Sun, 19 May 2013 15:59:03 -0400 http://saltspringnews.com/ PostNuke Powered Site en-us http://saltspringnews.com/images/banner.gif http://saltspringnews.com/ webmaster@SaltSpringNews.com http://saltspringnews.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=23397 Intro: USA: A democracy of the wealthy or "Billionaires Unchained" Salt Spring News British Columbia Canada May 17, 2013 Two links: Here an excerpt from one of those links: ... Can there be any question that this democracy of ours is nearing dangerous territory, if we're not already there? Picture the 2016 or 2020 election campaigns and, barring a new wave of campaign reforms, it’s not hard to see a tiny minority of people exerting a massive influence on our politics simply by virtue of bank accounts. There is nothing small-d democratic about that. It flies in the face of one of the central premises of this country of ours, equality, including political equality -- the concept that all citizens stand on an equal footing with one another when it comes to having their say on who represents them and how government should work. Increasingly, it looks like before the rest of us even have our say, before you enter the voting booth, issues, politics, and the politicians will have been winnowed, vetted, and predetermined by the wealthiest Americans. Think of it as a new definition of politics: the democracy of the wealthy, who can fight it out with each other inside and outside the political parties with little reference to you. In the meantime, the more those of modest means feel drowned out by the money of a tiny minority, the less connected they will feel to the work of government, and the less they will trust elected officials and government as an institution. It’s a formula for tuning out, staying home, and starving whatever’s left of our democracy. ... Stephen Harper’s failure to address Senate scandal is hurting his party Editorial Toronto Star Ontario Canada May 19, 2013 Just how long does Prime Minister Stephen Harper hope to float, butterflylike, above the Senate scandal that is ravaging his Conservative party’s credibility? ... Canadians deserve to hear directly from the Prime Minister, not from his minions, on what he thinks of a scandal that has been building for the better part of a year, and how he intends to make things right. Harper’s silence is no longer just hurting his party brand. It is undermining public confidence in his leadership. ... This sordid saga of improper Conservative behaviour, high-level secrecy and winking at wrongdoing has infuriated Canadians, disgraced the unelected Red Chamber, and spurred renewed interest in its abolition. It has also drawn the attention of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and of Parliament’s ethics commissioner, Mary Dawson. ... Now that the PMO is involved, it’s no longer a matter of a few rogue senators. This scandal goes directly to issues of respect for the taxpayers, political accountability and transparency, and the government’s disregard for all three. ... Items: Below: Paul Craig Roberts has been Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. Recovery or collapse? Bet on collapse Paul Craig Roberts Institute for Political Economy USA May 20, 2012 Visit this page for its embedded links. The US financial system and, probably, the financial system of Europe, like the police, no longer serves a useful social purpose. ... The enormous cost of the financial crisis has one single source–financial deregulation. Financial deregulation is likely to prove to be the mistake that destroys Western civilization. While we quake in our boots from fear of “Muslim terrorists,” it is financial deregulation that is destroying us, with help from jobs offshoring. ... Financial deregulation has had dangerous and adverse consequences. Deregulation permitted financial concentration that produced “banks too big to fail,” thus requiring the general public to absorb the costs of the banks’ mistakes and reckless gambling. Deregulation permitted banks to leverage a small amount of capital with enormous debt in order to maximize return on equity, thereby maximizing the instability of the financial system and the cost to society of the banks’ bad bets. Deregulation allowed financial institutions to sweep aside the position limits on speculators and to dominate commodity markets, turning them into a gambling casino and driving up the prices of energy and food. Deregulation permits financial institutions to sell naked shorts, which means to sell a company’s stock or gold and silver bullion that the seller does not possess into the market in order to drive down the price. ... Recently Bill Moyers interviewed Simon Johnson, formerly chief economist of the International Monetary Fund and currently professor at MIT. It turns out that deregulation, which abolished the separation of investment banks from commercial banks, permitted Jamie Dimon’s JPMorganChase to gamble with federally insured deposits. ... Simon Johnson says: “I think it [deregulation] is a recipe for disaster.” The problem is, Johnson says, that correct economic policy is blocked by the enormous donations banks make to political campaigns. This means Wall Street’s attitudes and faulty risk models will result in an even bigger financial crisis than the one from which we are still suffering. And it will happen prior to recovery from the current crisis. ... Johnson says that “a few people, particularly in and around the financial system, have become too powerful. They were allowed to take a lot of risk, and they did massive damage to the economy — more than eight million jobs lost. We’re still struggling to get back anywhere close to employment levels where we were before 2008. And they’ve done massive damage to the budget. ... Few Americans and no Washington policymakers understand the dire situation. They are too busy hyping a non-existent recovery and the next war. ... In the US free market economists unleashed avarice and permitted it to run amuck. Will the disastrous consequences discredit capitalism to the extent that the Soviet collapse discredited socialism? Will Western civilization itself survive the financial tsunami that deregulated Wall Street has produced? Ironic, isn’t it, that the United States, the home of the “indispensable people,” stands before us as the likely candidate whose government will be responsible for the collapse of the West. In the time between crises Rob Urie CounterPunch USA May 17-19, 2013 The working premise of politicians and economists in the ‘developed’ world of the West is a basic economic stability has been achieved by way of the depth and breadth of the political-economic institutions created over the last 75 years. The storyline coming out of Washington, London and Brussels is of degrees of economic ‘recovery,’ if halting, from the Great Recession. But missing are the institutions on which stability was based. They were removed in recent decades in favor of ‘market’ based reforms. What remains are institutions—the political establishment and the Federal Reserve, that support and foster the worst excesses of unfettered capitalism. This suggests periods of economic ‘recovery’ are now whatever lies between the periodic crises endemic to capitalism. To be clear, this isn’t a forecast. It is more nearly a look at history with and without the institutions of ‘managed’ capitalism to infer likely outcomes. ... Fast forward to today and the ‘new’ mainstream economic debate centers on ‘austerity’ versus economic stimulus to fix the still ailing economies of the West. ... But in earlier history Mr. (John Maynard) Keynes’ solutions to economic depression were implemented in conjunction with a broad set of restrictions on the system of finance capitalism. The current argument for Keynesian stimulus places the broader institutional changes that supported Mr. Keynes’ economics outside the realm of its concern. But in practical terms, no economic ‘lessons from history’ from Keynesian economics can be derived in isolation from the broader policy context in which they were enacted. The two reasons mainstream ‘New’ Keynesian economists avoid addressing the broader context is in the first place they have no context for broader context—the purposeful irrelevance of the profession quickly becomes apparent when the broader institutional context (laws, regulations, governing institutions, competing interests etc.) is determinant of economic outcomes because it resides (way) outside of the mainstream economic realm of concern. The second reason is implementing actual solutions requires taking a critical look at the ‘meta’ context of capitalism itself. Put another way, were a leading ‘liberal’ economist able to implement his / her wish list of fiscal stimulus it would do little to stabilize the system of finance capitalism. And by avoiding the larger issues Keynesian economic ‘patch’ jobs facilitate the next spectacular catastrophe. In fact, modest Keynesian patches have been applied during recessions in the recent decades of the ascendance of finance capitalism and its associated crises keep getting worse. The response of the liberal economic mainstream at present is as follows: financial bubbles, whatever their causes, may be contributing factors to economic crises; there are no financial bubbles evident at present, therefore the correct response of economists is to push for fiscal and monetary stimulus to address the still weak economy. The (unstated) historical context is there were no financial bubbles in the U.S. between 1935 and 1980, the approximate period in which Mr. Keynes’ economic prescriptions were coincident with institutional safeguards against them, and they have been regular occurrences of increasing severity since then. What changed is the broad set of institutional safeguards that prevented financial bubbles were removed beginning around 1980. But the safeguards weren’t directed at stopping financial bubbles per se—they were designed to restore the broad social function of capital allocation to the financial system. Even this version of events greatly understates the breadth of the institutional context in which these recurring crises of increasing intensity are now occurring. Coincident in recent decades with the financialization of the economy has been a shift in the distribution of the product of labor to capital and finance, the diminishment of labor’s bargaining power, a shift in tax burden from finance and property to labor, and increasing efforts to cut government expenditures so that even more resources are shifted toward ‘private’ wealth accumulation. ... The base argument made here and by (many) others is capitalism is a system of economic aggregation. Finance capitalism is a particular form of economic aggregation. Capitalists argue this aggregation is ‘capital formation’ and a good thing because it facilitates investment that leads to economic growth. The paradox long recognized is that without being managed, as in the broader institutional context of Mr. Keynes’ economic policies 1945 – 1980, capitalism cooks its own goose—economic concentration leads to political-economic instability. Recent historical evidence has it that when capitalism was managed 1945 – 1980 it was stable and in the time it hasn’t been managed 1980 – present it hasn’t been stable. ... The age of corporate treason Ralph Nadar CounterPunch USA May 17-19, 2013 Visit this page for its embedded links. Why are big, global U.S. corporations so unpatriotic? After all, they were created in the U.S.A., rose to immense profit because of the toil of American workers, are bailed out by American taxpayers whenever they’re in trouble, and are safeguarded abroad by the U.S. military. Yet these corporate goliaths work their tax lawyers overtime to escape U.S. taxes. Many pay less than you do in federal income taxes. Imagine corporations, like General Electric, have not paid federal income taxes on U.S. profits for years. Mega corporations have abandoned U.S. workers by entrenching “pull-down” trade agreements that make it easier than ever to ship jobs and whole industries to fascist and communist regimes abroad which keep their workers near serfdom. Remember, the U.S. has run large trade deficits for the past 30 years as a result of anti-American trade deals pushed by these global companies. These goliaths are pressing for the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a trade agreement that will further pull down our economy. (See http://www.citizen.org/page.aspx?pid=1328.) Corporate CEOs are raiding and draining traditional pension plans for millions of workers who are left without their expected and earned pension payments on retirement. (For more information see Ellen E. Schultz’s book Retirement Heist: How Companies Plunder and Profit from the Nest Eggs of American Workers.) They are freezing the federal minimum wage, for low income service jobs that they cannot export, at $7.25 per hour, leaving thirty million workers today making less than workers made in 1968, inflation adjusted. Having wages that go backwards into the future means workers cannot afford the basic necessities of life for themselves and their children. Giant companies hire legions of lobbyists to weaken or abolish consumer, worker and environmental safety and health laws, to stop our country from joining all other Western Nations with full Medicare for all. Corporate campaign cash increasingly flows to indentured politicians, who in turn do the bidding of the corporate paymasters at your expense. We’ve yet to find a CEO of a U.S. global corporation who will even go through the motions at their annual shareholders meeting standing up and, in the name of the company, pledging “allegiance to the United States…with liberty and justice for all.” When asked, as was General Motors, the CEO refused. Charge companies with unpatriotic behavior and you’ll tap a nerve or two. ... Big U.S. corporations have long demanded a legal system where they are defined as “people,” so as to get all of our constitutional rights while they expand their privileged powers and immunities. Well, why don’t we measure them by the many patriotic standards that we apply to ourselves, the real American people. Getting these giant firms on the defensive is the first step for the resurgence of the people so that corporations become our servants and do not remain our masters. Below: We're in the early stages of a massive transformation, from industrial capitalism to something new thinks Don Tapscott. Don Tapscott is Adjunct Professor at the Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto and the Inaugural Fellow of the Sun, 19 May 2013 15:59:03 -0400 http://saltspringnews.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=23396 What is loneliness? It’s not solitude or what Kierkegaard called “shut-upness.” It’s an interior experience. And it can kill you. The lethality of loneliness Judith Shulevitz The New Republic USA May 13, 2013 Sometime in the late ’50s, Frieda Fromm-Reichmann sat down to write an essay about a subject that had been mostly overlooked by other psychoanalysts up to that point. Even Freud had only touched on it in passing. She was not sure, she wrote, “what inner forces” made her struggle with the problem of loneliness, though she had a notion. It might have been the young female catatonic patient who began to communicate only when Fromm-Reichmann asked her how lonely she was. “She raised her hand with her thumb lifted, the other four fingers bent toward her palm,” Fromm-Reichmann wrote. The thumb stood alone, “isolated from the four hidden fingers.” Fromm-Reichmann responded gently, “That lonely?” And at that, the woman’s “facial expression loosened up as though in great relief and gratitude, and her fingers opened.” Fromm-Reichmann would later become world-famous as the dumpy little therapist mistaken for a housekeeper by a new patient, a severely disturbed schizophrenic girl named Joanne Greenberg. Fromm-Reichmann cured Greenberg, who had been deemed incurable. Greenberg left the hospital, went to college, became a writer, and immortalized her beloved analyst as “Dr. Fried” in the best-selling autobiographical novel I Never Promised You a Rose Garden (later also a movie and a pop song). Among analysts, Fromm-Reichmann, who had come to the United States from Germany to escape Hitler, was known for insisting that no patient was too sick to be healed through trust and intimacy. She figured that loneliness lay at the heart of nearly all mental illness and that the lonely person was just about the most terrifying spectacle in the world. She once chastised her fellow therapists for withdrawing from emotionally unreachable patients rather than risk being contaminated by them. The uncanny specter of loneliness “touches on our own possibility of loneliness,” she said. “We evade it and feel guilty.” Her 1959 essay, “On Loneliness,” is considered a founding document in a fast-growing area of scientific research you might call loneliness studies. Over the past half-century, academic psychologists have largely abandoned psychoanalysis and made themselves over as biologists. And as they delve deeper into the workings of cells and nerves, they are confirming that loneliness is as monstrous as Fromm-Reichmann said it was. It has now been linked with a wide array of bodily ailments as well as the old mental ones. In a way, these discoveries are as consequential as the germ theory of disease. Just as we once knew that infectious diseases killed, but didn’t know that germs spread them, we’ve known intuitively that loneliness hastens death, but haven’t been able to explain how. Psychobiologists can now show that loneliness sends misleading hormonal signals, rejiggers the molecules on genes that govern behavior, and wrenches a slew of other systems out of whack. They have proved that long-lasting loneliness not only makes you sick; it can kill you. Emotional isolation is ranked as high a risk factor for mortality as smoking. A partial list of the physical diseases thought to be caused or exacerbated by loneliness would include Alzheimer’s, obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, neurodegenerative diseases, and even cancer—tumors can metastasize faster in lonely people. The psychological definition of loneliness hasn’t changed much since Fromm-Reichmann laid it out. “Real loneliness,” as she called it, is not what the philosopher Søren Kierkegaard characterized as the “shut-upness” and solitariness of the civilized. Nor is “real loneliness” the happy solitude of the productive artist or the passing irritation of being cooped up with the flu while all your friends go off on some adventure. It’s not being dissatisfied with your companion of the moment—your friend or lover or even spouse— unless you chronically find yourself in that situation, in which case you may in fact be a lonely person. Fromm-Reichmann even distinguished “real loneliness” from mourning, since the well-adjusted eventually get over that, and from depression, which may be a symptom of loneliness but is rarely the cause. Loneliness, she said—and this will surprise no one—is the want of intimacy. ... Sun, 19 May 2013 15:51:18 -0400 http://saltspringnews.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=23395 Photo: Tom Hanson/The Canadian Press. "There needs to be a healing in the land and in the people." Elijah Harper, 1995. Jim comment: Given the pervasive corruption within the ruling classes, the profound debasement of our social institutions and the concomitant general anomie/ennui, I wonder if an Elijah Harper would even be heard—much less listened to—whether in the narrow halls of power or on the broader streets of today's Canada. Still, it seems the embers of Lady Justice's fire are kept aglow in social movements. Over the course of his career Harper used fundamental democratic processes to address First Nations issues that had been politically ignored for centuries. The Idle No More movement would not have been possible without his pioneering trail blazing. As a residential school survivor, Elijah spent a large part of his life fighting for the rights of First Nations people of Canada and for the betterment of the human condition around the world while he was a Chief of Red Sucker Lake First Nation, worked with the Manitoba Indian Brotherhood, a Member of the Manitoba Legislative Assembly, a Member of Parliament and as a Commissioner of the Indian Claims Commission. As a humble leader, he made Canadian history when he, with eagle feather in hand, said 'No' to the Meech Lake Accord. He felt that the Indigenous people of this country were not being recognized or being allowed to participate in a meaningful way in that constitutional process. Elijah Harper became a symbol of great courage and strong First Nations leadership. He was a Hero to many, an inspiring role model for Indigenous people here in Canada and around the globe. ... Over the course of his career he used fundamental democratic processes to address First Nations issues that had been politically ignored for centuries. His courage, his quiet and gentle leadership will be greatly missed. - < a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/142063514/For-Immediate-Release-Assembly-of-Manitoba-Chiefs-Offers-Condolences-After-Learning-of-Sudden-Passing-of-First-Nation-Hero-and-Political-Warrior-Mr-El" target="_blank">Grand Chief Derek Nepinak of the Assembly of Manitoba First Nations statement on the sudden passing of First Nations hero and political warrior, Mr. Elijah Harper Elijah Harper, key player in Meech Lake accord, dies at 64 CBC News Manitoba Canada May 17, 2013 This page includes embedded videos. Elijah Harper, a former Manitoba MLA and MP who was a key player in defeating the Meech Lake accord, has died at the age of 64. Harper died early Friday in Ottawa as a result of cardiac failure due to diabetes complications, according to a statement released by his family. Harper achieved national fame in 1990 by holding an eagle feather as he stood in the Manitoba legislature and refused to support the Meech Lake accord, effectively blocking the constitutional amendment package negotiated to gain Quebec's acceptance of the Constitution Act of 1982. Harper protested that the proposed accord was negotiated in 1987 without the input of Canada's aboriginal peoples. The accord required ratification by all 10 provincial legislatures and Parliament, and Harper's action prevented Manitoba from doing so before the deadline. Newfoundland followed by cancelling its free vote in the legislature. His wife, Anita Olsen Harper, his children and the family said in the statement that Harper "was a wonderful man, father, partner. He was a true leader and visionary in every sense of the word." The statement added: "He will have a place in Canadian history, forever, for his devotion to public service and uniting his fellow First Nations with pride, determination and resolve. Elijah will also be remembered for bringing aboriginal and non-aboriginal people together to find a spiritual basis for healing and understanding. We will miss him terribly and love him forever.” ... Born on the Red Sucker Lake First Nation, about 710 kilometres northeast of Winnipeg, Harper attended residential schools in Norway House, Brandon and Birtle, and then secondary schools at Garden Hill and Winnipeg. He studied at the University of Manitoba and began his long career in public service when he was elected chief of his community at the young age of 29. In 1981, Harper was elected as an NDP member of the Manitoba legislative assembly for Rupertsland, an office he held for 11 years. He was the first person elected from a First Nation to serve as an MLA. In 1993, Harper was elected for one term as a Liberal member of Parliament for the Churchill riding. In January 1998, he served a term as commissioner for the Indian Claims Commission. He was also bestowed with the title of honorary chief for life by the Red Sucker Lake First Nation. Gary Filmon, who was premier of Manitoba at the time of the Meech Lake vote, recalled Harper telling him in advance that he had decided to block the accord. "I felt his sincerity and I believed that he was doing what he felt he had to do and that he was not representing just himself — he was representing First Nations and aboriginal people from coast to coast," Filmon told CBC News. "He certainly has left an impact on our province and our country. [There's] no question that his position on Meech Lake brought First Nation and aboriginal issues into the forefront." ... Grand Chief David Harper of Manitoba Keewatinowi Okimakanak, an organization that represents northern Manitoba First Nations, applauded Harper's stand on Meech Lake and his efforts to ensure aboriginal voices were heard in Ottawa. "First Nations has to be up front and centre in the political landscape of this land. That's where he was and, for sure, he's going to be missed," he said. ... Jennifer Wood, who worked with Harper for 10 years, remembered him as someone who "wasn't afraid to challenge anyone or anyone." "There's not one person that I know that will ever be equal to Elijah," she said. "We should never be afraid to challenge anything." Kyra Wilson, co-president of the University of Manitoba's Aboriginal Students Association, described Harper as the original activist, and he said the Idle No More movement would not have been possible without him. "He started it all," she said. "Now we're seeing a lot of people coming forward and opposing some of the decisions that some of our governments are trying to impose." ... Canadians share memories, photos of Elijah Harper online Lauren O'Neil CBC News, Your Community Blog Canada May 17, 2013 Many Canadians were stricken to learn Friday morning that First Nations leader and former Manitoba MLA and MP Elijah Harper had passed away at the age of 64. ... Assembly of First Nations offers condolences after passing of Elijah Harper Assembly of First Nations Canada May 17, 2013 (Ottawa, ON) – Assembly of First Nations (AFN) National Chief Shawn A-in-chut Atleo today offered condolences to the family and friends of Elijah Harper of Red Sucker Lake First Nation who passed away this morning in Ottawa. “On behalf of the Assembly of First Nations National Executive, I offer sincere condolences to the family, friends and all First Nations in Manitoba region and across Canada mourning the loss of a tireless and courageous leader of our peoples,” said AFN National Chief Shawn Atleo. “Elijah’s commitment and dedication to asserting and upholding First Nation rights and recognition has helped lay a solid foundation as this hard work continues today. Leading two Sacred Assemblies focused on finding a spiritual basis for healing and understanding between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples, Elijah’s drive and actions toward reconciliation will continue to be a legacy for First Nation and all Canadians as we move toward improved and renewed relationships based on mutual respect and recognition – two things he stood firm on in all of his work.” Elijah Harper was the first First Nation person elected as to provincial government, serving the Manitoba riding of Rupertsland for the New Democratic Party in the 1980s. Mr. Harper was named provincial Minister of Northern Affairs and Minister in charge of the Communities Economic Fund Act in 1987, and Minister responsible for Native Affairs later that year. In 1990 Mr. Harper received the Stanley Knowles Humanitarian Award and was voted “Newsmaker of the Year in Canada” by the Canadian Press following his efforts to uphold the Constitution Act during the Meech Lake and Charlottetown Accords. He also received the title of Honourary Chief for Life of Red Sucker Lake First Nation and a commemorative medal of Canada from the Governor General for his efforts in the public service. He resigned from the Manitoba legislature in 1992, and joined the federal Liberal Party in 1993. Once elected Member of Parliament, Mr. Harper was a member of the Parliamentary Standing Committee of Aboriginal Affairs until 1997. Funeral services will take place at 10 a.m. Monday May 20 at the Aboriginal Funeral Chapel in Winnipeg, MB. UBCIC remembers Elijah Harper NationTalk Canada May 17, 2013 (Vancouver, B.C. / Coast Salish Territory) The Union of BC Indian Chiefs is shocked and deeply saddened to hear of the passing of Elijah Harper. On behalf of our member communities and leaders, we send our sincere condolences and prayers to Anita Olsen Harper and their children. We shall never forget Elijah Harper’s courage, tireless commitment and deep sense of political integrity. We shall be eternally grateful to Elijah Harper for the tremendous contribution he made, in spite of great personal sacrifices, to defend the sovereign interests of the Indigenous Peoples of Turtle Island. We shall honor and celebrate his memory from this day forward. He will be greatly missed, but never forgotten. Elijah Harper’s body to lie in state at Manitoba legislature Toronto Star Ontario Canada May 18, 2013 WINNIPEG—The Manitoba government says Elijah Harper’s body will lie in state in the province’s legislature. ... The province says the public will be able to view Harper on Monday afternoon and that books of condolences will be available. Later that evening, a funeral service will be held at Glory and Peace Church in Winnipeg. The burial service will take place Thursday in Red Sucker Lake, where Harper was born and was once chief of the Ojibwa-Cree Red Sucker Lake First Nation. Jennifer Wood, a longtime friend who worked with Harper in Winnipeg and in Ottawa, said the casket will be open during the viewing and that there will be a Manitoba flag draped over a portion of it. ... Related: A photo found on Facebook. Courtesy "Eagles….And Eagle Feathers….Some Native Teachings" Sun, 19 May 2013 15:26:11 -0400 http://saltspringnews.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=23394 Click on a headline below to go to that news item Friday, May 17,2013 World News The Western Axis' battle with Syria: Recent dispatches Social Ideas USA: A democracy of the wealthy or "Billionaires Unchained" World News Turbo-capitalism, turbo-neoliberalism: Fight - and it's US vs EU (Canada was just Uncle Sam's stalking horse in this vociferous dispute) World News Stephen Harper slams world leaders for not supporting Israel; Israel has highest poverty rate in developed world; UN warns Israel over 'int'l law violations'; 30,000 protest in Jerusalem Thursday, May 16,2013 New World Order Emboldened by unaccountable power: Mass surveillance, keeping secrets—Obama administration is civil-liberties-unfriendly. The AP seizures and the frightening web they've uncovered Commentary BC election: Climate change/global warming, tar sands pipelines, accusations of vote-spliting, poor campaigning/successful campaigning Commentary BC election: Progressive postmortems Wednesday, May 15,2013 National News Life in this corporatist state: Business journalists go on the attack; demonize Atlantic seasonal workers Regional News British Columbia: Our home province election. Shock win keeps two tar sands pipelines afloat and fracking fully and uncritically supported Tuesday, May 14,2013 Commentary British Columbia: Connections between wealth and power flourish in secret World News Turkey’s journalists say press freedom has declined under Erdogan’s rule & Talking about dissent in Turkey? Hush, hush! World News Concerning Israel and the occupied territories: Stephen Hawking and a brief history of boycotts World News Pakistan's Nawaz Sharif: Anti-US drone strikes, pro-Islamization, pro-Neoliberalism. Does he represent the turning over of a new leaf for Pakistan? Commentary Commentary concerning the criminalization of political dissent in the USA and Canada Monday, May 13,2013 World News Was Syria ‘Nuked’? & Israel, Iran, and the nuclear freight train Commentary It’s not al Qaeda, stupid! Sunday, May 12,2013 Social Ideas I still love Kierkegaard. He provides the link between imagination and rationality Arts Why Kathryn Schulz despises "The Great Gatsby" Commentary The on-going struggle to achieve political, economic, and intellectual dignity and autonomy in an age of declining and shifting empires. Against the Brahmins: An interview with Pankaj Mishra Social Ideas In these times: Sex, economics, and austerity Sat, 18 May 2013 03:00:08 -0400 http://saltspringnews.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=23393 On Tuesday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a group that tracks casualties in Syria, raised its total estimate of dead to more than 94,000 since the beginning of the rebellion in March 2011. The new figure included thousands of government troops and supporters who had not been accounted for in previous death tolls. - David Enders reporting “The only real outcome I see in the next 5 to 10 years is a series of cantons that agree to tactical cease-fires because they are tired of the bloodletting,” said Mr. Holliday, the analyst with the Institute for the Study of War. - Ben Hubbard reporting Another anti-Assad false flag Stephen Lendman Veterans Today USA May 13, 2013 Since early 2011, Obama’s been waging proxy war on Syria. Imported death squads masquerade as freedom fighters. The scheme’s familiar. It repeats. It reflects US imperialism’s dark side. In the 1980s, CIA-recruited mujahideen fighters battled Afghanistan’s Soviet occupiers. Ronald Reagan called them “the moral equivalent of our founding fathers.” He characterized Contra killers the same way. Naked aggression is called humanitarian intervention. New wars follow earlier ones. Ravaging humanity is called liberation. Nations are destroyed for their own good. Propaganda convinces people that America is threatened. Truth is turned on its head. Syria is Washington’s latest target. Plans haven’t gone as expected. Ousting another government was supposed to be easy. US-enlisted terrorists are no match against Syria’s military superiority. Implementing Plan B looms. It could come any time. ... Refugees fleeing besieged Qusayr say Syrian rebels dug in, preparing for government onslaught David Enders McClatchy Newspapers USA May 16, 2013 Syrian refugees wait to register for aid in Aarsal, a city in northern Lebanon. Many of the refugees in Aarsal have fled fighting around Qusayr, a city just over the border from here. Photo: David Enders/MCT AARSAL, Lebanon — The Syrian city of Qusayr lies just 10 miles over the border from Aarsal in northern Lebanon. But the Syrians now crowding into Aarsal said the trip to get here from Qusayr required walking for days. Those who fled said that as many as 40,000 people remain in Qusayr, a city that has been a stronghold of the rebels fighting the Syrian government for more than a year. But government troops, bolstered by recently trained militias, now surround the city, in apparent preparation for storming it. The checkpoints they’ve set up on the roads around it make fleeing the besieged city dangerous – and complicated. “To leave Qusayr is to risk death,” said one man who had made the journey along a circuitous route intended to avoid Syrian army checkpoints. The man, who refused to give his name because he feared reprisals from the Syrian government, said the trip took 10 days, most of it on foot. To stay in Qusayr is to risk death as well. Government troops’ overrunning of rebel-held districts has led to some of the highest civilian death tolls of Syria’s civil war. Last summer, when Syrian troops moved into Daraya, outside Dasmascus, hundreds of civilians reportedly were killed. Qusayr’s population, normally about 35,000, had dropped to about half as residents fled the fighting that ended in a rebel victory in July 2012. Now the population has swelled again as thousands fled to the city in recent weeks after government troops seized nearby villages from rebel forces. The Syrian government dropped leaflets last week on Qusayr and villages nearby, urging residents to leave the area to avoid bloodshed and promising rebel fighters safety if they surrender. The likelihood of a rebel surrender seems small, however. People who’ve fled Qusayr in recent days said that thousands of rebel fighters have dug in and are preparing to make a stand, even though their supply of ammunition was running low. ... Syria begins to break apart under pressure from war Ben Hubbard New York Times USA May 16, 2013 CAIRO — The black flag of jihad flies over much of northern Syria. In the center of the country, pro-government militias and Hezbollah fighters battle those who threaten their communities. In the northeast, the Kurds have effectively carved out an autonomous zone. After more than two years of conflict, Syria is breaking up. A constellation of armed groups battling to advance their own agendas are effectively creating the outlines of separate armed fiefs. As the war expands in scope and brutality, its biggest casualty appears to be the integrity of the Syrian state. On Thursday, President Obama met in Washington with the Turkish prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and once again pressed the idea of a top-down diplomatic solution. That approach depends on the rebels and the government agreeing to meet at a peace conference that was announced last week by the United States and Russia. “We’re going to keep increasing the pressure on the Assad regime and working with the Syrian opposition,” Mr. Obama said. “We are going to keep working for a Syria that is free of Assad’s tyranny.” But as evidence of massacres and chemical weapons mounts, experts and Syrians themselves say the American focus on change at the top ignores the deep fractures the war has caused in Syrian society. Increasingly, it appears Syria is so badly shattered that no single authority is likely to be able to pull it back together any time soon. Instead, three Syrias are emerging: one loyal to the government, to Iran and to Hezbollah; one dominated by Kurds with links to Kurdish separatists in Turkey and Iraq; and one with a Sunni majority that is heavily influenced by Islamists and jihadis. ... Fueling the country’s breakup are the growing brutality of fighters on all sides and the increasingly sectarian nature of the violence. ... Related: Below: The UN General Assembly has condemned Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's beleaguered regime, while as expected China and Russia voted against the resolution. Significant. however, was the increase in the number of skeptics who wanted neither to back Damascus nor to hamper a renewed push for peace talks. U.N. General Assembly condemns Syria as sceptics multiply Thalif Deen Inter Press Service International May 15, 2013 Bashar Ja’afari, Permanent Representative of the Syrian Arab Republic to the UN, addresses the Assembly on May 15. Photo: Evan Schneider/UN UNITED NATIONS, May 15 2013 (IPS) - When the 193-member General Assembly voted Wednesday to condemn the beleaguered government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, there was an increase in the number of sceptics who neither supported nor opposed the tottering regime in Damascus. The resolution, which is legally non-binding, was adopted by a vote of 107-12, compared with 133-12 last August. As the number of supporters to the resolution declined, from 133 to 107, the abstentions increased significantly, from 31 to 59, including a mix of Asian, African and Latin American countries. The abstentions included Algeria, Bangladesh, India, Brazil, South Africa, Indonesia, El Salvador, Eritrea, Fiji, Kenya, Lebanon, Myanmar, Singapore, Sudan, South Sudan and Uruguay. Asked for a response, Jose Luis Diaz, Amnesty International’s U.N. representative in New York, told IPS, “I think the number of abstentions – and the divisions in the General Assembly – are the consequence of political considerations.” ... The resolution, drafted by Qatar and co-sponsored or backed by most of the Arab countries and Western powers, recognised the Syrian National Coalition as “effective representative interlocutors needed for a political transition” in Syria. ... Russia, which lobbied last week against the resolution, described it as “very harmful and destructive”. Russia’s deputy permanent representative Ambassador Alexander Pankin said, “It’s particularly irresponsible and counterproductive to promote this when the United States and Russia reached a very important agreement … and need a unified approach.” Early this week, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov met in Moscow and agreed on a proposed international conference on Syria. ... No sensation, only standing contracts – Lavrov on Russia’s weapons supplies to Syria RT Russia May 17, 2013 Russia’s weapons supplies to Syria are fully in compliance with the law and do not give the government troops any advantage over the rebels, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said commenting on the hype in Western media. “I don’t understand why mass media are trying to make a sensation out of the fact. We do not conceal it that we supply weapons to Syria according to signed contracts, violating neither any international agreements, nor our own weapon export control legislation, one of the strictest in the world,” Lavrov said at a press conference on Friday. ... The Russian FM commented on Russia’s weapons supplies at a press-conference following his talks with the UN chief. The Syrian crisis dominated the agenda of the meeting, which is part of a recent flurry of diplomatic efforts to end the violence in the country, preceded by Vladimir Putin holding similar talks with worlds’ top officials, including the US secretary of state and the British and Israeli leaders. Eventually, a joint initiative was authored by Moscow and Washington to hold peace conference on Syria, planned for June. Before the conference happens though, both the US and Russia have several stumbling blocks to overcome, such as divisions inside the Syrian opposition, making it unclear who exactly can represent it at the conference, and harsh preconditions set by the rebels. “In contrast to the Syrian government, which has responded quite positively to the Russian-American initiative, the opposition's answer was quite vague. They said that they welcome any initiatives that will help to stop the violence, but before that Assad must go - reiterating their stance, which has been the cause of the deadlock for many months,” said Lavrov on Thursday in an interview to Al Mayadeen. As for the US it is expected to object to Iran’s participation, on which Moscow insists. ... Fri, 17 May 2013 17:24:50 -0400 http://saltspringnews.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=23392 Below: Andy Kroll covers money in politics for Mother Jones magazine, and is an associate editor at TomDispatch, which he writes for regularly. He lives in Washington, D.C., the only place in America where people freely discuss campaign financing at happy hour. Andy Kroll, A Democracy of the Wealthy Tom Englehardt and Andy Kroll TomDispatch USA May 16, 2013 Visit this page for its embedded links. Once upon a time, the election season began with the New Hampshire primary in early March and never really gained momentum (or much attention) until the candidates were chosen and the fall campaign revved up. Now, the New Hampshire primary is in early January, and by then, the campaign season has already been underway for a couple of years. Consider campaign 2016, the next 1% presidential election of the twenty-first century. It’s more than underway with congressional hearings that are visibly organized to skewer possible Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, and that special table-setter, the first Karl Rove super PAC attack video/ad, also lighting out after the former secretary of state. Looked at another way, like recent presidential campaigns, the 2016 version actually began before the last election ended. The initial media handicapping of future candidates by reporters and pundits, for instance, hit the news well before the first voter emerged from a polling booth in 2012 -- and it’s never stopped. Similarly, the first Iowa poll for the next campaign season made it on the scene within days of the 2012 vote count (Hillary was ahead), and the first attack ads in early primary states are already appearing. With thousands or perhaps tens of thousands of polls to follow, Americans will repeatedly “vote” in contests set up by companies, often hired by political parties or politicians to take the pulse of the public in the unending serial ballots that now precede the actual election. And don’t forget the single most obvious characteristic of supersizing American democracy: money that will flood the zone. Billions of dollars will go to “political consultants” (in 2012, an estimated $3 billion) and billions of dollars in ads will inundate TV, radio, and almost any other medium around ($6 billion in 2012 and expected to climb in 2016). Billions of words of punditry and commentary about the election (always) “of the century” will flow from well-funded TV news outfits stoked by all those ad dollars. Above all, there will be the money pouring into super PACs and the dark side, which will inundate everything else, shaping the new landscape in which U.S. elections now take place. The sums are staggering, and the limits on how much a wealthy person can “contribute” are rapidly falling away. As a result, “earlier” and “more” are likely to be the operative political words for 2016, which means that, in a sense, American “democracy” couldn’t be more vigorous. Unfortunately, it's the vigor of the wealthy, as TomDispatch Associate Editor Andy Kroll makes clear. Increasingly, it's their system, politically speaking and in every other way, and welcome to it. Tom Billionaires Unchained The New Pay-As-You-Go Landscape of American “Democracy” By Andy Kroll Billionaires with an axe to grind, now is your time. Not since the days before a bumbling crew of would-be break-in artists set into motion the fabled Watergate scandal, leading to the first far-reaching restrictions on money in American politics, have you been so free to meddle. There is no limit to the amount of money you can give to elect your friends and allies to political office, to defeat those with whom you disagree, to shape or stunt or kill policy, and above all to influence the tone and content of political discussion in this country. ... But simply tallying Adelson's wins and losses -- or the Koch brothers', or George Soros's, or any other mega-donors' -- misses the bigger point. What matters is that these wealthy funders were able to give so much money in the first place. With the advent of super PACs and a growing reliance on secretly funded nonprofits, the very wealthy can pour their money into the political system with an ease that didn't exist as recently as this moment in Barack Obama's first term in office. For now at least, Sheldon Adelson is an extreme example, but he portends a future in which 1-percenters can flood the system with money in ways beyond the dreams of ordinary Americans. In the meantime, the traditional political parties, barred from taking all that limitless cash, seem to be sliding toward irrelevance. They are losing their grip on the political process, political observers say, leaving motivated millionaires and billionaires to handpick the candidates and the issues. "It'll be wealthy people getting together and picking horses and riding those horses through a primary process and maybe upending the consensus of the party," a Democratic strategist recently told me. "We're in a whole new world." ... Can there be any question that this democracy of ours is nearing dangerous territory, if we're not already there? Picture the 2016 or 2020 election campaigns and, barring a new wave of campaign reforms, it’s not hard to see a tiny minority of people exerting a massive influence on our politics simply by virtue of bank accounts. There is nothing small-d democratic about that. It flies in the face of one of the central premises of this country of ours, equality, including political equality -- the concept that all citizens stand on an equal footing with one another when it comes to having their say on who represents them and how government should work. Increasingly, it looks like before the rest of us even have our say, before you enter the voting booth, issues, politics, and the politicians will have been winnowed, vetted, and predetermined by the wealthiest Americans. Think of it as a new definition of politics: the democracy of the wealthy, who can fight it out with each other inside and outside the political parties with little reference to you. In the meantime, the more those of modest means feel drowned out by the money of a tiny minority, the less connected they will feel to the work of government, and the less they will trust elected officials and government as an institution. It’s a formula for tuning out, staying home, and starving whatever’s left of our democracy. I caught a glimpse of this last November, when I spoke to a class of students at Radford University in Virginia, a state blanketed with super PAC attack ads and dark money in 2012. Over and over, students told me how disgusted they were by all the vitriol they heard when they turned on the TV or the radio. Most said that they ended up ignoring the campaigns; a few were so put off they didn't bother to vote. "They're all bought and sold anyway," one student told me in front of the entire class. "Why would my vote make any difference?" Related: The first presidential election since Citizens United lived up to its hype, with unprecedented outside spending from new sources making headlines. D&#275;mos and U.S. PIRG Education Fund analysis of reports from campaigns, parties, and outside spenders to the Federal Election Commission found that our big money system distorts democracy and creates clear winners and losers: ... - From the first two paragraphs in the Executive Summary of "Billion-Dollar Democracy: The Unprecedented Role of Money in the 2012 Elections" (PDF). The analysis by the liberal think tank D&#275;mos found that out of every $10 raised by super PACs in 2012, $9 came from just 3,318 people giving $10,000 or more. That small club of donors is equivalent to 0.0011% of the U.S. population. Fri, 17 May 2013 16:37:19 -0400 http://saltspringnews.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=23391 Forget about the Pentagon "pivoting" to Asia; nothing compares with the catfight developing between the United States and European Union over a free-trade pact proposed by Brussels, feared by many in Europe, and now pursued with a vengeance by Washington. Much lies in the hands of a European determined to be a personal winner in this transatlantic tussle, whatever its revolutionary potential. Catfight - and it's US vs EU Pepe Escobar Asia Times Online Hong Kong May 17, 2013 PARIS - Lovers of turbo-neoliberalism, rejoice - and take your bottles of Moet to a prime ringside seat; there won't be a nastier catfight this summer than the opening rounds opposing two Western giants. Forget about the Pentagon "pivoting" to Asia without ever abandoning the Middle East; nothing compares with this voyage in the entrails of turbo-capitalism, worthy of a neo-Balzac. We're talking about a new Holy Grail - a free-market deal between the United States and the European Union; the advent of a giant, internal transatlantic market (25% of global exports, 31% of global imports, 57% of foreign investment), where goods and services (but not people) will "freely" circulate, something that in theory will lead Europe out of its current funk. The problem is that to reach this Brave New World presided by the Market Goddess, Europe will have to renounce some of its quite complex juridical, environmental, cultural and health norms. In that Kafkaesque/Orwellian bureaucratic paradise also known as Brussels, hordes of faceless equivalents of the bowler hat men in a Magritte painting openly complain about this "adventure"; there's a growing consensus Europe has everything to lose and little to gain out of it, in contrast with the much-derided enemies of the European integration, as in the fanatics of an "pro-American" and "ultra-liberal" Europe. It gets curioser and curioser when one observes that the great majority of European nations actually have wanted a free-market deal for quite a while, unlike the much more protectionist US. By now, at least officially, not a single EU nation is opposed to the deal. Here's the non-official reason; none can afford to be blamed an enemy of the United States. The European Commission (EC) estimates that the gross national product growth of the EU as a whole will grow by 0.5% - not exactly a Chinese target. The Americans, on the other hand, are way more excited; the US Senate estimates that without custom duties, US exports to Europe will grow by almost 20%. The meat of the matter in clinching the deal will be harmonizing rules that are blamed for blocking the much-vaunted totally free circulation of goods. "Harmonizing" means diluting European rules. And there's the rub; Washington does not want just a transatlantic deal. The final countdown is to set in stone a global free for all that would later be imposed everywhere; that's code for totally opening the Chinese market, with absolutely no restrictions, for Western corporations. ... Related: Stalking horse: something used to mask a purpose; a candidate put forward to divide the opposition or to conceal someone's real candidacy. Concerning a North American-EU free trade zone, the Harper government has been a willing stalking horse for Uncle Sam. Canada Finance Minister: Canada-EU free trade discussions 'at very serious level' David George-Cosh Wall Street Journal USA May 13, 2013 TORONTO--Canadian Finance Minister Jim Flaherty said that free-trade negotiations between Canada and the European Union are "continuing at a very serious level," but have yet to be fully resolved. "Any time free trade with Europe came up this weekend, I can tell you that Canada was mentioned and the U.S. was mentioned also," he said Sunday during an interview on CTV's Question Period. "Europeans are very conscious of the months and months of negotiations with Canada." Mr. Flaherty spoke from London where he was attending a meeting of Group of Seven finance ministers and central bankers. Canada and the EU have been negotiating a free-trade deal for nearly four years. Officials have yet to confirm a new timeline to conclude free-trade talks after missing the deadline to arrive at a deal by the end of last year. The Wall Street Journal has previously reported that several outstanding issues remain, including Ottawa's demand for more access in the EU for Canadian beef, and the EU's demands for access to public procurement in Canada. ... Canada-Europe trade agreement: Food is only holdup, EU ambassador says Les Whittington and Bruce Campion-Smith Toronto Star Ontario Canada May 9, 2013 OTTAWA—Only food import issues now stand in the way of a long-sought Canada-European Union free trade agreement despite a growing war of words over petroleum exports from the Canadian oil sands, European officials say. Matthias Brinkmann, the EU’s ambassador to Canada, said the last major hurdle in the trade talks is focused on Canadian demands to export more beef to Europe and European demands for better access for their dairy products — particularly cheese — in Canada. Negotiations have been going on for more than four years but Brinkmann told reporters the two sides had hammered out the general elements of a deal, which will be the biggest trade liberalization pact signed by Canada since NAFTA in 1994. “I think we have the landing zones identified for all sectors where we negotiate,” Brinkmann said Thursday. “But as always, the most difficult sectors remain open to the end. “Like in most negotiations, it is agriculture that is the most difficult one,” Brinkmann added. But he said negotiators are making progress and it is hoped a deal will be reached by the summer. After that, it would take about two years for it to be approved by EU member states, he said. He said an emerging war of words over sales in Europe of petroleum from Canadian oil sands will not affect the trade talks. Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver has threatened to complain to the World Trade Organization if the EU goes ahead with a fuel-quality directive now being discussed by European countries. It would label crude from Canada’s oil sands as dirty oil that contributes disproportionately to global warming. The Harper government disputes this designation and is lobbying Europeans to reject it. ... Fri, 17 May 2013 15:41:51 -0400 http://saltspringnews.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=23390 Canada PM slams world leaders for not supporting Israel Associated Press/The Times of Israel USA/Israel May 17, 2013 NEW YORK (AP) — Canada’s prime minister Stephen Harper expressed dismay Thursday at the growing lack of support for Israel across the world and criticized international leaders for failing to back the Jewish state. “There’s nothing more shortsighted in Western capitals in our time than the softening of support we’ve seen for Israel around the globe,” he said, calling the country “the one stable, democratic ally in this part of the world.” Speaking during a visit to New York City, Harper also touched on Syria as he urged “extraordinary caution” on the idea of arming the opposition. “We should not fool ourselves about what’s happening in Syria,” he said, saying there is “brutality and extremism on both sides.” “To start talking about arming unnamed people whose objectives we don’t understand, I think, is extremely risky,” Harper said. Related: Israel has highest poverty rate in the developed world, OECD report shows Lior Dattel and Nadan Feldman Ha'aretz Israel May 15, 2013 The full artcle is behind a paywall. "The full text is available for subscribers & registered users. Click here to subscribe ($1 for the first 4 weeks) register (free access for 10 stories a month) or login" Israel is the most impoverished of the 34 economically developed countries, with a poverty rate of 20.9%, according to a report released by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development on Wednesday. Israel’s poor population has grown more than in any other OECD nation, making it the country with the highest rate of poverty, having exceeding Mexico, whose poverty rate stands at 20.4%. Israel also continues to be one of the countries with the largest income inequalities, ranking fifth, with the U.S., Mexico, Chile and Turkey having larger income gaps. Between 2007 and 2011, Israel experienced almost no changes in its social gaps – which saw a tiny decline of 0.1%. Between 2007 and 2010, poverty among children and young people in Israel grew at the fourth largest rate from among the OECD countries – although among senior citizens, it declined. As opposed to the trend in most countries, where salaries among both the richest and poorest has decreased, Israel has seen a slight increase in both. In Spain and Greece, which are suffering from recession, poverty rates are lower, at 15.4% and 14.3% respectively. The OECD report also points to an increase in inequality throughout the world, due to the global economic crisis. In almost all OECD countries incomes are in decline, while inequality is on the rise. ... UN warns PM over 'int'l law violations' in e. J'lem Michael Wilner Jerusalem Post Israel May 16, 2013 NEW YORK - On a phone call during the past two days, United Nations secretary-general Ban Ki-moon warned Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu of possible violations of "international humanitarian law" in east Jerusalem. ... "The Secretary-General conveyed his concerns to the Israeli authorities, urging Israel to abide by its obligations under international humanitarian law," read a press release from Ban's office. Ban called to address "recent tensions" in the region and specifically warned Netanyahu over "restrictions of access to Muslim and Christian holy sites." He also spoke with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and expressed similar concerns. "The Secretary-General stressed to both leaders the importance of respect for the religious freedom of all," the readout said. ... Jim comment: All well and good, Secretary-General, but what about Israeli attacks on Syria escape Security Council scrutiny? The continued air attacks have escalated tensions in the region and threatened a wider regional conflagration, according to reports from the Middle East. And yet, the Anglo-American reaction has been the political equivalent of a standing ovation. Anything to say, Secretary-General? J'lem: 30,000 haredim protest against enlistment reform Kobi Nachshoni Ynetnews Israel May 16, 2013 Some 30,000 haredim held a protest vigil in Jerusalem Thursday. The rally, held in protest of haredi enlistment to the IDF and civil service, quickly turned violent, resulting in the injuries of six officers and five protesters. Eight protesters were arrested. The protest was held at the initiative of the most radical of haredi factions – the Eda Hahredit – against what they dub the "enlistment edicts," currently threatening yeshiva students. They were joined by a number of more mainstream haredi rabbis. On the other side of the street a small number of haredi soldiers were holding a counter protest against draft dodging. ... Fri, 17 May 2013 14:26:46 -0400 http://saltspringnews.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=23389 Mass surveillance is the hallmark of a tyrannical political culture. But whatever one's views on that, the more that is known about what the US government and its surveillance agencies are doing, the better. -Glenn Greenwald, "Are all telephone calls recorded and accessible to the US government?", Guardian UK, May 4, 2013 ... all of it—from indefinite detention to the destruction of whistleblowers—is sanctified under the banner of keeping you safe. Your security is paramount, thus your liberty is required. We have dispensed with finite campaigns such as actual and cold wars, where the enemy is a state, and opted for a campaign far more catholic in its embrace, a campaign against a tactic—war without end. It is this narrative, so tirelessly rehearsed yet so tiresome and trite, that still needs to be relentlessly discredited. Until it is, normal circumstances will remain a legal fiction, as removed from reality as so many of the conjured threats themselves. - Jason Hirthler Who's got a secret? David Westin Huffington Post, The Blog USA/Canada May 14, 2013 Visit this page for its embedded links. The Associated Press is outraged that the Justice Department has been secretly rummaging through its telephone records, and who can blame it? But what really matters is what it means for all the rest of us. And if we don't watch out, it will mean that the government keeps more secrets from us than ever before. From what we've been told so far, the Department sometime last year subpoenaed two months' worth of records covering incoming and outgoing calls on dozens of telephones at Associated Press offices, as well as on private telephones of AP employees. The telephones included some main, switchboard numbers, so the calls may have involved hundreds of reporters. The AP had no idea what was going on until well after it was over because the subpoena went to the telephone company -- not the AP. The speculation is that the Justice Department wanted all those phone records for an investigation into who leaked information to the AP over a year ago about U.S. government efforts to foil a terrorist plot in Yemen. But we don't really know for sure. This isn't the media whining. It doesn't take much imagination to see that people won't be keen on talking with reporters if they think that the government may be indiscriminately monitoring thousands of phone calls by hundreds of reporters. And if the reporters can't talk with sources that want to remain anonymous, then the rest of us won't ever know the secrets that they would have told. At the heart of the First Amendment lies this basic paradox: In order to have all the information we need for our democracy to work, people have to be able to keep some secrets. Of course, the government needs some secrecy as well. It had wanted to keep what happened in Yemen secret just as badly as the AP wanted to keep secret how it had found out. But there's a big difference: The government has the power to issue subpoenas to news organizations and their telephone companies; the press can't subpoena the government for its stories. Since the time of Watergate, there's been an uneasy truce between the government and the press over how to resolve this tussle over one another's secrets. The Justice Department has a policy saying it will seize news organizations' records only after it has pursued all other avenues first and then only when absolutely necessary. Most important, its own regulations require it to work things out with the news organization in advance whenever possible. But it looks like the government broke the truce here. ... Holder says leak required "very aggressive action"... bank crimes, not so much Richard (RJ) Eskow Huffington Post USA/Canada May 14, 2013 Visit this page for its embedded links. Apparently it never occurred to Attorney General Eric Holder that the Associated Press might be "too big to fail." If it had,then his Justice Department probably never would have investigated it. The AP isn't just any news agency. It's the largest one in the United States and one of the three largest in the world, along with Great Britain's Reuters and Agence France-Presse. And it is, understandably enough, angry. So are journalists who work for other outlets, along defenders of a free press and supporters of an informed citizenry. Journalists must be free of direct or implied intimidation if democracy is to work properly. And yet, correspondents who cover this Administration will often admit privately that they do feel intimidated. A free press sometimes makes powerful people uncomfortable. It can even cause them considerable inconvenience. Actions against journalists must be very carefully weighed against democratic principle and fundamental freedoms. Instead, this White House has been as zealous as its Republican predecessors - in many ways, more so - both in its pursuit of low-level officials who leak information to reporters, and in its pursuit of reporters themselves. The AP investigation, which seems quite broad, is only one example of that. As The New York Times reports: "Under President Obama, six current and former government officials have been indicted in leak-related cases so far, twice the number brought under all previous administrations combined." Even the Bush Administration didn't find it necessary to pursue journalists and truth-revealing Americans as fiercely as the Obama White House. Holder said today that investigators were pursuing a "very serious" leak which "put the American people at risk" and therefore required "very aggressive action." That approach stands in stark contrast to his comments about bank prosecutions this past March, when he said: "the size of some of these institutions becomes so large that it does become difficult for us to prosecute them (because) if you do prosecute, if you do bring a criminal charge, it will have a negative impact on the national economy, perhaps even the world economy." Holder's comment appears to be disingenuous on its face, since he fails to explain how prosecuting individual wrongdoers at those institutions would threaten the national or world economy. That's the primary demand of those who criticize his failure to investigate or prosecute Wall Street criminals. It's also why the Home Defenders League has announced a week of action starting May 20 to demand an end to the Obama/Holder "too big to jail" policy. That policy has led to extraordinary prosecutorial passivity in the face of overwhelming evidence. There's certainly no sign that the Justice Department has ever sought the phone records or emails of America's top bankers. ... But instead of pursuing these crimes, the Obama/Holder Justice Department chose to aggressively pursue the phone records of journalists -- including those who weren't involved in the story they were investigating. Holder said that story "put the American people at risk." But experience with other civil-liberties-unfriendly administrations should teach us to treat such warnings with some skepticism. ... The AP seizures and the frightening web they've uncovered Alfredo Lopez This Can't Be Happening! USA May 16, 2013 Visit this page for its embedded links. "Paranoia," said Woody Allen, "is knowing all the facts." By that measure, we're becoming more and more "paranoid" every day. This week, we learned that the Obama Justice Department seized two months of records of at least 20 phone lines used by Associated Press reporters. These include phone lines in the AP's New York, Washington and Hartford, Conn offices as well as the main AP number in the House of Representatives press gallery, the private phones and cell phones belonging to AP reporters and a fax line in one AP office. The government effected this massive seizure "sometime this year" according to a letter from the Justice Department to AP's chief counsel this past Friday (May 10). The letter cites relevant "permission" clauses in its "investigative guidelines" and makes clear that it considers the action legal and necessary. In many ways, this is the most blatant act of media information seizure in memory. It affects over 100 AP journalists and the countless people those journalists communicated with by phone during those two months. It violates accepted constitutional guarantees, the concept of freedom of the press and the privacy rights of literally thousands of people. Predictably and justifiably, press, politicians and activists have expressed outrage. But as outrageous as the admitted facts are, the story's larger implications are even more disturbing. It's bad enough that the Obama Administration has grossly violated fundamental constitutional rights, acknowledged the violation and defended their legality. Even worse is that likelihood that the intrusion will probably be ruled legal, that it has been ongoing against other targets for some time and that this is only the tip of the intelligence-abuse iceberg. The facts are still tumbling out daily but here's what we know. ... The Justice Department v. the Fourth Estate Jason Hirthler CounterPunch USA May 16, 2013 On Tuesday The New York Times revealed that the Justice Department had seized without notice caches of Associated Press phone records. Not simply work phone logs, but home and mobile phone records of A.P. journalists as well, from the agency’s bureaus in New York, Washington, and Hartford, Connecticut, and the House of Representatives itself. How kind of them to finally break the news to the A.P. We don’t exactly when the DOJ seized the records. Initially, their response to that query was a limp, “sometime this year,” according to the Times. Later in the day, Attorney General Eric Holder got marginally more specific, conceding the records were taken in April and May. We may not know just when the AP’s private audio correspondence was taken, but we know why. Last June, AG Holder launched two investigations to discover the sources of two leaked stories: one, information on the Central Intelligence Agency’s foiling of a Yemeni bomb plot, broken by an A.P. journalist; and second, the Stuxnet cyber-attacks on Iran, broken by The Times. It’s hard to imagine Holder’s actions as anything other than an extension of President Obama’s nationwide dragnet on whistleblowers, or as the Commander in Chief might think of them, snitches. Six federal officials have been indicted for leaks thus far under Obama. ... The Times then notes, “Under normal circumstances, regulations call for notice and negotiations, giving the news organization a chance to challenge the subpoena in court.” That’s right. The Justice Department is supposedly beholden to the law, which stipulates it must subpoena records—like ordinary mortals—and then only as a last resort. A spokesman for the U.S. attorney of the District of Columbia (notice how far down the tree we’ve tumbled from the Oval Office; Holder was forced into the spotlight later on Tuesday) said that the DOJ must notify the affronted party in advance unless—and here comes the clichéd caveat that renders meaningless everything that goes before—unless that notification jeopardizes the investigation, or as the spokesman put it, “poses a substantial threat” to the inquiry. Note here that the threat is not to national security, but to the investigation into the leaking of information related to an investigation of a potential threat to national security. Rather quickly, the vocabulary of fear is extended into the abstract, where complicity soon becomes the subject of supposition. What The Times fails to notice, although it might when it discovers half its journalists have been wiretapped, is that “normal circumstances” have been banished to the netherworld (where lurk our naïve, pre-McCarthy ancestors). The war on terror has transformed the entire globe into a potential flashpoint or field of fire. Most notably the online world. The offline world is already swarming with Homeland Security agents, baiting Arabs into basements to plot crimes against the state. The DHS is stockpiling weapons at a frantic pace, clearly anticipating a domestic Armageddon. But it’s the online world from which we have the most to fear. Far easier to craft the appearance of complicity from a few transaction records and cell transcripts than by suckering unwitting immigrants into bomb-making workshops. ... Our civil liberties, RIP Justin Raimondo Antiwar.com USA May 16, 2013 Visit this page for its embedded links. Amidst all the justified outrage over the apparent targeting of Tea Party and conservative groups by the IRS, not to mention the Associated Press phone tapping brouhaha, an important point is being lost: this is nothing new. The Tea Partiers may be shocked – shocked! – that the Big Government they have spent the last few years complaining about really is a threat to our liberties, but the government targeting certain political groups wholly on account of their views is hardly breaking news. Just ask the Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO), which had set up an “Antiwar Committee” whose members have been spied on, indicted, and arrested for engaging in legal, constitutionally protected activities. The FBI had sent a pair of infiltrators into the Antiwar Committee, and, on September 24, 2010, a veritable army of FBI agents launched simultaneous raids on antiwar activists in Minneapolis, Chicago, and Grand Rapids (Michigan). They seized computers, cell phones, passports, documents, family photos and even children’s artwork. Agents issued 14 subpoenas ordering the recipients to testify before a Chicago federal grand jury, and showed warrants indicating that the feds were searching for evidence related to “material support for terrorism.” A total of 23 people have since been handed subpoenas commanding them to appear before the grand jury in Chicago: all have refused. The FBI “investigation” – i.e. fishing expedition – is continuing. At the time of these raids, we heard not a single protest from the “Tea Party” groups that are now loudly protesting their own victimization at the hands of the government: the leftists targeted by the FBI were just another group of “terrorists,” left to fight against their targeting and prosecution largely alone. Now that conservatives have been put in the crosshairs in a similar manner, however – singled out by a government agency for “special treatment” on account of their politics – their sympathizers in Congress are making a big stink about it and the headlines are alight with their outrage. The Tea Partiers’ problem is that their protests come far too late – because the legal and political precedents targeting dissident groups were established long ago, with the full complicity and even enthusiastic support of most of those who call themselves “conservatives” these days. The “Patriot” Act – passed with conservative support – gives the government the “right” to not only spy on such groups, it also gives them the means to spy on anyone, for any reason, as well as the prosecutorial “tools” to put them away forever. Law enforcement agencies have set up “fusion centers” in order to collect information on American citizens who might be considered a “threat.” A recent report on “right-wing extremism” issued by the Department of Homeland Security” listed groups local law enforcement should keep tabs on, including members of the Libertarian and Constitution parties, as well as Ron Paul supporters. Efforts by the FBI and local police to infiltrate and set up members of the “Occupy” movement have been widespread. Perhaps the Tea Partiers are unfamiliar with the long history of government repression of marginalized ideological groupings: during the 1960s, the FBI’s “Cointelpro” program targeted left-wing and black nationalist groups, sending in infiltrators, organizing disruption, and setting up prominent activists for “legal” repression. ... While right and left go at each other, the machinery of repression is being readied. The most recent – and chilling – example: a recent Pentagon-initiated change to the US Code would give military commanders powers equal to the President in wartime. As the revised language of the Code puts it: “Federal military commanders have the authority, in extraordinary emergency circumstances where prior authorization by the President is impossible and duly constituted local authorities are unable to control the situation, to engage temporarily in activities that are necessary to quell large-scale, unexpected civil disturbances.” When is it “impossible” for the President to duly authorize military action? This is never defined. What is “temporary”? This, too, goes undefined. And what about the Insurrection and Posse Comitatus Acts which limit and regulate the manner in which the military may intervene in domestic affairs? The revised regulations eviscerate both acts, and throw the door wide open to rule by the military in an ill-defined “emergency.” And hardly anybody notices! That’s the state of civil liberties in the US these days: the government is spying on reporters, IRS agents are harassing political activists, FBI agents are raiding antiwar organizations, and the Pentagon is busy getting the legal machinery up and running in the event they feel the need to impose martial law. The reason they can get away with this, politically, is because the right doesn’t care if the government comes down hard on the left, while the left openly agitates for the instruments of repression to be used against the right. There is no sense that we’re all in this together: that if the government can move against the Tea Partiers, then the antiwar activists are next. It’s all about whose ox is being gored – not whether our liberties are endangered by a regime emboldened by unaccountable power. Thu, 16 May 2013 16:11:38 -0400 http://saltspringnews.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=23388 ... now B.C. will suffer the consequences of electing a leader who is more vicious than visionary. - Bill Tieleman, "NDP flailed instead of fighting back" ... third parties like the Greens wouldn't exist if their supporters found what they were looking for in the main parties. - Tom Barrett Intro: Scientists agree (again): Climate change is happening Tom Zeller Jr. Huffington Post USA/Canada May 16, 2013 Visit this page for its embedded links. Public opinion on the topic of climate change is notoriously fickle, changing -- quite literally sometimes -- with the weather. The latest bit of evidence on this: Yale's April 2013 climate change survey, which found, among other things, that Americans' conviction that global warming is happening had dropped by seven points, to 63 percent, over the preceding six months. The decline, the authors surmised, was most likely due to "the cold winter of 2012-13 and an unusually cold March just before the survey was conducted." A far smaller percentage -- 49 percent -- understood that human activities are contributing to the problem. People and surveys being what they are, these numbers tend to jump around a bit from year to year. At the same time, 49 percent is nearly half the country, so it wouldn't be excessively cheerful (would it?) to note that half of the American public is more or less in harmony with basic science -- at least as it relates to climate change. Given that roughly the same number of Americans flatly reject evolution, the climate numbers represent a comparative bounty of enlightenment. That's not something you hear very often when it comes to surveys of Americans. Delving deeper into the textbooks, for instance, another recent study showed that less than half of population was clear on whether atoms are smaller than electrons, or whether lasers work by focusing sound waves. In this light (ahem), the larger consensus on global warming is notable. (Answers on atoms and lasers appear at the end of this column.) But a far more troubling metric from Yale's latest poll suggests that only 42 percent of Americans believe that most scientists think global warming is happening. A full 33 percent of respondents are convinced that there remains "widespread disagreement" among scientists on this question. This is a problem -- both because it is so at odds with reality, and because it likely helps prevent more Americans from recognizing and accepting some pretty straightforward scientific realities. It is this reason that prompted a team of researchers to painstakingly comb through the abstracts of more than 12,000 scientific articles published between 1991 and 2011 to determine just how much scientific agreement exists on the subject of climate change, and humanity's role in driving it. The team was led by John Cook, a Climate Communication Fellow for the Global Change Institute at the University of Queensland and the founder of the climate change education web site SkepticalScience.com. The results, published Thursday in the journal Environmental Research Letters, were clear: of the more than 4,000 abstracts that had anything to say about human-driven climate change, 97 percent endorsed the notion. A little less than 3 percent either rejected the idea or remained undecided. ... Items: There are at least 15 of the worlds largest oil and gas companies on our doorstep, scheming amongst themselves about the future of our coast. If that is not daunting enough, several of them have “non disclosure” agreements with this [BC Liberal] government. That’s right, gag orders. Legal agreements that dictate our government cannot publicly discuss what they are planning for us and how they are shaping the future of our Province. - Richard Hughes, "Who exactly is misleading and withholding information on pipelines in British Columbia?, April 28, 2013 Dix plan would allow B.C.er's to make decisions on future Letter to the editor The Province British Columbia Canada April 26, 2013 NDP leader Adrian Dix isn't short-sighted with his position on oil pipelines as your editorial suggests, but rather consistent and principled. For many, many months Dix has claimed that he opposes the equivalency agreement of June 2010, which saw the B.C. Liberals abandon the people of B.C. and our right to properly review, assess and decide the future of major oil and gas developments in this province. The recent announcement on Kinder Morgan is no surprise, but rather an effort to restore what the Liberals so easily abandoned, and that is the ability of British Columbians to decide their own destiny. Dix's promised made-in-B.C. environmental assessments will do exactly that, and are geared to ensure we have a better future that reflects the will of all B.C. stakeholders and not simply the might of international oil companies. Kevin Logan, Cowichan Bay Video: The truth about Christy Clark's position on pipelines, tankers Kevin Logan The Common Sense Canadian Canada May 10, 2013 The embedded video, "Christy Clark pipeline 'facts' vs the 'real' facts", is seven minutes, 10 seconds in length. This page contains two embedded links plus numerous appended and related links.. Christy Clark and the BC Liberals have made a lot of bold claims about their position on pipelines proposed for British Columbia. However, what they have neglected to tell British Columbians is that their government has entered into binding agreements that ensure the success of pipelines from Alberta to the BC Coast. Everyone knows there has been a lot of politics surrounding pipeline developments in British Columbia, but very few are aware of the longstanding agreements, established by the BC Liberals, that ensure the success of the proposed pipelines and have thoroughly tied the hands of all BC Stakeholders leaving them with no capacity to actually impact the processes that will ensure the success of these developments. The Trade, Investment and Labour Mobility Agreement (TILMA) and New West Partnership Agreement (NWPA) which it developed into absolutely confirm that no level of government in British Columbia can block pipeline development. Nor can they impede trade through the province or create any obstacle, whatsoever, that prevents pipelines from Alberta from reaching BC's tidal waters. Doing so would result in fines of up to 5 million dollars per infraction. The June 2010 "Equivalency Agreement", done in secret by the BC Liberals with the Harper Conservative Government - and against the letter of the law - forfeits BC's ability to review, assess and decide on these pipeline proposals which threaten to transform the province as we know it. The video presents these documents, and exposes the BC Liberal election posturing on pipelines as hollow and meaningless. These concepts, backed by government documentation, have been published online and are readily available for anyone interested. Yet Christy Clark has never publicly acknowledged their existence. More importantly, she has also positioned her party for re-election on claims that run counter to these indisputable facts. In fact, the material contained in the above video proves that Christy Clark's claims that she can block or prevent these pipeline proposals, based on her "tough NEW stance" and "5 conditions" is without merit, not based in reality and ignores the existence of these agreements of her government's own making. The video closes with live footage from the most recent Estimates debate for the Ministry of Energy, where the Minister of Everything, Rich Coleman, is on tape discussing his government's "non-disclosure agreements" with the world's largest oil companies. This fact has gone unreported and exposes the bold hypocrisy of the BC Liberal campaign, which has had the audacity to broadly claim the BC NDP is "concealing" their position on these pipeline developments. There is not one mainstream media report that covers the "non-disclosure agreements" the world's largest oil and gas companies have with the BC Liberals, even though the minister responsible has made their existence known in the public debate contained in this video. Stories on these topics (see below) have been published on the internet for over a year, yet no one has refuted them, and Christy Clark has never publicly acknowledged their existence. They impact all British Columbians and are crucial to our future. Uninvited and unwelcome: First Nation asks Enbridge to leave territory following botched consultation Media release, Gitga'at First Nation Marketwired Canada May 16, 2013 HARTLEY BAY, BRITISH COLUMBIA--(Marketwired - May 16, 2013) - The Gitga'at First Nation has instructed Enbridge to leave its territory after the company and a team of oil spill response surveyors showed-up uninvited, during the nation's annual food harvesting camp, a time of rich cultural activity and knowledge sharing. Enbridge representatives were instructed to leave Gitga'at council chambers and Gitga'at territory, Wednesday morning, after councillors voiced their displeasure at not being consulted on an Enbridge oil spill response survey. The dust-up comes on the eve of final oral arguments before the Joint Review Panel, which is reviewing the proposed Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline. "Despite an ongoing review process, Enbridge has entered our territory and begun project work before their proposed oil tanker and pipeline project has even been approved," said Arnold Clifton, Chief Councillor of the Gitga'at First Nation. "This is disrespectful to the Gitga'at First Nation, the review process, and the people of British Columbia, who oppose oil tankers in our coastal waters." "Four years ago when Enbridge CEO Patrick Daniel and Northern Gateway President John Carruthers visited Hartley Bay, we treated them respectfully, but informed them in no uncertain terms that their project is not welcome in Gitga'at Territory. We reminded their staff of that today," said Clifton. Enbridge signaled its intention to enter Gitga'at territory by sending an after hours fax without proper contact information, less than a week before their arrival, and without prior consultation. The fax also mistakenly included a letter addressed to Chief Councillor Conrad Lewis of the Gitxaala First Nation, which the Gitga'at returned to Enbridge. "It's hard to imagine a company screwing-up its relationships with First Nations more than Enbridge has," said Marven Robinson, Gitga'at Councillor. "This incident shows not only the failure of Enbridge to meaningfully consult, but also indicates an insensitive, scatter-shot approach to dealing with First Nations. We remain resolved to protect our territory and people from this project." Below is an email we received from the Yinka Dene Alliance First Nations Call For Government-to-Government Pipeline Talks With Re-Elected Premier Christy Clark With only days remaining until BC must take a final position on the Enbridge pipeline in the federal review process, the Yinka Dene Alliance has written to Premier Christy Clark, calling for government-to-government pipeline talks. The Yinka Dene Alliance, whose members’ territories make-up 25% of the proposed Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline route, say the Premiers’ position on Gateway will be a litmus test for the government’s new relationship with BC First Nations. “Christy Clark has expressed a strong interest in building positive relationships with First Nations in Northern BC,” said Chief Martin Louie, Nadleh Whut’en First Nation. “She can either start building that relationship by taking a strong, principled stand against the Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline and respecting our indigenous rights and title, or she can poison the well for future discussions on resource decision-making in Northern BC, including around LNG.” Over 160 First Nations have signed the Save the Fraser Declaration, banning tar sands oil projects from their territories as a matter of indigenous law. “Premier Clark has said that she will stand up for BC, and now is the time,” said Chief Dolly Abraham, Takla Lake First Nation. “The Yinka Dene Alliance is upholding our responsibility to protect the water and land for our children’s future prosperity. Will Premier Clark do the same?” More than 100,000 people across Canada have signed petitions that recognize and support the Yinka Dene Alliance’s decision to ban the Enbridge project from their territories. “As the stewards of our land, First Nations carry a heavy responsibility for resource decision-making that affects all British Columbians,” said Chief Stanley Thomas, Saik’uz First Nation. “It is imperative that we hold government-to-government talks with the new Premier, so that she understands both our deep concerns about the Enbridge pipeline, as well as our vision for the prosperity of our people and all British Columbians.” The Yinka Dene Alliance is made up of Nadleh Whut’en, Nak’azdli, Takla Lake, Saik’uz, Wet’suwet’en and T’lazt’en First Nations. Below: David Climenhaga, author of the Alberta Diary blog, is a journalist, author, journalism teacher, poet and trade union communicator who has worked in senior writing and editing positions with the Toronto Globe and Mail and the Calgary Herald. His 1995 book, A Poke in the Public Eye, explores the relationships among Canadian journalists, public relations people and politicians. He left journalism after the strike at the Calgary Herald in 1999 and 2000 to work for the trade union movement. Alberta Diary focuses on Alberta politics and social issues. Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory: Lessons from B.C. for NDPers everywhere David Climenhaga Alberta Diary Alberta Canada May 16, 2013 ... No one can snatch defeat from the jaws of victory quite like the New Democrats in my native British Columbia. Still, while Tuesday’s upset B.C. election victory by Premier Christy Clark and her un-liberal Liberals is inevitably going to be, well, upsetting to a lot of New Democrats, it is not really bad news for Thomas Mulcair and the federal NDP. This, we might say, is the social democratic truth that dare not speak its name: an NDP government in a large province like British Columbia would inevitably have enacted policies that upset voters elsewhere in Canada and would have provided excellent targets for attacks by the ever-negative Stephen Harper Tories on Mr. Mulcair and the NDP. So, as my mother used to tell me, every cloud has a silver lining, and this is the faint silver lining to the clouds blowing over B.C. today. Pretty soon, I expect Premier Clark will sit down with Alberta Premier Alison Redford and politely negotiate a pipeline from Alberta to Kitimat, Ms. Redford’s home town. But, as has been said in this space in the not-so-distant past, defeated B.C. NDP Leader Adrian Dix probably would have done much the same thing, which is one problem with running a low-bridge campaign that doesn’t really seem to stand for anything much. The majority of British Columbians who are opposed to pipelines from Alberta running through their back yards can be forgiven by their confusion about whom best to vote for to stop them. ... In a greenless world, would the NDP have won? Tom Barrett TheTyee.ca British Columbia Canada May 15, 2013 Imagine a British Columbia without the Green party. It's a fantasy that many angry New Democrats are indulging in today. That's because, if you take the Green party out of Tuesday's election and assume that every vote cast for the Greens would have gone instead to the NDP, you're looking at a hefty NDP majority government. Pending absentee ballots and possible recounts, Tuesday's results were: 50 seats for the BC Liberals, 33 NDP, one Green and one independent. The NDP lost in 13 ridings where the combined NDP and Green vote was greater than the BC Liberal vote. Switch all those seats to the NDP and you get 46 NDP, 37 Liberals, no Greens and one independent. However, the assumption underlying this fantasy Greenless world is a bit iffy. Those 13 ridings include Oak Bay-Gordon Head, where Andrew Weaver took 40 per cent of the vote. The NDP came third, just behind former Liberal cabinet minister Ida Chong. Can you really say Weaver split the NDP vote? For the sake of argument, let's give this riding to the NDP in our fantasy legislature. That leaves 12 ridings where the NDP came second to the Liberals and would have won if all the Green votes had gone to them. How likely is that? Can you assume that every Green voter would have voted NDP if the Greens didn't exist? How many Green voters would just stay home? How many would vote for an independent candidate or even the Liberals? These are tough questions to answer. To decide whether the Greens stole a victory from the NDP, let's look at those 12 ridings. ... By the way, all of this ignores an important point that often gets missed when people talk about vote-splitting: third parties like the Greens wouldn't exist if their supporters found what they were looking for in the main parties. ... Clark's new team: 'Rowing in same direction' Andrew MacLeod TheTyee.ca British Columbia Canada May 16, 2013 Christy Clark, leader of the BC Liberal Party British Columbians returned the BC Liberal Party to power this week, but the team that will be assembling in Victoria is very different from the one before the election. It's a point not lost on Christy Clark, who for the first time since becoming premier will be working with a team she's had a hand in shaping. "It's easier when you're leading your own team," she said during a press conference the afternoon after winning an unexpected victory. She noted that she became leader at a point when the party was coming out of a period of turmoil. "I think we're all going to be rowing in the same direction from now on." The party had won the 2009 election on a fudged budget, then introduced the HST in exchange for $1.6 billion from the federal government, leading to a public uprising and the resignation of Clark's predecessor Gordon Campbell. Clark won the leadership with the support of just one sitting MLA, Harry Bloy, and in the months before going to the polls faced criticism from several Liberal MLAs, a significant number of whom had decided not to run again. ... Significantly, the 50 BC Liberal's elected according to the preliminary count included 25 veterans of the legislature and 25 new MLAs. ... In contrast, the NDP's 33 elected MLAs include just six who are new, with the other 27 returning. ... The Green Party elected its first ever MLA in Andrew Weaver and independent Vicki Huntington was re-elected. "The vigour and the appetite of the group of MLAs that have been elected this time is going to be unparallelled," said Clark. "A lot of people would say it's time for renewal in British Columbia." There was also a desire to renew the BC Liberal party, she said. "You can't do that without new candidates." Clark said she'll meet early next week with all elected Liberal MLAs. The final count of the ballots will begin on May 27. ... Thu, 16 May 2013 14:53:34 -0400 http://saltspringnews.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=23387 Harry S. Truman has the last laugh as he holds up a copy of the Chicago Tribune at Union Station in St. Louis, Missouri, on November 3, 1948, after winning the US presidential election the previous day. He was so widely expected to lose that the Tribune ran this incorrect headline. Photo: Byron Rollins/Associated Press To my mind good leaders know what they don’t know, bad leaders think they know everything. This disastrous [NDP] campaign was all about bad leadership. - Ian Reid It’s clear that the negative-advertising campaign of the Liberals waged against the NDP had a slaughtering effect. If ever there was a case to behold that negative advertising campaigns work, it is here where the Liberals were able to take the NDP lead at the outset of the campaign of 20+ points in some of the polls and put it in the hole. - Ipsos in North America. Ipsos is a global independent market research company ranking third worldwide among research firms. Ipsos Reid is a research company based in Canada and is the Canadian arm of the global Ipsos Group. Founded in Winnipeg in 1979, the company expanded across the country and became part of the Ipsos Group in 2000. Today, Ipsos Reid is Canada’s largest market research and public opinion polling firm. NDP flailed instead of fighting back Bill Tieleman 24Hrs Vancouver British Columbia Canada May 14, 2013 BC NDP Adrian Dix speaks at the NDP headquarters after admitting defeat in the 2013 provincial election, May 14. Photo: Carmine Marinelli/24 Hours Politics determine who has the power, not who has the truth. - Economist Paul Krugman Tuesday night’s victory by Premier Christy Clark and the BC Liberals will go down in British Columbia political history as one of the biggest upset victories ever. Unfortunately, it will also go into the books as a triumph of fear over hope, of choosing incredibly negative, personal attack ads over policy and vision, and a revolting example that using taxpayer dollars to advertise your own party cause works. Bitter? You bet. Not because the BC Liberals won – political opponents have to accept that sometimes the other team had a superior campaign than your own, more ideas, a more effective leader or just did a better job. No, bitterness comes only when the other team plays dirty and never faces the penalty they should – to lose the game. That’s what happened in this election. Clark’s team ran the most right-wing, Republican-style campaign Canada has ever seen. The BC Liberals were relentlessly nasty, using wealthy allies to air slurs against BC NDP Leader Adrian Dix, while spending voters’ own money to promote the party with a collection of demonstrably false claims about B.C.’s budget, job creation and debt. And yet, it worked. For that, the BC NDP must bear its own share of the blame. t allowed a 20-point lead to disappear in a failed campaign that flailed instead of fighting back. Despite the Harmonized Sales Tax betrayal, the BC Rail scandal and Clark being one of the most unpopular premiers in Canada, the NDP blew it. And now B.C. will suffer the consequences of electing a leader who is more vicious than visionary. “The man of thought who will not act is ineffective; the man of action who will not think is dangerous.” ~ Richard Nixon. Laila Yuile No Strings Attached British Columbia Canada May 15, 2013 When asked by Philip Till what the leaders needed to do in the last bit of the campaign on his show recently, I said Dix needed to get on his game and get aggressive if he wanted to win. In fact,I even remarked that I would have run the NDP campaign aggressively from day 1 and that aggressive doesn’t have to mean being nasty. Look at the definition. 1.characterized by or tending toward unprovoked offensives, attacks, invasions, or the like; militantly forward or menacing 2.making an all-out effort to win or succeed; competitive. 3.vigorously energetic, especially in the use of initiative and forcefulness 4.boldly assertive and forward; pushy: Oddly enough,I had heard several pundits saying what a great campaign the NDP have been running prior to last night, when suddenly the truthful commentary started coming out that the campaign was poorly constructed, with which I have agreed and commented on several times, including in a column for 24Hrs Vancouver The BC liberals have always had well-oiled, strategic campaigns, regardless of leadership. While no one could check Clark’s mouth or actions as well as they might have liked to, in the end it didn’t matter that she campaigned on outright fallacies, because the Dix camp was slowly killing themselves over in the corner being cautious and trying out a new way to do politics that clearly doesn’t work. They were not able to deliver a consistant, simple message to the voters over and over again on why they should vote for them, and not the Liberals. Am I angry? Yes. ... Here’s what I saw going wrong, for what it is worth. ... Take it from the Topp Ian Reid The Real Story British Columbia Canada May 16, 2913 Last night I got this from a friend in the campaign. It’s from NDP Campaign Manager Brian Topp to his campaign staff, although it was sent through Jan O’Brien rather than directly from the KoolToppGuy himself. His letter makes one thing clear. This man isn’t taking any of the blame for the worst major campaign ever run in this province and arguably in the country. ... Now, while this makes me very angry, I do get what Topp is trying to say. He’s saying: ‘Thank you for your work. You worked unbelievably hard and did a good job. And with such a disastrous result – amongst the worst in Canadian history – few will recognize your contribution.’ Topp should then have added, “the disastrous result had everything to do with the leadership of the campaign team.” Here’s the letter Topp could have and should have sent to his staff: ... Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory: Lessons from B.C. for NDPers everywhere David Climenhaga Alberta Diary Alberta Canada May 16, 2013 ... Look, it’s been an awfully long time since I lived in B.C. – more than 30 years now – and the place has become a foreign country to me. Someone closer to the West Coast scene can probably tell me how wrong I am about each of these points, and almost certainly will. Still, it seems to me there are several telling lessons for New Democrats elsewhere in Canada, and for plenty of Liberals too, in the unexpected B.C. vote results on Tuesday night. Because I’m just a negative sort of guy, I’ve configured them all as Don’ts: Don’t be too quick to skid your leader. ... Don’t run an issueless campaign from opposition. ... Don’t promise never to use negative advertising. ... Don’t succumb to poll-driven hubris. ... Don’t forget your core supporters. ... Don’t assume Canadian political parties must be led by men to succeed. ... I’m also inclined to think that if you’re a politician expecting to get elected, you should have your doubts about hiring political campaign operatives who are in partnership with people working for other parties. ... Oh, and one other thing: if you’re not prepared to fight a tough, meaningful campaign that pays attention to your core supporters – you know, like Prime Minister Harper is a master at doing – maybe you should go to church instead of into politics! This is a moment of reckoning for Canadian pollsters Pretty obviously, we have reached a moment of reckoning for Canada’s pollsters. If you only have three strikes before you’re out, Canada’s pollsters have only got one more election to get it right. Here are four reasons, polling companies’ claims notwithstanding, for Canadian pollsters’ dramatic misses in Alberta last year and British Columbia the day before yesterday, not to mention their none-too-stellar performance in Quebec last fall: ... Inside the BC Election: What happened and why Media release Ipsos Reid Canada May 15, 2013 Vancouver, BC – While pollsters, pundits, pontificators, party stalwarts and journalists are wringing their hands wondering how Christy Clark and the BC Liberals managed to capture another mandate from voters, the definitive poll done on Election Day by Ipsos Reid and released today shows just what happened and what motivated people. In Canada, polls cannot be released on Election Day so it often leaves people guessing at what happened and produces lots of finger pointing. In the United States and other jurisdictions, polls that interview voters are harbingers of the outcome but most importantly help explain why things have turned out the way they have. ... In British Columbia, we interviewed 1,400 voters on Election Day and, as you’ll see, the numbers virtually matched the real outcome in terms of voter preference. But it also tells a story as to why this happened right down to the last minute. The reality is that one in 10 (11%) BC voters decided in the voting booth on election day to mark their ballot for their candidate—and with one of the lowest turnouts in provincial voting ever (52%) it was motivated voters, Liberals, who bested the NDP in the voting booth. The long and the short of it was that NDP voters did not get out and fulfill their promise to vote for the party of their choice – they stayed home while Liberal voters showed up. As such, a small number of voters were able to influence the greater outcome. In fact, nearly one-quarter (23%) of voters said they decided who they were going to vote for in the last week of the campaign. So the trend had continued from the week previously and these late deciders chose to vote BC Liberal by a 7 point margin over the NDP (41% BC Lib vs. 34% NDP). The BC Liberals also led by substantial margins among the 12% of voters who decided in the middle of the campaign (58% BC Lib vs. 25% NDP) and the 16% of voters who decided early in the campaign (49% BC Lib vs. 36% NDP). The NDP only had an advantage among the 47% of voters who decided before the campaign actually began (50% NDP vs. 43% BC Lib). It’s clear that the negative-advertising campaign of the Liberals waged against the NDP had a slaughtering effect. If ever there was a case to behold that negative advertising campaigns work, it is here where the Liberals were able to take the NDP lead at the outset of the campaign of 20+ points in some of the polls and put it in the hole. The following show the changes in what happened in the final days of the campaign: ... Friday updates: Former MLA David Schreck predicted a B.C. NDP election debacle in 2010 Carlito Pablo Georgia Straight British Columbia Canada May 17, 2013 David Schreck predicted a B.C. NDP debacle two-and-a-half years before the May 14, 2013, election. The former New Democrat MLA prophesied this outcome as the consequence of the bitter infighting that ousted Carole James as leader of the provincial NDP. James stepped down on December 6, 2010, five days after Vancouver–Mount Pleasant MLA Jenny Kwan issued a statement calling for new leadership in the party. On that same day in 2010, Schreck told the Straight in a phone interview that the B.C. NDP has been “permanently damaged”. “This split goes to the roots of the party,” he said then. Schreck went on to say that, as a result, the 2013 election “will be a cakewalk for the Liberals, and the NDP will be lucky if they can elect a half-dozen seats”. According to him, Kwan and the other anti-James dissidents could have simply waited for the party’s convention in November 2011, defeated James in a leadership review, and elected a new leader in time for the 2013 general election. “They chose a route in which the prize they’ve won they’ve made worthless,” Schreck said. ... In a comment appended to the above post, 'Stephen' says: You're quite right. Schreck was over-wrought over James's ouster but he sensibly got over it when it became clear that Dix had successfully united the party and recovered lost ground in public support. The biggest disappointment for those who supported Dix in the 2011 leadership contest is that he didn't follow through on what was widely expected of him: namely, to tackle head on the Liberals' flagrant lies about the NDP's record in government and their own 12-year record of incompetence, dishonesty, and corruption. A bare-knuckled critique, combined with a clear statement of NDP alternatives--boldly proclaimed, without apology--would have given thousands of NDP-inclined non-voters reason to actually vote--in stark contrast to the insipid campaigns the party ran in 2005 and 2009. In such a campaign it needn't have fallen exclusively to Dix to deliver the one-two punch. Horgan and Farnworth could have been given a larger role in the central campaign. If only, if only... Election lesson: Don't get the cart before the horse David Schreck Strategic Thoughts British Columbia Canada May 17, 2013 Visit this page for its embedded links. Political watchers in general, and New Democrats in particular, will argue for a long time over whether a different NDP campaign or a different leader might have yielded an NDP win on May 14th. There is no way to resolve the "what-ifs" about the election campaign because all we know with certainty is the Liberals did exactly what they predicted with a stunning come from-behind-win. Like almost all observers, save for exceptions like Trevor Lautens in the North Shore News, I thought the only question on election night would be the size of the NDP majority. Hind sight is twenty-twenty. During the course of the campaign it is doubtful that anyone could have convinced those behind the central NDP campaign to take a different approach because opinion polls pointed to an NDP victory. That produced a campaign focused on managing expectations for a soon-to-be NDP government rather than a campaign aimed at winning votes. In hockey terms, the NDP ragged the puck, confident that its lead was invincible. A wildcard was introduced in the campaign with Dix's announcement on the Kinder Morgan pipeline that caught everyone by surprise, including most NDP candidates. That announcement may have helped the NDP win two Vancouver seats but it framed the Liberal narrative perfectly, possibly contributing to the loss of far more seats elsewhere. The pollsters also have a lot of explaining to do. They aren't in the business of predicting, although many read the polls as if they were. The companies can always say that they take a snapshot at a point-in-time and things change after that. Angus Reid wrote in the Globe and Mail that "Now, pollsters must figure out how our projections were so off." Good to hear that admitted. Ipsos Reid issued a news release taking a different tack. ... Some New Democrats cling to the excuse that the Greens cost the party the election. That argument is nonsense. The Greens are not an offshoot of the NDP; they are not soft New Democrats. In Oak Bay Gordon Head where Andrew Weaver made history as the first Green to win a seat in the provincial legislature, the NDP vote dropped from 44% in 2009 to 28% in 2013; the Liberal vote also fell from 47% in 2009 to 30% in 2013. In Sannich North and the Islands, the seat that closely resembles Green MP Elizabeth May's federal riding, a close three way race means the final count on May 26 will determine the outcome. In 2009 that seat went Liberal with 45% of the vote to the NDP's 44%. The early vote in 2013 has the Liberals at 33.01%, the NDP at 33.19% and the Greens at 31.86%, a gap of just 52 votes between the NDP and the Liberal with the Greens 387 behind. It appears that the Greens drew equally from previous Liberal and NDP voters. On a personal level, I know Green supporters who would never consider voting NDP; no one can consider them to be soft New Democrats. Mathematically one can add the NDP and Green votes and compare the sum to the Liberal vote; politically the separate columns are distinct and as mixable as oil and water. Once dashed expectations fade, the good news for the NDP is a caucus of 33 (subject to a few seats more or less after the final count with the absentee ballots). Government functions best with a capable opposition; the NDP must demonstrate that it can be credible in that role and not simply withdraw in sorrow for itself. MLAs are well paid and have caucus and constituency staff to assist them. Those resources need to be applied effectively in doing the people's business, not wasted in an exercise of treading water for several years. With a tone that is not shrill and arguments that are reasonable, the Official Opposition needs to show that it is far more than a defeated political party. Some might argue that what happens between elections doesn't matter since, according to Ipsos Reid, the outcome was determined by 11% of voters who made up their minds when they marked their ballots. Voters may not be as knowledgeable about every twist and turn that political junkies follow with glee, but they pay enough attention to form an opinion, whether that is months or seconds before they vote. The 2013 election shows the last few days of the campaign are extremely important, but it does not support the argument that the four years preceding the vote can be ignored. ... Premier Clark will have respect and control of her party and caucus that was beyond her grasp before the election. Her MLAs know she won the election for them. Her caucus is large enough to allow her to reward loyalty and deal with trouble makers. She will be challenged to demonstrate statesman-like qualities and not make gaffs that some thought damaged her image over the last two years. She has an opportunity to wipe the slate clean and establish a new image. The big challenges for the government will be things beyond their control. ... Thu, 16 May 2013 14:44:23 -0400 http://saltspringnews.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=23386 BC has just returned a Harperite coalition to power whose public platform—despite the PR rhetoric—is based on socio-economic austerity and resource extraction wishful thinking. We say be on guard, citizens. The public platform, weak as it is, means nothing really. The coalition gets its corporate money in private and makes its decisions behind closed doors not in public. Former coalition premier Gordon Campbell began with principles and slid into corruption. Present coalition premier-elect Christy Clark began with no principles. As award-winning Norman Farrell has written "BC Liberals are drawing more and more public business behind closed doors. Private negotiations replace open tenders. Public private partnerships hide information for 'competitive reasons' and publicly owned private corporations shield major transactions from review. ... I could go on but the idea is clear. Again, I repeat that [Gordon] Campbell promised open and transparent government but he has given us the opposite. Liberal members of the legislature are frightened to speak out, they merely nod their heads and speak the words written for them by the leader's minions. Media pals, knowledgeable about ethical defects, close their eyes and write about other things. Some of them don't even hold their noses as they churn out pap punditry." Below: An award-winning investigative reporter and a founder of the Canadian Association of Journalists (CAJ), Nick Fillmore was a news editor and producer with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation for more than 20 years. One of the founders of Canadian Journalists for Free Expression (CJFE), he was involved in helping press freedom organizations in developing countries for several years. Business journalists go on the attack; demonize Atlantic seasonal workers Nick Fillmore A Different Point of View Ontario Canada May 13, 2013 Visit this page for its embedded links. National business journalists and columnists have bought into Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s demeaning view that folks in the Atlantic region are backward and have a defeatist attitude. Framed in disrespectful language, they’re promoting untested economic ideas that, if adopted, would seriously damage the economy – and the people – of the region. Apparently it wasn’t enough for elite business journalists to applaud how Harper has made life far more difficult for many already struggling seasonal workers by cracking down on employment Insurance (EI). They are advocating the elimination of EI for all 102,000 seasonal workers, people who are employed in the fishery, forestry, agriculture and tourism industries, etc. In this era of right-wing ideology, business writers target just about anything that doesn’t fit into their mean-spirited view of what are good economics. Editors fail to question absurd ideas, and it seems to be okay if journalists and pundits are loose and fast with the facts. Globe and Mail journalist Sean Silcoff, writing about the Atlantic region and EI, is wrong on two counts when he claims to quote the Auditor General as saying: “the federal government needs to do more to collect the $300-million or so it overpays in employment insurance every year, much of it to claimants who misrepresented themselves or committed outright fraud.” Wrong. The $300-million is not government money. The EI system is funded by contributions from employers and employees. The government has not contributed to the fund since 1990. Second, it is incorrect, and harmful to the people of the Atlantic region, to say that “much” of the overpayment went to cheaters. ... Writing in the The Vancouver Sun, Barbara Yaffe, who used to be Globe and Mail correspondent in the Maritimes, also got it wrong: “Last year, according to Human Resources, integrity officers found $128.7 million in fraudulent EI claims. In addition, they identified $330 million in EI overpayments the department is now trying to recoup. That reflects a whole lot of cheating - not a surprise, human nature being what it is.” Even though Human Resources Minister Diane Finley must have known that all the talk about so much fraud was greatly exaggerated, she still pushed the point in the House: “There’s still hundreds of millions of dollars of potential fraud out there,” she said. “The key is to . . . root out the fraud that’s within the system so that EI remains affordable for those who play by the rules.” Some business journalists are bothered that seasonal workers in the Atlantic provinces pay small amounts into EI but receive considerably more in return when there’s no work. ... None of the recent articles mention that past governments “stole” $57-billion from the EI account, which was created from contributions by workers and business. The money was put it into general government revenues to help pay down the debt and support other government programs. As of March 2012 – after much government fiddling – the account had a deficit of $7.9 billion. The business journalism set know very little about rural and seaside life in Atlantic Canada. It is unlikely that any of them – with the possible exception of Yaffe – have even spent any working time in a rural setting. None of them offered any suggestions as to what might be done in any of these communities. The region’s 100,000 seasonal workers support the livelihood of perhaps another 250,000 people and hundreds of large and small businesses – a value of billions of dollars. Hundreds of communities and businesses would collapse if the EI program for seasonal workers were cancelled and not replaced with a meaningful program. Considering Harper’s attitude toward the region, it is highly unlikely the government would bring in programs to support rural communities. ... What motivates these journalists to be so mean-spirited? Maritime academics Karen and Brian Foster believe they have the answer: ... Business journalism seldom acknowledges the importance of the human condition. In this era of neo-liberalism and its selfish values, journalism is much harsher than at any time in memory. Business writers glamourize the Canadian mining companies that destroy the environment and the lives of poor people around the world. The business pages carry articles by people who support the development of the tar sands and question whether global warming is caused by human endeavour. Because of this kind of journalism, the powerful men who run our economy are let off the hook and are never confronted with the consequences of their abuses. Personally, I’m in favour of abolishing so-called business journalism. We should hold all journalists to the same moral and ethical standards. Wed, 15 May 2013 19:24:05 -0400 http://saltspringnews.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=23385 Jim comment: I'm too stunned and disheartened to comment on the results of yesterday's election here in British Columbia. I will have to stew in that vile pot for awhile before I can say anything coherent. Before I ponder the future here in our benighted province, at the moment I'm puzzling over why half the registered electorate didn't vote. Was the cause anomie or ennui? I dunna know. But if it is anomie, not ennui, we should witness growing civil disobedience in the years ahead. As for those who did vote, I do agree somewhat with the defeated BC Conservative Party leader John Cummins who said "you can't begin to tell me that British Columbians chose the [BC] Liberal Party, when they can't keep their word to them. They didn't. They were running away from the [NDP]." And I'm astounded that only one sitting Independent MLA was returned and only one Green Party candidate was elected. The four sitting Independents before dissolution were among the very best in the Legislature. And the Green Party (which had the most compassionate, thoughtful and forward-looking platform) saw a number of articulate, intelligent candidates who deserved to sit in the provincial house of deliberation go down to defeat. Meanwhile, a few early dispatches. BC Liberals pull off stunning election win, Greens pick up first ever seat rabble staff rabble.ca Canada May 15, 2013 Visit this page for its embedded links. The BC Liberals pulled off a stunning upset Tuesday, defeating the BC NDP to win a majority in the provincial election. As of this morning., the Liberals had won 50 seats to the NDP's 33. One silver lining for the NDP is that Liberal leader Christy Clark was defeated in a close race by the NDP's David Eby, in the riding of Vancouver - Point Grey. Andrew Weaver made history by winning a lone seat for the Green Party in the Vancouver Island riding of Oak Bay-Gordon Head. Weaver becomes the first Green representative ever elected to the provincial legislature. One independent candidate, Vicki Huntington, won re-election in the riding of Delta South. This is the fourth straight majority government won by the BC Liberals, who have held power in B.C. Since 2001. Adrian Dix, 49, won re-election in his Vancouver Kingsway riding. As for the question of party leadership, Dix said that his party would discuss the matter in caucus and reach a democratic decision. Preliminary election results are available at the Elections BC website. Results, by party, are as follows: BC Liberals 44.40 per cent, NDP 39.49 per cent, Green Party 8.01 per cent, Conservative Party of BC 4.8 per cent. ... Election shows public mood now shifts 'in a matter of hours': Geller Doug Ward TheTyee.ca British Columbia Canada May 14, 2013 2300 hours Michael Geller, the prominent real estate consultant and pundit, said the upset BC Liberal win shows that chattering classes are having less impact on voter intention. "Isn't (it) wonderful that the pundits and the pollsters can no longer determine the outcome of an election," said Geller, who was one of the nearly 1,000 celebrants at the BC Liberal party in downtown Vancouver. "In this case, it was the voters who decided. And none of us predicted this." ... About the nature of polling today, Geller said that: "I think the reality is that today we no longer use land phone lines the same way. Social media has changed the way the public mood shifts. "It used to shift in a matter of years, then in a matter of months. Now it shifts in a matter of hours." For pollsters, an Alberta-sized mess Tom Barrett TheTyee.ca British Columbia Canada May 15, 2013 Visit this page for its embedded links. It was a lousy night to be a pollster and a great night to be someone who thinks polls undermine democracy. The pollsters got it wrong Tuesday: spectacularly, Alberta-sized wrong. Not one published poll in the months before the election gave the BC Liberals a lead over the New Democratic Party. Instead of the six-to-nine percentage point NDP victory suggested by the province's big political pollsters, voters appear to have given the Liberals a comfortable five-point victory. ... Did negative politics crush positive? Tom Barrett TheTyee.ca British Columbia Canada May 15, 2013 Visit this page for its embedded link. It won't be hard to find people who will point to tonight's Liberal victory and claim that negative politics beat positive campaigning. But the answer may be that a good campaign beat a bad one. The incumbent Liberals waged an aggressive battle that focused on raising fears about job losses and New Democrat leader Adrian Dix's personal trustworthiness. The NDP, which had pledged a positive campaign, spent little time reminding voters of why the Liberals were so unpopular. "It was a disastrous campaign and I felt that through most of the campaign," political scientist Hamish Telford said of the New Democrats' effort, which saw a 20-point lead in the polls turn into a five-point deficit when the ballots were counted. "I thought the NDP was not campaigning effectively," said Telford, head of the political science department at the University of the Fraser Valley. "I thought that Adrian Dix was quite lacklustre in both the debates. But I thought the campaign was going to be good enough to succeed. "Evidently it wasn't." Telford said much of the credit must go to Premier Christy Clark. "A lot of people are going to focus on the negativity of the Liberals, that they ran a very negative campaign with a lot of attacks," he said. "But I also believe it had a lot to do with the buoyant personality of Christy Clark. She's always upbeat, positive and optimistic." Clark's ability to project optimism while knocking down the NDP -- combined with Dix's "charisma deficit" -- is what turned the tide, Telford said. ... [Pollster Greg Lyle] said the Liberals won by turning the election from "a referendum on whether they were a perfect government into a referendum on whether or not Adrian Dix was a safe choice." British Columbia Liberals' shock win keeps pipeline afloat Agence France-Presse/globalpost France/USA May 15, 2013 British Columbia Liberals won an upset in the Canadian province's elections, officials said Wednesday, raising hopes for a pipeline from Canada's oil sands to the Pacific Coast for shipping to Asia. ... The Northern Gateway pipeline would bring oil from neighboring Alberta province's tar sands to a new marine terminal in Kitimat, British Columbia. Up to 220 supertankers each year would take on oil from it, one report estimated, but aboriginals and environmentalists oppose the terminal, saying tanker traffic poses risks to a pristine coastline that includes salmon-bearing rivers and the habitat of a rare white bear. The plan gained momentum after the United States initially rejected TransCanada's Keystone XL pipeline connecting the tar sands to Texas refineries. The State Department is expected to make a final recommendation on the Keystone XL project to US President Barack Obama in the coming months. Mulcair hopes to learn from BC NDP upset QMI Agency/Sun News Canada May 15, 2013 OTTAWA - NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair says he'll study the collapse of the provincial NDP in Tuesday's British Columbia election to learn why things went off the rails so they're not repeated in the next federal election. "There are always lessons to be learned from something like this and we are going to study it closely," he said about the surprise win for Christy Clark's Liberals after several pollsters counted her out and declared victory for NDP Leader Adrian Dix. Mulcair described the outcome as a "bitter result" for his provincial cousins. He rejected claims that voters panned what critics said was the NDP's anti-development and anti-oil platform. "We want development but we insist it be sustainable development. We want more trade, but we want it to be reciprocal fair trade," he said. Mulcair said his party supports a west-to-east oil pipeline over the Keystone XL line to Texas to create jobs in Canada, as long as it passes a credible environmental assessment. Wed, 15 May 2013 15:15:02 -0400 http://saltspringnews.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=23384 British Columbians have a right to know Vincent Gogolek and Murray Rankin, QC TheTyee.ca British Columbia Canada May 13, 2013 Visit this page for its embedded and related links. [Editor's note: British Columbia's economy is growing. Much of that growth rests on expanded resource industries. Yet our laws designed to protect the unparalleled beauty and richness of the B.C. environment have been weakened, both federally and provincially, over the past decade. This Tyee special series, in cooperation with the Environmental Law Centre at the University of Victoria, reveals what B.C.'s leading experts in environmental law say most needs to be fixed, and their specific suggestions for change. To read all their recommendations, download the free electronic publication Maintaining Natural British Columbia for our Children: Selected Law Reform Proposals. Last in our series, today we look at the need for stronger rights to know, and to protect whistleblowers.] The Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act was designed to give citizens direct access to government records -- to unvarnished, un-spun information that can be used to hold government to account. However, the Act isn't working as intended. We're coming up to the 20th anniversary of the Act's passage, and it is showing its age. High fees, long delays and unjustified government claims for exemptions from the duty to release are common problems. Some problems have become so extreme that only legislative changes will fix them. Here are some key things that need urgent overhaul. ... Connections between wealth and power flourish in secret Norman Farrell Northern Insight British Columbia Canada May 14, 2013 Visit this page for its embedded links. An article I published almost three years ago is timely on this election day. Voters have an opportunity to change direction. If we do not, the plundering of British Columbia will accelerate. Gordon Campbell began with a set of principles and slid into corruption. Christy Clark started without principle. ... BC Liberals are drawing more and more public business behind closed doors. Private negotiations replace open tenders. Public private partnerships hide information for "competitive reasons" and publicly owned private corporations shield major transactions from review. Trade councils and intermediaries controlled by government have been established to keep business out of the public sector. Crown corporations such as BC Hydro are made to follow government direction but allowed to hide contracts that commit citizens to pay tens of billions of dollars in future payments. I could go on but the idea is clear. Again, I repeat that Campbell promised open and transparent government but he has given us the opposite. Liberal members of the legislature are frightened to speak out, they merely nod their heads and speak the words written for them by the leader's minions. Media pals, knowledgeable about ethical defects, close their eyes and write about other things. Some of them don't even hold their noses as they churn out pap punditry. Tue, 14 May 2013 17:08:30 -0400 http://saltspringnews.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=23383 Not just abroad: Domestic, internal oppression/repression seem to be common traits of the Western Axis nations. Here's a peek inside Turkey. Turkey’s journalists say press freedom has declined under Erdogan’s rule Roy Gutman McClatchy Newspapers USA May 13, 2013 ISTANBUL — Veteran journalist Hasan Cemal was forced out of his job in March for defending his newspaper’s decision to publish secret protocols that embarrassed Turkey’s ruling party. Amberin Zaman lost hers in April following a succession of outspoken columns that criticized the government’s Syria policy and its treatment of the large Kurdish minority. After Nuray Mert criticized Turkey’s Kurdish policies and voiced concern that Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the powerful prime minister, risked becoming an authoritarian leader, she was dismissed from her job as a television show host with NTV and then fired early last year by the newspaper Milliyet. All were columnists in Turkish newspapers – royalty in this country’s media realm – who enjoyed perks, prominence and a modicum of freedom to report the news and give their views, far more than ordinary journalists. They are among more than a dozen Turkish columnists who were fired or quit under pressure in the past year, according to the U.S.-based Committee to Protect Journalists. Before they were forced out, Erdogan put pressure on their publications and attacked them by name or indirectly, raising a multitude of questions about whether Turkey has the advanced democracy it claims 10 years into Erdogan’s prime ministership. “If this is journalism, then down with your journalism,” Erdogan declared in a speech about Milliyet, Cemal’s newspaper, after it published the minutes of Kurdish politicians’ talks with Abdullah Ocalan, the imprisoned leader of the Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, a group the government had previously demonized as terrorists but is now negotiating with. Turkey, a nation of 80 million, has emerged as one of the most stable Muslim majority states, and its economy is the second fastest-growing in Europe. Three visits by Secretary of State John Kerry in his first three months in office confirm the country’s growing role in regional affairs. On Thursday, President Barack Obama will receive Erdogan at the White House, where the topics are likely to be the civil war in Syria and what role Turkey can assume in Middle East peace talks. Yet freedom of expression on contemporary issues lags woefully behind progress in other spheres, stymied by a government that regularly seeks to intimidate publishers, editors and reporters, as well as columnists. The Carnegie Endowment, a nonpartisan U.S.-based think tank, concluded early this year that press freedom in Turkey “is moving backward.” ... From the archives: In the political setting of neoliberal authoritarianism under the hegemony of the Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi or AKP (English: Justice and Development Party), it is clear that basic democratic struggles are integral to the political and organizational agenda of the Turkish opposition today. Talking about dissent in Turkey? Hush, hush! Simten Co&#351;ar and Gülden Özcan Socialist Project/Global Research Canada December 29, 2011 ... Erdogan’s interventions abroad have been widely, and most often favourably reviewed: first against the Israeli government over Gaza; then against Muammar Gaddafi in Libya; and now, more explicitly and rigorously, toward the Bashar al-Assad government in Syria. All these incidents are well-known to the general public in North America, and the mainstream media has been quite prominent in promoting the AKP’s rule. Many of the right in the West have praised the AKP government as one of the strongest allies in the Middle East. But the AKP government has also come in for praise from the left for its support of the non-governmental organizations sending the Mavi Marmara flotilla to Gaza in 2010. But what has been going on in Turkey is quite unknown to the general public abroad. The AKP government’s hostility toward ‘enemies within,’ by which it has branded all kinds of dissent, has been severe and growing. The AKP regime maybe acting as pro-democracy abroad, but it is increasingly authoritarian at home. ... Tue, 14 May 2013 16:40:04 -0400 http://saltspringnews.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=23382 The decision by world-renowned physics professor Stephen Hawking to boycott an Israeli academic conference was first dismissed by Israeli officials as insignificant, but signs that high-profile dissent is tearing at the country's carefully tailored narrative on Palestine have since appeared in public. While it warns of attempts to "de-legitimatize" Israel, Tel Aviv expects the world not to question settlements that violate international law. Ramzy Baroud is the editor of PalestineChronicle.com. His latest book is My Father Was A Freedom Fighter: Gaza's Untold Story (Pluto Press). Hawking and a brief history of boycotts Ramzy Baroud Asia Times Online Hong Kong May 14, 2013 It is an event "of cosmic proportions", said one Palestinian academic, a befitting description regarding Stephen Hawking's decision to boycott an Israeli academic conference slated for next June. It was also a decisive moral call which was communicated on May 8 by Cambridge University, where Hawking is a professor. Hawking is a world-renowned cosmologist and physicist. His scientific work had the kind of impact that redefined or challenged entire areas of research from the theory of relativity, to quantum mechanics and other fields of study. This towering figure is also wheelchair-bound - suffering from complete physical paralyses caused by amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) disease. For Hawking, however, such a painful fact seems like a mere side note in the face of his incredible contributions to science, ones that are comparable to only few men and women throughout history. What is considered a prestigious scientific conference in Israel is hosted by President Shimon Peres, most remembered by Lebanese and Palestinians for ordering the shelling of a United Nations compound near the village of Qana in South Lebanon in 1996. The compound was a safe heaven, where civilians often sought shelter during Israeli strikes. Not that time around, however. 106 innocent people that were mostly children and women were killed and 116 wounded, including UN forces. That harrowing event alone would have sent Peres, then Israel's prime minister, to serve his remaining years in jail. But of course, Israel is above the law, or so the Israeli government believes and thus it has consistently behaved accordingly in the last 65 years with a price tag of uncountable lives, untold destruction and protracted suffering of entire nations. Hawking's response to the boycott call was immensely important. The man's legendary status aside, the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement has proved more durable and successful than its detractors - mostly Israel's apologists - want to believe. Hawking's decision was also a testament that reason and morality should and must go hand in hand. Israel's boasting of its scientific accomplishments should mean zilch if such technology is put to work to advance state violence, tighten military occupation and make killer drones available to other countries, thus exporting violence and mayhem. ... Criticism of Hawking is not only emanating from Israel and its predictable circle of diehard supporters. It is also coming from some of those who count themselves as members of the Palestinian solidarity camp. The latter group, which is shrinking in number and outreach, argue that boycotting all aspects of Israel's academic, cultural and political life will play into Israel's "anti-Semitism" and "de-legitimization" arguments. But can the solidarity movement limit its boycott to few Israeli companies with links to West Bank settlements and expect to achieve tangible, long-term results? Those who think that boycotting the occupation is enough, seem not to understand the nature of the relationship between West Bank setters and the Israeli government. Israel treats the settlements and its well-armed inhabitants as part and parcel of the Israeli state and economy. They are residents of Israel, even if they live near Ramallah. There is no separation whatsoever except for some imaginary "Green Lines" and such. And now with the Apartheid Wall, even that separation is being blurred and redefined. ... Related: Speaking of science and scientists: Stephen Hawking joins academic boycott of Israel Salt Spring News British Columbia Canada May 8, 2013 Two links. From one of those links: ... Hawking's decision marks another victory in the campaign for boycott, divestment and sanctions targeting Israeli academic institutions. In April the Teachers' Union of Ireland became the first lecturers' association in Europe to call for an academic boycott of Israel, and in the United States members of the Association for Asian American Studies voted to support a boycott, the first national academic group to do so. ... and from the other: The Knesset passed Monday a law penalizing persons or organizations that boycott Israel or the settlements, by a vote of 47 to 38. ... MK Nitzan Horowitz from Meretz blasted the law, calling it outrageous and shameful. "We are dealing with a legislation that is an embarrassment to Israeli democracy and makes people around the world wonder if there is actually a democracy here," he said. Ilan Gilon, another Meretz MK, said the law would further delegitimize Israel. Kadima opposition party spokesman said the Netanyahu government is damaging Israel. ... Tue, 14 May 2013 15:43:02 -0400 http://saltspringnews.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=23381 Pakistan’s incoming leader, Nawaz Sharif. Photo: Press TV. Nawaz Sharif's return to power in Pakistan electrifies South Asia politics, while the electoral turnout represents an historic vote for democracy and rejection of extremism. The Pakistani electorate has thrown down the gauntlet for Washington to grasp the benefits of strengthening the new leader's hand. The big question is whether the US wants to be on the "right side of history" or to conduct business as usual with the generals in Rawalpindi. Will Pakistan finally stand up against illegal US drone attacks? Clive Stafford Smith guardian.co.uk UK May 12, 2013 Thursday's landmark decision by the Pakistani high court in Peshawar is a remarkable document: Chief Justice Dost Muhammad Khan examines the US use of drones against Pakistan's tribal areas and reaches several conclusions that, while obvious to most sensible observers, seem to have eluded American authorities for several years. The case was filed last year by Shahzad Akbar, of the Foundation for Fundamental Rights (FFR), a legal charity based in Islamabad. The case was brought by families of victims killed in a US drone strike on 17 March 2011. The strike – one of more than 300 Obama has launched at Pakistan – is infamous: more than 50 people were killed, including many community elders who had gathered to settle a local dispute over a chromite mine. For the locals it was the equivalent of a strike on the high court itself. The chief justice's first finding is perhaps the most obvious: "[Drone strikes] are absolutely illegal and a blatant violation of sovereignty of the state of Pakistan." The strikes are, he says, international war crimes, given that there is no state of war between the US and its nominal ally, Pakistan. It does not matter whether General Pervez Musharraf gave the CIA a wink and a nod when he was the country's dictator. "[T]here is nothing in writing to the effect," writes the chief justice. In any event, no government can legitimately authorise the murder of its own citizens – certainly not without a public announcement through the democratic process. Indeed, Musharraf is currently facing the music for a number of illegal acts he allegedly took while in office. The American use of drones is, in the chief justice's legal opinion, wholly disproportionate under international law. He notes that 9/11 still provides the US administration's pretext for a "global war on terror", yet there has been "not a single … terror incident … anywhere in the USA" emanating from Pakistan in more than a decade since. How, then, can it be proportionate to kill more than 3,000 Pakistanis, including "infant babies, pre-teen and teenage children, women and others". Rather than respond with force first and ask questions afterwards, the chief justice orders the Pakistan government to try to solve the dispute through the rule of law. ... Ultimately, the US must bear full responsibility for its actions. "The government of Pakistan shall mak[e] a request to the UN secretary general to constitute an independent war crime tribunal, to direct the US authorities to immediately stop the drone strikes ... and to immediately arrange for the complete and full compensation for the victims' families." This judicial decision is all about democracy and the rule of law. America has held itself out as a proponent of these ideals for more than 200 years. It is a shame that the CIA's supposedly secret drones campaign marks such a sharp departure from both, following on from earlier policy catastrophes such as Guantánamo Bay and Abu Ghraib. In contrast, Saturday's election marked the first time in its 66-year history that Pakistan has made the transition from one democratically elected government to another. The apparent victor, Nawaz Sharif's PLM-N party, has promised to stop US drone strikes in Pakistan. The court's decision will light a judicial fire under this vow. Sharif: US must take Pakistan’s opposition to drones seriously Jason Ditz Antiwar.com News USA May 13. 2013 Visit this page for its embedded links. Fresh off a decisive victory in this weekend’s election, Pakistan’s incoming leader Nawaz Sharif has quickly set the stage for a battle with the US over ongoing drone strikes against the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). “This is a very important issue and our concern must be understood properly,” Sharif said, warning that the drone strikes are a “challenge to our sovereignty” and one that Pakistan was not going to simply sit by and ignore. Sharif campaigned on a promise to end the strikes, saying he would “reconsider” relations with the US if they did not stop launching such strikes. Between his clear victory and the ruling by Pakistan’s high court last week that the strikes are a violation of international law, there is much momentum behind ending them. Sharif is moving quickly to form his new government, announcing his intention to make Ishaq Dar his finance minister. Counting still isn’t over in the election, so it still isn’t clear how much of a majority he’ll end up with. Pakistan’s elections: Continuity of IMF imposed austerity under new government Keith Jones Global Research Canada May 13, 2013 Official results of Saturday’s national and four provincial assembly elections are not expected for several more days. But unofficial partial returns indicate that the PPP’s traditional electoral rival, the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) or PML (N), will obtain a strong plurality or possibly a majority of the seats in the National Assembly. The PML (N) also retained control over the government of the Punjab, home to 60 percent of Pakistan’s 180 million people. Both Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Afghan President Hamid Karzai publicly congratulated PML (N) leader Nawaz Sharif on his victory. A right-wing industrialist, Sharif twice before served as Pakistan’s prime minister, only to be ousted by the military. The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI—Pakistan Movement for Justice) of former cricket star Imran Khan also did well. The PTI had long been an also-ran in Pakistani politics. However, in 2011 Khan began staging rallies denouncing US drone strikes that have killed thousands of civilians and terrorized Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). Khan also vowed to lead a “revolution” to end corruption and create an “Islamic welfare state.” Khan welcomed prominent businessmen and renegade PPP and PML (N) leaders into his party, while making clear that he is eager for Pakistan to retain close relations with Washington. Under conditions where the PPP, Pakistan’s main bourgeois “left” party, and its pseudo-left allies deepened the country’s alignment with US imperialism, Khan’s denunciations of illegal U.S. drone strikes struck a popular chord, especially among urban youth. The PTI, which hitherto had only ever won a single National Assembly seat, might force the PPP into third place in the National Assembly. It is the largest party in Khyber Pashtunkhwa (KP) province, which adjoins the FATA. Concerned about the surge in PTI support, Sharif has made limited anti-drone strike statements, announcing that “options” other than “guns and bullets…need to be explored” to end the AfPak war. ... The Election Commission and press claim that despite election-day violence that killed more than twenty people, the use of armed thugs to suppress voting in Karachi, threats from ethnic separatists in Balochistan to attack voters—that is, the fact that the country is largely in a state of civil war—the elections held on Saturday were “fair.” The reality is that the elections aimed at providing a thin democratic façade for neocolonial rule in Pakistan. The agenda of the new PML (N) government is being worked out in back-channel discussions between Washington, the IMF, and the Pakistani military and business elite. The head of Pakistan’s armed forces, General Kiyani, has met twice with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry in recent weeks. Pakistan is a key US partner as the Pentagon discusses scaling back the size of its occupation forces in Afghanistan and reorganizing its puppet regime in Kabul. In one indication of where real power lies in Pakistani bourgeois politics, Kerry invited Kiyani, not civilian officials, to meet with him and Afghan President Karzai last month. Pakistan’s caretaker election-period government has already negotiated the framework for an emergency IMF loan, as Pakistan only has enough foreign exchange reserves for a few weeks’ imports. The loan is predicated on pledges to slash energy price subsidies and social spending, raise taxes and accelerate the privatization of state enterprises. Sharif, who began his political career as a protégé of the US-backed military dictator General Zia-ul-Haq will do Washington’s bidding, no less than the PPP’s Zardari. US strategist Bruce Riedel, who worked on the Obama administration’s AfPak war plans, told the Washington Post that Sharif “is a man we can work with; we have worked with him before.” Sharif has declared that “I’m not someone who is against the IMF.” Unlike the PTI, the PML (N) spelled out its anti-working class program in some detail. Its election manifesto promised to establish Special Economic Zones, replace price subsidies with means-tested “targeted subsidies” and privatize key state-owned industries like power generation and distribution or the railways. ... Below: M K Bhadrakumar served as a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service for over 29 years, with postings including India's ambassador to Uzbekistan (1995-1998) and to Turkey (1998-2001). Pakistan throws down gauntlet at the US M K Bhadrakumar Asia Times Online Hong Kong May 14, 2013 The return of former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to power in Pakistan after a hiatus of 14 years electrifies the regional politics of South Asia. Signals passing back and forth between New Delhi and Lahore underscore a subtle change having already appeared in the political vibes. Typically, even as the results from the previous day's parliamentary poll were pouring in, Sharif told an Indian television channel on Sunday, "I will visit India whether India invites me or not." Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh reciprocated within hours by breaking with protocol and congratulating Sharif on his "emphatic" victory in the "historic" elections and inviting him to visit India at a mutually convenient time. Manmohan phoned Sharif and, according to the latter, a "long chat" followed. The two words - "emphatic" and "historic" - capture the mood in New Delhi. The Indian establishment has been keeping its fingers crossed that a strong government would be taking shape in Pakistan. The reading in Delhi is that given the extremely complicated situation in Pakistan and the dangerous regional environment, tough decisions are called for in steering the ship of the Pakistani state through the shark-infested sea, which only a strong government in Islamabad could undertake. From the Indian viewpoint, therefore, the outcome of Saturday's election has been "historic" insofar as it signifies a triumphant march of democracy. Pakistan's democratization profoundly impacts on the dynamics of the normalization of relations between the two countries. To be sure, the prospect of Nawaz Sharif being at the helm of affairs in Islamabad comes as great relief to the Indian leadership. Sharif is a known figure to the Indian elites and Delhi knows it can do business with him. In fact, things were beginning to look up in India-Pakistan relations at that point in 1999 when Sharif was ousted from power in the military coup led by General Pervez Musharraf. In the Indian estimation, one main reason why the military conspired against the elected government led by Sharif was the apprehension in Rawalpindi that the normalization process with India that he was actively pursuing might gain traction. Ironically, it was the right-wing Hindu nationalist government led by Atal Behiari Vajpayee that concluded that Nawaz Sharif is quintessentially a pragmatist and engaged him in a dramatic policy overture. Sharif always trusted that the mutual benefit that trade and investment involving India could bring for Pakistani economy could cement bilateral relations and make the two countries stakeholders in regional security and stability. ... The heart of the matter [for the Obama administration] is that strengthening Sharif's hands also makes smart regional policy. It means strengthening Sharif's capability to break the nexus between the militant groups and the security establishment in Pakistan. In turn, it means giving traction to the India-Pakistan normalization and defusing the Afghan-Pakistan tensions and thereby creating the underpinning of regional cooperation and the New Silk Road. A policy shift on the part of the US toward Sharif also could give a positive nudge to the overall Afghan-Pakistan relationship, which, of course, can help the stabilization of the Afghan situation, thus serving a key objective of Washington's post-2014 regional strategy. To be sure, by electing Sharif as their leader, Pakistani voters have thrown down the gauntlet at Washington. Obama should pick it up. Below: Canadian Eric Walberg is known worldwide as a journalist specializing in the Middle East, Central Asia and Russia. A graduate of University of Toronto and Cambridge in economics, he has been writing on East-West relations since the 1980s. He has lived in both the Soviet Union and Russia, and then Uzbekistan, as a UN adviser, writer, translator and lecturer. His articles appear in Russian, German, Spanish and Arabic. Presently a writer for the foremost Cairo newspaper, Al Ahram, he is also a regular contributor to Counterpunch, Dissident Voice, Global Research, Al-Jazeerah and Turkish Weekly, and is a commentator on Voice of the Cape radio. Eric Walberg was a moderator and speaker at the Leaders for Change Summit in Istanbul in 2011. Pakistan's elections: Turning over a new leaf Eric Walberg EricWalberg.com May 14, 2013 Pakistan's elections come at a key junction in the region's geopolitics, with the public firmly opposed to the US 'war on terror' being conducted on Pakistani soil with no regard for its sovereignty. Pakistan’s new prime minister has a mandate to take his country in a new direction, but will he use it? Steel magnate Nawaz Sharif is the country's fourth wealthiest citizen, a protégé of General Zia ul-Haq, toppled in a 1999 military coup, sentence to life imprisonment and exiled to Saudi Arabia. His Muslim League (PML-N) has enough seats to avoid the need for a coalition with second-place former cricketer Imran Khan’s Tehrik-i-Insaf (PTI), and/or the Bhutto family’s Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), which until last week presided over Pakistan’s first full-term civilian government. Despite pre-poll violence that killed at least 40 people, voter turnout was a robust 60%. On the surface, a win-win for Sharif, Khan, Pakistan, and even the West, which very much needs a stable government there. But Sharif, prime minister for the third time (having served from 1990–1993 and 1997–1999), has loads of baggage: his love of neoliberal trickle-down economics, his close ties with Saudi Arabia, his abiding interest in closer links with Central Asia republics (echoes of past regimes’ regional hegemonic designs). And though he loudly supported the reinstatement of Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudry (dismissed by Pervez Musharraf in 2007), he is no stranger to intimidating judges, having ousted Supreme Court chief justice Sajjad Ali Shah in 1997. He notoriously ‘pressed the button’ to bring Pakistan into the nuclear age in 1998. And he was best friends with the military until he was 'betrayed' by his own 1998 appointee as army chief of staff, Pervez Musharraf. What do the tea leaves tell us? Well, for one thing, ex-General Musharraf, who hounded Sharif into exile, better put a strong lock on his home near Islamabad, where he is now under house arrest. And Pakistanis better brace themselves for IMF-style austerity. US strategists also should be prepared for a continuation of the cooling of relations. Sharif’s brother Shahbaz, chief minister of Punjab, has stopped all USAID projects in Punjab province as a protest against Washington’s use of drones (3,000 dead since 2004), though we can be sure Nawaz is unlikely to jeopardise the $2 billion in annual US ‘aid’. Speaking of Nawaz’s brother, his son Hamza is a member of the National Assembly. And Nawaz’s daughter Maryam is leader of the PML-N. And, and … Politics is a family affair in Pakistan, though as the falling-out and scandals of the various Bhuttos (and Sharif’s cold-blooded alliance with Benazir’s brother Murtaza) suggests, the families are not always happy. So much for “cleaning up corruption”. Is there any hope for a new direction? Well, Sharif considers himself a friend of the environment, a fan of “bioconservatism”, having established the Environmental Protection Agency in 1997. He is committed to Islamization, including a more sharia-based legal system, though there is little to suggest that social justice plays any role at all in his deen. He may actually try to patch up relations with India; he tried to with the Lahore declaration in 1999 until undermined by clashes in Kargil, Kashmir. But don’t hold your breath waiting for any surprises. Sharif is in fact a logical heir to Pakistan’s tragic history, which continues to unfold, regardless of who sits on top. Since partition in 1947, intended by the British to leave a prostrate subcontinent which would be beholden to empire, Pakistani politics has been mostly dominated by military rule and crises. This makes sense, as Pakistan’s Muslims are a highly pluralist mix of Sunni and Shia, with large communities of Ahmadi, Bahai and others, and tension often boil over, requiring a firm, neutral hand. ... If Sharif can strike a peace accord with India and work with regional players—including Iran— and the US in Afghanistan, peace will break out in the region. This would reopen the borders with India, creating an economic boom across the region. At the same time, it will accelerate a genuine withdrawal of US forces from the region, end its threats to invade Iran, and—please note, US strategists—the US would still have quite a bit of influence in post-pullout Afghanistan. In fact, its profile across the region would be transformed for the better. This would also dash Pakistan’s goal of becoming regional hegemon. But peace with both Afghanistan and India would be a win-win for it too, slashing the parasitical military and raising living standards through mutually profitable cooperation with India, Iran and China. The centerpiece will be the Iran-Pakistan-India (IPI) Peace Pipeline. Even if Pakistani politics remains corrupt (and it will), the new regional cooperation would give a huge boost to its economy. If Sharif has the courage to do this, it would start the difficult process of turning over a new leaf for Pakistan. It would also guarantee him a second term, which combined with his peaceful accession to power, would mean a gratifying political bookend for his rule, making him ‘independent’ Pakistan’s true founder. Related: Within the Homeland of the Hegemony, deliberations on drone strikes and permanent troop strenghs in the region of Pakistan. Bringing drones out of the shadows Editorial Los Angeles Times USA May 13, 2013 The use of unmanned aircraft to kill suspected terrorists, a practice that has dramatically escalated during the Obama administration, is receiving fresh and welcome scrutiny in Congress and elsewhere even as the number of drone strikes seems to be on the decline. Last week, Rep. William M. "Mac" Thornberry (R-Texas), the chairman of a House armed services subcommittee, introduced legislation to require the Pentagon to promptly inform Congress about every drone strike outside Afghanistan as well as about operations to kill or capture terrorists away from declared war zones. And in a speech at Oxford University, Harold Koh, who until recently served as the State Department's legal advisor, criticized the administration for not being "sufficiently transparent to the media, to the Congress and to our allies." He urged the administration to publicize its standards for placing targets — Americans and others — on kill lists and to offer a clear tally of civilian casualties. This page has repeatedly criticized the administration for its lack of transparency about the targeted killing of terrorists in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen, and for its troublingly elastic definition of what constitutes an "imminent" attack on Americans that would justify the killing of a U.S. citizen abroad by drones or other means. The legality of targeting citizens without due process of law is an urgent issue. But a debate about drones and targeted killings can't be limited to questions about disclosure, accountability to Congress and legal standards. Nor should legitimate concern about the killing of Americans obscure the fact that about 3,000 foreigners have been killed in drone attacks.... When even former officials of the Obama administration are expressing qualms about drones and targeted killings, it behooves the president and his advisors to reconsider the scope and utility of the policy. ... For all their technological novelty, drones are weapons, and their use raises the perennial question of when and under what safeguards deadly force should be used to protect the national interest. More than a decade after the 9/11 attacks that provided the ultimate authority for the drone campaign, it's time to take stock of whether that policy still makes sense. Obama plans for troops in Afghanistan after 2014 to be announced shortly: John Kerry Patricia Zengerle Reuters/Huffington Post UK/USA/Canada May 14, 2013 STOCKHOLM, May 14 (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama will announce in the next few weeks how many combat troops the United States will leave in Afghanistan in 2014, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said on Tuesday. Obama has set next year as the target for withrawing most troops but the decision is a delicate one as sufficent forces must stay behind to train and support Afghan forces and carry out some operations. "Very shortly, not too long from now, the president does intend to make public what his plans are for post-2014," Kerry told reporters. Kerry declined to discuss how many troops might remain but said: "He (Obama) is committed to supporting the Afghan military beyond 2014." ... General James Mattis, who leads the U.S. military's Central Command, said in March he has recommended keeping 13,600 U.S. troops in Afghanistan after 2013. Tue, 14 May 2013 15:09:48 -0400 http://saltspringnews.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=23380 Hegemony (hegemonic): The processes by which dominant culture maintains its dominant position: for example, the use of institutions to formalize power; the employment of a bureaucracy to make power seem abstract (and, therefore, not attached to any one individual); the inculcation of the populace in the ideals of the hegomonic group through education, advertising, publication, etc.; the mobilization of a police force as well as military personnel to subdue opposition. The criminalization of political dissent in America Tom Carter Global Research Canada May 14, 2013 In a series of prosecutions, precedents are being established for the criminalization of political dissent in America. Last week, Massachusetts high school student Cameron D’Ambrosio was arrested and charged under “terrorism” laws merely for posting lyrics on Facebook that make reference to the Boston Marathon bombings. He faces 20 years in prison. A string of similar “terror” prosecutions around the country take aim at the First Amendment protection of free speech and political expression. The authorities have already branded select participants in Occupy Wall Street and anti-NATO protests as “terrorists.” Last year, heavily-armed “domestic terrorism” commandos raided Occupy Wall Street protesters’ homes in Washington and Oregon, using battering rams and stun grenades. The commandos were authorized to seize all “anti-government or anarchist literature or material.” As with freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, also guaranteed under the First Amendment, has not been officially repealed. The reality, however, is that political assembly is already a semi-criminal activity in America. Political protests are routinely met with vastly disproportionate police mobilizations, confinement to oxymoronic “free speech zones,” “kettling” (in which protesters are surrounded and forcibly moved in one direction or prevented from leaving an area), beatings, tear gas, pepper spray, stun grenades or rubber bullets. The standard government response to a political protest is a massive show of force, complete with police snipers on rooftops. The drive towards the establishment of an American police state, initiated under the Bush administration, has shifted into high gear under Obama. For nearly twelve years, the phony “war on terror” has been used as the overarching pretext for illegal imperialist war abroad and a methodical assault on democratic rights at home. The basic structure of authoritarian rule is now emerging into plain view. ... Canada: Elections 2011 and criminalization of dissent Stefan Christoff rabble.ca Canada April 4, 2011 Visit this page for its embedded links. As election ads fill the airwaves and campaign buses travel Canada's thawing highways over the next month, the national media-driven debate has shifted toward the possibility of the Conservatives forming a majority government. In newspaper pages coast-to-coast debates are alive on the rough style of party politics propelling attack ads against opposition politicians. Critically missing from this discussion is the attack on grassroots activism in Canada overseen by this Conservative government. Propelling the outright physical assault unleashed on people protesting the G20 summit in Toronto this past summer is a criminal attempt via state power in Ottawa to attack activist networks in Canada. In reflecting on the political realities of a potential Conservative majority, it is critical to reflect on systemic actions, undertaken by a Conservative minority parliament, to silence voices of dissent in Canada. ... Christoff goes on to look at "G20 repression", "Conservative [Party] political violence" and "Criminalizing dissent". Below, a look at the problem from Canada's legal profession. The criminalization of dissent Sonya Nigam Canadian Lawyer Magazine Canada March 11, 2013 Visit this page for its embedded links. Article 1. Everyone has the right, individually and in association with others, to promote and to strive for the protection and realization of human rights and fundamental freedoms at the national and international levels. — Declaration on the Right and Responsibility of Individuals, Groups and Organs of Society to Promote and Protect Universally Recognized Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms Adopted by General Assembly resolution 53/144 of Dec. 9, 1998 While freedom of speech and the right to organize politically are recognized human rights, the sphere of operation for those who do not agree with governments is shrinking both at home and abroad. In Canada, gone are the days of being able to oppose one’s government without the fear of being silenced. Lawful demonstrations during the G-20 summit in 2010 resulted in a rash of arrests, as well as unlawful “kettling” of innocent citizens participating in the event. The Canadian International Development Agency failed to renew development contracts for NGOs that disagreed with particular policies. The Canada Revenue Agency will remove an organization’s status as a charity if it deems its work to be political. Most recently, the criminalization of dissent has been noted in Canada’s counter-terrorism strategy unveiled by Minister of Public Safety Vic Toews in 2011. In “Building Resilience Against Terrorism,” under the main heading “The Terrorist Threat,” the strategy document lists environmentalism and anti-capitalism as examples of “domestic issue-based extremism.” So, how did we get here? According to Roch Tassé, national co-ordinator of the International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group who has been carefully tracking the change in attitude of the federal government through various reports and initiatives, it is clear there is now a greater alignment between government and corporations. The focus on economic growth is their common interest. The federal government, in particular, has been engaged in a disciplined communications strategy whereby it constantly and consistently messages to Canadians that economic interests, meaning economic growth, are the same as national interests. The language of post-Sept. 11 anti-terrorism legislation created to counter terrorist activities that threatened our national interests is now being used to allow government police agencies to spy on those who speak against corporate interests, particularly in relation to the extractive industries. ... Tue, 14 May 2013 14:58:37 -0400 http://saltspringnews.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=23379 Was Syria ‘Nuked’? Gordon Duff and Press TV Veterans Today USA May 11, 2013 This page contains appended and related links and embedded videos. Analysis shows Syria came under attack by Israel using, not just nuclear weapons, but an American nuclear bunker buster bomb, one of several supplied to Israel to use against Iran, one of the last acts of the Bush/Cheney administration. Striking evidence of the use of American EPW (Earth Penetrating Weapons) nuclear weapons in Syria has come to light. Experts say the proof is irrefutable. Dramatic video footage from Syria has revealed startling evidence that counters Israel’s claims of “surgical strikes” on weapons headed to Lebanon. ... There was no similarity whatsoever noted between the Syrian “event” and a conventional “bunker buster” including the GBU 57, the largest conventional weapon every to be used. Colonel James Hanke, former Defense Attaché and Liaison between the Pentagon and Netanyahu’s government , reviewed the footage. He indicated that the GBU 57 is considered too high a risk for use because of its danger to the earth’s crust. “The Syrian/African fault line spreads into Israel. Were it to be subjected to this kind of explosive power, the threat of an earthquake doing significant damage in Israel is a reality. The nuclear bunker busters have far less penetrating power and, I am not saying that this was a nuclear device, not until more evidence is in, but the ‘event profile’ shows striking similarities.” The other problem with the GBU 57 is delivery. Only two aircraft are capable of delivering this weapon, the B-52 and B-2 Stealth Bomber. Israel does not have these aircraft. Again Thus, if a MOP [were] used, it could have only been delivered by the United States Air Force, an organization reeling from recent disasters within its own ranks after a second lapse in nuclear weapons security in a five-year period was discovered at Minot Air Force Base in South Dakota. Seventeen officers have been removed, a “house cleaning” of unprecedented scale. Back in 2008, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates ordered a restructuring of America’s nuclear security command after a 2007 incident at Minot. A B-52 was loaded with thermonuclear weapons and flown off the base, violating 84 separate authorization protocols. The plane was later recovered over 1500 miles away under circumstances that have never been adequately explained. What is also not clear is whether the entire nuclear payload was recovered, complete and intact. The most important consideration is whether any command organization, be it Israeli, American or any other, would be willing to use nuclear weapons. There is little question that their use has been advocated by both political and military leaders. The prohibition has been the ability to conceal their use. Events in Iraq have proven such concealment to have worked effectively and when conclusive proof of nuclear weapons use was offered to the media and world scientific community, it was quickly “contained.” ... Related: Nick Turse, Israel, Iran, and the nuclear freight train Tom Englehardt/Nick Turse TomDispatch USA May 12, 2013 Visit this page for its embedded links. Has a weapon ever been invented, no matter how terrible, and not used? The crossbow, the dreadnought, poison gas, the tank, the landmine, chemical weapons, napalm, the B-29, the drone: all had their day and for some that day remains now. Even the most terrible weapon of all, the atomic bomb, that city-buster, that potential civilization-destroyer, was used as soon as it was available. Depending on your historical interpretation, it was either responsible for ending World War II in the Pacific or rushed into action before that war could end. In either case, it launched the atomic age. During the Cold War, the two superpowers, the U.S. and the Soviet Union, relied on a strategy that used to be termed, without irony, “mutual assured destruction” or MAD. Its intent was simple enough: to hold off a planetary holocaust by threatening to commit one. With their massive nuclear arsenals, those two imperial states held each other and everyone else on the planet hostage. Each safely secured more than enough nukes to be able to absorb a “first strike” that would devastate its territory, leaving possibly tens of millions of its citizens dead or wounded, and still return the (dis)favor. After the Soviet Union disappeared in 1991, nuclear weapons did, too -- without going away. The American and Russian arsenals, and the nuclear geography that underlay them, remained in place, just largely unremarked upon. In the meantime, the weaponry itself spread. In those years, the last superpower, which seldom discussed its own arsenal, selectively focused its energies on containing the spread of nuclear weaponry in three nations: the first was Pakistan some part of whose ever-growing nuclear arsenal it feared might fall into the hands of extreme Islamic fundamentalists in a land Washington was in the process of destabilizing via a war in neighboring Afghanistan and a CIA drone campaign in its tribal borderlands; the second was North Korea, a country encouraged in its quest for nuclear weapons by watching the U.S. take down two autocrats, Saddam Hussein and Muammar Qaddafi, who gave up their nuclear programs prior to U.S. interventions; and the third was Iran, which had a nuclear program (started by the U.S. in an era when the country was considered our bulwark in the Persian Gulf), but as far as anyone knows no plans to weaponize it. In the meantime, Washington (and so the American media) simply ignored the very existence of Israel’s massive nuclear arsenal and actually aided the further development of the Indian nuclear program. In these years, it also threatened or, in the case of Iraq, a country that no longer had a nuclear program, actually launched what Jonathan Schell has called “disarmament wars.” That the spread of nuclear weapons, whatever the country, is a danger to us all is obvious. Who exactly will use such weapons next and where remains unknown. But there is no reason to believe that, sooner or later, nuclear weapons -- which have now spread to nine countries -- and are likely to spread further, will not be used again. Recently, a Texas-based nonprofit got a lot of publicity by announcing that it had fired the first handgun ever made almost totally by a 3-D printer. This act, modest enough in itself, nonetheless highlights a trend of our time. Weaponry that once only a large state, mobilizing scientists, industrial power, and resources could produce can now be made by ever-smaller states -- say North Korea with limited resources and a malnourished populace. Similarly, weapons once made by large companies can now be assembled by individuals. Or put another way, ever more powerful weaponry is increasingly available to ever less powerful states and even non-state actors. It was, for instance, the Aum Shinrikyo cult that, in 1995, produced sarin nerve gas -- “the poor man’s atomic bomb” -- in its own laboratory and used it in the Tokyo subways, killing 13, just as in the U.S. anthrax began arriving in the mail a week after 9/11, killing five people. We don’t know where or why a nuclear weapon will be used. We don’t know whether it will be a North Korean, South Korean, Indian, Pakistani, Lebanese, Iranian, Israeli, or even American city that will be hit. All we should assume is that, as long as such weapons are developed, amassed, and stored for use, one day they will be used with consequences that, as Nick Turse, author of the bestselling Kill Anything That Moves, reports today, are -- even for those who have studied the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki -- beyond imagining. Tom Nuclear Terror in the Middle East Lethality Beyond the Pale By Nick Turse In those first minutes, they’ll be stunned. Eyes fixed in a thousand-yard stare, nerve endings numbed. They’ll just stand there. Soon, you’ll notice that they are holding their arms out at a 45-degree angle. Your eyes will be drawn to their hands and you’ll think you mind is playing tricks. But it won’t be. Their fingers will start to resemble stalactites, seeming to melt toward the ground. And it won’t be long until the screaming begins. Shrieking. Moaning. Tens of thousands of victims at once. They’ll be standing amid a sea of shattered concrete and glass, a wasteland punctuated by the shells of buildings, orphaned walls, stairways leading nowhere. This could be Tehran, or what’s left of it, just after an Israeli nuclear strike. Iranian cities -- owing to geography, climate, building construction, and population densities -- are particularly vulnerable to nuclear attack, according to a new study, “Nuclear War Between Israel and Iran: Lethality Beyond the Pale,” published in the journal Conflict & Health by researchers from the University of Georgia and Harvard University. It is the first publicly released scientific assessment of what a nuclear attack in the Middle East might actually mean for people in the region. Its scenarios are staggering. .. Mon, 13 May 2013 15:56:10 -0400 http://saltspringnews.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=23378 In a pluralist world, there is no hope of understanding people who live according to different values if we only judge them from the outside, from what we imagine to be an objective point of view but is really one infused with our own subjectivity. - Julian Baggini, "I still love Kierkegaard" Aeon Magazine UK May 6, 2013 What if we looked at them in their context, rather than forcing one upon it which suits our preconceptions, and suits our easy misreasoning? - Scott Lucas It’s not al Qaeda, stupid! Paul Woodward War in Context USA May 13, 2013 The embedded video is five minutes in length. Even as the influence of the neoconservatives seems to have waned, it must be for many of them a source of enduring satisfaction that the terms al Qaeda and terrorism have become such enduring fixtures in the American political lexicon — terms that are often used just as reflexively and mindlessly by many progressives and liberals as they are by security-obsessed figures on the right. As Scott Lucas points out in the video below, the way the term al Qaeda has functioned is to gloss over complexities and ignore the fact that Syria is not Libya, Libya is not Iraq, Iraq is not Pakistan, and al Qaeda is not a lens through which we should persist in attempting to understand the world. ... Mon, 13 May 2013 12:39:13 -0400 http://saltspringnews.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=23377 In a pluralist world, there is no hope of understanding people who live according to different values if we only judge them from the outside, from what we imagine to be an objective point of view but is really one infused with our own subjectivity. - Julian Baggini, a writer and founding editor of The Philosopher’s Magazine. His latest book is The Shrink and the Sage, co-authored with Antonia Macaro. Jim comment: Postmodern before postmodernism, existentialist before Sartre, ironic before irony was debased: Kierkegaard, rejected in his time, is a man for our time. Just as Julian Baggini, "I fell for Søren Kierkegaard as a teenager, and he has accompanied me on my intellectual travels ever since, not so much side by side as always a few steps ahead or lurking out of sight just behind me." How apt Baggini's words are for me! Before my fire, Kierkegaard had a shelf on my mentor's bookcase. I owned English translations of all his books and read and reread them many times over the decades. As much as any thinker, Søren Kierkegaard guided me as I tried to make sense of myself and of the world. I still love Kierkegaard Julian Baggini Aeon Magazine UK May 6, 2013 I fell for Søren Kierkegaard as a teenager, and he has accompanied me on my intellectual travels ever since, not so much side by side as always a few steps ahead or lurking out of sight just behind me. Perhaps that’s because he does not mix well with the other companions I’ve kept. I studied in the Anglo-American analytic tradition of philosophy, where the literary flourishes and wilful paradoxes of continental existentialists are viewed with anything from suspicion to outright disdain. In Paris, Roland Barthes might have proclaimed the death of the author, but in London the philosopher had been lifeless for years, as anonymous as possible so that the arguments could speak for themselves. Discovering that your childhood idols are now virtually ancient is usually a disturbing reminder of your own mortality. But for me, realising that 5th May 2013 marks the 200th anniversary of Søren Kierkegaard's birth was more of a reminder of his immortality. It's a strange word to use for a thinker who lived with a presentiment of his own death and didn't reach his 43rd birthday. Kierkegaard was the master of irony and paradox before both became debased by careless overuse. He was an existentialist a century before Jean-Paul Sarte, more rigorously post-modern than postmodernism, and a theist whose attacks on religion bit far deeper than many of those of today’s new atheists. Kierkegaard is not so much a thinker for our time but a timeless thinker, whose work is pertinent for all ages yet destined to be fully attuned to none. ... A detached reason that cannot enter into the viewpoints of others cannot be fully objective because it cannot access whole areas of the real world of human experience. Kierkegaard taught me the importance of attending to the internal logic of positions, not just how they stand up to outside scrutiny. This is arguably even more vital today than it was in Kierkegaard’s time. In a pluralist world, there is no hope of understanding people who live according to different values if we only judge them from the outside, from what we imagine to be an objective point of view but is really one infused with our own subjectivity. Atheists need to know what it really means to be religious, not simply to run through arguments against the existence of God that are not the bedrock of belief anyway. No one can hope to understand emerging nations such as China, India or Brazil unless they try to see how the world looks from inside those countries. But perhaps Kierkegaard’s most provocative message is that both work on the self and on understanding the world requires your whole being and cannot be just a compartmentalised, academic pursuit. His life and work both have a deep ethical seriousness, as well as plenty of playful, ironic elements. This has been lost today, where it seems we are afraid of taking ourselves too seriously. For Kierkegaard, irony was the means by which we could engage in serious self-examination without hubris or arrogance: ‘what doubt is to science, irony is to personal life’. ... Sun, 12 May 2013 13:27:50 -0400 http://saltspringnews.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=23376 Baz Luhrmann's new film remodels The Great Gatsby for the present day. Below are discussions of the original novel. Against Gatsby. Fitzgerald’s classic is not elegant, bold, or morally acute. It is condescending, self-serious, and among the most overrated books around. So says Kathryn Schulz. Schulz's article originally appeared in the May 13, 2013 issue of New York Magazine. Why I despise The Great Gatsby Kathryn Schulz Vulture USA Webposted May 6, 2013 The best advice I ever got about reading came from the critic and scholar Louis Menand. Back in 2005, I spent six months in Boston and, for the fun of it, sat in on a lit seminar he was teaching at Harvard. The week we were to read Gertrude Stein’s notoriously challenging Tender Buttons, one student raised her hand and asked—bravely, I thought—if Menand had any advice about how best to approach it. In response, he offered up the closest thing to a beatific smile I have ever seen on the face of a book critic. “With pleasure,” he replied. I have read The Great Gatsby five times. The first was in high school; the second, in college. The third was in my mid-twenties, stuck in a remote bus depot in Peru with someone’s left-behind copy. The fourth was last month, in advance of seeing the new film adaptation; the fifth, last week. There are a small number of novels I return to again and again: Middlemarch, The Portrait of a Lady, Pride and ­Prejudice, maybe a half-dozen others. But Gatsby is in a class by itself. It is the only book I have read so often despite failing—in the face of real effort and sincere ­intentions—to derive almost any pleasure at all from the experience. I know how I’m supposed to feel about Gatsby: In the words of the critic Jonathan Yardley, “that it is the American masterwork.” Malcolm Cowley admired its “moral permanence.” T.&#8197;S. Eliot called it “the first step that American fiction has taken since Henry James.” Lionel Trilling thought Fitzgerald had achieved in it “the ideal voice of the novelist.” That’s the received Gatsby: a linguistically elegant, intellectually bold, morally acute parable of our nation. I am in thoroughgoing disagreement with all of this. I find Gatsby aesthetically overrated, psychologically vacant, and morally complacent; I think we kid ourselves about the lessons it contains. None of this would matter much to me if Gatsby were not also sacrosanct. Books being borderline irrelevant in America, one is generally free to dislike them—but not this book. So since we find ourselves, as we cyclically do here, in the middle of another massive Gatsby ­recrudescence, allow me to file a minority report. ... Related audio: The questionable greatness of Gatsby: A debate "Day 6" CBC Radio One Canada May 10, 2013 (aired May 11, 2013) This page contains embedded links. It also has a pop-up link from which you can listen to the debate (11:39). Much like Baz Luhrmann's new film adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, the latest article by New York Magazine book critic Kathryn Schulz is being met with both praise and scorn. In "Why I Despise The Great Gatsby," Schulz argues Fitzgerald's famous story isn't anything special--in fact, she finds it quite shallow. Is Gatsby, perhaps, not so great? Brent moderates a friendly debate between Schulz and Anne Margaret Daniel, a professor of literature at New York's New School and an F. Scott Fitzgerald scholar. You can also read Anne Margaret's in-depth review of Luhrmann's adaptation here. Sun, 12 May 2013 13:19:46 -0400 http://saltspringnews.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=23375 Intellectuals have become too professionalized, too careerist, too timid, says Pankaj Mishra. The result: Our echo chamber of conventional wisdom. Mishra doesn’t see much hope at present for a broader consciousness untainted by neo-imperialist fantasies. Pankaj Mishra. Photo: On Being/ Boston Review Against the Brahmins Interview conducted by Wajahat Ali Boston Review USA May 2, 2013 Pankaj Mishra enjoys upsetting the alleged status quo. The 43-year-old Indian writer has become a leading critic of Western imperialism, globalization, and abuses of power among the political and intellectual upper crust. He charges India’s privileged class with manipulating the democratic process for self-preservation and profit. He publicly blasts peers, such as Salman Rushdie, whom he accuses of choosing to “amplify the orthodoxies of political and military elites.” and Niall Ferguson, whom he condemned as a cheerleader of “neo-imperialist wars.” Born and raised in Northern India, Mishra was expected to join the civil service after graduating from university. Instead, he moved to a small village in the Himalayas for five years and wrote literary reviews for the Indian press. In 1995, he published his first book, Butter Chicken in Ludhiana: Travels in Small Town India, a travelogue populated by colorful and diverse characters living at the intersection of globalization and Indian tradition. Since then, he has written numerous essays, edited an anthology, and published a novel and three books of nonfiction, including last year’s From the Ruins of Empire: The Revolt Against the West and the Remaking of Asia, which was just short-listed for the 2013 Orwell Prize, a prestigious British award for political writing. In From the Ruins of Empire, Mishra crafts an epic narrative interlinking the lives of three 19th-century revolutionary protagonists: the pan-Islamist Jamal al-Din Afghani, Lian Qichao of China, and Bengali writer and Nobel Prize–winner Rabindranath Tagor. Independently, these intellectual upstarts sought to create an empowered Asian identity rising from the humiliation of colonization and Western imperialism. Their attempts left an influential legacy for modern Middle Eastern and Asian communities struggling to achieve political, economic, and intellectual dignity and autonomy in an age of declining and shifting empires. In this email interview, Mishra discusses modern South Asian identity; the consequences of democracy, modernization, and religious extremism in India; the role and responsibility of intellectuals; and the question of whether global power is shifting from the West to the East. —Wajahat Ali ... Sun, 12 May 2013 13:16:25 -0400 http://saltspringnews.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=23374 Sex and economics. John Maynard Keynes – all mustache and bedroom eyes – had many lovers. Is there any connection between the people he slept with and the ideas he espoused? Jeet Heer takes on the real meaning of Niall Ferguson’s John Maynard Keynes-was-gay jibe—and why Keynes is so threatening to austerity economists and puritan moralists alike. As Heer writes, "Keynes was able to see through the fallacy of austerity because he didn’t think traditional moral strictures should be uncritically accepted." Sex, economics, and austerity Jeet Heer The American Prospect USA May 7, 2013 Visit this page for its embedded links. John Maynard Keynes was the sexiest economist who ever lived. This might seem like half-hearted praise since in our mind’s eye the typical economist appears as a dowdy and almost always balding man, full of prudential advice about thrift and the miracle of compound interest. Keynes, with his caterpillar moustache and mesmerizing bedroom eyes, cut a more dashing figure. He had many lovers of both genders, and was married to one of the great beauties of the age, the ballerina Lydia Lopokova. His genius at playing the stock market allowed him to enjoy the life of bon vivant, socializing with the writers and artists of the Bloomsbury group such as Virginia Woolf and E.M. Forster rather than dull number crunchers he knew at Cambridge and in the British Treasury. While other economists focused on maximizing economic growth, Keynes wanted to go further and maximize the pleasures of life. Given all this, it’s perhaps not surprising that a much-publicized recent attack on the Keynesian policy of using government deficits to overcome economic recession resorted to homophobia to discredit it. Last Friday, in a question and answer session following his lecture, Harvard historian Niall Ferguson startled his audience at the Altegris Strategic Investment Conference in California by calling Keynes a childless gay man who couldn’t give his wife conjugal satisfaction and had no concern for the impact of deficits on posterity. A storm of criticism followed, and in an effort to salvage his reputation, Ferguson—a vocal critic of both President Obama’s mild stimulus policies and the more ambitious Keynesianism of economists like Paul Krugman—quickly and comprehensively apologized, saying his original remarks were “stupid as they were insensitive” and “disagreements with Keynes’s economic philosophy have never had anything to do with his sexual orientation.” Ferguson’s gaffe came in the wake of the recent news that an influential 2010 study by his Harvard colleagues Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff, which had seemed to show a hard threshold beyond which deficits hampered economic growth, turned out to depend heavily on an Excel spread sheet error as well as other elementary methodological flaws. While austerity’s advocates have enjoyed an inexplicable ascendancy in the political world since the beginning of the current great recession, the scrutiny of Ferguson as well as Reinhart and Rogoff has put deficit hawks on the intellectual defensive. Ferguson’s repudiation of his original homophobic comments should be commended. But Ferguson has a history of making jibes about Keynes’s sexuality. University of Michigan economist Justin Wolfers called attention to the fact that in Ferguson’s 1999 book The Pity of War, Keynes is described as being depressed by World War I, in part, because “the boys he liked to pick up in London all joined up.” Later in the same book, Ferguson toys with the idea that Keynes may have been influenced to become a harsh critic of the Treaty of Versailles by an attraction to the German negotiator Carl Melchior. (Its embarrassing to have to refute arrant nonsense with facts and logic, but Keynes was likely depressed by the war because he didn’t like pointless mass slaughter, while his Treaty of Versailles critique was vindicated by the post-war political and economic chaos he predicted). But there is something deeper and weirder going on here. Homophobic slurs against Keynes, it turns out, have a long pedigree. As both Berkeley economist Brad DeLong and the Washington Monthly’s Kathleen Geier have documented, the attempt to dismiss Keynes as someone heedless about the future because he was a childless gay man has been a staple of conservative thought for nearly seven decades. ... Sun, 12 May 2013 13:13:15 -0400 http://saltspringnews.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=23373 Click on a headline below to go to that news item Friday, May 10,2013 World News Inside America's dirty wars: How three US citizens were killed by their own government in the space of one month in 2011 Commentary Afghan peace snared in wider regional politics World News To the victors go the spoils? Backlash feared as Bangladesh sentences Islamic politician Muhammad Kamaruzzaman to death for 1971 war crimes World News Pakistani people battle pre-election violence, president calls for "appropriate measures" that prevent extremists from hijacking the elections; Pakistani high court declares US drone strikes not only illegal but also war crimes Thursday, May 9,2013 World News Those attacks on Syria: Some Israelis may think their nation can act with impunity but perhaps not—the Russian bear is out of hibernation World News Overview: Major U.S. military operations/actions to protect oil since the 1950s & Canada's Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver and the pathologies of petro states Environment Canada says it may take EU to WTO for labeling tar sands oil "highly polluting" & Prince Charles attacks global warming sceptics Wednesday, May 8,2013 Environment The honeybees are simply dying. Meanwhile, human regulators dither National News O! Canada! NRC diktat: Here we go again, Harper Government cuts funding for basic science World News Speaking of science and scientists: Stephen Hawking joins academic boycott of Israel Tuesday, May 7,2013 Regional News The accomplishments, blunders and conflicts of 12 long years in office—BC Liberals: The Newsreel Commentary Eye on Canada: Class, politics and the undifferentiated middle World News International intervention heats up in Mali World News Is Israel's bombing of Syrian army installations a part of Obama’s initiative to counter the “fundamentalist crescent” of Iran, Iraq, Syria and Hezbollah? Commentary Syrian crisis may or may not have begun solely as an internal sovereign protest; whatever, the Syrian war today is not a sovereign question but rather a question of sovereignty Monday, May 6,2013 World News Combative Carla Del Ponte back in the headlines, still divisive & U.S. military intervention in Syria is a really bad idea World News Syrian conflict escalating on a number of fronts, leaving open the question of whether it will calm down or simply careen out of control into wider war Sunday, May 5,2013 Social Ideas The singularity of fools: A special report from the utopian future Arts Chronicling wars of the recent past with eyes and minds wide open: Reviewing two maverick reporters, George Orwell (Spain) and Nick Turse (Vietnam) Commentary Can any Canadian escape the shame? Stephen Harper has reshaped Canada in two years. The destrucion will continue—why are the people who head our NGOs and unions so timid in response? Sat, 11 May 2013 03:00:05 -0400