Democracy gone Astray: 12/01/2011

Democracy Gone Astray

Democracy, being a human construct, needs to be thought of as directionality rather than an object. As such, to understand it requires not so much a description of existing structures and/or other related phenomena but a declaration of intentionality.

This blog aims at creating labeled lists of published infringements of such intentionality, of points in time where democracy strays from its intended directionality. In addition to outright infringements, this blog also collects important contemporary information and/or discussions that impact our socio-political landscape.

All the posts here were published in the electronic media – main-stream as well as fringe, and maintain links to the original texts.

[NOTE: Due to changes I haven't caught on time in the blogging software, all of the 'Original Article' links were nullified between September 11, 2012 and December 11, 2012. My apologies.]

Saturday, December 31, 2011

Riot Crackdown was Cack-handed

You would be forgiven for thinking that 30 years after the last major round of riots in London, the government would have learned a thing or two from its (Conservative) predecessor.

But you would be wrong.

While those best acquainted with the culprits – youth workers and members of the community – were careful not to draw any conclusions in the first days of rioting, the Prime Minister knew within hours of his return from a Tuscan holiday, just what kind of problem he was facing.

The first hint that his promise of “swift justice” might be amiss, was that various parts of the capital had already been burning for two nights.

More worryingly, the PM hasn’t seemed terribly keen to find out why people took a sudden interest in making Molotov cocktails and setting things on fire.

He said the behaviour of these young miscreants was simply “sickening” – a fair enough start if you wish to proceed to a more reasoned diagnosis.

But he didn’t.

As the latest memorial of mass murder recedes into our collective calendar’s crossed out dates, we should look back…at how we look back, and peer beyond the grief and suffering, into the rank hypocrisy of America’s leaders who make a mockery of it all.

When President Barack Obama read scriptures and saluted the armed forces on Sunday, little was said of the injustice the U.S. government continues to commit against its own people.

On September 11, 2001, fire-fighters, police, emergency services and regular civilians waded into the poisonous wreckage of the twin towers in search of survivors and human remains.

Perhaps they had no idea.

Or they put out of mind, the maw of toxicity in which they were working: 90,000 litres of jet fuel from the fallen planes, hundreds of tonnes of asbestos, pulverised lead, mercury and other highly toxic chemicals.

These men and women went in wearing no more than a bandanna over their mouths or what the Daily Show’s Jon Stewart described as the kind of mask “a Japanese businessman would wear when he has a cold.”

Some responders were given protection, many were not.

Payroll tax bill includes funds for more immigration detention beds

The congressional showdown over payroll tax cuts and unemployment benefits continues after the GOP-led House voted Tuesday against a Senate bill approved over the weekend.

The bill to extend payroll tax cuts and extend unemployment benefits is part of the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2012, H.R. 3671, a $1 trillion dollar omnibus spending bill that funds several federal government departments, including Defense and Homeland Security.

The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday that “the House voted Tuesday to scuttle a deal brokered in the Senate to extend the payroll-tax holiday and federal unemployment insurance for two months.”

The Journal adds that the “vote leaves Congress at a familiar impasse, just days after a final deal seemed to be in sight. Senate leaders reached an agreement late last week to extend for two months the payroll-tax cut, federal unemployment benefits and a measure to reimburse doctors for treating Medicare patients.”

The film "Mission Impossible 4" opened in US theatres in recent weeks, starring BMW, Apple and Tom Cruise. A two-hour-long commercial on steroids.

If you are unfamiliar with it, Paid Product Placement (PPP) is a big thing in the movie industry.

This is how it works: Hollywood places in its movies certain watches, cars or a laptop brands; preferably worn by George Clooney, driven by Angelina Jolie or placed in front of Meg Ryan. In "The Transformers", for example, GM’s Cameros lead with Megan Fox.

PPP is indirect marketing that targets oblivious movie viewers, gender notwithstanding, Catherine Banning or Will Smith could be drinking Pepsi.

The spirit and soul of a movie are sometimes compromised when its script and shooting are shaped by commercial, rather than artistic, considerations.

PPP allows for extra budgets to produce costlier gimmicks that, in turn, bring more profit. "Mission Impossible", for example, has reaped $75m in the first 10 days at the box office.

The same logic seems to apply to politics. PPP is one way to understand the sudden surge of Israel-schmoozing and Palestine abusing ahead of the US election.

Suddenly, the Ford family’s penchant for calling 911 stopped being quite so funny, or even funny at all.

Far from simply being a roundup of 911 calls placed from the house, the story reported by the Toronto Star ended up being a sad and troubling intimation of marital strife. Nobody knows what’s really going on, only that there’s domestic unrest bad enough to have the police called in repeatedly, but apparently not involving physical violence.

Almost as soon as the story appeared, you could all but hear the city’s political machinery gasp and seize. A story like this, stingy on details, nebulous in exactly which pieces of information came from whom, and no doubt lawyered to within an inch of its life, is terrifically hard to respond to. It confronts us once again with the question of where a politician’s personal life ends and his public life begins, but forces us to do so without the benefit of a complete story to work with. But, whether or not we should be talking about Rob Ford’s home life, the story has run. Now we’re talking about it.

Newt was on fire for a couple of weeks there, wasn’t he? Alas, the flames seem to be guttering just in time for Iowa. The Republican Establishment Fire Department, worried that the whole gated neighborhood might burn down, has deployed the big hoses. A possibly decisive dousing was administered earlier this week on page one of the Wall Street Journal:

Newt Gingrich voiced enthusiasm for Mitt Romney’s Massachusetts health-care plan as recently as five years ago, the same plan he has been denouncing over the last few months as he campaigned for the Republican presidential nomination.
“The health bill that Governor Romney signed into law this month has tremendous potential to effect major changes in the American health system,” said an April 2006 newsletter published by Mr. Gingrich’s former consulting company, the Center for Health Transformation.

The two-page “Newt Notes” analysis, found online by The Wall Street Journal even though it no longer appears on the center’s website, continued: “We agree entirely with Governor Romney and Massachusetts legislators that our goal should be 100% insurance coverage for all Americans.”

Quelle horreur.

NEW YORK -- For the first time, the top export of the United States, the world's biggest gas guzzler, is – wait for it – fuel.

Measured in dollars, the nation is on pace this year to ship more gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel than any other single export, according to U.S. Census data going back to 1990. It will also be the first year in more than 60 that America has been a net exporter of these fuels.

Just how big of a shift is this? A decade ago, fuel wasn't even among the top 25 exports. And for the last five years, America's top export was aircraft.

The trend is significant because for decades the U.S. has relied on huge imports of fuel from Europe in order to meet demand. It only reinforced the image of America as an energy hog. And up until a few years ago, whenever gasoline prices climbed, there were complaints in Congress that U.S. refiners were not growing quickly enough to satisfy domestic demand; that controversy would appear to be over.

Still, the U.S. is nowhere close to energy independence. America is still the world's largest importer of crude oil. From January to October, the country imported 2.7 billion barrels of oil worth roughly $280 billion.

In keeping with his orderly ascension from ranking army general to top political official to supreme leader of the last hard-line Communist country on earth, North Korea’s chubby young Kim Jong-un is expected soon to take up golf, where he will challenge his father’s record of scoring almost a dozen holes-in-one on his first try at the game.

Afforded little else in the way of information on the internal doings of the secretive country, observers will be reduced to parsing news of the young leader’s score, speculating on what it might mean should he fail to match his father’s 38-under-par.

Such is the fantasy scenario of North Korea’s notorious – often ludicrous – propaganda machine, which is operating at full throttle after the death of the country’s last demigod ruler. Observers question whether the regime can maintain the barrage of lies big and little it has used for so long to mislead and repress its citizens.

In particular, they wonder how long it will be before the flood of information loosened by the digital revolution, which helped destabilize and wash away repressive regimes throughout the Middle East this year, finally leaks through slowly widening cracks in the Kimchi Curtain.

CAIRO -- It was an unusually intense raid on pro-democracy groups backed by some of Egypt's closest allies, including the United States: Special commandos in full gear sealed office doors shut with wax, demanded computer passwords, carted away boxes of documents and searched the bathrooms.

Rights groups on Friday denounced the startling show of force in the raids on 10 organizations a day earlier and accused Egypt's ruling generals of trying to silence critics as the country approaches the first anniversary of the revolution that toppled former president Hosni Mubarak.

Less than two weeks after the military violently crushed street protests leaving dozens killed and hundreds injured, some warned Thursday's raids were a sign of a fiercer crackdown ahead of new protests planned for Jan. 25, the anniversary of the start of the 18-day mass uprising.

The sweep was also a dramatic escalation in the military's campaign to portray the protests against its rule as a plot by "foreign hands" against Egypt.

The United States has reached a deal to sell $3.48 billion worth of missiles and related technology to the United Arab Emirates, a close Mideast ally, as part of a massive buildup of defence technology among friendly Mideast nations near Iran.

Pentagon spokesman George Little announced the Christmas Day sale on Friday night. He said the U.S. and UAE have a strong defence relationship and are both interested in “a secure and stable” Persian Gulf region.

The deal includes 96 missiles, along with supporting technology and training support that Little says will bolster the nation's missile defence capacity.

The deal includes a contract with Lockheed Martin to produce the highly sophisticated Terminal High Altitude Area Defence, or THAAD, weapon system for the UAE.

Occupy Iowa continued a string of protests on Thursday, this time outside Democratic Party headquarters in Des Moines, resulting in the arrests of 12 people. Among them was 14-year-old Frankie Hughes, who was released into her father's custody at the scene and may face a juvenile court proceeding. The overall tenor of the arrests was peaceful and symbolic.

When the protesters first arrived, Iowa Democratic Party chairwoman Sue Dvorsky and executive director Norm Sterzenbach came out to greet them. The two party officials spent about 20 minutes expressing their frustrations with what they considered to be a distraction, but also their willingness to listen to the protesters' grievances. Then they went back inside to prepare for the January 3 caucuses, and soon called the police.

The protesters originally planned to demonstrate outside Barack Obama's campaign headquarters, after having focused their attention Wednesday on Mitt Romney. They changed their plans after an impromptu early morning protest at Ron Paul's headquarters, and after hearing that Obama's headquarters had closed for the day. At the new location, about 40 protesters focused their attention on Obama's ties to Wall Street and his support of the National Defense Authorization Act, which codified the indefinite detention of terrorist suspects arrested on US soil.

"We are here to listen to you. We are not trying to ignore you," Dvorsky had told protesters before the arrests. "But we don't know what you want," she added, expressing frustration that, after eight protesters were arrested at the same location 10 days prior, some occupiers had turned down a subsequent offer to meet with her and instead showed up to protest on Thursday unannounced. When protesters asked Dvorsky to make a phone call to the White House to request that the president meet with Occupy Iowa, she refused, calling the demand unrealistic. "You guys are working outside of electoral politics," she added. "We work inside of it. That's the best answer I can give you."

As of New Year's Eve, Air Miles collectors will have exactly five years to use their existing miles before they expire, a change that has some members of the reward program upset.

All Air Miles accrued by tomorrow will have to be redeemed by December 31, 2016, or they will disappear. All miles collected past tomorrow will also face a five-year limit.

The move, announced this week by the reward program, has prompted a backlash from consumers on the Air Miles Facebook page, with many complaining it takes them long enough as it is to collect the miles they need.

"I guess the dream of flying to Europe with my wife using Air Miles is just a dream," one commenter wrote on Facebook.

"We chose Air Miles over Aeroplan and other such points collector cards for the simple fact that air miles didn't expire," wrote another commenter. "I will be cancelling my Air Miles Mastercard..."

Air Miles collectors gather miles by making qualified purchases from the program's participating sponsors. Until now, the miles — redeemable for eligible merchandise, including electronic goods, plane tickets and vacation packages — never carried an expiration date.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government is eroding the federal public service so that Canadians will turn to the private sector for the services they need, charges interim NDP leader Nycole Turmel.

Speaking in a year-end interview with iPolitics, Turmel said the government is cutting back everywhere and reducing the public service without a clear and defined program.

“If you erode the services, people turn away from those services and automatically go towards another sector,” Turmel said. “They will let services go and, at that point, people turn towards the private sector.”

Job services are one area where Turmel sees that happening.

“We have more and more private job sector services that do research for jobs,” said Turmel, a former head of the Public Service Alliance of Canada. “It is one example of the privatization of certain services.”

Time magazine named The Protester its 2011 “Person of the Year” because, for decades till recently, most protests “seemed ineffectual and irrelevant.” That’s just silly. You can always find resistance and, depending on how you judge, it’s often relevant. The spirit of protest is indomitable and inspiring. Eruptions happen constantly, exactly when you don’t expect them. That defines resistance: it shouldn’t exist but it resists anyway. Often it’s crushed but it didn’t fail to happen because Time failed to deem it coverworthy.

What may have been unique this past year was something else: a collapse of the conventional fountains of authority and respect. In the Arab world that meant governments. But in the West, it meant big business and finance. The brilliance of Occupy Wall Street was that it didn’t go to Washington. The Tea Party did; it directed its rage toward politicians and so it was eclipsed by the Occupiers, who targetted the bankers and financiers who control governments. That clearly resonated, but it wouldn’t have, 20 or 30 years ago.

Think back to the torrent of bestselling business bios and takeover epics like Iacocca or Barbarians at the Gate that began around 1980. Business was the hero; government was the “problem” because it impeded business’s freedom (even if business icons like Lee Iacocca demanded and relied on public money). Pro-business think-tanks proliferated; they disgorged “educational” series, often on public TV, by advocates like Milton Friedman. This accelerated through the Clinton-Bush years and beyond. Disdain for the über-rich was unthinkable until —

Vancouver, Canada - Under Stephen Harper's Conservatives, Canada has developed a reputation as the most pro-Israel government in the western world.

Three years ago, Canada refused to utter a word of criticism about Israeli war crimes committed during Operation Cast Lead against Gaza. Before that, back in 2006, the first year of the Harper government, Canada insisted that Israel's attacks on Lebanon were "a measured response" - even after a Canadian family and a Canadian UN peacekeeper were among the victims killed by the intensive Israeli bombing.

So it was no surprise that when, in November, a Canadian boat with the Freedom Waves Flotilla to Gaza was hijacked in international waters by Israel's navy, there was not a word of concern uttered by the Harper government for the Canadians detained in an Israeli jail. That same month, Defence Minister Peter MacKay met with his counterpart Ehud Barak to announce new military co-operation between Israel and Canada. The Harper government also obliged with some saber rattling and the announcement of new, strengthened sanctions against Iran.

Although Canada never deserved its reputation as a "fair broker" in the Middle East, there has been a marked shift in recent years culminating in loud, explicit support for Israel's wars of aggression and its occupation. But Canada's ignominious status as enabler of Israeli occupation on the world stage has also been facilitated by rampant political cowardice among opposition politicians. In many cases they know better, but remain silent for fear of bearing the brunt of an organised and well-funded lobby that defends Israeli policies.

Bungled and botched policies are hallmarks of the Ford administration, but no file has been more badly mishandled at Toronto City Hall than public transit. The impact of that failure hits riders starting Sunday, when a 10-cent fare increase kicks in. But that marks only the beginning of their woes in the coming year, and beyond, thanks to Mayor Rob Ford.

On taking office last December, Ford forthrightly declared his goal of making life easier for motorists, announcing: “The war on the car is over.” Left unsaid — but made clear by subsequent events — was that a war on public transit had begun.

The 10-cent fare hike is part of the onslaught. Yes, there have been plenty of fare increases in the past, including under Ford’s predecessor, David Miller. But Miller raised fares while expanding public transit and giving riders more for their money. The Ford administration is doing the opposite — burdening commuters with new costs while reducing Toronto Transit Commission service levels. Meanwhile car owners pocket an extra $60 a year thanks to Ford’s elimination of the city’s motor vehicle tax.

The mayor’s favouritism toward drivers goes even beyond that. It was instrumental in his killing of Transit City, a fully funded expansion of TTC service that would have pushed light rail lines into almost every part of Toronto. Ford’s main objection was that cars would have had to share street space with these lines, which he called a “disaster.”

If a man and a woman are drowning in a river, first they'll save the man, 'who is obligated to perform more commandments,' whereas a woman's 'wisdom is only in the spindle.' In fact, 'words of Torah should be burned rather than being given to women.'

If you would like to know the source from which your brothers derive their brazen behavior, go over to the study hall and open a page of Talmud. It's true that the Torah has 70 faces, but the trend of these faces is clear: The source of the pollution is in halakha (Jewish law ) itself. What is happening in Beit Shemesh and its satellites is not "contrary to halakha," it is mandated by halakha. And the rest will be told to the grandmothers, daughters and granddaughters.

Anyone ignoramus knows that the Torah's "ways are ways of pleasantness," that "the honor of a king's daughter is within," and that "proper behavior comes before the Torah," but it's worth knowing more. It's worth knowing that a woman is unfit to be a judge, and is also unfit to give testimony. She is unfit for any public position with authority. "Thou shalt appoint a king over thee" - a king and not a queen.

A daughter, commanded the sages, must not be taught Torah, because "the mind of woman is not suited to be taught, but [only] to words of nonsense." Women are light-minded and have little knowledge.

And if a man and a woman are drowning in a river, first they'll save the man, "who is obligated to perform more commandments," whereas a woman's "wisdom is only in the spindle." In fact, "words of Torah should be burned rather than being given to women."

Since the Occupy movement began spreading through California early this fall, many questioned Jerry Brown's silence on the issue.

The governor offered no comments on the state's more than 150 separate Occupy groups, nor would he discuss the violent police activity that shed the national spotlight on incidents in both Oakland and Davis.

But that changed on Tuesday, when he finally responded to reporter questions about Occupy Oakland's efforts to shut down the city's port. Brown, who served as Oakland's mayor from 1999-2007, said he would do everything in his power to keep the Port of Oakland running -- short of employing the National Guard.

“I’d give whatever help was needed,” the governor told CBS News. “We don’t look to the Guard for police work except under extreme emergencies. However, there are resources under mutual aid and in Oakland. With some leadership and some imagination, not only can they keep the port open, but they should keep the port open.”

GoDaddy Boycott: Domain-Hosting Company Changes SOPA Stance

Thursday's GoDaddy boycott may not have been the revolution some had hoped for, but it was enough to convince the domain hosting firm to publicly oppose the controversial Stop Internet Piracy Act ("SOPA").

As reported by CNET, GoDaddy CEO Warren Adelman said on Thursday:

We have observed a spike in domain name transfers, which are running above normal rates and which we attribute to GoDaddy's prior support for SOPA, which was reversed. GoDaddy opposes SOPA because the legislation has not fulfilled its basic requirement to build a consensus among stake-holders in the technology and Internet communities.

While GoDaddy had previously withdrawn its support for SOPA, until Thursday's statement, the company had not voiced public disagreement towards the bill, which the House Judiciary Committee had been debating before adjourning for the holiday.

According to Yahoo, about 70,000 domains had already been switched before Thursday's planned boycott. While these numbers aren't extremely consequential to a company that hosts 50 million websites worldwide, these withdrawals along with high profile moves from Wikipedia, Cheezburger and image sharing site Imgur seem to have been enough to force GoDaddy's hand.

Imgur, one of the largest image hosting sites on the web, announced on Wednesday that it had changed its registry entries. Imgur founder and owner Alan Schaaf told Fox News.com, "I'm against the SOPA act and imgur as a company is against it. We just feel it is terrible that GoDaddy.com would support this legislation."

Further supporting the argument that it was the public outcry and not the domain transfers themselves that changed GoDaddy's stance, TechDirt reports that on the day of the boycott almost twice as many domains were transferred into GoDaddy's network as out. GoDaddy actually ended "Dump GoDaddy Day" up 20,748 domains. TechDirt's stats come from Daily Changes, a DNS changes and web hosting activity monitoring site.

Original Article
Source: Huff

Verizon Fee: Mobile Network Operator Scraps Convenience Fee After Customer Uproar

Well, isn't that convenient! After public outcry, Verizon has decided that it will not instate a $2 "convenience fee" for customers paying monthly bills with a credit or debit card via the Internet or telephone.

A press release on the Verizon website announced the carrier's change of heart and credited "customer feedback about the plan" for its decision:

Verizon Wireless has decided it will not institute the fee for online or telephone single payments that was announced earlier this week. The company made the decision in response to customer feedback about the plan, which was designed to improve the efficiency of those transactions. The company continues to encourage customers to take advantage of the numerous simple and convenient payment methods it provides.

In a move that is sure to upset some customers, Verizon has announced on its website that it will start charging a $2 convenience fee "for customers who make single bill payments online or by telephone."

The $2 fee will apply to those who pay with credit or debit cards on a per-statement basis, either through the company's website or by telephone, and the company says that the fee is designed to offset the cost that credit card companies charge Verizon for processing payments.

On its website, Verizon is encouraging its customers to choose one of seven alternative payment options to avoid incurring the fee -- those options include enrolling in an Auto-Pay system on the company's website, paying via check or cash via mail, paying at a Verizon kiosk, or paying with a Verizon gift card.

The new fee goes into effect on January 15.

ONTARIO, Calif. -- Just after she started working for an ambulance company in this suburban enclave east of Los Angeles, Cierra Nelson came to admire the quick decision making and street smarts of the nurses she met on runs to local hospitals. She soon opted to pursue a nursing degree, settling on a low-cost, two-year program at a nearby community college that has an excellent job placement record.

But despite her efforts to complete the coursework in the ensuing four years, Nelson is still not a nurse. California's budget cuts have forced the state's community college system to scale back the availability of crucial science classes. Nelson found herself repeatedly turned away from the oversubscribed courses required for her degree.

Frustrated and seeking an alternative, she took out more than $50,000 in student loans to enroll last winter in a nursing program at Everest College, one of many for-profit institutions that have sprung up in the area amid massive cutbacks in public funding for higher education.

"When I first saw how high it was, it was kind of a shock," said Nelson, who eventually came to the conclusion that taking out loans made more sense than waiting semester after semester to take the community college classes she needed to advance. "I know it's a lot of money and I'll be in debt, but I've got to do what I need to do."

Margaret Thatcher Iron Lady Archives Reveal Behind The Scenes Battles Hidden For 30 Years

Margaret Thatcher's bitter battles within her cabinet over the economy, with the military over defence cuts, the Argentinians, the French and their concerns about the abuse of parliamentary expenses have been laid bare in secret documents published for the first time.

The remarkable records reveal how the former prime minister faced a near carbon copy of problems faced today by David Cameron.

The files, released by the National Archives under the 30-year rule that governs the publication of official government papers, come as interest in Thatcher has been re-ignited by the soon to be released biopic The Iron Lady starring Meryl Streep.

Previously unseen, the documents cover the divisive leader's 11-year period in power between 1979 to 1990, which saw a radical transformation of British society and economy.

While famous for insisting she would stick by her economic policies, declaring that "the lady's not for turning" and expelling the so-called "wets" who opposed a squeeze on spending from her cabinet, the files reveal some of Thatcher's supporters in cabinet apparently feared she was in danger of "going soft" herself.

The North Carolina Family Policy Council's use of a violent image to promote the state's proposed amendment banning same-sex marriage has ignited controversy among lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) rights advocates.

The photograph, which can be found on page 13 of the winter 2012 issue of the organization's Family North Carolina publication, shows a traditionally-dressed bride and groom being targeted by an unseen sniper. It illustrates an article titled "Marriage In Society's Moral Crosshairs," by Jacqueline Schaffer, J.D.

"Protecting traditional marriage by enshrining it in the State Constitution is not only socially beneficial, but it is also necessary to protect religious liberty," Schaffer writes. "When the state sanctions a morally controversial lifestyle such as homosexuality, it will inevitably draw itself into conflict with the religious and moral beliefs of its citizens. Such conflict, however, is not hypothetical, and its outcomes are already well-documented."

The image has sparked the ire of several bloggers. Writes Unicorn Booty's Kevin Farrell: "Did the North Carolina Family Policy Council somehow sleep through that time Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was shot in the head after Sarah Palin put her in a rifle's crosshairs? Didn't we come to the societal conclusion that crosshairs and gun imagery?"

Defence Minister Peter MacKay says he’s worried about Nova Scotia’s future under Premier Darrell Dexter.

MacKay pointed to high taxes and the NDP’s recently passed first-contract arbitration law as harbingers of economic hard times.

"We have concerns about companies that want to invest here, or existing companies, going elsewhere because of questionable labour legislation that has been introduced against the protestations of the business community in Nova Scotia," he said.

It’s rare for provincial and federal politicians to scrap so openly, but MacKay’s comments in a phone interview with The Chronicle Herald on Thursday are just the latest in a series of words publicly exchanged between the federal minister and the premier.

It started after Halifax won the $25-billion main prize in the $35-billion national shipbuilding procurement strategy. MacKay criticized the provincial Ships Start Here campaign as misleading and worthless because the evaluations were independent.

Plant got big federal tax break

If London's Electro-Motive plant is closed and its jobs moved to Indiana, it'll be after having milked the benefits of a billion-dollar tax break once trumpeted on the plant floor by Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

Three years ago, Harper donned protective goggles and posed with workers to chat up how his government had created a $1-billion tax break for industry broadly and a $5-million break to grease the wheels for sales by the locomotive-maker.

"Ontario is the heart, it is still the engine of the Canadian economy," Harper said then. "There's no reason the Ontario economy can't be as strong as the economy in any other part of this country."

Harper wasn't talking Thursday, as many of those same workers faced off with a company now owned by Caterpillar Inc. that seemingly wants to slash wages and benefits by more than half or close the 61-year-old facility.

While a Harper spokesperson said she'd seek a comment from him, the task of answering was delegated to an Industry Canada spokesperson.

Early Christmas morning, police were called to the home of Mayor Rob Ford about a reported domestic dispute. It was the second such call in as many months.

On Oct. 25, less than 15 hours after Ford himself called 911 regarding the intrusion of the comedy show This Hour has 22 Minutes on his property, officers from 22 Division were back at the Etobicoke residence on a domestic call.

On Christmas, Ford’s mother-in-law called police between 4 and 5 a.m. to report that the mayor had been drinking and was taking his children to Florida against the wishes of his wife, Renata.

The Toronto police Youth and Family Violence Unit, which handles all domestic disputes, including incidents that are strictly verbal, is still investigating both events. No charges have been laid.

An interview request submitted to Ford’s office, which detailed the contents of this story, went unanswered.

According to numerous police and emergency service sources, 911 calls to the mayor’s Edenbridge Dr. home are a reality for the South Etobicoke division. Exactly how many calls have been made is unknown.

City surplus higher than predicted, sources say

This year’s City of Toronto budget surplus is higher than the forecast $139 million, sources say — a windfall that would increase pressure on Mayor Rob Ford’s allies to spare threatened city services.

City finance staff will reveal revenues for the first nine months of 2011, and update the year-end surplus projection, on Jan. 9. The same day, the budget committee will vote on $88 million in proposed cuts that include eliminating some homeless shelters, daycares, wading pools, community centres and programs for recreation, the arts and HIV prevention.

A source with knowledge of the calculations said the surplus to be carried over to 2012 is “significantly” higher than the $139 million predicted earlier this year. Another source would only say the operating surplus will be “more than $139 million, certainly.”

However, Councillor Mike Del Grande, the budget chief, told the Star on Thursday: “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” And Cam Weldon, the city’s chief financial officer, said in an email: “I have not reviewed the final report so I can’t release a number now. Not sure of your sources but I doubt they are well informed.”

The Education Ministry reprimanded the Arara High School and demanded clarifications after the school participated in a human rights march in Tel Aviv at the beginning of the month.

"The students carried signs against racism, house demolitions, etc., which violates the director general's circular [i.e. ministry regulations]," stated the letter sent to the school.

"This was a praiseworthy initiative by the students as part of their assignment in civics class," countered one of the school's teachers. "What better way to express civic involvement and internalize the material?"

A bus with students from the tenth, eleventh and twelfth grades went to the march, which was sponsored by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, on Friday three weeks ago, another teacher said. All the students had approval from their parents and all the students chose to participate, with the encouragement of the student council.

"It was a celebration of human rights," the teacher said. "There were students who said at the end of the march that this was one of the most important and significant days in their lives."

"A thousand civics classes couldn't give what that hour they spent there could," she added.

China raises the ante on trade with new tariffs

IT HAS BEEN 10 years since China joined the World Trade Organization. U.S. policymakers of both parties favored Chinese membership in the organization, which promotes global trade and resolves disputes. Not only would this facilitate trade, they argued, it would also help bring China into the framework of international law and thus encourage the rise of a People’s Republic that acted with the greatest possible consideration for the needs and interests of the United States and other nations.

How’s that working out? In short-run economic terms, the bet delivered access to cheaper, high-quality goods for U.S. consumers and more income for the once-impoverished people of China. This is the result one would have expected from freer trade, which remains the key to prosperity for all emerging markets and the global economy in general.

For the longer term, though, much depends on gradually resolving the huge imbalance between the two countries, which has built up as a result of China’s persistent trade surpluses, without triggering a trade war.

The Chinese have a point when they argue that the United States wouldn’t be so dependent on Chinese credit if it did a better job of controlling its own federal budget deficits. Nevertheless, China must adjust its export-dependent growth model as well. And in that regard, WTO membership has not delivered the hoped-for evolution in China’s mind-set — at least not yet.

The Alberta government has ordered a review of all diagnostic imaging and pathology testing in the province after errors surfaced at three separate hospitals since November.

The move follows a spate of botched medical tests in other provinces in the past few years – in British Columbia, Saskatchewan, Ontario and Newfoundland and Labrador.

The mistakes have spurred panic among patients, who in some cases received delayed treatment or the wrong care, and prompted multiple government probes. B.C. recently undertook a sweeping look at radiology, which concluded that misread tests did hurt some patients and which resulted in a government pledge to overhaul the medical imaging sector.

Citing recommendations from the B.C. report, including adopting a peer review system, Alberta has launched a provincial review in response to mistakes detected in Calgary, Edmonton and now Drumheller.

“This is not about blaming the people that deliver the care,” Health and Wellness Minister Fred Horne told reporters on Thursday. “This is about answering some very fundamental questions about checks and balances in our health-care system.”

They are among the year’s most high-profile stories from the city’s fringes: A homeless woman whose brutal Yonge St. assault was captured on video. A quadriplegic man who claims he was yanked from his wheelchair by police during the G20. Occupy Toronto’s sprawling encampment in St. James Park. The fugitive mother and daughter living in Parkdale.

Beyond their street-level setting, these stories also share a common behind-the-scenes character: Doug Johnson Hatlem, the Mennonite “street pastor.”

As many local reporters can attest, when a story breaks in Toronto involving the city’s most marginalized people, a phone call or text message from Hatlem will usually follow.

The father of three with the bushy beard and curious title is one of Toronto’s most vocal — and sometimes difficult — advocates for anti-poverty issues, and often the de facto media representative for many of the city’s voiceless citizens.

In the largest protests Syria has seen in months, hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets Friday in a display of defiance to show an Arab League observer mission the strength of the opposition movement.

Despite the monitors' presence in the country, activists said Syrian forces loyal to President Bashar Assad killed at least 22 people, most of them shot during the anti-government demonstrations.

In a further attempt to appeal to the monitors, dissident troops who have broken away from the Syrian army said they have halted attacks on regime forces to reinforce the activists' contention that the uprising against Mr. Assad is a peaceful movement.

While opposition activists are deeply skeptical of the observer mission, the outpouring of demonstrators across Syria underscores their wish to make their case to the foreign monitors and take advantage of the small measure of safety they feel they brought with them.

The nearly 100 Arab League monitors are the first that Syria has allowed into the country during the uprising, which began in March. They are supposed to ensure the regime complies with terms of the League's plan to end MR. Assad's crackdown on dissent. The UN says more than 5,000 people have died as the government has sought to crush the revolt.

In the past seven months of the Republican presidential campaign, there have been more than a dozen debates and countless polls. Nearly every candidate has enjoyed the spotlight as a front-runner. But Tuesday, the nominating process kicks off in earnest as Iowans gather in schools, churches and neighbors’ homes to vote. Having covered caucus campaigns since 1976 for the Des Moines Register, I’d like to clear up some misconceptions about Iowa voters and the state’s role in the race for the White House.

1. Iowa voters don’t represent the United States.
Americans like to deal in stereotypes. But not all New Yorkers are rude, not all San Franciscans are gay, and not all Iowans are farmers. Of Iowa’s 3 million people, about 90,000 are farmers, and of those, 48,737 list farming as a principal occupation. Iowa’s manufacturing and financial services industries contribute far more to the gross state product than does farming. So media caricatures of snaggle-toothed hicks from an “American Gothic” painting don’t fit.

The state is 91.3 percent white, while the country is 72.4 percent white. But these homogeneous demographics helped Barack Obama when he won the 2008 Democratic caucuses. His victory proved to a lot of people — especially African Americans he was courting — that he could attract white votes.
While small, Iowa is traditionally one of a half-dozen battleground states. In November 1996, 2000, 2004 and 2008, the Iowa popular vote closely tracked national preferences. Activists from each party attend caucuses, and they tend to be similar to the activists in their parties around the country. Among Democrats, that means lots of people who are pro-labor and antiwar, and many who are concerned with social justice. For Republicans, it’s social and fiscal conservatives, foreign policy hawks, Second Amendment conservatives and libertarians. The Iowans who show up on caucus night look a lot like the people on the floor of the national conventions.

2. Retail politics is king in Iowa.
The one-on-one retail politicking that marked earlier campaigns has gone the way of the corner store. The days when a candidate such as George H.W. Bush could bounce around Iowa in a station wagon with a driver, an aide and a reporter are gone. “Retail politicking” now includes messages on Web sites, social media posts and trips to Wal-Mart. Add in TV commercials, and politicking here looks more wholesale than retail.
Whenever America starts selecting a president, it’s a big story. Since technology has become cheaper and more portable, large groups of journalists now descend on Iowa and change the nature of the events they cover. Every reporter in Iowa these days has a story of showing up to an event where there were more media folks then caucus-goers. Gone are the days when journalists such as Johnny Apple, David Broder, Jack Germond and Jules Witcover would slip into the kitchen to hear what was happening in the living room.
Just as the heat of an observer’s eyeball through a microscope can change the performance of the specimen below, so, too, has media heat changed retail politics. A candidate’s every word is flashed around the world, critiqued on cable news outlets, blogs and Twitter. No more does a candidate get to munch on lemon bars with a dozen locals to try out messaging and ideas.

3. To win, you need to appeal to right-wing activists.
Ultra-conservatives are an important constituency in the Republican Party, just as left-wing liberals are important to Democrats. But hard-liners are not the whole game in either party. For example, an October Des Moines Register Iowa Poll reported that only 45 percent of likely GOP caucus-goers described themselves as very conservative on social issues. Even among such voters, issues such as jobs and the economy are often more important than abortion and same-sex marriage.

The more centrist candidates are often the ones who claim victory in Iowa. Mike Huckabee wasn’t the most conservative Republican in the 2008 contest. George W. Bush in 2000 and George H.W. Bush in 1980 weren’t the most conservative in their races, either. In 1976, Gerald Ford beat a more conservative Ronald Reagan. Bob Dole wasn’t the most far-right candidate in the 1988 or 1996 contests.

If Mitt Romney wins Tuesday, it will be because many conservatives split their votes among the plethora of candidates and he was able to assemble a center-right coalition of moderate Republicans. Is Iowa conservative? Yes. Far right? No.

4. The weather will influence the outcome.
Iowa isn’t a bunch of dirt roads. Generations before farmers cared about ethanol (except as corn liquor), they cared about getting their goods to town. Today, Iowa ranks 14th among the states in the number of miles of paved roads, while it’s 30th in population. And Iowans are used to getting around in bad weather.
It is true that in the first modern presidential caucus, in 1972, Democrat George McGovern turned in one of those media-declared unexpectedly strong showings against front-runner Edmund Muskie in part because of a bad storm. Party centrists stayed home — no need to risk a broken hip to help Muskie, who was going to win anyway, right? The antiwar activists supporting McGovern were more motivated. But that instance of the weather affecting the outcome has been the exception. Ever since, there has been no indication that the weather has an influence.
However, that doesn’t stop the talk. Speculation about the weather affecting results generally comes from bored reporters and politicians making small talk. In terms of turnout, Iowa is usually among the top 10 states in the country for general-election participation. And the forecasts for Tuesday call for above-normal temperatures and no precipitation. So not too many broken hips are likely Tuesday night.

5. Iowa caucus-goers take voting more seriously than people in other states.
Iowans are not the only vetters of candidates. The attention lavished on their state, and the money spent there by campaigns and the media, cause jealousy among other states. But Iowa remains first largely because the two major parties can’t agree on a different way to start the process. To bring in more states, both parties have added South Carolina and Nevada to the Iowa-New Hampshire kickoff.
Iowa gets all this attention because it’s first, not because people here are any more serious about the democratic process than other Americans. And the ability of Iowans to predict winners is limited. The more traditional outcomes of the caucuses include “winnowing the field” of candidates, as Howard Baker once described it. Iowa may start the process, but other states finish it.

Original Article
Source: Washington Post

Ottawa’s health-care role about measurement, not money, Aglukkaq says

Ottawa still has sway with the provinces on health policy, despite issuing a new funding formula without conditions, Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq says.

But federal-provincial talks on the future of health care won’t be the tense, high-stakes game of chicken of the past, Ms. Aglukkaq said in her first public comments since Finance Minister Jim Flaherty handed provinces the federal health funding scheme for the coming decade.

Instead, the discussions will be more about performance measurement, accountability and sharing of best practices rather than money, she told reporters.

“In 2004, when we discussed the accord, I was there. And those conversations, [it] was strictly about dollars. It did not have the pieces around what outcomes do we want to accomplish as ministers,” said Ms. Aglukkaq, a former Nunavut finance and health minister.

“Health ministries across Canada can now have reassurance that there’s predictable funding in health care to allow us to have a meaningful conversation on what outcomes we want to accomplish around health, around prevention, around obesity.”

Parliament Hill is stepping up security in 2012, with $9 million in security upgrades planned for its entrance gates.

The changes will include retractable bollards as well as vehicle barriers and security cameras at four existing vehicle entrances. Two other openings will be made smaller by restoring portions of the heritage wall, a spokesman for Public Works and Government Services Canada said in an email.

Currently, the RCMP rely on "a combination of concrete blocks, removable fences, chains and RCMP vehicles at the gates to Parliament Hill," Sebastien Bois said.

The government wants to install the barriers at all vehicle and pedestrian entry points to the Hill, according to a request for proposals posted online.

"Some bollard systems will be fixed. Other bollard systems will be retractable allowing authorized vehicles, such as parliamentary transportation buses, access to Parliament Hill," the notice says.

Several tech companies and online communities have come out against the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), a recently proposed piece of legislation that many feel will bring unnecessary censorship to the web. But much less attention has been given to how the bill will affect the overall landscape of business and innovation.

The bill, introduced by Rep. Lamar Smith in late October, gives both the U.S. government and copyright holders the authority to seek court orders against websites associated with infringing, pirating and/or counterfeiting intellectual property. So for example, a website that provides a collection of links to sites that illegally stream copyrighted video content could get shut down and taken to court under SOPA, despite the fact that the site isn’t streaming the content itself.

If the government had the sole responsibility of policing websites that violated copyrighted intellectual property, it would be a much different scenario. However, because the copyright holders also get to enforce the law (under SOPA), it allows them to push around anyone who may compete with them under the guise of upholding the law. Giant media companies — music labels, television networks and movie studios in particular — could easily take advantage of this situation.

Girls seeking abortions in New Hampshire must first tell their parents or a judge, employers in Alabama must verify new workers' U.S. residency, and California students will be the first in the country to receive mandatory lessons about the contributions of gays and lesbians under the set of state laws set to take effect at the start of 2012.

Many laws reflect the nation's concerns over immigration, the cost of government and the best way to protect and benefit young people, including regulations on sports concussions.

Alabama, with the country's toughest immigration law, is enacting a key provision requiring all employers who do business with any government entity to use a federal system known as E-Verify to check that all new employees are in the country legally.

Georgia is putting a similar law into effect requiring any business with 500 or more employees to use E-Verify to check the employment eligibility of new hires. The requirement is being phased in, with all employers with more than 10 employees to be included by July 2013.

Federal prosecutors are preparing the first criminal charges against BP in connection with the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, the worst of its kind in U.S. history, the Wall Street Journal reports.

The charges, reportedly to be revealed early next year, center around several engineers and may include providing false information about the risks of drilling in the Guld of Mexico in federal documents, the WSJ reported.

The charge carries a penalty of a fine as well as up to five years imprisonment.

People familiar with the matter told NPR that no final decisions have been made about the charges, adding that even if prosecutors go ahead with the charges, attorneys for the engineers will have a chance to appeal to other Justice Department officials. BP spokesmen declined to comment to Bloomberg Businessweek on the WSJ report.

Allegations of widespread fraud in the recent elections that gave Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party a parliamentary majority have galvanized massive street protests in opposition to the Russian political establishment. This comes on the 20th anniversary of the breakup of the Soviet Union. "The reason that the people who control the financial oligarchy in Russia don’t want free elections is they know that if they had free elections to a parliament, the people would vote for candidates pledging to confiscate their property," which was privatized in the 1990s, says Stephen Cohen, professor of Russian studies at New York University. He notes, "though these elections were not free and fair, they were the freest and fairest in 15 years," and that members of the country’s middle class make up the bulk of the protesters. Cohen also argues the American media has failed to report on the resurgence of the Communist Party, supported mainly by working-class voters in Russia’s vast provinces, which could challenge Putin in the 2012 presidential race and force a runoff election.

Video
Source: Democracy Now!

Nuclear Power Play: Ambition, Betrayal And The 'Ugly Underbelly' Of Energy Regulation

WASHINGTON -- A feud at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, where five presidentially appointed commissioners oversee the safety of the nation's nuclear power reactors, has broken out into full public view, with Chairman Gregory Jaczko's fellow commissioners assailing his character and management style, both in a letter made public earlier this month and in the resulting testimony before Congress.

Republicans have begun calling for Jaczko's ouster.

"The situation at the NRC sounds dire," wrote Rep. Ed Whitfield (R-Ky.) in a letter to President Barack Obama, "leaving me very concerned that the Chairman is unable to lead the Commission in the fulfillment of its responsibilities."

On K Street, energy lobbyists have rallied to support the four other commissioners.

So far, the White House is standing by Jaczko, one of the least industry-friendly leaders to serve at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in a generation.

For Washington's tight nuclear policy circle, where scientifically trained political operatives move back and forth between the industry, the NRC, the Department of Energy and key congressional committees, it's déjà vu. Interviews with several senior officials who worked on nuclear energy policy in the 1990s reveal that at least two of those operatives -- both with strong ties to the nuclear industry -- were closely involved in the ouster of an earlier reformist regulator and are now involved in the current drama.

TEHRAN - A showdown between Iran and the United States over Tehran's threats to close the strategic Strait of Hormuz to oil tankers worsened Thursday with warships from each side giving weight to an increasingly bellicose exchange of words.

Iran's Revolutionary Guards rejected a warning that the U.S. military would "not tolerate" such a closure, saying they would act decisively "to protect our vital interests."

The tough language came as Iran's navy said a U.S. aircraft carrier entered a zone where its ships and aircraft were in the middle of 10 days of war games designed to be a show of military might.

The area was in waters to the east of the Strait of Hormuz, a choke point at the entrance to the Gulf through which more than a third of the world's tanker-borne oil passes.

Iranian Vice-President Mohammad Reza Rahimi warned this week that "not a drop of oil will pass through the Strait of Hormuz" if the West followed through with planned additional sanctions against Iran over its nuclear program.

The navy commander, Admiral Habibollah Sayari, backed that up by saying it would be "really easy" to close the strait.

Between filibuster and closure? Lots of hurry, little debate

It didn’t take long for the new NDP Opposition to assert itself after the May 2 federal election. Only a few weeks later, it seemed it was handed an opportunity by the Canadian postal workers union, which had gone on strike after negotiations over pay differences between new and established workers ended in a lockout.

The Conservative government’s allegedly heavy-handed proposed back-to-work legislation, combined with the NDP’s support of the union’s argument that the possible settlement would be damaging to new and future postal workers, gave Jack Layton and his new, larger team the chance to show Canadians what kind of opposition they’d elected. The NDP set about filibustering the legislation — a move they argued gave the postal workers and Canada Post time to get back to the bargaining table and negotiate further. It resulted in days of debate, and allowed the NDP to show off some of the new faces it had acquired during its assault on the electoral map.

But only six months later, the NDP choosing to filibuster the debate on the back-to-work legislation already seems like a move from a bygone era — a time when the NDP didn’t look like a farm team lobbing easy, grab-bag attacks across the aisle, but instead took a principled course of action and offered the image of a real alternative to the government. The filibuster did little, in the end, to sway the government’s planned course of action, but the NDP made a successful bid to show that, at some level, it was worth doing, even if the result was ultimately the same.

Which Tony Clement you get often depends on the subject.

Over the past year, Clement has been one of Canada’s most approachable MPs. Send him a message on Twitter and chances are he will respond.

As treasury board president he is opening the government up to new technology — from reading speeches off his iPad, to doing interviews via Skype, or organizing the federal government’s first Twitter Town Hall to discuss his open government initiative.

However, Clement has also been heading one of the most secretive processes of all in an administration that has raised government secrecy and message control to new heights. Clement’s strategic and operating review, also dubbed the deficit reduction action plan, is enveloped in such a deep cloud of mystery that even the most senior public service executives are largely in the dark.

When it comes to the controversial G8 Legacy Fund, which showered Clement’s Muskoka-area riding with $50-million worth of beautification projects including the now iconic gazebo, Clement can be maddeningly mute, sitting silently while others field the barrage of questions in the House of Commons.

Poverty is falling in Latin America, and so is inequality – a rare cause for celebration in a world otherwise plagued by financial woes – and yet another sign that the balance of global economic power is shifting to emerging economies.

The percentage of those living in poverty in 2010 dropped to 31.4 per cent from 48.4 per cent in 1990, according to a report from the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean. This is the lowest rate since experts began collecting data in the 1970s.

The region deserves kudos for transforming itself in the past two decades, thanks to structural reforms and sound economic management, especially in Mexico and Brazil, which comprise two-thirds of Latin America’s economy.

Public-sector fiscal prudence, lower inflation and debt reduction have helped fuel economic growth and rosier long-term investment picture. This, combined with transfers of wealth to the poor, resulted in rising standards of living for millions. “The macroeconomic success of Brazil, and other countries, has been complemented by the micro-policies, such as increased social spending and poverty reduction,” noted Jonathan Hausman, vice-chair of the Canadian Council for the Americas. Latin America’s GDP expanded by 5.9 per cent last year, and is forecast to be about 4.5 per cent this year. Of course the region still faces many challenges: high crime rates in Venezuela; Mexico’s drug war; and Brazil’s infrastructure hurdles as it prepares for the 2014 World Cup. Inequality is still the highest in the world, even though it too has fallen in the last two decades, while rising in the U.S. and Canada.

Still, the report is well-timed, on the heels of a visit from the International Monetary Fund’s managing director to Brazil, Mexico and Peru, cap in hand, to ask the countries to consider providing aid to the ailing euro zone economies. Such a role reversal would have been unimaginable five years ago. Latin America’s long-term advances may be difficult to sustain, but they will also be difficult to completely reverse.

Original Article
Source: Globe

City Hall forecast 2012

A look ahead at the big issues that will dominate the council agenda in 2012, plus a few fearless predictions (uh oh) and tips for surviving the big cheese, also known as Rob Ford.

Locking out logic

Herr Ford is banking on a scrap with the city’s outside and inside workers’ unions to boost his sagging political fortunes in 2012. His administration has been busy for weeks laying the groundwork for a lockout early in the new year.

But forcing a work stoppage is an iffy proposition. The unions have nothing to lose, since the mayor has made no secret of his intention to chop some 7,000 jobs. They’ll go into this fight with that in mind.

If voters were pissed off about hauling their garbage to depots in mid-summer in 2009, they may be angrier about lugging it to the dump in the dead of winter.

Tories want more cash from parks

The federal government is hunting for more cash from Canada's national parks and historic sites, including examining potential new fees for some activities and services.

Parks Canada is looking to identify new sources of earned revenue from areas such as retail, concessions, Internet activities, licensing/ royalties, rentals, memberships, public programs and other ventures, according to the work summary of a new "revenue generation study" it is commissioning.

"Some of our locations can have lots of potential for that kind of revenue generation," said Ed Jager, director of visitor experience with Parks Canada.

The federal agency - which is responsible for the country's 42 national parks, 167 national historic sites and three marine conservation areas - is also searching for new sources of contributed revenue, such as individual and corporate donations, fundraising and annual giving.

Environment Minister Peter Kent, who is in charge of Parks Canada, released a report in November that found the country's national parks and heritage sites are raking in billions of dollars for Canada's economy, with more than 80 per cent of the revenue coming from visitors.

The mass media in Canada have rushed to ascribe the "honour" killing phenomenon to Arabs and Muslims rather than recognize it as a product of patriarchy.

I was an expert witness at the Shafia trial in a Kingston, Ont., courtroom, where a husband, wife, and son face murder charges in the deaths of four family members. My role was to explain to the court the nature of the phenomenon known as “honour” killing. During my testimony on Dec. 5, 2011, the crown prosecutor asked me to read a passage from the United Nations Commission on Human Rights' report of the "Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women, its Causes and Consequences" (dated Jan. 31, 2002), which states: “Honour killings in West Asia have their roots in the crude Arabic expression ‘a man’s honour lies between the legs of a woman’” (p. 13, Sec. 28). Most media reports highlighted the quotation and erroneously attributed the quote as my own on the issue of religion and culture (The Huffington Post, Toronto Star, and National Post); this is by no means a minor oversight. I am not the source of this quotation, which is overtly racist, nor was it my choice to use it in my testimony.

The ascription of any characteristic – real or imaginary, negative or positive – to a particular race lends itself to racism. To claim that a patriarchal notion of male honour is an essential value of Arabs is one such attribution of negative traits to an entire group of people. It is a racist claim, as it identifies “Arabness” as the source or cause of male violence in the name of “honour.”

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on Wednesday rejected calls to hold talks with opposition leaders who have brought tens of thousands of Russians into the streets to demand an end to his 12-year rule, saying he doesn’t know what the demonstrators want or who he would talk to.

Mr. Putin has belittled the opposition even as his government has rolled out a set of proposed reforms in response to outrage over the Dec. 4 election for parliament, in which only Kremlin-approved parties were allowed to run and observers reported widespread vote-rigging. Mr. Putin hopes to return to the presidency in a March vote.

The opposition leaders “should formulate some kind of common platform and common position, so that it’s possible to understand what people want,” a smiling Mr. Putin told a group of Russian reporters. “Is there a common platform? No. Who is there to talk to?”

Kim Lindsay looks up at the gleaming steel of Precision Drilling Corp.’s (10.50-0.05-0.47%) Rig 560, dusted in snow and towering above the North Dakota prairie, and smiles.

“This is hot off the press – been out a month,” said Mr. Lindsay, a U.S. manager with the company. The yellow paint on the rig’s Caterpillar engines is unsullied. The technology is state of the art, with a driller operating a joystick in front of rows of flat-panel monitors that look like something out of NASA mission control. Built in Canada, the rig was trucked across the border to drill for oil.

By March, Precision intends to have 33 of these rigs running – their drill bits aimed at a lucrative payload nearly three kilometres beneath the earth. It is the Middle Bakken formation, known to most as simply the Bakken, a reservoir jammed with so much oil that companies have flocked from all over the world to profit from it.

That includes a growing cadre of Canadian companies that are using the Bakken – and a series of oil and gas plays like it in Arkansas, Pennsylvania, Ohio and beyond – as a springboard to expand their presence beyond Canada. And while they’re brought here by the scent of opportunity, they’re also cashing in on the serendipity of proximity: Williston lies just 1,000 kilometres from Calgary, and an easy day’s drive from Edmonton for the flow of men and machinery that have been dispatched here.

The ORNGE air ambulance service has recently spent more than $600,000 on university business degrees for top executives.

In the last year, at least seven ORNGE officials have received or are enrolled in an executive MBA from a top Canadian business school.

An ORNGE spokesman defended the practice, saying the executives are “high performers” and funding the business degrees helps ORNGE “attract and retain top quality talent.”

ORNGE, which employs 400 people, receives $150 million in public funding each year.

One of the executives, Maria Renzella, was enrolled at the Kellogg-Schulich school at York University but spent part of her time in Germany and Belgium taking courses on “European business practices.”

A Newmarket couple is planning to sell their house and move after repeated threats and racist vandalism.

The latest attack happened on Christmas Eve.

Rita Brown found an offensive word carved into the side of her car.

"We sit down and we just cry our hearts out," she said. "You know, why us? You know, we didn't do anything to anybody. You know, we didn't hurt anybody. You know, just because he's black and I'm white?"

Brown and her husband, Seun Oyinsan, moved into their home in August. The vandalism began almost immediately.

They found nails left behind their car tires. Nazi symbols and offensive words were spray-painted on the garage. There were also death threats warning that unless the couple moved "someone would be killed."

York Regional Police have been on the case for months, but so far they haven't been able to make an arrest.

"We need witnesses to come forward," said Const. Rebecca Boyd. "We need people to give us that information in order to follow tips and leads and conclude the investigation."

But the couple isn't waiting for an arrest. They've decided to sell their home and move on.

"I feel until they get us out, they're not going to leave us alone," said Brown.

Original Article
Source: Huff

Canada's Fracking Struggles

Early last year, deep in the forests of northern British Columbia, workers for Apache Corp. performed what the company proclaimed was the biggest hydraulic fracturing operation ever.

The project used 259 million gallons of water and 50,000 tons of sand to frack 16 gas wells side by side. It was "nearly four times larger than any project of its nature in North America," Apache boasted.
The record didn't stand for long. By the end of the year, Apache and its partner, Encana, topped it by half at a neighboring site.

As furious debate over fracking continues in the United States, it is instructive to look at how a similar gas boom is unfolding for our neighbor to the north.

To a large extent, the same themes have emerged as Canada struggles to balance the economic benefits drilling has brought with the reports of water contamination and air pollution that have accompanied them.

The Canadian boom has differed in one regard: The western provinces' exuberant embrace of large-scale fracking offers a vision of what could happen elsewhere if governments clear away at least some of the regulatory hurdles to growth.

Banks helped create the housing crisis, and now they're seeking a new way to profit from it. As Bloomberg reported Monday, several financial and investment companies have submitted proposals to the federal government, suggesting ways that they can help manage a program to rent out 180,000 foreclosed homes.

Fair and affordable housing advocates are calling on the Obama administration to reject help from the financial sector, or at least limit its influence.

"It's really a question of whether the banks that made so much money creating this crisis are going to profit again," Jeremy Rosen, policy director at the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty, told The Huffington Post.

More than 4,000 companies, organizations and individuals submitted ideas to the federal government this fall, Bloomberg reported. Of those, about 400 proposals are considered valid. UBS, Deutsche Bank AG, Barclays Capital Inc. and others submitted ideas, according to Bloomberg.

The National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty also registered its suggestions, Rosen said.

Perhaps most notable is a proposal from Fortress Investment Group, LLC, a private equity firm helmed by former Fannie Mae CEO Daniel Mudd. Earlier this month, the SEC sued Mudd for alleged wrongdoing during his tenure at Fannie, claiming that he lied about the amount of risk the mortgage finance giant was taking on during the housing boom. Many of the foreclosed homes now owned by the federal government had mortgages underwritten by Fannie. In proposing to help the government unload those homes, Mudd would be profiting off a problem he may have helped to fuel.