Democracy gone Astray: Wednesday, November 23, 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.]

Wednesday, November 23, 2011

F-35: Canadian Jets Will Initially Be Unable To Track Troops, Talk To Older Planes

OTTAWA - The first dozen or so F-35s slated to arrive in Canada won't be equipped with software that allows the stealth fighters to communicate with ground forces, a feature designed to prevent incidents of friendly fire.

The initial operating system also won't be equipped with a program that helps the fighters communicate with older aircraft, such as the Air Force's Aurora surveillance planes.

The software isn't expected to be added until an upgrade program is introduced in 2019 — three years after the Royal Canadian Air Force begins taking delivery the advanced multi-role fighter.

The absence of both items in the initial operating system is alluded to in heavily-censored access-to-information documents, obtained by The Canadian Press and referenced in military publications in the United States.

The system that helps distinguish between friend and foe is known as a Blue Force Tracker, a GPS-enabled device, and its absence means the computers of the first F-35s will not be able to link with ground troops until software is updated.

The dismantling of Occupy Toronto has begun.

Just before 7 am on Wednesday, as a cold rain fell on St. James Park, police and city bylaw officers entered the site where protesters have been camped out for the past five weeks, and began the work of taking down their makeshift community.

The police say they're only in the park to facilitate the removal of the tents by city staff.

A showdown with the police has been brewing ever since Occupy Toronto set up camp in St. James last month, but while some protesters had feared a police crackdown on the scale of last year’s G20 summit, the initial stages of the police foray into the park were largely without incident.

“It’s been going really peacefully so far,” said Leila, a 23-year-old activist who came to St. James Park to bear witness to the eviction. “The police are leaving the people who are just watching and filming them alone, which means they don’t have anything to hide.”

The Occupy Toronto encampment has come to a peaceful end with protesters vacating the last occupied tent in St. James Park after a negotiated settlement with police.

Mayor Rob Ford said in a late afternoon news conference that he was proud of city staff and police for the job they did in the park on Wednesday, and warned protesters they would not be able to relocate.

"The protest is over and I'd like to keep it that way," he said. "And if they do go to another park, we will ask them to leave immediately."

That could mean another showdown with protesters.

Interviewed by CBC News on Wednesday morning, Misha Saunders said he and fellow Occupy protesters were weighing whether to move their encampment to another public space downtown. He said the presence of a protesters' "village" is essential to the Occupy movement.

"It's been a hub of activity for people who have a deep-rooted feeling that something must change," he said. "That conversation is going to go to the living rooms, the coffee shops and the subways about how we will move forward in a meaningful way.”

Five weeks into the York Region transit strike, a Progressive Conservative MPP introduced a private members’ bill Wednesday to end the dispute and set it to binding arbitration for a settlement.

The bill is “the only avenue available to us” amid frustration that Premier Dalton McGuinty’s government has taken no action other than offering mediation services and urging all parties to reach a deal restoring bus service for 70,000 riders, said Tory MPP Peter Shurman.

“I hope it serves as a good kick to the labour minister,” said Shurman (Thornhill), also taking shots at York Region Liberal MPPs for not putting more pressure on the government.

Labour Minister Linda Jeffrey said she recognizes the inconvenience of the strike to York bus riders but is not considering back-to-work legislation and urged all parties “to return to the bargaining table as quickly as possible.”

“Our government is not considering or discussing back-to-work legislation,” she added. “The best agreements are those reached through the collective bargaining process.”

Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman is threatening to break up the coalition if the illegal outposts Migron and Givat Assaf are evacuated. "Migron is not an illegal outpost," the minister said Monday. "It's a community where then-Defense Minister Moshe Arens and the GOC Central Command stood beside the cornerstone at its founding. How did it suddenly become illegal?"

The fact that the highest court in the land determined that Migron was built on private Palestinian land and that it must be evacuated by March does not impress Lieberman. Even the fact that the state pledged to evacuate Givat Assaf by the end of the year and then asked for a postponement until July is irrelevant for the man who heads Israel's third largest political party. From his point of view, if a minister and a top general graced the outpost's founding ceremony, the ruling by the High Court of Justice is meaningless.

Lieberman's position symbolizes gross contempt for the rule of law in Israel, but it seems there is nothing really new about that. The foreign minister is a full partner in the effort to legislate a number of anti-democratic laws, laws that will become the face of the 18th Knesset. And his current stance is nothing more than another realization of his nationalist doctrine.

Fox News viewers are less informed than people who don't watch any news, according to a new poll from Fairleigh Dickinson University.

The poll surveyed New Jersey residents about the uprisings in Egypt and the Middle East, and where they get their news sources. The study, which controlled for demographic factors like education and partisanship, found that "people who watch Fox News are 18-points less likely to know that Egyptians overthrew their government" and "6-points less likely to know that Syrians have not yet overthrown their government" compared to those who watch no news.

Overall, 53% of all respondents knew that Egyptians successfully overthrew Hosni Mubarak and 48% knew that Syrians have yet to overthrow their government.

Dan Cassino, a political science professor at Fairleigh Dickinson, explained in a statement, "Because of the controls for partisanship, we know these results are not just driven by Republicans or other groups being more likely to watch Fox News. Rather, the results show us that there is something about watching Fox News that leads people to do worse on these questions than those who don’t watch any news at all."

This isn't the first study that has found that Fox News viewers more misinformed in comparison to others. Last year, a study from the University of Maryland found that Fox News viewers were more likely to believe false information about politics.

Origin
Source: Huff

Airport Workers Say Pay Is Illegally Low

CHICAGO, Ill. -- Every day she goes to work at O'Hare International Airport, Elda Burke faces the same dilemma.

Burke, 30, works as a passenger attendant at the airport, escorting the elderly and disabled to and from their gates by wheelchair. Even though the airlines describe this as a free service, Burke's employer has her working partly for tips, which is why her base pay is a low $6.50 an hour, somewhat like a restaurant server's, rather than the typical Illinois minimum wage of $8.25.

But unlike diners at a restaurant, many of the passengers Burke will be escorting on their holiday travels this week won't realize she's working for tips -- and by federal law, she won't be allowed to tell them.

"We cannot say anything," Burke says. "If we do that, they can fire us."

Burke works for Illinois-based Prospect Airport Services, Inc., a company that has contracts to supply service workers at O'Hare and other airports around the country. Prospect and similar contractors often pay their workers like Burke at a reduced rate before tips, which allows them to shift a portion of the salary burden to passengers. Such a pay scheme is perfectly legal, so long as the employer makes up the difference whenever a worker comes up short of the minimum wage after tips.

The recent loss of sea ice in the Arctic is greater than any natural variation in the past 1½ millennia, a Canadian study shows.

"The recent sea ice decline … appears to be unprecedented," said Christian Zdanowicz, a glaciologist at Natural Resources Canada, who co-led the study and is a co-author of the paper published Wednesday online in Nature.

"We kind of have to conclude that there's a strong chance that there's a human influence embedded in that signal."

In September, Germany's University of Bremen reported that sea ice had hit a record low, based on data from a Japanese sensor on NASA's Aqua satellite. The U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center, using a different satellite data set, reported that the sea ice coverage in 2011 was the second-lowest on record, after the record set in 2007.

What makes recent sea ice declines unique is that they have been driven by multiple factors that never all coincided in historical periods of major sea ice loss, said Christophe Kinnard, lead author of the new report.

It is often the role of the economist to point at the impending doom with which reality confronts our fondest wishes. For that reason, Thomas Carlyle referred to economics as the dismal science. It is made the more dismal for the economist when the fondest wishes are held and extolled by friends and those whom one admires.

I find myself in this predicament with the pronunciations of two such people on the issue of the Greeks and their political reactions to the gifts borne to them by Germany in the guise of the European Union. In assessing the gift of monetary rescue, wrapped in the sackcloth of fiscal austerity, then-prime minister George Papandreou unexpectedly proposed that there should be a referendum. This gesture caused pandemonium in markets and, after stern ultimatums from the European Union, the Greeks found that they could accept the lifeline without waiting four months for a referendum.

Two Canadians of substance who have given us reason to admire them, Mark Carney, governor of the Bank of Canada, and Preston Manning, founder of the Reform Party and Fraser Institute senior fellow, supported the notion of a referendum. Mr. Carney told the House of Commons finance committee that a referendum was a good idea because it is “imperative that there is widespread support” for the tax and spending reforms that would have to be adopted and maintained for a long time. Mr. Manning, a reliable and able democrat, recently wrote in The Globe and Mail to support Mr. Carney.

OTTAWA—The NDP says Conservative minister Tony Clement’s office edited an official parliamentary transcript, in an effort to hide a trail of documents showing he directed how $50 million in G8 funds should be spent in his riding.

MPs Charlie Angus and Alexandre Boulerice said municipal documents obtained by the NDP through provincial freedom-of-information legislation show Clement’s office had a direct hand in deciding which projects ended up getting about $45 million, contrary to testimony he gave a parliamentary committee.

Clement testified he played only a “coordinating role” and did not review the wish-list of 33 projects from mayors in his Muskoka riding. Clement said the list was whittled down from 242 by the mayors, and his office merely sent them to then-infrastructure minister John Baird. Clement insisted Wednesday in the Commons it was Baird who decided where the money would be spent.

But Angus, the NDP ethics critic, said: “This is simply not true.”

Moreover, Angus charged that Clement appeared to have changed the official parliamentary record, known as Hansard, to withdraw a verbal undertaking he made to the committee to provide all relevant documents. Clement rose after question period on a point of privilege to deny he or anyone in his office had made changes, and asked the Speaker to investigate to learn who did.

Russia: a bill to silence millions

Political leaders in St. Petersburg are about to vote on law that will make it illegal for any person to write a book, publish an article or speak in public about being gay, lesbian or transgender. The ruling party led by President Medvedev and Prime Minister Putin could make millions of people invisible with the stroke of a pen.

Human rights defenders around the country are doing everything they can to stop it. They are risking their freedom to organize flashmobs and protests, but they are afraid that it won't be enough.

Right now, the world needs to speak up and tell Russian authorities to drop the bill. Join this call to leaders around the world to reach out to their counterparts in the Russian government - and ask them to reject this discriminatory and anti-democratic law.

Origin
Source: AllOut

Black Tuesday in South Africa

South Africa, which many still see as a role model for young democracies—it has one of the most liberal constitutions in the world—just sent a strong message to the rest of the young (and even old) democracies on the continent: get tough with anybody going public with state secrets. In fact, the South African government wants to get so tough that anybody caught doing so could face up to twenty-five years in jail.

That harsh penalty is contained in a bill that the National Assembly approved today by a vote of 229 to 107, with two abstentions. It is officially titled the Protection of State Information Bill, but is widely referred to as the Secrecy Bill. Its opponents include just about every media house in the country; unions whose members were terrorized over their reporting of local government corruption; and most civil-society organizations. The Nobel laureate Nadine Gordimer is among those who have been calling this Black Tuesday, a reference to the day in 1977, known as Black Wednesday, when the apartheid regime banned the World, a crusading newspaper, and detained its editor and some of its staff. That, of course, was back in the era when the minority white regime had laws that banned just about everything black, as well as information relating to its brutal suppression of the country’s black majority. Those recalling that time now have been wearing black as a protest against what might have otherwise been an inconceivable move by a body comprised of people who put their lives on the line for freedom from such tyranny.

The First Amendment Upside Down: Why We Must Occupy Democracy

You've been seeing this across the country... Americans assaulted, clubbed, dragged, pepper-sprayed... Why? For exercising their right to free speech and assembly -- protesting the increasing concentration of income, wealth, and political power at the top.

And what's Washington's response? Nothing. In fact, Congress's so-called "super committee" just disbanded because Republicans refuse to raise a penny of taxes on the rich.

Meanwhile, the Supreme Court says money is speech and corporations are people. The Supreme Court's Citizens United decision last year ended all limits on political spending. Millions of dollars are being funneled to politicians without a trace.

And a revolving door has developed between official Washington and Wall Street -- with bank executives becoming public officials who make rules that benefit the banks before heading back to the Street to make money off the rules they created.

Other top officials, including an increasing proportion of former members of congress, are cashing in by joining lobbying power houses and pressuring their former colleagues to do whatever their clients want.

WASHINGTON -- The conservative Susan B. Anthony List sent out an email announcing that Herman Cain had become the latest presidential candidate to sign its 'Pro-life Presidential Leadership Pledge' on Tuesday.

The pledge commits candidates to supporting a strict anti-abortion rights platform, including choosing "pro-life appointees" to the courts and the executive branch.

Candidates also commit to trying to defund Planned Parenthood, advancing legislation to "permanently end all taxpayer funding of abortion in all domestic and international spending programs," and supporting a "Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act to protect unborn children who are capable of feeling pain from abortion."

"This decision is consistent with the Herman Cain we have come to know," said SBA List President Marjorie Dannenfelser in a statement. "He understands the wound abortion is to America and especially to the most vulnerable among us -- people that Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger labeled 'human weeds.' We commend Mr. Cain for adding his name to the list of candidates who have signed the pledge, and should he be elected to the White House, look forward to his leadership in the mission to protect Life."

Newt's Cruelest Campaign: Replace School Janitors With Child Labor

It has been suggested that the Republicans who would be president are determined to turn the clock back 75 years and "rescind the New Deal."

Now, Newt Gingrich has gone his rivals one better.

The former Speaker of the House, and sudden contender for the 2012 GOP presidential nod, is not about to stop with the New Deal. He wants to turn the clock back 100 years and rescind the progressive era.

This is no small threat. While the New Deal brought a measure of economic security to the American experiment, along with a bolder vision of what government could do to tame the wildest excesses of bankers and speculators, it was the Progressive Era that introduced measures of basic humanity and democratic aspiration to the project.

Gingrich goes to the heart of the matter with his new proposal to attack public-sector collective bargaining rights with a proposal to fire school janitors and replace them with child laborers.

Blaming “the core policies of protecting unionization and bureaucratization" for “crippling” children," Gingrich told a Harvard Kennedy School of Government seminar that: “It is tragic what we do in the poorest neighborhoods, entrapping children in, first of all, in child laws, which are truly stupid."

OTTAWA — In their latest attack against Tony Clement's handling of G8 infrastructure funds, the NDP is accusing the minister of doctoring the public record of a committee hearing at which he promised to fork over documents.

The Opposition unveiled Wednesday both the unedited and edited versions of a Hansard transcript of a Nov. 2 Commons committee meeting.

Asked twice during the meeting by New Democrat MP Charlie Angus whether he would table the 242 completed project forms, Clement said "sure" each time, according to the unedited record.

The word "sure," however, is missing from the edited version, Angus said Wednesday.

He noted MPs are allowed to correct facts and mispronunciations in their own statements but "it's a stretch to take an affirmative and make it blank."

The heavy reliance on tear gas, pepper spray, and other "safe" crowd control measures from Oakland to Cairo is raising new concerns about just how much damage police and armies are doing to unarmed citizens. Weapons like these are intended to protect crowds from more dangerous shows of force like guns and batons, but even when used correctly (which is not always the case) they may be doing permanent damage to the people they're used on.

Doctors in Egypt are saying that the tear gas used in Tahrir Square in recent days is particularly toxic and may have actually caused the deaths of some protesters. A man working at field clinic in the square says, "About 70 per cent of the injuries are fainting. People are coming in with asthma, convulsions sometimes - this wasn't often before." Some of the 30+ people killed in the last week are believed to have died from asphyxiation.

Protesters at UC-Davis who were shot in the faces with pepper spray last weekend complained of pain and irritation in their breathing passages even days after their arrests, and a pregnant woman sprayed at Occupy Seattle says she suffered a miscarriage as a result. (That claim hasn't been verified, and The Stranger says her story is "increasingly dubious.")

Some of the other "non-lethal" methods that are popular among police and armies.

The GOP Divide Over Illegal Immigrants: Are They People or Abstractions?

Is it inhumane to deport an illegal immigrant who came to the United States 25 years ago, established roots, obeyed the law, raised his children here, and now has American grandchildren? Yes, emphatically so. But I suspect that when Newt Gingrich made that assertion during Tuesday evening's GOP debate, he upset a lot of conservative Republican voters.

Short of calling immigration restrictionists "racist," the quickest way to upset them is to say that they're "heartless," as Rick Perry once put it, or that they suffer from a lack empathy or compassion. That's the sort of thing liberals are always saying when they attack immigration restrictionists, who resent the accusation even more when it is made by their fellow conservatives. I can imagine how they feel. For the most part, these immigration restrictionists are just as humane as anyone. They give to charity, do volunteer work, help out people in need.

They see themselves as compassionate people.

What they haven't done is ponder mass deportations in anything but the comfortably abstract. What would it be like in reality? Shocking, even to them. If America started aggressively rounding up all the illegal immigrants, support for that course of action would fall precipitously from its current level. Some folks would change their minds after seeing the screaming, tearful families on the news; others when they realized that their dry cleaner or gardener or neighbor or co-worker was secretly undocumented. There would literally be millions of heart-wrenching stories.

What will the evicted residents of Zuccotti Park occupy next? Will it be Duarte Plaza, a triangular patch of brick and gravel owned by Trinity Church in Tribeca? Foreclosed and abandoned buildings in Harlem and the Lower East Side? Nearby colleges or small towns? Or something less tangible?

At a 40-person meeting Saturday to discuss the issue, not everyone thought that retaking a public space would be worthwhile. "Not to sound like an asshole, but there's a lot of energy and resources that go into sustaining an occupation and feeding and clothing people," said Daniel Zeta, a respected former resident of the park. "If we are not careful, we are going to turn into a homeless shelter and food kitchen, and to be honest, that's not why I came here."

Others argued that OWS has a duty to revive the country's first and most symbolic occupation. "Having a space that is a show of force, that is big, that is in your face is really important," said a guy named Danny, clad in a red bandanna and plaid shirt. "And it's something that a lot of different occupations around the country are waiting for us to do."

Even before last week's police raid and eviction of campers from the park, the movement's organizers were working to set up satellite occupations around the city. On October 15, the night of a massive demonstration at Times Square, a delegation from Zuccotti held a 3,000-person rally at Washington Square Park near New York University, where they announced they would camp. But just before the park's midnight curfew, about 100 riot police dispersed the crowd and arrested 14 holdouts.

GTA Woman Has Niqab Pulled Off In Assault

A Muslim woman from Mississauga, Ont., who had her niqab pulled from her face at a local mall, says her young children no longer feel secure with only her nearby.

Inas Kadri, whose assault at Sheridan Centre in Mississauga was caught on a security camera, spoke to CBC News on Tuesday as she awaits the sentencing of the woman who attacked her.

Kadri was shopping with her three-year-old son and two-year-old daughter when she was approached by two women. One of the women began swearing at her, about her religion and her veil, telling her, "Leave our country. Go back to your country," Kadri said.

The woman can be seen in the video grabbing Kadri's veil and pulling her off-camera. The attacker walked away while Kadri ran for help.

"Being attacked for no reason — for no reason — that's something difficult," she said.

Kadri's victim impact statement reads, in part, that, "My kids don't feel secure with me alone, and always prefer to have someone bigger in size than me to feel safe."

The accused, Rosemarie Creswell, pleaded guilty after the video was played in court.

When CBC News spoke to Creswell on the phone, she admitted to pulling off the veil but insisted it was all just a misunderstanding, before hanging up mid-interview.

Kadri believes the attack was motivated by hate, which could bring a stiffer sentence.

York University law professor Faisal Kutty, who is Muslim, will watch for the judge's sentencing Friday with interest.

"As Canadians in a multicultural, liberal, democratic society, I think we need to send a clear message and I hope the judge does so," he said.

Kadri said she won't stop wearing her face veil no matter what anyone else says or does.

"Not my father, not my husband, not no one at all," she said. " It's me, and it's my choice."

Origin
Source: Huff

Canada Military Drones: ScanEagle, Unmanned Aircraft, To Be Deployed On Mediterranean Missions

OTTAWA - Canadian warships will soon be deploying drones on overseas operations.

The crew of HMCS Charlottetown is currently testing the lightweight ScanEagle, a leased, unmanned aircraft the army used to great effect in Afghanistan.

Vice-Admiral Paul Maddison, head of the Royal Canadian Navy, says the idea is to deploy the drone when the frigate heads back to the Mediterranean next year as part of the government's recently announced plan to keep a warship in the region throughout 2012.

But instead of hunting for Taliban planting roadside bombs, Maddison says the plane will provide surveillance over both sea and land.

OTTAWA - The NDP has obtained more documents which appear to contradict Tony Clement's insistence that he was not involved in carving up a $50-million fund to spruce up his riding before last year's G8 summit.

The Treasury Board president told a Commons committee he simply played a "co-ordinating role," forwarding the wish lists of mayors in his Ontario cottage country riding to John Baird, infrastructure minister at the time, who decided which projects would get funding.

But municipal documents obtained by the NDP through provincial freedom-of-information legislation tell a different story.

New Democrat MP Charlie Angus says they show Clement gave "false and misleading" testimony to the public accounts committee earlier this month and is not fit to be in cabinet, much less in charge of the nation's treasury.

"Mr. Clement has become toxic, dead weight to this government," Angus told a news conference Wednesday.

Schafer: Government on the take

Governments regulate the use of property. Sometimes that regulation has a minor effect on the uses to which a property owner can put that property. Sometimes the regulation has a more severe effect. And, sometimes the regulation is so severe as to effectively strip all uses. In that last instance, it is said to effect a “regulatory taking” — also known as a “constructive” taking, or a “de facto expropriation” — meaning that it effectively achieves a taking-by-regulation.

A regulatory taking, therefore, occurs where government, rather than expropriating and paying compensation, instead by way of regulation strips away all uses to which the property can be put.

Canada is rare in the Western world for its lack of constitutionally entrenched property rights. The individual protections under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms do not include a right to property or any significant protections for property holders. While statutory protections exist in respect of expropriation (which entails the actual taking of title), and while common law protections have been recognized and affirmed by the Supreme Court of Canada which provide that compensation is payable absent express legislative language directing otherwise, Canada’s legal regime for the protection of property rights remains deficient. This is because there is no liability in Canadian law for governments to compensate for regulated property use, even where the regulation is so extensive as to amount to a regulatory taking.

War radio and the militarization of Canadian culture

"The deformed human mind is the ultimate doomsday weapon."

I was reminded of this chilling warning from the late British historian E.P. Thompson, while listening to Rex Murphy's Cross-Country Checkup on CBC Radio on Nov. 20.

Murphy was interviewing Terry Glavin, a B.C. author, about Glavin's latest book, one endorsing Canada's so-called "mission" in Afghanistan. Murphy was little less than fawning in his praise of the book's refutation of all those silly notions of imperialism.

That's pretty standard MediaThink. But what really got my attention was Murphy's handling of his first telephone caller, a military man from Winnipeg. Addressing the theme of whether the "mission" was worth it, the caller said, in effect, that the "mission" was good for the Canadian Forces, because it gave them a chance to put their training and the tools of their trade to a practical test.

In the Throne Speech in June, the Harper Conservatives presented Canadians with their priorities for the coming year. High on their list is the securing of an economic partnership with the European Union, the CETA (comprehensive economic and trade agreement). Negotiations between Canada and the EU began in the summer of 2007 and are set to conclude in 2012.

The agreement is about a good deal more than tariffs and the cross-border flow of goods. CETA will involve such broad matters as investment, government procurement, energy, telecommunications, the environment and intellectual property. The purpose of the agreement, according to its crafters, is to enhance national competitiveness and prosperity.

It is striking to note the absence of public meditation over the CETA. Contrast this with two decades ago when Canada was convulsed in debate over the prospect of a North America-wide trade and investment liberalization regime. The stakes were high back then and no one pretended otherwise.

The advocates of CETA are marketing the agreement on the apparent success of NAFTA. But was NAFTA a success? It is often assumed to be so, but few bother to identify the criteria they employ when evaluating it.

How Canada's "experts" are eschewing their commitment to evidence-based research and policy.

Ever wonder who all those “experts” quoted in the news are?

They, and the organizations or “think tanks” they work for, make up the knowledge-production industry in Canada. They influence our beliefs and help frame our understanding of our country – how it is, or should be, governed. The most sophisticated among them are savvy in their outreach activities and regularly make headlines in newspapers and talk shows. Journalists use them regularly as the centrepiece for “news” articles, and rarely question their evidence base. Furthermore, politicians use them to justify their positions.

But who are these “experts,” and what do we understand about what they do?

Both the Republicans and Democrats are actively working to service the one per cent.

The big political lie of the Super Committee is that the deficit must be closed mainly by cutting government spending rather than by raising taxes on corporations and the super-rich. Both parties are complicit.

The Republicans want to close the deficit entirely by cutting spending, and Obama has brandished the formula of $3 of cuts for every $1 of tax revenues. On either approach, the poor and middle class would suffer grievously while the rich and powerful would win yet again (at least until the social pressures boil over).

The key to understanding the U.S. economy is to understand that we have two economies, not one. The economy of rich Americans is booming. Salaries are high. Profits are soaring. Luxury brands and upscale restaurants are packed. There is no recession.

The economy of the middle class and poor is in crisis. Poverty and near-poverty are spreading. Unemployment is rampant. Household incomes have been falling sharply. Millions of discouraged workers have dropped out of the labour force entirely. The poor work at minimum wages to provide services for the rich.

The Scene. Adherents to the faith of smaller government take note, for the Harper government has successfully identified and eliminated one of the prime inefficiencies standing between us and true freedom.

“This government cannot say how many jobs were created after having spent $47 billion of Canadians’ money,” lamented the NDP’s Peter Julian this afternoon of the government’s trademarked action plan. “The program was so badly monitored that no one knows if it was effective.”

Of this, Mr. Julian can claim the authority of the auditor general, who apparently found no attempt by the government to determine precisely how many jobs it “created” (in the messianic parlance) with its billions in bridges, roads and hockey arenas.

But just because the government can’t—indeed, won’t—add, doesn’t mean Mr. Julian can’t subtract. “We now know that 72,000 full-time jobs were lost last month thanks to the policies of this government,” he asserted with his next breath. “Now that the truth is out, when will this government put aside bogus and unsubstantiated job claims and take real and immediate action to create jobs here in Canada for Canadian families?”

Harper’s sabre-rattling

Is Prime Minister Stephen Harper spoiling for a new fight in the Middle East? Is he preparing the ground to send CF-18 fighter-bombers against Iran’s provocative nuclear facilities or Syria’s brutal military? Canadians might well wonder.

There’s been a spasm of sabre-rattling in Ottawa recently, in the wake of a chilling United Nations report on Iran’s suspected nuclear weapons program and Syria’s ugly crackdown on dissidents.

Two weeks ago Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird declared that “Canada will continue to work with its like-minded allies to take the necessary action for Iran to abandon its nuclear program …. It is not a question of if, but to what extent, we will act.” While opaque, that had an ominous ring, coming as it did amid speculation about a possible pre-emptive Israeli/American strike at Iran’s nuclear facilities.

Then on Sunday, Defence Minister Peter MacKay pointedly refused to rule out attacking Syria if the UN Security Council were to authorize it.

The Conservatives should cool their jets. We have just joined our American and British allies in cranking up political and economic sanctions on both regimes, to get them to curb their worst tendencies. The sanctions need time to bite. And there’s no sign of a UN consensus in favour of tougher sanctions, much less war.

If the Security Council does at some point deem Iran to be a threat to world peace or Syria to be slaughtering civilians on a mass scale, Canada would be obliged to consider military action in the context of a collective international effort. In 1999 our CF-18s flew 684 combat sorties against Yugoslav forces during the Kosovo conflict, roughly 10 per cent of the allied effort. More recently, in Libya, we pulled roughly the same weight, flying 942 of the allies’ 9,600 strike missions.

But in both cases Canada acted prudently, under proper UN warrants as part of a broad international coalition to thwart genocide and ethnic cleansing in Kosovo and wholesale civilian slaughter in Libya. Absent similar UN approval, an unprovoked attack on Iran or Syria with a handful of allies would be unlawful and unwise. Canada rightly refused to join the ill-fated U.S. invasion of Iraq for those very reasons. That should remain our guiding principle.

Origin
Source: Toronto Star

Whither the public good?

Our political language about taxes has changed. Gone is "ability to pay." The new catchphrases are "user pay" and "pay as you go." The bottom-line message to citizens is "if you can't pay, you don't go." You don't get to drive into our congested cities without a toll; you don't get your garbage collected without a fee; and who knows, soon you won't get to visit a doctor without a charge.

So pervasive is everyone-for-himself that there is hardly anyone talking about concepts such as "the public good" and "a rising tide lifts all boats."

There's no more community, just individuals and their self-interest.

Alex Himelfarb, clerk of the Privy Council and secretary to the cabinet from 2002 to 2006, has joined an eclectic band of prominent public figures challenging the 30-year-old demonization of government and taxes. They include American billionaire Warren Buffett, who noted he is taxed at half the rate of his secretary, and Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney who called the Occupy movement "entirely constructive" and an understandable product of the "increase in inequality... You've had a big increase in the ratio of CEO earnings to the workers' on the shop floor."

Choose high-speed rail over F-35s

Canada faces a much clearer and more present danger than the threat from anything the F-35 fighter jets will shoot down.

That's the hollowing out of Canada's manufacturing industry in southern Ontario and Quebec. Without the tax revenue that vital economic sector produces, Canada might not be able to purchase the military hardware and execute the effective foreign policy the country needs. If Finance Minister Jim Flaherty is concerned about the federal deficit, why is his government spending between $9 billion and $30 billion for the F-35 jets that now even U.S. hawks are concerned will cost, over their life cycle, more than $1 trillion south of the border? Would not this money be better spent to build the infrastructure to spur development of the Canadian economy so the federal government could afford jets sometime in the future?

So rather than save $9 billion or $30 billion on jets or, say, $2.5 billion over five years for provincial and federal governments on new crime legislation in the face of declining law-breaking statistics, the federal and provincial politicians have thrown cold water on one infrastructure project that could stimulate and revolutionize Canada's critical economic corridor from Toronto to Ottawa to Montreal - the high-speed rail project, the subject of a recent feasability report. One could understand the province dropping the bullet train; it has an enormous deficit and massive future financial problems dealing with health-care costs. But the federal government choosing $9 billion in fighter planes over $9 billion in rail, stimulus and infrastructure? Bad choice.

There's a good reason why Canadian oil-and-gas producer Suncor Energy Inc., is permitted to continue operating in Syria despite the abuses of its government against the population, Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird said Tuesday.

Speaking on a conference call held at the conclusion of a trip to the Middle East, Baird was asked why the same kind of sanctions that forced Calgary-based Suncor to shut down operations in Libya earlier this year, when the former regime of late dictator Moammar Gadhafi was attacking civilians, would not apply in Syria.

Baird said the main difference is that Suncor's operations in Libya were to produce oil for export, while in Syria, it is extracting natural gas to generate electricity domestically.

"Cutting off families from the electricity grid would have a significant detrimental consequence on popular support for reform, and at this time, we've decided it would be negative, not positive, to cut hospitals, places of work and families' homes off electricity," Baird said.

Prison double-bunking used in segregation cells

Federal prisons in British Columbia and Manitoba are forcing some inmates to be double-bunked in segregation cells, a practice that was supposed to have been abolished for everything but extreme emergency situations a decade ago, CBC News has learned.

Documents obtained by CBC News under the Access to Information Act show at least two prisons have forced segregated inmates to share cells — Stony Mountain in Manitoba and Mission Institution in B.C. In a number of Ontario prisons, the mandatory assessments that are required before any inmate can be double-bunked are not always completed, the documents also show.

The Office of the Correctional Investigator, an ombudsman for federal offenders, says double-bunking in segregation is a violation of government policy, the Charter of Rights and international human rights standards. A 2001 Correctional Service of Canada directive explicitly prohibits the use of segregation cells for double-bunking unless emergency exemptions are warranted.

"Segregation is the most austere form of incarceration we have in Canada. You're locked in a very small cell for 23 out of 24 hours," correctional investigator Howard Sapers said. "These are very confined spaces. These cells are not designed to house more than one inmate. So if you're now going to house two inmates in one of these very small segregation cells, you're really bordering on inhumane custody."

The undercover police officers who infiltrated two activist communities in southern Ontario played key roles in planning the G20 protests – going so far as identifying targets for mayhem, The Globe and Mail has learned.

One officer helped develop a list of locations for protesters to congregate at or vandalize; another was such a prominent presence in pre-G20 marches that his face was twice featured in newspapers alongside the activists he was spying on.

But despite having information – both from the list and in meetings – that protesters were considering gathering on Queen Street and embarking on a smashing rampage that would target Starbucks, Commerce Court and other specific businesses and offices, police were unable to stop the vandalism.

Asked why police didn’t do more, a spokesman for Toronto Police said it would be inappropriate to comment. “These cases may be over but the inquiries looking into the G20 have not yet reported,” Mark Pugash said.

Canadian taxpayers are doling out millions of dollars a year for a fleet of sleek government executive jets that spend most of the time either flying empty or parked on the tarmac.

Detailed federal flight logs obtained by CBC News show that each of Transport Canada's nine Citation passenger jets spent an average of just over 300 hours in the air all of last year — less than six hours a week.

More than 70 per cent of that time, the seven-passenger luxury planes flew empty.

That means, on average, each of the roughly $5-million jets is actually transporting passengers for only about 90 hours a year, or under two per cent of their possible annual flying time.

Transport Canada pilots apparently have so little demand for their services that they frequently burn up jet fuel flying the planes empty just to maintain the minimum flight-time requirements of their aviation licences.

Derek Fildebrandt of the Canadian Taxpayers' Federation says the government should junk the jets and force its officials to fly on commercial airlines like most people.

DND: Military's 'values' shape 'Canada's identity'

An annual report from the Department of National Defence says Canadians should appreciate that their values are shaped in part by their military.

That represents a shift from past annual departmental reports that said departmental activities were informed by Canadian interests and values. Now it's the other way around.

On Nov. 17, the department's 2010-11 departmental performance report was released, altering a section that deals with ceremonies, youth programs and military history by introducing a new program activity called "Canadian identity."

The report says that the results of this activity should be that "Canadians are aware of, understand, and appreciate the history, proficiency, and values of the Canadian military as part of Canada's identity."

This flips the source of these "values" from previous performance reports. In 2009-10, for example, the report said that this program activity aimed to "contribute to Canadian government, society and international community in accordance with Canadian interests and values."

The politics of ruthlessness

Not for the first time, Stephen Harper’s Conservatives have puzzled many pundits.

They won an unassailable majority. Their party is united. They face an opposition that is weak, divided, leaderless. Their dominance is complete and while it’s possible to dream up challenges in the future, they are only the stuff of imagination.

Here and now, nothing can touch them.

So why do the Conservatives continue to act like the elbows-up, stick-swinging, trash-talking goons who bullied their way through five years of minority government?

Public safety minister Vic Toews has repeatedly accused those who oppose the government’s omnibus crime bill of being “pro-crime.” Environment minister Peter Kent said NDP MPs who went to the United States to voice opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline had behaved “treacherously.” Dean Del Mastro, parliamentary secretary to the minister of heritage, publicly suggested Liberal MP Justin Trudeau isn’t a good Catholic and shouldn’t be invited to speak at Catholic schools.

Each time the tone seems to have reached bottom, down it goes again. When the House of Commons marked Remembrance Day, each party stood to say a few words honouring the dead, but MPs from the Green Party and the Bloc Québécois needed unanimous consent to speak because they are not officially recognized in the House of Commons. They didn’t get it because some Conservative MP, or MPs, objected. The next day, with the support of the NDP, they tried again. Again the Conservatives blocked them.

Information Commissioner Suzanne Legault says destroying records could contravene 'spirit and letter' of Access to Information law and Library and Archives Canada Act. Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart says it could also violate the Privacy Act

PARLIAMENT HILL—Two of the most powerful officers of Parliament raised new questions Tuesday about aspects of a controversial bill the majority Conservative government is steamrolling through the Commons to dismantle the federal long-gun registry and destroy its entire database of records.

Information Commissioner Suzanne Legault warned MPs on the Public Safety Committee the legislation, Bill C-19, ignores “the spirit and the letter” of access to information law and the Library and Archives Canada Act.

And, in the furor over the government’s plan to destroy a range of information on seven million rifles and shotguns, and over the province of Quebec’s objections, which wants to use the records from within its borders to establish its own version of a long-gun registry, Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart raised concerns that the government may destroy the records before a two-year period the Privacy Act normally requires for the maintenance of all personal information.

OTTAWA — Oilsands production in Canada will likely triple by 2035, making it the overwhelming source of Canadian crude oil and opening doors to additional energy exports, says a new report from the National Energy Board.

The NEB says massive growth in oilsands development, coupled with a moderate increase in Canadian energy demand, means the amount of net crude oil available for export will more than triple over the next 25 years — good news for a federal government eyeing new energy export markets in the Asia-Pacific region.

Unconventional energy production — including development of the oilsands and shale gas — will emerge as the “dominant source of supply growth” over the next quarter-century, according to the NEB, Canada’s energy regulator.

But the growth in oilsands production is sure to spark additional criticism about developing the so-called “dirty oil” and its impacts on land, air and water.

It has been more than 20 years since the House of Commons unanimously resolved to end child poverty by 2000, but a national advocacy group says it's shocked by how little progress has been made.

While the economy has more than doubled in size since that 1989 resolution, the incomes of Canada's poorest families have stagnated, Campaign 2000 says in its 20th annual report card on child and family poverty released Wednesday.

"Every year I am shocked by the lack of progress made in poverty eradication," said Laurel Rothman, national co-ordinator of Campaign 2000. "The gap between rich and poor families has continued to widen, and low-income and average-income families are left struggling to keep up."

The effort to catch the ringleaders responsible for plotting G20 mayhem has involved two undercover officers, eight police services, millions of dollars and more than two years of investigation and prosecution.

But on Tuesday, it all came to an abrupt halt with a plea deal between the Crown and 17 people charged with conspiracy during the June 2010 summit. As a result, 11 defendants are walking free and the six others have pleaded guilty to a lesser charge. The longest jail sentence will be 16 months.

So how did this happen?

Talks of a plea deal were set in motion by just one of the defendants, according to a source familiar with the case.

On Sept. 12, the group began an 11-week preliminary hearing. According to the source, during the first week, the defendant asked his lawyer to float a plea deal with the Crown.