Democracy gone Astray: Thursday, November 24, 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.]

Thursday, November 24, 2011

CSIS: Keep it simple, cheap and on a short leash

The federal government is being tight-lipped about proposed changes to the law governing our spy agency, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service.

It is reliably reported, however, that it is seriously considering changes in the agency’s mandate to authorize it to conduct overseas spying operations. As it is, the CSIS Act, whereby the agency was brought into being in 1984, specifies that its operations are to be limited to “within Canada.”

The government is well advised to do so, in part because the present CSIS mandate limits its scope in countering foreign threats to Canadian security, but also to legitimize something the agency has already been doing to some extent, notably in Afghanistan where CSIS agents have been involved in the interrogation of prisoners.

There have been growing calls for the government to extend the CSIS mandate to allow it the same offensive capability to spy on foreigners overseas that it is endowed with domestically.

Dropout rates and youth-suicide rates among Aboriginal Canadians are six times those of non-Aboriginals; incarceration rates are more than seven times higher among Aboriginal Canadians. The discrimination that leads to this disparity is perhaps the gravest moral issue facing Canadians today.

Canadians may care, but they do not act. With the exception of a feather-headed slur and an ignominious misstatement by a Bloc Québécois candidate, aboriginal issues rarely made headlines during the most recent federal election. Last week, former prime minister Paul Martin raised this issue at an event hosted by the C.D. Howe Institute. His message was clear: For Canadians to do something, we need to reframe the problem.

Fortunately, the language exists.

A few weeks ago, as part of Action Canada, I visited an Inuit community in the Nunatsiavut region of Northern Labrador. I had not anticipated that two years of arguing about the responsibility to protect and contemplating the application of human security to the Levant would serve me. To my surprise, it did.

Buried in its otherwise dry and business-like global economic forecast last spring, the International Monetary Fund quietly offered this world-changing prediction: China’s economy will overtake that of the United States in real terms in 2016 – just five years from now. For the first time in over a century, the United States will no longer be the world’s largest economy. For the first time in two centuries, a non-western, non-democratic power will be economically dominant.

Some try to downplay the significance of this coming event. They point out that extrapolating GDP growth to predict future power is an imprecise science. In the mid-1950s, then-Communist-leader Nikita Khrushchev boasted that a fast-growing Soviet Union would “bury” the U.S. – and we know how that worked out. Japan, the rising economic superpower of the 1980s, was on track to become the world’s biggest economy by the late 1990s, according to some forecasters. We are still waiting. And yet, China’s sheer size – and the speed of its industrialization – seems to place it in an entirely different category. In 2000, U.S. economic output was three times that of China. By 2030, even with conservative growth estimates, China’s output will be three times America’s. This will mark a complete reversal of their relative economic importance in just 30 years.

Billed as the Davos for Security, the Department and National Defence (DND) funded Halifax International Security Forum sought and accomplished to court the security elite. Last weekend’s lavish affair was attended by nearly 20 defence ministers, top global security analysts, beltway security consultants, international affairs journalists, and a handful of security academics. As at Davos, it’s hard to fault the execution, and the host Peter Mackay deserves a lot of credit.

Throughout the event though, I couldn’t help asking whether this was the right group of people having the right conversation at the right time. With deeply troubled military occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, attention increasingly turning to Asia and the BRICs, and much of the world embroiled in an uprising against concentrated political and financial power, what is the value proposition of a largely Euro-Atlantic, NATO-focused, confab amongst security sector leaders?

This feeling was magnified by the subject matter on the agenda. For two days, debate swirled around the purchasing of F35s, the potential invasion of Syria and bombing of Iran, and the western security implications of Arab revolutions. Throughout, military actions were discussed in an unproblematic way, as part of a natural escalation of engagement.

This was not entirely surprising, as Halifax was for all intents and purposes a military conference; but even for a military conference, this discourse seemed limited. There was no discussion of the abyss of the war in Afghanistan, the very real problems with the Libya mission (beyond the easy success of bombing fixed, undefended targets), or the dilemma that no one wants to put troops on the ground in NATO missions.

HALIFAX - Ottawa should expand health care programs by increasing taxes, medicare advocates said Thursday ahead of discussions in Halifax between federal, provincial and territorial health ministers on the next health care accord.

Maude Barlow of the Council of Canadians said the federal government should commit to a 10-year health transfer plan with the provinces that would see a six per cent hike in funding annually. That would go beyond Prime Minister Stephen Harper's promise to implement such a funding increase up to 2016.

"We are very concerned that they have no intention of carrying it beyond that," Barlow told a news conference.

She said the Canada Health Act must also be enforced to stop private health care services from eroding the system.

MONTREAL - The dismantling of protest camps in Canada's largest cities is now nearly complete, with members of the Occupy Montreal movement warned that they will face a fate similar to their allies in Toronto and Vancouver.

Montreal municipal officials say their tolerance has run out with the activists occupying a square in the downtown financial district.

Police have been handing out notices ordering the Occupy Montreal protesters to immediately remove their tents. Some of the urban campers have already begun packing up.

A two-sided bilingual flyer, dated Nov. 23, warns that if the installations aren't taken down, the city will do it. The notice cites city bylaws that prohibit use of the square between midnight and 6 a.m.

A city spokesman says Montreal wants the campers to leave on their own, but he adds that necessary measures will be taken if required.

Pressure is growing on the federal and Ontario governments to intervene in the northern Ontario reserve of Attawapiskat, sparked by what one MP is calling a “digital storm” from concerned Canadians.

But even as corporate and other organizations rallied to the cause, Ottawa quickly denied a report Thursday that it had committed $2.5-million for housing on the troubled reserve, frustrating NDP MP Charlie Angus, who has led the charge to raise awareness about the James Bay community.

Earlier this week, Angus wrote a blog post on the Huffington Post Canada that documented his visit to the reserve, which had declared a state of emergency last month.

"I spoke with one family of six who had been living in a tiny tent for two years. I visited elderly people living in sheds without water or electricity. I met children whose idea of a toilet was a plastic bucket that was dumped into the ditch in front of their shack," the MP representing the reserve wrote in the blog post, which has been shared on Facebook more than 60,000 times.

Even Naheed Nenshi, possibly the nicest mayor big-city Canada ever had, is fed up with the Occupiers. If you've lost Calgary Mayor Nenshi, you've lost the country.

So here is the choice the Occupiers face: go, with their tents and their portable toilets, and keep their dignity and message reasonably intact; or resist, and act as a law unto themselves, and be forever remembered dragging their own names through the mud of their unwanted encampments.

There is a third choice, peaceful civil disobedience: refuse to leave, insist on being carried away by police, and face the judicial consequences. Alas, if Mr. Nenshi is fed up, civil disobedience at this late stage is probably going to be met with a yawn, at best, by the public. “The protesters need to understand that they've lost the thread, they've completely lost the plot,” Mr. Nenshi says. “Making this about the tents instead of about the issues they're talking about, they've completely lost any ability to influence people.”

The remarkable tolerance of the civic authorities may have created a mistaken impression among the Occupiers that they have a right to occupy. Maybe that explains why the movement has tried everyone's patience, including Mr. Nenshi's. Its members seem to believe that civil disobedience is a form of protest protected from consequences. In Vancouver, after being served with a court order, the protesters packed up their tents and, like children proud of their cunning, moved them to another public area. Occupy seems just another group claiming an entitlement, free of responsibilities toward others.

The Occupy movement began as an understandable response to the excesses that contributed to the world financial crisis. It turned into an excess of its own. And now the courts have taken a strong stand against that excess. The time for negotiations is gone. Even Mr. Nenshi says so.

What will anyone remember of all this in a few years, or even in a few weeks? It depends on whether the Occupiers make a last, self-defeating stand, or go, as Montreal Mayor Gérald Tremblay says, with their heads held high.

Origin
Source: Globe&Mail

Is Harper trying to increase Canada's military might?

The federal government paid tribute to its role in the Libya campaign Thursday with a flashy display of military might on Parliament Hill, a ceremony that some observers viewed as a way of declaring Canada's more muscular role on the global stage.

The celebratory event, which was attended by Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Defence Minister Peter MacKay as well as a host of military officials, included a flypast by CF-18 fighter jets, a 21-gun salute and the awarding of a Meritorious Service Cross (Military Division) to Lt.-Gen. Charles Bouchard, the Canadian air force general who commanded the NATO mission in Libya.

Some saw it as a conventional victory parade. "It is a celebration of sorts, there's no question, but it's within military tradition," said Michel Drapeau, a professor of military law at the University of Ottawa, who pointed to similar victory parades held in Canada for V-Day and the Korean War.

BRUSSELS (Ben Deighton) - Franco-Belgian bank Dexia (DEXI.BR) is accessing emergency liquidity facilities in Belgium, France, Spain and Italy, a banking source said on Thursday, as analysts described its liquidity situation as "very dramatic."

The source said the bank was making use of the Emergency Liquidity Assistance (ELA) facility of the Belgian central bank as well as "national central banks in France, in Spain, in Italy," where Dexia has units.

One analyst said the fact Dexia was tapping national central banks' liquidity via the European Central Bank network showed how bad the situation had become for the lender.

"The emergency window of the ECB ... is very expensive, so it shows that the liquidity situation is very dramatic," the analyst said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

"At some point you run out of unencumbered assets to post at the ECB, and then the only way to fund yourself is via the ELA, which is clearly not a good sign," the analyst said.

Dexia and the central banks of France and Belgium both declined to comment.

The source added that Dexia would try to raise money on markets again after the finalization of a 90 billion euro ($120 billion) guarantee scheme agreed in October by France, Belgium and Luxembourg.

Belgian Finance Minister Didier Reynders said Wednesday that he hoped to reach an agreement with the European Commission about the restructuring plan for Dexia (DEXI.BR) in the coming days.

($1 = 0.7490 euros)

(Additional reporting by Dan Flynn in Paris; Editing by Luke Baker and Will Waterman)

Origin
Source: Huff

10 reasons to oppose Bill C-10

Bill C-10 is titled The Safe Streets and Communities Act — an ironic name, considering that Canada already has some of the safest streets and communities in the world and a declining crime rate. This bill will do nothing to improve that state of affairs but, through its overreach and overreaction to imaginary problems, Bill C-10 could easily make it worse. It could eventually create the very problems it’s supposed to solve.

Bill C-10 will require new prisons; mandate incarceration for minor, non-violent offences; justify poor treatment of inmates and make their reintegration into society more difficult. Texas and California, among other jurisdictions, have already started down this road before changing course, realizing it cost too much and made their justice system worse. Canada is poised to repeat their mistake.

Hundreds of Occupy protesters, union members march in Toronto

The Ontario Federation of Labour will continue supporting the Occupy movement, park or no park.

More than 1,000 union members marched through downtown Toronto Thursday afternoon alongside about 100 Occupy protesters from Toronto, London, Kingston, Hamilton and Ottawa.

“We decided at the (federation) convention to fortify our relationship with Occupy,” said CUPE Ontario president Fred Hahn.

On Thursday morning, a fleet of buses funded by the federation took protesters from cities across the province to Toronto for the rally.

Occupy signs and union flags in hand, union members and protesters gathered outside City Hall and marched through the financial district to the Toronto Stock Exchange, chanting “We are the 99 per cent!”

The Scene. Whatever Joe Oliver and Peter Kent are actually accomplishing in their capacity as ministers of the crown, these two children of the 1940s have at least the basis of a promising buddy comedy.

If memory serves, Mr. Oliver’s first forays were mostly unmemorable. Then, at some point, the Natural Resources Minister started shouting.

Recent weeks have been spent metaphorically shaking his fist at the official opposition and imploring them to get off his metaphorical lawn. He has linked them to Hugo Chavez and “European socialists” and “jet-setting Hollywood stars” and, worst of all, “European bureaucrats.” He has said that their only priority is to protect the interests of “their foreign socialist comrades and billionaire U.S. limousine liberals.” He has accused them of standing in the way of social services for children and health care for the elderly. He has ventured, in the course of a single sentence, that “NDP members have never met a job creating private sector policy or project that they do not want to kill, a tax they do not want to raise, a regulation they do not want to impose, a freedom they do not want to curtail, an issue they do not try to use to divide Canadians, and a fictitious problem they do not want the government to solve at great cost.” One day he concluded his remarks with a cry of “send in the clowns!”

All of this, apparently, because the New Democrats have some reservations about the Keystone pipeline project. And all of it committed to the record in the sort of tone—grumbly and impatient—that is generally employed to advise hippies that they might cut their hair and get a job.

OTTAWA - The Conservative government is ignoring evidence and common sense in dismantling the long-gun registry, says a survivor of the 1989 Montreal massacre.

Nathalie Provost, an engineer who was shot at the Ecole Polytechnique, told the Commons public safety committee Thursday she's watching with a "heavy heart" as the Tories move to scrap the registry.

"Long guns are dangerous. And this I know," Provost told MPs studying a government bill.

The legislation introduced last month would end registration of common rifles and shotguns and permanently delete more than seven million files on gun ownership.

The Tories argue the registration of long guns is wasteful and unnecessary. However, they support the licensing of gun owners and registration of prohibited and restricted weapons such as handguns.

Provost said all guns can be used to do harm.

OTTAWA - Treasury Board President Tony Clement says the drive to cut back government spending could mean axing entire programs.

But at the same time, some will be spared outright, Clement told a Commons committee on Thursday.

"In some cases, the budget may have zero reductions in certain programs because it is deemed that that is the appropriate thing to do and in other cases the reduction could be anywhere form zero per cent to 10 per cent," he said.

"And in some cases, if the program is deemed to be not useful to Canadians the reduction could be 100 per cent."

Clement was asked the question in the context of whether the budget for Veterans Affairs could be spared entirely from the spending review.

That would follow the example set by governments in the U.S., U.K. and Australia which has committed to protecting veterans' departments from budget cuts.

In Canada, Veterans Affairs is already shaving $226 million from its spending, citing a declining number of clients for it to serve.

But Clement wouldn't commit to stopping any further cuts there.

Thanks for What?

I love Thanksgiving for its illusion of abundance. It brings back early childhood memories of the one day each year during the Depression when the food on my family’s table was not the leftover produce that my Uncle Leon could no longer sell at his stall, or the nearly spoiled organ meats that our local butcher offered at a steep discount.

But Thanksgiving day was quite the opposite, and while I obviously can’t recall what was served in 1936, the year I was born, the holiday was soon seared into my childhood memory as the day when the good times looked upon us in the form of charity gift baskets from philanthropists of various religious and political orders, much like the needy will be served today in volunteer kitchens across America and just as soon will be forgotten.

It did not take long before I was old enough to realize that the largesse of Thanksgiving was the rare exception, and that “just getting by,” as my mother’s brave optimism would have it, was the norm. Getting by, thanks to Mom’s piecework in the downtown sweatshops and my mechanic father’s signing on to one of the New Deal’s public jobs programs.

Then came the economic miracle of World War II, dismissed in its day by some Republicans as Franklin Roosevelt’s treachery, and my parents and other relatives got their jobs back. The relevance of the wartime jobs to Thanksgiving in our family was that my Uncle Edward, the welder, was rewarded every year at his plant with one enormous turkey or two smaller ones.

OTTAWA — Canadian workers are failing to keep up with the rising cost of living as real wages continue to fall dramatically, new data from Statistics Canada shows.

The agency reported Thursday that average weekly earnings for non-farm payrolls fell 0.3 per cent in nominal terms in September to $872.75 — when the 3.2 per cent inflation rate for the month is taken into consideration, the drop in real wages was more dramatic.

On a year-over-year basis, the increase in earnings was a mere 1.1 per cent, the lowest level of growth since November 2009.

Average weekly earning gains have been dropping steadily since the spring, when they were as high as 4.1 per cent in April, well above the inflation rate.

With income from investments also soft because of the volatility in equity markets, analysts said it is fair to assume Canadians’ average standard of living is also dropping.

With Black Friday heralding the start of the shopping season, a bevy of groups identified with the Occupy Wall Street movement are asking consumers to reconsider their spending habits.

But unlike other high-profile Occupy efforts of late -- such as last week's march across the Brooklyn Bridge, in which thousands of activists participated, it's unclear whether the pushback against Black Friday shopping will serve as a show of strength for the movement.

"I don't think that they're going to gain any traction out of this one," said Stephen Hoch, a marketing professor at the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania. "If I was them, I wouldn't be investing a whole lot of energy in using this as a poster child for what's wrong with our country."

Black Friday, otherwise known as the day after Thanksgiving, serves as the unofficial start of the November-December holiday shopping corridor, one of the busiest times of year for retailers. About 152 million people are expected to shop this Friday, in what has become an annual tradition of shoppers mobbing stores in the hopes of getting limited-time deals.

Today, a Democracy Now! special with legendary independent filmmaker and author, John Sayles. Over the past three decades, he has directed 17 feature films, including "Return of the Secaucus Seven," "Matewan," "Lone Star," and "Eight Men Out." He has often used his films to tackle pressing political issues, as well as themes of race, class, labor and sexuality. His latest film, "Amigo," which opened in August, is set in the Philippines during the U.S. occupation. Sayles is also a celebrated author. A winner of the O. Henry Award, he recently published his first novel in 20 years. It’s called "A Moment in the Sun," and it is a sprawling work which takes the turn of the 20th century in its sights — from a white racist coup in Wilmington, North Carolina, to the first stirrings of the motion picture industry, to the bloody dawn of U.S. interventionism in Cuba and the Philippines. We spend the hour with Sayles, discussing his work and career. "However small your audience is, however frustrating it is to get your version of the world or what you want to talk about out there, it’s part of the conversation. And if you shut up, the conversation is one-sided," says Sayles.

Video
Source: Democracy Now!

Occupy it forward: what next for Occupy Toronto?

Occupy, as its participants like to say in their gentle, optimistic style, is now “moving into the next phase.”

But it’s a forced evolution, thanks to the drawn-out, dramatic take-down in the mud of St. James Park on Wednesday, November 23. That eviction is the project of a municipal regime ready to intrude on the lives of many more people through service cuts than has the five-week bit of communal activity in a public green space.

The mobilization of green-vested park staff and the extensive police operation we witnessed Wednesday were ostensibly in support of a few dog walkers and a handful of disgruntled restaurant owners, whose rights, it seems, have trumped an urgent appeal for social fairness or what Occupy lawyer Susan Ursel calls “an expression of conscience.”

Not to mention the fact that the contested terrain, on shelter-laden Jarvis, has long been a haven for the dispossessed. If you’re looking for a sense of proportion, don’t seek it here.

Debate erupts over resource-intensive G20 undercover operation

One day after six people pleaded guilty to encouraging vandalism at last year’s G20 summit, the undercover operation that made the case has touched off a debate about whether such resource-intensive tactics were worthwhile.

Two police officers infiltrated activist communities in Southern Ontario for a year and a half to glean intelligence about the group’s plans for the summit, employing techniques used to bust biker gangs and terrorist networks.

Lawyers and criminologists say the case should be subject to civilian oversight to ensure the money spent on it – hundreds of hours of officers’ time courting activists, buying them beer and ferrying them to meetings – was warranted and determine if similar investigations should be approved.

Constables Brenda Carey and Bindo Showan befriended anarchists in Guelph and Kitchener, reporting their plans to an RCMP-led Joint Intelligence Group monitoring threats to the G20. Constable Carey also wore a wire to the group’s final planning meeting.

Canada Child Exploitation, Senate Committee Says, Needs National Strategy

OTTAWA - The federal government needs to take the lead in fighting child exploitation in Canada starting with a national databank on the problem, a Senate committee said Thursday.

"Canadian children who are being sexually exploited, or are at risk of being sexually exploited, do not all have sufficient access to the services that could help them," the committee wrote in a report prepared after two years of study.

"Those currently working to help these children could benefit from co-ordinated efforts and shared expertise. The Government of Canada could show leadership in this area by facilitating the sharing of experiences and best practices amongst various stakeholders."

Members of the Senate human rights committee unanimously renewed an unheeded call from 2007 to name a parliamentary Children's Commissioner to represent the interests of the country's youngest and most vulnerable citizens.

That commissioner would ensure the government was taking effective steps to follow and address such issues as child abuse, child prostitution and child pornography, and make sure Canada was fulfilling its duties under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Pickton investigators were indifferent, Mountie says

A high-profile Mountie who recently came forward with allegations of sexual harassment in the RCMP has now made sensational new claims about the investigation of serial killer Robert Pickton.

Cpl. Catherine Galliford told CBC News earlier this month about abusive treatment inside the national police force, including sexual advances from several senior officers.

Galliford was the RCMP's spokeswoman during the Robert Pickton investigation and is scheduled to speak at the ongoing inquiry into the case, and told CBC News some of what she will reveal at the inquiry.

Galliford says she saw numerous problems inside the investigation, including investigators who were more interested in padding their paycheques and drinking alcohol than catching a serial killer.

"They would break between noon and 2 p.m. PT to just drink and party and go for lunch, but then they would go back to work on Friday and claim double-time," she said Wednesday.

The economic downturn bruised all types of workers – but some were hit harder than others.

Employment levels among aboriginal people tumbled further and declined over a longer period of time than among the non-aboriginal work force through the downturn.

A Statistics Canada paper released Wednesday paints a troubling picture for a demographic group that faced much higher-than-average jobless rates even before the recession.

It found the gaps in employment, unemployment and participation rates widened between aboriginal and non-aboriginal people over two years. By last year, the aboriginal jobless rate hit 12.3 per cent, compared with 6.8-per-cent among non-aboriginals.

“We should be concerned. Why? Because we are dealing already with some pretty horrific socio-economic gaps,” said Kelly Lendsay, president and CEO of the Saskatoon-based Aboriginal Human Resources Council, who is of Métis descent.

Seventy thousand teaching jobs. More than one billion in Title I grants to disadvantaged school districts. Nearly 900 million in funding for special education students.

All these and more K-12 educational expenditures will be axed smack in the middle of the 2012-2013 school year -- barring an act of Congress that would prevent the automatic, across-the-board cuts set by this summer's debt deal from going into effect, according to the National Education Association.

These cuts became one step closer to reality when the 12-member congressional super committee's admitted Monday that it had failed to reach an agreement on trimming $1.2 trillion from the deficit.

And the triggered cuts will feel all the worse because they'll be widening still-open wounds of state-level cuts. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 37 states are providing less funding per-student this year than last. In 17 states, these funding levels are as much as 10 percent lower.

NEW YORK -- In the two months since its inception in a small park in lower Manhattan, the Occupy Wall Street movement has spread from coast to coast, inspiring hundreds of like-minded encampments and demonstrations in city centers and college campuses.

But while the vast majority of demonstrators have hewed consistently to a non-violent ethos, the tactics of law enforcement have been anything but uniform. From jurisdiction to jurisdiction, official responses have varied from paramilitary style crackdowns to peaceful accommodation.

In Oakland, Calif., riot-gear clad police officers cleared demonstrators from their encampment using rubber bullets and tear gas grenades, gravely wounding an Iraq war veteran in the process. At the University of California at Davis, campus police doused the faces of seated protesters with pepper spray at close range, in an incident that quickly went viral after video of the event appeared online.

Occupy Y'all Street: OWS Movement Takes Shape In Gainesville

GAINESVILLE, Fla. -- Ed Speanburgh is nearly inconsolable, sitting on a bench in the middle of Occupy Gainesville's encampment. It's his laptop. A fellow Occupier stepped on the power cord and broke the input.

Speanburgh runs Occupy Gainesville's livestream and needs his laptop to work. He is unemployed. He also needs his laptop to look for work.

Speanburgh, 42, does not want to talk to a pair of reporters who have parachuted into the quiet center of Occupy Gainesville from Washington, D.C., for the first leg of a nearly week-long road trip through occupy sites in the South -- what we've been calling "Occupy Y'All Street", an effort to capture the Dixie wing of the movement that has so far largely gone unnoticed as the media focus on high-profile police encounters on the east and west coasts.

Speanburgh says he has a truck -- but he hasn't made payments on it in six months. He has a townhouse, 20 miles away, past the University of Florida -- but he is days from losing it, and has no electricity or running water. So, he lives on donated Occupy Gainesville meals -- and his neighbor's tap water.

Democracy gone Astray