Democracy gone Astray: Tuesday, December 13, 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.]

Tuesday, December 13, 2011

Vaughan backs embattled Environment Canada scientists

Canada’s environment commissioner stood by the embattled scientists at Environment Canada in a report released Tuesday, praising their “long record of accomplishments” and highlighting concerns about how the government is treating them.

Environment Commissioner Scott Vaughan noted that Environment Canada is one of the few organizations with the capacity to carry out credible, long-term environmental research and monitoring at the national level, in the public interest. His audit concluded it produces high-quality work.

“We found that Environment Canada’s systems and practices to ensure the quality of its science activities are consistent with those generally used in the scientific community,” Vaughan said.

He praised the department’s environmental monitoring in particular, which provides Canadians with information about local weather, air and water quality and the ecology of national parks.

“Environmental monitoring is necessary to know whether the quality of our environment is getting better or worse,” Vaughan said. “The information the government collects serves many users, including municipal planners, resource managers, and Canadian families.”

Transport Canada, Energy Board told to clean up their acts

Transport Canada and the National Energy Board stand accused of multiple shortcomings in the transportation of dangerous substances in a new report from Canada’s environment commissioner.

Scott Vaughan found Transport Canada does not have a consistent approach to planning and implementing compliance activities, and the National Energy Board has yet to review emergency-procedure manuals for 39 per cent of regulated companies.

Both bodies have undertaken limited followup to correct deficiencies in their records, and must make improvements to reduce the risk and effects of accidents, Vaughan concluded in the year-end report released Tuesday.

“Good oversight of regulatory compliance is necessary to protect public safety and the environment,” he said.

Transport Canada is responsible for regulating the shipment of such dangerous products as industrial acids and petroleum by road, rail, air and ship; the National Energy Board regulates the flow of oil and gas through 71,000 kilometres of pipelines.

Canada's decision to withdraw from the Kyoto protocol is "bad news" for global efforts against climate change, the French foreign ministry said on Tuesday.

"Canada's announcement that it is withdrawing from the Kyoto protocol is bad news for the fight against climate change," ministry spokesman Bernard Valero told journalists.

"It is out of the question to relax our efforts or to break the dynamic of the Durban agreement," he said.

Canada on Monday became the first country to declare it was formally exiting the pact, a reversal that will save it billions of dollars in fines, and poured scorn on the landmark treaty for hampering attempts to tackle pollution.

But the decision provoked heavy criticism, including from China which said the move went against international efforts to combat climate change.

Canada's decision follows a deal reached in Durban this month to create a roadmap that will for the first time bring all major greenhouse-gas emitters under a single legal roof. If approved as scheduled in 2015, it will become operational in 2020.

Canada agreed under the Kyoto Protocol to reduce CO2 emissions to 6.0 percent below 1990 levels by 2012, but its emissions of the gases blamed for damaging Earth's fragile climate system have instead increased sharply.

The landmark pact reached in 1997 is the only global treaty that sets down targeted curbs in global emissions.

But those curbs apply only to rich countries, excluding the United States - which has refused to ratify the accord.

Origin
Source: Canada.com

Indefinite Military Detention: Revised Defense Bill Still Gives President Authority To Lock Up Citizens

WASHINGTON -- Congress would give the president ultimate authority to detain American citizens indefinitely in military custody under the final version of a defense bill expected to pass this week.

The National Defense Authorization Act was facing the threat of a presidential veto after the White House complained that it restricted the administration's ability to fight terrorism and raised "serious and unsettled legal questions." The conference committee working out the differences between the Senate and House versions of the bill added and amended several provisions in an attempt to produce legislation that would pass muster with President Barack Obama, who appealed personally for fixes.

But the version released Monday night still contains the authority to indefinitely imprison suspects linked to al Qaeda or associated groups, including citizens captured in the United States.

"We have [in the bill] the authority to detain without charge or trial terrorism suspects," said Raha Wala, a lawyer with the Law and Security Program of the group Human Rights First. "There aren't any material changes to the indefinite detention provision," he said in a conference call organized by the progressive National Security Network.

Dramatic and unprecedented plumes of methane – a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide – have been seen bubbling to the surface of the Arctic Ocean by scientists undertaking an extensive survey of the region.

The scale and volume of the methane release has astonished the head of the Russian research team who has been surveying the seabed of the East Siberian Arctic Shelf off northern Russia for nearly 20 years.

In an exclusive interview with The Independent, Igor Semiletov, of the Far Eastern branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, said that he has never before witnessed the scale and force of the methane being released from beneath the Arctic seabed.

"Earlier we found torch-like structures like this but they were only tens of metres in diameter. This is the first time that we've found continuous, powerful and impressive seeping structures, more than 1,000 metres in diameter. It's amazing," Dr Semiletov said. "I was most impressed by the sheer scale and high density of the plumes. Over a relatively small area we found more than 100, but over a wider area there should be thousands of them."

Over the past three years, lawmakers on the House Oversight and Government Reform committee have investigated bonuses and executive pay at companies that benefited from billions in taxpayer dollars: Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, AIG and others bailed out after the 2008 financial crisis.

Now, Democrats on the committee have turned their attention to another industry whose fortunes are closely tied to federal money: for-profit colleges.

Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), the ranking member on the House oversight committee, has requested executive compensation information this week from 13 Wall Street corporations that own for-profit colleges. According to letters he sent to the companies' executives Monday, Cummings is seeking information on how what he termed "lavish" executive pay at college corporations is tied to the quality of education and student performance at such schools.

"When compared to public and non-profit schools, for-profit companies spend a smaller percentage of their funds on student education, reserving more for marketing, advertising, recruitment and other non education expenses," Cummings said. "Their student success rates are lower, and their students are more likely to default on loans. But their CEOs consistently make much more than their counterparts at public and non-profit schools."

Canada's prison ombudsman gave up on free needle exchanges this week, and a senior justice adviser slammed the federal government for taking Canada backward on crime. They were separate events, but they reflect the frustration that many reform-minded people working in justice and corrections surely feel these days. Canada is heading to that awful place that the United States has just inhabited for 20 years – a place of longer and longer prison sentences, of a futile “war on drugs,” of mandatory minimum sentences for nearly everything (including six months for growing as few as five marijuana plants) that remove judges' discretion. The financial and social costs in the U.S. were incalculable, and just as the U.S. is coming to its senses, Canada is losing its own.

David Daubney, a justice-department adviser, could have gone quietly into retirement. Instead, he tried to talk some sense back into this country. Prison overcrowding will worsen and breed violence, he told The Globe's Kirk Makin in an exit interview. The tough-on-crime route has been tried and failed. The government knows what it knows, doesn't listen to evidence and is reluctant to ask for research to be undertaken.

“The policy is based on fear – fear of criminals and fear of people who are different. I do not think these harsh views are deeply held.” It's a good point. A new poll shows that 93 per cent of Canadians feel safe from crime. Why, then, spend billions of dollars to go backward?

Cancelling Transit City in favour of Toronto Mayor Rob Ford's subway-focused plan will cost $65 million, TTC general manager Gary Webster says.

The Toronto Transit Commission's chief used the figure � which is $16 million more than the previous number cited � during the city's budget committee meeting on Tuesday.

Bruce McCuaig, CEO of the regional transportation agency Metrolinx, said in March the city would be liable for about $49 million in penalties, but said that number was likely to rise.

The province announced earlier this year that the province would support an Eglinton light rail line underground, effectively killing former mayor David Miller's Transit City plan.

When he took office last December, Ford said he would scrap Transit City because it would run at street-level and obstruct traffic.

Coun. Adam Vaughan, a frequent Ford critic, said he didn't understand the mayor's thinking, especially given the 2012 spending cuts that council has been debating.

"We turn around to the children and say, 'Sorry, you're not going to get rec programs, you're not going to get a breakfast program, the library won't be open necessarily when you go to use it,' " he said. "And yet the mayor's priority is to spend $65 million on a handshake with no input from any staff or any of the other councillors. $65 million? Just to cancel stuff?"

Council Doug Ford, the mayor's brother, countered that Torontonians want subways and the cancellation fees are worth the cost.

One change in the mayor's plan replaces a $950-million light rail extension on Sheppard that would have been built eastward from Don Mills station with a subway extension pegged at $4.2 billion.

Origin
Source: Huff

Ottawa’s pension liabilities understated by $80-billion, report says

The federal government is understating the liability for its employee pension plans by $80-billion because it does not use “real world” investment returns in its calculation, a new report says.

A C.D. Howe Institute study has concluded that the federal liability for pension plans now totals $227-billion, which is $80-billion more than the government reports in its Public Accounts.

“Ottawa’s calculations do not reflect investment returns available in the real world,” says co-author William Robson, chief executive officer of the C.D. Howe Institute.

The report, which updates a similar analysis released last year, argues that Ottawa uses unrealistic assumptions in its accounting that could not be used by private-sector companies.

One of the figures Ottawa uses to determine its pension liability is a moving average of past “nominal” yields on 20-year federal bonds, while the other is an assumed return on investments of 4.2 per cent based on averages earned since 2000.

Bob Rae says the Conservative government has been playing with power while ramming through an agenda “that can only be described as ideological” and Canadians should worry that their own rights will be trampled along with parliamentary democracy.

“This is a government that is marked by excessive partisanship, a narrow-minded ideology, an attempt to control the agenda of Parliament without consultation, without discussion,” the Interim Liberal Leader told reporters Tuesday at a news conference to mark the end of the fall sitting.

Instead of the economy, Prime Minister Stephen Harper has focused on issues of secondary interest to Canadians like dismantling the Wheat Board, Mr. Rae said, also lambasting the government’s omnibus crime bill and its decision to withdrawn from the Kyoto Accord on climate change.

In addition, he said, the Prime Minister has done nothing to condemn calls by Conservatives to people in the Montreal riding of MP Irwin Cotler, which falsely informed voters the veteran Liberal was preparing to leave politics and a by-election would be called. The Tories explained that their actions were just part of free speech.

This is “a government that does not even condemn the deliberate falsification of information being given to people in telephone calls directed into a riding, a government that is not even capable of understanding how wrong that is, but just says ‘oh well, everybody does it, it’s fine, it’s okay,’” Mr. Rae fumed.

The Conservative government is putting the provinces on notice that Ottawa plans to shrink the rate of growth in health transfers.

As Finance Minister Jim Flaherty prepares to meet his provincial and territorial counterparts Monday in Victoria, signals continue to pile up that Ottawa will not keep increasing transfers by 6 per cent a year beyond the 2015-16 fiscal year.

Since 2004, provinces and territories have enjoyed a 10-year funding arrangement in which health transfers from Ottawa grew by 6 per cent annually. The federal Conservatives promised this year to continue that rate for an additional two years, but were mum on what arrangement would follow.

A government official noted Tuesday that federal health transfers to the provinces under the Conservatives has grown from $19-billion to $27-billion this year.

“We will continue to increase funding for health care in a way that is balanced and sustainable,” said the official, noting that any future arrangement will not lead to cuts in annual spending on health transfers.

Canada's Kyoto withdrawal called an ‘act of sabotage’

BEIJING- China and Japan said on Tuesday Canada's decision to quit the Kyoto treaty on greenhouse gas emissions was “regrettable” and called on it to continue abiding by its commitments on climate change.

On Monday, Canada became the first country to announce it would withdraw from the Kyoto Protocol. Canada, a major energy producer, has long complained that the agreement is unworkable because it excludes many significant emitters from binding action.

China, the world's biggest emitter of greenhouse gases from human activity, has long insisted the Kyoto Protocol remain a foundation of global efforts to curb these emissions causing global warming.

At recently concluded climate change negotiations in Durban, China won an extension of the protocol until 2017, but also bowed to pressure to launch later talks for a new pact that would legally oblige all the big emitters to take action.

“It is regrettable and flies in the face of the efforts of the international community for Canada to leave the Kyoto Protocol at a time when the Durban meeting, as everyone knows, made important progress by securing a second phase of commitment to the Protocol,” China's Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Weimin said at a news briefing.

Feds fail to follow up safety violations, says environment audit

When it comes to shipping dangerous chemicals on highways and railroads and pumping millions of litres of oil and gas across the country, Ottawa’s record of cracking down on companies that violate safety standards leaves a lot to be desired.

That’s just one of the many findings made by federal Environment Commissioner Scott Vaughan in a damning report tabled to Parliament Tuesday.

The report documents a series of problems across Transport Canada, the National Energy Board, and Environment Canada, including a failure to enforce safety regulations and a lack of required training for inspectors. But the most common problem among the departments is a lack of follow-up after violations have been discovered.

“Inspectors find problems and deficiencies, but they don’t know whether these problems have been corrected,” Vaughan said Tuesday. “Canadians would certainly be better protected if these regulations were enforced correctly.”

In his audit of Transport Canada, Vaughan and his team examined 49 compliance reports for inspections done between 2008 and 2010. Inspectors found violations in more than half, including problems with containers used to transport dangerous goods, and missing warning labels. Despite the identification of these problems, there was no evidence of any corrective action taken by Transport Canada in most cases.

Europe trashed: The coming austerity implosion is a scary precedent

World leaders are doing their best to provoke a global economic downturn of epic proportions. Of course, it is politically hazardous for leaders to admit this. Democratic accountability can be inconvenient when leaders are obsessed with imposing economic austerity policies.

The new Euro area agreement provides political cover for these unpopular measures. To appease financial markets, European leaders have submitted to the "new fiscal rule," a pledge to keep government budgets balanced or in surplus.

This new fiscal rule will have the force of law. Countries are required to enshrine this new fiscal rule in their national level constitutions.

If a country is in violation of the new fiscal rule, coercive measures can be taken. These countries will be subjected to the ominous "excessive deficit procedure," a structural adjustment program reminiscent of the IMF-style policies imposed on developing countries. These are the sort of austerity measures that have been sending desperate Greeks into the streets.

This fiscal compact is all about appeasing financial markets. They are worried that European banks loaned too much to some European countries. Might we point out that banks decided to lend to European countries? No one put a gun to their heads. But now banks want reassurance that they won't suffer much as a result of their own business decisions. Banks want assurances that their sovereign debt exposure will be made more palatable to financial markets

Some Attawapiskat residents at odds with chief

Some residents of Attawapiskat First Nations support the government's plan to put the reserve under third-party management, a move strongly opposed by the chief and band council.

"I think it would be a good thing. We need to clean up our financial crisis here in Attawapiskat because it's been like this too long now," Greg Shisheesh, a former deputy chief of the reserve, told CBC News in a phone interview.

"I was happy to hear the federal government was stepping in to clean the mess up."

Shisheesh, who said he has lived on the reserve all his life, said he believes a forensic audit should be conducted on a number of organizations on the reserve, including the band office and economic development office.

"If our leaders have nothing to hide, by all means do it."

Climate theatre of the absurd

No matter where you stand on climate change, there’s one thing on which we can probably agree. The “breakthrough” deal hammered out in Durban is completely meaningless. No carbon dioxide emissions will be cut because of it. All they agreed to do was keep on talking about a framework for a deal you can be sure will never happen.

For some people, this is too much reality to bear. Thomas Homer-Dixon, writing on The Globe’s website, says we should be “ashamed” by our inaction on the climate. “The lies are starting to corrupt our civilization from inside out,” he wrote.

Yet there was never any likelihood that anything would happen at Durban. It was an elaborate exercise in process, mounted by bureaucrats who’ve staked their livelihoods on denying that the parrot is really dead. Any hope for global action expired in the wreckage of Copenhagen, when the Chinese sucker-punched Barack Obama. It’s unlikely he’ll come back for more.

The key thing to understand about the climate talks is that they’re not really about the climate. They’re about power and money. They are about the desire of fast-growing emitters such as Brazil, South Africa, India and China to extract billions in so-called climate reparations from rich countries, especially the United States. These and other so-called developing countries now account for more than half of greenhouse gas emissions. They want the rich countries to start cutting large amounts of carbon right away, while they do nothing. The rich countries are understandably reluctant. Hence the impasse.

Jean Chrétien is warning Liberals that gun control and the Kyoto accord are dead because of Stephen Harper’s Tories, darkly noting that same-sex marriage and abortion rights could be next on the Conservative government’s chopping block. He even raises the return of the death penalty as a possibility.

“Unless we are bold. Unless we seize the moment. Everything we built will start being chipped away,” the former prime minister writes in a toughly-worded fundraising letter. “The Conservatives have already ended gun control and Kyoto. Next may be a woman’s right to choose, or gay marriage. Then might come capital punishment. And one by one, the values we cherish as Canadians will be gone.”

This new Liberal fundraising effort hits some hot button issues – it doesn’t end there.

Mr. Chrétien notes that he was first elected in 1963 when there was no medicare or Canada Pension Plan, Canadian flag or Charter of Rights. Nor was there a Clarity Act – which his government brought in to define the rules around holding a referendum should Quebec contemplate separation.

Mythology: Ford Nation, one year later

Like any myth, the power is in the repetition.

And so it is with Ford Nation, that legendary block of voters who elected maverick city councillor Rob Ford mayor of Toronto just a year ago and are presumed to be so loyal, all he has to do is beckon and they’ll turn into political attack dogs.

Ford Nation has been written about and repeated so often, many observers accept it as a reflection of reality, rather than a political invention.

During the Ontario provincial election this Fall, the idea of Ford Nation mushroomed into a political threat. Prime Minister Stephen Harper mused about the potential of a Conservative ‘hat trick’ in the backyard of a Ford summer barbecue party. Rob Ford himself was quoted as threatening to ‘sic Ford Nation’ on the Liberal provincial government.

With the provincial election now behind us and Toronto voters having revealed Ford Nation had no coat tails on which to ride, it would appear the political invention is starting to unravel.

Ford’s own popularity has plummeted, according to a Forum Research poll, which pegged the mayor’s public support at 42 per cent, down from 60 per cent in late February.

Obama insists on indefinite detention of Americans

Think that President Obama will stand by his word and veto the legislation that will allow the government to detain American citizens without charge or trial? Think again.

The Obama administration has insisted that the president will veto the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012, a bill that passed through the Senate last week. Under the legislation, the United States of America is deemed a battlefield and Americans suspected of committing a terrorism offense can be held without trial and tortured indefinitely. Despite the grave consequences for citizens and the direct assault on the US Constitution, the act managed to make it through both halves of Congress but President Obama says he won’t let it become a law.

According to Senator Carl Levin, however, Americans should be a bit more concerned about what the president’s actual intentions are. Levin, who sits on the Armed Services Committee as chairman, has revealed to Congress that the Obama administration influenced the wording of the act and shot down text that would have saved American citizens from the indefinite imprisonment and suspension of habeas corpus.

Senator Levin told Congress recently that under the original wording of the National Defense Authorization Act, American citizens were excluded from the provision that allowed for detention. Once Obama’s officials saw the text though, says Levin, “the administration asked us to remove the language which says that US citizens and lawful residents would not be subject to this section.”

Specifically, the section that Obama asked to be reworded was Section 1031 of the NDAA FY2012, which says that "any person who has committed a belligerent act" could be held indefinitely.

“It was the administration that asked us to remove the very language which we had in the bill which passed the committee…we removed it at the request of the administration,” said Levin. “It was the administration which asked us to remove the very language the absence of which is now objected to.”

John Wood of Change.org writes that President Obama proposed a veto of Section 1032 of the NDAA, which does not pertain to the detention of American citizens. Rather, that section deals with the use of the US military in taking custody of suspected criminals. Section 1031, which actually deals with the indefinite imprisonment of Americans, remains not only unopposed by the Obama administration, but the president has made sure that the law specifically includes Americans, urging Congress to redraft the legislation with increasingly confusing wording that makes the legalization detrimental to America.

President Obama could sign off on the legislation as early as this December 13 if he chooses not to exercise his veto power. The bill, which includes budgetary provisions for the US military, comes at a price-tag several billion dollars cheaper than the president had asked for of Congress.

Origin

Source: RT

For-Profit Colleges Evade Stricter Rules By Courting Powerful Allies In Washington

Cass Sunstein, President Obama's top regulatory czar, said a parade of for-profit college lobbyists and executives who marched through his office last spring had nothing to do with the administration's eventual weakening of regulations on the industry.

"The haranguing had zero effect," Sunstein told The New York Times, referring to the year-long lobbying blitz by the for-profit college industry, which fought a relentless campaign to stave off consumer protection regulations and maintain access to billions of dollars in federal subsidies.

But it's difficult to swallow Sunstein's message, given the all-star cast of lobbyists and advisers hired to pressure the administration to weaken the rules. Among those brought to bear in the fight this spring were Anita Dunn, a former White House communications director for Obama who helped craft messaging for Kaplan University, a subsidiary of the Washington Post Co., and Jamie Rubin, a major fundraising organizer for Obama's re-election campaign, who met with the administration about ATI, a Dallas-based college corporation.

Other Democratic power brokers who got involved included former House Leader Dick Gephardt and Tony Podesta, the brother of Obama administration transition leader John Podesta. In a piece this weekend, the Times built on and lent credence to a series of in-depth reports done by The Huffington Post over the course of the past year that tracked how for-profit colleges have cultivated relationships in Washington by spending liberally on lobbyists and campaign contributions on both sides of the aisle, in an effort to evade stricter government oversight.

The regulations crafted by the Obama administration intended to answer a central question: Are students who attend for-profit or vocational college programs being adequately set up for careers that will allow them to pay off student debts? As originally drafted in 2010, the rules would have quickly cut off federal student aid going to programs that leave students with outsized debts and meager wages after leaving the institution.

After raising greenhouse gas emissions by 20 percent over the past two decades -- that's four times faster than the United States's rate -- Canada is abandoning its commitment to the Kyoto Protocol.The country's environment minister Peter Kent made the announcement on Monday, making Canada the first country to formally renounce the agreement to curb global warming. Believe it or not, he blamed both China and the U.S. for his country's change of heart. "The Kyoto Protocol does not cover the world’s largest two emitters, United States and China, and therefore cannot work," Kent said during a gathering of negotiators from 200 countries in South Africa over the weekend. "It’s now clear that Kyoto is not the path forward to a global solution to climate change. If anything it’s an impediment."

Kent's comments must sound hypocritical to some. On Sunday, the CBC News's Robert Sheppard acknowledged that China did present a problem to the Kyoto Protocol's hope to succeed but argued that Canada wasn't without fault. Despite its original commitment to reducing carbon dioxide emissions by 5.2 percent from 1990 to 2012, Canada's COS levels had actually risen about 20 percent by 2010, as Yes Magazine's Brooke Jarvis pointed out on Twitter. During the same time period, the U.S. CO2 emissions rose by a comparatively paltry 5 percent. Which brings us to Canada's optics problem. Sheppard explains:

When the former Liberal government signed on to Kyoto, perhaps naively, in 1997, it was with an eye to getting the then ultra-consuming U.S. on board as well. But our commitment became caught up in domestic politics and we essentially bobbed and weaved to the point where it is now hard to know where we really stand on emissions control. …
It's a legitimate argument: China needs to step up. But how do you make it with a straight face when you haven't come anywhere close to meeting your own international obligations and you also want to turn around and sell China as much oil sands petroleum as it is willing to take.

The Associated Press notes that Canada has the world's third largest oil reserve, behind Saudi Arabia and Venezuela. Just saying.

Origin
Source: the Atlantic Wire

Occupy Wall Street Plans a Second New York Encampment

This Saturday will be the one-month anniversary of the massive protest that followed Occupy Wall Street's eviction from Zuccotti Park (and four months since Occupy Wall Street began), and to mark it the protesters plan to occupy another space in Lower Manhattan. The new encampment, planned for Duarte Square at Canal and Varick streets, picks up where a group of protesters left off on Nov. 15, the day Zuccotti got raided. They plan to have a big rally with musical acts, then they say they'll enter the privately owned park and set up a new Occupy camp.

If you remember, sometime after they left Zuccotti the morning of Nov. 15 and before they were allowed back in sans tents in the evening, a group of protesters marched up to Duarte and broke in, pledging to set up camp there. Cops quickly forced them out, arresting several (including a few photographers and reporters), but they've been plotting a return to the site ever since. Occupy has been unsuccessfully pressuring Trinity Church, which owns the property, to let them camp there. Now they plan to go in without permission in an action they're calling Re-Occupy. "We’ll make them decide whether they’re a real estate organization or a church, a place of sanctuary, said Patrick Bruner, an Occupy spokesman.

The plan is to hold rally with "big-name musical acts" to attract a crowd, Occupy organizer Mark Bray said. But he wouldn't say which bands they were booking. "I don’t think any of them have been made public yet." Once they amass enough people, they plan to enter the fenced-off patch of land, which is about the same size as Zuccotti. They're bringing tents, kitchen supplies, the library, and all the other accoutrements recognizable from the occupation of Zuccotti.

JERUSALEM -- Israel's president says he is "ashamed" that lawmakers are trying to pass a string of bills he regards as undemocratic.

Shimon Peres' comments break with the presidential custom of maintaining silence on political issues.

In an interview with the Yediot Ahronot daily published Tuesday, Peres singled out bills that would slash funding to dovish groups, silence Muslim calls to prayer and tighten a defamation law in a way that could hobble investigative reports.

Peres said he was "personally ashamed that they are trying to pass those laws." The president's office says he was accurately quoted.

Supporters say the proposed legislation is a bulwark against attempts to undermine Israel's legitimacy. Critics see them as muzzling dissent.

Origin
Source: Huff

Occupy Shuts Down West Coast Ports

The first phase of Monday's Occupy Oakland-led West Coast port shutdown was, by protesters' accounts, a success: Port terminals were shut down in Oakland and in Longview, Washington—the site of an ongoing contract fight with a subsidiary of agribusiness giant Bunge. In Long Beach, San Diego, and Vancouver, attempts to shut down the respective ports were less successful, with protesters blocking access to the three ports for about an hour before police forced them to disperse. Police arrested five demonstrators in San Diego and at least two in Long Beach.

In Oakland, protesters exchanged heated words with angry port truckers who were anxious to be paid. Members of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) didn't lose any pay but their leadership had spoken out in opposition to the shutdown.

At one blockade, a trucker sparred verbally with a protester as the two recorded videos of each other. The trucker called the protesters "hooligans" who were hurting the working class. Nearby, a union electrical worker laughed and called protesters "morons."

NSCAD University, one of Canada's oldest and most revered art schools, faces an uncertain future this week as it struggles to stay afloat financially, having already watched Queen's University suspend enrolments to its fine arts program last month over a lack of resources.

The storied but cash-strapped Nova Scotia College of Art and Design awaits the final draft of a report to government on ways to slash its ongoing deficits. For months, the province has publicly entertained thoughts of merging NSCAD with another university as a way of trimming costs – something the college's community has vehemently opposed.

NSCAD officials and faculty are increasingly optimistic the report, authored by former provincial deputy minister Howard Windsor, will leave the university independent, thanks partly to doubts about whether a merger would actually save money. But with no new funding expected, there are hard choices ahead about how to cut spending without harming the quality of the costly studio-based education that has groomed such nationally renowned graduates as conceptual sculptor Micah Lexier and multimedia artist Kelly Mark. Sarah McLachlan attended for a time, and Joseph Beuys, Michael Snow and Joyce Wieland have lectured there.

The NSCAD community has rallied to argue that its freedom is central to nurturing its smart, spirited culture of experimentation – the “mix of head, hands and heart” that has defined it, says Karin Cope, an associate professor who has helped spearhead the response.

Plan to cut sodium in foods nixed by Ottawa

Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq refused to accept a proposed federal-provincial sodium-reduction plan that highlighted regulations and the independent monitoring of the food industry to reduce the amount of sodium in processed foods.

The plan, prepared by federal and provincial health officials and obtained exclusively by Postmedia News, was set to be released along-side a joint childhood obesity report last month at the health ministers' meeting in Halifax.

But when Aglukkaq refused to endorse the sodium report, it had to be withdrawn, though the provinces still plan to reach an agreement among themselves on its measures.

Ottawa will not be a partner to the plan.

"This is an unfortunate and significant change," a senior health official familiar with discussions at the health ministers' meeting told Postmedia News.

"One can speculate about why the federal government would not agree to releasing the report - especially after originally agreeing to partner on reducing sodium consumption in Canada - but the consensus opinion is that the federal government is not willing to regulate or take a strong approach with the food industry. You can see the report from the joint sodium working group recommends just that," the senior official said.

The joint report reiterates the commitment made by the provincial, territorial and federal health ministers at their 2010 meeting to reduce the average daily sodium intake of Canadians by about a third by 2016.

OTTAWA — About 400 Fisheries and Oceans employees across Canada are to receive letters from managers Monday informing them their jobs will be affected as the department rolls out reductions from last year’s strategic review.

The written notices are going to employees who work in the seven regions where the department operates. More than 200 of those receiving notices are biologists and other scientists and the vast majority work outside the capital in areas of ocean management, fish habitat management, hydrography and aquaculture. Another 39 positions are being cut from the Coast Guard following a re-organization.

It’s unclear how many of those “affected” will end up losing their jobs. Officials from one of the unions representing workers say they are braced for between 150 and 280 jobs to permanently disappear. Cutting jobs in the regions is always a dicey political decision compared to slashing jobs in Ottawa where job growth outpaced the regions over the decade.

Gary Corbett, president of the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada, said he’s disappointed at the timing of the notices comes so close to Christmas, but fears these cuts are just the beginning.

The Harper government’s decision to withdraw from the Kyoto Protocol tarnishes Canada before the world. Liberal and Conservative incompetence and mendacity are to blame. You and I are to blame. And Lehman Brothers had something to do with it as well.

It isn’t easy for a country to descend, in the space of a single decade, from crusader to pariah, as Canada has done on the environment. But our political leaders were up to the task.

The first, worst mistake occurred at Kyoto itself in 1997, when then prime minister Jean Chrétien told Canadian negotiators to meet or beat the American commitment, whatever it took. The problem was that while the American commitment was ambitious, Bill Clinton never expected the Senate to ratify that commitment, and he was right.

The Liberals found themselves stuck with Draconian targets that, if met, would hobble oil sands production, hammer big industry in Ontario, and send home-heating bills through the roof. Their solution was to study the issue. And study. I remember sitting through an interminable briefing in 2003, in which officials patiently explained how Canada would meet its Kyoto targets. The only problem was that there was this enormous gap, which was to be closed through “future reductions.” It was like having a household budget in which Miscellaneous was bigger than Mortgage.

The PMO says in a “typical week” Cabinet ministers participate in 60 media interviews, but today’s federal government communications is tightly and centrally controlled, a feat facilitated by the approximately 1,500 communications staff currently working in departmental and ministerial offices across Canada, and Hill journalists say they continue to be frustrated by the decreased access to Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his Cabinet ministers even after nearly six years in power.

The Hill Times called the offices of every Cabinet minister and minister of state over eight days to try to speak, on the phone, with a communications staffer about how their minister engages with the Parliamentary Press Gallery media. Of the 38 Cabinet ministers and ministers of state, only nine offices responded to The Hill Times’ request for a phone discussion about media access to the minister—that’s less than one quarter. But of those nine, only seven responded meaningfully to The Hill Times’ questions.

Communications staff in the offices of Senate Government Leader Marjory LeBreton, Government House Leader Peter Van Loan (York-Simcoe, Ont.), Chief Government Whip Gordon O’Connor (Carleton-Mississippi Mills, Ont.), Minister of State for Seniors Alice Wong (Richmond, B.C.), Minister of State for Western Economic Diversification Lynne Yelich (Blackstrap, Sask.), Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq (Nunavut) and Minister of State for Small Business and Tourism Maxime Bernier (Beauce, Que.) all discussed media accessibility, providing specific times, topics, and news outlets they did interviews with.

CBC ombudsman reviewing Ford-911 stories

The CBC’s ombudsman is reviewing “CBC online, radio and television reports concerning 911 distress calls made by Toronto Mayor Rob Ford.”

Kirk LaPointe quietly announced his look at the broadcaster’s coverage of Ford’s 911 calls at the end of a recent blog entry.

Around 8 a.m. on Oct. 24, Mary Walsh of CBC satire show 22 Minutes appeared in Ford’s Etobicoke driveway as her character “Marg Delahunty,” who, clad in warrior garb, ambushes politicians with jokes.

In video later broadcast, Ford appeared to be smiling but refused to speak to her and retreated into his house, where he twice called 911 demanding police be dispatched to make Walsh and her camera operator leave.

Later that week, CBC cited anonymous police sources in reporting that Ford yelled at one dispatcher: “You ... bitches! Don’t you f---ing know? I’m Rob f---ing Ford, the mayor of this city!”

Ford vehemently denied that account. In a statement, he acknowledged that, after being “attacked” in his driveway, he used the “F-word” with an operator but “never called anyone any names.”

Police Chief Bill Blair, after listening to Ford’s two 911 calls and a third in which an operator called him back, said: “The mayor did not use the word ‘bitches,’ attributed to him by those ‘several anonymous sources.’ The mayor did not describe himself as the original account claimed.”

CBC spokesman Chris Ball said Monday the broadcaster stands behind the story, and awaits the results of LaPointe’s review.

LaPointe could not be reached Monday. He recently told OpenFile.ca’s John Michael McGrath he had decided to launch a review — which has not yet started — in response to “a handful of complaints” from the public.

Origin
Source: Star

Canada pulls out of Kyoto Protocol

Canada is formally withdrawing from the Kyoto accord, Environment Minister Peter Kent said Monday.

The decision to do so will save the government an estimated $14 billion in penalties, Kent said. The Conservative government says it has no choice given the economic situation.

Blaming an "incompetent Liberal government" who signed the accord and then took little action to make the necessary greenhouse gas emission cuts, Kent said he was formalizing what the Conservative government has been saying for weeks.

"Kyoto for Canada is in the past. As such, we are invoking our legal right to formally withdraw," Kent said.

The Kyoto Protocol, which expires next year, committed major industrial economies to reducing their annual CO2 emissions to below 1990 levels, while providing financial supports to developing nations to encourage them to follow suit eventually. Canada ratified the accord in 1997 but was not on track to meet its legally binding targets.

The army spokesman was right - Mustafa died because he threw stones; he died because he dared to speak a truth, with his hands, in a place where the truth is forbidden

Mustafa Tamimi threw stones. Unapologetically and sometimes fearlessly. Not on that day alone, but nearly every Friday. He also concealed his face. Not for fear of the prison cell, which he had already come to know intimately, but in order to preserve his freedom, so he could continue to throw stones and resist the theft of his land. He continued to do this until the moment of his death.

According to British newspaper The Daily Telegraph, in response to the reports about the shooting of Tamimi, the spokesman of the GOC Southern Command wondered on his Twitter account: "What was Mustafa thinking running after a moving jeep while throwing stones #fail." Thus, simply and mockingly, the spokesman explained why Tamimi was to blame for his own death.

The lack of a viable land-registry system in Haiti remains a chronic source of conflict and insecurity.

I recently spent two weeks in Haiti, interviewing members of the huge international contingent of soldiers, diplomats, and police trying to help the country construct stable and accountable security and justice institutions. Most of them diagnosed Haiti as suffering from a host of chronic problems that are pushed to the breaking point by acute crises like coups, hurricanes, and, most recently, the January 2010 earthquake.

While I was there, I witnessed one case of a pressing chronic problem – the lack of land titles for Haiti’s poor – erupting into violence and conflict. It started on my sixth day there, when my translator, Carla, received a phone call. There had been gunshots in Grosjean, the small town outside of Port-au-Prince where she and my driver, Woutson, live. They immediately recognized the incident as an act of intimidation carried out by a local landowner’s paid thugs – apparently just the latest chapter in a years-long land dispute.

A new political party has entered the fray as an alternative to Democrats and Republicans ahead of the 2012 elections. On Monday, former Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson announced he will run for president with the newly formed Justice Party. Although hailing from a solidly red state, Anderson has been known as one of the most progressive mayors of any major U.S. city in recent years. During his two mayoral terms from 2000 to 2008, Anderson was an outspoken champion of LGBT rights, environmental sustainability, and the antiwar movement in opposition to the Iraq War. Vowing to fight the influence of money over politics, Anderson kicked off his campaign on Monday with a pledge to limit individual donations to $100 a person. Anderson and the Justice Party say they hope to build a grassroots movement heading into the November 2012 elections. "We launched the Justice Party because the entire system is so corrupt," Anderson says. "It’s so diseased. We know that the public interest is not being served by anyone in the system right now, particularly the two dominant parties who have sustained this corrupt system and who are sustained by it."

Video
Source: Democracy Now!

A Look Inside the Tea Party

In your new book The Tea Party and the Remaking of Republican Conservatism, you talk about how the Tea Party has been an influential force in Republican politics. What does the Tea Party want; what is it primarily after?

Well, the Tea Party is not just one thing, it's three things working together: [It’s] grassroots activists who are very conservative older white people; big-money funders and free-market-policy advocates who operate on the national stage; and then the conservative media involved in promoting the whole thing.

The elites in the Tea Party want to push the Republican party further to the right and to make sure that Republican officeholders don’t compromise with Democrats. They would like to pursue maximal policies of cutting taxes on the wealthy, removing business regulations, blocking environmental regulations, and if possible, privatizing social security and Medicare.

Most of the grassroots activists also want to push the Republican party to the right, but they are mostly just very upset about [President] Barack Obama. And many of them are on social security and Medicare so they’re more ambivalent about that goal.

Citizenship and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney has announced that, beginning immediately, veiled Muslim women will have to remove their facial veils when they take their citizenship oath, to make sure the oath can be heard. He’s right that the oath needs to be taken, and heard to be taken. But then, anyone who has been to a citizenship ceremony lately knows that many oath-takers can’t be heard, and that the whole effort is more like a symbolic court or show-court than an actual one.

At some ceremonies, everyone present (including current citizens) is invited to step forward and recite the oath with the newcomers, en masse. Who can be sure who is saying what?

In practice, citizenship ceremonies are treated less as a solemn oath-taking of individuals and more as a celebration of diversity, of multiculturalism, of the world’s different peoples coming together as Canadians.

But Mr. Kenney is right. The oath of citizenship – an oath to the Queen and her successors, and to obey the laws of Canada, and fulfill the duties of being a citizen – should be taken seriously. Does the face need to be bare to demonstrate seriousness? Mr. Kenney says that to be seen, and not to be covered, is in keeping with Canadian values. True, but protection of religious expression, as long as it causes no direct harm to the vulnerable, is also a Canadian value.

Toronto’s library board has voted to reject Rob Ford’s demand for a 10 per cent cut, marking a clear split between the mayor and the board he chose to head one of the city’s largest agencies.

In an 8-5 decision, directors thwarted a proposal from board chair Councillor Paul Ainslie to exact savings by carving 7 per cent of the hours from 56 branches – a motion supported by the mayor’s office that would have shed $5.1-million from the library budget.

The mayor may have backed Mr. Ainslie’s motion, but some key allies did not. The eight dissenters included two members of the Mr. Ford’s cabinet-like executive committee, Councillor Jaye Robinson and Councillor Cesar Palacio, who said they the 10-per-cent command was simply too inflexible.

“I simply can’t support a reduction in hours,” said Ms. Robinson. “I think in January you will find most of council backing this up and supporting keeping libraries open and accessible.”

While a board-room packed with library staff celebrated, Mr. Ainslie didn’t hold back his disappointment. “As far as I’m concerned, a majority of the board just abrogated their duties, shirked their responsibilities,” he said.

Temagami plan not a done deal as old-growth red pines at risk

The plan to destroy old growth forest near Temagami is not a done deal, said the Minister of Natural Resources.

In the wake of a Star story about his ministry’s plans to remove protections for stands of 300-year-old red pine around Wolf Lake in northern Ontario, Minister Michael Gravelle said he will decide soon whether the area will be opened up for increased mining.

“I will be speaking with my officials soon about that,” Gravelle said.

“There is no question that there is now an elevated interest in this issue,” he added, referring to the Star story.

The ministry wants to change the “forest reserve” designation for 340 hectares around Wolf Lake, located 50 kilometres from Temagami, to “general use,” which puts a greater focus on mining instead of forests and recreation.

The only company drilling in the region is Alberta’s Flag Resources, which has been delisted or forced to stop trading on stock exchanges across the country. It is currently not trading anywhere.

The federal environment commissioner warned Tuesday that Environment Canada is struggling to enforce environmental protection regulations, and those who break the law aren't always properly punished.

"We concluded that the enforcement program was not well-managed to adequately enforce compliance with the Canadian Environmental Protection Act," wrote Scott Vaughan in his annual report tabled in Parliament.

Part of the problem stems from a lack of knowledge

The federal environmental enforcement directorate "does not have adequate information on whom it is regulating and who is not complying [with the act]," wrote Vaughan.

He also found that procedures to mete out penalties in a "fair, predictable and consistent manner" weren’t being followed.

Vaughan's report looked at 45 out of the environmental protection act's 53 regulations. He says he found problems with many of them.

"We noted there are major gaps," Vaughan told reporters following the report's release.

Canada made good Monday on speculation that surfaced two weeks ago regarding the country's intentions to withdraw from the Kyoto Protocol.

Speaking at a news conference in Ottawa, Canada's minister for the environment, Peter Kent, said the decision would save the nation some $14 billion in penalties that would accrue for failure to meet emissions targets agreed to by a previous government in the 1997 pact -- the first international accord aimed at reducing global emissions of planet-warming gases.

"As we have said, Kyoto -- for Canada -- is in the past," Kent said, according to a wire transcript forwarded by the environment ministry. Kent had just returned from global climate talks in Durban, South Africa. "As such," he continued, "we are invoking our legal right to formally withdraw from Kyoto."

Canada's conservative government under Stephen Harper, who assumed the title of prime minister in 2006, has long been hostile to the Kyoto agreement, which was ratified by Liberal Party Prime Minister Jean Chrétien in 2002.

The Harper government has charged its predecessors with never making any real attempts to comply with Kyoto's emissions limits. It has also issued concerns, shared by the U.S. and other developed countries, that Kyoto's emissions rules apply only to rich nations, leaving up-and-coming polluters like India and China off the hook.