Democracy gone Astray: Friday, December 30, 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.]

Friday, December 30, 2011

China raises the ante on trade with new tariffs

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Original Article
Source: Washington Post

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Video
Source: Democracy Now!

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

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

Republicans have begun calling for Jaczko's ouster.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Between filibuster and closure? Lots of hurry, little debate

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

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

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

Which Tony Clement you get often depends on the subject.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Original Article
Source: Globe

City Hall forecast 2012

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

Locking out logic

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

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

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

Tories want more cash from parks

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The latest attack happened on Christmas Eve.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Original Article
Source: Huff

Canada's Fracking Struggles

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

An Atlanta woman who allegedly mailed threats to lawmakers was shot and killed by police during an altercation on Christmas Day.

Jameela Barnette, 53, was indicted earlier this year for her supposed involvement in the sending of malicious packages to two New York lawmakers.

Barnette was accused of mailing a pig's foot to the office of Rep. Peter King (R) in April. A note included in the package read "Kiss my black Muslim ass," and referred to King as a "Jew," even though he is Catholic. The incident came in the wake of King's hearings on Muslim "radicalization."

Barnette was also indicted for allegedly sending a fake weapon of mass destruction to the office of New York State Sen. Greg Ball in the form of a bottled liquid labeled "Zyklon B." The substance was eventually identified as perfume oil. The package also included a screed against Jews and Christians and a stuffed toy monkey with Stars of David fastened to it.

By extending the payroll tax cut, Congress and the administration have quietly made a critical change in how Social Security is funded — one that some in Washington worry could undermine the program’s foundation if lawmakers keep renewing the tax break.

For the first time in the program’s history, tens of billions of dollars from the government’s general pool of revenue are being funneled to the Social Security trust fund to make up for the revenue lost to the tax cut. Roughly $110 billion will be automatically shifted from the Treasury to the trust fund to cover this year’s cut, according to the Social Security Board of Trustees. An additional $19 billion, it is estimated, will be necessary to pay for the two-month extension.

The tax cut is supposed to be temporary. But as squabbles over this issue and the Bush tax cuts have revealed, short-term tax cuts in Washington have a way of sticking around longer than planned, especially as economic growth remains slow and lawmakers are wary of raising anyone’s tax bill.

The prospect of policymakers continually turning to the payroll tax as a way of providing economic stimulus troubles experts, some lawmakers and both public trustees of the Social Security trust fund. Their concern: that Social Security will lose its status as a protected benefit owed to every working American and instead become politically vulnerable, just like any other government program.

Iso Rabins has always done a delicate tango around environmental and food regulations. Rabins pioneered the Bay Area's burgeoning wild-foods movement when he founded ForageSF in 2009, but city health inspectors, noting the potential hazards of eating products gathered in the wild -- the best-known of which come in the form of poisonous mushrooms -- were never thrilled with his organization or its various commercial offshoots.

Earlier this year, one of Rabins' signature ventures -- the Underground Market, a wildly successful event at which various sub-professional food producers peddled their wares -- was shut down by the Department of Public Health, which had previously given the market its tacit blessing. Rabins has since been working to bring the Underground Market into compliance with city law.

But this fall, during that process, he suddenly faced persecution on another front. In October, city officials sent a letter informing him that another series of foraging get-togethers, his so-called Wild Kitchen dinners, could subject him to thousands of dollars in fines. The dinners typically served dozens of patrons, each paying $40 or more for a prix fixe menu of hunted and foraged local foods such as squid, mushrooms, and nettle soup.

(Disclosure: SF Weekly profiled Rabins for a cover story in 2009. I attended two Wild Kitchen dinners in the course of reporting for that article, and have since attended one more. They were tasty, and I never got sick.)

One of the nation's most widely planted crops – a genetically engineered corn plant that makes its own insecticide – may be losing its effectiveness because a major pest appears to be developing resistance more quickly than scientists expected.

The U.S. food supply is not in any immediate danger because the problem remains isolated. But scientists fear potentially risky farming practices could be blunting the hybrid's sophisticated weaponry.

When it was introduced in 2003, so-called Bt corn seemed like the answer to farmers' dreams: It would allow growers to bring in bountiful harvests using fewer chemicals because the corn naturally produces a toxin that poisons western corn rootworms. The hybrid was such a swift success that it and similar varieties now account for 65 percent of all U.S. corn acres – grain that ends up in thousands of everyday foods such as cereal, sweeteners and cooking oil.

But over the last few summers, rootworms have feasted on the roots of Bt corn in parts of four Midwestern states, suggesting that some of the insects are becoming resistant to the crop's pest-fighting powers.

Scientists say the problem could be partly the result of farmers who've planted Bt corn year after year in the same fields.

Most farmers rotate corn with other crops in a practice long used to curb the spread of pests, but some have abandoned rotation because they need extra grain for livestock or because they have grain contracts with ethanol producers. Other farmers have eschewed the practice to cash in on high corn prices, which hit a record in June.

Our attention has been rightfully turned to the stomach-churning photos of women being dragged by the hair through the streets of Egypt and Bahrain, and reports of yet more deaths in Syria. As this year ends however, it is worth noting with a bit of apprehension that Iran has been relatively quiet compared to its neighbors. In fact, when John Dudin of the New York Council on Foreign Relations reviewed the ten most significant developments in the Middle East in 2011 Iran did not make the list at all--even after the downing of the US drone earlier this month. Either things are improving and we are learning to better deal with Iran, or this is merely a pause in a decades-long estrangement which could turn violent, providing a shock to the global economy it might not be able to withstand.

War with Iran would mean the closing of the Strait of Hormuz, where the Iranian Navy began ten days of war games to practice doing just that on December 24th. At least 30% of all seaborne oil shipments pass through this chokepoint. Oil prices have been rising on the strength of the maneuvers alone: an actual blockade would double the price of oil overnight.

Now that America's withdrawal from Iraq has been formalized, and Osama bin Laden, Hosni Mubarak, Muammar Gaddafi, Ali Abdullah Saleh, and Zine el Abidine Ben Ali have all been vanquished, after a year of unbelievable changes throughout the Middle East, my prediction is that Iran is about to regain center stage in the region. As a result of the US withdrawal, Iraq could be prone to more violence, and the Iranian leadership must certainly have taken note that none of the toppled leaders, including Sadam Hussein, possessed formal nuclear capabilities.

For our last broadcast of 2011, we turn to someone who became one the faces of the global Occupy movement this year. Scott Olsen, a 24-year-old former U.S. Marine who served two tours in the Iraq War, was critically wounded after being shot in the head by a police projectile at Occupy Oakland. In a rare interview, Olsen joins us to discuss his life-threatening ordeal, his involvement in this year’s historic Wisconsin and Occupy protests, the case of accused Army whistleblower Bradley Manning and how he too had access to similar types of information, and the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq. "They aren’t respecting our right to assemble, protest and redress our government for grievances," Olsen says of police repression of the Occupy protests. "They are terrorizing us from going out [to demonstrations]. That is a sad statement for our country." Olsen also says he expects to rejoin the Occupy and antiwar protests as his recovery progresses. "I look forward to being a part of the 99 percent and Iraq Veterans Against the War in 2012," he says.

Video
Source: Democracy Now!

Nouri Al Maliki Accrues Power

BAGHDAD -- In the week since the last American troops left Iraq, Shiite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki ordered an arrest warrant for the country's highest-ranking Sunni official, threatened to exclude the rival sect's main political party from his government and warned that "rivers of blood" would flow if Sunnis seek an autonomous region.

The moves confirmed what many longtime observers of Iraqi politics have suspected since al-Maliki came to office more than five years ago – that he has an authoritarian streak and beneath his tireless rhetoric about national unity is essentially a sectarian politician.

As a result, the veneer of sectarian unity that the United States tried to paint over Iraq's leadership throughout a 9-year presence is quickly being washed away after the departure of American forces.

The first casualty could be the unity government that al-Maliki heads, uneasily combining his powerful Shiite alliance with a Sunni-backed bloc. It took nine months after Iraq's elections in March last year to put it together, under heavy American pressure to include the Sunnis, but al-Maliki never liked it and is increasingly saying he wants a government based on the majority in parliament, which would squeeze out Sunnis.

And al-Maliki has made clear he intends keep a strong grip heading that government.

OTTAWA - Canada's economy performed relatively well last year, but not enough to displace Germany as the top country in the Group of Seven big industrial nations, the Bank of Montreal says.

The chartered bank's annual report card for economic performance puts Canada slightly ahead of where it stood in 2010 cumulatively on five benchmarks, including unemployment and government deficits.

But the combined score of 81.6 is well back of Germany's 89.2 out of a maximum 100.

The scorecard suggests that the Harper government's contention that Canada leads the G7 in economic performance is somewhat of an exaggeration.

While Canada scores higher than the G7 average, exporting powerhouse Germany tops Canada in four of five major categories — jobless rate, inflation, government fiscal health and the current account balance with the rest of the world.

If there were two things that defined 2011, they were the Arab Spring uprisings that threw the Middle East into turmoil and the Occupy Wall Street protests in North America and Europe. But Canadian Senator Romeo Dallaire, the former U.N. general lionized for leading the besieged peacekeepers during the Rwandan Genocide, says a third revolution connects the two movements — the communications revolution.

“We are in an era of conflict with a certain world disorder, a time of revolutions, with the communications revolution being one,” Dallaire tells Huffington Post Canada.

Dallaire begs to differ with author Malcolm Gladwell's argument in his essay “Small Change: Why the Revolution Will Not be Tweeted," that technology and social media play no real role in high-risk activism,

“It's starting. We are entering an era where the revolution in communications is empowering the under-25s and they're able to start realizing that they can coalesce in real-time around the world. They’re also getting more information about what's going on around them, whether they want it or not, because it's all being punched out every minute,” he says, adding that their power extends beyond protests.

The U.S. warned Iran Wednesday that it will not tolerate any disruption of naval traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, after Iran's navy chief said the Islamic Republic is capable of closing the vital oil route if the West imposes new sanctions targeting Tehran's oil exports.

Iran's Adm. Habibollah Sayyari told state-run Press TV that closing the strait, which is the only sea outlet for the crucial oil fields in and around the Persian Gulf, “is very easy” for his country's naval forces.

It was the second such warning by Iran in two days, reflecting Tehran's concern that the West is about to impose new sanctions that could hit the country's biggest source of revenue, its oil sector. On Tuesday, Vice President Mohamed Reza Rahimi threatened to close the strait if the West imposes such sanctions.

In response, the Bahrain-based U.S. 5th Fleet's spokeswoman warned that any disruption at the strait “will not be tolerated.”

The spokeswoman, Lt. Rebecca Rebarich, said the U.S. Navy is “always ready to counter malevolent actions to ensure freedom of navigation.”

Mayor Rob Ford’s administration had concerns, at least briefly, about the company that won the contract to collect residential garbage west of Yonge St., internal emails show.

The emails, obtained through a freedom of information request, do not suggest that the city has had any problems with the company, GFL Environmental East Corp. They reveal, however, that the Ford administration was privately unsure about GFL even as it publicly expressed strong confidence.

Councillor Denzil Minnan-Wong, the Ford ally who chairs the public works committee, stood at a "Respect for Taxpayers" podium in Ford’s office on Oct. 19 and announced that GFL had beaten its competitors with an exceptionally low bid that would save the city $11 million per year, far more than expected. "The taxpayers are the big winners today," he said.

Some of Ford’s left-leaning council opponents and the union representing city garbage workers had already expressed skepticism about the company’s ability to do the job for the price it quoted. Minnan-Wong told reporters that such critics were engaging in “fear-mongering.”

"This is a good-news story," he said.

The next day, he sounded far less certain.

OTTAWA—Canadians will see the biggest increase in payroll taxes in a decade next year, according to a Canadian Taxpayers Federation analysis of how many of your dollars will go to federal government coffers.

Employment insurance premiums will increase 5 cents per $100 of insurable earnings as of Jan. 1. That’s half of what the Conservative government originally planned but the analysis shows employees will still see a $53 jump to $840 in EI premiums in 2012

Combine that with the federal pension plan contributions and it means employees will have to give up a total of $3,147 in payroll taxes next year — an increase of about $142 over this year.

Employers will have to shell out about $164 more in payroll taxes next year, for a total of $3,483.

The combined net increase of 4.84 per cent is the highest since 2002.

“Finance Canada tells us that we should be thanking the government because they are not going to be raising payroll taxes as much as they promised,” said Derek Fildebrandt, national research director for the advocacy group.

Scott Walker: Wisconsin Recall Process 'Pretty Unusual'

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker (R) criticized his state's recall process, attacking the state's elections and ethics agency for allowing questionable names on petitions.

"The whole process is pretty unusual," Walker said Tuesday during an appearance on Fox News. "We had one of the local affiliates here [reporting] about someone signing it, proudly saying they signed 80 different recall petitions. As we see it, you should only be able to sign it once and only once, and it should be for a legal citizen."

Walker was criticizing the recent news that signatures from Mickey Mouse and Adolf Hitler would count on recall petitions as long as they are properly dated and include a valid Wisconsin address. The Government Accountability Board, which runs the recall process in Wisconsin, has said that it won't eliminate duplicate or questionable signatures from recall petitions, leaving the responsibility to validate signatures to the campaigns.

Walker's campaign and the state's Republican Party director have filed a lawsuit against the board, saying that allowing multiple signatures is a violation of the equal protection clauses of the state and U.S. constitutions.

Wisconsin Senate Leader Scott Fitzgerald (R-Juneau), who supports Walker, was recently confronted over an email he sent to constituents titled "Mickey Mouse is helping..." asking them to "fight the fraud that is happening right now on recall petitions in my district." The email, which questioned the authenticity of the recall petitions, alleged opponents of the Badger State's governor were "going to cheat to get Scott Walker out."

Original Article
Source: Huff

SEC Doubles Down On Its Efforts To Find Hedge Fund Fraud

Memo to hedge fund managers: It's a bad time to try to overachieve. The Securities and Exchange Commission is cracking down on hedge fund fraud, and the first places they're looking are the firms that seem to be doing a little too well.

According to a report in The Wall Street Journal, the SEC has devised a method of sorting data that highlights hedge funds whose balance sheets never seem to suffer, no matter how rocky the market gets. The WSJ notes that the agency is trying to spot the next Bernie Madoff before he or she can defraud investors of billions of dollars, the way Madoff did with his Ponzi scheme. Already, the WSJ says, the SEC has initiated four civil-fraud lawsuits based on their data review system.

It's an auspicious time for the SEC to be seen bringing the hammer down on Wall Street scofflaws, because many have criticized the agency since the height of the financial crisis for not doing more to identify and prosecute financial malpractice.

In one such high-profile instance, Harry Markopolos, the fraud investigator who spent almost a decade building a case against Madoff's wealth management firm, told the House Financial Services Committee in 2009 that the SEC was "financially illiterate" and "captive to the industry it regulates."