Democracy gone Astray: Monday, January 09, 2012

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.]

Monday, January 09, 2012

The Sketchy Plan for Terrorist Suspects

One of the stranger ironies of the controversial defense bill signed recently by President Obama is that, while it eroded the rights of Americans at home, it may have augmented those of detainees in Afghanistan.

As it stands, detainees in Afghanistan are essentially in limbo. Thanks to a 2008 Supreme Court ruling, Guantanamo detainees have habeas corpus rights and can challenge their detention in federal court. But individuals held by American forces in Afghanistan face military panels where they rarely get to see, let alone challenge, the evidence against them.

"It's Brechtian," says Daphne Eviatar, a senior associate with Human Rights First's Law and Security Program, who observed detainee review board proceedings in Afghanistan last February. "The government says, 'Trust us, we have evidence against you, but we're not going to tell you what it is.'"

That could all change. A little-noticed provision in the National Defense Authorization Act mandates that the administration provide suspected terrorist detainees being held in "long-term" military detention with the option of being represented by military attorneys while their status is evaluated by a military judge. The legislation would offer far more due process to detainees who, until now, haven't had any meaningful opportunities to challenge their detention. According to some legal experts, the measure would be an unprecedented extension of due process rights to detainees who are still being held in a war zone. Ironic, considering that elsewhere in the legislation it further militarizes domestic counterterrorism and hands the president the power to hold certain individuals suspected of terrorism without charge or trial.

Republican strategist Carl Forti has been described, variously, as "Karl Rove's Karl Rove" (Politico), "one of the smartest people in politics you've never heard of" (Karl Rove), and "the Alexander the Great of the Republican independent expenditure world" (Republican operative Bradley Blakeman). You can add one more to the list: President Obama and the Democrats' worst nightmare in 2012. A pioneer in the post-Citizens United world of super-PACs and dark money, Forti is one of the lead architects of the GOP's outside-spending strategy and an operative who has for years tested the boundaries of campaign finance law.

Forti first waded into the outside-money wars while working for the National Republican Congressional Committee. During the 2006 election cycle, he managed an $82 million independent-expenditure campaign—the largest in the committee's history. Through the Black Rock Group, the strategic communications firm he cofounded, Forti has gone on to advise an all-star roster of conservative outside-spending groups, including the 60 Plus Association (the "conservative AARP") and Americans for Job Security. Forti is also the political director of American Crossroads and advocacy director of Crossroads GPS, the Rove-inspired outfits that reported spending nearly $39 million together during the midterms. The groups have already begun running ads bashing Obama and vulnerable Democrats and plan to dump $240 million into 2012 races.

Imagine, for a moment, that you are an Iranian mullah. Sitting crosslegged on your Persian rug in Tehran, sipping a cup of chai, you glance up at the map of the Middle East on the wall. It is a disturbing image: your country, the Islamic Republic of Iran, is surrounded on all sides by virulent enemies and regional rivals, both nuclear and non-nuclear.

On your eastern border, the United States has 100,000 troops serving in Afghanistan. On your western border, the US has been occupying Iraq since 2003 and plans to retain a small force of military contractors and CIA operatives even after its official withdrawal next month. Pakistan, a nuclear-armed nation, is to the south-east; Turkey, America's Nato ally, to the north-west; Turkmenistan, which has acted as a refuelling base for US military transport planes since 2002, to the north-east. To the south, across the Persian Gulf, you see a cluster of US client states: Bahrain, home to the US Fifth Fleet; Qatar, host to a forward headquarters of US Central Command; Saudi Arabia, whose king has exhorted America to "attack Iran" and "cut off the head of the snake".

Then, of course, less than a thousand miles to the west, there is Israel, your mortal enemy, in possession of over a hundred nuclear warheads and with a history of pre-emptive aggression against its opponents.

The map makes it clear: Iran is, literally, encircled by the United States and its allies.

If that wasn't worrying enough, your country seems to be under (covert) attack. Several nuclear scientists have been mysteriously assassinated and, late last year, a sophisticated computer virus succeeded in shutting down roughly a fifth of Iran's nuclear centrifuges. Only last weekend, the "pioneer" of the Islamic Republic's missile programme, Major General Hassan Moghaddam, was killed – with 16 others – in a huge explosion at a Revolutionary Guards base 25 miles outside Tehran. You go online to discover western journalists reporting that the Mossad is believed to have been behind the blast.

$15.4 billion in damages sought as compensation for end of farmers' control

A class action lawsuit was launched in Saskatoon Monday seeking $15.4 billion in damages resulting from changes made by the Harper government to the Canadian Wheat Board.

Plaintiff Duane Filson, a farmer, teacher and municipal politician from Woodrow, Sask., represents a class that could include any Prairie grain farmer who sold wheat or barley to the Canadian Wheat Board in 2011 or 2012.

Filson ran for the federal Liberals in the 2011 general election in the riding of Cypress Hills-Grasslands, losing to the current parliamentary secretary responsible for the Canadian Wheat Board, Conservative David Anderson.

Merchant Law Group LLP launched the suit on farmers' behalf. Class action lawsuits must be certified by a judge before they can proceed, and the claims in the suit have not been proven in court.

The first court date to consider the certification of the class is expected in about two months.

When it comes to Stephen Harper’s plan to reform the Senate, the Prime Minister isn’t just playing with fire. He’s running through a barn that’s stuffed with dry straw, waving a torch and sending embers off in all directions. It’s difficult to imagine anything good coming from his dangerous game.

The latest batch of Senate appointments includes Betty Unger, giving Alberta two “elected” senators. All seven of the new appointees have agreed to abide by the government’s attempt to remake the Senate without the bother of a constitutional free-for-all, a plan that includes limited terms and more elections. The government has a bill giving effect to these changes that is winding its way through the House. The mystery is why a government — any government — would be so intent on fiddling with something that can only bring the country more grief, at a time when it’s pretty evident we have plenty enough grief to go around.

Harper government steps up attack on environmentalists over pipeline issue

OTTAWA—Accusing opponents of a proposed tarsands pipeline in western Canada of being radicals opposed to any major energy projects, the Harper government Monday stepped up its campaign to keep environmentalists from blocking approval of the planned Northern Gateway line.

A day before an independent federal panel is set to begin hearings to determine if the proposed $5.5-billion pipeline should be built, Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver said the regulatory process needs to be streamlined so opponents of the line can’t slow approval by overloading the public hearings.

The regulatory approval system “is broken,” Oliver said in an open letter to Canadians in which he suggested the federal government will pursue ways to overhaul the hearings of independent regulatory bodies like the National Energy Board.

“We believe reviews for major projects can be accomplished in a quicker and more streamlined fashion,” the letter said. The federal government does not want to see projects “die in the approval phase due to unnecessary delays.”

“It is an urgent matter of Canada’s national interest.”

The Supreme Court may have declared in Citizens United v. the FEC that corporations have a First Amendment right to spend unlimited amounts of money to influence elections, but that doesn’t mean cities and states have to be happy about it.

They’re expressing their disagreement on an increasing number of battlegrounds, with Citizens United under challenge in courts, in city council meetings, in state legislatures, on ballots, and in the streets.

U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta let slip on Sunday the big open secret that Washington war hawks don’t want widely known: Iran is not developing nuclear weapons.

Appearing on CBS’s Face the Nation on Sunday, Panetta admitted that despite all the rhetoric, Iran is not pursuing the ability to split atoms with weapons, saying it is instead pursuing “a nuclear capability.”

That “capability” falls in line with what Iran has said for years: that it is developing nuclear energy facilities, not nuclear weapons.

“I think the pressure of the sanctions, the diplomatic pressures from everywhere, Europe, the United States, elsewhere, it’s working to put pressure on them,” Panetta explained on Sunday. “To make them understand that they cannot continue to do what they’re doing. Are they trying to develop a nuclear weapon? No. But we know that they’re trying to develop a nuclear capability, and that’s what concerns us. And our red line to Iran is, do not develop a nuclear weapon. That’s a red line for us.”

Republicans have been beating the drums of war in recent weeks as tensions in the Iranian gulf have soared. Iran has threatened to shut down the Strait of Hormuz, a key oil transport hub crucial to global industry, if U.S. warships return to monitor their activities.

A good friend of mine sent me a link to a small story last week, something that deserves a little attention, post-factum.

The Bloomberg piece is about J.P. Morgan Chase winning a bid to be the lead underwriter on a $400 million bond issue by the state of Massachusetts. Chase was up against Merrill for the bid and won the race with an offer of a 2.57% interest rate, beating Merrill’s bid of 2.79. The difference in the bid saved the state of Massachusetts $880,000.

Afterward, Massachusetts state treasurer Steven Grossman breezily played up the benefits of a competitive bid. "There's always a certain amount of competition going on out there," Grossman said in a telephone interview yesterday. "That's good. We like competition.”

Well … so what, right? Two banks fight over the right to be the government’s underwriter, one submits a more competitive bid, the taxpayer saves money, and everyone wins. That’s the way it ought to be, correct?

One of the worst things that the Tea Party has done is push the championing of an uncompromising legislative branch in the name of liberty. Sadly, all too many politicians have fallen for this dangling carrot of immediate gratification at the eventual expense of democracy.

Extremists complain that politicians compromise too much and that nothing gets done in congress. But of course, democracies are slower and more complicated than autocracies by nature and inherent in this fact is the protection of liberty from the hands of a dictator.

As former House member Lee H. Hamilton (D-IN) wrote in his book “How Congress Works and Why You Should Care”, Congress acts “as the people’s voice against unchecked power [;] it is the guarantor of liberty.” We should qualify this statement as “congress should act” instead of it does act as the voice against unchecked power. He wrote his book long before the Tea Party came to Washington.

Hamilton, who served in the House from 1965-1999, talks about the importance of consensus building in the legislative process and how congress works to provide balance with the federal government. Hamilton stresses the necessity of compromise, listening and coalition building within the body. He also finds plenty of fault with it, but urges citizens to work to improve it rather than give up on it.

Using Religious, Philosophical and Political Views to Excuse Bullying

“What must we do to win? We must educate, engage, evangelize and eradicate.”

- Rick Santorum, March 2007 at David Horowitz’s “Islamo-Fascism Campus Awareness Week.”

“There is no crime for those who have Christ.”

- Shenoute, Egyptian monk, fifth century C.E.

People have the right to believe what they want to believe. The Constitution’s First Amendment protections contained in the Establishment clause guarantee that. But that means everybody has a right to believe what they want to believe. To hear Christian fundamentalists talk, these protections extend only to them, not to Islam, not to Mormons, and certainly not to pissant Heathens like yours truly, let alone to gays, atheists and other undesirables.

This is the axis around which revolves fundamentalist opposition to anti-bullying legislation. Just as when fundamentalists talk about religious freedom they mean only their religious freedom, when they talk about anti-bullying legislation they see as the real victims of bullying – “true believers” who are being persecuted for their beliefs. This one-directional concept of freedom isn’t in keeping with the Constitution.

What fundamentalists want you to worry about is not the First Amendment but about their god’s wrath. They want you to be thinking not in terms of freedoms, as the Founding Fathers intended via their very secular Constitution, but about brimstone and hellfire, birds falling out of the sky, floods and tornadoes and hurricanes. Rather than celebrating our freedoms, we should fear them.

Robert Jeffress of the Southern Baptist Convention (who supports Rick Perry, by the way) takes a different tack than Bryan Fischer, who claims the First Amendment’s Establishment clause establishes Christianity as America’s state religion. Jeffress, reports Right Wing Watch, maintains that our First Amendment protections will “kindle the anger of God against us.”

Fundamentalist Christianity has shown that it is not above using any means at its disposal to find converts, even if those conversions are essentially coerced – coercion itself being an ancient weapon in the Church’s arsenal – the means by which, after all, most of the Christian world was converted. The government will help people with nothing expected in return; when Evangelical groups have the reins, they require conversion as the price of assistance.

A noted example of this behavior comes from 2006. From the New York Times:

In June, 2006, U.S. District Judge Robert W. Pratt ruled that a faith based-program at a Newton, Iowa prison called InnerChange, operated by Charles Colson’s Prison Fellowship Ministries, unconstitutionally used tax money for a religious program that gave special privileges to inmates who accepted its evangelical Christian teachings and terms. “For all practical purposes,” Judge Pratt said, “the state has literally established an Evangelical Christian congregation within the walls of one its penal institutions, giving the leaders of that congregation, i.e., InnerChange employees, authority to control the spiritual, emotional, and physical lives of hundreds of Iowa inmates.” [See Americans United v. Prison Fellowship Ministries, 2006 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 36970, June 2, 2006]

Last week, we brought you items 1-34, two samples of questionable spending on subsidies and infrastructure, as well as food-related and job creation programs. Here we look at public money that went into dubious environmental initiatives and just plain waste. Check us out tomorrow to see even more stupid things your government did with your money .

Canada’s finances may be the envy of the world, but the bar is awfully low these days. Whether it’s Ottawa, the provinces or municipalities, governments across the country face horrendous deficits. We must tighten our belts, say the politicians. Austerity and cutbacks are the order of the day.

Only, you wouldn’t know it looking at this list. What follows is but a slice of the silly, wasteful, craven and often outright stupid ways governments at all levels spent taxpayers’ money over the last year. To find our 99 items, Maclean’s scoured press releases and auditor generals’ reports, contacted watchdog groups like the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, and waded through news reports, looking for examples where the money was either spent or announced in 2011. We also included a handful of egregious instances of waste that only came to light in the past 12 months, even if the actual cash was doled out in previous years.

Not everyone will agree with all these items being on the list. Some will justify handouts to companies and sports teams as necessary to “promote economic activity,” or they’ll say a camping program for new immigrants was a nice thing to do. Sure, it would be great if we could afford everything, but at a time when government spending is under the knife, when services and jobs are being cut, it’s clear many of those with their hands on the public purse have yet to come to terms with Canada’s new fiscal reality.

The head of Canada's Nuclear Safety Commission calls two recent incidents at New Brunswick's Point Lepreau nuclear generating station are "unsettling."

On Dec. 13, there was a radioactive spill. Up to six litres of heavy water splashed to the floor, forcing an evacuation of the reactor building and halt of operations.

Then, on Dec. 14, NB Power issued a news release, admitting there had been another type of spill three weeks earlier. About 23 barrels of water laced with the toxic chemical hydrazine was released into the Bay of Fundy.

Both incidents occurred as part of preparations for restarting the plant, which has been undergoing refurbishments for nearly four years.

"Since this plant is almost finished refurbishing, it's a bit unsettling to hear about hydrazine and heavy water leak one after the other," safety commission president Michael Binder said during a regularly scheduled meeting in Ottawa on Dec. 15.

U.S. Army investigators have released explosive new details about the death of Private Danny Chen, who allegedly took his own life just weeks after he was deployed to Afghanistan last October. The family of the 19-year-old Chinese-American soldier says the Army told them Chen had been abused by comrades on an almost daily basis, including racist hazing, with soldiers throwing rocks at him, calling him ethnic slurs and forcing him to do push-ups or hang upside down with his mouth full of water. “This is not a situation where you can expect Danny to make complaints to higher-ups when they’re the ones that are causing this hazing,” says Liz OuYang of the civil rights group OCA-New York. “It was incumbent upon the officer, the highest leader in this platoon, to take action. ... Had he reported it to higher-ups, there’s a great possibility that Danny may still be alive today.” Chen’s family and supporters have called for eight soldiers charged in his death to be tried in the United States, instead of overseas.

Video
Source: Democracy Now!

Drones, Asia and Cyber War: Pentagon Shifts Priorities in New Review; Budget Still Exceeds Bush Era

During the Republican presidential debates this weekend, candidates took aim at the military strategy President Obama unveiled late last week, which vows cuts in military spending and a stepped-up focus on the Asia-Pacific region, as well as increased use of drone strikes that have targeted militants in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen and throughout Horn of Africa. We speak with William Hartung, director of the Arms and Security Project at the Center for International Policy, about Obama’s new strategy, which leaves spending at levels equal to the Bush administration, and examine alternatives presented by the GOP front-runner in New Hampshire, Mitt Romney. “His plan would be sort of laughable if it wasn’t so obscene,” Hartung says. “He’s talking about, let’s keep the military budget at 4 percent of GDP, as if it was some sort of entitlement program for the Pentagon ... He would spend something like $6.5 trillion over 10 years, which would be about a trillion and a half more than the Obama plan. ... If he’s not gonna raise taxes, it’s going to come straight out of domestic programs which are already being hit quite substantially.”

Video
Source: Democracy Now!

Swiss National Bank Head Philipp Hildebrand Resigns In Wake Of Public Uproar Over Private Deals

GENEVA (AP) — Switzerland's central bank says its chairman Philipp Hildebrand has stepped down in the wake of a public uproar over his private currency deals.

The Swiss National Bank says the resignation takes effect immediately and Hildebrand would make a statement and release documents to the public.

His departure coincided with a Swiss parliamentary committee hearing, to be held Monday behind closed doors, to get answers about the deals he engaged in while leading efforts to soften the Swiss franc.

Hildebrand broke weeks of silence Thursday to deny breaching central bank rules.

Swiss media have been awash with reports about public unease over the dollar swaps that netted Hildebrand tens of thousands of dollars last year. He said he has since donated the profits to charity.

Original Article
Source: Huff

Jack Persyn, Georgia Middle School Student, Suspended For Reporting He Accidentally Brought Knife To School

Jack Persyn, 13, was in chess club before class when he discovered a short knife in the bag he brought to his Georgia school, station WXIA reports.

Persyn's aunt had bought the bag from a yard sale, and gave the purchase to the teen without checking inside first, the Atlanta-Journal Constitution reports. After Persyn told his Lanier Middle School teacher that he accidentally brought the weapon to class, the teen received four days of in-school suspension, a punishment his father Bill Persyn says is excessive.

"There was never a safety issue," Persyn told WXIA. "No harm was done. It was a genuine honest mistake, yet he got pulled out of class for four days. I can see a one-hour detention if they had to do something, but this is nonsensical."

AJC's reporter Maureen Downey contacted the Gwinnett schools, and received this statement from director of media relations Jorge Quintana:

"Gwinnett County Public Schools does not have a zero-tolerance policy. We look at situations individually and take appropriate disciplinary action. While we are not at liberty to confirm or discuss the discipline this young man faces, we know our administrators followed procedures as stated in the Student Conduct Code. The rules call for more severe action against those students who do not self-report weapons they have in their possession. It’s important to understand that these rules are in place, in part, to prevent future incidents and rule violations. Without these rules in place, others could easily claim they were not aware of what they had in their possession."

Original Article
Source: Huff

Northern Gateway Pipeline Hearings To Start As Tories Slam 'Radical Groups', Plan Looser Enviro Rules

UPDATE: Citing the influence of "radical groups" seeking to stop oil pipeline construction, the Harper government is planning to shorten environmental review periods for major energy infrastructure projects such as oil pipelines, the Globe and Mail reported Monday. In a letter to the newspaper, Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver cites “jet-setting celebrities” funded by foreign special interest groups who “threaten to hijack our regulatory system to achieve their radical ideological ends.”
An overhauled environmental review system would have as its objective "that these reviews would no longer go on for many, many years," Oliver wrote. "They would have a definitive timeline that would provide certainty to the participants who are sponsoring the project.”

VICTORIA - It's being called a nation-builder, nation-divider and non-starter.

Depending on who's talking, the proposed Northern Gateway oil pipeline project has the potential to make Canada rich, while risking an environmental disaster on the scale of the Exxon Valdez oil spill.

Federal regulatory hearings for Enbridge Inc.'s controversial and anticipated $5.5 billion twin pipeline proposal to carry Alberta crude oil to the West Coast for export to Asia start Tuesday in northwest B.C. in Kitimat, the proposed oil tanker port.

More than 4,300 individuals and groups have registered to speak at the hearings conducted by two federal environmental bodies over the next 18 months or more across British Columbia and Alberta.

Northern Gateway is being billed as the largest private infrastructure project in B.C. history.

But it's also a major target of Canadian and international environmental groups that are gearing up for a public relations battle that pits environmental protection against economic development.

Den Tandt: A serious approach to religious freedom should begin at home

As they get set to roll out Canada's new Office of Religious Freedom, Conservatives face suspicion from opposition benches, as well as from left-leaning human-rights organizations such as Amnesty International, that this is a clumsily-disguised attempt to curry favour with Christian evangelicals.

It's a fair question. If the Office of Religious Freedom, to be established as a sub-branch within John Baird's Department of Foreign Affairs, becomes a vehicle uniquely for the defence of Pakistani Catholics or Egyptian Copts, it may do more harm than good. Rather than protecting the right to have faith, the government would be perceived as aligning itself with one faith, Christianity, over all the others.

If, however, Baird truly intends to champion religious freedom globally for all, including those who choose to be agnostic or atheist, then he has a great deal of important work ahead. For rarely, judging from the latest report from the U.S. Department of State's Office of Religious Freedom, have there been more instances of governments violating people's inalienable human right to worship as they please, or not worship at all.

Al-Qaida, still the reigning champions of theistic hatred, in 2010 attacked Sufi, Shia, Ahmadiyah and Christian holy sites in Pakistan. The Taliban assassinated Abdullah Haleem, who was director of hajj and religious affairs in Kandahar. Iraqi extremists attacked the Our Lady of Salvation cathedral in Baghdad, killing 50.

State use of apostasy and blasphemy laws is on the rise, according to the State Department, most worryingly against Muslims who promote interfaith tolerance. In Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, converting to any faith but Islam is considered apostasy and punishable by death.

Feds would face ‘open warfare’ for pension scale-back, PSAC warns

The federal government would face “open warfare” against any move to overhaul public sector pensions, warns the head of Canada’s biggest public service union.

John Gordon, president of the Public Service Alliance of Canada, has not seen any sign the government is set to revamp federal pensions, noting that a mutual agreement to increase the contribution rate from employees to meet a 60 to 40 ratio will be reached next year. Finance Minster Jim Flaherty has assured him no further changes are in store for the pension plan — and Gordon believes current speculation around the “hot button” pension issue is driven by right-wing think-tanks.

Any “drastic” change would require legislative changes, Gordon said.

“With a majority government, if they want to change the pension plan through legislation, they’d probably succeed,” he told iPolitics. “They would have open warfare on that as far as we’re concerned, because people have paid into their pension plan. This is a pension plan that has joint contribution, and it’s deferred wages.”

Jennifer Gearey, director of communications for Treasury Board President Tony Clement, said the government continues to examine ways to better manage compensation, “including the financial management of these public sector pension plans.

Dear Ryan: A New Year's leadership wish list for 2012

Ryan Leef
Member of Parliament, Yukon
Open Letter #9
January 2012

Dear Ryan,

Recently, the Conservative Party hired Campaign Research Inc, a polling company, to phone constituents in the Liberal riding of Mount Royal, asking who they would vote for in the upcoming by-election since Liberal MP Irwin Cotler was resigning. This was, of course, a complete lie. But Conservative Party House Leader, Peter Van Loan, defended the practice saying, "What he (Irwin Cotler) is asking you, Mr. Speaker, to do here is prevent people from being able to speak the truth." Mr. Van Loan went on to declare that this deceitful practice was an exercise in "free speech." Last year, Conservative operatives at Sun News Network attempted to get the rules changed by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) to allow false news to be presented as real news under the guise of free speech. (Sun News is headed by Kory Teneycke, VP of development for Quebecor and a former director of communications and chief spokesperson for Prime Minister Stephen Harper.)

Anyone who has ever had the misfortune to work in a poisoned environment understands that toxic individuals and practices flourish only with the permission of management at the highest level. Poison is liquid and flows downhill. The activities described above could only have occurred with the endorsement of the prime minister and his office.

This leads me to the subject of the ninth letter; leadership and a great big, blue-sky-dreaming, New Year's wish list for 2012.

When Ellen Sargent took a job as a purchaser with the City of Saint John in New Brunswick 26 years ago, she didn’t expect that living below the poverty line when she retired would become a possibility.

Like most municipal employees across Canada, Sargent was promised an indexed pension by the city as part of the terms of her contract — a pension that both she and the city would contribute to over the course of her employment.

But now the 55-year-old widowed retiree is facing the prospect of having to subsist on her $25,000 annual pension without it increasing to meet the rising cost of living.

That’s because the City of Saint John is struggling with a $165 million funding shortfall in its pension plan, and is attempting to make a number of contentious changes, including suspending pension indexing, to close the gap.

One recent high-profile solution for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the establishment of a binational state instead of two states. Its logic is comparable to an effort to put two people who couldn't agree on the placement of their two separate beds into one bed. The idea has been put forth by people who see no hope for peace. It has also been advocated by proponents of a "state of all its citizens," but particularly by those who subscribe to the concept that they must "possess the land which the Lord your God giveth you."

The people in this latter camp are certain that friction will ignite the situation before they are forced to agree to divide the pie, or maybe they'll find other ways to exclude the Palestinians from the area. From their standpoint, the flames will eliminate the last of the barriers to a kind of national "price tag" operation that would establish Jordan as the Palestinian state.

But what happens if this wild vision is not fulfilled, if the fire is not ignited? What do the visionaries of "Israstine" suggest, for example, when it comes to the Palestinian refugees? Can they deprive a Palestinian of the immigration rights that are accorded to every Jew? Can potential aliyah of Diaspora Jews offset the Palestinian right of return?

Absent partition, a future Arab majority in Israel simply leaves the Jews inequality as an organizing principle and as their defining political, social and cultural force if they want the country to remain the state of the Jewish people. The current inequality in the West Bank would not be possible in a stable binational state, but the principle of equality would spell the end of the Zionist idea. And how do these Jewish advocates of a unitary state expect to merge first-world and third-world economies?

The weaker segments of Israeli society - ultra-Orthodox Jews, Israeli Arabs and part of the immigrant population - suffer from poverty, low rates of workforce participation and low or irrelevant skills. It is well-known that they are a drag on Israeli economic growth. The immediate addition of 4 million Palestinians, the vast majority of whom are similar to the weak segments of Israeli society or are even worse off, would immediately defeat Israel's economic wizards, who would quickly look for greener pastures elsewhere.

There is great promise for the social movements that took root around the globe this past year.

Let us make sustainable hope our resolution for 2012. We need to be done with demoralizing cynicism, not least to honour those who have risked, or even lost, their lives in the non-violent global movement for a better world. My research evidences a number of reasons for a new, sustained, and committed hope that Time magazine’s determination of 2011 as the year of The Protester will translate into more than media spectacle in 2012. My research also attests that hope is flourishing among long-time activists and the (no longer disaffected and disenfranchised) younger generation engaged in the Occupy movement – and it is a hope unlike that of 2008’s “Yes We Can,” which was pinned to a single person.

Last spring, I received funding for a three-year study to explore how young people are redefining democracy and using social media for protest. At the time, I did not anticipate the Occupy movement, and was fully prepared to hear hundreds of interviewees and survey subjects give reasons for cynicism and despair. However, this fall, I visited five Occupy sites (Wall Street, Oakland, San Francisco, Toronto, and Minneapolis), studied infinite Twitter Feeds and LiveStreams, studied national and international news coverage, and observed three marches (including the fateful Occupy Times Square on Oct. 15, when the movement “went global”). I’ve also responded to dozens of media calls on this topic, in which journalists inevitably ask, “Why hasn’t the Occupy movement made specific demands?” Other pessimistic voices – even the sympathetic – complain, “They can barely organize to distribute food,” or, “I don’t want mob rule deciding our future,” or “They have become so mired in inclusive discussions that they can’t get anything done.”

The Canadian government must recognize that economic growth relies on respecting the integrity of ecosystems, the global climate included.

What purpose do governments serve? Some people think we could do without them, but that’s absurd. Even libertarians agree that some kind of police force and legal system are necessary to ensure that individual freedoms and property are protected, especially when conflicts arise over competing freedoms and property rights.

Others argue that the ever-expanding economy is our highest priority, and that governments should encourage this unending growth by subsidizing or promoting business and removing so-called regulatory red tape.

At its most basic, a government is there to protect its citizens. That’s more complicated than it seems. What rights do citizens have? Most democratic countries spell those out in their constitutions. Canada’s Constitution, for example, enshrines rights in a range of areas: fundamental, democratic, legal, equality, language, and so on.

As we begin a new year, it’s worth reflecting on how well our government has looked after the interests of its citizens, and where we might be heading.

According to our Constitution’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms, we are legally entitled to life, liberty, and security in Canada. But how can we fulfill that right without protecting the necessary preconditions for life: clean air and water and productive soils to grow food? These all come from, and depend on, natural functioning ecosystems. We can try to clean up water that has been polluted or grow food in a lab, but those strategies will cost much more than protecting the ecosystems before they are compromised.

Natural functioning ecosystems (let’s just call them “nature”) supply resources that we all depend on to meet our basic needs, and to survive. We need nature, including each other, more than anything else. We can’t rely on technological fixes, individual actions, or market systems to protect it. Unfortunately, the negative costs of damaging the environment and the benefits that nature provides are rarely factored into economic equations.

WASHINGTON — American drug enforcement agents posing as money launderers secretly helped a powerful Mexican drug trafficker and his principal Colombian cocaine supplier move millions in drug proceeds around the world, as part of an effort to infiltrate and dismantle the criminal organizations wreaking havoc south of the border, according to newly obtained Mexican government documents.

The documents, part of an extradition order by the Mexican Foreign Ministry against the Colombian supplier, describe American counternarcotics agents, Mexican law enforcement officials and a Colombian informant working undercover together over several months in 2007. Together, they conducted numerous wire transfers of tens of thousands of dollars at a time, smuggled millions of dollars in bulk cash — and escorted at least one large shipment of cocaine from Ecuador to Dallas to Madrid.

The extradition order — obtained by the Mexican magazine emeequis and shared with The New York Times — includes testimony by a Drug Enforcement Administration special agent who oversaw a covert money laundering investigation against a Colombian trafficker named Harold Mauricio Poveda-Ortega, also known as “The Rabbit.” He is accused of having sent some 150 tons of cocaine to Mexico between 2000 and 2010. Much of that cocaine, the authorities said, was destined for the United States.

Ottawa defence lawyers are calling for all police officers to be equipped with body cameras, supporting a call for the devices that was made by the Ottawa Police Association earlier this month.

While the police association argued that the cameras are needed to protect officers from frivolous lawsuits, the defence lawyers say the cameras would help protect citizens from police who abuse their authority.

"The most powerful piece of evidence in the Stacy Bonds case was the complete video record of what happened," said Matthew Weber, Bonds's lawyer.

In 2008, Bonds was arrested, kneed several times, pinned to the floor and had her clothes cut off by Ottawa police — all of which was captured on cellblock video.

Weber, along with the Defence Counsel Association of Ottawa, wants video evidence for all clients.

With cameras, "we don't have to debate what happened or what was said to the accused. We know, and thus fairness is inevitable," he said.

The Conservative government will bring forward new rules to greatly shorten environmental reviews of pipelines and other major projects, arguing that “radical groups” are exploiting the reviews to block proposals vital to Canada’s economic future.

On the eve of hearings into the proposed Northern Gateway oil pipeline from Alberta to the Pacific coast, Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver released a strongly-worded open letter Monday condemning some opponents of the pipeline. A copy of the letter was provided in advance to The Globe and Mail.

The letter warns of “environmental and other radical groups” including “jet-setting celebrities” funded by foreign special interest groups who “threaten to hijack our regulatory system to achieve their radical ideological ends.”

They system “is broken,” Mr. Oliver concludes in the letter. “It’s time to take a look at it.”

In an interview Sunday, the minister said his department is examining the existing rules around the environmental review process to prevent the same objections from being made repeatedly by different people or groups.

Corporate Campuses

The presidential political season is now underway, which means that many important stories that affect the quality of our social lives have been obscured in the fog of campaign soap opera. One such story is the meteoric rise in the salaries of our college and university presidents.

At first glace, this issue seems quite far removed from the nuts and bolts of everyday life, let alone the whys and wherefores of the political arena. But these astounding salaries symbolize a disturbing transformation of the university, a transformation that underscores a shift in our cultural values.

Consider some of these figures reported by Tamar Lewin in the New York Times. Between 1999-2000 and 2009-2010 the presidential salaries at the 50 wealthiest universities rose a stunning 75 percent. Professorial salaries, by contrast rose only by 14 percent. In 2009, 36 university presidents earned yearly salaries of more than $1,000,000.

Although these significant compensation increases have been granted during a time of massive unemployment and tuition increases, university officials defend these high salaries. "The job of college president has changed dramatically in the last 30 years, as have the demands," David L. Warren, the president of the National Association of Independent Universities and Colleges, said in a statement quoted in the aforementioned New York Times article. "There is just a small pool of candidates who possess the skill set that is required and are willing to take on the stressful 24/7 nature of the position."

The combative head of an anti-environmentalist Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit with Colorado roots vowed on Thursday to appeal last week’s Montana Supreme Court ruling upholding the state’s nearly 100-year-old ban on corporate campaign spending.

“American Tradition Partnership will appeal to federal courts regarding the Montana Supreme Court’s incorrect and contemptuous ruling last week,” ATP’s Executive Director Donald Ferguson said in a release. “We, and impartial legal scholars, are confident these unbiased courts will uphold the First Amendment rights of Montanans to speak freely about power holders.”

The 5-2 Montana ruling flies in the face of the landmark 2010 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United v. the Federal Elections Commission. That ruling by a 5-4 margin in 2010 blocked the government from limiting spending by corporations and unions for political purposes, as long as that spending is independent and not coordinated with campaigns.

Montana Supreme Court Chief Justice Mike McGrath, writing for the majority, argued that the sprawling western Rocky Mountain state passed its law to limit the undue influence of “mining and industrial enterprises controlled by foreign trusts or corporations.” He referenced the state’s “Copper Kings” who used to buy politicians and state officials.

“The question then, is when in the last 99 years did Montana lose the power or interest sufficient to support the statute, if it ever did. If the statute has worked to preserve a degree of political and social autonomy is the State required to throw away its protections?” McGrath wrote.

Why we’ve all gone nuclear over the eurozone crisis

Will 2012 be the year of financial “meltdown” in Europe? Could bad policy decisions create a “chain reaction” as investors panic about “toxic assets”? Will Europe’s banks turn “radioactive,” spreading “fallout” across markets?

These questions are on investors’ minds right now. Nevertheless, amid the arguments about economics, it is worth thinking not just about the raw numbers but also the language being used. After months of rolling crises, I have become almost inured to the words being bandied about; in the wake of 2011, disaster headlines have lost their shock appeal.

I recently attended an interdisciplinary conference to discuss systemic risk in different fields of 21st-century life. I chatted with some engineers and nuclear physicists, and they pointed out that it was fascinating to see finance being discussed using phrases from the nuclear world. “It’s like nobody can talk about finance any more without borrowing words [from the nuclear industry],” one physics professor laughed.

If you check on the Factiva database of press sources, for example, you will see “meltdown” and “fallout” have been used more than 2,000 times in relation to articles about the eurozone. “Toxic” has cropped up as much in articles about banks, and “chain reaction,” “explosion” and “radioactive” come up regularly.

Why? One explanation might be that journalists – or traders and politicians – are trying to be dramatic. After all, it is rarely easy to construct a punchy story about money: finance now operates in cyberspace, with numbers and concepts that are often esoteric.

A First Nations Education Act could arrive before Parliament this year, aimed at breaking the cycle of failure on reserve schools and representing one of the most important and unexpected priorities for the Harper government.

So far, this new initiative has been masked by accusations and controversy over who’s to blame for the crisis conditions at Attawapiskat, or discussion on whether natives on reserves should be given property rights.

But native education is where the Conservatives hope to make their mark, and they just might succeed.
An important but largely overlooked report from the Senate committee on aboriginal peoples, chaired by Tory Senator Gerry St. Germain and supported by Senate Liberals, arrived in December urging legislation to create a native education system.

The report is getting a favourable response from key decision makers within the Harper government, according to sources.

Virtually every student in this country who does not live on reserve attends a school that is operated by a school board, that is presided over by a provincial ministry of education.

Yesterday, we brought you items 1-18, a sample of questionable spending on subsidies and infrastructure. Here we look at public waste on dubious food-related and job creation programs. Check us out tomorrow to see even more stupid things your government did with your money .

Canada’s finances may be the envy of the world, but the bar is awfully low these days. Whether it’s Ottawa, the provinces or municipalities, governments across the country face horrendous deficits. We must tighten our belts, say the politicians. Austerity and cutbacks are the order of the day.

Only, you wouldn’t know it looking at this list. What follows is but a slice of the silly, wasteful, craven and often outright stupid ways governments at all levels spent taxpayers’ money over the last year. To find our 99 items, Maclean’s scoured press releases and auditor generals’ reports, contacted watchdog groups like the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, and waded through news reports, looking for examples where the money was either spent or announced in 2011. We also included a handful of egregious instances of waste that only came to light in the past 12 months, even if the actual cash was doled out in previous years.

Not everyone will agree with all these items being on the list. Some will justify handouts to companies and sports teams as necessary to “promote economic activity,” or they’ll say a camping program for new immigrants was a nice thing to do. Sure, it would be great if we could afford everything, but at a time when government spending is under the knife, when services and jobs are being cut, it’s clear many of those with their hands on the public purse have yet to come to terms with Canada’s new fiscal reality.

Canada’s finances may be the envy of the world, but the bar is awfully low these days. Whether it’s Ottawa, the provinces or municipalities, governments across the country face horrendous deficits. We must tighten our belts, say the politicians. Austerity and cutbacks are the order of the day.

Only, you wouldn’t know it looking at this list. What follows is but a slice of the silly, wasteful, craven and often outright stupid ways governments at all levels spent taxpayers’ money over the last year. To find our 99 items, Maclean’s scoured press releases and auditor generals’ reports, contacted watchdog groups like the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, and waded through news reports, looking for examples where the money was either spent or announced in 2011. We also included a handful of egregious instances of waste that only came to light in the past 12 months, even if the actual cash was doled out in previous years.

Not everyone will agree with all these items being on the list. Some will justify handouts to companies and sports teams as necessary to “promote economic activity,” or they’ll say a camping program for new immigrants was a nice thing to do. Sure, it would be great if we could afford everything, but at a time when government spending is under the knife, when services and jobs are being cut, it’s clear many of those with their hands on the public purse have yet to come to terms with Canada’s new fiscal reality.

One of North America’s largest operators of seniors’ care homes is laying off all of its unionized staff at Malaspina Gardens in Nanaimo and will replace them with contracted-out workers by July, part of a plan to build a new facility.

The 177 workers at the 135-bed long-term care home got word just after New Year’s Day from employer Chartwell Seniors Housing Real Estate Investment Trust, which operates in 180 Canadian and U.S. locations.

Chartwell’s senior vice-president of operations said the “rebuild” isn’t possible unless financial decisions are made.

“Resources are limited in health care,” Donna Marasco said from Vancouver.

But she refused to confirm that the contracted-out workers would be paid less.

“I’m not going to say any more,” she said of possible wage reductions.

The Mississauga-based company is committed to providing quality service for residents while remaining a viable business, Ms. Marasco said.

Keeping shareholders, residents and staff happy is the goal, she added.

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency has laid 60 criminal charges against Brampton-based Maple Lodge Farms, Canada’s largest independent chicken processor, alleging violations of federal animal health regulations.

The CFIA alleges that between December 2008 and February 2009, and then December 2009 and April 2010, thousands of chickens died from exposure to cold conditions during transportation from farm to slaughterhouse, often because of proximity to a truck trailer’s floor or walls.

Two of the counts have been heard in a series of six hearings at the Ontario Court of Justice, in Brampton, which began in September. The hearings continue on Monday.

In one count, dated “on or about” Dec. 30 and Dec.31, 2008, the Crown alleges that 711 chickens, of nearly 10,000 in shipment, were “found dead on arrival” at Maple Lodge’s slaughterhouse. In the other, “on or about” Feb. 23, 2009, 1,181 chickens, of nearly 11,000, were discovered dead upon unloading at the slaughterhouse.

The first count concerns a haul of broiler chickens, which are raised solely for meat production; their breasts and thighs appear on grocery store shelves. The second refers to a load of spent hens, a term for poultry no longer capable of laying eggs, whose meat is often used in ground chicken products.

OTTAWA—A biologist, an energy lawyer and an aboriginal geologist will sit down Tuesday in a recreation centre in the wilderness of northern British Columbia to initiate what could be the fiercest environmental standoff ever seen in Canada.

Before the hearings in B.C. and Alberta are completed next year, more than 4,000 people are expected to appear before the three-member panel vetting the proposed Northern Gateway pipeline from Alberta through the Rockies to the B.C. coast.

Like the now-stalled Keystone XL project in the United States, the planned pipeline to carry tarsands-derived crude oil across the mountains to a new supertanker port in northern B.C. is shaping up as a titanic clash of economic and environmental imperatives.

Fear of pipeline leaks or a tanker spill that would foul some of the world’s most pristine forests and coastal areas has already galvanized unprecedented concern in the green movement, with some groups calling it the “defining environmental battle” of modern times. The army of opponents includes environmentalists from around North America, more than 100 aboriginal groups and thousands of other B.C. citizens. Star power will also be brought into play from the likes of Robert Redford and Leonardo DiCaprio.