Democracy gone Astray: 09/01/2015

Democracy Gone Astray

Democracy, being a human construct, needs to be thought of as directionality rather than an object. As such, to understand it requires not so much a description of existing structures and/or other related phenomena but a declaration of intentionality.

This blog aims at creating labeled lists of published infringements of such intentionality, of points in time where democracy strays from its intended directionality. In addition to outright infringements, this blog also collects important contemporary information and/or discussions that impact our socio-political landscape.

All the posts here were published in the electronic media – main-stream as well as fringe, and maintain links to the original texts.

[NOTE: Due to changes I haven't caught on time in the blogging software, all of the 'Original Article' links were nullified between September 11, 2012 and December 11, 2012. My apologies.]

Wednesday, September 30, 2015

Venezuelan President Calls For U.N. To Impose Restrictions On War

Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro urged world leaders Tuesday to create new rules governing the use of force in the wake of a series of violent conflicts in the Middle East and North Africa that have sparked a refugee crisis, as hundreds of thousands of people flee to Europe looking for safety.

Speaking for the annual gathering of heads of state at the United Nations General Assembly, Maduro said he supported a plan by proposed by Russian President Vladimir Putin to create an international coalition to coordinate foreign military action in Syria.

After first refusing to confirm nor deny it, the Vatican has confirmed that Pope Francis met with the Kentucky clerk Kim Davis at the Vatican Embassy in Washington, where Davis' attorney -- who made the news public after the pope's trip ended -- said Francis told her to "stay strong." And that simple encounter completely undermines all the goodwill the pope created in downplaying "the gay issue" on his U.S. trip.

The pope played us for fools, trying to have it both ways. As I noted last week, he's an artful politician, telling different audiences what they want to hear on homosexuality. He did that in Argentina as a cardinal -- railing against gay marriage when the Vatican expected him to do so -- and he's done that since becoming pope, striking a softer tone on the issue after Benedict's harsh denunciations were a p.r. disaster for the Catholic Church in the West. But this news about Kim Davis portrays him as a more sinister kind of politician. That's the kind that secretly supports hate, ushering the bigots in the back door -- knowing they're an embarrassment -- while speaking publicly about about how none of us can judge one another.

BRUSSELS, Sept 30 (Reuters) - NATO said on Wednesday it was concerned that Russia's air strikes on Syria may have devastated rebel-held areas of the country and may not have targeted Islamic State positions.

Russia launched air strikes in Syria on Wednesday in the Kremlin's biggest Middle East intervention in decades, but Moscow's assertion that it had hit Islamic State militants was disputed by the United States and rebels on the ground.

"I'm concerned about the reports saying that the Russian air strikes were not targeted against ISIL," NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said during a visit to the United States.

"I'm especially concerned because there has been no real effort by the Russian side to deconflict the Russian air strikes in Syria with the ongoing US-led coalition fighting ISIL."

Original Article
Source: huffingtonpost.com/
Author: Robin Emmott

How Much of Big Pharma's Massive Profits Are Used to Influence Politicians?

Whenever it's called out for charging too much for drugs or outright price gouging, the pharmaceutical industry's standard defense is to assure the public that its profits will be used to develop even better drugs in the future. Turing Pharmaceuticals CEO Martin Shkreli clung to that defense in late September when asked to explain his sudden decision to hike the price of a longstanding anti-parasitic drug by more than $700, prompting a collective eye roll among medical experts and an outraged public.

In reality, a good chunk of pharmaceutical "research and development" comes from the subsidized labs at universities and the National Institutes of Health, and now angry consumers and even some prominent politicians are demanding that the industry put its money where its mouth is.

Hedge funder Martin Shkreli reminded everyone of the sky-high—and seemingly arbitrary—costs of prescription medicines in this country when he bought and immediately increased the price of an established drug used to fight a parasitic infection. The price hike was eye-popping, from $13.50 a pill to $750 per pill, prompting Dr. Judith Aberg of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai to ask, “What is it that they are doing differently that has led to this dramatic increase?” Shkreli’s answer was similar to what Big Pharma trots out all the time—the extra money will help them to make better drugs. Besides, he noted, not many people get the parasitic infection that the now-$750 drug treats. (Small consolation, one imagines, to the unfortunates who actually have it.)

GENEVA — Canada has moved up two notches to 13th position in the latest Global Competitiveness Report issued Wednesday by the Geneva-based World Economic Forum.

The report says Canada improved its ranking mainly because of a lower budget deficit based on 2014 data and a more favourable assessment of its financial market development.

The federal government and the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC), the largest union representing federal workers, will exchange documents this month ahead of a court battle over proposed reforms to sick leave. For over a year, sick leave has been at the centre of contentious contract negotiations.

Officially, the government supports continuing the bargaining process, but in May gave itself the power, through budget implementation Bill C-59, to impose its plan regardless of the negotiations' outcomes.

Years of irresponsible government policies and message control have left a serious chill on free expression in Canada. From a crippled access to information system, to the muzzling of privacy experts and federal scientists, the Harper government has been operating under extreme secrecy, while placing innocent Canadians under the microscope with mass surveillance.

When Emmanuelle Walter moved to Canada from France five years ago, she thought she was moving to one of the human rights capitals of the world. That vision was soon shattered.

"I came across an article about the United Nations [wanting] to do an investigation about missing and murdered indigenous women in Canada, and I was shocked," Walter said in a phone interview with The Tyee from her home in Montreal. "After that I became obsessed with the topic, and at the end I decided to write the book."

Stephen Harper is defending a major military deal with Saudi Arabia in the face of questions about pervasive human rights abuses in that country.

He says cancelling the contract could punish Ontario plant workers.

The issue arises as a young man, arrested at age 17 for protesting the Saudi regime, faces imminent beheading and crucifixion in a country known for crackdowns on opponents and the repressive treatment of women.

OTTAWA – Today, farmers from across the country drove their tractors to Parliament Hill to protest the damage that will be inflicted on the dairy and other Canadian industries by the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal. As CBC reported yesterday: the TPP will open our border to “more American milk, without getting reciprocal access for Canadian dairy farms in the U.S.” Farmers are saying it will decimate the industry.

“The Conservatives are picking on farmers, especially family farms,” says Maude Barlow, National Chairperson of the Council of Canadians. “At a time when people want local and sustainable produce, the Conservatives are destroying the very system that could support it. Instead, this deal will prioritize factory farms, including those outside Canada. The butter may be cheaper, but the cost to our infrastructure and our environment will be enormous.”

By the time you read this column, my membership in the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario will likely be revoked. I will no longer be a director of the Toronto Centre Conservative Association.

This is not because I am no longer useful to the once-proud party of Bill Davis, John Robarts and, yes, Christine Elliott, but because I am coming out against comrade Stephen Harper -- our party's federal counterpart.

The U.S. government has labeled as specially designated terrorists two French fugitives who during the past 15 years have risen from street crime to alleged front-line roles in the Charlie Hebdo attacks and terrorist violence in Tunisia and Syria.

The announcement today by the State Department targeted Peter Cherif and Boubaker Hakim. They are former members of a crew of a dozen young militants from the Buttes-Chaumont neighborhood in northeast Paris who went to Iraq to fight U.S. troops in 2003. Some died in battle, while others were arrested and eventually convicted of terrorist offenses in France.

On Monday, the Taliban swept into the provincial capital of Kunduz, taking it in half a day from a large and well-equipped Afghan National Army force. Tuesday’s riposte had only mixed success, with the ANA saying it had taken back the (no-empty) prison. An attempt to take back the airport failed, and when the Taliban captured an ANA tank, the US Air Force had to intervene to take it out lest it be used to drive an ANA rout.

Those who want the US to go into Syria in a big way should just consider what the Kunduz events mean. Fourteen years after the US went into Afghanistan, it still has not been able to stand up a successful army to which it could hope to turn the country over. How many orphans do the hawks want to adopt?

Since the mid-1990s, around 300,000 Indian farmers have killed themselves—a rate of about one every 30 minutes, which is 47 percent higher than the national average. The tragedy has become entangled in the rhetorical war around genetically modified seeds.

Some anti-GMO activists, including Indian scientist and organic-farming champion Vandana Shiva, have blamed the high suicide rates directly on biotech seeds—specifically, cotton tweaked by Monsanto to contain the Bt pesticide, now used on more than 90 percent of India's cotton acreage. Shiva has gone so far as to declare them "seeds of suicide," because, she claims, "suicides increased after Bt cotton was introduced."

Stephen Harper says the world is full of danger. In a sit-down interview with Metro, the prime minister warned of international financial crises, pandemics, terrorists and, in a measured way, explained why Canadians can’t have the kinder, gentler country that the other leaders are promising.

Harper almost looked casual — the top button of his blue shirt undone — as he brought the hammer down on what he called “Canada’s elite.”

The Liberal government is under fire for selling off a provincially owned telecommunications company at a $61 million loss.

Even so Northern Development Minister Michael Gravelle says it was a “necessary decision” and a good deal for taxpayers.

Ontera, which provides local and long distance telephone, data and Internet service throughout northeastern Ontario, was sold to Bell Aliant for $6.3 million — less than the $6.5 million the province paid consultants, lawyers and others advising the government on the sale.

At least 25 multi-millionaire Canadians used an offshore "sham" set up by accounting firm KPMG, a document filed Tuesday in Federal Court shows.

For more than two years, KPMG has been fighting a court order to provide the list of names of multi-millionaire clients who had used what the CRA has alleged in court documents is a "sham" Isle of Man tax avoidance structure. The court file, which had seen virtually no activity for much of that time, had remained mysteriously stalled.

A First Nation chief says Stephen Harper’s cursory “those people” remark during Monday’s leaders’ debate was a “neo-colonial Freudian slip.”

Defending the government’s Arctic strategy during a foreign policy debate, the Conservative leader said that having Inuk candidate Leona Aglukkaq sit in Parliament is an indication that “those people, that the Inuit and the North has really arrived in our country.”

Americans Agree On One Thing: Citizens United Is Terrible

Tuesday marks the 10th anniversary of Chief Justice John Roberts taking the helm of the Supreme Court, and as academics and journalists look back on the cases that defined the past decade, none loom larger than the 2010 decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission.

Americans are pretty much of one mind about that ruling. By and large, they despise it.

WASHINGTON -- A district court judge on Monday dismissed four corruption charges against Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) and his donor Salomon Melgen, but denied motions to toss out other charges including, notably, the senator’s solicitation of contributions for a super PAC.

Lawyers for the senator had asked the court to dismiss charges related to Menendez’s solicitation of $700,000 from Melgen for Senate Majority PAC, a super PAC run by former aides to Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) that made independent expenditures to support Menendez’s 2012 reelection.

Chicago's bloody weekend spilled into the workweek, as 14 people were shot in the city over a 15-hour period from late Monday night to early Tuesday morning.

At least six people died. They included a pregnant woman and her mother, who were struck by a "barrage of bullets" in the Back of the Yards neighborhood, NBC Chicago reports. The woman's 11-month-old child was also injured in the shooting, although he is expected to recover.

WASHINGTON -- Donald Trump's tax plan would increase the national debt by more than 75 percent over the next decade, according to an analysis by a conservative think tank.

Trump claims on his website that his plan "doesn't add to our debt." But the businessman-birther, who believes wrongly that vaccines cause autism, should at least recognize when numbers don't add up.

A group of five corporations announced on Tuesday at the Clinton Global Initiative’s annual meeting that they will improve their paid family leave policies. The companies, which include Barclays, Nestlé, and Danone (owner of Dannon yogurt and Evian water), have formed the Working Parent Support Coalition to work together to expand supportive policies for their employees, including breastfeeding access and programs to help them transition back to work.

There’s a theory out there that if you want the most accurate possible forecast of election results, ask the people who have money riding on it.

The University of British Columbia has been running an election prediction marketsince 1993, and today investors can place between $25 and $1,000 on the outcome of the Oct. 19 federal election.

Dear friends:

I won't be voting Liberal on October 19.

With Election Day coming fast, the two-thirds of Canadians who don't want Stephen Harper as Prime Minister are mulling their options. For many of these voters, the ballot-box question is this: Who is the "progressive" choice? Justin Trudeau's Liberals, or Tom Mulcair's New Democrats?

Trudeau promises immediate debt-financed infrastructure investments to boost the economy. Mulcair's longer-term approach calls for a national child-care program (which Liberals promised 20 years ago) and a national drug plan (which all provinces say is long overdue).

"We're paying [gas] prices similar to when oil was $100," Bruce Cran of the Consumers Association of Canada toldGlobal News reporter Jamie Sturgeon in August, just as the election got underway.

Motorists know major oil companies keep profits high by rigging prices they pay to fill up. When the oil price falls, profits are registered in gas sales instead of at the wellhead.

Why not keep prices at the pump high? Big Oil controls the production of petroleum, the sale of gasoline, and everything in between. Who is to stop them from abusing their power?

Canadian commuters looking for a break can look to government. An investigation into price fixing by the oil majors would be warmly welcomed by Canadians who drive cars, a significant number of voters.

Call it an unexpected doomsday scenario for New Democrats, Liberals and Greens, but the Conservatives have a clear path to stay in power after the election into 2016 -- and then fight a second election -- without Parliament ever sitting.

And with some polls putting the Conservatives in first place, or at least with the best chance of winning the most seats, the odds of them pulling a magic rabbit out of the electoral hat keep increasing.

When April Charleson, a chief of the Hesquiaht First Nation, described some of her community's challenges with poverty at an all candidates meeting, Conservative candidate and former Aboriginal Affairs minister John Duncan responded that she shouldn't expect help from Ottawa.

"We're struggling. We're poor," Charleson said, describing her community on the west coast of Vancouver Island, about an hour by boat northwest from Tofino. The population is spread out and not on the hydro grid.

Federal assistance rates are tied to provincial welfare rates that have been frozen since 2007, she said. The few hundred dollars people receive each month quickly disappear when it costs a minimum of $250 to charter a boat to get to a place where groceries are available, she said.

WINNIPEG—The head of the CBC is hitting back at Conservative Leader Stephen Harper over the national broadcaster’s funding.

CEO Hubert Lacroix says the CBC has healthy ratings, but is crippled by a broken funding model.

After the CBC’s annual general meeting in Winnipeg, Lacroix said Canada must look to other European countries for ideas on how to fund public broadcasting.

In June, the US Department of Defense released its "Law of War Manual," within which the Pentagon states clearly that journalists may be "unprivileged belligerents," which leaves those reporting on the military in any capacity open to be treated the same as spies - or even terrorists.

"Unprivileged belligerent" is a legal term that can be applied to combatants (people who are not soldiers in a state-sanctioned military) in a conflict, who are given even fewer protections than combatants openly participating in war.

OTTAWA — "Canada is still involved in peacekeeping in areas like the Sinai. We still contribute peacekeepers around the world." — Conservative Leader Stephen Harper, responding to Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau's suggestion that Canada is out of the peacekeeping business.

___

As Canada's political leaders slugged it out in a foreign policy debate in Toronto, world leaders meeting in New York pledged to increase the size of United Nations peacekeeping forces by 30,000.

VAUGHAN, Ont. — The Conservatives are setting a target of creating 700,000 new homeowners by 2020.

Party leader Stephen Harper says a combination of previous tax breaks and new promises makes that a realistic goal.

They include commitments made on this campaign to expand the home buyers' plan, establish a permanent home renovation tax credit and measures to address foreign ownership of Canadian residential real estate.

A man charged in Sunday's deadly car crash north of Toronto has a history of driving offences.

Three children and their grandfather were travelling in a van in Vaughan, Ont. when their vehicle was T-boned by another, emergency officials said.

Gary Neville, 65, died on scene. The children identified as Daniel, Harrison, and Milly Neville-Lake died after being rushed to hospital with life-threatening injuries on Sunday afternoon.

TORONTO — A review of more than 700 companies listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange has found that the number of women on corporate boards and in executive positions varies by industry and company size.

For example, about 60 per cent of TSX-listed companies with a market capitalization more than $2 billion reported having at least two female board members. And 59 per cent of the reporting issuers of that size said they had at least two female executive officers.

The governing Conservatives have lined up enough support for a massive Pacific Rim trade agreement from big auto-parts makers to expose a split in the industry ahead of talks this week that may yield a 12-country deal.

Talks between trade ministers resume shortly in Atlanta and one of the most contentious subjects is provisions agreed to by Japan and the United States that some warn could sideswipe some of the 80,000 auto-parts manufacturing jobs in Canada. Conservative Leader Stephen Harper has acknowledged some in the auto sector may not like the terms that would be reached in a Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement.

As the three principal contenders for the job of running the country weresparring entertainingly over the mostly insignificant differences among their platforms and trading slogans designed to obfuscate rather than illuminate -- "the threat we face today is not CSIS, it's ISIS" -- other actors on the geopolitical stage are creating new realities.

In fact, it would tell us voters a lot about how much of a threat the so-called Islamic State phenomenon is likely to actually present to Canadians if we had some idea of how Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper, NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair and Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau propose to respond to the efforts of the nations with troops on the ground in Syria, beyond the RCAF's occasional and apparently ineffective bombing raids in the neighbourhood, but the topic barely came up amid the posturing.

In the wake of a damning report this summer accusing a Peel cop of “tampering” with the scene of a police-involved shooting, the regional force assured it would conduct a thorough review of its officers’ actions.

As public outcry grew over the Peel force’s handling of the September, 2014 shooting death of Jermaine Carby — and the revelation an officer had removed a knife from the scene of the shooting — Chief Jennifer Evans said she could not answer key questions about Carby’s death and its aftermath before the completion of the internal review.

What do Stephen Harper and Joan Jett have in common besides a burning love for rock and roll?

Neither, apparently, gives a damn about his or her reputation.

Jett said so explicitly in her hit song, “Bad Reputation,” released in 1980. And Harper, according to his foes, has quietly and deliberately diminished Canada’s international standing as the True North Strong and Friendly since he entered the prime minister’s office in 2006.

TORONTO — It was quite a night at the old Tin Can.

That is the name the doorman at the Intercontinental Hotel gave to the Roy Thomson Hall as I made my way to the best debate of a very lean season of good political theatre.

Hip, full of hop, and all showbiz, Justin Trudeau stole the show last night. It was billed as a foreign policy debate. It was really about politics as entertainment. The guy who isn’t supposed to be “ready” wasn’t quite Donald Trump, but he knew it was all about playing to the crowd.

The Harper government is touting its $1.9-billion surplus for 2014-15 as an indication of sound fiscal management. But to get there it made major cuts to vital public services, which in some cases compromised public safety.

Starving the rail regulatory budget is a case in point. The government cut the rail safety division budget by 20 per cent between 2010 and 2014. It froze the transportation of dangerous goods (TDG) budget at a pitifully low $14 million and dismantled its team of professional engineers with unique expertise in this field.

I am a candidate in the upcoming federal election and a scientist committed to evidence-based decision-making.

As a scientist, I find myself among the throngs of Canadians who do not want Stephen Harper back in power. Does this mean, as suggested by David Beers last week, that today, Sept. 28, the deadline to remove my name from the ballot, I should step down unless I am positioned to win my seat?

The premise is undemocratic, but the question is rational. The Harper Conservatives leave us burdened with legislation designed to silence dissent, increase inequality, and suppress democracy. The urgency of climate change is denied, scientists are muzzled, and health, safety and environmental protections eviscerated. The recent drop in oil prices exposed the fragility of a petro-state economy. The list goes on. These "accomplishments" are the legacy of an ideology that is out of touch with the realities of our planet and Canadian values.

A potentially explosive parliamentary investigation into the Harper government's so-called "muzzling" of government scientists shows no signs of being released before the federal election on Oct.19, despite Canada's Information Commissioner digging into it for more than two and a half years.

“Voters need to know what the result of that investigation has been,” said law professor Calvin Sandborn, with the University of Victoria's Environmental Law Centre. “I think the public needs to know the extent of the muzzling… Our submission is that it runs very deep in government."

WASHINGTON -- Republican presidential candidate and former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina may not be a career politician, but a new interview sheds light on some of her firsthand experience in the national security realm.

In a Yahoo News interview published Monday, Fiorina said that shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks, she redirected trucks full of Hewlett-Packard servers on their way to retail stores to Fort Meade, Maryland, upon request of then-National Security Agency director Michael Hayden.

When people talk about “balancing work and family,” they’re usually talking more about the workplace than what’s going on at home. Now we’re starting to get data on what the workaday life looks like from a kid’s eye view, and it doesn’t look good.

When debating the issue of work-life balance, arguments over unlimited vacation and employment discrimination center around women’s barriers to opportunity—the perennial glass ceiling that Anne Marie Slaughter and Sheryl Sandberg rage at when lamenting not “having it all.” For working-class folks crushed by on-call schedules or poverty wages, it’s often hard to find any life outside work, let alone to balance work and family lives. But centering the conversation not on career ambition but the life course of a family helps put the false dichotomy of work vs. life in perspective.

Author Margaret Atwood and 200 of her fellow writers and artists are launching a renewed push to repeal Bill C-51 just 20 days before Canada’s federal election.

In an open letter published in Macleans on Sept. 29, the signatories warned that the anti-terror law endangers freedom of speech and expression, potentially restricting and criminalizing Canadian creative arts.

Good news! Donald Trump's tax plan is out. He claims it's revenue neutral, and, remarkably, doesn't claim that this is because of dynamic effects that will supercharge the economy. It's just plain revenue neutral. But let's put aside this extremely unlikely claim for the moment and look instead only at how Trump's plan affects his rich golfing buddies. Here are all the aspects of the plan that benefit the rich:

Cut the top marginal rate from 39.6 percent to 25 percent
Eliminate the Alternative Minimum Tax
Eliminate the estate tax
Cut the corporate tax rate to 15 percent

An audio recording of Justin Trudeau explaining why convicted terrorists should not be stripped of their Canadian citizenship has been leaked by Conservatives ahead of a key leaders' debate on foreign policy.

CTV News reported Sunday that the three-minute clip was recorded at a Winnipeg town hall in July.

In the recording, a man is heard asking the Liberal leader about Bill C-24, a controversial piece of legislation the man deems "absolutely disgusting."

The claim: the Conservatives will "stand up for victims" by fighting human trafficking

Stephen Harper announced that his government, if re-elected would continue to combat human trafficking. They'll do this by creating special RCMP human trafficking teams in Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary and Winnipeg, doubling the money currently available for victims of human trafficking and declaring Feb. 22 human trafficking awareness day.

WASHINGTON, Sept 27 (Reuters) - Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump said in an interview that aired on Sunday on the eve of the unveiling of his tax plan that a "large segment" of U.S. taxpayers would have a zero rate if he wins the White House.

Trump's campaign has scheduled a news conference for 11 a.m. (1500 GMT) on Monday in New York to announce a tax policy it said would offer "a major tax reduction for almost all citizens and corporations, in particular, those in the middle and lower income classes."

Democracy Gone Astray

Wednesday, September 30, 2015

Tuesday, September 29, 2015