'The Deserters' -- These vivid stories of men who fled may finally kill the myth of the 'Good War.'

• The Deserters: A Hidden History of World War II
• Charles Glass
• Penguin (2013)

When I was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1963, we joined the military with a symbolic step forward. The only one who didn't move was a Jehovah's Witness; I ruefully admired him as the bravest man in the room.

In those days, conscientious objection was only marginally more acceptable than draft dodging, and only outright desertion was worse. Our parents had fought in the Second World War, which had been a "Good War," a just struggle against genocidal evil. That Manichean struggle had carried on into the Cold War; we were enlisted in it whether we liked it or not.

Energy in, energy out: Getting off the fossil fuel treadmill

The European Union (EU) fuel quality directive requires a 6 per cent reduction in the greenhouse gas (GHG) intensity of fuels used in vehicles by 2020. To help meet this target, the EU has calculated average GHG releases from biofuels, conventional crude, tar sands, and oil shale using a "life-cycle" approach, including emissions from extraction, processing and distribution.

Canada's federal government recently released a new report criticizing the EU's fuel quality directive: the Independent Assessment of the European Commission's Fuel Quality Directive's "Conventional" Default Value. The report does not challenge the EU's conclusion that development of tar sands and shale oil releases high amounts of GHGs.  It merely asserts that "some light and heavy conventional crudes have GHG intensities that are similar or even higher than those of crudes derived from natural bitumen," because of flaring "in oil fields where infrastructure is insufficient to handle the associated gas. " It cites Russia and Nigeria as countries where gas flaring increases GHG releases.

CSEC security tear down activist banner at 'spy palace'

On November 27 security guards at the construction site for the new $1.2 billion headquarters for the Communications Security Establishment Canada (CSEC) confronted a group of young people who successfully hung a 24ft banner reading "I SPY A WASTE OF MONEY."

Multiple security guards informed the comedians that they were on private property and that alarms in the facility had been triggered by their presence. The guards proceeded to film the activists, who responded by filming the guards and staring at them with two 3ft eyeballs.

America is the Stingiest Rich Country in the World

Over at the Economist, Steven Mazie directs me to a recent New Yorker piece on income inequality by John Cassidy. Its most revealing chart, Mazie says, is one that compares raw income inequality in various rich countries (as calculated by GINI scores) to income inequality after taxes and government transfers. In other words, it helps us see which countries do the most to fight the relentless rise in income inequality over the past three decades.

But I wanted to see that more directly, so I re-charted the data. All I did was calculate how much taxes and transfers reduced inequality in every country that had high inequality to begin with. Unsurprisingly, whether you use raw number or percentages, the United States is #1:


The United States is one of the richest countries in the world, with a top 1 percent that's seen its income triple or more in the past three decades. And yet, we also do the least to fight the rising tide of income inequality. Government programs in America reduce the level of inequality by only 26 percent. Nobody else is so stingy.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Original Article
Source: motherjones.com
Author: Kevin Drum

I Tried To See Where My T-Shirt Was Made, and the Factory Sent Thugs After Me

Aruna, a 19-year-old nurse I met in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, is a lot like some of my friends in Washington, DC—bright, single, self-assured, loves her job. She speaks quickly and eloquently, not stopping to drink her tea and hardly ever even pausing to breathe. When I first meet her in Coimbatore, a city known for its textile industry, she is on her lunch break, wearing her freshly starched white uniform and a traditional red bindi dot on her forehead.

How Wall Street Has Turned Housing Into a Dangerous Get-Rich-Quick Scheme—Again

You can hardly turn on the television or open a newspaper without hearing about the nation's impressive, much celebrated housing recovery. Home prices are rising! New construction has started! The crisis is over! Yet beneath the fanfare, a whole new get-rich-quick scheme is brewing.

Over the last year and a half, Wall Street hedge funds and private equity firms have quietly amassed an unprecedented rental empire, snapping up Queen Anne Victorians in Atlanta, brick-faced bungalows in Chicago, Spanish revivals in Phoenix. In total, these deep-pocketed investors have bought more than 200,000 cheap, mostly foreclosed houses in cities hardest hit by the economic meltdown.

Conservatives muzzle key players from testifying on Duffy audit

OTTAWA — Conservatives in the upper chamber prevented one of two key players at the centre of a storm over Sen. Mike Duffy’s audit from testifying about what he knew, and were equally unwilling to let a top Tory senator testify as well.

The Conservatives blocked one attempt to call senior Deloitte partner Michael Runia, the auditor of record for the Conservative party on Elections Canada documents, to answer questions about a call he made to Duffy’s audit team seeking confidential information.

RCMP docs show 'how deep the rot was' in PMO

Alleged interference into an audit of Mike Duffy’s expenses “showed just how deep the rot was” in the Prime Minister’s Office, says Conservative communications consultant David Sachs.

The long-time Tory worked for former cabinet ministers Lawrence Cannon and Peter Kent, and now sits on the board of the Conservative Riding Association in Pontiac, Que.

Sachs told CTV’s Power Play Thursday evening that his disenchantment with the Conservative government and Harper “has been building over a number of years.”

PMO has hired three law firms to handle Duffy-Wright investigation

The prime minister’s office has hired three law firms to provide legal advice to current and former employees in relation to the RCMP investigation of former chief of staff Nigel Wright’s $90,000 payment to Mike Duffy.

The PMO didn’t provide an estimate of the cost of the legal fees, but they are likely to be steep. The lead lawyer on the file, Bay Street litigator Robert Staley, a partner at Bennet Jones, is said to bill in the $900-an-hour range.

The other firms are Miller Thompson, and Caroll and Wallace.

Cyberbullying Bill Accountability Needs Improvement: Privacy Czar

OTTAWA - The federal privacy commissioner says she has questions about the government's cyberbullying bill — including the lack of accountability and reporting mechanisms to shed light on new investigative powers.

Jennifer Stoddart issued a statement following an outpouring of concern from civil libertarians that the bill tabled last week goes too far in expanding police powers to probe online behaviour.