Politics

April 3, 2009

Grand March for Housing - 12 noon, Saturday, April 4, 2009

The Citywide Housing Coalition's march to end homelessness, build social housing, and raise the minimum wage takes place this weekend.

Muster stations are located at Thornton Park (due west of the bus depot / train station), Hastings and Main streets, and Peace Flame Park (at the south end of the Burrard Street bridge). Marchers will walk peacefully (but noisily, we hope) from the march starting points to the Vancouver Art Gallery, meeting in front of the Art Gallery, on Georgia Street, at 1:30 p.m.

Given the failure of the federal government to step up to the plate and build affordable housing for Canadians - when many across Canada are experiencing a housing crisis - is unconscionable. We need a renewed, affordable, well-funded and effective co-operative housing programme, as well as the construction of special needs housing (for women, and for single parent families, for the homeless). Housing is an issue which affects us all.

Let's make this a march for change, for a renewed commitment to social agency, and to programmes benefitting the most vulnerable in our society. Let's march to encourage government to bring in programmes to protect renters, and construct social housing for the homeless and for families in Vancouver, throughout British Columbia, and across our great country!

February 19, 2009

Insatiable Olympic Budget Puts Paid To All-Day Kindergarten In BC
by Noel Herron, retired school principal / former Vancouver school trustee

If anyone doubts the imminent demise of the emergence of a province-wide all-day kindergarten programme in BC in the near future, think again.

The emergence of an apparently insatiable Olympic appetite for taxpayer money coupled with the recent release of several bogus Olympic budgets, points to not just a postponement but the demise of key education initiatives, among them universal all-day kindergarten.

To think otherwise flies in the face of reality.

It's not just the rushed January convening of a special session of the BC provincial legislature to bail out the billion dollar Olympic Village boondoggle, but the upcoming gathering storm around the hidden Olympic security budget that could top a billion dollars, eliminating any pretense of the availability of funds from Victoria for essential early childhood programmes.

Ironically, the Vancouver Olympic Committee and the International Olympic Committee have excluded the highly regarded humanitarian organization Right to Play from operating from the Vancouver Olympic Village site as it has in previous Olympics. Right to Play uses sports and play programmes to improve health, develop life skills and foster peace for children and communities in some of the world's most disadvantaged countries.

On top of the Olympic Village's potentially heavy debt, the exclusion of Right to Play further tarnishes the iconic status of this controversial site.

However, it was the late January front-page analysis by the Vancouver Sun pegging the overall Olympic debt at a massive $6 billion (and counting!), that puts paid to any remaining hope for the implementation of universal all-day kindergarten in all of BC's 59 school districts in the near future.

Shamefully, it has now emerged that both Canadian and BC taxpayers have been either hoodwinked or lied to — in this case, both — by politicians at all levels (municipal, provincial, and federal) in the lead up to next year's much ballyhooed Olympic sports extravaganza.

For the past three years provincial politicians have shamelessly promised action on the early childhood file. There has been no let up on the hype and spin from the Ministry of Education on this topic.

Parents were told we would have "great early childhood programmes in BC. Make no mistake: they will be some of the best in Canada." The provincial government pleaded that it needed a little more time to "get it right," and then, as our education minister boasted, "we are going to lead the way!"

The BC Liberals' 2007 speech from the throne belatedly conceded that "currently approximately 25% of children (in BC) are not ready to learn when they enter kindergarten."

Vague and over-the-top promises followed this speech, such as BC Education Minister Shirley Bond's assertion that by the year 2012, BC will have, "pre-kindergarten classes for 3-year-olds" when at the same time the prospects for all-day kindergarten for 5-year-olds, as the minister well knew, were rapidly disappearing over BC's financial horizon.

However, that did not prevent Bond from claiming that currently, "BC leads the country in early childhood education" when in reality, according to most analysts, BC is close to being dead last.

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January 20, 2009

Barack Hussein Obama: the 44th President of the United States

January 19, 2009

President-Elect Barack Obama Inauguration Eve: Change

The U.S. Capitol inaugural stage where Barack Obama will be sworn in as the 44th President of the United States, at 9 a.m. Pacific time, Tuesday, January 20 2009, an historic day

On the threshold of change, at 9 a.m. Pacific Time on Tuesday, January 20th, 2009 history will be made on the steps of the U.S. Capitol, as President-elect Barack Obama will take the oath of office as America's 44th President. Placing his left hand on the Bible that Abraham Lincoln used when he took the same oath in 1861, Obama will usher in an era of change.

The special significance of Barack Obama's inauguration, as America's first black president, will also be a moment for reflection and celebration. On a long weekend in the U.S. already commemorating the 80th birthday of slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., Americans of all colours will converge on their nation's capital in unprecedented numbers to bear witness to this latest step in the struggle toward racial equality, as we here in Canada will witness from afar this most historic political event.

In his remarks at the Lincoln Memorial on Sunday, Mr. Obama himself sought to place this moment in the sweep of history ...

"In the course of our history, only a handful of generations have been asked to confront challenges as serious as the ones we face right now," he said. "Our nation is at war. Our economy is in crisis. Millions of Americans are losing their jobs and their homes. But despite all of this — despite the enormity of the task that lies ahead — I stand here today as hopeful as ever that the United States of America will endure, that the dream of our founders will live on in our time."

For one day at least, and however irrationally, relief will replace fear, and gloom will be swept aside by a vast tide of hope. The dream set out 45 years ago by Martin Luther King on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial — at the opposite end of the Washington Mall from where Mr. Obama will speak, may not have been entirely realized — the colour of a person's skin still does matter in America — but how far America seems to have come.

December 20, 2008

The Sleeping Giant Awakes: VanRamblings Resumes Posting

A wintry, December day in Vancouver (from the Safeway parking lot facing Kits library)

There has been this past two months, since VanRamblings last published, a great deal of interest to VanRamblings' readers that has occurred near to our little secluded isle, due east of the Pacific Ocean.

For instance ...

• The election of a Vision Vancouver government to City Hall. We have not weighed in on the ascension of Gregor Robertson to the Mayor's chair, nor evinced any particular opinion on the councillors who were elected. But in the days to come, we will opine about the star in the making that is Geoff Meggs, and just what a destructive dunce Suzanne Anton will be to the forces of the NPA as she plays Republican style politics with the notion of democratic decision-making in our City. We might have something of interest to say.

• While we're on the subject of municipal politics, mention should be made about the launch of citycaucus.com, a centre-right apologia for the do-nothing government of Sam Sullivan. But, heck, the site is readable, the page design terrific (Frances Bula, take note), the writing first rate (damn those right wingers for being able to write and design, so well), and much to the horror of VanRamblings, the site surprisingly manages to be even-handed on occasion, as witness this piece by citycaucus.com contributor, Eric Mang.

  We would be remiss in our duty, as well, if we didn't point you to this story on the quick action taken by Mayor Gregor Robertson and Premier Campbell in creating 200 new homeless shelter beds, arising citycaucus.com points out from months of preparatory work by the previous, Sam Sullivan administration. Fair's fair, after all ... Vision shouldn't get all the credit.

• We at VanRamblings are 'lists' people. Top 10 lists of the best movies of the year, the best music, and books ... we just eat this stuff up. VanRamblings fully intends to drive you to complete distraction in the days to come with our take on the upcoming Oscars, what we've admired and were moved by on film this year (Brideshead Revisited, Elegy, Frozen River ... all released earlier this year), as well as our favourite music of the year (no surprise that Adele will be right up there ... we simply love her début, 19).
• The up-until-recently impeccably well-orchestrated Obama transition, somewhat undone in recent days by the apparent thuggery of Illinois governor, Rod Blagojevich.
  
• And, finally, as a topic we'll raise briefly in this entry and explore at greater length another day, the whole issue of homelessness, why homeless persons choose to sleep on the street rather spend overnight in a shelter, and just how difficult it will be in the coming days, weeks and many, many months to address the issue of homelessness in a compassionate, yet effective manner. Of course, homelessness is not the only issue in respect of housing that requires addressing: VanRamblings will also explore the affordable housing crisis in our City.

As we say, there are a great many topics to tackle in the days to come, to write about and reflect on. Some topics to be explored by VanRamblings will be of a serious nature, others not quite so much.

We hope to see you returning to visit VanRamblings, often.

November 4, 2008

Obama for President: The Hope for the Future of the United States

September 16, 2008

I Can See Russia From My House

For those of you who missed it, Tina Fey and Amy Poehler as Sarah Palin and Hillary Clinton giving a joint address on Saturday Night Live.

September 2, 2008

The Federal Tories: The Gang That Can't Think Straight

No matter how much money the federal Tories have in their coffers heading into the federal election — expected to be called on Sunday — no matter that, over the course of the next six weeks, they'll outspend the Liberals, the NDP and the Green parties combined, Stephen Harper's Conservative can't help themselves.

They just keep shooting themselves in the foot.

Writing in her column in the Toronto Star, Chantal Hebert says that ...

The recent Conservative cuts to arts and culture have done what neither the pursuit of the unpopular Afghan war nor the demise of the Kyoto Protocol had accomplished: wake up a sleeping Quebec giant that is now gathering strength for a show of force in the upcoming election campaign ...

On Tuesday, a 2,000-strong who's who of Quebec's art community gathered in Montreal to decry what has largely come across in the province's media as an ideologically driven federal disengagement from the front of culture.

In no other province in Canada would the citizens express the ire that Quebeckers do over funding cuts to the arts — thank God that there's one province in Canada that stands up for Canadian cultural identity.

The Conservatives probably feel that with a weak and inarticulate Stephane Dion leading the federal Liberal party, and a rudderless Bloc Quebecois, they'll romp to election victory on October 14th. Don't bet on it.

The Conservatives are so inept (not to mention, mean-spirited) that Harper won't be able to help himself from putting his foot in his mouth during the 37-day election period. The Conservative party will, VanRamblings predicts, do everything in their power to snatch defeat from the jaws victory.

Hopefully, after October 14th, there will be a responsible and responsive federal government in Ottawa that will be committed to ...

• the creation of affordable housing
• the development of a national transit strategy
• the development of a national telecommunications strategy
• restored funding of the arts, and a recommitment to the CBC
• the implementation of national daycare
• the re-establishment of the Canadian armed forces as peacekeepers
• restoring the economy so that Canadian familes can be provided for

If the Conservatives are re-elected, they'll be committed to none of those initiatives. What an anti-Canadian government the Tories proved to be.

Come October 14th, it'll be time to throw the bums out. Good riddance.

June 25, 2008

Hypocrisy on the Right: And It Was Always Thus

Would you sleep with this man?

The federal Conservative party's "family values" guy, Vic Toews, who currently serves in Stephen Harper's cabinet as President of the Treasury Board, and was a former Minister of Justice in Progressive Conservative Premier Gary Filmon's government in the 1990s — as well as, Minister of Justice and Attorney-General, in the early part of Harper's lingering, undeserved mandate — seems to be in a spot of personal trouble.

Now, Mr. Harper and Mr. Toews (the latter, a socially conservative right-winger, and even prior to the emergence of the current scandal was something of an embarrassment to the Prime Minister) up until a month, or so, ago was slated for a federal appointment to Manitoba's Court of Queen's Bench. Hey, it all could have worked out so well. Harper gets rid of an old fogey (he's 55, but he looks much older, don'tcha think?), putting him out to pasture in the sinecure of the Courts, and Toews gets to make blue collar criminals miserable while offering white collars thieves an opportunity to carry on with their dirty deeds.

But no, it is not to be. No Court appointment for Mr. Toews will be in the offing, it would seem. And why not offer the old fascist homophobe a cushy retirement within the luxuriant confines of the august Manitoba Court system? Yes, folks, there is a story to be told, a juicy scandale du jour.

Mr. Toews is "embroiled in a messy divorce" after fathering a child last fall with a much younger woman. So, it'll be no $232,000 a year job for the federal MP often dubbed the "minister of family values". In Mr. Toews' crowd you just don't go around knocking up a much younger woman who is not your wife. Particularly when you've fashioned yourself as an ethically pure saint, a man who knows the "true" way, a family man with family values.

Tch, tch, Mr. Toews. But it could be worse. Just ask poor ol' Larry Craig.

June 23, 2008

Speaking Truth to Power: George Carlin Rambles Into the Night

Although, for the most part, VanRamblings concurs with the sentiments expressed by Carlin in the video (may he rest in peace), we believe there is hope for our future. What that means, though, is citizen involvement in the life of the society. Change will come slowly, but change will come.

November 3, 2006

Once Upon a Time There Was Hope For A Better World

Hailed as a great speech, President John Fitzgerald Kennedy's inaugural 1961 address to the world held out hope for a better future.

How different our times are today: as ever increasing amounts of scarce financial resources are spent on armaments and we watch as our sons and daughters die in far off lands for reasons unclear to almost all of us, as homeless sleep in our streets, when far too many children live in poverty and want, and when division and indifference define the body politic.

October 26, 2006

MSNBC's Keith Olbermann On The Politics of Fear

May 8, 2006

A Docile American Press Corps Embarrasses Itself

Just click on the picture above to see the video

The most popular video in the blogosphere — so popular in fact that Google Video and YouTube.com were forced to take it down despite millions of visitors logging onto their sites — comedian Stephen Colbert’s evisceration of the President of the United at the recent Washington Press Corps dinner constitutes an act of bravery rivalled only by the actions of Cindy Sheehan this past year, as she has traveled the globe.

If you haven’t had a chance to watch Stephen Colbert’s video, it's available by clicking on the picture above (or by clicking on the Google Video link, which actually provides a better video, even if Google’s lawyers have the folks at Google pull the video from time to time).

December 28, 2005

Year-End Review, Part 3: Bush Had a Terrible Year

Just click on the picture above for a year-end Bush review ... (you’ll want to be patient and wait through the advertisement).

November 11, 2005

Remembrance Day 2005: A Pittance of Time

On November 11, 1999 Terry Kelly was in a Shoppers Drug Mart store in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. At 10:55 a.m. an announcement came over the store’s PA system asking customers who might still be on the premises at 11:00 a.m. to give two minutes of silence in respect to the veterans who had sacrificed so much for all of us.

Terry found himself moved by the store’s role in adopting the Legion’s “two minutes of silence” initiative, and felt that the retail outlet’s contribution in educating the public to the importance of remembrance was both appropriate and laudable.

When 11 o’clock arrived, an announcement was again made asking for “two minutes of silence” to commence. All customers, with the exception of a man who was accompanied by his young daughter, showed their respect.

Terry’s chagrin at the conduct of the father who was demanding service from the store’s clerks rather than show appropriate respect, in the process setting a poor example for his daughter, was later channeled into a beautiful piece of music, titled A Pittance of Time. VanRamblings today presents Mr. Kelly’s award-winning, moving video of A Pittance of Time.

November 9, 2005

Paris is Burning: Racism, Poverty and Police Brutality

VanRamblings first became aware of the divide between Muslim Arab immigrants and the majority French population seven years ago during a screening of Jeanne and the Perfect Guy when, in the film’s opening scene, the Muslim, Arab and black janitorial staff at a chic Paris travel agency break out into song decrying the exploitative treatment each experiences at the hands of the French, and the pervasive sense of exclusion each feels, their diaspora to France hardly welcome despite the necessity of their labours.

Now, in fall 2005, after almost two weeks of violent clashes between youth and police, as the world looks on in stunned disbelief at the destruction of the social fabric in France, many of us our looking for answers as to why “a tsunami of inchoate youth rebellion” is engulfing France.

As Doug Ireland writes in his piece, Why Is France Burning? The Rebellion of A Lost Generation, “To understand the origins of this profound crisis for France, it is important to step back and remember that the ghettos where festering resentment has now burst into flames were created as a matter of industrial policy by the French state.”

It is the result of thirty years of government neglect: of the failure of the French political classes — of both right and left — to make any serious effort to integrate its Muslim and black populations into the larger French economy and culture; and of the deep-seated, searing, soul-destroying racism that the unemployed and profoundly alienated young of the ghettos face every day of their lives, both from the police, and when trying to find a job or decent housing.

In the course of his essay, Ireland suggests that the events of the past two weeks can be attributed to institutionalized racism and a long, inglorious exploitation of 10% of the population who have consistently been locked out of political decision-making, and denied access to basic education, housing and social services. The history of such treatment of the Muslim, Arab and black population dates back almost a half century.

During the post-World War II boom years of reconstruction and economic expansion, the government recruited labourers and factory and menial workers from France’s foreign colonies. These immigrant workers, primarily from North Africa, were desperately needed to allow the French economy to expand due to the shortage of manpower caused by two World Wars, killing many French men, and slashing native French birth-rates. Moreover, these immigrant workers were favoured by industrial employers as passive, unlikely to strike and cheaper to hire. Literacy, too, was a disqualification, because an Arab worker who could read could educate himself about politics and become more susceptible to organization into a union.

Upon arrival and since, these Arab workers were and are warehoused in huge, high-rise low-income housing ghettos — known as cités (Americans call them ‘the projects’) — specially built and deliberately placed out of sight in the suburbs so that their darker-skinned inhabitants wouldn’t “pollute” the larger metropolitan centres. Now 30, 40, and 50 years old, these high-rise human warehouses in the isolated suburbs are dilapidated, sinister places, housing the hopeless and the alienated, an undereducated, oppressed and rage-filled population of the dispossessed.

Read More...

September 5, 2005

Katrina: A Fundamental Shift in American Politics Will Occur

People Are Mad As Hell and Unwilling To Take It Anymore

A seismic rift developed between the classes in America this past week, the results of which may be unclear at this juncture but are sure to be as devastating to the body politic of the United States — and perhaps beyond their shores — as the impact of Hurricane Katrina on the American South.

This past week, as tens of thousands of New Orleans’ citizens awaited rescue from the cataclysmic effects of Hurricane Katrina, the U.S. government — woefully miscalculating the level of destruction they would face — failed to respond in a timely, humane, responsible and competent manner to one of the most devastating domestic crises in American history.

As conservative columnist David Brooks writes in his incisive New York Times essay ...

On Sept. 11, Rudy Giuliani took control. The government response was quick and decisive. The rich and poor suffered alike. Americans had been hit, but felt united and strong. Public confidence in institutions surged. Last week in New Orleans, nobody took control. Authority was diffuse and action was ineffective. The rich escaped while the poor were abandoned. Leaders spun while looters rampaged. Partisans squabbled while the nation was ashamed. The first rule of the social fabric — that in times of crisis you protect the vulnerable — was trampled.

Katrina means that the political culture, already sour and bloody-minded in many quarters, will shift. There will be a reaction. There will be more impatience for something new. There is going to be some sort of big bang as people respond to the cumulative blows of bad events and try to fundamentally change the way things are. Reaganite conservatism was the response to the pessimism and feebleness of the 1970s. Maybe this time there will be a progressive resurgence ... All we can be sure of is that the political culture is about to undergo some big change.

To point out just how incompetent and staggeringly ineffectual the Bush administration was in its response to the rapidly deteriorating situation in New Orleans, CNN’s Tom Foreman set about to examine what is being said about Katrina today by Department of Homeland Security Chief Michael Chertoff compared to what was said in the past. Chertoff Fact Check consists of video clips of the various positions taken by DHS Secretary Chertoff and FEMA Director Michael Brown before and after Katrina struck.

The response by the Bush administration to the needs of its citizens can be characterized as cruel and heartless and assuredly nothing less than incomprehensible and unforgivable. In words that haunt the soul, Aaron Broussard, President of Jefferson Parish, appearing Sunday on Meet the Press, said, “the cavalry never came.” You can read the transcript, but the video is so much more powerful. The video is accessible by clicking on the permalink here, and then clicking on one of the video links.

As a coda to tonight’s post, VanRamblings offers another video, one of the harrowing pieces of television reportage as you’re ever likely to see watch. The video is accessible by clicking on the permalink here, and then click on either one of the video links. While Aaron Brown on CNN stated, “We have turned the corner,” Fox News’ Geraldo Rivera and Shepard Smith reported on the thousands of people trapped in what Geraldo called “this Hell on Earth” at the convention center. No one had been bused out. Shepard was on the I-10 and is devastating in his description of the “hundreds and hundreds and hundreds” of people denied exit, all of whom were left without food, water or medicine, for days.

July 25, 2005

Despicable Barbarians: Iran Executes Gay Teens In Public Hanging

Two gay Iranian teenagers — one 18, the other believed to be 16 or 17, were executed last week for the “crime” of homosexuality. The two youths — identified only by their initials as M.A. and A.M., were hanged on Tuesday, July 19th in Edalat (Justice) Square in the city of Mashhad in north-eastern Iran, on the orders of Court No. 19. The hanging of the teens was also reported by the National Council of Resistance of Iran.

According to OutRage magazine ...

(The two boys) admitted to having gay sex (probably under torture) but claimed in their defence that most young boys had sex with each other and that they were not aware that homosexuality was punishable by death. Prior to their execution, the teenagers were held in prison for 14 months and severely beaten with 228 lashes.

Ruhollah Rezazadeh, the lawyer of the youngest boy, had appealed that he was too young to be executed and that the court should take into account his tender age. But the Supreme Court in Tehran ordered him to be hanged. Under the Iranian penal code, girls as young as nine and boys as young as 15 can be hanged.

WikiNews reports that Iran in Focus “claimed that the two were hanged not for gay sex, but for sexually assaulting a 13-year-old boy at knife point. Neither the Iranian Student’s News Agency nor another report from the National Council of Resistance of Iran made this allegation.” Direland Press notes that the accusation of rape in reports came days after international outrage and detailed reports by other Iranian news agencies. They suggest the report is a ploy of the Iranian government to justify its actions.

“The allegation of sexual assault may either be a trumped-up charge to undermine public sympathy for the youths — a frequent tactic by the Islamist regime in Iran — or it may be that the 13-year-old was a willing participant but that Iranian law ... deems that no person of that age is capable of sexual consent and that therefore any sexual contact is automatically deemed in law to be a sex assault,” said OutRage!’s Peter Tatchell.

“This is just the latest barbarity by the Islamo-fascists in Iran,” Tatchell remarked. “The entire country is a gigantic prison, with Islamic rule sustained by detention without trial, torture and state-sanctioned murder.”

Tatchell told reporters that according to Iranian human rights activists, more than 4,000 lesbians and gay men have been executed in Iran since the ayatollahs seized power in 1979.

April 25, 2005

Paradise Lost | Never To Be Regained

In an article published in The Nation this past week, author and social commentarian Naomi Klein eviscerates the U.S. government in respect of its response to the peoples devastated by the December 26th tsunami, calling U.S. foreign policy “stunningly inept,” corrupt and incompetent.

In the body of the article, Klein defines “the rise of a predatory form of disaster capitalism that uses the desperation and fear created by catastrophe to engage in radical social and economic engineering.”

As in other reconstruction sites, from Haiti to Iraq, tsunami relief has little to do with recovering what was lost. Although hotels and industry have already started reconstructing on the coast, in Sri Lanka, Thailand, Indonesia and India, governments have passed laws preventing families from rebuilding their oceanfront homes. Hundreds of thousands of people are being forcibly relocated inland, to military style barracks in Aceh and prefab concrete boxes in Thailand. The coast is not being rebuilt as it was — dotted with fishing villages and beaches strewn with handmade nets. Instead, governments, corporations and foreign donors are teaming up to rebuild it as they would like it to be: the beaches as playgrounds for tourists, the oceans as watery mines for corporate fishing fleets, both serviced by privatized airports and highways built on borrowed money.

In January, Condoleezza Rice sparked a small controversy by describing the tsunami as “a wonderful opportunity” that “has paid great dividends for us.” Many were horrified at the idea of treating a massive human tragedy as a chance to seek advantage. But, if anything, Rice was understating the case. A group calling itself Thailand Tsunami Survivors and Supporters says that for “businessmen-politicians, the tsunami was the answer to their prayers, since it literally wiped these coastal areas clean of the communities which had previously stood in the way of their plans for resorts, hotels, casinos and shrimp farms. To them, all these coastal areas are now open land!”

Disaster, it seems, is the new terra nullius.

March 2, 2005

America Under Bush: The 14 Tenets of Facism

Click on the picture above for a visual and auditory representation of the 14 tenets of facism, as outlined in an article titled Affirmations of Humanism: A Statement of Principles — available in the latest issue of Free Inquiry magazine, a publication of the independent Council for Secular Humanism.

February 24, 2005

6th Annual Global Women's Strike: Invest in Caring, Not Killing

Seeking to end poverty and to put an end to war, fighting for a living wage for all of our work, and continuing the struggle to achieve pay equity in the global market, each March 8th, on every International Women’s Day since 2000 — and again in 2005 — women in over 60 countries will, and have, engaged in grassroots organizing activities to demand together that society invest in caring not killing, that the money squandered on wars across the globe instead be directed to the needs of our communities.

The demands of the global women’s strike — a day when women do neither paid, nor unpaid work — include ...

• Payment for all caring work — in wages, pensions, land and other resources.
• Pay equity for all — women and men — in the global market.
• Food security for breastfeeding mothers, paid maternity leave and maternity breaks.
• Accessible clean water, healthcare, housing, transport and literacy.
• Non-polluting energy and technology.
• Protection and asylum from all violence and persecution, including by family members and those in positions of authority.
• Freedom of movement.

Nothing in life is to be feared. It is only to be understood. Marie Curie

From Ghana, where women and girls have taken to the street of Anum to demand an end to war, and support for issues of importance to women; in Guyana, where multi-racial demonstrations have protested against the country’s 25-year history of racial segregation and violence; in India, where mass rallies and workshops of Tribal and Dalit women have demanded an end to the wage discrimination of the caste system, and an end to rape by individual men, employers and the police; in Uganda, where rural women have won free and accessible healthcare, the right to clean water close to their homes, and the respect of their husbands; to Peru, where domestic workers’ organizations in Lima took over a community radio station to press the government to implement legislation to provide benefits and rights to domestic workers — strike action has brought about needed change and empowered women, children and men to take more, and increasingly effective, action to create a more caring, just and equitable world.

Change comes slowly, but change comes only through action and struggle.

February 23, 2005

Depraved and Decadent: The Life and Death of Hunter S Thompson

Hunter S. Thompson is dead. Long live the king.

Amid the guns, drugs and enormous expenses claims, Hunter Stockton Thompson created a new style of writing — gonzo journalism — and a generation of adherents. In the days after Thompson’s suicide, journalists from across the globe have weighed in on the importance of Thompson’s contribution to the canon of late twentieth century political discourse.

From Eric Homberger’s chronicling of Thompson’s life, published in The Guardian, to Tom Wolfe’s historical merry prankster retrospective, through to the perspective offered by author and political commentator Williams Rivers Pitt, to the voice of the man himself (audio via What Really Happened), when all is said and done all that is left to declaim is that Thompson will be sorely missed.

Thompson took pride in being the wild man of American journalism.

“As a journalist, I somehow managed to break most of the rules and still succeed,” he told biographer William McKeen. “It’s a hard thing for most of today’s journeymen journalists to understand, but only because they can’t do it.”

There is no more cogent evocation of what Thompson meant to political discourse than his writing on the passing of Richard Milhous Nixon, He Was A Crook. As Alexander Cockburn writes in counterpunch, “How Thompson said goodbye to Richard Nixon is as good a way to remember the high priest of gonzo as any ...”

Richard Nixon is gone now and I am poorer for it. He was the real thing — a political monster straight out of Grendel and a very dangerous enemy. He could shake your hand and stab you in the back at the same time. He lied to his friends and betrayed the trust of his family.

It was Richard Nixon who got me into politics, and now that he’s gone, I feel lonely. He was a giant in his way. As long as Nixon was politically alive — and he was, all the way to the end — we could always be sure of finding the enemy on the Low Road. There was no need to look anywhere else for the evil bastard. He had the fighting instincts of a badger trapped by hounds. The badger will roll over on its back and emit a smell of death, which confuses the dogs and lures them in for the traditional ripping and tearing action. But it is usually the badger who does the ripping and tearing. It is a beast that fights best on its back: rolling under the throat of the enemy and seizing it by the head with all four claws. That was Nixon’s style — and if you forgot, he would kill you as a lesson to the others. Badgers don’t fight fair, bubba. That’s why God made dachshunds.

The remainder of Thompson’s Nixon retrospective is available here.

February 19, 2005

Something Evil This Way Comes

From 1971 to 1973, John Negroponte — confirmed by the Bush administration this past week as the first U.S. National Intelligence director — was the officer-in charge for Vietnam at the National Security Council under Henry Kissinger. During that period, former Drug Enforcement Administration agent Michael Levine was conducting undercover operations in Saigon, Thailand, and Cambodia where the U.S. government was smuggling heroin into the U.S. The government was utilizing caskets and body bags of those "Killed In Action" to smuggled the heroin.

From 1981-1985, Negroponte was assigned as U.S. Ambassador to Honduras, where he illegally assisted the Contra war, aiding the Reagan administration in ‘disappearing’ close to 300 political opponents in classic death squad fashion. He supervised the creation of the El Aguacate air base, which the Contras used as a secret detention and torture centre. From 1989 to September 1993, Negroponte was ambassador to Mexico where he directed U. S. intelligence services in assisting the war against the Zapatista rebels in Chiapas.

According to the New York Times, under the diplomatic cover of his role as ‘ambassador’, Negroponte organized right wing death squads in Central America, leaving tens of thousands of people dead in El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua as they murdered to prop up pro-U.S. dictatorships under President Ronald Reagan. The Times credits Negroponte with ‘carrying out the covert strategy of the Reagan administration to crush the Sandinista government in Nicaragua’ during his tenure as U.S. ambassador to Honduras from 1981 to 1985.

In an article titled, Former death squad man to run Iraq, Kevin Ovenden writes in IndyMedia UK that ...

• Negroponte could give lessons to the most brutal dictatorships in the world on how to organise death squads, assassinate opponents and terrorise popular movements into submission

• Negroponte, during his term as ‘ambassador’, oversaw the growth of military aid to Honduras from $4 million to $77.4 million a year. Much of that money was funnelled to the death squads in neighbouring Nicaragua and El Salvador

• Negroponte concealed murder, kidnapping and torture by a CIA equipped and trained Honduran military unit, Battalion 3-16

  Negroponte, while at the U.S. embassy in Vietnam, coordinated pro-U.S. death squads from 1964 to 1968

Dave Lindorff, writing in Counterpunch, calls the nomination by President George Bush of John Negroponte both ‘obscene and predictable’.

October 16, 2004

Jon Stewart in a Dust Up on CNN's Crossfire

Seems that Jon Stewart is mad as hell and he just ain’t gonna take it any more.

Appearing on CNN’s Crossfire, the Daily Show’s acerbic host took Crossfire hosts Paul Begala and Tucker Carlson to task for “hurting America,” by failing to take journalism as a serious endeavour, by failing to hold politician’s feet to the fire, and by turning their show into nothing more than Spin Alley. “Now don’t you think that for people watching at home, that’s kind of a drag? That you’re literally walking to a place called Deception Lane?”

Both Dave Cullen and Salon magazine’s Charles Taylor weigh in on what Stewart accomplished by demanding that Crossfire “confront tough issues, instead of being the political equivalent of pro wrestling.”

Video of Stewart’s appearance on Crossfire is made available by The Free Speech Zone.

October 10, 2004

2004 U.S. Election: Bush On the Ropes As Kerry Takes The Lead

Click on the Electoral Vote Predictor graphic for more detailed information.

September 18, 2004

Kerry Rising: Rumours of John Kerry's Demise Greatly Exaggerated
New polls suggest it’s the President who should be trembling

In a September 17th column in Salon magazine (hidden behind a subscription firewall) political columnist and author Joe Conason writes that “there is no reason to give up, regardless of any flaws in the Kerry-Edwards campaign or the Bush-Cheney convention bounce.” That ‘bounce’ has fallen flat, according to Conason, returning the presidential race to a virtual dead heat, according to several new polls.

The new Harris Interactive/Wall Street Journal poll, completed on September 13th, shows Kerry with 48 percent, Bush with 47 percent and Ralph Nader with 2 percent, an almost identical result to the Harris poll taken before the Republican Convention, when Kerry was ahead by 1 point.

Late last week, the Economist released a new YouGov poll, which employs online technology developed by a British survey firm, and found Bush ahead of Kerry by a single point, 47 to 46. “To the magazine’s editors this represents an ‘impressive’ result for Bush,” writes Conason, “because more than 56 percent of the voters polled by YouGov say they are ‘dissatisfied with the way things are going in the United States at this time’.”

Democracy Corps, run by James Carville and Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg, completed a new poll of 1,003 voters on September 14th, which also showed Bush one point ahead, 49 to 48 percent. Greenberg’s poll includes lots of data suggesting that voters want a new direction — and that independents, in particular, are deeply dissatisfied with Bush.

The latest survey by Investor’s Business Daily and the Christian Science Monitor, completed September 12th, actually shows Kerry ahead by two points among registered voters and tied with Bush among ‘likely’ voters. Conason suggests that “for a useful discussion of this distinction and why it may not be meaningful at this stage” that readers consult Ruy Teixeira’s Donkey Rising blog, “which provides smart, professional and duly skeptical analysis of media polls.”

Too often, the left tends to adopt a defeatist ‘sky is falling’ attitude at the first hint of trouble allegedly impacting on the viability of the more progressive party, or candidate, running in a federal, provincial / state, or municipal election, seeming to give up the cause and awarding the win in the early going to the corporatist, right-wing candidate or party.

With 48 days to go, though, before Presidential election day in the United States, to believe that the ‘game is over’ and that Bush is all but a shoo-in for a second term in office would be, at best, wrong-headed and just plain asinine. As one-time New York Yankees coach Yogi Berra put it so cogently oh so many years ago, “It ain’t over ’til its over.”

September 17, 2004

Canada's Most Respected Cheaters

Earlier this year, KPMG released its annual ranking of Canada’s most respected corporations, the silver medal awarded to WestJet, Canada’s western-based, national, privately owned airline. “Today, corporate reputation matters more than ever,” said KPMG partner Bill Dillabough in announcing the results. “We at KPMG are proud to draw attention to the importance of respect and integrity in the business world.”

Canadian Auto Workers’ Jim Stanford wonders how it is that a company ...

with revelations (not yet proven in court) that it snooped confidential information on Jetsgo (its low-cost competitor), in addition to hacking similar data from Air Canada ... with first-half profits down by half, and the profit margin (as a share of revenue) at its lowest ever ... paying its workers sub-average wages and offering no pension plan ...

could possibly have been provided with a much sought after designation by one of the world’s most prestigious corporate advisers? We wonder, too.

September 13, 2004

George W. Bush Unmasked: Liar, Deserter, Hypocrite, Murderer

With less than 50 days to the U.S. election and some polls reporting a 10-point lead over John Kerry, George W Bush’s re-election as President looks a breeze. Despite his dodgy past, he has successfully sold himself as a ‘hero’ War President and defender of traditional U.S. values. How did he do it? Bush’s people have run riot over Democratic Presidential candidate John Kerry’s record, so what about the President’s?

President Bush under fire

Although Time magazine last week reported a double-digit lead for incumbent President George W. Bush — the so-called ‘post convention bounce’ — Newsweek will publish a story this week that shows Bush’s double-digit lead has narrowed to six points following revelations made public in the last few days of cocaine use by the President while vacationing at Camp David, deliberate fudging by the President of his military service in the National Guard, the right-to-life President’s alleged assistance in helping a girlfriend secure an abortion in the 1970s, and the President’s close ties to the bin Laden family.

In a story published yesterday in Great Britain’s Glasgow Sunday Herald, Investigations Editor Neil Mackay explores “Bush’s charge sheet for alleged wrongdoing — sex, drugs, cowardice, cruelty; [as well as other of] his alleged failings and foibles [which] are imperial in stature.”

Bush has wrapped himself in the Stars and Stripes since the horror of Sept. 11. His presidency has pushed a simple message: America is in danger and he’s the man to keep the people safe; he’ll take the fight against the terrorists abroad and he’s proud of U.S. troops.

If that is the case, why is Bush mired in a scandal about his Vietnam-era service, or lack of, with fresh allegations that he was able to sneak out of serving his country overseas because his daddy was famous, powerful and rolling in cash?

Being proved to be a little yellow-bellied about fighting in Vietnam would be mere collateral damage to the Bush campaign compared to the all-out nuclear holocaust which would ensue if the allegations made about Dubya’s cocaine use and abortion-fixing, in biographer and muck-raker Kitty Kelly’s forthcoming book on the Bush family, stand up to scrutiny.

Since his days in Yale, Bush has been strongly anti-intellectual and rampantly pro-business. Until the age of 30, he didn’t really do very much of anything, but by 1977 he started to use his family’s powerful connections to raise money for an oil business.

The most questionable business venture of Bush’s oil career came while he was with the Harken Energy Corporation. Harken made investments in the Middle East in the run-up to the invasion of Kuwait by Saddam. At the time, Bush Sr was the 41st President of the USA and Bush Jr was on the board of Harken. Harken took a pasting on the stockmarket. In June 1990, Harken consultants said only ‘ drastic action’ could save the company. Bush sold his entire stock in Harken before information about the dire state of the company was known publicly — despite a legal requirement on him to notify the Securities Exchange Commission ...

When governor of Texas between 1995 and 2000, Bush presided over more than 120 executions — that accounts for about a third of the executions in the entire USA during the same period. Bush objected to a bill to stop the state executing people with mental problems. He also vetoed a unanimous bill by the Texas legislature requiring the appointment of a lawyer to an accused within 20 days.

Neil Mackay asks a series of critical questions, deserving of answers before the American people go to the polls on November 2nd: “Is President George W Bush, who weaves a narrative about himself as a man of God, actually a charlatan? Is he really a wolf in sheep’s clothing? Is his faith a sham? Is he more bad boy than born again? More playboy than penitent?”

These are just a few of the issues in debate, as the American people and the world community await answers about Bush’s shrouded past.

September 12, 2004

Youth Criminal Justice: A Unique Diversion Programme

In 2002, a group of angry girls between the ages of twelve and seventeen blew a fuse, initiating a vicious attack on a woman who they perceived to be a hooker.

The woman was walking down the street at around midnight, dazed, shoes in hand. One member of the group of girls hanging out decided to punch the woman and knock her to the ground. Gang mentality led to more of the girls becoming involved, and the woman was kicked to the ground, at one point one of the girls even dancing on her face.

The innocent woman was, in fact, the dazed victim of a recent sexual assault. But had she been a prostitute, the actions of the girls would hardly have mitigated the crime. So how should the girls’ crime be addressed?

The three primary offenders, all under the age of sixteen, were handed a unique sentence, which the victim of their crime had a hand in determining. Through the Youth Restorative Action Project (YRAP), the consequence was constructed to foster a little empathy for the prostitutes whom the girls claimed to hate.

YRAP is a justice committee unique to Edmonton, the inspiration of Yasmina Semanac, a teenaged Serbian / Canadian who managed to escape her war-ravaged country. The YRAP panel is comprised of a group of youth who work with the courts to determine sentences for young people involved in “hate crimes and crimes of significant social issues.”

In this case, the panel called on Mark Cherrington, a youth worker involved in YRAP and Youth Menace, a radio show on the University of Alberta’s CJSR, a weekly programme hosted and produced by young offenders who’ve had contact with the criminal justice system. The programme exists to give voice to the young offender population, a group often invisible to the mainstream population.

Programmes often involve Cherrington transferring young offenders directly from the Law Courts to CJSR, where they are given the opportunity to discuss their situations, unedited and live on the air. “Somebody described [the show] as either brilliantly wonderful or a wonderful disaster depending on what show you turn on,” laughs Cherrington.

Youth Menace and YRAP are partners in crime fighting, a collaboration that allows for the opportunity for youth peer justice, which is to say justice outcomes developed and delivered by youth. The only requirement to be a panel member is that s/he is 25 years or younger and that they affirm a belief in the declaration of universal human rights.

In the case of the young women convicted of assaulting the woman on an Edmonton street, the young female offenders involved were instructed to make a two-hour radio documentary about child prostitution in their own backyards. The award-winning documentary, Children and Prostitution: Victims, All of Us, is as honest and provocative a document of child prostitution as you’re likely ever to hear, akin to the work of writer Harmony Korine, a youth himself, on Larry Clark’s film Kids, though here there is not an ounce of fiction or conjecture in the radio documentary.

The voices represented in Victims are all children and all girls. The documentary introduces a 16-year-old pimp who chews unendingly on candy because she’s trying to get off crystal meth; and a child prostitute who met her pimp by naively waving at him across the street from the public library because she thought he was cute. Two days later, she found herself working the streets for drug money.

“This piece is the first piece from the perspective of the child,” says Cherrington. “It’s not a ministerial statement, it’s not mid- to low-level bureaucrats talking about ‘we need to’ or ‘we should’ or ‘this is adequate or inadequate.’”

Peppered with original urban music, explicit songs all written by street kids from ihuman, an inner city arts studio, Children and Prostitution: Victims, All of Us is well-executed, although the voices of the girls couldn’t be more raw and unvarnished.

“It’s a testament, not a message,” says Cherrington. “At the end it goes back to the philosophy of Youth Menace: you may agree or disagree with what’s being said, but the bottom line is that you certainly have to respect it, and it needs to be listened to.”

Reporting by Tash Fryzuk in the May issue of See magazine.

September 6, 2004

A Holiday For Us All: Where Labour Day Came From
© The Vancouver Sun 2004, with additional linked material

A part of Canadian history: the Winnipeg General Strike of 1919

According to many history books, Labour Day began in the United States when the Knights of Labor organized a parade on Sept. 5, 1882 in New York City.

As is often the case, the history books got one thing right and another wrong. The Knights did hold a parade in 1882, but the history of Labour Day began 10 years earlier, and in a place much closer to home.

On April 15, 1872, when Canada was just five years old, the Toronto Trades Assembly organized a “workingman’s demonstration” to call for the freedom of 24 imprisoned leaders of the Toronto Typographical Union.

The demonstration, which was attended by 10,000 people, included a parade and speeches that called for the repeal of a law criminalizing membership in trade unions.

Buoyed by the success of the demonstration, members of seven Ottawa trade unions organized a mile-long parade on Sept. 3, 1872, once again to protest laws that made union membership illegal.

But this wasn’t your average parade — marchers stopped at the home of then prime minister John A. Macdonald, literally picked up the PM, and took him to Ottawa City Hall by torchlight.

The prime minister was well aware of workers’ discontent with the law, and on the steps of the city hall, he promised marchers that his party would “sweep away all such barbarous laws from the statue books.”

Later that year, Mr. Macdonald and his party made good on his promise, and for the next decade, trade unions continued to hold annual parades and demonstrations.

On July 22, 1882, the Toronto Trades and Labour council decided to invite New Yorker Peter J. McGuire, the general secretary of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and co-founder of the American Federation of Labour, to speak at the demonstration.

McGuire was duly impressed with the event, and, when he returned home, he proposed that America celebrate a day in honour of workers. Sure enough, the Americans celebrated their first unofficial Labour Day on Sept. 5, 1882, and McGuire became known as the “father of Labour Day.”

Over the next decade, individual states enacted legislation making the first Monday in September Labour Day, and on June 28, 1894, the U.S. Congress passed a federal law enshrining the holiday.

Just four weeks later, the Canadian Parliament enacted a similar law, and now the first Monday in September is celebrated as Labour Day throughout North America. Many other countries, including Australia, New Zealand and the Netherlands, also recognize Labour Day, but have chosen different dates on which the holiday is observed.

And still other countries recognize Labour Day’s spinoff — May Day — on May 1. But regardless of what it's called, when it's celebrated or who first made it official, Labour Day was clearly introduced to the world by Canada.

As with many holidays, the roots of Labour Day are often forgotten. Many people now see Labour Day simply as one more much needed holiday, one more much appreciated long weekend, one more much valued opportunity to spend time with the family, or to work around the house, or to sit back and relax.

And you know what? That’s okay. The history of Labour Day is important of course, but the holiday means most when it provides working people with a well-deserved breather from their usual work routines.

So this Labour Day, feel free to do whatever strikes your fancy. After all, this is a holiday that celebrates the contributions of Canadian workers, and a holiday we can truly call our own.

© The Vancouver Sun 2004, with additional linked material.

September 5, 2004

Amnesty International: Stop Child Executions
Ending The Death Penalty For Child Offenders

Napoleon Beazley was executed in 2002 in Texas for a murder committed 8 years earlier when he was 17 years old. At the trial the white prosecutor described him as an ‘animal’ to an all-white jury. Trial witnesses cited his potential for rehabilitation. He was a model prisoner.

Amnesty International and medical experts from seven countries have sent an open letter to the heads of government in China, Pakistan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Philippines, Iran, Sudan and the USA urging them to stop using the death penalty against children.

The letter has been signed by 17 medical experts with outstanding credentials in the field of child and adolescent psychology, psychiatry and social development.

International standards prohibit the execution of child offenders — people who were under 18 years old at the time of the crime. These standards include the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the American Convention on Human Rights and the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child. The relevant standards are respected by the overwhelming majority of the 80 countries which still retain and use the death penalty.

“Although adolescents generally know the difference between right and wrong, they can suffer from diminished capacities to reason logically, to control their impulses, to think through the future consequences of their actions, and to resist the negative influences and persuasion of others,” says the letter.

“They should face punishment for criminal actions, but the sanctions which can be imposed on mentally competent adolescent offenders should not be the same as those faced by adults found guilty of the same offences.”

Since 1990, Amnesty International has documented 38 executions of child offenders in eight countries: China, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Iran, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, the USA and Yemen.

Endorsing the call of the world community to abolish child executions, Irene Khan, Secretary General of Amnesty International, said, “Child offenders should not be punished as if they were adults. Governments must amend their laws and practices to conform with international human rights standards and end the death penalty for offenders under the age of 18.”

September 2, 2004

American Election Campaign 2004: You're The Campaign Manager

By clicking on the picture above, you’ll be taken to a flash website which will effectively place you “in the shoes of a campaign manager in the 2004 [American] presidential election” for the candidate of your choice.

Yes, employing clever strategy, you can determine the outcome of the election to the south. Four more years of George W. Bush or a new President, John Forbes Kerry? The decision rests on your shoulders.

August 30, 2004

Chile Makes Final Ruling: Pinochet Can Stand Trial

The former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet this past Friday lost what could be the final round in his tortuous struggle to avoid prosecution for human rights abuses.

In a surprise ruling, the country’s Supreme Court ruled by 9 votes to 8 to uphold the decision of a lower court in May that stripped Pinochet, 88, of immunity from prosecution. There can be no appeal against the ruling.

The ruling was received with joy by the families of victims of the dictator, while the centre-left coalition government has taken a cautious stance.

“This is a historic day, because this ruling opens a window of opportunity for us to try all of the human rights violators," said Lorena Pizarro, president of the Group of Families of the Detained-Disappeared.”

A website maintained by Michael Neumann provides stark accounts of Pinochet’s crimes. Human Rights Watch has published a timeline of the Pinochet prosecution dating back to October 16, 1998.

In their special report, The Guardian published their own early timeline of the march toward justice for Augusto Pinochet, as well as a Reuters report in which the seemingly delusional former dictator states ...

“I never aspired to be a dictator because I considered that to be a dictator would end badly. I always acted in a democratic way.”

With Pinochet in the hands of the justice system, the path would now seem to be clear to establish his share of responsibility in Operation Condor, the strategy by which South American de facto military regimes co-ordinated the repression of political opponents in the 1970s and 1980s.

August 28, 2004

Ya Better Watch Out, Ya Better Not Cry

Just how much damage has President George Walker Bush done to the United States in just four short years? And what are the reasons why the people of the United States shouldn’t even consider electing him to a second term in office?

Author, journalist, Peabody award-winning documentarian, and syndicated columnist Richard Reeves believes he has at least a partial answer to the questions posed above.

• “He has divided the country; we are all part of a vicious little hissing match. We were united and humbled on September 12, 2001. We are divided and humliated now, telling lies about each other.”

• “He has divided the world. ‘We are all Americans now’ headlined Le Monde on that September 12. Now there are days when it seems as if they are all anti-Americans.”

• “He is leaving no child or grandchild without debt. He has taken the government from surplus into deficit in the name of national security and increased private investment. We can pay the debt in two ways: with more government revenues (taxation) or by borrowing — against the sweat and income of new generations. The President has chosen to borrow.”

• “He campaigns as a champion of smaller government, but is greatly increasing the size and role of government. Ideological conservatism, it turns out, costs just as much or more than ideological liberalism. Conservative and liberal politicians are both for increasing the reach and power of government. The difference between them is which parts and functions of the state are to be empowered and financed. The choice is between military measures and order, or more redistribution of income. Money is power.”

The latter part of Mr. Reeves’ column may be found here.

August 16, 2004

Nice, Polite, Calm, Reserved, and Chock Full of Common Sense

liberal gadfly Molly Ivins

Former editor of the liberal monthly The Texas Observer, and syndicated columnist on politics for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram (among many other endeavours past and present), Molly Ivins, on writing about the American psychodrama (this autumn’s U.S. election) suggests that having the United States to the south of us is “like having the Simpsons for next-door neighbours.”

While vacationing in Kananaskis, Alberta, Ms. Ivins was, she says, queried repeatedly by Canadians about the prospect of electing George Walker Bush to a second term in office.

“You couldn’t possibly …” they begin, only to break off. “Are you not aware of what …” “Surely you realize how …” But they can think of no polite way of asking if we are such freaking idiots that we haven’t noticed the damage that has been done by the Bush administration to the American reputation all over the world.

Ms. Ivins finds herself at some pains to try to answer the ever-so-delicately phrased question: Are you people actually going to re-elect that nincompoop? In replying to queries placed by politely astonished Canadians, she finds herself dumbfounded at what her fellow Americans may do come November 2nd, leaving her readers with a wearying concluding thought, “Some days are much tougher sledding than others.”

August 15, 2004

American Election Results In: Kerry Wins In a Landslide !!!

In much the same way that Canada’s Election Prediction Project sought to predict the outcome of our recent Canadian federal election, to the south of us the folks behind the Electoral Vote Predictor have set about to track how the Electoral College will likely vote come the evening of November 2nd.

At the moment, the folks behind the Electoral Vote Predictor show that, based on polling data, Senator John Kerry holds a commanding lead over the sitting President, George W. Bush. Even the folks at the pro-Bush Election Prediction.com website have Kerry in front of Bush, both in the probable Electoral College vote and American voter percentage support. The Rasmussen Report also places Kerry ahead of Bush, with 232 to 197 probable Electoral College votes; 109 votes are in the toss-up column.

VanRamblings will post udpated, projected Electoral College numbers throughout the late summer and autumn. In the meantime, click on the supplied site links above for more in-depth information.

August 10, 2004

American Election: 84 Days Between Now and November 2nd

August 9, 2004

Remember Abu Ghraib? You May, But The Media Seems Not To.

The abuse of Iraqi child prisoners continues to go unreported in the U.S. press

Why has the media slacked off in covering the Iraqi prison abuse scandal?

Until the first important story by Seymour Hersh in The New Yorker, along with the first wave of pictures from CBS and the Washington Post, journalists across North America had reported almost nothing on the abuse of prisoners at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib detention centre. An American Journalism Review report lists several possible reasons for the failure: lack of resources, the difficulties of reporting in Iraq, reporters worried about ‘liberal media’ charges, and stonewalling by the White House.

For whatever reason, major media failed to put the pieces together.

Now, three months after the story of the torture and abuse of Iraqi prisoners began being widely reported in the U.S. media, the story has all but disappeared from coverage in the major print media and on the national evening news programmes. Mother Jones’ Bradford Plumer asks, “How long will this new stretch of silence last?”

The question becomes particularly cogent when one considers the revelations of abuse that have continued to come to light in the past month. Across the Atlantic, Scotland’s Sunday Herald recently discovered that there are up to 107 child prisoners being held in Iraq (reported earlier by VanRamblings), according to a UNICEF report not yet made public.

In the United States, Rolling Stone magazine got its hands on the classified annexes to the prison report by Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba. The annexes accuse high-ranking military officials of setting conditions for torture in Abu Ghraib. In particular, Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, who currently runs all of the prisons in Iraq, was sent to Abu Ghraib in order to speed up the intelligence-gathering process. Miller recommended that the jailers should become “actively engaged in setting the conditions for successful exploitation of the internees.” The end result was entirely predictable:

A former Army intelligence officer (told) Rolling Stone that the intent of Miller’s report was clear to everyone involved: “It means treat the detainees like shit until they will sell their mother for a blanket, some food without bugs in it and some sleep.”

The Rolling Stone story is disturbing, not least because of the recent admission by senior Army criminal investigators that the abused inmates had “little or no intelligence value to the United States.”

With so many stories that need reporting, particularly in a Presidential election year down south, where is our media, both in the United States and Canada, when it comes to reporting these very important stories to the public? As Mother Jones avers, “we shouldn’t have to rely on a Scottish newspaper and a music magazine to get the inside dirt on child torture.” Media complicity in prisoner torture must end. Reporters need to wake up.

August 2, 2004

All the Right Moves: How Conservatism Won

In a new book titled The Right Nation: How Conservatism Won, written by John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge, Oxford-educated American correspondents for The Economist, the two Brits present a vividly detailed study of why conservatives rule American politics (and, by extension, set the agenda for Canadian politics).

The authors trace the history of the conservative movement from the McCarthy era, when ‘conservatism was a fringe idea,’ to the second Bush administration and the ‘victory of the right’. They dissect the new ‘conservative establishment’, which combines the intellectual force of think tanks, business interests and sympathetic media outlets, and argue that continuing Republican hegemony is likely.

Why? Three simple reasons explain why conservatives keep defeating the left, the authors suggest: The right wins the battle of ideas, has a more determined and focused army of activists, and is reaping the benefits of long-term changes in American society.

And, lest you think that Micklethwait and Wooldridge are themselves conservatives, they take pains in the introduction to disclaim any allegiance to either of America’s “two great political tribes.”

In his review of the book for Mother Jones magazine, Michael Kazin accepts the cogency of the arguments made by Micklethwait and Wooldridge, and writes that if the left is to succeed in reclaiming the hearts and minds of the American people ...

“ ... they (must) rid themselves of a nagging contempt for the unhip, the poorly educated, and the God-fearing. If the left is not a movement of and for working people — blemishes and all — then it has little chance to regain its previous influence.”

Micklethwait and Wooldridge limn a powerful dynamic that unites the Burkean philosophy of the right-leaning think tanks with the moral passion of religious activists and the entrepreneurial energy of small-business owners. Whether this fusion of interests will disintegrate amidst its own internal contradictions or whether the left will come to reclaim the activist and collectivist agenda of working people remains to be seen.

July 31, 2004

John Kerry: The Next President of the United States?

Click on the picture above to watch “A Remarkable Promise” (Windows Media Player)