Core Dump

The New York Times has an article examining the rise of the Tea Party as a major political force in the U.S. It's well worth reading, though you may find it quite unsettling, as I did, to find what would appear to be otherwise normal, middle-class Americans seriously considering armed rebellion against their own government.

Not long ago, Mrs. Stout sent an e-mail message to her members under the subject line: “Revolution.” It linked to an article by Greg Evensen, a leader in the militia movement, titled “The Anatomy of an American Revolution,” that listed “grievances” he said “would justify a declaration of war against any criminal enterprise including that which is killing our nation from Washington, D.C.”

Mrs. Stout said she has begun to contemplate the possibility of “another civil war.” It is her deepest fear, she said. Yet she believes the stakes are that high. Basic freedoms are threatened, she said. Economic collapse, food shortages and civil unrest all seem imminent.

“I don’t see us being the ones to start it, but I would give up my life for my country,” Mrs. Stout said.

She paused, considering her next words.

“Peaceful means,” she continued, “are the best way of going about it. But sometimes you are not given a choice.”

I do find it interesting that a lot of the statements made by Tea Party members quoted in the article sound a lot li6ke those made by radical leftists in the 1960s.

Update: I'm not the only one who noticed the similarities between the populist rhetoric of the Tea Party and the radical sixites' leftists. See this post by John Taplin, where he quotes from the Students for a Democratic Society.

Labels: Another thing to worry about, politics

The Atlantic has published a long article that takes a thorough look at the long-term effects of high unemployment on the social fabric of the U.S. Most of what the article describes is also applicable to Canada and especially to Southern Ontario, where the manufacturing industry has been hard hit by the recession. The picture it paints is deeply unsettling.

Indeed, this period of economic weakness may reinforce class divides, and decrease opportunities to cross them—especially for young people. The research of Till Von Wachter, the economist at Columbia University, suggests that not all people graduating into a recession see their life chances dimmed: those with degrees from elite universities catch up fairly quickly to where they otherwise would have been if they’d graduated in better times; it’s the masses beneath them that are left behind. Princeton’s 2009 graduating class found more jobs in financial services than in any other industry. According to Princeton’s career-services director, Beverly Hamilton-Chandler, campus visits and hiring by the big investment banks have been down, but that decline has been partly offset by an uptick in recruiting by hedge funds and boutique financial firms.

In the Internet age, it is particularly easy to see the bile that has always lurked within American society. More difficult, in the moment, is discerning precisely how these lean times are affecting society’s character. In many respects, the U.S. was more socially tolerant entering this recession than at any time in its history, and a variety of national polls on social conflict since then have shown mixed results. Signs of looming class warfare or racial conflagration are not much in evidence. But some seeds of discontent are slowly germinating. The town-hall meetings last summer and fall were contentious, often uncivil, and at times given over to inchoate outrage. One National Journal poll in October showed that whites (especially white men) were feeling particularly anxious about their future and alienated by the government. We will have to wait and see exactly how these hard times will reshape our social fabric. But they certainly will reshape it, and all the more so the longer they extend.

There's a long section in the article describing how the recession is affecting young people - if you're a parent, I highly recommend reading it.

Labels: economics and finance, politics, society

Saturday's Globe and Mail had a long article about the Tea Party, the US populist fringe party that's holding its convention in Nashville this weekend. It's making mainstream US politician's quite nervous.

Though their gripes are not always coherent – they're against Mr. Obama's “government-run” health-care proposal, but cling to publicly funded Medicare for seniors – the Tea Partiers are promising to shake up U.S. politics in ways that leave almost no elected official safe. Indeed, often dismissed by liberal foes as Republican-financed “Astroturf” – or fake grassroots – the hundreds of Tea Partiers gathered here seem as mad, if not madder, at the GOP.

They intend to stay angry – at least for the election cycle that culminates with this fall's midterm elections. The Tea Partiers' strong anti-incumbency inclination means that dozens of senators, congressman, governors and judges from both sides of the aisle are facing the toughest re-election battles of their careers.

The Globe article manages to gloss over the extremist side of this movement. For more on that, see this post and this one.

Labels: politics

Say what you will about Barack Obama's policies, there's no doubt that he's the most Internet savvy president yet. This Washington Post article describes in some detail how he gets information and makes decisions, and the Internet plays a big part.

Obama is the first truly wired president, the first to have Internet access at his desk and to converse regularly via e-mail. This fingertip access sends him "constantly" online, said one senior adviser, and the information he finds there influences his thinking and some of his deliberations. He also "uses the Internet like a normal adult," said another aide, "reading news articles, checking sports scores."

As for what Obama reads online, his advisers said he looks for offbeat blogs and news stories, tracking down firsthand reporting and seeking out writers with opinions about his policies. Obama was particularly interested in Atlantic Online's Andrew Sullivan's tweeting of the Iranian elections last year, said an aide, who requested anonymity to discuss what influences the president.

When they spoke for attribution, administration officials played down the notion of a Googling commander in chief.

"I don't think time permits him to be surfing all the time," Axelrod said, adding that the president reads "magazines like crazy," including the New Yorker, the Economist, Sports Illustrated and Rolling Stone. "There are some commentators whose views he's interested in, and he'll read blog items."

Labels: Internet, politics

Canadian broadcasters and the cable/satellite companies have been squaring off the last few months, both launching campaigns to try to persuade viewers that they deserve more money. The broadcasters figure that the cable/satellite companies should pay them for "stealing" their signals and rebroadcasting them, while the cable/satellite companies are complaining that we're already paying the broadcaters to produce content. And we, the poor viewers , are caught in the middle while both try to pick our pockets.

The Writers Guild of Canada has produced a video that tries to explain the situation. It's short and to the point. If you're getting confused and annoyed by the blitz of competing attack ads on TV, watch it.

Labels: movies and television, politics

Here's a wonderful piece of pro-net-neutrality propogranda - a poster advertising various Internet service bundles - a parody of the way your cable company likely sells it's services. It can't happen here, can it?

And before you dismiss the chart outright, check out your cable company's channel packages. Replace content provider fees with new network backbone charges, and cable packages with traffic or website packages, and hey, look, shit—this doesn't seem so crazy, does it? Click here for the full version. [Reddit via Crunchgear]

Labels: Internet, politics

In his latest editorial in The Guardian, Cory Doctorow takes on the 3-strikes and you're disconnected anti-piracy laws that are being proposed in Europe (and in Canada too, if our fearless leader and his minions have their way). Worth reading and keeping in mind when the next version of Bill C-61 is launched in Parliament.

The internet is an integral part of our children’s education; it’s critical to our employment; it’s how we stay in touch with distant relatives. It’s how we engage with government. It’s the single wire that delivers freedom of speech, freedom of the press and freedom of assembly. It isn’t just a conduit for getting a few naughty free movies, it is the circulatory system of the information age.

To understand just how disproportionate this is, consider the corollary: what if Peter Mandelson proposed a rule to terminate the internet access of any movie studio or record company accused of three baseless copyright claims against the public? We could go down to all Universal offices and data centres with a huge pair of boltcutters and snip its net wires at the junction box.

It would be a corporate death penalty. Families that receive this penalty — without a judge or trial — will face a similar terminal fate, cut off from the system that connects them to life and livelihood.

Labels: intellectual property, Internet, politics

John Taplin writes about a chart that shows the decline in investment in productive goods and industries over the last few decades. It does not bode well for the future.

We can talk all we want about building a better future full of “Green Jobs”, but on the current trajectory, that future will arrive in China long before it reaches our shores. The “chicken and egg” problem described by the Wall Street Journal won’t be solved until the government starts aggressively seeding the Green Tech Business, because alternative energy is the only place where we have undercapacity. And this can be a “bottoms-up” strategy simply by requiring every utility company to buy excess solar and wind capacity from consumers at some sort of fixed rate. Consumers in California could easily afford to shift to solar if they knew they could make a profit from their excess capacity. The second thing the government could do would be to designate certain less scenic parts of the millions of acres of government land as open for solar and wind development in a public private partnership.

Labels: Another thing to worry about, economics and finance, politics

Naked Capitalism has posted a review of Michael Moore's Capitalism, A Story that's worth reading.

Readers will likely enjoy his treatment of the TARP and its aftermath. Moore provides evidence well known to finance blog readers, such as Goldman penetration of key policy positions, an obligatory Phil Gramm saying something heinous shot, and the role of financial services contributions (he managed to interview the fellow at Countrywide in charge of the “Friends of Angelo” cheap mortgage as bribe program, who sees nothing wrong in what he did). He also makes good use of Bill Black and Elizabeth Warren. Congressmen and women, agitated even now, describe how the process of getting the TARP through despite overwhelming popular opposition was masterfully orchestrated, carefully timed to prey on re-election fears “like an intelligence operation”. The clips are simply damning, and dispel any doubts of who is really in charge in DC.

And if you read the review, definitely read or watch the linked Bill Moyers interview. It would be interesting to see a graph comparing the decline of the manufacturing sector in the US, the increasing disparity of wealth between rich and poor, and the rise of the financial sector. I'd like to see that correlation graphed.

Labels: economics and finance, movies and television, politics

A U.S. couple had their home raided by a Fisheries and Wildlife department SWAT team over orchids. You heard it right - Fisheries and Wildlife has a SWAT team. And the couple got raided because of improper paperwork for imported orchids. Yes, orchids. Don't these people have anything better to do with their time?

The agents who spent half a day ransacking Mrs. Norris' longtime home in Spring, Texas, answered no questions while they emptied file cabinets, pulled books off shelves, rifled through drawers and closets, and threw the contents on the floor.

The six agents, wearing SWAT gear and carrying weapons, were with - get this- the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Kathy and George Norris lived under the specter of a covert government investigation for almost six months before the government unsealed a secret indictment and revealed why the Fish and Wildlife Service had treated their family home as if it were a training base for suspected terrorists. Orchids.

Labels: politics, The Crazy Years

It appears that our Conservative government has been playing fast and loose with the truth again, making false claims about a Vancouver murder to buttress their case for legislation that would force ISPs to divulge personal information about their subscribers without a warrant.

Van Loan argues that the changes are long overdue, pointing to a kidnapping case in Vancouver earlier this year as evidence of the need for legislative change. In several interviews, he has described witnessing an emergency situation in which Vancouver police waited 36 hours to get the information they needed in order to obtain a warrant for customer name and address information.

While that makes for a powerful example, a more detailed investigation into the specifics of the case reveals that Van Loan's rendition leaves out some important details. Over the summer, I launched Access to Information requests with the Ministry of Public Safety, the RCMP, and the Vancouver Police Department, seeking further information on the kidnapping case.

Both Public Safety and the RCMP responded that they had no additional information to provide other than the transcripts of the minister's interviews. The Vancouver Police identified the case as a February kidnapping (not March as suggested by Van Loan). The suspect was ultimately arrested and the case is currently before the courts, therefore limiting the department's ability to provide much detailed information.

However, in an admission that goes to the heart of Van Loan's claims, a legal adviser disclosed that no ISP records were sought during the investigation. In other words, the case the minister of public safety has presented as evidence of the need for mandatory disclosure of ISP customer records never involved a request for such records and yielded an arrest using the current law.

Labels: intellectual property, politics, security

This is hard to believe, but the Philadelphia Free Library System will be shutting down October 2 because of lack of funds. I find it mind boggling that even in a recession, that this could happen in a major U.S. city. Compare and contrast with Toronto Public Library, which is the busiest library system in North America. I completely agree with the Boing Boing poster, who said this:

Just look at that list of all the things libraries do for our communities, all the ways they help the least among us, the vulnerable, the children, the elderly. Think of every wonderful thing that happened to you among the shelves of a library. Think of the millions of lifelong love-affairs with literacy sparked in the collections of those libraries. Think of every person whose life was forever changed for the better in those buildings.

Think of the nobility of libraries and librarianship, the great scar that the Burning of Alexandria gouged in human history. Think of the archivists who barricaded themselves in the Hermitage during the Siege of Leningrad, slowly starving and freezing to death but refusing to desert their posts for fear that the collections they guarded would become firewood.

Think of the librarians who took a stand during the darkest years of the PATRIOT Act and refused to turn over patron records. Think of the moral unimpeachability of those whose trade is universal access to all human knowledge.

Picture an entire city, a modern, wealthy place, in the richest country in the world, in which the vital services provided by libraries are withdrawn due to political brinksmanship and an unwillingness to spare one banker's bonus worth of tax-dollars to sustain an entire region's connection with human culture and knowledge and community.

Think of it and ask yourself what the hell has happened to us.

Labels: politics, society, The Crazy Years

For the last few months, the government has been soliciting the views of Canadians on copyright and intellectual prior to introducing a new bill to replace the seriously flawed Bill C-61. Ottawa law professor and intellectual property expert, Michael Geist, has posted his submission.

Before addressing the consultation questions, I have two comments about process. First, thank you to Industry Minister Clement and Canadian Heritage Minister Moore for launching this consultation. As promised, it has been fair, transparent, and accessible to all Canadians.

Second, this consultation should be viewed as the start of an ongoing process to craft Canadian copyright law. Once a bill is tabled, it is essential that Canadians again have the opportunity to register their views through an open, comprehensive committee process. Moreover, Canadians should determine the shape and scope of Canadian copyright law. International treaty negotiations, particularly the ongoing Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement discussions, should not effectively pre-determine domestic reforms. The ACTA negotiations have generated considerable concern among many Canadians and the government should demand that those negotiations be conducted in an open manner with the release of draft text for public comment.

If you haven't already submitted your views, you still have a couple of days. The proposed three-strikes provision for copyright infringement is particularly repugnant - implementing a non-judicial penalty that in some respects is more draconian than house arrest.

Labels: intellectual property, politics

If you were living in 1909 and were trying to predict the political roadmap of the 20th century, it's unlikely that you'd have predicted either the rise of fascism in the 1920s and 30s or the rise of democracy in the latter part of the century.

So what will the political landscape of the latter part of this century be like. SF writer Charles Stross examines that questions and comes up with an interesting, and rather unexpected answer.

To get to the money shot: transhumanism is going to influence the next century because, unless we are very unlucky indeed, the biotechnology, nanotechnology, and telecommunications industries are going to deliver goods that combine to fundamentally change the human condition. We've seen the tip of the iceberg so far: news stories like this would have been fodder for an SF story twenty or thirty years ago, and this video (playing pong! Using transcranial brain interfaces!) probably still is. But don't be deceived: we're entering strange territory.

And what particularly exercises me is the possibility that if we can alter the parameters of the human condition, we can arbitrarily define some people as being better than others — and can make them so.

Not all transhumanists have good intentions. Earlier I went on for a while about Italy, home of the Modernist movement in art and birthplace of Fascism. Italy's currently in the grip of a wave of racism and neofascist vigilantism, presided over by an allegedly racist media mogul with a near-monopoly on broadcast media in that country.

So it's probably not surprising that Italy is the source of a new political meme that I hadn't heard of before this week: overhumanism:

Italian overhumanism is heavily influenced by the "Nouvelle Droite", a fringe political movement that emerged from the French neofascist microcosm in the late '70s/early '80s, and which attempted to bring far-right ideas into the mainstream by discarding the trappings of historical Fascism in order to convey a similar message in a less unpalatable form. In common with the Nouvelle Droite, it borrows heavily from the extreme left (anti-americanism, anti-clericalism, opposition to globalisation), and has adopted neopaganism as a religious stance. While affirming the importance of science in modern life, this hybrid offspring of neofascism also maintains more traditional far-right positions such as elitism, antiegalitarianism and an interest in ethnic identity that crosses into differentialist racism.

Did you get that? The fascists have noticed transhumanism, and decided that they like it.

Labels: politics, SF

SF author Charles Stross has written a long and heartfelt post about something he sees lacking in today's world, and especially in the US - mercy. For what it's worth, I agree with him completely. Here's part:

Well, let's pan across the political landscape and look at another current cause celebre that provides a window into the darker corners of the American psyche; the issue of healthcare reform.

I've been watching the war of words with increasing disbelief for the past month, trying to get my head around the reason why so many loud, vocal citizens seem to be so adamantly opposed to something that's in their own best interests — the US healthcare system is utterly dysfunctional, even for those with health insurance costs are spiraling out of control, and the current system is becoming a major drag on economic productivity — many business start-ups abort because the founders can't obtain healthcare, many novelists of my acquaintance are in serious financial trouble or are terrified of giving up the day job (that comes with insurance), and so on. The current mess is responsible for 22,000 avoidable deaths per year — a 9/11 scale catastrophe every six weeks.

And yet we hear rhetoric about death panels, idiotic allegations that Stephen Hawking would be dead if he lived in the UK and was dependent on the NHS (this just in: Stephen Hawking is British and, er, alive because of the NHS), and so on. What's going on?

What's noticable is that the "debate" isn't about the need for healthcare, or about actual medical issues. It's about ideology, and outlook ...

Near as I can work it out from over here (caveat: I've spent somewhere between four and eight months of my life in the USA — this doesn't make me an expert) there is a small but significant proportion of the US population who hate the poor and want them to die. (Or at least to go somewhere where they're invisible and can't act as a perpetual reminder to the haters that their own security is at best tenuous.) I'm not sure why there's this hatred — my personal feeling is that it springs from numerous sources: from prosperity theology (if you're poor it's because you're ungodly and deserve to suffer), insecurity, lack of empathy, or a combination of these factors in different people. Other observers have different theories: M'Learned Friend opines that it's because the American conservative movement rejects Rawls's preconditions for justice. (That doesn't go far enough for my taste; they also seem to want to reject the entire concept of the Social Contract.) And then there's the growing tendency towards eliminationist rhetoric against socially sanctioned out-groups. (Arguably the endorsement of maltreatment of convicts is an emergent part of this trend, feeding into and normalising it.) .

The subjects vary — crime and penal policy, healthcare, don't get me started on foreign policy — but there is an ideological approach in America that is distinguished by one common characteristic: words and deeds utterly lacking in the quality of mercy.

And just to clarify one thing, because I know from previous experience that I'm likely to get snarky emails accusing me of being an American-basher, or worse - our current Conservative government in Ottawa is guilty of the same thinking that Stross is talking about.

Update: Here's another perspective on what's been going on in the U.S. recently from John Taplin.

Labels: politics, society

According the Guardian, the US won't be going back to the moon. They just don't have the money.

Less than a month after the 40th anniversary of Apollo 11's first lunar landing, the group will tell White House advisers today that the space agency simply does not have enough money to do it again.

Without a significant increase in funding – unlikely with the federal deficit approaching $1.3tn – Nasa will almost certainly have to scrap the next-generation Ares I rocket that has already cost more than $9bn to develop.

The longer-term part of the agency's $81bn Constellation project – to land humans on Mars by the middle of the century, touted by George Bush in his 2004 vision for space exploration – will remain in the realms of science fiction, at least for now.

"This is a big surprise," said Edward Ellegood, a space policy analyst at Florida's Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. "Up until this point Nasa, privately at least, was confident that Constellation was a little behind schedule but on track. Now this changes everything. That it no longer fits within the budget is disturbing."

Labels: politics, space

The copyright cartel, represented by organizations like the CRIA and CMPDA, are still pushing the governments towards US-style DMCA-like copyright legislation for Canada. Disturbingly, according to Michael Geist, they now seem to be pushing for even stronger legislation than in the US, legislation that might include a three-strikes-and-you're-disconnected provision.

# CRIA and CMPDA lobbyist Barry Sookman, in a National Post op-ed written with Stephen Stohn, labels Canada a piracy heaven while calling for "graduated response" (the euphemism for three strikes and a user loses Internet access for a year), anti-circumvention legislation, ISP liability, notice and takedown, secondary liability for sites like the Pirate Bay, and limited fair dealing expansion rather than a more flexible approach.
# In a second piece, Sookman and Glen Bloom are quoted as saying the consultation isn't needed, claiming that "endless consultation is useless", that Canadian law is an embarrassment, and that we should just get on with WIPO ratification.

If you're concerned about this, and you should be, go to Speak Out on Copyright, and voice your opinion.

Update: This has been getting more attention on other blogs. On TechDirt, Michael Masnick writes about what Access Canada, another rights-holding organization really thinks of "users" and it's not pretty:

But rather than deal with reality, Access Copyright, presents it as "us vs. them" with "them" outnumbering "us." The most stunning statement of all:

"It's a simple fact that users outnumber us. But Canadian users involved in the online debate are so adept at leveraging the internet and social networks to their advantage, there's a danger that your voices as Canadian creators and publishers will be drowned out by the chatter. "

Think about that fact for a second. Access Copyright is talking about customers here. The people who actually determine the real value of whatever content creators make. And Access Copyright is flat-out insulting them, by making them out to be an unruly mob that content creators need to fight. Copyright is supposed to be about what's best for society as a whole, in encouraging the production of more works. It should be a win-win situation. But here Access Copyright is stating flat-out that the desires of users to protect their own rights is somehow something that needs to be forcibly denied.

If you want to understand why these industries are dying, the evidence is right here. When you treat your customers as the enemy, don't be surprised if they go away. It's not because of "piracy" or "the internet." It's because these content creators are treating their best customers as anything but customers.

Labels: intellectual property, politics

Here's an article from The Economist which suggests that the usual knee-jerk reaction to sex-related crimes may not be the most effective in keeping them from happening again and that the laws are casting too wide a net.

ONE day in 1996 the lights went off in a classroom in Georgia so that the students could watch a video. Wendy Whitaker, a 17-year-old pupil at the time, was sitting near the back. The boy next to her suggested that, since it was dark, she could perform oral sex on him without anyone noticing. She obliged. And that single teenage fumble wrecked her life.

Her classmate was three weeks shy of his 16th birthday. That made Ms Whitaker a criminal. She was arrested and charged with sodomy, which in Georgia can refer to oral sex. She met her court-appointed lawyer five minutes before the hearing. He told her to plead guilty. She did not really understand what was going on, so she did as she was told.

She was sentenced to five years on probation. Not being the most organised of people, she failed to meet all the conditions, such as checking in regularly with her probation officer. For a series of technical violations, she was incarcerated for more than a year, in the county jail, the state women’s prison and a boot camp. “I was in there with people who killed people. It’s crazy,” she says.

She finished her probation in 2002. But her ordeal continues. Georgia puts sex offenders on a public registry. Ms Whitaker’s name, photograph and address are easily accessible online, along with the information that she was convicted of “sodomy”. The website does not explain what she actually did. But since it describes itself as a list of people who have “been convicted of a criminal offence against a victim who is a minor or any dangerous sexual offence”, it makes it sound as if she did something terrible to a helpless child. She sees people whispering, and parents pulling their children indoors when she walks by.

Labels: politics, society, The Crazy Years

With just over a year left before the Shuttle program is due to be terminated, and with only about six years of scheduled life for the International Space Station, the future of the US space program looks bleak. The Houston Chronicle has a good article looking at some of the problems facing NASA and outlining some of the options.

Instead of a 4.5-year gap in human spaceflight, we're probably looking at at least a 6-year gap. Moreover, through 2019, it will cost $15 billion more than the current budget to keep the station flying and to deliver Constellation two years late.

Perhaps even more importantly, you're not doing anything unique. If you're Obama, you're simply keeping the programs sustained (space station) and begun (Constellation) under President Bush afloat. Nothing in here will "wow" the public.

So if you're Obama, what do you do? If you abandon the space station to save money for exploration, you're going to do real harm to your international relations with both friends, such as Canada and Japan, but also countries with more problematic relationships, such as Russia.

That's probably just not a realistic option, then. In fact his only options are to spend considerably more money to boost exploration while maintaining the space station; or to radically overhaul the space program, perhaps by skipping the moon and going directly to Mars. But this would probably involve a gap in human spaceflight that's much longer than 6 years.

Labels: politics, space

BoingBoing reports that Access Canada, the Canadian agency responsible for collecting fees for authors for use of their work, is once again trying to stifle public debate on copyright reform.

Access Copyright, the Canadian author's collecting society (a group that collects money from libraries for book lending and gives it to authors) is using its members' money to sabotage an enormously popular consultation on the future of Canadian copyright.

Previous to this consultation, the Canadian government twice tried to ram through restrictive, US-style copyright rules, refusing to meet with Canadian creators, net-users, libraries, educators, publishers or musicians. Now, after hundreds of thousands of Canadians came forward demanding public consultations and a balanced, made-in-Canada answer to copyright in the information age, Access Copyright has responded with an hysterical, dishonest call to its members to condemn the consultation and any notion of protecting privacy, access, fair dealing and other public rights in copyright.

The broadside includes this remarkable condemnation of "users" of information -- that is, readers, writers, teachers, scholars, fans, government, students -- "It's a simple fact that users outnumber us. But Canadian users involved in the online debate are so adept at leveraging the Internet and social networks to their advantage, there's a danger that your voices as Canadian creators and publishers will be drowned out by the chatter. Your interests need to be expressed as forcefully as possible, and it's up to you to get involved to make that happen."

Labels: intellectual property, politics

I've seen, many times, right-wing US pundits criticizing Canadian health care as inefficient, slow, or just not as good as the US system. This despite the fact that everyone in Canada receives at least a basic level of care through the government-funded system. (And I haven't seen any ads on Canadian TV about companies offering services to help people navigate through the health insurance bureaucracy).

Rhonda Hackett form the Denver Post has written an article that debunks many of the commonly cited myths about Canadian health care.

Myth: Canada's health care system is a cumbersome bureaucracy.

The U.S. has the most bureaucratic health care system in the world. More than 31 percent of every dollar spent on health care in the U.S. goes to paperwork, overhead, CEO salaries, profits, etc. The provincial single-payer system in Canada operates with just a 1 percent overhead. Think about it. It is not necessary to spend a huge amount of money to decide who gets care and who doesn't when everybody is covered.

Myth: The Canadian system is significantly more expensive than that of the U.S.

Ten percent of Canada's GDP is spent on health care for 100 percent of the population. The U.S. spends 17 percent of its GDP but 15 percent of its population has no coverage whatsoever and millions of others have inadequate coverage. In essence, the U.S. system is considerably more expensive than Canada's. Part of the reason for this is uninsured and underinsured people in the U.S. still get sick and eventually seek care. People who cannot afford care wait until advanced stages of an illness to see a doctor and then do so through emergency rooms, which cost considerably more than primary care services.

What the American taxpayer may not realize is that such care costs about $45 billion per year, and someone has to pay it. This is why insurance premiums increase every year for insured patients while co-pays and deductibles also rise rapidly.

Labels: health, politics, society

The Boston Globe's Big Picture blog has a three-part series on the election and subsequent turmoil in Iran. Like most Big Picture posts, these are outstanding collections of photographs, and offer by far the best pictures I've seen anywhere on what's going on in Iran. Definitely not to be missed.

• Iran's Presidential Election<


• Iran's disputed election


• Iran's Continued Election Turmoil

Labels: photography, politics

Here's one of the more interesting posts I've seen on BoingBoing recently, discussing the turmoil in Iran, how the US TV networks have blown it (also discussed in detail on yesterday's This Week in Tech podcast), and how technology and social networking are changing both the way we look at events, but the events themselves.

But as I starting scanning Twitter, Facebook, and Tumblr, again for the novelty of doing it in the air, I started seeing postings from friends about the Iranian protests that CNN had also been covering since Obama's AMA speech had ended. First, a Twitter post from Brett Bullington, reblogging a post from John Perry Barlow that you could search Twitter within 15 miles of Iran. I got glued to the stream of messages there, and then hit this vein of extraordinary photos posted on Twitpic by @Iranpishi, especially this one, which I immediately posted to my blog, again amazed that I could follow all this from a plane. Just a few years ago, we got onto a plane and shut the doors, and we could land on a different planet than the one we took off from, depending on what had happened in our world in those eight hours; and just eight months ago, I spent election night flying on a plane across country, feeling cut off from the web and the rest of the world as our plane watched Obama win the presidency and change the world on our little in-seat screens (Daisy Whitney also happened to be on the flight, and wrote this TV Week column about it). This time, though, plugged in and reblogging photos coming out of Tehran and seeing people on the ground then reblogging my posts, I felt like a participant.

Labels: politics, technology

John Baird's intemperate remark about Toronto's request for money to purchase streetcars has got some international attention. Here's an article about it from the Infrastructuralist blog. Harper's ministers seem to be saying a lot stupid things recently, don't they?

First, apparently Baird would have much preferred that Toronto spend the stimulus money on roadwork–that is, something that would have directly and immediately put money into the local economy. Miller adopted a less strict interpretation of “stimulus” and figured that local jobs would be created by a better transit system. Also, jobs at the Bombardier plant in Thunder Bay would be good for the province and the country, and therefore good for Toronto. Miller said the benefits of the streetcars to the city would be “extraordinary.”

“We recreate a manufacturing industry that had been very damaged, and the federal and provincial governments will get probably hundreds of millions of dollars in tax revenue through the income taxes paid by the workers,” Miller said.

That expansive view is spot on and there’s plenty of data to back up the high multiplier effects of transit investments. Rather than just frittering away billions on small scale stuff like adding fancy guardrails to highways, he’s thinking of “stimulus” in a context of thirty or forty years. In 2050, that $300 million will probably still be stimulating the Toronto economy, assuming we all don’t get eaten by robots in the meantime.

Labels: politics

Law professor and Internet expert Michael Geist recently spoke to the standing Senate Committee on Transportation and Communications about the state of the Internet and mobile wireless industry in Canada. If you are a Canadian and concerned about the quality and price of your Internet and phone access, (and you should be, because to put it bluntly, you're getting screwed), then you should read this, all of it. It's long, true, but very informative.

We should recognize that Canada was once a leader in the area. In the late 1990s, we became the first country in the world to ensure that every school from coast to coast to coast was connected to the Internet. Soon after that we launched the National Broadband Task Force committed to developing a strategy to ensure that all Canadians had access to high-speed networks.

In the years since that task force, Canada's global standing has steadily declined. Many Europeans countries have eclipsed Canada in its broadband rankings. The Telecommunications Policy Review Panel from a couple of years ago undertook a detailed analysis of the Canadian marketplace with the goal of identifying whether the market could be relied upon to ensure that all Canadians would have access to broadband. Their conclusion was that it would not be relied upon. The panel concluded that at least 5 per cent of Canadians — hundreds of thousands of our fellow citizens — will be without broadband access without public involvement. Last week, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, OECD, released its latest report on global broadband, and the results should be mandatory reading for anyone concerned with these issues. Canada ranked ninth out of the 30 OECD countries on broadband penetration. That is not great, but the situation becomes even worse once you delve into the details on pricing and speed.

First, Canada is relatively expensive, ranking fourteenth for monthly subscription costs at $45.65. By comparison, Japan costs $30.46 cents and the U.K. is $30.63. Second, the Canadian Internet is slow, ranking twenty-fourth out of the 30 OECD countries. It is truly a different Internet experience for people in Japan, Korea and France, where the speed allows for applications and opportunities that we do not have. Moreover, Canada lags behind in fibre connections direct to home fibre with 0 per cent penetration, according to the OECD. By comparison, Japan sits at 48 per cent, Korea at 43 per cent, Sweden at 20 per cent and the United States, which has been slow in this area, is at 4 per cent. Third, when you combine speed and pricing, Canada drops to twenty-eighth out of the 30 OECD countries for price per megabyte. In other words, as consumers, we pay more for less — higher prices, slower speeds. Fourth, in addition, Canada is one of only four OECD countries where consumers have no alternative but to take a service with bit caps. That means the service provider caps the amount of bandwidth that the consumer can use each month. In almost every other OECD country, consumers at least have a choice between providers that use bit caps and those that do not.

Labels: intellectual property, Internet, politics

I'm constantly amazed by the technical and scientific illiteracy of many (most) of our political leaders. That's probably because most of them are lawyers instead of scientists, engineers, or doctors. Perhaps it would help if they read more science fiction, according to SF author Ben Bova.

I may be prejudiced, of course, but it seems to me that if more people read science fiction — real science fiction, not the Hollywood tripe — the world would be a better place.

When I say “real science fiction,” I mean stories based solidly on known scientific facts. The writer is free to extrapolate from the known and project into the future, of course. The writer is free to invent anything he or she wants to — as long as nobody can prove that it’s wrong.

Thus science-fiction stories can deal with flights to the stars, or human immortality, a world government, settlements on other worlds. All of these things are possibilities of the future.

In the past, science-fiction writers have written about computers, robots, space flight, nuclear power, organ transplants, prosthetic limbs, brain stimulators, climate change, overpopulation and a myriad of other ideas and possibilities — usually several decades before they became actualities.

If our political leaders had been reading science fiction, we might have been spared the Cold War, the energy crises, the failures of public education and many of the other problems that now seem intractable because we were not prepared to deal with them when they arose.

Labels: politics, SF, society

If you think the economy is bad and getting worse - you're right. According to the metrics published in this article, the world economy is following the same path as the Great Depression and may be even worse in some areas.

To sum up, globally we are tracking or doing even worse than the Great Depression, whether the metric is industrial production, exports or equity valuations. Focusing on the US causes one to minimise this alarming fact. The “Great Recession” label may turn out to be too optimistic. This is a Depression-sized event.

That said, we are only one year into the current crisis, whereas after 1929 the world economy continued to shrink for three successive years. What matters now is that policy makers arrest the decline. We therefore turn to the policy response.

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Labels: Another thing to worry about, economics and finance, politics

Gas prices seem to be on the rise again, hovering around $1/litre. Given that we're in the middle of a deep recession, this seems odd, and lends credence to the idea that we really are past the tipping point for cheap oil supply. And there are other reasons for the high price, as this post points out - a few excerpted below:

Geopolitical instability—The question is not whether Iran develops the Bomb, but when. When they do demonstrate a device, will they be attacked? If their weapons capability is not destroyed, will they nuke someone in retaliation (forcing Washington to make a decision)? If their capability is destroyed, will they retaliate by closing the Straits of Hormuz and 40% of the world’s oil supply? If the world does nothing, will that provoke the Saudis and Egyptians to get the bomb? When several other nations in the region get the bomb, deterrence will be a fond memory because no one will be sure enough of who originated an attack to retaliate.

–Sideline money..The sideline money is waiting for an excuse to jump back in. I don’t think speculators can change the direction of the market, but they can and do make the move more violent. Once it breaks out, it will run.

Labels: economics and finance, politics

The Taliban are making a major advance in Pakistan, something that seems to be under-reported in the mainstream US North American press. I suspect that the thought of a nuclear-armed Taliban, or an Islamist government in Pakistan, is one the things that keeps Obama awake at 3:00 a.m.

The Taliban has seized control of an area just 60 miles from the Pakistani capital Islamabad, provoking fears that militants are attempting to spread their insurgency – and with it their extreme brand of Islam – across the country.

Pakistani forces came under fire yesterday as they attempted to wrest back control of the strategically important district of Buner. The seizure by militants of the district in recent days underlines the strength of the insurgency and its ability to advance from the neighbouring Swat Valley which the Taliban controls, into the heart of Pakistan. Two policemen and a soldier were gunned down as six platoons of the Frontier Constabulary, a paramilitary force, were despatched to Buner to attempt to secure government buildings and bridges.

Labels: Another thing to worry about, politics

In his latest column for Internet Evolution, Cory Doctorow talks about how big entertainment is trying to turn the clock back to 1996 or thereabouts. A part of the colomn is about their attempts to railroad the Canadian government into passing more restrictive copyright legislation, an attempt that fortunately has been unsuccessful.

It's not that these companies can't get their laws on the agenda, and not that they can't cook the process to make it run favorably for themselves. For example, when Canada was considering its own version of the WCT, the entertainment giants saw to it that the parliamentarians in charge of the process only talked to multinational entertainment giants, without conducting any kind of embarrassing public consultation. They wouldn't even talk to the Canadian record companies -- just the multinationals.

The proposed laws -- Bill C60 and Bill C61 -- were complicated and took a lot of explaining. But here's what didn't take any explaining at all: "Your government is about to introduce sweeping, controversial regulations to the Internet, and they won't talk with anyone except the jerks who are suing all those music downloaders in the States about it -- they won't even talk to Canadian record companies!"

This made the Canadian lawmakers who backed the proposal look like sellouts (which they were); made the laws look like conspiracies (which they were); and made the geeks who cared about this stuff look like heroes (which they were). The complicated story about the law became a simple story about the process.

Labels: intellectual property, politics

Ex-Torontonian Cory Doctorow notes that voting records for Canadian MPs (Members of Parliament) are now online. But as Cory notes, it could be made a little friendlier (well, a l

ot

friendlier).

It's about time, but what a lame execution: "To view an MP's record, head to the website and click on the Members of Parliament link to find your member of the House of Commons. Your MP's site will will have a tab for votes that takes you to a list showing whether they voted yea, nea, or didn't vote at all on any given bill."

It's time for some civic-minded Canadian hackers to slurp out all that data and reformat in a way that gives you real insight into what your elected representative is up to and how she compares to all the other politicos on the Hill.

Rhis Toronto Star article says that more features will be added in the near future.

Commons technical staff began working on the design, and the chamber's board of internal economy agreed at a meeting last month to launch the feature.

Starting next week, the website will also include a search engine that allows people to see how MPs have voted since October 2004.

Labels: politics, technology

According to this article, there's little the U.S. can do to prevent Pakistan from degenerating into a collection of nuclear-armed, Islamist fiefdoms.

"The implications of this are disastrous for the U.S.," he added. "The supply lines (from Karachi to U.S. bases) in Kandahar and Kabul from the south and east will be cut, or at least they'll be less secure, and probably sooner rather than later, and that will jeopardize the mission in Afghanistan, especially now that it's getting bigger."

The experts McClatchy interviewed said their views aren't a worst case scenario but a realistic expectation based on the militants' gains and the failure of Pakistan's civilian and military leadership to respond.

"The place is beyond redemption," said a Pentagon adviser who asked not to be further identified so he could speak freely. "I don't see any plausible scenario under which the present government or its most likely successor will mobilize the economic, political and security resources to push back this rising tide of violence.

"I think Pakistan is moving toward a situation where the extremists control virtually all of the countryside and the government controls only the urban centers," he continued. "If you look out 10 years, I think the government will be overrun by Islamic militants."

Labels: Another thing to worry about, politics

I just can't resist this - The Dead visited President Obama in the White House last night, before their concert in Washington.

The meeting, which was not on the president's official schedule, was a surprise for the band, arranged by a plugged-in friend. The current lineup (surviving founding Grateful Dead members Bob Weir, Phil Lesh, Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann, along with fill-ins Warren Haynes and Jeff Chimenti), some joined by their wives, met with Obama for about 15 minutes, chatting amiably about the history of the Oval Office and the pjavascript:void(0)resident's desk.

Then it was on to a much longer visit with senior staff. While the president has never been to a Dead show, the officials they met with next -- senior advisers David Axelrod and Pete Rouse and Deputy Chief of Staff Jim Messina -- are said to be big fans who had plans to attend last night's Verizon Center show. "They talked about a lot of different issues," said our source, "the environment, climate change." (And, maybe, like, who's got the best collection of bootlegs?)

The times, they are a changing, indeed.

Labels: music, politics

With the end of the cold war, many people stopped worrying about the possibility of a world-wide nuclear war and the accompanying nuclear winter. But although tensions have eased somewhat between the superpowers, there are still hot spots, like India and Pakistan and the middle East, that could spark a smaller nuclear exchange. Recent studies show that even a smaller, regional nuclear war could have devastating global consequences.
The intense heat generated by the burning cities in the models' simulations lofted black smoke high into the stratosphere, where there is no rain to rain out the particles. The black smoke absorbed far more solar radiation than the brighter sulfuric acid aerosol particles emitted by volcanic eruptions. This caused the smoke to heat the surrounding stratospheric air by 30°C, resulting in stronger upward motion of the smoke particles higher into the stratosphere. As a result, the smoke stayed at significant levels for over a decade (by contrast, highly reflective volcanic aerosol particles do not absorb solar radiation and create such circulations, and only stay in the stratosphere 1-2 years). The black soot blocked sunlight, resulting in global cooling of over 1.2°C (2.2°F) at the surface for two years, and 0.5°C (0.9°F) for more than a decade (Figures 1 and 2). Precipitation fell up to 9% globally, and was reduced by 40% in the Asian monsoon regions.

This magnitude of this cooling would bring about the coldest temperatures observed on the globe in over 1000 years (Figure 1). The growing season would shorten by 10-30 days over much of the globe, resulting in widespread crop failures. The effects would be similar to what happened after the greatest volcanic eruption in historic times, the 1815 Tambora eruption in Indonesia. This cooling from this eruption triggered the infamous Year Without a Summer in 1816 in the Northern Hemisphere, when killing frosts disrupted agriculture every month of the summer in New England, creating terrible hardship. Exceptionally cold and wet weather in Europe triggered widespread harvest failures, resulting in famine and economic collapse. However, the cooling effect of this eruption only lasted about a year. Cooling from a limited nuclear exchange would create two to three consecutive "Years Without a Summer", and over a decade of significantly reduced crop yields. The authors found that the smoke in the stratosphere cause a 20% reduction in Earth's protective ozone layer, with losses of 25-45% over the mid-latitudes where the majority of Earth's population lives, and 50-70% ozone loss at northern high latitude regions such as Scandinavia, Alaska, and northern Canada. A massive increase in ultraviolet radiation at the surface would result, capable of causing widespread and severe damage to plants and animals. Thus, even a limited nuclear exchange could trigger sevejavascript:void(0)re global climate change capable of causing economic chaos and widespread starvation.

Labels: Another thing to worry about, military, politics

Dubai is sometimes held up as an example of how capitalism can raise a third-world country into glittering new heights, but as this article from The Independent shows, it has a dark, seamy underbelly, of indentured workers, political repression, and ecological abuse.

Sahinal Monir, a slim 24-year-old from the deltas of Bangladesh. "To get you here, they tell you Dubai is heaven. Then you get here and realise it is hell," he says. Four years ago, an employment agent arrived in Sahinal's village in Southern Bangladesh. He told the men of the village that there was a place where they could earn 40,000 takka a month (£400) just for working nine-to-five on construction projects. It was a place where they would be given great accommodation, great food, and treated well. All they had to do was pay an up-front fee of 220,000 takka (£2,300) for the work visa – a fee they'd pay off in the first six months, easy. So Sahinal sold his family land, and took out a loan from the local lender, to head to this paradise.

As soon as he arrived at Dubai airport, his passport was taken from him by his construction company. He has not seen it since. He was told brusquely that from now on he would be working 14-hour days in the desert heat – where western tourists are advised not to stay outside for even five minutes in summer, when it hits 55 degrees – for 500 dirhams a month (£90), less than a quarter of the wage he was promised. If you don't like it, the company told him, go home. "But how can I go home? You have my passport, and I have no money for the ticket," he said. "Well, then you'd better get to work," they replied.

Sahinal was in a panic. His family back home – his son, daughter, wife and parents – were waiting for money, excited that their boy had finally made it. But he was going to have to work for more than two years just to pay for the cost of getting here – and all to earn less than he did in Bangladesh.

For some excellent photographs of Dubai (and other places) check out the photoblog Seeing Things, including this incredible shot of Dubai at night.

Update: For a somewhat different view, here's a post from Joi Ito, a part-time resident of Dubai.

I don't want to sound too defensive about Dubai or the Middle East in general, but one thing I've learned from my still brief time is that it's much more complicated than it appears. Just calling Muslim law and governance "medieval" and writing it off is ignorant. It's very different and isn't in sync with what many of us might think is "fair". They treat bounced checks and drug smuggling very seriously. Moving to the Middle East casually and assuming that everything should be just like home is dangerous and I wouldn't recommend it. However, I knew about the drug thing even before I visited and I learned about the "bounced checks land you in jail" thing on my first day.

In summary, I think that if you're looking for fast money or a "rags to riches" dream, I would recommend against going to Dubai. On the other hand, if you're looking for a safe place to park while you explore opportunities or culture in the Middle East, I think Dubai is fine, for now. The food is good, there are great people, the culture is diverse, most of the infrastructure works and the laws are, relatively speaking, friendly to foreigners compared to the rest of the region. That's why I moved there and so far I'm not regretting my decision.

Labels: economics and finance, places, politics

If you think things are bad, and getting worse, it looks like you're right, at least according to this article from Naked Capitalism. By almost every indicator, the economic indicators are worse than in 1929-1930, and show no sign of improvement.

To sum up, globally we are tracking or doing even worse than the Great Depression, whether the metric is industrial production, exports or equity valuations. Focusing on the US causes one to minimize this alarming fact. The “Great Recession” label may turn out to be too optimistic. This is a Depression-sized event.

That said, we are only one year into the current crisis, whereas after 1929 the world economy continued to shrink for three successive years. What matters now is that policy makers arrest the decline.

And there's more along the same theme, with a detailed analysis in the Wall Street Journal.

Update: Here's a couple of more links. This article posits that the US or the UK could actually default, or run into a scenario where the only other option would be massive inflation or a currency devaluation. On the other side of the coin, this article shows that world trade may finally be picking up.

Labels: Another thing to worry about, economics and finance, politics

So in the U.S., President Obama appoints a Nobel-prize-winning particle physicist as his Energy Secretary. In Canada, we have a Minister of Science who refuses to say that he believes in evolution. Yet another example of just how clueless our current government is when it comes to matters of science and technology.

Brian Alters, founder and director of the Evolution Education Research Centre at McGill University in Montreal, was shocked by the minister's comments.

Evolution is a scientific fact, Dr. Alters said, and the foundation of modern biology, genetics and paleontology. It is taught at universities and accepted by many of the world's major religions, he said.

“It is the same as asking the gentleman, ‘Do you believe the world is flat?' and he doesn't answer on religious grounds,” said Dr. Alters. “Or gravity, or plate tectonics, or that the Earth goes around the sun.”

Jim Turk, executive director of the Canadian Association of University Teachers, said he was flabbergasted that the minister would invoke his religion when asked about evolution.

Labels: politics, science

Model rocket hobbyists in the U.S. have won a significant court victory after a judge declared that the ammonium percholorate propellant used in the model rocket motors was not an explosive and hence doesn't fall under the jurisdiction of the Bureau of Alocohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives. This means that a federal license will no longer be required to purchase the motors.

I was into model rocketry when I was in high school. Since the motors weren't available for sale in Canada, we used to go across the river to the Michigan Soo and smuggle them back in our pockets. Lord knows what would happen if I tried that now.

Labels: politics, technology

Here's a list (PDF link)of 10 of the worst political risks worldwide for 2009. Number one is obvious - the inability of the US Congress to get any sort of a handle on the current economic situation.

By the end of 2009, the critical question will be whether the White House or Congress will have driven most of the lasting domestic economic policy agenda. In even the most optimistic assessment, a combination of economic crisis and a stronger Congress means that the balance is likely to tilt considerably from where it has been over the past decade, making the rise of the US Congress the world’s top risk in 2009.

Labels: Another thing to worry about, economics and finance, politics

The term "failed state" has come into currency in the last few years to describe places like Somalia and Zimbawe, where the government and the economy are essentially moribund, and chaos reigns. But on a smaller scale, you can also have a failed city, and Detroit would be a good candidate.

Things were bad enough there when I was in university years ago. I remember taking a cab to the Grandee Ballroom to see the Jefferson Airplane, and driving through block after block of burnt out buildings, remnants of the infamous riots. Downtown was safe enough by day, if you didn't get hassled by the cops who walked in pairs or trios, with pearl handled revolvers conspicuous on their belts. By night, you went there at your own peril.

Now, it's far worse. The Financial Times has a good article on Detroit, looking at what the city is like now. It's not all hopeless, but it's certainly bleak enough. If the recession gets worse, and turns into a full-blown depression, you have to wonder if Detroit is a model for what other North American cities might become.

High culture aside, charities and institutions such as the Mosaic Youth Theatre, a beacon for poor, inner-city teens, are also worried about their budgets. The city’s two newspapers, The Detroit News and the Detroit Free Press, are clinging together for survival under a joint operating agreement that allows them to skirt antitrust law and pool costs on areas such as printing and back-office functions. From this month, they are cutting home delivery – standard for newspapers in the US – to just three days a week.

Detroiters also speak of a fraying of the city’s social fabric. For much of the 20th century, the car industry was a ticket to the middle class for poor whites from Appalachia and blacks from the deep south, lured north by Henry Ford’s famous $5-a-day jobs. Public sector unions, in turn, negotiated benefits modelled on the UAW’s – which are now straining city and state budgets. For some, social mobility is now in reverse. In Detroit’s predominantly black North End, there are blocks of ramshackle houses, many up for auction after being abandoned by owners no longer able to meet higher payments on their adjustable-rate mortgages. Again, this is the stuff of Detroit dispatches of past; the difference is that this neighbourhood always had middle-class residents alongside its poor majority. All are now bearing the brunt of the sub-prime crisis and its ripple effect on jobs, the economy and confidence.

Labels: economics and finance, places, politics, society

President Obama is certainly one of the best orators of our time. He's blessed with a great voice, but more than that, he understands how to put words and sentences together for maximum effect. It turns out that you can subject his speeches to formal grammatical analysis, with fascinating results.

This may be the essential Obama gift: making complexity and caution sound bold and active, even masculine... or rather, it may be one facet of a larger gift: what Zadie Smith calls "having more than one voice in your ear." Notice the canny way that the sentence above turns on the fulcrum of what may be Obama's favorite word: "but." What appears to be a hard line - "My view is... that nobody is above the law" - turns out to have been a qualifier for a vaguer but more inspiring motto: "I am more interested in looking forward than I am in looking back." The most controversial part of the sentence - "people should be prosecuted" - gets tucked away, almost parenthetically, in the middle.

It is possible - mistaken, I think, but certainly possible - to dismiss this sentence as a platitudinous non-answer, and if comedians ever overcome their Obama anxiety, this may be his Achilles heel: "The beef, assuming it's in a port wine reduction, sounds, uh, amazing, but on the other hand, given that the chicken is, ah, locally grown, I'd be eager to try it." But to underrate the subtlety and appeal of Obama the communicator is to be out of touch with Americans' hunger to be addressed as adults. Indeed, after "You're with us or you're against us" and "Putin rears his head," such thoughtfulness seems positively worth celebrating.

Labels: language, politics

Given the dependence of the West on Chinese manufacturing, the prospect of widespread civil unrest in China is rather disquieting. The Chinese government exercises tight control over domestic media, so you won't see much reporting about civil problems there. But a report in the Times Online suggests that the situation there is worse than has been widely reported, and could get worse.

Bankruptcies, unemployment and social unrest are spreading more widely in China than officially reported, according to independent research that paints an ominous picture for the world economy.

The research was conducted for The Sunday Times over the last two months in three provinces vital to Chinese trade – Guangdong, Zhejiang and Jiangsu. It found that the global economic crisis has scythed through exports and set off dozens of protests that are never mentioned by the state media.

While troubling for the Chinese government, this should strengthen the argument of Premier Wen Jiabao, who will say on a visit to London this week that his country faces enormous problems and cannot let its currency rise in response to American demands.

And later in the article:

Even security guards and teachers have staged protests as disorder sweeps through the industrial zones that were built on cheap manufacturing for multinational companies. Worker dormitory suburbs already resemble ghost towns.

In the southern province of Guangdong, three jobless men detonated a bomb in a business travellers’ hotel in the commercial city of Foshan to extort money from the management.

The Communist party is so concerned to buy off trouble that in one case, confirmed by a local government official in Foshan, armed police forced a factory owner to withdraw cash from the bank to pay his workers.

Labels: Another thing to worry about, economics and finance, politics

You have to feel sorry for the people working for Barack Obama in the White House. They ran one of the most technically-savvy political campaigns ever, but when they get to take power, they're faced with (by computer standards, anyway) a Stone Age working environment.

White House staff are banned from communicating by instant messaging, according to Andrew Rasiej, co-founder of the blog TechPresident. That's for the sake of preventing casual talk from leaking out of the White House and onto the web.

That's understandable, but some chat clients, such as Adium, offer the option to encrypt chats, turning your chat logs into unintelligible characters and numbers if accessed without authorization. Plus, the Obama team has already proven with the president's Twitter account that it's pretty good at handling its own PR, right?

In other words, it sounds just like working for most large corporations.

Labels: politics, Windows XP

There have been reports that an outbreak of the plague hit an Al Qaeda training camp, forcing the closure of the camp, and possibly killing as many as 40 terrorists. If so, this would be a rather chilling development. Although modern antiboitics make it unlikely to be a serious threat to developed nations, it still has potential to cause quite a bit of havoc.

Labels: Another thing to worry about, health, politics

Wired has a long and very interesting article about what the obstacles the Obama administration will face when they try to move the US government into the Web 2.0 world. It's not going to be easy. I should note that although the article focuses on the U.S. government, similar problems exist in any large, bureaucratic organization.

Even triumphs like Obama's 2006 Google for Government bill, cosponsored with Republican senator Tom Coburn, have been caught up in red tape. The bill led to the creation of FedSpending.org, a site allowing the public to track federal contracts and grants. Instead of building it in-house, the Office of Management and Budget decided to license something similar from a nonprofit watchdog group, OMB Watch—for just 4 percent of what the government had expected to spend. It was a striking victory for government efficiency, but the process behind the scenes "was extremely difficult," says Gary Bass, executive director of OMB Watch. After floating the idea of donating the system to OMB ("the government can't take things for free," Bass quickly learned), the nonprofit had to sign on as a subcontractor and undergo three rounds, and six wasted months, of bidding before the deal was complete.

Changes to what is effectively the president's homepage, WhiteHouse.gov, will encounter similar obstacles. David Almacy, a PR executive and new media consultant at Waggener Edstrom who served as the Bush administration's White House Internet director from 2005 to 2007, recalls that following Hurricane Katrina, he posted the transcript of a speech to the site. In the text, where Bush had directed people to Redcross.org, Almacy helpfully inserted a hyperlink. "Within a few hours," Almacy says, "I got a call from the White House general counsel's office saying I needed to take out the link." Some federal government Web pages, it turns out, are virtually barred from linking to nongovernmental sites to avoid the appearance of endorsing one product or organization over another.

The incoming administration is still working to assess the implications of the Presidential Records Act, the post-Nixon legislation requiring the preservation of all White House written communications. But that means that once any page goes up on the White House site, it can't be altered, only archived and replaced, greatly slowing down the process of modifying and enhancing pages.

Labels: politics, technology

Here's a wonderfully funny clip from a British TV show featuring Robin Williams riffing on Barack Obama and the US election. Hilarious. I'd love to see what he'd do with the current political situation in Canada.

Labels: Internet, politics

From the Malaysian Insider, some details on the Mumbai attack, based on interrogation of the one terrorist who was captured. As suspected, he was Pakistani, and claims to be connected to a well-known Pakistani terror group (although they deny it). I expect relations between India and Pakistan to deteriorate further as a result of this attack, possibly to the point of attacks between the two countries, especially in Kashmir.

The confessions of the clean-shaven, fluent English-speaking 21-year-old Pakistani have given investigators a clearer picture of what had happened last Wednesday.

Azam said he was member of the Lashkar-e-Taiba, but the Kashmir- based Pakistani militant group has denied any role in the attacks.

Founded as a guerilla group to fight the Indian army in Kashmir, the group was banned by the Pakistani government after the Sept 11, 2001 attacks, but reportedly continues to enjoy the backing of some Pakistani politicians and security officials.

A native of Faridkot in Pakistan- occupied Kashmir, Azam revealed the names of his fellow terrorists, all Pakistani citizens: Abu Ali, Fahad, Omar, Shoaib, Umer, Abu Akasha, Ismail, Abdul Rahman (Bara) and Abdul Rahman (Chhota).

Labels: politics

Here's a post on Jon Taplin's blog about the capitalist economic system needs to change into something that can survive without the emphasis on growth and resource consumption. This mirrors much of my own thinking over the last few years.

Beyond regulating the most anti-social and greedy members of the business society for the common good, the government will have to be like a venture capital investor in the same way that DARPA built the first Internet. We are now about to embark on an experiment in how this kind of investment in “Public Goods” can raise productivity for the private sector as well as the society as a whole. Universal Broadband, 21st Century schoolrooms, massive solar and wind farms, a smart electricity grid–these are the foundations of a Green New Deal.

I am well aware that questioning the “Growth Imperative” is heresy in America, but the huge investments we make in the next twelve months will help determine whether we are truly willing to give up our dependence on disposable products that keep people coming back to the mall (Planned Obsolescence) and invest to be the high quality innovator in durable goods that last for years.

Labels: economics and finance, politics

Rolling Stone has published a long article by the excellent journalist Naomi Klein about the Wall Street bailout, and how the usual suspects are lining up at the trough for the public's money.

See if any of this sounds familiar: As soon as the bailout was announced, it became clear that Treasury officials would hire outsiders to perform their jobs for them — at a profit. Private companies wanting to help manage the bailout were given just two days to apply for massive, multiyear contracts. Since it was such a mad rush — after all, the entire economy was about to implode — there was no time for an open bidding process. Nor was there time to draft rigorous rules to make sure that those applying don't have serious conflicts of interest. Instead, applicants were asked to disclose their conflicts and to explain — and this is not a joke — their "philosophy in fulfilling your duty to the Treasury and the U.S. taxpayer in light of your proprietary interests and those of other clients." In other words, an open invitation to bullshit about how much they love their country and how they can be trusted to regulate themselves.

The first major contract to be awarded in the bailout was for legal advice — and the choice Treasury made was Halliburton-esque in its audacity. Six law firms were invited to bid, but four declined, either because they didn't want the contract or because they had too many conflicts of interest. Rep. Barney Frank, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, said the fact that so many law firms chose not to bid "shows that the guidelines are sufficiently rigorous."

Or it may just show that the bidder who won the contract — Simpson Thacher & Bartlett — takes a more relaxed approach to conflicts than its colleagues. The law firm is a Wall Street heavy hitter, having brokered some of the biggest bank mergers in recent years. It also provided legal support to companies trading mortgage-backed securities — the "financial weapons of mass destruction," as Warren Buffett called them, that detonated the banking industry. More to the point, it was hired to provide legal services to the Treasury in its negotiations to spend $250 billion of the bailout money purchasing equity in America's banks

Labels: economics and finance, politics

George Bush's lame duck administration is indulging in a last-minute orgy of regulation setting that seems aimed at helping the administration's industrial buddies at the expense of the environment.

The rule changes include getting wolves off the Endangered Species List, allowing power plants to operate near national parks, relaxing regulations for factory farm waste and making it easier for mountaintop coal-mining operations. None have found much favour with environmental groups.

Hopefully, someone on Obama's team is keeping track of this so they can reverse the damage when they take office.

Labels: environment, politics

I stayed up to watch Obama win the election last night, and like most Candians, I was pleased and excited that he won. I've seen commentary that he's just a junior senator with little experience and shady connections, and he'll turn out to be just another politician, (and those are the politely negative comments, I won't quote the right wing blather), but I don't think that's the case. Yes, he is inexperienced, but he ran a campaign with a cool sense of purpose, and he motivated a whole new generation of Amerians in way that only a handful of politicians in my lifetime have managed (Kennedy, Trudeau, and Reagan). And like those three, he is a charismatic leader who has been given in opportunity to change the course of a nation. I hope that he is one of those even rarer leaders who fulfills the promise on which he was elected.

SF writer Charlie Stross makes a good point about Obama's campaign:

However, he's intelligent, highly organized, and gives every indication of being extremely competent. He's run a campaign that, astonishingly, has not left him beholden to large corporate interests for funding — the vast majority of his campaign was funded by small individual donations. And if there's one thing the USA has been short of for the past eight years, it's competent governance administered by people who believe the system can be made to work in the public interest and who are not beholden to lobbyists.

And finally, I thought McCain was a gracious in defeat and struck exactly the right tone.

Labels: politics

SF writer John Scalzi has endorsed Barack Obama, to no one's surprise. He is quite eloquent about it, and since his thoughts on the subject almost perfectly mirror mine, I'll quote some of it here.

I was never going to vote for John McCain, but of all the GOP primary candidates this year, he was the one I would have had the least problem with eventually becoming president. But he lost me with his campaign, which was substanceless, stunt-driven and more focused on trying to scare voters from Obama than on making the case for McCain. I wanted to feel like if McCain won that there would still be enough of a break between his administration and the Bush administration that we wouldn’t continue the downward spiral we’ve been on — that McCain at least would be there at the controls, trying to yank the flaps into a “climb” position. Instead all I got from his campaign was that McCain’s a maverick, and Obama hangs with terrorists and probably wants to eat my children. You know, I’m not stupid. I know when someone’s trying to distract me with handwaving from the fact there’s no there there.

And then there’s the Palin thing, which exposed the bankruptcy of both the McCain campaign and the modern GOP. No one in the world believes that the Palin pick was anything more than a spur-of-the-moment choice, a sop to the GOP base and a transparently cynical bid for the Democratic women still smarting from Clinton’s loss in the primaries, an estimation by McCain’s camp that Palin’s possession of a vagina outweighed the fact that she shared not a single policy with that presidential candidate. That failed, at least; about the only Hillary supporter McCain picked up is Lady de Rothschild, to whom he is most welcome. The rest were understandably insulted.

But the Palin pick did firm up the support of the GOP base, a fact which should terrify anyone with a working brain. Palin is indisputably the single worst major party candidate for high office in living memory, a proudly ignorant political automaton whose only notable qualities are a pretty face, a sufficient lack of awareness to blind her to her own incompetencies and a quality of ambition that can only be described as voracious. The GOP base should have been insulted that this was all it was given by the McCain campaign; instead it embraced her and has declared her a frontrunner for 2012. Which tells you that the GOP base has learned nothing in the last eight years; Palin, in every way that matters, is nothing more than Bush with boobs. The GOP base doesn’t want a president, it wants a mirror.

Labels: politics

Rolling Stone has a long first-person article by a reporter who managed to get inside the Taliban-controlled area of Afghanistan. It's a tense, gripping read, as well as making a pretty good case that the current NATO-lead coalition is doomed to fail in their plan to pacify the country.

But even as Rumsfeld spoke, the Taliban were beginning their reconquest of Afghanistan. The Pentagon, already focused on invading Iraq, assumed that the Afghan militias it had bought with American money would be enough to secure the country. Instead, the militias proved far more interested in extorting bribes and seizing land than pursuing the hardened Taliban veterans who had taken refuge across the border in Pakistan. The parliamentary elections in 2005 returned power to the warlords who had terrorized the countryside before the Taliban imposed order. "The American intervention issued a blank check to these guys," says a senior aid official in Kabul. "They threw money, weapons, vehicles at them. But the warlords never abandoned their bad habits — they're abusing people and filling their pockets.

By contrast, aid for rebuilding schools and clinics has been paltry. In the critical first two years after the invasion, international assistance amounted to only $57 per citizen — compared with $679 in Bosnia. As U.S. contractors botched reconstruction jobs and fed corruption, little of the money intended to rebuild Afghanistan reached those in need. Even worse, the sudden infusion of international aid drove up real estate and food prices, increasing poverty and fueling widespread resentment.

Labels: military, politics

I've seen quite a few newspaper articles and blog posts referring (with a clearly derogatory intention) to Barack Obama as being a socialist. In US politics, socialist means communist, at least to the right wingers. However, as George Jonas points out in this National Post article, socialism can mean quite a few things.

The McCain campaign has taken to calling Barack Obama a socialist. This is neither as derogatory as McCain's handlers seem to think nor as baseless as Obama supporters would like U. S. voters to believe. Yes, Senator Obama is something of a socialist. So is Senator McCain.

In the 21st century it's difficult to run for office without being something of a socialist. There's a basic philosophical split between people who think of government as the problem and liberty as the solution, and those who think of liberty as the problem and government as the solution. People who think of government as the solution are statists, and one of their left-wing subspecies is called "socialist." Their right-wing subspecies include paleo-or social conservatives. In reality, they're birds of a feather. Their policies may be diametrically opposed; their mindsets are near-identical.

Thanks to Fresh Bilge for the link and the post title.

Labels: politics

Although last week's election didn't turn out quite as I had hoped, it could have been much worse, if the Conservatives had won another dozen seats. There was a fair amount of organized opposition to the governments proposed copyright bill, Bil C-61, and this article posits that it might have cost the Conservatives some support.

“If the government were to introduce essentially the same bill again, it’s going to run into the same kind of criticism,” Geist said. That criticism includes tens of thousands of Canadians who protested the bill through Geist’s own Fair Copyright Facebook group, as well as, strong opposition from a powerful business coalition comprised of corporate giants such as Google Inc., Yahoo Inc., Rogers Communications Inc. and Telus Corp.

“We’ve also seen a crystallizing of opposition to the bill from the NDP and a fair number of Liberals MPs,” he added. “It would be prudent to take some of those criticisms to heart, and even if there’s no formal consultation before reintroducing the legislation, make an effort to implement some of the concerns that have been so widely expressed.

Labels: intellectual property, politics

These videos of McCain/Palin supporters at a political rally are truly scary. Think Nazi Germany in 1933 scary.

First, the media should be ashamed of themselves for not covering this until now. The McCain-Palin supporters in my videos are not new, they are not exceptional, they are not hiding. This is who they are. It has been brewing for months, and not one mainstream media outlet has taken the time to expose them. Not one. And that is dangerous. If America is about to decide on its president based on this level of hate and ignorance, without a single question being asked as to why, then America is in for a rude awakening.

Update: Finally, some people in the media are beginning to take McCain and Palin to task for their dangerous and desperate rhetoric.

John McCain, you are no fool, and you understand the depths of hatred that surround the issue of race in this country. You also know that, post-9/11, to call someone a friend of a terrorist is a very serious matter. You also know we are a bitterly divided country on many other issues. You know that, sadly, in America, violence is always just a moment away. You know that there are plenty of crazy people out there.

Stop! Think! Your rallies are beginning to look, sound, feel and smell like lynch mobs.

John McCain, you're walking a perilous line. If you do not stand up for all that is good in America and declare that Senator Obama is a patriot, fit for office, and denounce your hate-filled supporters when they scream out "Terrorist" or "Kill him," history will hold you responsible for all that follows.

Labels: Another thing to worry about, politics

According to Michael Geist, the Conservative party platform indicates that they will re-introduce their controversial pro big-company anti-user copyright legislation if they form the government again after next week's election.

Of course, Bill C-61 did not strike the appropriate balance and tens of thousands of Canadians told Harper just that over the summer. Unlike the Liberals, NDP, and Greens, no Conservative has supported the copyright pledge, which now makes sense given this platform commitment.

The CBC has more about this:

The Conservatives' previous copyright-reform legislation, Bill C-61, which died on the order paper when the election was called, was released in June to a wave of criticism. While a number of organizations that represent copyright holders, such as the Canadian Recording Industry Association and the Entertainment Software Association of Canada, praised the plan, it was roundly criticized as unfair by consumer advocates, artists, privacy watchdogs, education groups and other businesses.

Yet another reason not to vote Conservative, as if I needed one.

Labels: intellectual property, politics

Bruce Springsteen played a voter registration rally in Philadelphia this weekend and made an impassioned plea in favour of Barack Obama.

In my job, I travel the world, and occasionally play big stadiums, just like Senator Obama. I’ve continued to find, wherever I go, America remains a repository of peoples hopes, possibilities, and desires, and that despite the terrible erosion to our standing around the world, accomplished by our recent administration, we remain, for many, a house of dreams. One thousand George Bushes and one thousand Dick Cheneys will never be able to tear that house down.

They will, however, be leaving office, dropping the national tragedies of Katrina, Iraq, and our financial crisis in our laps. Our sacred house of dreams has been abused, looted, and left in a terrible state of disrepair. It needs care; it needs saving, it needs defending against those who would sell it down the river for power or a quick buck. It needs strong arms, hearts, and minds. It needs someone with Senator Obama’s understanding, temperateness, deliberativeness, maturity, compassion, toughness, and faith, to help us rebuild our house once again. But most importantly, it needs us. You and me. To build that house with the generosity that is at the heart of the American spirit. A house that is truer and big enough to contain the hopes and dreams of all of our fellow people by our ability to accomplish this task. Now I don’t know about you, but I want that dream back, I want my America back, I want my country back.

So now is the time to stand with Barack Obama and Joe Biden, roll up our sleeves, and come on up for the rising.

Way to go, Bruce!

Labels: politics

I only watched a few minutes of the U.S. vice-presidential debate Thursday night, as it was opposite the Canadian leaders' debate. I wasn't impressed, but that's another story. What is clear from reading about it later, is that neither candidate had a very good grasp of the facts. Newsweek has done a nice job of checking the candidates statements and finds both of them wanting.

The CBC has a similar feature on the Canadian leaders' debate, although this one is a video.

And if anyone reading this can explain how to watch videos on the CBC site without them breaking up into 10 second chunks separated by several seconds of silence, please leave me a comment.

Labels: politics

I try not to let comments made by politicians get to me, but I was both upset and appalled by Stephen Harper's comments about rich artists at taxpayer subsidized galas comlaining about their subidies. I do have more than a passing familiarity with the arts - I was treasurer for an art gallery in Alberta for several years and I worked for a small Canadian publisher after I moved from back to Ontario from Alberta. Trust me on this one. Most artists and authors aren't rich. And despite Harper's claim, government arts funding is not going up.

As this article from the Toronto Star points out, he's importing the same techniques used by Bush and the Republicans in the last few of elections. Let's hope that Canadian voters have more common sense than American voters have shown inthe last few elections.

Marc Ouellette caught Stephen Harper talking about Canadians turning on their TVs to see privileged people at rich galas and knew his prediction had come true: American-style cultural wars have landed with a thud on the Canadian federal scene.

He's not thrilled about it, and perhaps it's hit the national political stage a little sooner than the McMaster University English and cultural studies professor anticipated. But he's been observing what he considers politics of division for years in the U.S., seen signs of it here and knew the real onslaught was on its way.

"It's American-style anti-intellectualism," says Ouellette, noting the former Michael Harris Conservative government used it effectively (for a time) in Ontario, when they harped about teachers not having to work as hard as ordinary people.

It's no accident, he says, that a string of Harper ministers – John Baird, Jim Flaherty, Tony Clement – apprenticed at the Harris school.

Harper's comments came during this week's controversy over cuts to the federal arts budget. His opponents argue he's slashed the budget by $45 million, while the Prime Minister counters there's been an annual increase in arts funding of 8 per cent, albeit with a wider definition of "arts" to include, for example, sports funding.

Labels: art, politics