September 2007 Archives

I've been listening this morning to Billie Holiday singing that old song and ringing every change possible on the melody and meaning both. I couldn't find a good video of Billie herself, although you can hear the perfect performance here, for instance, as background to a charming personal montage, an example of the tender associations that voice and those words inspire in so many people.

This is for Melanie, who is a long-time friend of POGGE and a friend of mine, and who is grieving. I know that some people don't want to think about grief and especially can't take grief for the wee animals seriously, so those people should go away now.

Melanie wrote to me last night:

I can't believe I'm not seeing him around every corner.

The deepest truest toughest shock -- I still see him lighting his pipe; I still see her bounding towards me; I still see him walking down the street a block ahead of me; I still see him walking in the door. How can the garden be there, and she not in it? How can the door be there, and he not coming home?

Memory and grief -- I am disastrously bad at them m'self, except I believe that it matters to register them, to tell the truth and not just say pretty things. When any companion goes, s/he takes part of our life with her. It friggin' hurts, for sure, Melanie, and it scares as well.

Truly madly deeply, Melanie.

Baird 'optimistic' after Bush climate speech

Environment Minister John Baird says he's "more optimistic now" that U.S. President George Bush has called on the international community -- including the United States -- to come together to set goals to reduce gas house emissions.
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Baird told CTV's Mike Duffy Live that having the Americans on-board is a key step to fighting global warming.

George Bush was castigated by European diplomats and found himself isolated yesterday after a special conference on climate change ended without any progress.
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A senior European diplomat attending the conference, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the meeting confirmed European suspicions that it had been intended by Mr Bush as a spoiler for a major UN conference on climate change in Bali in December.

"It was a total charade and has been exposed as a charade," the diplomat said. "I have never heard a more humiliating speech by a major leader. He [Mr Bush] was trying to present himself as a leader while showing no sign of leadership. It was a total failure."

It's a triple play this evening. How Many More Years.

May I Have A Talk With You.

And Dust My Broom.

So if Canadian military officials were responsible for the speech Hamid Karzai delivered to Canadian parliamentarians a year ago, do you suppose those same Canadian officials had a hand in these recent remarks by Karzai?

Just a thought.

So I read this article a few days ago, and found it instructive if worrisome. On the left we're pretty used to the realization that there are these right-wing groups that are in the business of influencing society in directions we don't like: “Think tanks”, PR outfits, foundations, the “National Endowment for Democracy” and so on and so forth. This article suggests that we need to be nearly equally worried about the ways liberal NGOs including many charities shape societies, particularly in the third world. Sometimes deliberately, perhaps often not, they seem to push charity recipients into configurations that block social change that might bring more fundamental improvements.

James Petras and Henry Veltmeyer (2004) argue that most funding “for poverty alleviation through NGOs also has had little positive effect” and:

“On the contrary, foreign aid directed toward NGOs has undermined national decision-making, given that most projects and priorities are set out by the European or US-based NGOs. In addition, NGO projects tend to co-opt local leaders and turn them into functionaries administering local projects that fail to deal with the structural problems and crises of the recipient countries. Worse yet, NGO funding has led to a proliferation of competing groups, which set communities and groups against each other, undermining existing social movements. Rather than compensating for the social damage inflicted by free market policies and conditions of debt bondage, the NGO­ channelled foreign aid complements the IFIs’ [international financial institutions’] neo-liberal agenda.”[51]

The Globe and Mail has a report on the third annual National Freedom of Information Audit conducted by the Canadian Newspaper Association. It's not encouraging.

When journalists from across Canada asked government officials for 85 public records ranging from court documents, to local water-quality reports, to federal food-safety warnings, the answer was no nearly half the time.

Even after filing formal written requests under information laws, journalists were still unable to pry basic public records from government filing cabinets in 41 per cent of cases.

The most disturbing part of the article is this:

Ann Rees, who published an in-depth series of stories in 2003 on public access to government-held records and is now researching a doctorate at Simon Fraser University on the subject, said delays are increasingly common, especially for requests made by the news media.

That's due in part to more aggressive “surveillance” of potentially embarrassing requests by government public-relations officials, she said. “The spin doctors are keeping a very close watch on media requests, and there is a big question about how far public relations has led to interference.”

“Year after year, newspapers show through this exercise that many Canadian governments have a flawed understanding of the importance of transparency to the democratic system,” she said. “But transparency is exactly what underpins the accountability principle at the heart of it all. You can't have one without the other.”

The tune is Willie Dixon's Little Red Rooster. Here's The Rolling Stones.

And here's The Grateful Dead stretching it out a bit more.

I doubt that most Canadians know that today is the twenty-fifth UN International Day of Peace, but there is one country where the anniversary is being honoured, or where some people are attempting to honour it: Afghanistan:

The parliament, clerics in mosques and children in orphanages and schools are all holding events to push for peace.

"We're doing it because we think there are potential benefits from it," said U.N. spokesman Adrian Edwards. "We are dealing with a massive group psychology: How do you persuade people in a place where there's been so much conflict that a day of peace is possible?

"We have nothing, in fact, to lose by trying. What do you have to lose by promoting peace?"

British actor Jude Law traveled to and filmed in treacherous areas of eastern Afghanistan in June for an upcoming film to promote Peace Day. Public service announcements he filmed while in Kabul have since been shown constantly on Afghan TV.

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While Peace Day seems to have captured the attention of a wide group of Afghans, neither NATO's International Security Assistance Force nor the Taliban has committed to a cease-fire.

"No one wants world peace more than the soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines serving their respective countries as part of the International Security Assistance Force," said Gen. Dan McNeill, the top NATO general here. "Every day, the men and women of ISAF answer the noble call of assisting the Afghan people to find peace and long-term security."

But Taliban spokesman Qari Yousef Ahmadi noted that NATO's ISAF kicked off a new military operation in Helmand province this week.

"They are asking the Taliban to observe Peace Day but the British and Afghan government just launched a new operation? They are breaking Peace Day," Ahmadi said. "If NATO or Afghan forces are on operations anywhere in Afghanistan, definitely the Taliban will respond. They will plant roadside bombs, do suicide attacks and launch ambushes."

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This year has been the most violent in Afghanistan since the 2001 U.S.-led invasion to oust the Taliban for hosting Osama bin Laden. More than 4,300 people — mostly militants — have died in insurgency-related violence, according to an Associated Press count.

It distresses me that Canadian voices are not being raised today to speak for peace. If our political and military leaders believed their own rhetoric about our purposes in Afghanistan, they would at least be able to match the courage and decency of those Afghans who tried today to teach the children of their country that peace is possible. Imagine trying to tell those children that in the country far away that pretends to care for them by sending soldiers to kill and die in Afghanistan, no one held an assembly in sympathy with theirs; no prime minister and no general stood with them to speak of his hopes for peace; no one asked of Canadians what the UN has been teaching Afghans to ask of each other.

In the U.S., today is the first Iraq Moratorium Day, and we wish all those who have begun to participate in this ongoing action well, including those who have joined the Out of Iraq Bloggers Caucus.

There is too much to say in one sad longing post about Iraq right now, about the Israeli designation of Gaza as a "hostile entity" and the raid into Syria, about Pakistan, about Iran, so I will stop the words here. But you get some music on the turn.

While it appears that the Democrats have used a procedural mechanism to allow the issue to be revisited, for the moment the GOP has successfully blocked an attempt to bring an amendment to restore Habeas Corpus to a vote in the United States Senate. So the attempt to undo at least some of the damage done by the Military Commissions Act has failed. It remains the opinion of this blogger that travel to any country that has repudiated both its own constitution and the Magna Carta should be approached with caution.

And isn't it interesting that when Democratic senators even contemplated using the filibuster they were cast as devils incarnate. Now that the GOP is in the minority, they filibuster as a matter of routine and the word rarely even gets mentioned outside the blogosphere. Kinda makes you go "Hmmmmm", doesn't it?

Edited for spelling and clarity.

Back in October of 2004 I noted that a class action suit had been filed against the major cellphone companies. That was a follow up to an earlier post based on an investigative report by the Toronto Star (whose link is now dead). If you want the short version, you can check out the latest development.

A Saskatchewan court has certified a massive class-action lawsuit against Canada's cellphone providers.

The suit, first launched in 2004, alleges Canada's cellphone users are owed $12 billion plus interest for unfair "system access" fees collected over the years.
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It is described as the largest class-action in Canadian history, potentially affecting every cellphone user in the country. Currently, there are 7,500 complainants signed onto the suit.
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The suit claims the companies are practicing "unjust enrichment" by charging the so-called "system access" or "licensing" fees."

[The lawyer who initiated the suit] maintains cellphone service providers have convinced customers the fees are required under federal regulations.

"They're gouging people. They're receiving money they ought not to receive and people believe they're paying it with good and just cause, and they're not."

The practice effectively allows companies to advertise lower prices, then boost the cost of cellphone plans through hidden fees, he said.

WASHINGTON -- -- Resigning Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales left the scandal-scarred Justice Department on Friday, declaring himself hopeful about its mission of ferreting out crime and defending the truth.

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"Over the past 2 1/2 years, I have seen tyranny, dishonesty, corruption and depravity of types I never thought possible," Gonzales said Friday morning in remarks at Bolling Air Force Base. But, he said, "Every time I see a glimmer of the evil man can do, I see the defenders of liberty, truth and justice who stand ready to fight it."

I knew you could.

Buddy Guy. 'Bout time, eh? Damn Right I've Got The Blues.

And Lucy Mae Blues.

There's an interesting piece at CBC News concerning the latest government consultation on "how law enforcement and national security agencies can gain lawful access to [telephone and internet] customers' information." What may be most interesting about it is that the government agencies involved don't seem to want to consult with certain interested parties. Us.

Privacy advocates, however, expressed displeasure over both the content and the process of the consultation.
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Michael Geist, chair of internet and e-commerce law at the University of Ottawa, said the process is not being conducted publicly as two previous consultations have been, in 2002 and in 2005.

The consultation has not been published in the Canada Gazette, where such documents are normally publicized, or on the agencies' websites.

Interested parties have been given until Sept. 27 to submit their comments, which is a short consultation time, Geist said. Several organizations and individuals contacted by CBCNews.ca only received their documents this week.

More pointedly, a number of parties that took part in the previous consultations, including privacy and civil liberty advocates — and even some telecommunication service providers — have not been made aware of the discussion, he said.
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Officials with the Canadian Civil Liberties Association were not aware of the consultation.

This has been another edition of simple answers to simple questions.

(After all that's already been written about this, it simply boggles my mind that we're now hearing from someone who is both politician and paid pundit who apparently either has neglected to read the legislation or wants to pretend that if parliamentarians screwed up when they wrote the damn bill and passed it, it's somebody else's problem. Mayrand can only follow the law. It's up to parliament to change it.)

John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers. Room To Move.

And All Your Love.

This is the secret history of the free market. It wasn't born in freedom and democracy. It was born in shock.

-- Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine

Only a crisis -- actual or perceived -- produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around.

-- Milton Friedman

This short film by writer-narrator Naomi Klein and filmmakers Alfonso and Jonás Cuarón will première this evening at the Toronto Film Festival and tomorrow at the Venice Film Festival. It is a companion to Klein's new book, The Shock Doctrine, published on Wednesday.

Torture reconceived as a form of therapy. Disasters both man-made and natural re-framed in the same way, as opportunities to restructure entire societies that would otherwise have resisted the ministrations of the opportunists.

Klein's reading of the story of true capitalist believers since the Second World War is compelling and convincing, a distillation of the logic behind many of the most significant political coups of the last three generations -- and if you think that political coups happen only in other countries on other continents, Klein will convince you to think again.

So I've been thinking about the compensation for CEOs and such people. Everyone knows it's obscene and keeps getting more so, both in absolute and relative terms. Apparently it's not even the CEOs who get paid the best—it's the fund managers, which reflects the whole turn towards the dominance of the financial over issues of actual production. According to this article, the top four fund managers are taking home more than a billion dollars a year each. Yes, that's B, as in nine zeroes, illion, and that's per year, not how much they have. Makes the poor CEOs look downright impoverished.

But that's not really what I want to talk about. The standard defense of the obscenity is that it's the price they have to pay to compete for the best person. I want to unpack the whole “best person for the job worth megadollars” idea and look at the underpinnings a bit and pick them apart. There are a lot more assumptions there than it looks like. For instance—so apparently as long as someone is “the best”, you can hire them from anywhere. It doesn't matter if they know beans about the particular company they're supposed to run, often not even whether they know anything about the specific industry. This is not even worth mentioning these days—it's just part of the core assumption, apparently, but I don't see what makes it particularly obvious. Basically, the idea is the same one behind the rise of Business Administration degrees at universities: There is a general science of bossing, which is broadly about manipulating money and to a lesser extent about manipulating people, and more specific knowledge of how to do things in any particular business is irrelevant. Not only that, but this general science of bossing is such that a genius boss who knows nothing about his business can successfully generate far more profits than a merely very competent one who knows the business well. Sounds kind of dumb when you put it like that, doesn't it?

The last British troops in southern Iraq have begun their withdrawal to the Basra airport, a process that has been going on for several weeks but that speeded up a little over a week ago. They may remain at the airport for several months before leaving for good -- I repeat, for good. I'm not quite sure why the further delay.

As the British slowly back out of the disgraced Coalition of the Willing, senior officers -- including the head of the British Army at the time of the invasion -- have begun to speak out about the absurd alliance they were forced into:

Transatlantic strains over Iraq continued at the weekend with an attack on the US from a second retired British general. Major General Tim Cross, the deputy head of the coalition's Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance, denounced Washington's postwar policy as "fatally flawed". He insisted he had raised serious concerns about the country sliding into chaos with Donald Rumsfeld, the US defence secretary at the time, but he had "dismissed" the warnings.

"The US had already convinced themselves that Iraq would emerge reasonably quickly as a stable democracy," he told the Sunday Mirror. "Anybody who tried to tell them anything that challenged that idea - they simply shut it out."

On Friday Major General Sir Mike Jackson, head of the army in 2003, called the American approach "intellectually bankrupt". Sir Mike also singled out Mr Rumsfeld for criticism, saying his claim that US forces "don't do nation-building" was "nonsensical".

If we still know too little about where Gordon Brown is headed, at least we know that he is not Tony Blair. Brown has already made it clear that he has little patience with the melodramatic rhetoric of the so-called war on terror, and he had the nerve to do that during a visit to Camp David. He is more comfortable with the stolid and steady language of serious criminal investigation, which has proved, not incidentally, the only effective way to stop terrorists in their tracks before they strike or to track them down afterwards.

It is good that the British are going. They have been part of an immense historical tragedy, and even their leaving of Iraq is tragic in the classical sense. So many lives lost, so many. So pointless.

Me, I just want to cry.