Getting our money's worth

I mentioned in an earlier post that for the amount of money being spent on the G8/G20 meetings just for security, the government could build a money wall around the main venue for the G8 summit. I ran a few more numbers.
$1.1 billion dollars would allow the government to pay 150,000 security officers $100 per hour for the entire 72 hours and still have $20 million left to buy crullers and large double-doubles from Tim Horton's for the massive security detail.
It would take a better mathematician than I am to figure out the all the numbers, but I'm also confident that for $1.1 billion they could hold both conferences in a giant hollow sphere made of 18 carat gold floating off shore in Lake Ontario. $1.1 billion dollars would buy you nearly 36,000 kilograms of 18k gold. Maybe we could just have Stephen Harper and his Cabinet covered in gold leaf -- that would be sure to impress the visiting dignitaries!

This money is getting spent somewhere, and I suspect that a lot of it is going for fat "consulting fees" and no-bid contracts to Conservative Party of Canada backers. I expect the eventual auditor's report will have more pages discussing pork than the annual report of the Canadian Hog Farmers Association.

Leave your suggestions on how the money could be spent in the comments.

vive la revolution de sirop d'erable!

The latest edition of the Maple Syrup Revolution - in which Canadian Cynic's Lindsay Stewart returns to discuss copyright, lying Conservative Party of Canada MPs, the Harper government's fear of open government and the insane amount of money being spent on security for the G8 and G20 summits -- is ready for your listening pleasure.

Just for fun, I ran some numbers and the 1.1 billion dollars the Canadian government is spending on security for the G8 and G20 summits would build a wall of $10 bills about 3 meters high, 10 centimeters thick and 767 meters long--probably long enough to surround the Deerhurst resort--with enough left over to buy everyone within 100 km of Huntsville, Ontario, a beer.

Jason Kenney: Liar or just absentminded?

I'm all for giving people the benefit of the doubt. We all forget things we've said or done once in a while, and hey, maybe Jason Kenney has suffered some sort of head injury that has left him unable to remember anything that happened more than a few minutes ago, like that guy in that movie. Or maybe he's been brainwashed into remembering things differently from the way they really happened, like that guy in that other movie. Or maybe, just maybe, he's a dishonest hack who suffers from incendiary trouser syndrome.  Given the frequency with which the Conservative Party of Canada likes to quote chapter and verse from the Adscam scandal, I'm guessing Kenney needs a fireproof chair. From now on we ought to call him "Lilac" Kenney, because he can lie like nobody else.
"But Rev. P," you say, "You can't just go around accusing members of Parliament of being liars! That's terrible! It's libelous!"
Yes, it is true that calling someone a liar, especially a politician, especially one as notoriously thin-skinned as Jason Kenney, is a risky business. One could very well be sued for libel. But you know what buckaroos? This ain't my first rodeo.
The best, indeed just about the only defence to a charge of libel is that the allegedly libelous comment is the truth and can be proved to be so. The truth really will set you free.



Jason "Lilac" Kenny, while being--as this clip shows--a lying douche bag, is correct about one thing: It is the Cabinet member who is ultimately responsible to Parliament for what happens in his ministry and therefore it is essential that his underlings never ever get a chance to tell Parliament just how badly the ministry and by extension the minister, has screwed up a particular issue. Twentysomething senior aides just can't be counted on to lie as effectively as a Cabinet minister and therefore must be kept away from testifying before Parliamentary committees where the Conservative Party can't control the questions they could be asked.
Imagine the disaster that could ensue if one of these young "inexperienced" aides who are paid about 100 grand a year to essentially run the ministries for their elected bosses were ever put in a position by a Parliamentary committee where they would have to tell the truth about the shit their boss was trying to pull in order to salvage whatever future career they might have. Cabinet ministers on the other hand, in addition to generally being accomplished bullshit artists, have already peaked careerwise and have the added option of blaming their staff for doing things the minister -- who is far too busy to deal with the day to day details dotcha know -- could not possibly have known about!
Just what is it that the Stephen Harper Conservatives are so desperate to hide?

(hat tip to Stageleft for the video)

Questions are a burden to others, answers are a burden to oneself.

For years, we've known that Stephen Harper is a control freak who insists that every utterance of everyone speaking for the government be vetted through the PMO, but methinks he has now gone a bit too far. 
 First, it was gagging backbenchers so that the ignorant, knuckledragging rednecks let's be kind and say the "less sophisticated, less media-savy" among his Reform Alliance colleagues didn't start ranting about racial minorities and commies under the bed "get off message" and embarass  the "New Government of Canada." Then, after he realized he a had a few of these loose cannons in the Cabinet, ministers were told to zip it, that anything that had to be said would be said by the PMO. After all the press were hostile and prone to asking "gotcha" questions and-- let's face it-- your average Parliament Hill journalist engaging a Reform-Tory Cabinet Minister in a battle of wits is pretty much attacking an unarmed target.
Having shut out the press to the degree possible, Harper then decided that even Parliamentary committees should be served a nice big mug of STFU, and the party put out a manual for Conservative members that explained how to block committee business, even completely shut things down by being obstructionist arseholes if things weren't going their way. When that didn't work well enough to keep 
a committee from demanding information about the way Afghan detainees were being dealt with and whether Canadian troops could face accusations of war crimes for the negligent way their superiors had decided to organize things, Harper shut down Parliament and hoped the whole thing would blow over.
It didn't.
Next he tried the classic American conservative argument -- that everything was a matter of national security and  tippy-top secret to protect our wonderful troops and if you wanted to violate that sacred trust and find out what the elected government had ordered the troops to do on the nation's behalf,  well clearly you were a troop-hating pinko bastard who hated freedom -- Wolverines!!!
Then the Speaker of the House stuck a pin in that particular trial balloon.
Now, Harper has decided that ministerial aides and other senior staff answer to no one but the PMO and the Minister and couldn't possibly be called upon to answer questions by Parliamentary committees. The spin he is trying to put on this is both hilarious and ironically true. The justification for this notion that just because they draw a government salary, civil servants shouldn't ever have to explain their actions to Parliament is that the Ministers are ultimately responsible for what is done in their ministry. This is true -- and just you wait and see how responsible some of these schmucks are going to be held if their underlings are ever made to testify under oath about the crap that goes on at the behest of their bosses.

So if Dmitiri Soudas is able enough to command a handsome taxpayer-funded salary as the director of communications for the Prime Minister of Canada, he can damn well answer a few questions about his job from the House of Commons Ethics Committee. Parliament is supreme and if it summons him, he better show up, otherwise he will be guilty of Contempt of Parliament. And if Michael Ignatieff , Gilles Duceppe and Jack Layton won't  go to the mat on this, then they won't go to the mat on anything and we might just as well let Harper appoint himself dictator-for-life and be done with it.

Also, what Dave said -- that goes double for me.

sad, but true

It is tragic that we have fallen so far.

What don't we know about the Afghan detainees and when didn't we know it?

Attention must be paid

I know I've been a lazy blogger lately, and aside from obsessively watching Bill Mason movies, learning how to make podcasts and searching for a new job 2000 km away, I have no real excuse. I don't normally like to post entries that are little more than a link to another blogger, but in the case of this absolutely first-rate post by a less famous blogger I will make an exception and enthusiastically recommend that you go read one of the best things I've read in while by one of my favorite bloggers, the always thoughtful Willie Loman.

(and by "less famous" I don't mean "less famous than me" -- no one is that obscure -- I mean the blogger in question is not one of those five-post-a-day, read-by-thousands-daily types, but damn it, he should be!)

Early homecoming presents

David over at JimDandy Goodness has a fine selection of homecoming presents from the NFB assembled for me and I haven't even started packing yet! I am officially touched.
Bill Mason is The MAN!

And by the way, if you don't know who Bill Mason is, wowsers -- have you ever been missing out!

with a purposeful grimace and terrible snarl...

As usual, the Rude Pundit nails it -- what we need here is Godzilla!



Maybe if a giant fire-breathing lizard was in charge of dealing with oil company execs, instead of Dick Cheney, we could make some progress.

Papers please!

Google to the rescue?

There may be a light at the end of the tunnel for journalism, and Google may be paying the electric bill for it, according to this excellent article by James Fallows  at The Atlantic (Just because they pay McMegan to warm a chair and fill valuable column inches with teh stupid doesn't mean The Atlantic is all bad).

h/t to Driftglass PTFW!

Update: Arrrgh! This is what happens when I try to multitask and post here while commenting elsewhere. Originally, the link to the Atlantic lead mistakenly led here, though it almost lead here too.

What Roy Edroso said...

In a discussion of dumbassery re: the Kagan nomination, Roy Edroso sums up Meagan McArdle.

Armageddon tired of superstition dictating government policy

The Divine Ms. Z has a great piece in today's Toronto Star - an interview with Marci McDonald, author of the just-released The Armageddon Factor: the Rise of Christian Nationalism in Canada, about which I blogged the other day. She points out the release of the book come on the very day that Canadian politicians are taking part in what has become a staple in U.S. politics - the prayer breakfast. These meeting of the pious and the political have been an annual event in Canada for 45 years, but have never had the prominence or the political import of similar events in the U.S.

These prayer breakfasts were begun in Seattle during the depression by a preacher named Abraham Veriede as a way to pull local business and political leaders together to beat the labor movement. Veriede courted the rich and powerful and built the organization now run by Douglas Coe and described in Jeff Sharlet's The Family. The group believes that the rich and powerful are given wealth and power by God to do his bidding and that minor considerations such as ethics and morality do not apply to them because they are doing God's bidding. Veriede and later Coe, often speak admiringly of the dedication of men such as Adolf Hitler and Lenin and want to harness the same sort of dedication to their cause. Read Sharlet's book, it is chilling stuff. The Family already has dozens of senators and congressmen in its "prayer cells" and it can be assumed their tentacles reach into these political prayer breakfasts in Canada too.

Then read Marci McDonald's book on the Canadian wing of theocratic movement and realize that it can and is happening here. 

Don't get me wrong, I don't really have anything against religious belief - I'm a believer myself, at least on odd-numbered days. What I object to is allowing any one religion to sway public policy, especially a religion as goofy as the North American brand of tent revival fundamentalist Christianity. How goofy are some of these people?

From Antonia Zerbisais' article in The Toronto Star:

According to The Armageddon Factor, evangelicals believe Canada has to clean up its act on abortion, feminism, and homosexuality because it has a special role to play in the “end times.”

That’s because of Psalms 72: 8-9, which leads off the book, and foretells of “dominion … from sea to sea, and from the River to the ends of the earth.”

Never mind that it was likely about an ancient tribal leader’s turf. Many evangelicals see it as a sign, as they see how Parliament Hill’s Peace Tower clock, which stopped because of electrical problems for the first time ever in 2006, stopped at 7:28.

Yeah, that's the kind of magical thinking that you really really want governing economic, education, environmental and defense policy, the kind that thinks Jesus will take of everything for us and that there is no point planning past next Tuesday because the Rapture is coming.

Expect the lead up to the next election to consist entirely of distracting "culture war" wedge issues like gay marriage, crime, and whether the National Gallery should have nude pictures in it. There will even be coded references to changes in abortion law rules on maternal health and funding for religious aid organizations. If the Conservatives have their way the economy, the war in Afghanistan and the mistreatment of detainees and the government's abandonment of its responsibilities to its citizens (see Omar Khadr, Abousfian Abdelrazik, et al) will never be mentioned.

"If they run, they're VC. If they don't run, they're well-disciplined VC"

Most of the news out of Afghanistan is depressing and occasionally enraging, but when I see Seymour Hersh's byline attached to a story, I make sure to read it even though I know it will probably be both depressing and enraging. This story is no exception. It seems "the good guys" are now executing prisoners on the battlefield, or at least that is the story that has been relayed to Hersh by U.S. troops.
I won't argue that Hersh is infallible -- no one is -- but he is one of the best reporters working today and his track record from My Lai to Abu Ghraib is pretty impressive.

This isn't a story, at least not yet. This comes from a talk Hersh gave at the Global Investigative Journalism Conference in Geneva on April 24, 2010.

HERSH: The purpose of my [Abu Ghraib] stories was to take it out of the field and into the White House. It's not that the President or the Secretary of Defense Mr. Rumsfeld, or Bush, or Cheney, it's not that they knew what happened in Abu Ghraib. It's that they had allowed this kind of activity to happen.

And I'll tell you right now, one of the great tragedies of my country is that Mr. Obama is looking the other way, because equally horrible things are happening to prisoners, to those we capture in Afghanistan. They're being executed on the battlefield. It's unbelievable stuff going on there that doesn't necessarily get reported. Things don't change. 

[...]

What they've done in the field now is, they tell the troops, you have to make a determination within a day or two or so whether or not the prisoners you have, the detainees, are Taliban. You must extract whatever tactical intelligence you can get, as opposed to strategic, long-range intelligence, immediately. And if you cannot conclude they're Taliban, you must turn them free. What it means is, and I've been told this anecdotally by five or six different people, battlefield executions are taking place. Well, if they can't prove they're Taliban, bam. If we don't do it ourselves, we turn them over to the nearby Afghan troops and by the time we walk three feet the bullets are flying. And that's going on now.

Chuckles McVety wants to give you a wedgie

Read this story on the rise of the religious right in Canada and don't get scared, get angry. Then get busy and stop this tiny minority from seizing control of the political agenda in Canada with the same kind of wedge tactics they have used in the United States.
The whole introduction of abortion into the national political agenda has been driven by the tiny religious right in Canada -- in poll after poll Canadians have been shown to favor the status quo on abortion and want to keep it legal, safe and broadly available.
The Reverend Doctor Chuckles McVety (whose credentials are as valid as my own) and his merry little gang of socially regressive theocrats will do their very best to try to push people's buttons and play to their fear, prejudices and worst, darkest sides to push their agenda of having their narrowminded view of morality dominate public policy.
To do this they will try to raise cultural wedge issues. How? Simple - they pick an issue where the state has endorsed a progressive position that may be slightly ahead of the social development curve and use an extreme example and negative stereotypes that might make some in the mushy middle ground on the issue uncomfortable and then claim that it is going to become the standard to scare that middle ground into picking a side.  The transformation of our society to a more open-minded, more progressive one is a slow journey and not everyone travels the road in the direction of progress at the same speed or travels the same distance, so if the religious right and other social regressives can pick off the stragglers and build their numbers, over time they gain enough political clout to throw up roadblock to everyone else's journey and drag more and more people back to the dark ages with them.
The strategy is to divide and conquer, the tactic is to use coded language, innuendo, suggestion and disinformation.
For example: Some people, especially older folks raised in a less open time, are still a bit leery of  open homosexuality - a mindset that is fading with each passing year as Canadians get less religious and the  laws granting equal rights become more broadly accepted and enforced. (Note:  I'm using broad generalizations here, so please, spare me the lecture about how you aren't a homophobe or how everyone is a homophobe or whatever - as far as I'm concerned, if you want to have sex with another consenting adult, do so - it is no one else's business. The public fight over equal rights for homosexuals is merely a convenient example to draw on, the same argument can be made on the fight over fair treatment of people accused of terrorism, women's rights, financial regulation - you name it). The religious right will condemn through various forums - speeches, complaints to government panels, press releases - the most excessive behaviour in the gay community and try to convince Mr. and Mrs. On-the-fence mushy-middle, "we don't know any gay people and we'd rather not talk about sex anyways" that all gays are perverts and degenerates diesel dyke bikers or the guy in the Gay Pride Parade in full make-up wearing nothing a feather boa and assless chaps (not, as the saying goes, that there is anything wrong with that - like I said, they use stereotypes) and claim that they are trying to force everyone to submit to accept gay sex. They will take this conclusion a step further and insist that by trying to inform people, especially young people, of issues of sexuality and sexual preference - for example telling kids that being attracted to someone of their own sex doesn't make them a bad person - is a form of seducing" "recruiting" those young people. Then they make an oh-so-very-brave declaration that just because the world is going to hell in handbasket doesn't mean that they will put up with  pedophiles molesting their children openly gay teachers our in our once proud schools. They will claim gay teachers and "activists" are "trying to cram the homosexual agenda down our throats" and the more extreme elements will make wild baseless claims and equate homosexuality with everything from disease and abuse to child-rape and cannibalism in an effort to drag the Overton window of what is acceptable in discourse back in their direction.
Then they drive the wedge by pushing a false choice that fits with their simplistic black-and-white view of the world: You are either in favor of child-rape and cannibalism or you are against homosexuality. A lot of it has to do with framing the question using loaded language about family or morality or even religiosity, but the goal is to force the subject to make an us-and-them distinction and side with the team conducting the campaign.
The strategy is a tough one to counter, especially if the side using it is willing to be blatantly dishonest in repeating the Big Lie until people start to believe it and has lots of money to spend on advertising, publishing books, magazines, newsletters, websites, building an infrastructure of institutions and networks of people who will back each other up and help mainstream the language and ideas of the extremists. (see Dave Neiwert's excellent The Eliminationists for more on this idea of mainstreaming extremist rhetoric).
Almost any social movement uses this strategy. It worked very well for the African-American civil rights movement and the women's suffrage movement and even the abolitionists. For all I know, early man used it to convince other early men to use fire and tools and move out of the caves - "remember how we found the cave bear in that one cave and it ate Ugg? Unless we leave the cave, the bears will eat us all!"
peckerwoods, they managed to achieve a massive lasting change in society.
Before I am accused of the crime of high Broderism for saying "both sides do it" let me point out some key differences in how and why both sides do it. Both sides want to present their goals in the most favorable light, but one side is using this strategy to oppress people and the other is doing it to achieve equality of treatment, opportunity or status. The aim of the strategy is important and goals are not value-neutral or equally valid -- ending slavery is a good and noble goal, filling you own pockets or keeping your boot on the neck of others is not.
I am not saying the end justifies the means either, because there are important differences in the tactics used to pursue this strategy. Klan lynch mobs and violent rednecks existed, you could see them attacking the civil rights marchers on television. Condemning lynch mobs and complaining about the mistreatment of African Americans in the Jim Crow South was telling the truth. Complaining that abortion leads to breast cancer, teen promiscuity and moral degradation is a Big Lie. Complaining that allowing gay marriage somehow damages heterosexual marriages or undermines families is a Big Lie. Complaining that increasing taxes on the top 2% of income earners back up to where they were 20 years ago or enforcing the existing rules governing financial fraud is socialism/communism/fascism or whatever other idiotic idea the teabaggers are misspelling on their signs this week is a Big Lie.
These are important differences - they are the difference between good and evil.

the Rules #439-#453

Too much time on my hands? What makes you think that?

Dr.Dawg and the vengeful nature of the Harper-cons

This week's guest John Baglow aka Dr. Dawg (left) with returned Canadian exile Abousfian Abdelrazik.

Subscribe at iTunes or click below to download or listen

Golden Week

Golden week is sort of like the Japanese version of Spring Break - so I'll up north visiting the in-laws for a bit. In the meantime - enjoy.



Chaplin saved the best part for last of course - this speech at the end of the movie written by John Steinbeck is still just as relevant now as then, maybe even more so.

In praise of virtual communities

A lot of stuff has been written about the role of so-called virtual communities on the internet and their role in our new technology-enhanced world of online everything and electronic communication and globalized yadda yadda yadda. Well, most of what you've read, like most of everything, is likely crap - but let me tell you from experience - there is nothing "virtual" about online communities, they are as real as any other. 

I know by writing about this on a blog I'm probably already preaching to the choir, but in my 15 or so years on the internet, I've been part of more than a couple online groups from the old-time BBS type to the "cutting-edge" worlds of Second Life-MyBook-FaceSpace etc etc. 

Just because the people involved are pixels on your computer screen doesn't make them any less real. I have good friends I've made through different online venues, none of whom I've met in the flesh, though we have exchanged innumerable letters, gifts and confidences. 

When I first got on the internet 15 years ago, I used to post a lot to the alt.Callahans message boards, in its day one of the busiest non-pornographic spots on the internet. You know what the key precept there was? Shared pain is lessened, shared joy increased (aka Spider's Law) and dammit, that precept was very much in evidence in the discussions. Sure, there were arguments and even flame wars and mean things occasionally said, but by and large the people there  genuinely gave a damn about each other and uplifted one another's spirits, and mostly made each other laugh a lot.

I used to spend a bit of time on the BBC's excellent Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy boards too (see blogroll), and have a few friends from that time and virtual space I still stay vaguely in touch with, a few of whom still read this blog. And then, of course, there are all of you who read this blog and leave your comments, and the people who are part of Progressive Bloggers and now those who listen to the podcast and email or comment - and I'm grateful for the connections I've made in that way too. 

But when it comes to community, let me tell you - Second Life really does have the edge over other forums. 

I've been hanging out with these folks for a couple of years now, and a nicer, more well-meaning bunch you will not find. We get together in various combinations and at various locations a few times a week. Sometimes, like at my Sunday night parties at the Red Zeppelin--my little virtual tree fort clubhouse in Second Life--it's just for laughs and conversation. Other times, such as the annual virtual Netroots Nation convention,  it's for political activism. Even when we are just hanging out having a good time, we've done good things - a couple of months ago we raised a couple of hundred bucks for relief in Haiti, and we often pass the virtual hat to send flowers to friends in the hospital or help out other causes.

Today was a prime example of the latter type of gathering. One of the groups I've gotten involved with in Second Life (and a major inspiration for the Maple Leaf Revolution podcast) is Virtually Speaking,  a sort of progressive talk show done in real time in Second Life as well as being recorded as a podcast.

Say what you want about SL being a bunch of nerds who spend too much time online or who are too wrapped up in their fantasy world  -- and yeah, there are those people there too -- but I just spent 90 minutes as part of a discussion by two U.S. military lawyers who are doing their damnedest to get innocent people freed from Guantanamo Bay. I even got to ask them some questions. 

That cartoon lady on the right is my good pal Seattle Tammy aka Bookem Streeter from Washington state, who sells me books at Jackson Street Books and does occasional writing at Daily Kos and Jesus' General. She met Lt. Col Barry Wingard and Lt. Cmdr. Kevin Bogucki through a twitter group and email network that she joined that was set up by a blogger and the mother of one of these fine men. Wingard and Bogucki are the military lawyers I mentioned earlier who are working their asses off to uphold the best ideals of the United States and the rule of law. You can, and should, read more about them and their efforts here and here. You can, and should, listen to the discussion here. 

I'm very proud of Tammy for putting this event together and very proud of the community that took part - - it was one of the most compelling onlne discussions of any kind I've been a part of. And Virtually Speaking does this kind of thing a couple of times a week with different guests. Not all of them are as compelling as these to JAG lawyers, but it's a pretty impressive list just the same.

My point is that such a forum could not have taken place in any other non-commercial medium - we had a real time discussion with people from Texas to Tokyo to Timbuktu, with the potential for people to call in with questions or simply type them in on the screen for the panelists to read and respond to. The audience of about 50 could both question the panel and discuss their answers among ourselves. And then we all went to our favorite club and danced (to music provided by Tammy' husband, my pal Seattle Dan aka Dano Bookmite) while we talked about the earlier discussion. Say what you want about the nerdiness of me hanging out with my "cartoon friends", but you try that with Meet the Press.

A force for good in our time - A new spiritual hero of the moment

Louise Arbour, former Canadian Supreme Court Justice, Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, is now running a private NGO, the International Crisis Group.

While the International Crisis Group is not a boots-on-the-ground aid group in terms of directly delivering food or medical aid to crisis-stricken areas, it is instrumental is getting governments to do the right thing by providing impartial analysis and sound advice to those in the corridors of power.
In the recent Maple Syrup Revolution podcast, Lindsay Stewart and I talked briefly about the damage done to Canada international reputation over the last few years by Harper Government. It is thanks to the fine work of people like Louise Arbour and Steven Lewis and our past dedication to international peacekeeping missions that give Canada any international credibility at all. 
In a recent inteview with the Toronto Star she claims that of her many public incarnations this will be the last. I think that is unfortunate because there is one more incarnation I'd like to see her in, that of leader of the Liberal Party of Canada and Prime Minister of Canada  -- since she doesn't seem anymore impressed with the current government than I am:

“Is Canada punching below its weight?” she says. “Is it punching at all?”

Ottawa, Arbour argues, is “largely absent on the international scene. It’s very difficult to capture any kind of message, position or form of engagement these days.”

And she adds, “when I was prosecutor in 1996, it mattered what Canada thought. On issues of justice and ethics, it mattered what the Canadian position was. There was a sense that you would get an honest, well-thought-out approach. Not just a raw pursuit of ideological or national interest.”

Check out this 2008 interview from CBC radio's As It Happens.
And a tip of the hat to Estaban in Olde Berlin for the suggestion.