Posts from our progressive community

Corruption is always rooted in human character. But these days -- at least in Canada -- Robert Sibley suggests that it might also have something to do with the cult of efficiency:

Indeed, our culture of expediency is in some ways the consequence of a technologically-minded attitude that regards efficiency and effectiveness as the central purpose and goal of governance. The essence of technology, as the philosophers teach, is efficiency. The whole point of technology is to close as best as possible the gap between means and ends. The fondness of Trudeau and his successors for “centralization” reflects the desire to close the gap as much as possible between the inefficient means of parliamentary democracy with a more efficient means of decision-making. For the centralizers, many aspects of the democratic tradition — debate, committees, hearings, compromise and consensus building, and, yes, even voting — are outmoded, inefficient and increasingly ineffective in suitably responding to our high-speed, never-stop, crisis-a-minute world.
Thus, a government which tells us that it is "focused on the economy" outlaws strikes before they begin. It short circuits environment assessment because it slows down the process of getting oil to market. And it imposes closure on debate, because debate merely puts off the inevitable -- passage of a bill.

That emphasis on getting things done opens the door to political corruption:

This devotion to efficiency breeds the cultural of expediency that fosters political corruption. Corruption, as political scientist Samuel Huntington once stated, can be defined as “behaviour of public officials which deviates from accepted norms in order to serve private ends.” (Private ends can include political interests.) Is this not what we’ve seen in the Senate expenses scandal? Politicians identify their self-interest with the public interest, assuming they’re entitled to every entitlement, advantage and benefit they can obtain, whether private or public, monetary or political, by the most expedient (or efficient) means.
And, therefore, we are left with the absurd proposition that self-interest is in the public interest. If the Harper government stands for anything, it is that self interest is in the country's best interest. That is why Mike Duffy was made a senator. That is why we have the lowest corporate taxes in our history. And that is why the government is devoted to shutting down the flow of information. That information would make it abundantly clear that the government carries no brief for the public interest.

Democracy -- by its very nature -- is inefficient. So is the justice system. But we used to believe that democracy and justice were more important than efficiency. Indeed, we used to believe that democracy made justice possible.

Amnesty International is calling for the release of war resister Kimberly Rivera, who was forced out of Canada by the Harper Government. Will you please write a letter in support of her release? Here's how.

If you want to write to Kim, you can reach her at:
Kimberly Rivera
P.O. Box 452136
San Diego, CA 92145-2136Important Note: The military has very strict (arcane, incomprehensible) rules about what prisoners can receive. Please do not include anything in the letter but the paper you write on. If you send gifts - even stamps, writing paper, or stickers - the letter will not reach Kim.

Be sure to include your full name and address in the return address area of the envelope. Mail with incomplete return addresses will not get through.

Even if you do this, there is no guarantee that Kim will receive your letter. But if you don't follow these instructions, she definitely won't.

You cannot send books through Amazon or any other online book distributor. Books can only be sent directly from the publisher. Look on publishers' websites for this information. For example, from the FAQ on the HarperCollins website:
Special Orders

I would like to send a book to someone who is in prison. Prisons will only accept books directly from publisher. How can I pay and have you ship it?

Send an e-mail with the specifics to orders@harpercollins.com or phone 1-800-242-7737 -- a customer service representative will respond to you.

Whether or not you live in Ontario, you may find Martin Regg Cohn's column of some interest in illustrating the fractured and uneven relationship that Federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty has with the provinces. Writing in the voice of Ontario residents responding to Flaherty's finger-wagging over the MetroLinx proposal to raise the HST one point to help meet the GTHA's transit needs, he observes,

Your latest letter takes federal-provincial pugilism to a new level of aggression — lecturing and hectoring [Ont. Finance Minister] Sousa by telling him what he already knows: That he cannot create a regional GTA sales tax, a tax he has neither imposed nor proposed.

He goes on to point out Flaherty's hypocisy as well as his intransigence in meeting with his provincial counterpart to discuss federal involvement in addressing transit funding, once more underscoring the rather limited 'skill-set' (divide and conquer seems to be their default position) the Conservative Party of Canada brings to the table in federal-provincial relations.

All in all, a rather good piece of writing to enjoy on a Sunday morning.Recommend this Post

As I kind of expected, when I suggested on Friday that we could now foresee an age where mass surveillance by governments was so cheap and easy that it would be effectively impossible to prevent, the main objection was that while it might be easy to collect essentially unlimited information, it would be impossible to process it, and hence the threat of some sort of grand Big Brother database is being overblown. I’d like to respond to that in detail.

One of the most chilling things about the leaked documents, at least to people who know a little of the (alleged) history of the NSA, is the following detail, which kind of got slipped in unnoticed, probably even by the journalists who wrote it. The following text courtesy of the Washington Post:

The Silicon Valley operation works alongside a parallel program, code-named BLARNEY, that gathers up “metadata” — technical information about communications traffic and network devices — as it streams past choke points along the backbone of the Internet. BLARNEY’s top-secret program summary, set down in the slides alongside a cartoon insignia of a shamrock and a leprechaun hat,

It’s probably a coincidence rather than being meant as a homage, but the logo of PRISM’s sister program BLARNEY isn’t the first time that shamrocks figured prominently in NSA operations. SHAMROCK, as it happens, was one of the codenames for a program which ran from the late 1940s to the mid-1970s, under which the NSA is said to have collected essentially every international telegram entering or leaving the United States.

As you may have guessed by now, my decision to use text messages as the example for building a hypothetical surveillance database wasn’t entirely accidental. Text messages are the informalized descendants of telegrams. And the problem is the same. At the time, NSA reportedly took in millions of messages per day, but chucked out 90% of them without even reading them. We can probably assume a similar triage is applied today.

That said, while the amount of data to be collected has increased exponentially, so has the capacity to process that information — to the point that we’re really not sure what processing capacity the NSA actually has. This was brought home to me a year ago when a professional social media website, LinkedIn, had its list of user passwords leaked. The passwords were in an encrypted form, which theoretically limited the damage.

Which sounds good, but, by last year, it was possible for a fairly run-of-the-mill personal computer to brute-force passwords encrypted in that format by running through about one billion guesses per second. This machine was built with commercial off-the-shelf parts, with what would be some sort of five-figure budget for parts, could make 63 billion guesses per second using the encryption protocol used by LinkedIn. That’s with a five-figure budget. NSA has an eleven-figure budget.

That’s all a side issue, of course, because the NSA isn’t breaking encrypted passwords when it comes to Skype, Facebook, Google, etc. At least according to the latest leaks, it doesn’t need to break anything: it already has an all-access pass.

Not being a computer scientist I’m really not prepared to say what is possible and what isn’t here. I’m just trying to point out that the cost and the difficulty of obtaining, storing, and processing huge amounts of data has fallen exponentially, and, more importantly, that there is every reason to believe it will continue falling exponentially in the future. You reach a point where collecting a massive database of personal communications is so cheap that it gets implausible to assume that a large and secretive intelligence bureaucracy won’t step up over the line, especially when its opponents consist of a compliant opposition, a lacklustre media, and an uninterested public.

All that said, let’s return to my hypothetical text message database for a moment. If NSA wants to perform the equivalent of about one billion operations for every text message in the United States, and it had a supercomputer equal to the fastest publicly documented computer on the planet in order to do this task, then by my back-of-the-napkin math it could run through the whole list in about a couple of hours.*

After that, it could move on to some other equally daunting task, like maybe running through every message posted on Facebook over the previous day.

 

* 42 text messages per day times 350 million Americans times 1 billion operations divided by 30 petaflops, which is the current computing capacity of Tianhe-2 in China.

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Although I have written countless posts about the abrogation of charter rights and myriad instances of police brutality that occured in Toronto during the infamous G20 weekend in 2010, the story never seems to be over.

This past week saw one officer acquitted in the assault of Dorian Barton; Glenn Weddell was found not guilty of aggravated assault and assault with a weapon by Ontario Superior Court Justice M. Gregory Ellies based on Wedell's testimony that he initially did not even remember any interaction with Barton, but after reviewing images of the event recalled that he merely helped Barton up from the pavement by his T-shirt and guided him clear of police lines.

This 'memory' stood in sharp contrast to that of Andrew Wallace, a hospital worker also taking pictures of the protest, [who] said he saw Weddell emerge from a line of riot police to viciously hit Barton with his shield and baton, completely without provocation.

Another man, Adam Nobody, testified to similar mistreatment this week; he was, again apparently without provocation, beset upon by five or six officers who pinned him to the ground and pummelled him repeatedly. Police lawyer Harry Black, who is defending Const. Babak Andalib-Goortani against charges of assaulting Nobody with a weapon, his nightstick, made the predictable attempts to impugn Nobody's character and veracity, but the latter remained calmly consistent in his testimony.

In another development,

A court has ruled Ontario’s police watchdog must re-examine a complaint about orders given during the G20 summit by the upper command of Toronto police — allegedly including Chief Bill Blair — to arrest anyone wearing bandanas or masks.

Jason Wall, who filed the complaint, was wearing a brown bandana around his neck when he was arrested on June 27, 2010, while walking on Yonge St. near Gerrard St.

Wall, 26, was charged with wearing a disguise with intent and held for 28 hours in the Eastern Ave. prisoner processing centre.

Finally, and probably the most cowardly and disgraceful act of the entire weekend of police abuse involved John Pruyn, the man who was in the so-called 'official protest zone' at Queens Park with his wife and daughter when, inexplicably, police charged the area, ripped off Pruyn's leg, appropriated his walking sticks, and hauled him off to detention for 24 hours. He received his leg back upon release.

While the link to the Star article doesn't seem to be working, I will tell you what he wants: an official apology by the police officers involved in the abuse, "their boss, Chief Bill Blair, and their ultimate boss, Prime Minister Stephen Harper, that they were wrong to treat him that way.

So far, and unsurprisingly, none of the above have indicated any interest in acknowledging Pruyn's request.

Perhaps all should be reminded of the old adage: Pride goeth before the fall.

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Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Jillian Berman reports on research showing that the predictable effect of decreased unionization is a transfer of wealth from workers to shareholders:
The jump in corporate profit over the past few decades can be explained largely by a decline in union membership over the same period, according to a study by Tali Kristal, a sociologist at the University of Haifa in Israel. The boost in companies’ bottom line comes at workers’ expense, Kristal wrote in an email to The Huffington Post.

“It’s a zero sum game: whatever is not going to workers, goes to corporations,” Kristal said. “Union decline not only increased wage gaps among workers, but also enabled capitalists to grab a larger slice of the national income pie at the expense of all workers, including the highly skilled.”

The findings, published Thursday in the American Sociological Review, add a new dimension to the debate over income inequality in the U.S., suggesting that policies aimed at boosting unions may help. Corporate profit soared to a record high share of the economy earlier this year, according to Bloomberg, while workers' wages have remained largely stagnant. The rise in profit comes as union membership has dropped to a record low. - Nora Loreto discusses the importance of including younger workers in the benefits of unionization - rather than conceding future losses to protect past gains. And Trish Hennessy offers some numbers on working women - including confirmation of the role of unions in pursuing pay equity.

- Thomas Walkom writes that the Cons' PMO-controlled slush fund looks to be the missing link connecting Clusterduff to the broader party apparatus. And as Colin Horgan points out, the Cons aren't helping their already-lacking credibility any through feeble attempts to deny the obvious facts about a fund - particularly after confirming them a day earlier.

- Meanwhile, Alex Himelfarb comments that Stephen Harper's choice to flee questions about his party's patronage system reflects disdain for democratic transparency. And Chantal Hebert wonders whether resignation may soon be in the cards for Harper.

- Finally, Adrienne Silnicki observes that funding health care is a matter of political choice - and that the governments who demand that we accept fewer services in the name of tax breaks for the wealthy be held to account for that readily-avoidable state of affairs.:

Deep Throat advised Woodward and Bernstein to "follow the money" -- because that trail would lead them back to the White House and the plumbers who committed the Watergate burglary. Greg Weston has done that -- and the trail leads back to the PMO. Tom Walkom writes in today's Toronto Star:

For weeks, questions have swirled as to why Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s then chief of staff would give $90,000 of his own money to Mike Duffy, a Conservative senator he barely knew.

Now we have a plausible answer. It seems that former chief of staff Nigel Wright also controlled a secret Conservative Party slush fund that at times contained almost $1 million.

Which meant that he was in a position to repay himself for his generosity.

The Conservatives are busy spinning the line that there was no such slush fund:

Chris Alexander was given the unenviable task of defending the fund on CBC Radio. He said all political parties defray the partisan activities of their leaders, which is true.

He also said, “All of those expenses are reported to Elections Canada.” Which is not true.

And he said that anything the Conservatives do as a party is “overseen as to its appropriateness by Elections Canada.” Which is also not true.

In fact, as an Elections Canada spokesman confirmed Friday, the monitoring body has limited jurisdiction. Parties must reveal all donations to Elections Canada, which then makes the list public. Parties must account for money they spend on activities during the relatively short period of an election campaign.
Like all the president and all his men, Stephen Harper and his acolytes are desperately trying to cover up what was going on. Unfortunately for them, Brent Rathgeber has focused attention on the rot that has accumulated in the Prime Minister's Office.

As he did in 2008 -- when it looked like his government would fall -- Stephen Harper has gone into hiding, desperately looking for a scapegoat -- one that resides outside his party.The difference this time is that it's abundantly clear, even to the Conservative base, that the enemy is within.

It took Nixon awhile to get around to the realisation that there was no way out. He had to resign. My bet is that -- eventually -- Stephen Harper will come to the same realisation.

I guess they really are the key to maintaining both fiscal and democratic health.

But to ensure such a salutary state, people need to get their 'narratives' straight. Perhaps they need some outside assistance?

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While I'm not writing, I hope you will read this excellent article by Matt Taibbi on mainstream media coverage of the Bradley Manning court martial.

I cannot understand why good writers like Taibbi continue to refer to the "Bradley Manning trial". A trial is, in theory, an impartial hearing, where an unbiased judge and 12 ordinary citizens hear a full range of evidence from both prosecution and defense.

Bradley Manning, by contrast, is being tried by his accusers. The accusers are judge and jury, and they write the rule book.

What's more, the court martial procedures used by the United States military do not comply with accepted international standards of justice. This was proven in the cases of Chris Vassey and Jules Tindungan, US Iraq War resisters living in Canada.

Calling Bradley Manning's court martial a trial connotes justice, fairness, and due process, where none exist.

Oh.My.Gotterdammerung. I can only imagine the grim scene inside the Harper bunker tonight.

The PMO boys in a tizzy screaming "Treason !!! Treason !!!"

Or "Wallin is coming !!! Wallin is coming !!!"

And Great Ugly Leader in a lather screaming "Attack the CBC !!!!"
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People are always asking me whether I REALLY believe that the Cons should be arrested eh?

And I'm always having to say yes I really do.

Not just because of the way they have hijacked our democracy, and all their sordid scandals.

But because they are actually prepared to hurt, or even kill Canadians, in the name of their foul ideology.
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That's Emily Cohn explaining the 'revolutionary' philosophy driving Costco's profits:








H/t Tyna MCNairRecommend this Post

Gareth Emery feat. Lucy Saunders - Sanctuary

As you may have heard, the Obama administration has been outed as ambitiously Big Brother-ish, overseeing a National Security Agency surveillance program which essentially scoops user data from every major online source — Facebook, Google, Skype, even Apple — and puts it into the world’s largest personal information database. (This, surprisingly, means Facebook is probably only the second largest such database.)

There’s an inevitable furore in the press, as there should be, but I think — as I’ve warned before — that people are asking the wrong questions about the latest scandal. The reality is that the sort of pervasive surveillance which the U.S. government now stands accused of dabbling in was inevitable, and is only going to get worse — bigger, more intrusive, more pervasive. Maybe even more secret.

The first problem with the latest spy scandal is, as I’ve repeatedly stated over the past several weeks, that the majority of people don’t care. They won’t say so — especially Republicans — but the reality is that a very small minority both (a) votes and (b) would vote differently based on the latest scandal. Indeed, we’ve reached the point where the party system can’t eliminate a program like PRISM in the United States: it was set up by Bush, and maintained and expanded by Obama, so unless you’re willing to vote for a (basically non-existent) third party over this, you’re hooped. Live with it. Which most people will. Outside of libertarian and Tea Party circles, and maybe not even there, it’s hard to imagine people genuinely care about this. Not people who were already active on Facebook, anyways.

The more serious issue is this, though: pervasive surveillance is rapidly becoming so easy, and so cheap, that it’s foolhardy to imagine governments resisting the temptation to engage in it. The only real difficulty is getting everyone to play along — and that obviously wasn’t a serious problem when it came to Facebook, or Google, or Apple, or Microsoft, or Skype, just to name a few. So in fact, there are no real difficulties.

Let’s say, hypothetically, that you want to build a database containing every text message sent by every American, every day. Apparently, the average American sends 42 text messages per day. (For what it’s worth, I send zero, and I feel very, very old now, despite being under 30.) Let’s further assume that every text message generates 500 characters of text, which is probably an extremely high figure. Now, 300 million Americans times 21 kilobytes of text equals 6.3 terabytes of information per day.

Right now, in a retail stare, you can get a 2 terabyte hard drive for $100, on sale. So even if you’re paying retail rates  for your surveillance database, which seems unlikely, you can store every text message sent by every American for around $300 a day.

If that still seems unlikely to you, consider that that amounts to 2.3 petabytes per year of data. Almost two years ago, IBM built a 120-petabyte hard drive cluster in California “for an unnamed customer.”

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Perhaps the peripatetic Pamela is simply a tad confused?

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I have a nifty idea for fashion writers hard-up for ideas for next season's trends and must-haves. When you're talking about clothing, it's only fair and balanced to also talk to nudists (or naturists as I think they prefer to be called).

You know, get their take on how clothing is restrictive and unhealthy and expensive and often silly. Get their views on fashion designers who are just in it for the glory. And on workers in the fashion industry who are just in it for the (miserly) income. And on the selfishness and vanity of people -- women in particular -- who buy and wear clothing.

It doesn't matter that naturists are a small minority in Canada. It doesn't matter that most sensible naturists would think you nuts for inviting them to opine on fashion. And it doesn't matter that the vast majority of Canadians are stout defenders of pants and shirts and sox and toques and so on.

See, fashion writers, you've got to be FAIR and BALANCED.

OK, that's loopy, but that kind of thinking seemed to bestir the mainstream media in reporting on the death of Dr Henry Morgentaler.
Although nearly all mainstream media sources quoted pro-choice views, most also interviewed at least one anti-choice spokesperson (22 out of 35 news articles or broadcasts that I reviewed). Apparently, the media thinks that view has some kind of legitimacy and must be presented against the pro-choice view in the name of "balance." Well, NO. The anti-choice position -- that women must be compelled to carry every pregnancy to term under threat of criminal law regardless of circumstances -- is an extremist view held by only 5 per cent of Canadians. It is also profoundly mistaken, cruel and undemocratic. As such, it does not deserve equal time or respect in Canada.Joyce Arthur of the Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada has had it with the lying bullshit spewed by fetus fanatics and the obligatory obeisance of the media.

And so have we.

There was absolutely no point in polling the forced pregnancy brigade on Dr Morgentaler's 'legacy'. We know what they thought of him and his work. They loathed him. They attacked him, his motives, his personal life, his clinics, and his person. Even -- especially gleefully -- after he was dead.

As for his legacy, they simply want to obliterate it.

There was plenty of grave-dancing going on in their own media, why the hell did the mainstream media -- who purportedly serve us all -- feel they had to give equal time to this tiny minority of lying nutbars?

Joyce again:
The lives and health of half the population are at stake here, so why is the mainstream media casually repeating dangerous medical misinformation from the mouths of zealots without any correction? Why did the media allow extremists to propagate their vicious libel and stupid lies about Dr. Morgentaler? And why is the media still giving equal time to interviewing these pro-death proponents, as if women's right to life is up for debate in Canada? Pro-choice advocates have had enough.It's cheap, lazy, and stupid. It misrepresents Canada to itself.

And it's got to stop.

The Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada is collaborating with Dammit Janet! bloggers on a project to hold mainstream media to account when they publish or broadcast anti-choice hatred and propaganda in the name of "balance." Please email joyce[at]arcc-cdac.ca to alert us to examples, or to help with the project.
Go read Joyce's whole piece. It's brilliant.

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Harper and Ford will make a great political team.

These are the main topics discussed on last night's At Issue panel:

BTW, Parliament rises in about a week. I hope the weather for Harper and his many enablers continues to be hot and uncomfortable, with heavy storms in the fall.Recommend this Post

In defiance of current internet rules, I am posting this on my own blog instead of on Pinterest - but please feel free to share this on Pinterest if you like.

I'm going to post one slow-cooker recipe each week until I run out of ideas.

Thai Peanut Chicken, adapted from The 150 Healthiest Slow Cooker Recipes on Earth, by Jonny Bowden and Jeannette Bessinger.

chicken drumsticks and thighs, on the bone but without skin
1 sweet onion, run through food processor
1 cup peanut-only peanut butter (i.e. no added salt, sugar, trans fats, or chemicals)
1/2 cup low-sodium chicken broth
1/4 cup low-sodium tamari sauce
juice of 1 large or 3 small limes
4 cloves of garlic, crushed or minced
1 inch chunk of fresh ginger, peeled and grated or minced
1 tablespoon honey
1 tablespoon rice wine vinegar
1/2 teaspoon red pepper (optional, I don't use this)

Brown chicken pieces, or omit this step. Put chicken in slow cooker.

Soften onions, put in slow cooker. If you browned the chicken, you can throw the onion in the same skillet so it cooks in the chicken residue.

In food processor or blender, or with hand mixer, combine all remaining ingredients until well blended.

Pour sauce into slow cooker and move chicken pieces around so that all are coated thoroughly.

Cook 4 hours on low.

Remove chicken and keep warm. Continue cooking sauce for 4 more hours on low. Return chicken to sauce for last half hour.

You could serve this with rice noodles or rice. I make a pot of brown rice, which is healthier and re-heats beautifully.