20 September - Articles & Opinions

Northern lights go online, live

 

Free website to include image gallery with still photos and movies from previous nights 

at http://www.asc-csa.gc.ca/auroramax

Read more: http://www.montrealgazette.com/business/Northern+lights+online+live/3550408/story.html#ixzz106kCRw6f
Also Vancouver Sun


Toronto Sun

Stormy weather for IPCC

‘Disgraced’ boss of climate change panel faces heat over ‘shoddy’ work

Britain’s foremost magazine of weekly political and social commentary, The Spectator, wonders editorially how Rajendra Pachauri keeps his job.

Who, you might ask, is Rajendra Pachauri?

Well, he’s chairman of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), whose reports on global warming influence governments (and journalists) around the world — and whose science in recent months has “been exposed as shoddy pieces of work which would have disgraced an undergraduate thesis.”

In any other business, The Speccy says, Pachauri would have long ago been bounced. Yet he remains on the job, secure until his term expires in 2014, while calling his critics “arrogant” and viewing dissident opinions as “voodoo science.”

( You'd think the pundits could call such an easy misrepresentation to identify  correctly : "Deniers" )

Alberta’s water watchdog under tighter scrutiny over oil sands

Minister Jim Prentice said Friday he was “disgusted” by images released this week showing deformities of fish pulled from the Athabasca. He made the comments two days after travelling to Edmonton to meet with David Schindler, a University of Alberta researcher who authored a report last month revealing levels of harmful elements, such as mercury, found in the Athabasca.

( I remember Apocryphical tales of Ralph Klein, Environment Minister, being shut down by Peter Lougheed when he tried to push environmental responsibility for the Oldman River. We shall see how much has changed...or not. )


Lawmakers want power to shut down 'pirate sites'

Read more: http://news.cnet.com/8301-31001_3-20016995-261.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20#ixzz106ch5Pe9
The legislation comes after years of failed attempts by the United States to battle alleged pirate sites based overseas. None of those sites are more well known than The Pirate Bay, a BitTorrent search engine whose three founders are from Scandinavia.

( This immediately reminds me of unilateral U.S. 'sanctions.' This from the proponents of 'Free Trade.' And it remains a domestic mystery in the U.S.A. why the rest of the world would think they talk out of both sides of their face at the same time. )

Montreal Gazette

U.S. can't kick the protectionist habit

Economists keep on showing that "protectionism" does the opposite of protecting a whole economy, but powerful interests in the United States keep turning to protective measures of narrow benefit every time they think they can get away with it.
Campaigns to "Make it in America" and "Buy America" cropped up swiftly after the economic meltdown of 2008. Exporters to the U.S. -including Canada, the U.S.'s main trading partner -protested furiously, pointing out that for the economy overall, proliferating protective barriers only exacerbate a downturn, and could even push the world into a full-blown and protracted recession. Cooler heads finally prevailed and a government procurement agreement went a long way to resolving the Buy American problem.
But the U.S. economy is still struggling, especially in the Rust Belt of the Midwest and northeast. And Americans have not given up on protectionism. The latest scheme is the Foreign Manufacturers Legal Accountability Act. It comes as no surprise that the bill is sponsored by a Democrat from Ohio who's fearful about November's congressional elections.

Don't count on Ottawa to fund your retirement

 

Pay down debt and sell off possessions: Freedom, not stuff

Read more: http://www.montrealgazette.com/business/count+Ottawa+fund+your+retirement/3534750/story.html#ixzz106l5yd49


Las Vegas Review-Journal
Nevada unemployment rises to all-time high 14.4 percent 
The construction sector, restaurants and professional firms all added jobs in the month, but declines in Census jobs and other public-sector cuts offset that hiring to push statewide unemployment to an all-time high of 14.4 percent, the state Department of Employment, Training & Rehabilitation said this morning. That's up from 14.3 percent in July and 12.5 percent in August 2009.

The economic case for universal pharmacare ( Canada )

a new CCPA report

Click here to read the full report.


techdirt

MPAA Wants To Know If ACTA Can Be Used To Block Wikileaks?

The folks over at Open Acta Mexico sent over their report on an open information meeting at the Ministry of the Economy in Mexico about ACTA last week. There were two oddities that they called attention to. The first is that there was an MPAA representative at the meeting, who apparently asked whether or not ACTA could be used to block access to "damaging" sites like Wikileaks.  The ACTA negotiator who was there leading the meeting, Gilda Gonzalez Camarena, claimed that the negotiators met every day with the relevant Senate commission to keep them updated on ACTA negotiations. Yet, Open Acta Mexico notes that the Senate recently requested a full debrief on ACTA negotiators later this month. 

Common Dreams

Blowing Whistles On War Crimes Is Not A Crime

Rallies organized by several groups are being held this week for Bradley Manning, charged with leaking the Wikileaks video of the U.S. Apache attack in Baghdad. Exposing war crimes, his supporters reasonably argue, is not a crime. Rally at the Marine Corps Quantico, where he is being held, here. Facebook page here.

We Have Gone Astray

It is Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement. Writing in Ha'aretz, Bradley Burston prays for help to "turn this life around" and find justice for all. Until then, injustice prevails. From Mondoweiss, a tale of the Freedom Theater, the Palestinian rap group DAM's first open-air concert in Jenin, and the victims of the mundane cruelty of the occupation.

UK troops in Sangin did not die in vain, says Cameron

( Lots of Talk about 'success'....in the undefined mission "They made Afghanistan a safer place and they have made Britain a safer place and they will never be forgotten" and zero explanation how this is so. As far as 'not being forgotten' goes How an 1845 British Cavalry memo explains Afghanistan )

John le Carré: "The United States of America Has Gone Mad"

2003 Essay  

America has entered one of its periods of historical madness, but this is the worst I can remember: worse than McCarthyism, worse than the Bay of Pigs and in the long term potentially more disastrous than the Vietnam War. 
The reaction to 9/11 is beyond anything Osama bin Laden could have hoped for in his nastiest dreams. As in McCarthy times, the freedoms that have made America the envy of the world are being systematically eroded. The combination of compliant US media and vested corporate interests is once more ensuring that a debate that should be ringing out in every town square is confined to the loftier columns of the East Coast press. 
The imminent war was planned years before bin Laden struck, but it was he who made it possible. Without bin Laden, the Bush junta would still be trying to explain such tricky matters as how it came to be elected in the first place; Enron; its shameless favouring of the already-too-rich; its reckless disregard for the world’s poor, the ecology and a raft of unilaterally abrogated international treaties. They might also have to be telling us why they support Israel in its continuing disregard for UN resolutions.
But bin Laden conveniently swept all that under the carpet.
Last Friday a friend of mine in California drove to his local supermarket with a sticker on his car saying: "Peace is also Patriotic". It was gone by the time he’d finished shopping.

Legendary British Author John le Carré on Why He Won’t Be Reading Tony Blair’s Iraq War-Defending Memoir

Are you prepared to kneel beside a dying soldier and tell him why he went to Iraq, or why he went to any war? I think that if anything has happened to Europe since 1945 that defines it, it is collectively Europeans do not believe in war anymore, until it comes as an absolute last resort, and then they’re going to do it rather badly. The United States, I think, still sees war as a necessary part of its existence. It’s impossible to maintain the military on that scale, a Pentagon on that scale, without turning it over. You’ve got to have officers who are experienced in command and control. You’ve got to have troops who have been bloodied. So, we were, in that sense, at odds. I was, as a European. I was at odds with the whole notion of a preemptive strike. And I think many Europeans have that in common, of course with very many Americans, too, feel the same. 

Value of Academic Libraries Report

Full Report (PDF) | Executive Summary (PDF) |  Bibliography (PDF)

InfoWars

Food: The Ultimate Secret Exposed

The grocery store, along with your kitchen sink, are two of the most dangerous places in the world.

In a special video, Alex Jones addresses one of the darkest modes of power the globalists have used to control the population– food. The adulteration of the planet’s staple crops, genetically-altered species and intentionally-altered water, food and air all amount to a Eugenics operation to weaken the masses and achieve full spectrum domination.

Earth's Highest Coastal Mountain on the Move

The rocks of Colombia's Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta -- the highest coastal mountain on Earth -- tell a fascinating tale: The mountain collides and then separates from former super-continents. Volcanoes are born and die. The mountain travels from Peru to northern Colombia and finally rotates in a clockwise direction to open up an entirely new geological basin.

Smithsonian scientists were part of a four-year project to study Santa Marta's geological evolution. Their findings are published in the October 2010 special issue of the Journal of South American Earth Sciences.Using the ancient magnetic field recorded in these rocks, the Smithsonian research group revealed Santa Marta's 2,200-kilometer journey from northern Peru to its modern position on the Caribbean coast of Colombia during the past 170 million years.

Geophysicists Show That Crust Temperature Variation Explains Half Of Elevation Differences In North America

21 Nov - Unforeseen Consequences

Loss Of Top Predators Causing Surge In Smaller Predators, Ecosystem Collapse

In North America all of the largest terrestrial predators have been in decline during the past 200 years while the ranges of 60 percent of mesopredators have expanded. The problem is global, growing and severe, scientists say, with few solutions in sight.

An example: in parts of Sub-Saharan Africa, lion and leopard populations have been decimated, allowing a surge in the "mesopredator" population next down the line, baboons. In some cases children are now being kept home from school to guard family gardens from brazen packs of crop-raiding baboons.

"This issue is very complex, and a lot of the consequences are not known," said William Ripple, a professor of forest ecosystems and society at Oregon State University. "But there's evidence that the explosion of mesopredator populations is very severe and has both ecological and economic repercussions."

In case after case around the world, the researchers said, primary predators such as wolves, lions or sharks have been dramatically reduced if not eliminated, usually on purpose and sometimes by forces such as habitat disruption, hunting or fishing. Many times this has been viewed positively by humans, fearful of personal attack, loss of livestock or other concerns. But the new picture that's emerging is a range of problems, including ecosystem and economic disruption that may dwarf any problems presented by the original primary predators.

"I've done a lot of work on wildlife in Africa, and people everywhere are asking some of the same questions, what do we do?" said Clinton Epps, an assistant professor at OSU who is studying the interactions between humans and wildlife. "Most important to understand is that these issues are complex, the issue is not as simple as getting rid of wolves or lions and thinking you've solved some problem. We have to be more careful about taking what appears to be the easy solution."

The elimination of wolves is often favored by ranchers, for instance, who fear attacks on their livestock. However, that has led to a huge surge in the number of coyotes, a "mesopredator" once kept in check by the wolves. The coyotes attack pronghorn antelope and domestic sheep, and attempts to control them have been hugely expensive, costing hundreds of millions of dollars.

"The economic impacts of mesopredators should be expected to exceed those of apex predators in any scenario in which mesopredators contribute to the same or to new conflict with humans," the researchers wrote in their report. "Mesopredators occur at higher densities than apex predators and exhibit greater resiliency to control efforts."

Zionist Control of Britain’s Government: 1940-2009

This week the British people listened to the Daily Mail’s Peter Oborne present, on Channel 4, his devastating account of the Jewish lobby’s control of their government. Now we know that virtually all the principal politicians in the UK of both parties, like their brothers across the lake in our House and Senate, take “contributions” from the Israeli lobby machine ensuring that the Anglo-American mid-east policies follow the dictates of the Israeli government. Gilad Atzmon responded to this report in his article “Britain must de-Zionise itself immediately,” noting that this control has been in place for so many years the lobby feels “untouchable.”

How many years are “many” one might ask? In 1941, the High Commissioner of Palestine, Harold MacMichael, Senior Palestine Mandate officer for the British Mandate forces in Palestine, sent the following “Top Secret” “Memorandum on the Participation of the Jewish National Institutions in Palestine in Acts of Lawlessness and Violence” to the Secretary of State, dated October 16th, a report prepared by The Palestine Police, Criminal Investigation Department:

The memorandum illustrates—indeed, brings into full limelight—the fact that the Mandatory is faced potentially with as grave a danger in Palestine from Jewish violence as it ever faced from Arab violence, a danger infinitely less easy to meet by the methods of repression which have been employed against Arabs. In the first place, the Jews … have the moral and political support … of considerable sections of public opinion both in the United Kingdom and the United States of America … all the influence and political ability of the Zionists would be brought to bear to show that the Jews in Palestine were the victims of aggression, and that a substantial body of opinion abroad would be persuaded of the truth of the contention.

Shoes dropping

Colvin's testimony was alarming and the Conservative Party response, true to form, abysmal and disgusting. But there are shoes yet to drop regarding Afghan prisoners. So far the discussion seems to be around what happens to prisoners after Canada hands them to the ANP or ANA. The next shoe to drop will be when the stories come out about what Canadian soldiers have done to Afghan prisoners.

Texas' gay marriage ban may have banned all marriages

a 22-word clause in a 2005 constitutional amendment designed to ban gay marriages erroneously endangers the legal status of all marriages in the state.

The amendment, approved by the Legislature and overwhelmingly ratified by voters, declares that "marriage in this state shall consist only of the union of one man and one woman." But the troublemaking phrase, as Radnofsky sees it, is Subsection B, which declares:

"This state or a political subdivision of this state may not create or recognize any legal status identical or similar to marriage."

Oversight of U.S. aid to Afghanistan "sloppy"

Nearly 600 detainees may have been turned over to Afghan security forces

Canadian soldiers may have turned over as many as 580 detainees to Afghan security forces in the first 18 months of operations in Kandahar.

The Department of National Defence has refused to provide information on the number of Afghans taken into custody by Canadian troops, claiming that releasing such details would aid the Taliban.

However, the British government doesn't see a need for such secrecy and has informed its parliament that in the period from the beginning of 2006 to the summer of 2007 its soldiers took into custody 97 Afghans. The detainees were briefly held before being transferred to Afghan authorities.

The release of the British numbers and the testimony of a Canadian diplomat involved in the Afghan mission gives for the first time an indication of how extensive Canadian efforts were in detaining Afghans.

Depleted Uranium and the Medical Mismanagement of Gulf War Veterans

The United States insists that weapons containing depleted uranium (DU) pose no health hazards to exposed populations. This charade persists because an artful propaganda matrix has infiltrated and corrupted certain aspects of the radiation and biological sciences. The facts which follow will introduce how our debilitated veterans are being misinformed of the possible role played by uranium in their illnesses.

It's already too late to shut the door on GM foods

A report from the British Royal Society has been released that urges support for genetically-modified foods by the British public in order to address what it deems the world's growing demand for food. The report also reveals the disturbing reality about just how far genetically-modified (GM) foods have already penetrated the food supply in England, despite widespread public rejection of genetically-modified organisms (GMOs) roughly a decade ago.

Over the years, Brits have been led to believe that their diets are GMO-free. Truth be told, nearly two-thirds of the roughly 2.6 million tons of soy that is imported into the United Kingdom each and every year is GM and most people there are entirely unaware of it.

Though used primarily for animal feed, GM soy has been making its way into the British food supply for years due to the fact that manufacturers and retailers are not properly tracking the source of their soy, allowing GM soy to make its way into the human food chain. GM soybean oil, for example, is now being heavily used by catering companies in preparing food.

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 2009

'Criminal' Justice in Bush/Perry's Fascist Texas

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

Despite the state Board of Pardons and Parole voting to spare Robert Lee Thompson's life, Bush Jr's successor, Rick 'Hair Club of Men' Perry voted to kill him anyway. Why have a board when you have a dictator?

Even as the controversy over his execution of an innocent man goes unresolved, last night the Texas Governor rejected a rare clemency recommendation from the state Board of Pardons and Paroles for a man facing execution for a murder he did not commit.
Robert Lee Thompson was an accomplice in a violent convenience store robbery in Houston in 1996, when his co-conspirator fatally shot the sales clerk, a man named Mansoor Bhai Rahim Mohammed. Thompson himself fired shots that wounded Mohammed, but it was his partner, Sammy Butler, who pulled the trigger that would leave him dead. Butler was tried and sentenced to life. A different jury found Thompson guilty and sentenced him to death.
...
Numerous defendants who did not kill anyone have been executed under the Law of Parties; that Perry wouldn't hesitate to sign off on Thompson's execution should comes as no surprise. But yesterday Thompson was granted a recommendation for clemency by the state's Board of Pardons and Paroles -- an extremely rare move. The Board, whose members are political appointments, has only recommended clemency two other times in recent memory.
One of these was two years ago in the case of Kenneth Foster, Jr., who also faced execution under the Law of Parties. In his case, the murder took place while he was in a car, 18 feet away. A grassroots campaign rose up to stop Foster's execution and in August 2007, Perry took the Board's recommendation and spared his life.
--Out-of-Control Rick Perry Overrides Rare Clemency Vote, Executes Man Who Killed No One

Why do these state-sponsored crimes against humanity continue? The Carvellian quick response: there's money in it!
It's may be 'legal'! So what? Under Nazi law, the Holocaust was legal! What's happening in Texas is an on-going, institutionalized crime against humanity.
Here's how the prison moguls in the gulag state of Texas make money killing people: they farm out the prison system to 'private enterprise'. When there are profits to be made warehousing and killing folk, what incentive is there to keep the crime rate down? What incentive is there to educate people? The geniuses in Texas figured out that not only is it cheaper to kill folk than educate them, there is more profit it. Education --'they figger' --is expensive and requires the suburban, GOP nouveau riche to pay their fair share of taxes.

It is no coincidence that as executions increase the number of people graduating high school in Texas declines. This gulag state now leads the nation, beating even Mississippi for dead last in high school graduations. To be expected: those not graduating high school make up the greater part of those finding their way into the so-called 'criminal justice system'.
There is a fascist incentive, then, NOT to educate people. There is a fascist incentive to murder people while they are behind bars for crimes that might have been prevented by a responsible, civilized state. There is a fascist incentive to thumb the Texas nose at humanity, outsource justice to corporations, make the quick buck and let society slide off into the sewers of fascism and neo-barbarism. I state Texas at least since Bush Jr has become Nazi/fascist state and should be held to account by the civilized world.
The outsourcing of prisons should be banned by international conventions. This is a U.S/GOP holocaust that must be stopped now!

The United States holds the dubious distinction of having the largest incarcerated population in the world, with 2 million people behind bars as of year-end 1999.2 With only 5% of the world's population, the US holds a quarter of the world's prisoners In the 1990s alone, more persons were added to prisons and jails than in any other decade on record.

As UC Regents Approve Major Tuition Hike, Students, Faculty Decry Erosion of Public Education in CA and Nationwide

Amid thousands of student protesters and armed police standing guard, the University of California’s Board of Regents has approved a 32 percent increase in student fees. The vote will bring the total cost of a UC education to more than $10,000 per year for the first time. We discuss the protests and the growing privatization of public education with UCLA student activist Zen Dochterman and the president of the UC American Federation of Teachers, Bob Samuels.

 What we’re seeing, especially at the major prestigious universities, is more and more—only upper middle class, upper class students can go to them. And they’re privatizing these institutions. And the institutions—what happened about 1980 was that states started to cut their funding of higher education, and so universities looked for other ways of making money, and so they concentrated on raising funds and doing research, and especially research funded by corporations and the federal government. And so, basically now at a lot of universities, instruction only represents about ten percent of the budget, and so it’s a minor aspect of the universities.

And most people don’t know that, that universities, in some ways, are just kind of fronts for investment banks and investments, because at the University of California, the regents, who are the main financial overseers of the university, are appointed by the governor for twelve-year terms. And most of the regents now are Republicans, who not only have voted against taxes and have not only tried to defund higher education—and they’re the ones in charge in many ways—but they’re also business people chosen by Republican governors. And those—and they are real estate people, they’re investment bankers. The new head of the—the chair of the UC Regents is the former head of Wachovia, and he actually—they sold subprime student loans, right? And they profit from the student loans. And also, they pushed the UC into investing heavily into mortgage-backed securities and into real estate right when those were tanking.

And so, I really think that the Board of Regents basically is forcing the UC or motivating the UC to make a lot of incredibly bad investments, and when the investments turn bad, then they try to take it out on the students, on the faculty and the workers. 

Canadian parents win legal battle against homework

a Canadian couple have just won a legal battle to exempt their offspring from homework after successfully arguing there is no clear evidence it improves academic performance.

It took two years to negotiate the Milleys' Differentiated Homework Plan, which ensures their youngest two children will never have to do homework again at their current school. The two-page plan, signed by the children, parents and teachers, stipulates that "homework will not be used as a form of evaluation for the children". In return, the pupils promise to get their work done in class, to come to school prepared, and to revise for tests. They must also read daily and practise their musical instruments at home.

B.C. approves disaster relief for flooded communities as hundreds flee homes

North Cowichan spokesman Mark Ruttan said this type of flooding, which is centred around the Cowichan and Koksilah rivers, has not been this severe for some time.

“Not for many years,” he said. “There are dikes along Beverly Street, and Lakes Road was built up years ago. It’s protected it until now, but this is just an extremely unusual rain event. It’s a lot of rain combined with some high tides.”

• 

  CBC Question of the Day

  

  posted by Alison at Creekside - 9 hours ago

  Commenter Stephen Phillips under this CBC poll has a question of his own : "What kind of a question is this? Mr. Colvin is a distinguished career diplomat under attack by a Government that has misled Parl...
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  El vuelo de las palomas

  

  posted by Banco de Imágenes Gratuitas atfotoFRONTERA - 20 hours ago

  Nota:* Haz click aquí o sobre la imagen para ampliar el tamaño de este wallpaper.* Esta mañana, salí al balcón y al ver cómo la neblina tenía cubierta la ciudad, tomé mi cámara y retraté las casas cercana...
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  El sol entre las nubes

  

  posted by Banco de Imágenes Gratuitas atfotoFRONTERA - 20 hours ago

  Nota:* Haz click aquí o sobre la imagen para ampliar el tamaño de este wallpaper.*
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  Desde mi balcón

  

  posted by Banco de Imágenes Gratuitas atfotoFRONTERA - 20 hours ago

  Nota:* Haz click aquí o sobre la imagen para ampliar el tamaño de este wallpaper.*
• 

  Peter MacKay vs the US State Dept.

  

  posted by Alison at Creekside - 1 day ago

  Defensive Minister Peter MacKay : "A top diplomat’s account of the rampant torture and rape of Afghan detainees is not credible, Defence Minister Peter MacKay said Thursday. MacKay dismissed testimony from...
• 

  How GOP Bigots Scapegoat Obama

  

  posted by Len Hart at The Existentialist Cowboy - 2 days ago

  by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy Hitler scapegoated jews! The American right wing now scapegoats Obama! Why are we surprised? The GOP/right wing is just doing what psychopathic screw-ups and habitu...
• 

  Do you hear it - 'Taos' Hums...?

  posted by address-withheld@my.opera.com.invalid (Dr. John v. Kampen) at - 2 days ago

  *For years I wonder* how certain sounds are propagated in nature. Not so strange, then -living in a desert-like surrounding- one can easily find some places without any sounds at all! Total silence on win...
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  A Last Resort

  

  posted by Len Hart at The Existentialist Cowboy - 2 days ago

  by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy A nation in which about one half of the population openly pines for the murder of the only fairly elected president in some 9 years is finished. The writing is on th...
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  Sultan of Swing - Marc Knopfler live...

  posted by address-withheld@my.opera.com.invalid (Dr. John v. Kampen) at - 2 days ago

  Url movie: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4j34gG2xR3I Dire Straits? To me its sounds super! John
• 

  Why U.S. Nukes Did Not Shorten the War with Japan

  

  posted by Len Hart at The Existentialist Cowboy - 3 days ago

  by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy The 'bomb' did not shorten the war, nor did it affect --in any way --Japan's insistence upon retaining its emperor. Absolutely nothing was gained by the wanton murde...
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  Putting a 'happy face' on war crimes

  

  posted by Alison at Creekside - 3 days ago

  ... updated below ... A month ago, Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Minister of Foreign Affairs at the time Peter MacKay , and Minister of Defence at the time Gordon O'Connor all denied ever seeing any of th...
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  $300 for a Kindle eBook?

  

  posted by C. Moffat at Lilith News - 3 days ago

  ENTERTAINMENT/TECHNOLOGY - The Kingle ebook is a wireless electronic book which allows you to download books whenever you want and read them on a wireless device that is easily portable... for a fee, of co...
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  Skinny Cable for Canada?

  

  posted by C. Moffat at Lilith News - 3 days ago

  CANADA/ENTERTAINMENT - Canadian broadcasters are urging the CRTC to allow "skinny cable", essentially a smaller and dramatically cheaper variation of basic cable. But cable companies don't like the idea, ...