Opit's LinkFest!: 19 December - Netvibes - Private and Breaking News

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      What is a Colonized Mind? | Posted December 19 2011 By Peter d'Errico
England was once so proud of its colonial regime that it boasted, “The sun never sets on the British empire.” Today, colonialism is a bad word. It is fashionable to say we live in a ‘post-colonial’ world.

The truth is the world continues to involve relations of domination and exploitation, under new names: “globalization,” for example.

None of this is news to observers of history and contemporary affairs. The “Occupy” movement, whatever else it may be, is evidence of widespread awareness that 1 percent of the population dominates 99 percent, an arrangement similar to colonialism except it happens within as well as between nations.

The interesting—and complicated—thing about colonialism is that it encompasses not just politics and economics, but consciousness. Critical theorists such as Frantz Fanon and Paulo Freire have pointed this out.

Fanon, a black man born in the French colony of Martinique, became a world-renowned psychoanalyst and philosopher, working in Algeria. He wrote, “For a colonized people the most essential value, because the most concrete, is first and foremost the land: the land which will bring them bread and, above all, dignity” [The Wretched of the Earth].

Fanon’s study of psychology and sociology led him to the further conclusion that colonized people perpetuate their condition by striving to emulate the culture and ideas of their oppressors. He wrote, “Imperialism leaves behind germs of rot which we must clinically detect and remove from our land but from our minds as well.”

Paulo Freire, a Brazilian educator, is best known for his development of what might be called ‘liberation literacy,’ teaching literacy and political awareness together. Freire agreed with Fanon, “The oppressed want at any cost to resemble the oppressors.” He said, “the oppressed must be their own example.” Unlike Fanon, he argued that oppressors also could (and those who wanted to end colonialism must) change their own thinking: “those who authentically commit themselves to the people must re-examine themselves constantly” [Pedagogy of the Oppressed].

Happening Tomorrow!!! Occupy Canada & Wahgoshig First Nation Queens Park March | Posted December 19 2011December-19-11 2:44 AMOccupy Canada & Wahgoshig First Nation Queens Park March

Tuesday

Time
08:00 until 11:00

Protest march tomorrow morning, "Wahgoshig First Nation leadership are asking for the community to come and march with them on December 20th. The community of Wahgoshig have a court battle with Solid Gold mine who are presently drilling on First Nation Territory. This F.N's are seeking a court injunction to stop Solid Gold from drilling. As F.N's people, our supporters, our communities. We need to go in and support this march on Dec 20th at 8 a.m. (From Queens Park ).
Solid Gold Resources Corp., a junior mineral exploration company with head offices near Toronto is engaging in practices reminiscent of the early 1900s and is threatening the foundations that have only recently been established in industry/First Nations relations. Solid Gold began drilling in the traditional territory of Wahgoshig First Nation without any prior consultation. Since Wahghoshig discovered the company on its lands, the company has refused to stop drilling despite the protests of the Wahgoshig community and despite a letter from Ontario imploring the company to stop. The area is sacred to Wahgoshig and is replete with cultural heritage values such as burial grounds and other archaeological sites, many of which remain undiscovered. Despite this, Solid Gold refuses to cease its drilling operations and refuses to fund any studies that would locate buried sites before drilling takes place.

The brazen actions of Solid Gold have caught the attention of numerous influential First Nations organizations. The Chiefs of the Nishnawbe Aski Nation recently passed a resolution calling for an immediate suspension of Solid Gold’s drilling operations on the territory. The resolution also supported the efforts of Wahgoshig to protect its Aboriginal and treaty rights in its traditional territory.

The Chiefs of Ontario have also thrown their support behind Wahgoshig. Angus Toulouse, the Regional Chief of Ontario recently sent a letter to the Minister of Natural Resources, Minister of Northern Development and Mines, and the Minister of Aboriginal Affairs calling on the Ontario government to intervene and stop Solid Gold’s drilling. These statements by the Nishnawbe Aski Nation and the Chiefs of Ontario should concern the mining industry given the modern-day need for industry/First Nations cooperation in resource development.

First Nations could stall Northern Gateway: Aboriginal Affairs | December 19 2011December-19-11 2:27 AMEnbridge Inc.’s plans for the “Northern Gateway” pipeline may be delayed by legal challenges by aboriginal groups, the federal department of Aboriginal Affairs said in a briefing note to minister John Duncan.

“Pending a favorable environmental assessment, Northern Gateway is targeted to start up in 2016, but risks being held back by legal challenges from the First Nations,” said the briefing note, which is dated June 21 and was obtained by Bloomberg News through Canada’s freedom-of-information law.

Unsettled land claims are “one of the main obstacles for the project,” the briefing note said, adding that the pipeline will cross “key watersheds that are home to salmon stocks on which the local aboriginal communities rely.”

Enbridge, based in Calgary, is proposing to build a twin pipeline system between Alberta and the coast of British Columbia to transport crude from oil-sands projects.

http://business.financialpost.com/201 ... -northern-gateway-duncan/
FINANCIAL POST

Protesters set up camp at Obama offices | December 19 2011
Following two Saturday protests, Occupy Des Moines demonstrators have decided to establish an around-the-clock occupation outside of President Barack Obama’s Des Moines campaign office.

The demonstrators teamed with Veterans for Peace and Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement for a pair of demonstrations on Saturday morning and afternoon.

Demonstrators decided to establish an occupation after arriving at the Obama campaign office at 621 E. Second St. for an 11:30 a.m. protest to find the doors locked and the office closed, said Frank Cordaro, a member of the Catholic Worker movement.

“We came to air our grievances to the president, and he locked us out,” Cordaro said. “We decided this is no time to give up this space.”

Assembly of First Nations asks UN to step in | December 19 2011
Leaders of the troubled Attawapiskat community have asked the United Nations to intervene in their crisis, saying the move would force Prime Minister Stephen Harper to explain to the world why he is not living up to his international obligations to respect aboriginal people.

"We have a right to go abroad to international people to say, 'look, this is what's happening in Canada,'" Grand Chief Stan Louttit said after chiefs from across the country passed a resolution to ask the UN for a special rapporteur.

The housing crisis in Attawapiskat — where families live in uninsulated shacks as winter sets in — has turned into a political crisis that pits First Nations chiefs against the federal government.

Tehran urges UN to investigate conditions of Canada’s First Nations | December 19 2011
Mehmanparast criticized the Canadian government for failing to abide by its commitments to the terms of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, condemned the inhumane conditions that the indigenous people, who are called First Nations in Canada, are experiencing, and expressed sympathy with these people.

In a unanimous resolution passed on December 6, First Nations chiefs asked the UN to appoint a special rapporteur to determine whether the federal government is meeting its obligations under Canadian law and international treaties, according to iPolitics.

http://www.tehrantimes.com/politics/9 ... -of-canadas-first-nations

American Holocaust of Native American Indians (FULL Documentary) | December 19 2011
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature= ... _embedded&v=gTrbVf6SrCc#!
The powerful and hard-hitting documentary, American Holocaust, is quite possibly the only film that reveals the link between the Nazi holocaust, which claimed at least 6 million Jews, and the American Holocaust which claimed, according to conservative estimates, 19 million Indigenous People.

It is seldom noted anywhere in fact, be it in textbooks or on the internet, that Hitler studied Americas Indian policy, and used it as a model for what he termed the final solution.

He wasnt the only one either. Its not explicitly mentioned in the film, but its well known that members of the National Party government in South Africa studied the American approach before they introduced the system of racial apartheid, which lasted from 1948 to 1994. Other fascist regimes, for instance, in South and Central America, studied the same policy.

Noted even less frequently, Canadas Aboriginal policy was also closely examined for its psychological properties. America always took the more wide-open approach, for example, by decimating the Buffalo to get rid of a primary food source, by introducing pox blankets, and by giving $1 rewards to settlers in return for scalps of Indigenous Men, women, and children, among many, many other horrendous acts. Canada, on the other hand, was more bureaucratic about it. They used what I like to call the gentlemans touch, because instead of extinguishment, Canada sought to remove the Indian from the Man and the Women and the Child, through a long-term, and very specific program of internal breakdown and replacement call it assimilation. America had its own assimilation program, but Canada was far more technical about it.

Perhaps these points would have been more closely examined in American Holocaust if the film had been completed. The films director, Joanelle Romero, says shes been turned down from all sources of funding since she began putting it together in 1995.

$12,000,000 in a Single Account, and Still No Charges Laid | December 19 2011
Four years after the Canadian government was given the names of 106 Canadians with undeclared bank accounts in Liechtenstein, the Harper government has now confirmed that not one person has been fined or charged with tax evasion. Unlike Germany, the United States and a host of other countries, the Canadian Government has decided to not impose any fines, or charge anyone.
Any ordinary Canadian who is found to have undeclared bank accounts and is not declaring their income would be hounded by the Canadian Revenue Agency, charged and fined. Why the double standard for very rich Canadians with foreign bank accounts hidden in well-known tax havens?

The Stark Difference Between North Korea and South Korea from Space [Image Cache] - 1 hour ago

If you want to know the true effect of departed...

( See Sanctions article )

Monckton on blackbody radiation

by Joanne Nova

I wrote to Christopher Monckton a while back to ask him about a post Blackbody – the key error in climate science, and bless his soul, he whipped off a letter with his detailed answer and wrote it all back to me, saying that other people were asking him about that too. It’s a shame to keep it hidden and high time I brought it out. Usually this topic generates quite a discussion. Though, warning, it’s not a light read. It contains equations, and primarily discusses the physics of blackbody radiation from Earth. It is essentially a debate about the core physics among a few skeptics. The most curious thing being that this time — this blog is on the mainstream end of opinions. Huffman asserts there is no measureable greenhouse effect on Venus and Earth and that the temperatures of both planets is determined by their distance to the sun. (Michael Hammer responded to that with an explanation of why we know There is a Greenhouse Effect on Venus). My unsophisticated thought was that if distance explained it all, then ergo albedo would have no effect at all — as in zero — and it seems hard to believe [...]

Carbon price hits record low of 6.3 Euro…

by Joanne Nova

The low price, 6.3 Euro, is equivalent to about $8 Australian or US.
The Australian government signed us up to pay $23A with a floor at $15 (and they think that they are creating a “free” market.)

By Thomson Reuters Point Carbon

LONDON | Wed Dec 14, 2011 12:01pm EST LONDON (Reuters) -

EU carbon prices fell to their lowest ever level on Wednesday ...

The ICE ECX December 2011 EUA contract fell 73 cents to an all-time low of 6.30 euros, down 10.4 percent on Tuesday’s 7.03-euro settlement. By 16.30 GMT, the contract had recovered slightly to 6.41 euros on healthy turnover of around 15 million units.

The drop sends the contract into unchartered territory, falling well below its previous low of 6.77 euros on December 6 as market traders saw few signs of respite in the EU economy to boost demand for emission permits.

“I still don’t see any bottom to this market,” said one carbon trader, who said any positive sentiment from this weekend’s landmark U.N. climate summit in Durban was purely psychological as it brought no increase in demand for permits.

Enron called Kyoto “a victory for us” in 1997

by Joanne Nova

Enron was jubilant when the Kyoto agreement was put forward Here’s a legacy exhibit from the historical annals of How the Global Warming Scam Grew. You can see the cogs of the industrial machine picking up the “green theme”, becoming patrons of eco-legislation, and pouring money and influence into any big-government scheme that also promises them big profits. This is exactly the unholy alliance of Big-Finance with Big-Government that I described in the Climate Scare Machine Map. The email below documents one part of that self-fulfilling cycle where the taxpayers and citizens get screwed, corporates and politicians win, and the environment is irrelevant. The Greens ought be ashamed their naivety and ambition was so easily gamed by the real powers-behind-the-scenes.
Robert Bradley Jr. was working for Enron in 1998, and saw Enron lobbying for profits in the green sector. Bradley’s name was on the “to” list of this email below (perhaps with the wrong address because it did not arrive). He only saw the email when another man asked Bradley what he thought of it, and Bradley asked him to forward the message.

by Joanne Nova

A blockbuster Chinese study of Tibetan tree rings by Liu et al 2011 shows, with detail, that the modern era is a dog-standard normal climate when compared to the last 2,500 years. The temperature, the rate of change — it’s all been seen before. Nothing about the current period is “abnormal”, indeed the current warming

Influential people are getting the message: Gina Rinehart explains the science of climate change

by Joanne Nova

Cover: Australian Resources and Investment Dec 2011
The key messages are not lost on the bright and influential, and even if the mass-media avoid the evidence, the facts are quietly storming their way through the echelons of power. For the future historians, here’s a glimpse of how information networks grow and evolve behind the scenes. Once upon a time, the missing hot spot and the water vapor amplification were virtually unknown. In Jan 2009, Tony Kelly (a member of the Royal Society) met David and me privately in Perth. He grasped the implications of the model amplification in a flash. There’s a world of difference between the certainty of the 1.2 C direct effect of CO2, and the highly uncertain assumptions that push it up to 3.3 C. Three months later, not coincidentally, the Royal Society was approached by deeply concerned skeptical members, and had to formally reconsider its position.

Australian sea level rises exaggerated by 8 fold (or maybe ten)

by Joanne Nova

The Daily Telegraph exposed the NSW state government protecting the world from some dangerous scientific analysis of sea-levels. The officials pulled papers and posters within days of when they were due to be released, late in September 2011. Doug Lord examined 120 years of tidal data from Sydney Harbour, and found a 1 mm year on year rise which didn’t fit with the 900 mm rise projected by the Wizards of Climate Change at the Department. He finds the official figures exaggerate ten fold.
Ken Stewart has taken the dangerous data from 19 sites around Australia and finds it averaged 1.4 mm/year over the last 100 years. He finds about an 8-fold exaggeration. This is another sordid tale in the Science-perverted-for-PR category.
Sea Level Change in Australia: What’s Likely? The mean sea-level rise recorded at 19 stations around Australia (warning, data is limited in the first half of the series). The trend is a steady rise. The last 20 years is not unusual.
Seas have been rising in a reasonably continuous trend around the world since 1800. The last two decades are not unusual.

The Travesty of the Missing Heat — deep ocean or outer space?

by Joanne Nova

(See the Hammer link below, for more information on this graphic).
If there is one topic that trumps all others in climate science, it’s ocean heat.
If there is a planetary imbalance in energy, and Earth is acquiring more heat than it’s losing, we ought to be able to find that heat. Energy can not be created nor destroyed. It has to be somewhere.
On this Water-Planet, virtually every scientist agrees that the vast bulk of the extra energy ought be stored in the water. The oceans cover 70% of the surface, and are 4km deep; water has a high heat capacity (meaning it can store a lot of energy), and, because water flows quickly (unlike rock), turbulence and mixing can take that heat energy away from the surface.

Every skeptic (and taxpayer) ought to know that since 2003 (when we started measuring oceans properly) the oceans have been cooling: Douglass and Knox 2010.
Five years of planetary heating amounts to a massive amount of energy. That’s 2,000 days of the sun bearing down on an atmosphere with growing levels of CO2. According to the IPCC favored models, the extra heat stored should be 0.7 x [...]

== Why Culture War? ==

Yes, Phase Three of the American Civil War has been foisted on us by powerful, cynical men for their own political and economic gain. But there have to be deeper things going on. Psychological drives that those men cleverly exploit.

Our next guest, researcher and science fiction author Dr. Charles Gannon, has offered his own diagnosis of Culture War and why so many millions of our neighbors nod along with Glenn Beck, marching willingly to enlist in the Great Big War on Science... and on teachers, doctors, journalists, civil servants, and so on, biliously hating every American knowledge profession.

(Go ahead and ask your crazy uncle to name ONE major center of American intellect and knowledge that isn’t under attack by Fox and co. Make it a wager!)

Chuck Gannon suggests that in this modern, dizzying age, people respond to that most primal of all fears: fundamental loss of control.

"In short, people are realizing more and more that they know less and less about almost everything in their lives. How many people understand what is going on with the euro and how that's part of a much bigger picture? How many understand ANYthing about how their smartphone works--not what it does, but how it WORKS? What are the ethics of cloning? Of copyright? Of no child left behind versus the death of rigor and excellence?

"Head in hand, they feel the grey matter between their hands threatening to explode. And they want relief. And they have their eureka moment. "I know! I will adopt a stance! And so what if I can't figure out my own stance? I can BORROW one!

"I will shop amongst the bazaar (bizarre) of demagogues and choose the one that says the things I like best. And the details--well, they're only details. Someone else will think about those--and besides, I'm fed up with details. (Secretly, where they can't even hear it: "all those details I don't understand make me feel stupid....")

"I suppose, at some level, it has ever been thus. However, I think the Tofflerian Waves and Culture Shocks geometrically amplify the discomfort. The distance between the haves and have nots is growing, yes--but I think the separation between the knows and know-nots is growing just as fast. It is not that they ARE stupid, but they feel that way.

"And in a culture which panders to couch-potato passive consumption of media and goods, dumbs down the critical reasoning component of schools (and life), and in which an integrated view of "reality" moves further and further beyond the reach of even the most cognitively proactive folks, they hardly have the role-models or encouragement, or preparation to FIGHT through the tides of uncertainty in their lives and set sail upon the high seas of perpetual indefinitude that is the modern world."

== The Real Reason to Worry ==

So, what does all of this have to do with The Terminator? (Okay, I saved the sci fi perspective till last. But it has a terrifying kind of plausibility.)

You'll recall the by-now cliched premise of that film - it supposes that (sometime in the future) the U.S. military would develop a super computer/program/system called "Skynet" that gradually becomes self-aware through a process that theoreticians call "emergence from complexity." This is actually taken very seriously by deep thinkers about artificial Intelligence. Indeed, our first encounter with AI may come exactly that way... by surprise.

Only... supposing that this malevolent AI comes from a military source? That's pure Hollywood. Such systems are built with high priority to systematic reporting, accountability, multiple redundancies, fail-safes and obedience to chain of command. No, there are other complex computer systems that seem far more likely to suddenly become self-aware in powerfully dangerous ways.

Take those high-speed trading systems we've been discussing. They are growing incredibly sophisticated, at a very rapid rate, absorbing and incorporating models of human psychology, with one goal in mind. To appraise and predict behavior patterns in order for the program to track and to pounce on opportunities for predatory trading. Competitive ferocity is the only criterion for success. Indeed, if you were to even propose inserting balancing factors like ethics or morality or accountability into such a project, you'd at-minimum be laughed down and probably fired.

A bizarre-sci-fi notion? MIT researcher Alexander Wissner-Gross suggested that the first true AI could emerge on a planetary scale from the developing system of interlocked exchanges for high-frequency financial trading, which could be seen as a developing global “brain” already operating at relativistic speeds.

Moreover, these systems are receiving billions in funding (including their own new transatlantic fiber cable) entirely in secret. There are no public agencies involved. No third party observers. No Congressional oversight committees. No supervision whatsoever. Laboratories developing new genetic strains of wheat are under closer accountability than cryptic Wall Street think tanks that may unleash the first fully autonomous AI... programmed deliberately to have only the behavior patterns, goals, attitudes and morality of parasites.

[The Born Loser] [This Modern World] [Wizard of Id] [Xkcd]