Obama and the Middle East—time for the Yankee to go home?

I realize that U.S. President Barack Obama is now campaigning for the 2012 election. And I realize also the importance of Jewish support to his campaign. And I recognize the need for politicians to pander to important constituencies. But did he have to stoop, in the words of an Al Jazeera correspondent, to such a "scandalously obsequious pleading tone" in his speech to the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee?

Pandering is usually fine—no harm done—but pandering to Israel via its zealous American supporters involves victims. Specifically, the Palestinians. Promising unconditional support for Israel, as he did, is nothing less than abandoning Israel's victims. After all, unless the U.S. holds Israel to account, nobody will, and the Palestinians are left to their mercy.

He got, by some reports, 50 standing ovations, and 50 standing ovations from an AIPEC crowd is very bad news for the Palestinians. The crowd knew what he was saying, they can read between the lines: "We really want Israel to do this, but if they do something entirely different, we will support them anyway, and we will support them unconditionally." He reiterated what the Americans have been saying for 50 years.

His speech simply underlines something that is becoming increasingly clear—the Americans are now irrelevant in the Middle East. They won't help the Palestinians rid themselves of their oppressor. They are scrambling to keep up with the Arab people generally as dictators are swept out of power, dictators that were often good friends of the United States. As for peace, they are more the ally of war, currently involved in the largest arms sale in U.S. history to their favourite dictators in the region, the misogynistic Sauds. The Americans are capable of causing trouble while seemingly incapable of causing peace.

Obama is even irrelevant to Israel. Netanyahu scorns him, simply dismissing his blah, blah, blah about 1967 borders, knowing he has more clout with the U.S. Congress than Obama does. The Congress's fawning response to Netanyahu when he spoke to them early this week attests to that. And while Obama has to genuflect to AIPEC, Netanyahu owns it. The dog will be wagged and the tail will do as it damn well pleases. The status quo will continue: Israel will steal more land, the Palestinians will be more intensely segregated, and the victims of this land theft and segregation will continue to suffer poverty and humiliation.

But not forever, despite Israeli and American intransigence. They are taking their future into their own hands. Hamas and Fatah are reconciling—hugely important to the Palestinians who are sick and tired of their feuding. And in unity comes strength. The Palestinians will push for recognition as a state in the UN General Assembly in September. Needless, to say, the Americans, aping Israel, oppose both of these measures, but the Palestinians, supported by the Arab world, will persist. And young Palestinians are learning from their colleagues in Tunisia and Egypt about rising up against an oppressor. Earlier this month, thousands of Palestinian refugees and their supporters marched on Israel's borders with Syria, Lebanon and Jordan, and more marches are planned.

Help also increases from outside. Support for the Palestinian people grows in the international community, and support will increase particularly from Arab countries should they truly become democratic. Already, Egypt has stated it will permanently open its Rafah border crossing with Gaza.

Where is the U.S. in all this? Increasingly in the background. History is passing them by. Maybe it's time for them to leave the Middle East to the Middle Easterners, and try just minding their own business. They clearly have enough problems in their own house to keep themselves busy. Time, perhaps, for the Yankee to go home.

Sheila Fraser—an honourable public servant

In our habitual government-bashing, we sometimes overlook the splendid contributions made to our society by our civil servants. Such a contribution, manifesting integrity and commitment to public service at its best, has been exemplified for the past ten years by our retiring Auditor General Sheila Fraser.

The CBC  refers to Ms. Fraser as "one of the most important—not to mention popular—Canadian national figures of the last decade." Quarreling with either one of these claims is impossible. Scrupulous, forthright and unflappable, her pointed yet balanced critiques of both Liberal and Conservative government spending practices characterized her tenure and made her one of the most well-known and well-respected of Canadians. Quality civil servants such as Sheila Fraser are, I often think, even more important to government than quality politicians.

Canadians owe her a vote of thanks for ten years of assiduous oversight of our government's use—or abuse—of our tax dollars. She will be hard to replace.

Dandelions win one!

Finally, a victory for that cheerful harbinger of spring, the common dandelion. The Alberta government has removed the little yellow fellow from the list of noxious weeds in the province's Weed Control Act. Municipal bylaw officers will now no longer be able to fine homeowners who let dandelions overtake their yards. Calgary's pest management co-ordinator Simon Wilkins says officials in Calgary have more serious weed problems to tackle than dandelions anyway.

Of course they do. Indeed, listing dandelions as noxious is pretty noxious in itself. They are edible in their entirety: leaves delicious in salads, flowers good for making wine and roots for making a coffee. And the little plant is more than tasty. Its long taproot brings up nutrients for shallower-rooting plants and adds minerals and nitrogen to the soil. It also attracts pollinating insects and releases ethylene gas which helps fruit to ripen. Noxious indeed!

I have always enjoyed the delightful surprises the dandelion offer the city dweller. That bright yellow head pushing up through a crack in the sidewalk in early spring, for example, sending the heart-warming message that winter is finally over, about the least noxious message a Canadian can get. And to see an ugly vacant lot suddenly transformed by a carpet of yellow—the whole neighbourhood is brightened.

True, they do look a little ratty as they go to seed, but that's a small price to pay for the charm they offer. In any case, I'm looking a bit grey and weedy myself in my old age. So cheers for the dandelions—long may they gladden the hearts of Albertans.

The Better Life Index is a better measure

The search for a better measure of standard of living just got a big boost with the launch of Your Better Life Index by the OECD. The need for an alternative to the ubiquitous but misleading, if not outright dangerous, GDP is underlined when the prestigious OECD, with its membership of 34 industrial countries, emphasizes the importance of considering a range of criteria to determine a country's quality of life rather than just income.

According to the OECD, the index is part of a "larger Better Life Initiative that aims to measure well-being and progress. The index allows citizens to compare lives across 34 countries, based on 11 dimensions—housing, income, jobs, community, education, environment, governance, health, life satisfaction, safety, work-life balance." Perhaps the most unique aspect of the index is that people can weight the dimensions themselves to compare the countries according to their own standards.

The choice of dimensions is arbitrary of course but seems to cover a reasonable range of life quality factors. The index joins a number of other indexes offering superior yardsticks to the GDP for assessing the health of a society, such as the Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI) and the Canadian Index of Wellbeing (CIW). We seem to be well on our way to returning the GDP to the place its inventor, Nobel Prize winning economist Simon Kuznets, intended for it, as nothing more than a measure of national income. Upon introducing the GDP to the U.S. Congress in 1934, Kuznets immediately warned "...the welfare of a nation can, therefore, scarcely be inferred from a measure of national income...." Kuznets would, I suspect, have welcomed the introduction of a yardstick that could reasonably measure "the welfare of a nation," such as Your Better Life Index.

No doubt you are now asking how well Canada does on the index. Well, see for yourself. Check how well we are doing by OECD standards and by your own standards, at http://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/.

Calendar note: Sunday, May 22 is the International Day for Biological Diversity

Recognizing that the Earth's biological resources are essential to humanity's economic and social welfare, yet species and ecosystems are threatened as never before, the United Nations established The Convention on Biological Diversity in 1993. The Convention has 3 main objectives:

1. The conservation of biological diversity.
2. The sustainable use of the components of biological diversity.
3. The fair and equitable sharing of the benefits arising out of the utilization of genetic resources.

In order to further increase understanding and awareness of biodiversity issues, The United Nations has proclaimed May 22nd as the International Day for Biological Diversity. Each year the day celebrates a different theme. 2011 is the International Year of Forests, so this year the theme is forest biodiversity.

Events focusing on forests are taking place throughout the year including the International Forest Film Festival earlier this year in New York. On May 22nd, countries throughout the world will showcase their work on forest biodiversity with activities and events to celebrate the International Day for Biological Diversity.

So this coming Sunday, remember to hug a tree or, better yet, plant one.

Reflections on the murder of Osama bin Laden

At the end of the Second World War, the Americans and their allies captured a pack of Nazis, an assortment of the most evil men on Earth. They could have lined them up against a wall and shot them and there would have been little argument. But, as the Americans have often done, they set a higher standard. They arrested these men, charged them with war crimes, and only after trying them in a court of law did they punish them.

How things have changed. In dealing with their bogeyman Osama bin Laden, they offered no arrest, no charges, no trial. Instead they sent a hit team to break into his house and shoot him down in front of his wife and children. In the last 65 years, it seems the U.S. has descended from the rule of law to extrajudicial murder.

There can be no doubt they could have captured him alive. He was unarmed, and if they could land and retrieve 79 assassins, they could certainly have brought back one prisoner. Instead they decided to wreak simple vengeance.

Summary justice is of course no stranger to the United States. Vigilantes often rode in the Wild West and lynchings were once part of the American landscape, but one might think Barack Obama of all people would be above that sort of thing.

However his poll ratings are up along with American triumphalism, and his military did indeed do their dirty work well, even recording it live for the folks back home. On that score, I must say I find the idea of the President of the United States and his entourage watching a snuff film put on by his military somewhat unsettling.

When asked why he didn't release the photographs of bin Laden's corpse, the President responded, "That is not who we are." That, sir, may now be in question.

When is bad financial management good financial management?

Consider two events and the responses to these events by two different governments. The events are remarkably similar. A party is elected to government at a time when the economy is healthy and then is blindsided by a recession referred to as the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. As a result, the government runs steep deficit budgets.

Thereafter, the similarity ends. One party is punished for its efforts—thrown out in the next election and condemned thereafter as financially incompetent. The other party is rewarded handsomely—re-elected with a solid majority, supported by almost the entire daily press, and praised for its financial acumen.

The first event is the election of the NDP in Ontario in the early 1990s and the second the recent election of the Conservatives federally.

The myth that Conservatives are fiscally responsible relative to the NDP is as persistent as it is wrong. An article by Tony Sanger, Senior Economist with the Canadian Union of Public Employees, in the Progressive Economics Forum clearly illustrate this fact. The attached chart from the article shows that over the past 30 years NDP governments have balanced their budgets 50 per cent of the time compared to Conservative governments' 37 per cent. Sanger also showed that comparing size of deficits as a share of GDP, NDP governments again came out ahead, illustrating that not only did the NDP balance their budgets more often but also ran smaller deficits.

Why this myth persists is an intriguing question. No doubt ownership of the daily press by that good friend of the Conservatives the corporate sector is a large part of the answer.

First-past-the-post creates a conservative English Canada vs. a progressive Quebec

The NDP scored a number of firsts for itself in the 2011 election: the first time with seats in the triple digits, the first time as Official Opposition, the first time with strength in Quebec, and so on.

This is also the first time it has beaten the first-past-the-post (FPTP) election system. In the past, the NDP has been the major loser in the strange and undemocratic games FPTP plays, consistently receiving far fewer seats in the House than its popular support justifies. But this time it was slightly ahead of the game with 33 per cent of the seats for 31 per cent of the popular vote.

The NDP's more equitable showing resulted from its Quebec performance: 77 per cent of the seats for 42 per cent popular support. In Saskatchewan on the other hand, the province most closely associated with the NDP (even though the original CCF was founded in Alberta), it was shut out despite receiving a third of the vote.

This was in fact the pattern of the election. The NDP grossly over-represented in Quebec and, along with the Liberals, under-represented just about everywhere else. The Conservatives, on the other hand, were under-represented in Quebec, four per cent of the seats with 17 per cent of the vote, but heavily over-represented in English Canada. Overall, with only 40 per cent of the votes, they gained 54 per cent of the seats in the House.

The Conservatives are widely thought to own the West, and they do, although not to the extent the election indicated. If they didn't have the 20 more seats than they deserved in the West, they wouldn't have won a majority.

In any case, we now have yet another polarity in the country—a conservative English Canada and a progressive Quebec—once again aggravated by FPTP. Will we never rid ourselves of this undemocratic beast and adopt an electoral system that accurately represents the Canadian people?

Massive dual win for Harper—a majority and a Liberal Party in ruins

Stephen Harper has long had two goals, a short-term goal of winning a majority government and a long-term goal of destroying the Liberal Party. Last night he achieved the first and got a good start on the second, both in convincing fashion.

Of course he couldn't have achieved either without a lot of help from the Liberals themselves. They decided to push for an election when they were low in the polls, with a leader who couldn't connect to ordinary Canadians and a platform so vague it seemed indistinguishable form the Tories. Nonetheless, even though I'm an NDP supporter, I take no satisfaction in seeing the Liberals brought so low. Liberalism—the small "l" variety—does after all represent the best in human nature.

In any case, their loss could turn out to be a blessing. Since 2006 they have floundered in their attempts to rebuild their party with another election always looming in the background. Now they have four clear years to concentrate on revitalizing their party, creating a strong grass-roots base, and solidifying their funding.

After all, life is short but politics is long. I can remember when the NDP had so few sears in the House, they lost their party status, and look at them now—102 seats and forming the Official Opposition. They even received a special treat: for the very first time they have more seats than their proportion of the popular vote would justify. And we all remember when the post-Mulroney Conservatives were nearly wiped off the map. And look at them now, or at least the new Reform-leavened version. And then there were the UK Liberals who were overrun by Labour early in the last century. It's taken them decades to recover but now they are back in government, albeit in a coalition.

Rebuilding will be made more difficult for the Liberals  by a mass media in this country that has over the past few decades become increasingly right-wing and partisan. (Witness the sleazy attempt by the Sun papers to halt the NDP surge with a smear of Jack Layton.) Nonetheless, they now have the time and the opportunity. Whether or not Harper ultimately destroys them, as he would dearly love to do—he's just that kind of guy—will be largely up to them.

Measuring democracy

It wouldn't surprise anyone if they were told that the rich have more influence on government than the rest of us. Some scholars in the U.S. have gone further than assume this, they have actually measured it, and the results are intriguing.

Professor Martin Gilens of Princeton University, writing in the Public Opinion Quarterly, says, "when Americans with different income levels differ in their policy preferences, actual policy outcomes strongly reflect the preferences of the most affluent but bear virtually no relationship to the preferences of poor or middle-income Americans." He goes on to conclude, "Although perfect political equality is an unrealistic goal, representational biases of this magnitude call into question the very democratic character of our society."

Professor Gilens applied a detailed statistical analysis to quantify the results of a variety of policy questions asked of Americans in surveys taken between 1981 and 2002. Responders, categorized by income, education, race, sex age and partisan politics, were asked whether they supported or opposed such issues as raising the minimum wage, sending troops to Haiti, allowing gays to serve in the military, requiring employers to provide health care, and so on. Note was taken of whether the policy change occurred or not.

Gilens work substantiated a number of previous studies. In an article published in the Cambridge Journals, based on the construction of  several "Material Power Indices," Jeffery Winters and Benjamin Page of Northwestern University reported that “the wealthiest Americans may exert vastly greater political influence than average citizens and that a very small group of the wealthiest (perhaps the top tenth of 1 percent) may have sufficient power to dominate policy in certain key areas."

Page and Lawrence Jacobs from the University of Minnesota wrote in the American Political Science Review that "The results of cross-sectional and time-lagged analyses suggest that U.S. foreign policy is most heavily and consistently influenced by internationally oriented business leaders, followed by experts (who, however, may themselves be influenced by business)."

A study by Princeton's Larry Bartels found that on issues such as civil rights, the minimum wage, government spending and abortion, U.S. senators "appear to be considerably more responsive to the opinions of affluent constituents than to the opinions of middle-class constituents, while the opinions of constituents in the bottom third of the income distribution have no apparent statistical effect on their senators’ roll call votes."

What these scholars are describing with their scientific analyses is more of a plutocracy, or perhaps oligarchy, than a democracy. They are saying, in effect, that when you bring out the yardsticks, American democracy doesn't measure up. Does ours, I wonder? We await the analyses.

Allan Blakeney ... death of a statesman

As politicians of all sorts battle another election down to the wire, I'd like to pay my respects to one of the best. Allan Blakeney died April 16th leaving behind an impressive legacy.

Blakeney was an achiever from the beginning. He followed a gold medal graduation from Dalhousie's law school with a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford.

Following his education, he became a senior civil servant in Saskatchewan before winning political office and joining the cabinet of Premier Tommy Douglas. He played a key role in the introduction of Medicare in 1962 and was subsequently appointed Minister of Health. He became leader of the NDP and ultimately Premier of Saskatchewan from 1971 to 1982. As premier he worked to improve the province's social programs with a dental program for children, a prescription drug program, subsidized housing, home care, and a guaranteed income supplement for the elderly poor. To ensure control of the province's resources remained in the hands of its people he created Crown Corporations such as SaskOil and the Potash Corporation of Saskatchewan.

After leaving politics he occupied the Bora Laskin Chair in Public Law at Osgoode Hall in Toronto for two years, then later settled in Saskatoon where he accepted the Law Foundation Chair at the University of Saskatchewan. He has been appointed an Officer of the Order of Canada, awarded the Saskatchewan Order of Merit, and made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. He is also a past president of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association.

His interests went beyond provincial and national to the international. He had a long-term interest in the World Federalist Movement and served as the Canadian branch's National President from 1992 to 1996. He was intensely involved in South Africa where he helped develop the structures for democratic government following the dismantling of apartheid.

Blakeney's appointment to the Order of Canada read:

A former Premier of Saskatchewan, he has contributed enormously to the field of public administration and was a key player in introducing the first comprehensive public medical health care plan in Canada. Throughout his distinguished career, his patriotism and loyalty to the nation have transcended party politics. His integrity and sense of social responsibility as a statesman, lawyer and teacher are an inspiration to all Canadians.

The candidates in the current federal election could do worse than model themselves after Allan Blakeney.

Murdoch's mischief ... the excesses of freedom

If you were to suggest that the most powerful man in British political politics today was Prime Minister David Cameron, I would respectfully disagree. I would suggest it is Britain's most powerful press lord, Rupert Murdoch. Murdoch's News International owns four British newspapers, including the nation's two biggest, News of the World and The Sun, and controls BSkyB, the country's biggest private TV broadcaster.

When Tony Blair first ran for prime minister, one of the first things he did was fly half way around the world to genuflect before Murdoch in his native Australia. In the nine days prior to the Iraq war, Blair consulted with Murdoch on at least three occasions.

And when David Cameron became prime minister, one of the first visitors to Number 10 was of course Rupert Murdoch. At least on this occasion the mountain came to Mohammed. Cameron had already done Murdoch a big favour. In 2007, News of the World editor Andy Coulson resigned after one of his reporters and a private investigator went to jail for tapping the phones of the royal family. Six months later Cameron hired Coulson as his communications director (chief spin doctor).

It turns out Coulson wasn't alone. News International has admitted the hacking was widespread, including not only celebrities but also politicians, including Labour MP Tessa Jowell, who was culture secretary in the former Labour government, responsible for decisions that could have affected Murdoch's business interests.

Even the British police may have been subject to Murdoch's influence. Most of the work to expose the hacking has been done by his rivals in the press, particularly the Guardian newspaper. The police stated in 2009 "no further investigation was required" even though it is now obvious it was. Following the revelations of the Guardian, the police have been forced to reactivate the case.

Murdoch's excessive power is not the only problem he presents. He has also systematically lowered journalistic standards. Not content to pollute the press in the UK, he has brought his toxic influence to North America, most notably with Fox News whose standards are not so much in the gutter as in the sewer.

Freedom is essential to democracy, but like all good things there can be too much of it. And when individuals such as Rupert Murdoch are allowed the liberty to dominate news and opinion, and subject elected representatives to their will, freedom of the press has gone too far. It has gone from liberty to license.

Democracy requires a broad and equitable dissemination of news and views. Restricting what is said is dangerous, but restricting who controls the dissemination of what is said is essential. Leaving control in the hands of autocrats such as Murdoch is oligarchy, not democracy. The media—the public forums of the modern state—must answer to the democratic process just as government must. The British need to be reminded of this. But then, perhaps, so do we.

One man's hero ...

Two items in the news recently underlined the old difficulty of agreeing on who is a terrorist.

Last week a court in The Hague found Ante Gotovina, a Croatian commander in the 1990s war against the Serbs, guilty of waging a campaign of terror, bombing and murder aimed at ethnically cleansing the Serbian minority, and sentenced him to 24 years in prison. Gotovina was convicted of responsibility for shelling civilians, torching Serb homes, slaughtering hundreds of elderly Serbs and forcing at least 20,000 Serbs from land they had occupied for centuries.

Gotovina may be a monster, but not in Croatia. There, he is a hero. Croats are outraged at the court's decision. Prime Minister Jadranka Kosor declared, "Our view of the operation is absolutely clear: it was a legitimate military and police action to liberate Croatian state territory from occupation." President Ivo Josipović said the verdict was "shocking."

Some might puzzle at the intense hostility between two such similar peoples. After all, both are Slavic and speak the same language. But once you are informed they belong to different religions, all becomes clear. Serbs are Orthodox, Croats are Catholic. Catholic bishops denounced the court, accusing it of deliberately confusing victim and aggressor. The Catholic god apparently approves of Gotovina while the Orthodox god loathes him.

Another ideological division explains the contrasting attitudes toward Luis Posada Carriles. Posada, a former CIA operative and long-time enemy of Fidel Castro, was recently acquitted of a series of terrorism-related charges by an El Paso jury. His acquittal may have been influenced by the fact he once served in the American military and El Paso, home of a major military base, is highly sympathetic to veterans. Posada was given a hero's welcome by the Cuban exile community in Miami following his acquittal and congratulated by U.S. Congressman David Rivera.

But again, Posada is not everywhere a hero. He is wanted in Venezuela for the bombing of a Cuban airliner that killed 73 people; he did time in Panama for trying to assassinate Fidel Castro; and in an interview with a New York Times reporter claimed responsibility for a string of hotel bombings in Havana. The U.S. government would like to get rid of him but won't extradite him to either Cuba or Venezuela.

So, Gotovina and Posada, terrorists or heroes? Both mass murderers for political ends, yes, but in the minds of many, it isn't mass murder that decides, it's who you mass murder.

Pembina Institute evaluates party posltions on the environment

For a capsule look at the various parties' environmental platforms from the perspective of an environmental research group focusing on energy, the Pembina Institute offers the following:

Bloc Québécois:

The party supports a science-based 2020 target, a cap-and-trade system and an end to fossil fuel subsides — all important tools for reducing greenhouse gas pollution in Canada. However, once again the platform provides few details about when these policies should go into effect or how stringent they should be.

NDP:

Overall, we're happy to see this platform commit to the kinds of policies that would help move clean energy to the centre of Canada's economic future. Strong action on climate change can create more jobs than 'business as usual,' so the NDP's clean energy commitments would be good news for Canadian workers and the environment.

While the platform leaves some unanswered questions about the NDP's plans, the NDP's proposals would help to make a clean energy transformation in Canada a reality.

Conservative Party:

The Conservative Party came to today's announcement with a five-year track record of failing to meaningfully tackle greenhouse gas pollution and avoiding federal responsibility for oilsands development. The result is that Canada now risks falling further behind other countries in capitalizing on the rapidly growing global clean energy market.

Today's platform would do nothing to reverse these trends.

Green Party:

The Green Party puts tackling climate change at the heart of its platform. The result is a commitment to a suite of strong policies to cut greenhouse gas pollution, along with national emission reduction targets based on up-to-date climate science. More clearly than any of the other parties have to date, the Green Party's platform makes the case for urgent action to prevent dangerous global warming.

Liberal Party:

Overall, we're happy to see this platform put clean energy at the centre of Canada's economic future. While countries such as China and the U.S. are taking steps to succeed in the clean energy economy, Canada has been lagging behind. Strong action on climate change can create more jobs than 'business as usual,' so the Liberal Party's decision to make clean energy a priority would be good news for Canadian workers and for the environment.

While Michael Ignatieff's platform takes important steps to make that clean energy transformation a reality, it also leaves some gaps.

More detailed summaries can be found at http://www.pembina.org/.

Vermonters tackle corporations-as-citizens issue

According to a poll by ABC News, 76 per cent of Americans oppose their Supreme Court's 5-4 decision to grant corporations the same rights as individuals when it comes to political speech and can therefore freely use their profits to support or oppose electoral candidates. The opposition is unanimous with solid majorities of both liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans opposing the ruling and favouring congressional efforts to limit corporate and union spending.

While Democrats craft legislation to limit the impact of the court's decision, Vermont politicians, ever ready to stand up to corporate power, have presented an anti-corporate personhood resolution to the state legislature that proposes "an amendment to the United States Constitution ... which provides that corporations are not persons under the laws of the United States."

This echoes the words of Justice Paul Stevens, one of the four judges able to distinguish speech from money, who wrote for the dissent, "Corporations have no consciences, no beliefs, no feelings, no thoughts, no desires. Corporations help structure and facilitate the activities of human beings, to be sure, and their 'personhood' often serves as a useful legal fiction. But they are not themselves members of 'We the People' by whom and for whom our Constitution was established."

Of course they aren't. And now the court's bizarre decision may make it necessary to amend the U.S. Constitution to re-establish common sense. Vermont, to its credit, is leading the way.

Bolivia calls on Pachamama to enshrine Nature's rights in law

According to ancient Andean spirituality, the fertility goddess Pachamama is at the centre of all life. Pachamama has inspired the Bolivian government to pass legislation, entitled the Law of Mother Earth, which will grant all nature equal rights to humans. According to the Guardian, the laws "will establish 11 new rights for nature. They include: the right to life and to exist; the right to continue vital cycles and processes free from human alteration; the right to pure water and clean air; the right to balance; the right not to be polluted; and the right to not have cellular structure modified or genetically altered."

The Law, strongly influenced by resurgent spiritual world views, is part of Bolivia's restructuring of its legal system following changes to the constitution in 2009. The government is expected to establish a ministry of mother earth and to appoint an ombudsman, as well as give local communities legal powers to monitor and control polluting industries. According to Bolivian Foreign Minister David Choquehuanca, "Our grandparents taught us that we belong to a big family of plants and animals. We believe that everything in the planet forms part of a big family. We indigenous people can contribute to solving the energy, climate, food and financial crises with our values." These may be indigenous values, but they are also good biology. Unfortunately, all too many of the modern world's science-informed business and political leaders fail to grasp the simple truth that "everything in the planet forms part of a big family."

I have little use for religion, whether it be the mumbo-jumbo of Andean spirituality or the mumbo-jumbo of Christian theology, but if Pachamama can help save us from the folly of wrecking our own environment, then good luck to Her and Her disciples.

Homo sapiens and the sixth great extinction

What kind of creature are we, we Homo sapiens?

According to a recent study by scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, we may be among the half dozen most destructive forces ever to assault life on the planet Earth. Since life began on our planet, there have been five great extinctions, defined as events when over 75 per cent of species disappear. By applying new statistical methods to a new generation of fossil databases, the Berkley scientists tested the hypothesis that human activity is causing a sixth great extinction. The results indicate that the current rate of extinctions is far above normal and if it continues we are indeed on the road to another great extinction.

The scientists warn that, if anything, the study may grossly underestimate the number of species that will disappear. To date, we have pushed species into extinctions through hunting, overfishing, deforestation and other means, but global warming is only beginning to have an effect and could greatly add to the devastation. All this is not entirely new. Suspicion that we are causing a sixth extinction has been around for years. The Berkeley study simply provides more scientific reinforcement.

So I ask again, what kind of creature are we? An intelligent, moral creature or a mass murderer of species? If we were the former, even the possibility we are also the latter would horrify us. Yet it seems to be hardly more than a peripheral issue with us.

Not that concern doesn't exist. For example, the United Nations Environment Programme established the Convention on Biological Diversity in 1993 with the signatures of 168 nations. The Convention establishes three main goals: the conservation of biological diversity, the sustainable use of its components, and the fair and equitable sharing of the benefits from the use of genetic resources. Parties to the convention are required to develop national strategies for the conservation and sustainable use of biological diversity and report on measures taken for the implementation of the provisions of the convention.

So meetings are held, studies are done and plans are formulated, yet species continue to disappear and political leaders rarely allow the word "biodiversity" to cross their lips. Where is their concern, or even their consciousness, about the devastation their economic policies—our economic policies—are wreaking upon our fellow species? They—we—ought to be horrified.

True, we are a murderous species. We have, after all, been slaughtering members of our own species for economic and other purposes, even to the point of driving whole groups into extinction, since we first walked the Earth, so why should we be expected to behave any better toward those we consider our inferiors? Is this, then, our defining characteristic? Will it be our legacy? Does it override our intelligence and our morality? If not, where is the outrage?legacy

Canadians show compassion in straw poll on Bradley Manning

Whether you think Bradley Manning is a good guy or a bad guy will depend to a large extent on your political persuasion, those on the left opting for the former and those on the right for the latter. Manning is the American GI accused of providing WikiLeaks with classified information. But whether what he is accused of was right or wrong, he deserves to be treated humanely. The U.S. military now stands accused itself, specifically of violating humane standards by subjecting Manning to unconscionable abuse.

They are accused of keeping him in solitary confinement for 23 hours a day; stripping him naked each night and giving him a suicide-proof smock to wear to bed; forcing him to answer a call every five minutes; not allowing him to sleep between 5:00 a.m. and 8:00 p.m. and forcing him to stand or sit up if he tries; requiring him to be visible at all times, including at night; allowing him only one blanket and one book or magazine in his cell; and not allowing him any contact with other prisoners even during the hour he is allowed out of his cell. All of this—which some would call torture—to a man who has never been convicted of a crime.

In reporting the story, the CBC ran a straw poll asking Canadians if they thought Manning is being treated fairly. To the respondents credit, and my relief, the response was 15 per cent yes and 82 per cent no. Straw votes, being hopelessly unscientific, don't mean much of course, but 82 to 15 seems significant.

And what is my response to the question? Of course I think his treatment is unfair, indeed far worse than unfair. Furthermore, I think that if he did what he is accused of, he did the right thing. Caught in a war based on lies, he made a decision at least as moral as the decision to start the war in the first place. He may have violated the oath he took when he joined the military, but when his commander-in-chief lies to him and he is forced to witness evil generated by that lie, one might argue he no longer owes that oath any loyalty. If he is in prison, justice would demand the liar, George W. Bush, sit in the next cell.

No jasmine revolution for China—Pew survey

With revolution all the rage, so to speak, in the Middle East, pundits have been pondering the prospects of similar passions being sparked elsewhere. Inevitably China, the blossoming superpower on everyone's mind, comes up for consideration. To examine the possibility of an uprising there, the U.S.-based Pew Research Center compared the results of surveys taken in 2010 in China and Egypt to compare attitudes in the two countries. The results strongly suggest the Chinese won't be taking to the streets en masse any time soon.

Whereas the number of Egyptians who where satisfied with the direction their country was taking was low and dropping, 28 per cent down from 47 per cent in 2007, the number of satisfied Chinese was high and rising, 87 per cent up from 83 per cent in 2007. Their hopes for the future also varied starkly. Seventy-four per cent of Chinese were optimistic about making personal progress in the next five years while only 23 per cent of Egyptians were.

According to the Pew Center, "While the Egyptian and Chinese publics rated their current lives comparably, Chinese reported much more personal progress over the past five years and much more optimism looking ahead. The prevailing feeling in Egypt was one of losing ground." This suggests "that in the lead-up to this year's popular revolt frustrations may have been mounting not only with respect to democratic yearnings, but in terms of personal aspirations."

It is reassuring to know that China isn't about to explode in violence like say, Libya, yet one can't help despairing at the ruthless persecution of critics of the regime. According to human rights campaigners, China has just recently launched the most severe crackdown on dissidents and activists in years following anonymous online calls for "jasmine revolution" protests. Despite little sign of support for the appeal, the Chinese government began detaining and harassing people within hours of its appearance. The word "Egypt'' has been blocked from the country's wildly popular Twitter-like service, and a search for "Egypt'' on the Sina microblogging service brings up the message, "According to relevant laws, regulations and policies, the search results are not shown."

One might think that with a generally contented population, Chinese officials might be less paranoid, but then paranoia is always the close companion of dictators. As long as the Chinese government can keep the good economic times rolling they should be secure, but if the economy falters ... who knows. After all, they have little else to offer.

Republicans wage war on the environment (with a little help from the Democrats)

If anyone still believes we are going to save ourselves from environmental catastrophe, the U.S. Congress is doing its best to disabuse us of our optimism. It has mounted a wholesale effort to preclude any serious efforts by the American government to deal with climate change.

The Republicans have introduced bills that would bar the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from  regulating carbon emissions from power plants and factories and would allow no further reductions in emissions from cars after 2016. Their budget spending proposals reserved the biggest cut of any government agency for the EPA—30% of its budget. The cuts would do away with funds for such items as protecting salmon in San Francisco bay, treating sewage going into Florida's lakes, and weaken rules for mercury pollution from cement kilns. They would even eliminate funding for the president's energy and climate adviser and the state department envoy to UN climate negotiations. Democrat representatives from coal and oil states, although generally more moderate than the Republicans, have nonetheless shown support for anti-environment legislation.

All this is aided and abetted by similar measures in various states. Republican governors in New Mexico and Maine are attempting to reverse air and water pollution laws as well as efforts to promote alternative energy. Wisconsin's infamous governor, Scott Walker, intends to cut funding for local recycling programs.

According to Bill Becker, secretary of the National Association of Clean Air Agencies,"It is as if they are trying to throw as much slop against a wall as they can and hoping some of it sticks in the end. The more they throw the more they feel may stick, and they are throwing quite a bit." Joe Mendelson, director of global warming policy at the National Wildlife Federation, adds, "They are using the budget process as a costume to hide what they are doing, which is a full-on assault against our fundamental environmental protections."

Obama can veto federal bills, of course, but even his stance on the environment is weakening. He has, for example, downgraded the post of climate adviser. He has expanded offshore drilling rights, extended $36-billion in loan guarantees for new nuclear plants, and opened up 7,500 acres for coal mining in Wyoming.

How the American people will react to all this is hard to predict. On the one hand, 83 per cent consistently agree that stricter laws and regulations are needed to protect the environment. On the other hand, the number who consider protecting the environment is a priority even if it means slower economic growth and job losses has fallen precipitously from 69 per cent in 2002 to 51 per cent in 2009. In other words, support for environmental protection is widespread but soft which makes it easy for polluters to manipulate. And, of course, they do, with coal, oil and chemical companies spending multi-millions to support climate change deniers such as the Tea Partiers and amenable politicians. 

If the world's largest economy does nothing to reduce its assault on the environment, the global prospects are grim. I post this on April 1st, but it is no April Fool's joke. The future of our civilization is at stake.

Daylight saving time year-round ... If the Russians can do it, so can we

If George W. Bush did anything worthwhile as president, it was extending daylight saving time (DST) for an extra few weeks. Now the Russians have gone him one better—much better. They are extending DST for the whole year.

On Sunday, Russian clocks sprang ahead for the last time. The country is now on summer time permanently. President Dmitry Medvedev claimed the time changes caused "stress and illnesses" and "upset the human biorhythm." From a more scientific standpoint, geography professor Arkady Tishkov, a member of the working group that advised cancelling the biannual changes, said they created a number of problems including disruption of sleep patterns, aggravation of chronic diseases and increased traffic accidents. "During the period of the clocks changing, the number of heart attacks increases by 50 per cent and the number of suicides by 66 per cent," he said, "Crime will also drop when the clocks are not put back in October because thieves are less active during daylight hours."

The British group Lighter Later wants to go even further, adding an hour throughout the year plus changing the clocks in spring and fall to get yet another hour for the summer months (sort of like Saskatchewan with DST). Their argument is for more sunshine when people are awake to enjoy it as well as the environmental benefits from reduced electrical use. In Queensland, Australia, advocates for permanent daylight saving time have even formed a political party—Daylight Saving for South East Queensland—that seeks a referendum on the issue.

I, too, would like more light when I'm awake and doing stuff. I freely confess to a bias. I have always been a late-night, late-morning person, something my retirement has given me full opportunity to enjoy; nonetheless, I am confident most Canadians, suffering through our seemingly interminable winters, would prefer a little more light in the evening at a cost of a little less in the morning. Anyway, let's ask them. Let's take a page out of Daylight Saving for South Queensland's book, and hold a referendum. My bet is a sweep for DST year round.

I'd like to vote, but my conscience objects

So we are to have yet another election. On May 2nd we will have the opportunity to exercise our democratic franchise. We will have the opportunity as free and equal citizens to elect representatives to govern us. Well, actually, we won't. If I were to cast a vote, for example, it would count the same as it has for the last many federal elections I've voted in—absolutely nothing. It would elect no one to represent me. Voting will, therefore, be a waste of my time, so I am not going to bother.

I have always voted in the past. A close friend has consistently asked me why, seeing as it has never helped elect anyone to carry my views to Ottawa, and I have consistently come up with some vague justification about performing my democratic duty, about how so many people elsewhere lacked the right, etc. My reasoning increasingly seemed to sound like my mother telling me why I should eat my vegetables when I was a kid. "Children in China are starving," she used to say, "they would be grateful for those peas." Of course me eating my vegetables made not the slightest difference to Chinese kids. Similarly, me voting in a federal election won't make the slightest difference to who represents Canadians in Ottawa.

I already know who will win in my constituency and by how much. Lee Richardson, Conservative, will win by between 15 to 20,000 votes. Lee is a nice enough fellow, and probably a good representative—if you're a Conservative. But I'm not. Lee and I disagree on probably 19 issues out of 20, so he doesn't represent me in any meaningful way. And my vote will not help elect anyone who does. It should, but it doesn't.

The reason it doesn't is because of our shabby electoral system. A democratic system would ensure that every vote counted and that it counted equally in electing someone who represented the individual voter's views. This could easily be done. There would, thank god, be no need to amend the constitution. There are many electoral systems that ensure each vote contributes to the election of a legislator who meaningfully represents the voter. The federal government need only choose a system that best fits Canadian circumstances—and proportional systems can be tailor-made to fit a wide range of circumstances—and legislate it into effect.

Until that happens, I will feel that if I vote I am participating in a fraud, acting as if my vote counts, being told it counts, when in fact it doesn't. Democracy means political equality—every citizen has the same power in electing his or her representative. Our antiquated first-past-the-post system betrays that equality. It deprives me, and millions of other Canadians, of their democratic right.

This should be unconstitutional and may very well be. A case winding its way through the courts in Quebec which will probably wind up in the Supreme Court is challenging the constitutionality of first-past-the-post. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that the courts will rule that to be meaningful under Section 3 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms there must be a strong (I'm thinking at least 95 per cent) correlation between the popular vote and representation in the House of Commons. If the case is successful, I may finally get to cast a meaningful vote in a federal election.

In the meantime, I will continue to support Fair Vote Canada and hound the political parties to promote a democratic voting system. But vote? No point.

Bertrand Serlet (father of Mac OS X) leaves Apple

In one of those curious twists of fate, when Apple fired Steven Jobs in 1985, it couldn't have know that this would lead to the salvation of the company. Jobs formed another company, NeXT, to build a new computer with which he hoped to beat Apple to death. Joining his team from Xerox was a French-educated computer scientist named Bertrand Serlet. When Apple, on the brink of bankruptcy, acquired NeXT in 1996 to build a new Mac operating system, they acquired as well Jobs and Serlet.

The latter turned out to be the company's saviour. His was the main brain behind Mac OS X, which not only powers Apple’s Mac computers, but the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch as well, all huge money-makers for Apple.

Now Serlet is moving on. A day before OS X turned 10 years old, he announced he was departing Apple. "At this point, I want to focus less on products and more on science,” he explained. All Mac users, of which I am one—I've never owned another computer—owe Serlet a big thank you. Apple's loss will be science's gain.

The U.S. destroys one Arab dictator's air force while it builds another's

While the Americans join in the destruction of Muammar Gaddafi's air force, they mount a major effort to build up the Saud family's air force. Strange are the ways of American diplomacy.

As part of a $60-billion arms deal between the United States and Saudi Arabia, the Pentagon is planning to bring dozens of Saudi pilots to an air base in Idaho to train them to fly the 84 new F-15E Strike Eagles—advanced fighter aircraft—that the Saudis received in the deal.

So many questions spring to mind: Why is the United States, a freedom-loving nation, honing the instrument a family of dictators will use to maintain their power? Why are the Americans training the very men whose ruler may call upon to kill their own people? Why do the Americans keep arming those who may be their future enemy? Do they not realize that if the Sauds' are overthrown—and that is probably only a matter of time—the United States could face a new, hostile regime armed with U.S.-trained pilots flying U.S.-made planes?

There are two obvious answers to these questions of course: oil and money. The Sauds, unlike the unpredictable Gaddafi, have been reasonably reliable providers of oil to the U.S. And conversely, the Sauds have been major buyers of American arms. Interestingly, three Idaho politicians who strongly opposed the building of an Islamic cultural centre two blocks from ground zero in New York, congressman Mike Simpson and senators Jim Risch and Mike Crapo, are all in favour of bringing the Saudi pilots to their home state. The Saudis are paying for the required enhancement of the air base and the influx of the Arabian pilots, support staff and their families will bring a lot of revenue to Idaho. Oh, what a difference a dollar makes.

And then there's just ideological ignorance. Retired air force officer Edmund O'Reilly, president of the local chapter of the Military Officers' Association of America opined, "From a military standpoint, I think it's an awesome thing for the free world forces." Saudi Arabia, one of the world's most oppressive dictatorships, and probably its most misogynistic, is now part of the free world?

Not all Idahoans, or all Americans, are so sanguine, however. Some have pointed out that it was mostly Saudis trained to fly in the United States who flew planes into the twin towers. To date, most of the outrage has been expressed by conservatives, but if there is a bright side to this folly, it may be that here at last is an issue that American conservatives and liberals can unite on.

Suicide bombers—why do they do it?

Why do suicide bombers do what they do? Not for religious reasons apparently. According to political scientist Robert Pape and defense policy analyst James Feldman in their book Cutting the Fuse: The Explosion of Global Suicide Terrorism and How to Stop It,  it is the result of foreign military occupation, not religious extremism. According to Pape, who has studied suicide attacks for 30 years, “What over 95 per cent of all suicide attacks since 1980 have had in common is not religion but a specific strategic objective: to compel a democratic state to withdraw combat forces from territory the terrorists consider their homeland or prize greatly.”

Pape, director of the Chicago Project on Security and Terrorism, works from a database of over 2,000 incidents to analyze recordings that bombers left behind, information about their religious affiliations and socioeconomic status, and other personal details. He notes that prior to 2003, the year the Americans invaded Iraq, fewer than 15 per cent of such attacks around the world were directed against American interests. Since 2003, 92 per cent have been aimed at U.S. targets.

In Afghanistan, there were fewer than 15 suicide attacks from 2003 to 2005, but the number rose to 87 in 2006 and 128 in 2007. According to Pape, the rise was the result of the arrival of  international forces in increasing numbers.

In Lebanon, there were 30 suicide attacks between 1982 and 1986, including a truck bomb that killed 241 U.S. Marines. The number of attacks declined as foreign troops left the country—first the United States, then France, then Israel. Since Israel’s military withdrawal in 2000, there has not been a single Lebanese suicide attack.

“Foreign occupation," says Pape, "is the trigger for suicide terrorism much like smoking is the trigger for lung cancer.” It appears that if the U.S. wants to put an end to suicide attacks against its interests, it should simply stop occupying other people's countries. And our government's argument we are in Afghanistan to protect Canadians against terrorism would seem to be a bit threadbare. But then we knew all that, didn't we?

Saudis send a message in Bahrain

While the West moves to use force against Muammar Gadhaffi, Saudi Arabia marches into Bahrain. The goals, however, are not quite the same. The West supports the Libyan rebels desire for democracy and freedom, the Saudis motives are likely less noble. The Saudis are no doubt unnerved by the threat the massive protests pose to the power of the Al Khalifa family who have ruled Bahrain for over two hundred years. The Saud family, with a lot shorter pedigree than the Al Khalifas, are looking over their shoulders at the demand for democracy in the Middle East with its threat to absolute power and can hardly be amused.

Invited by the Al Khalifas, and under the auspices of the Gulf Cooperation Council, hundreds of troops from Saudi Arabia and police officers from the United Arab Emirates have poured into Bahrain, marking the first time Arab nations have intervened in another country's affairs amid the current unrest in the region.

Not only do the protests in  Bahrain threaten royal power but they threaten Sunni power. The Al Khalifa monarchy represents a Sunni tyranny ruling over a population 70 per cent Shia. The Saudi monarchy, also Sunni, faces only a minority Shia population but a population that is becoming increasingly restive.

So the Sauds have good reason to send a message in Bahrain: the tsunami of revolution sweeping across the Middle East will not be allowed to reach the shores of Saudi Arabia. And, given the military hardware the West has put in their hands, they will no doubt be able to enforce that message—for a while.

Peaceful revolution the most successful

At at time when the world is comparing the outcome of violent revolution in Libya to the outcome of peaceful revolution in Egypt, it may be worth examining which approach has the best chance of success. Actually, that examination has already been made. A study by Erica Chenoweth, assistant professor of government at Wesleyan University, and Maria J. Stephan, a strategic planner at the U.S. State Department, showed that "major nonviolent campaigns achieved success 53 percent of the time compared with 26 percent for violent resistance campaigns." The study, “Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict,” suggests two reasons for this:

First, nonviolent methods offer a campaign greater legitimacy, both domestically and internationally. This offers broader recognition of the group’s grievances and translates into greater support, internally and externally, and greater alienation of the target regime, undermining the regime’s political, economic, and even military power. In Ms. Chenoweth's words, "People don’t have to give up their jobs, leave their families or agree to kill anyone to participate in a nonviolent campaign. Such movements tend, therefore to draw a wider range of participants, which gives them more access to members of the regime, including security forces and economic elites, who often sympathize with or are even relatives of protesters."

Second, while regimes can easily justify violent reaction against armed insurgents, violence against nonviolent movements is more likely to backfire. Oppressive regimes need the loyalty of their bureaucracy and military to carry out their orders. Violent resistance reinforces that loyalty, while civil resistance undermines it. Potential sympathizers, at home and abroad, see violent militants as having extreme goals, but they perceive nonviolent resistance groups as more accommodating, thereby enhancing their appeal and the possibility of concessions through negotiation.

The study compared the outcomes of 323 violent and nonviolent campaigns from 1900 to 2006.

The strategies and tactics of dissent will will always depend to some extent on circumstances, of course, but it is encouraging to know that civil resistance is much more effective than the uncivil kind. Give peace a chance, indeed.

From the GDP to Norway's Index of Nature

A number of indexes have been suggested—some written about on this blog—to replace the GDP as a measure of societal well-being. The GDP is not a measure of a nation's health, after all—only of its national income—yet it continues to be used in the more general sense as a gauge of how well a society is doing. More meaningful, and less dangerous, indexes include the Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI) and the Canadian Index of Wellbeing (CIW). Now, Norway has come up with a yardstick to measure the health of the natural environment—the Norwegian Nature Index.

Based on 309 indicators covering nine major habitats, the index was designed "to provide an overview of the state and development of biodiversity in the major ecosystems in Norway." According to Vivian Pharis, director of the Alberta Wilderness Association, the Nature Index "will help Norway to halt deforestation, complete its parks system, protect fresh and marine waters and to build a model for global biodiversity monitoring." The latter is of particular importance in a world facing the worst rate of species extinction since the dinosaurs vanished 65 million years ago.

The index will not be a yardstick for the overall health of a society, of course, but it will measure a critical aspect of that health—the state of  the environment—and as such make a valuable complement to indexes such as the GPI and the CIW. It could be a first step toward officially placing a value on "free" services such as insect pollination and forest growth that make a huge contribution to the economy.

A recent UN report, The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity, estimated that damage to natural capital from wetlands to coral reefs totals $2-4.5-trillion every year, losses not included in GDPs. Norway plans to follow up the UN report with a review of the value of services provided by nature in Norway. The work could lead to a radical shift in the way we view economics. Ultimately, of course, our entire economy depends on nature directly or indirectly.

Although various countries use bioindicators to assess nature, few have attempted to aggregate their indicators into a single index as Norway has done. Bravo to the Norwegians.

Conservatives create a project that could actually reduce crime

Progressives despair at the federal government's emphasis on tough law and order measures to reduce crime, particularly spending oodles of money on building more prisons for more and longer incarcerations. On the bright side, the Alberta Conservative government has created a program that will incur a modest cost but offer major potential for reducing crime and saving youngsters from wasting their lives on anti-social behaviour.

The government has established the Alberta Vulnerable Infant Response Team to assist at-risk Calgary families with babies. The team will consist of Children and Youth Services caseworkers, nurses and police officers and will offer intensive guidance and support for the first three months of a child's life. The initiative was in response to a significant increase in the city of infants reported to be at risk of neglect and abuse.

That criminals are the product of dysfunctional homes is well-known. Interventions that assist young mothers in proper parenting have been shown to pay off many times over with reduced crime and by the productivity, including payment of taxes, of young people who were steered onto the right path. Better socially and economically, for the individuals involved and society generally, to have people working and paying taxes rather than languishing, at the taxpayers' expense, in prison. A penny of prevention is worth thrupence of cure.

The team will work with parents to teach parenting skills and provide addiction and family violence counseling. The program, to be followed by a similar initiative in Edmonton, will cost $1-million, about the cost of keeping one man in prison for a dozen years.

Limiting assistance to children under three months seems unduly restrictive, but it's a start. These are the kind of programs that will significantly reduce crime. If the federal government is interested in protecting the public and not just in revenge, it should take notice.

Europe moves toward a Robin Hood (Tobin) tax

In 1972, Nobel Laureate economist James Tobin suggested a currency transaction tax to be leveled on all spot conversions of one currency into another. He intended the tax to penalize currency flipping, thereby modifying currency volatility. In his words, "National economies and national governments are not capable of adjusting to massive movements of funds across the foreign exchanges, without real hardship and without significant sacrifice of the objectives of national economic policy with respect to employment, output, and inflation." In other words, currency speculation undermined the democratic process.

Since then, the idea of a Tobin tax has grown well beyond Tobin's original intention of "putting a brake on foreign exchange trafficking." The global justice movement promotes application of a tax on financial transactions as a means of generating revenue for the fight against global poverty and protection of the environment. A means, in other words, to allow governments, i.e. citizens, to reclaim part of the democratic space that global trade agreements have conceded to markets. Thus the Tobin tax becomes the Robin Hood tax. You can read much more about this at http://robinhoodtax.org/. The idea is that, due to the vast number of financial transactions in today's globalized world, a tiny tax on such transactions could generate large amounts of revenue for the public good.

The Robin Hood tax campaign has now received a boost from the European Union. Earlier this week, the European Parliament voted in support of a financial transactions tax on banks. They estimate the 0.05 per cent levy on financial transactions will raise  $270-billion a year. The Members want Europe to press ahead unilaterally with the tax to discourage speculative trading and to raise money to protect public services, fight global poverty and tackle climate change. The vote is not binding, so the challenge now is to get national governments on board. A number already are, including France who chairs the G20 this year. The German, Austrian and Spanish governments are also in support.

This bold move by the European Parliament has put paid to the argument that nothing can happen without global agreement and sets a global standard for pressing ahead with action on the banks. An idea, as they say, whose time has come.

Egypt - a revolution for men?

The Egyptian revolution has captured the hearts and minds of freedom and democracy-loving people around the world. The largely peaceful overthrow of a tyrant with the hope of establishing a democracy is inspiring. It will be less inspiring, however, if it turn out to be a revolution for men only.

Women were in the forefront when the people took to the streets. But now that the tyrant has packed his bags, women, it seems, are being pushed aside. When the military selected a 10-member committee to make constitutional reforms, they selected not one woman. When a new cabinet was sworn in earlier this week, it contained only one woman. Particularly disturbing to many Egyptian women is the return of sexual harassment in the streets, a practice for which Egyptian men are notorious but which seemed to be suspended during the protests. All of this surrounding international women's day is not encouraging for the women of Egypt.

The new prime minister, Essam Sharaf, has announced the creation of a committee to deal with the advancement of women, which is all well and good but does nothing for women now. As one woman remarked, "It's like saying you women can have your little committee while we men do the serious business."

Women nobly set their struggle for gender equality aside while they fought for the political and social rights of all Egyptians.What a betrayal it will be if their political and social rights are now set aside by men.

Globalization and the race to the bottom in Wisconsin

The globalization of economics as we have come to know it is revealing itself rather dramatically in Wisconsin. It has ravaged the market for well-paying blue-collar jobs in the U.S., reducing the wages and benefits of middle class Americans in the bargain. Now right-wing politicians are exploiting the wreckage to slash the wages and benefits of public sector workers. It's called the race to the bottom.

The race does not, however, include the corporate sector. Just as politicians like Wisconsin governor Scott Walker use the new global order to justify union-bashing, they use it also to justify cutting taxes for corporations, citing the need for ever more investment. Ah, the symmetry of global capitalism!

Now don't get me wrong. I support globalization. I support the breaking down of barriers. But what we have seen isn't globalization, it is—for lack of a better word—corporatization. It is drawing up agreements that advance the interests of corporations, particularly in their relentless search for cheap labour, while dismissing or even undermining the interests of workers, the environment and democracy generally. For example, under NAFTA American corporations are free to seek out cheap labour in Mexico but Mexican workers are not free to seek out high wages in the United States.

The theory of corporatization is that we will all benefit ultimately by trickle-down from the prosperity of corporations. As workers in Wisconsin are finding out, there isn't much trickling going on.

A humane globalization would ensure that the rights of workers and respect for the environment were internationalized no less than trade. If tariffs were not allowed to protect a country's industries, neither would the exploitation of workers nor the abuse of the environment. But such is not the case. Blue collar jobs in places like Wisconsin can be farmed out to the coerced labour mills of China, dragging American wages down in first the private sector, then the public. It is a sad spectacle to see a noble idea—globalization—corrupted into a vehicle for exploitation and the undermining of human rights.

Not so conservative times in U.S.

After the November elections in the U.S. swept Republicans into power in the House of Representatives and a number of state legislatures and governorships, to say nothing of the exuberance of the Tea Partiers, one might have thought Americans were swinging hard to the right. The Pew Research Centre begs to differ. In a recent survey, the prominent research group revealed some intriguing drifts toward moderation in our southern neighbour.

• Opinion on gay marriage, still strongly opposed only a few years ago, is now evenly split.
• Support for the view that abortion should be legal in all or most cases has recovered from a low in 2008, and is now at 54 per cent as opposed to 42 per cent who think it should be illegal.
• Support for legalizing marijuana has continued to increase to 45 per cent, closing in on the support for maintaining its illegality which has dropped to 50 per cent.

As the graphs below indicate, some significant trends in American attitudes are clearly moving in a progressive direction. Encouraging stuff.
.

Americans strongly support public-sector unions

While various governors and legislators of various American states exploit state budget deficits to do some union-busting, Americans at large remain staunchly supportive of public-sector unions. According to a New York Times/CBS News poll, most Americans not only oppose efforts to weaken the collective bargaining rights of public-sector unions but also oppose cutting the pay or benefits of public workers to reduce state budget deficits.

The support is  convincing. Respondents opposed weakening public-sector union rights by a margin of almost two to one (60 per cent to 33 per cent). Even among Republicans the margin was nearly 50-50. Opposition to cutting the pay or benefits of civil servants to reduce deficits was also strongly opposed—by a margin of 56 per cent to 37 per cent. Sixty-one percent of those polled, including just over half of Republicans, thought the salaries and benefits of most public employees was either “about right” or “too low,” directly contradicting those politicians who have been making the case that public-service workers are overpaid or have overly generous benefits. The disagreement extended to dealing with budget deficits: raising taxes was twice as popular as benefit cuts for state workers.

This strong support by the American people for both civil servants and unions is encouraging. Aside from worker co-operatives, unions are the sole component of democracy in the workplace. If we are to have a democratic society, self-governance must inform all public institutions, not just government, and to many citizens, the most important institution is their workplace. Americans likely support public-sector unions for various reasons—fair play, respect for the work they do, etc.—but one hopes also because they support democracy.