justtryingtosortitout

Climate Change and the Garbage Can of Public Discourse

2011-11-11T13:45:00.001-05:00

David , an apt term 'the garbage can of public discourse' It explains it all.

David Creelman
www.creelmanresearch.com
Toronto

One of my favourite business academics is James March. He devised the 'garbage can' model of decision making, which suggests that organisations are like a garbage can of full of issues and solutions that are shaken about and occasionally match up. He's says it better, but let me move on to my main point.

Here is something about climate change:

“The issue isn’t the issue.” The issue, apparently, is that “no free society would do to itself what this agenda requires…. The first step to that is to remove these nagging freedoms that keep getting in the way.”

Claiming that climate change is a plot to steal American freedom is rather tame by Heartland standards. Over the course of this two-day conference, I will learn that Obama’s campaign promise to support locally owned biofuels refineries was really about “green communitarianism,” akin to the “Maoist” scheme to put “a pig iron furnace in everybody’s backyard” (the Cato Institute’s Patrick Michaels). That climate change is “a stalking horse for National Socialism”

What this signals is that climate change is an "issue" and "American Freedom" is an issue; and they've collided rather oddly in the garbage can of public discourse.

Let me draw some conclusions from this:
- taking 'the issue is not the issue' one step further. It is not even American Freedom that is the issue; the issue is that a group of people feel horribly under threat and they've grabbed onto the familiar labels of Freedom / Communism etc because they can't articulate what is really wrong.

- the "feeling under threat" is so strong that people have gone all wacky. If you told these people you had a nation-wide plan for better highway signage they'd probably see that as connected to an attack on "American Freedom" ...the anxiety they have is like a highly reactive chemical that will bond with anything

- they do not have any proper outlet for the discourse about their anxiety; which is why it appears in crazy places.

David

Email to a friend about the Congress's Failure to Tackle the Debt

2011-10-06T17:40:00.001-04:00

Duncan, the debt problem is self evident. A leadership failure in Washington with a President unwilling to lead and behaviour in the Republican Party that is more appropriate as an act for the Goon Show or Saturday Night Live has resulted in a failure to reach any solution. Obama simply lacks the experience, the toughness and I suspect the convictions to be a President. As for the Republican list of Presidential candidates it's a collection of rigid evangelists, old corporately financed politicians and bigots all seemingly lacking scholarship and frankly basic intelligence. Perry the Texas Governor and Bachman, the latest Presidential hopefuls make George Bush Jr. look like an intellectual. Even the pathetic and utterly confused Tea Baggers can see the mounting debt problem. The solutions are self evident too but this Congress is incapable of dealing with it.

As I see it, here are the major issues that need to be addressed. Nothing original in my list.

First and foremost the Government has to collect taxes and that means taxing the ultra rich and corporations and dealing with tax loop holes, inheritance issues and off shore tax havens. America prospered during the period from Eisenhower up to Clinton when the rich paid their fair share of taxes.
Massively reduce America's largest welfare and pork barrel system, namely the military budget and reinvest this money in repairing America's infrastructure. That means investing in urban renewal, high speed trains, transit systems, road and bridge repairs, energy systems etc. It will employ people and they will earn and spend. It will also build up strong and independent companies that can look beyond America's shores.
Dump rigid ideologies that rely on prayer and simplistic convictions about the role of government vs the private sector, views inherited from Reagan in the early stages of Alzheimers, Ayn Rand and Milton Friedman. Whether a conservative or liberal, start thinking about what can work best for the economy instead of digging in with rigid idealogical beliefs. If single payer medical services will save about 40 cents on the dollar try it out in a few states who are willing. If it works do it.
Reconfirm the clear separation of Church and State. Most of the Tea Baggers in their confusion fall back on prayer for a solution and few people share the same prayers so it raises an impossible fog, divisiveness and rage. It is also irrelevant to resolving America's debt problems because it creates a diversion and too much time engaging in political debates fighting over Gay rights, abortion, Creationism, condom usage and sexual behaviour in general.
Hang on the nearest tree any CEO who takes Government aid and promptly sublets the work gained out to a foreign nation. If the unemployment problem isn't resolved the swelling anger will give rise to demagoguery, loss of control of the streets and its questionable whether any semblance of democracy will prevail.
Declare a war on debt and unemployment and wave lots of flags. War and love of country seems to unite people. Look to the economic models in northern European nations like Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Germany where taxes are collected, the population is educated and wealth is fairly distributed. It can be done.

No doubt you can add to this list. The marriage between Democracy and Capitalism is on trial in America. An oligharchy is in control and congress is paid to do their bidding. The American public is pessimistic giving rise to a Tea Bag movement and nonsensical evangelism that seeks immediate solutions, to a problem that has taken years to build, by giving up on the unemployed, and leaving them destitute, and downscaling federal and state governments and selling off their assets to cash rich Chinese, Arabs and our carpet bagging oligarchy to pay the bills. Its giving up.

Don

--------------------------------------------------

> *2011 Federal Budget "Deal"
> *
> Federal Budget: $ 3,820,000,000,000 (3.82 Trillion)
> Income: $ 2,170,000,000,000 (2.17 Trillion)
> New Debt: $ 1,650,000,000,000 (1.65 Trillion)
> Amount Cut: $ 38,500,000,000 (38.5 Billion) – about

>
> National Debt Total: $ 14,271,000,000,000 before this years budget.****

Globalization and Who is in Control?

2011-05-03T09:54:00.000-04:00

The problem with both Greenspan and Bernanke is that the Fed has never cared for its dual mission of jobs and inflation so the Fed continues to whistle past the graveyard where American jobs have been placed.
Posted by entropyman

They  are all tinkering around the edges of a very basic problem. Those  middle income manufacturing and service industry jobs are gone and won't  be coming back. The factories are closed and those business towers now  half empty are connected electronically to their staff in faraway countries. 

Milton  Friedman, a disciple of Ayn Rand set  loose on the World through his  Chicago School the belief that an unregulated market would be self  correcting and spread prosperity for all. Well it has created an  explosion of wealth but it has also transferred power from the nation  states and it's citizens to a wealthy oligarchy whose only loyalty is to  the financial enterprises they control.  Nation states with their  taxation policies, regulations and social policies are perceived as  barriers to their goals and must be influenced and controlled to do  their bidding. Thus tolerated by the nation states, off-shore tax havens  combined with privileged taxation policies keep their immense profits  intact.

What's the outcome of all this? Well with middle class  consumption stagnating, and with the oligarchy not paying their share,  the governments revenues are no longer sufficient to meet their  commitments. Budgets for education, social services and infrastructure  must be either privatized for those who can afford it or cut. A tiered  society with a large underclass. 

Financed  and propagandized by an oligarchy represented by the likes of the Koch  brothers, Wall Street, Murdoch and others, their foot soldiers, namely  Tea Party, evangelists, Libertarians and apparently most other  Republicans, are naively intent on dismantling universal health care   and 120 years of social and regulatory legislation. With a freeloading  oligarchy calling the shots it's questionable whether any real democracy  can survive because those leading it don't really give a damn as long  as their money keeps piling up. 

Is all of this inevitable?

Readers' comments:

Thanks. I am always heartened and relieved that you articulate my positions so eloquently. I have several friends that I love but who send me drivel from the right.

The question is what can we do and I fall back on the old standbys of activism and ideas. All good things from the Red Cross to Greenpeace to recycling came about because of activism. Without the idea of democracy I don't think people would be taking on the tyrants in the Arab world.

Sad to say, you've nailed it. And neatly. Thank you for including me. When we're not able to be
as articulate (not to mention as knowledgeable) as you are we frequently lose our audiences,
get frustrated and give up. My Republican friends are not evil....they are quite respectable, go to
church, kind to animals, etc. They just don't get it.

Democracy enroute to Barbarism

2010-10-10T13:02:00.004-04:00

In the Tea Baggers the Republican Party seems to have joined forces with quite a gang of social misfits. Here is the latest in a Nazi SS uniform.

Saturday's Le Monde has several pages dedicated to the French philosopher who recently died, Claude Lefort, and in particular his book entitled "democratic invention" that deals with the theme of 'neither socialism nor barbarism' , a refreshing examination of the spectrum of political and power systems. A fascinating read when looking at the world we live in and the political struggles taking place.

History clearly has shown us that total power corrupts. Monarchies, communism, dictatorships and religious dynasties inevitably become self serving and end up victimizing their citizenry. Their replacement, Democracy, a relatively modern intervention on a large scale (admittedly invented in ancient Greece) , attempts to mix a blend of centralized power with a fair amount of economic freedom to independently pursue ones own interests. As a system in North America and Western Europe it seems to have enjoyed its heyday from 1945 to the end of the century.

Now we are seeing the rapid rise of oligarchic power undermining that of central governments. If the current political struggle in the United States is an example of what is happening then democracy may just be a brief passage en route to the barbarism Claude Lefort talks about.

Where can this end? We are already seeing oligarchies doing battle with nation states to undermine their power so that they can escape into an international world where they can freely fight it out with their peers to own it all. I see the governors of nations states where an oligarchy unduly controls power as increasingly becoming the paid servants of this New World Order.

Under these conditions citizens are increasingly powerless, democratic elections become meaningless, and social systems break down. In the past this predictably led to social unrest, a sense of desperation, marching in the streets, civil disobedience, economic breakdown and if unchecked, revolution. A major difference over the past several decades has been the creation of a consumer society of entertained, preoccupied and indoctrinated citizens. In English speaking countries this has resulted in a surprisingly passive public and the streets are empty. In the United States living under permanent wartime conditions this has further reinforced their sense of loyalty and faith in their country.

The American oligarchy is clearly financing and controlling the Republican party including their inept and confused Tea Party members. If they should gain power they will clearly serve their masters by ensuring the deregulation of banking and corporations, reducing taxation by down scaling or eliminating social legislation that has evolved over the past century and the introduction of a church state alliance to control the allegiance of the masses. An assured highway to the barbarism that Claude Lefort talks about.

The US experience with democracy has lasted now for over two hundred years. The first 160 years reflects a heroic struggle by many great leaders to create an essentially middle class and just society. With the arrival of Reagan and his successors Bush Snr, Clinton, and Bush Jnr much of this is being dismantled, presumably to service the demands of their oligarchic princes.

Guantanamo Bay North at the G20 Meeting in Toronto

2010-07-19T08:55:00.011-04:00

My 14 year old grandson lives in the centre of Toronto and decided to take his bicycle down to see what was going on. Twenty thousand police officers dressed and armed like Darth Vader was worth checking out. He committed no crime but was arrested, manacled and thrown into a cage along with several hundred people until he was released 23 hours later. His telling of his experience confirms much of what you are about to read.

My Abuse and Arrest at the G20.
Prepared by Tommy Taylor, who is 29 years old. Born and raised in Mississauga, Ontario. Valedictorian from Iona CSS in '98, Government of Ontario awarded scholar. Graduate of the Vancouver Film School and the University of Waterloo Centre of Cultural Management. He is a theatre director and playwright in Toronto..

I'm going to start by saying that at no point in this note will I be exaggerating, bending the truth or lying in any way. I can also say I've never felt this angry, violated or betrayed. If you're moved to action, educate yourself to what happened this weekend, and pass along my story.

Black Bloc left alone to create carnage and photo ops.

Second, to those who are disgusted with the violence and vandalism - I agree. It was disgusting, but happened to property, by a small group. You can see the photos everywhere of the few individuals who did that. They were also allowed to by police, who parked the cars and left. Everywhere else there was organized riot police in the thousands. They left Yonge Street alone - why? Just read more than the headlines and photo ops - http://2010.mediacoop.ca/
I'm not going to wig out in a conspiracy theory way, just read for yourself. It happened to me and I still find it hard to believe, I don't want to believe it. My country broke my heart.

So here is what happened.

PART ONE: Grandmas, Idiots and High School Reunions

I was home during the day on Saturday June 26th until around 1:00pm when I went over to Allan Gardens Park (which is literally across the street from my apartment). Hey, if Mayor David Miller was encouraging people to get out do things in the city, why not? There were a few tents left over from the Tent City, which slept there the night before. Various groups were getting signs still ready to march over to the 'Free Speech Zone" at Queen's Park - far away from all things G20. I met a group of grandmothers who were marching on behalf of grandmothers in Third World countries who have adopted millions of children whose parents have died of AIDS. (To all those who are speaking out against the violence in the streets of Toronto and damning the protesters - where were your voices of outrage at this? Or do you only care when the irreplaceable Starbucks has its window smashed? When it's on your front doorstep you cry and give the rest of the world your apathy - why are you only upset now?)

I walk with the grannies and arrive in Queens Park. There are thousands of police in all kinds of riot gear, mounted police units (people chant of "Get those animals off those horses" made me laugh). There were students, seniors, media, everyone, thousands! And it was so peaceful and a tremendous sense of community. The riot squads were quite scary, but people were chanting "You're pretty, you're cute, take off the ugly riot suit!", which also made me laugh, and many of the officers in the riot gear laughed too, one of them quipped "I wish, this thing's hot". Cool, this was fun. Good messages, free speech, the grannies along side the burly boys of the Steel Workers Union. Someone gave me a marker and bristol board. I made a sign "Apathy Will Kill You." After a while of awesome speeches, interesting people and wasted money (1.2 Biliion...?) I give away my sign and head home to Jarvis & Gerrard. Like on the way there, cops are lined up everywhere, watching everything - no holes anywhere. Strange absence of cops at Yonge and Dundas Square...they were all over it earlier....

At home I soon read about the violence happening along Yonge...what? Where are the cops? It's guys in ALL black, easy to see. Why are they just running along with no one to stop them...there were cops there. Ok. Weird. These guys suck for doing this, because this is all anyone will see and read about. And now it's justification for the gross amount of force and money spent. Then comes word about the police cars parked and abandoned, they even rolled down the windows before leaving. What? No radios or any equipment inside the cop cars? No police in sight? Arrest these idiots before they ruin any chance at - oh, too late. So then the media starts to assemble the evening news with the fiery money shots of Yonge St and the burning cars. Vandal assholes taking the bait and acting in a predictable destructive way. Idiots.
Watch an account by a photo journalist who followed them:
http://www.pacificfreepress.com/news/1/6497-alt-perspectives-on-toronto-protests.html

Argghh! But, hey, at least things were cool in the "Free Speech Zone". My girlfriend Kate gets home with her co-worker Ben and their friend Simon at around 7pm. She asks if it's ok to go out and see what's going on. I said sure, the Free Speech Zone is awesome, there's all kinds of causes, we can go take a look. So, off we go along College Street. There are people on sidewalks and taxis and cars, all very normal. We got to Bay and College when around 20 mini-vans full of riot cops honked their horns and went flying through the intersection - I had never seen anything like it, it was crazy. We arrived at University Ave to find it completely blocked off by riot cops in full gear. The "Free Speech Zone" was completely blocked in. The cops wouldn't answer any questions, wouldn't move, wouldn't look at you. Nothing. Then rows of riot police form on College behind us, start banging their shields and march in, followed by a rows of mounted horse units. Then out of nowhere two young guys are pepper sprayed nnearby, everyone runs, nothing is said by police, no announcements. People help the guys and pick them up, they don't know what happened or why.

Up on the steps of a building I see a friend from high school, Derek. We head over, catch up - he came down to see what was happening, but was blocked off from Queen's Park on all sides. Shortly after some homeless people threw on arm bands and had extending night sticks and tackled people standing around and dragged them behind the dense line of riot cops and dragged them away. Secret under-cover homeless police - oo la la. Still no messages from the police and no violence to be seen except from them. I remember on JackAss when Johnny tried being tasered and peppered sprayed and said the spray was the worst thing he's ever had done to him and never again, poor dudes on the ground. Nothing happened. So, guess the day was over and police didn't want the protest getting any bigger (is what we thought). Derek went back to Mississauga and we decided to head home and Simon went to a bar.

PART 2: A Blue Raspberry Slushie and the Lost Tactical Squads - A Saturday night in TO.

Now 9pm. Kate, Ben and I were thirsty and I remembered reading a story about the ice cream truck guy that parked at City Hall at Queen and Bay and how G20 was killing his business, and I like blue raspberry slushies. So down we went, he was up front with his feet on the dashboard. I was very thirsty at this point, so it was great. The streets seemed a little empty, but people were around, walking, going places to eat, taxis and cars driving around. Seemed like the oncoming rain and shut-out from the police killed the protests. We said "All people will talk about is the violence, to bad." Then things changed around us. It was now just after 9pm, all the violence from earlier in the day was long over and the vandals who committed it, gone. Vans and buses of riot police and tactical teams were swarming. We couldn't see any protesters, but the streets were filing with cops, cars tried backing away and had to jump the curb, people were getting confused, and no cop were saying anything.

We thought it best to head east and get home right now, who knew what was happening. The guys in green tactical gear were pretty scary and shouting to each other "We're in the wrong place, go west! Go west!" They got in there vehicles of all kinds (from armored personnel carries to Budget panel vans), big gas guns, crazy gear. Kate needed a bathroom desperately, nothing was open now and there were quite scary police squads everywhere - now very confusing as to what's happening. We see two construction workers peeking their heads out of the door of a store. We run over and Kate talks her way into the bathroom. We talk to the guys, its confusing, but no signs of violence. The workers wish us well and head back inside.

Were now at Bay St and King St, trying to head east. The sky opens up and the rain pours on down. Heavy. We see a group marching AWAY from the fence, away from G20, they get blocked in by police, but are then let go and told to move east--great, towards home! It's a crowd of maybe 200 people, all kinds. Some flags and signs lead the group. The free speech zone was shut down, so I guess there was nowhere else to go. We live in Canada, so before you say that everyone should have gone home, no. Is that the country you want to live in? Where you can't speak up? One day you'll have to actually face an issue of injustice that will make you actually stand up and go outside and use your freedom, use your voice - and you'll be glad you can. Imagine if you couldn't? What country does that make you think of? So, with no instructions from the surrounding police I ask someone marching in the street and they seem to think it's back to Allan Gardens Park, perfect! We live there!

PART 3 - Tommy Taylor, You're Under Arrest

So the three of us follow, on the sidewalk, away from the central group. Occasional clapping on some great slogans chanted. There are regular people on the street watching, who live and work in the area. We get to Front St continue south to the Esplanade and stop in front of the Novotel. Hrm? Apparently the workers are on strike at Novotel for unfair treatment and some delegates from G20 will be staying there. We are across the street on the sidewalk , in front of The Keg. The marchers sit down and chant "peaceful protest". And it is. Everyone is calm; it's actually pretty awesome to see. There are some awful things in this world and when our economic and political leaders gather in one place to decide the world's solutions and futures (including the government of China), people are going to want to have their voices heard. That's the Constitution, thankfully.

Then they start singing "Give Peace a Chance", wow- it's actually a cliche of a protest! It was a lot of fun, a great thing to witness live instead of stock footage form the 60's and 70's when people were changing the way sexuality, gender and ethnicity are treated in North America. Without public protests we would still have slavery and women couldn't vote. Would you go back and tell those people to go home? No word from police yet, and why would there be? It's 10:00 at night on Saturday on small sub-street in Toronto with no traffic tonight. Everyone's peaceful and out of the way, and only in a number of 200. It actually seemed like just a little whimper from the numbers I saw together earlier, but at least they had heart and spirit. We join in singing "Give Peace a Chance" - how could you not, it felt so great. Then, riot cops show up on the sides of the street. Uh-on. They're blocking it off, time to go.

We head towards them to leave; they say 'Get Back', no problem. We turn to leave the other way, more riot cops "Get Back". Okay, We ask if we can please leave - no response. They haven't said anything. There are journalists in here, a couple comes out of The Keg and tries to leave, they are told, "It's too late." Too late for what they ask, and are told nothing. We ask again (Kate has become quite distraught and upset) if we can please leave and are told, "You should have left when we told you." Wait, what? When? Everyone is saying the same thing. They the phone number for legal aid starts making the rounds, people write it on their arms and hands (I already had it on a post-it note). They guy from the Keg can't believe it. They guy in the wheelchair on his way home is stunned. The confused guy with cerebral palsy is freaking out and scared. A few First Nations people around us say, "Well, this is familiar. Welcome to our club everyone." A gay couple hugs, in tears. And older lady (the splitting image of Jane Goodall) asks what's happening. The media with the huge cameras seem at a loss. The riot police have the full gear, shields, helmets, masks down, saying nothing. The leaders of the march ask for negotiator to get people out of here. No response. They give official media a chance to leave that have badges, but no one else. Not even people who have obvious news camera and photo cameras. Steve Paikin from TVO managed to get out. We all chant, “Let us go!” They begin pulling people out of the sitting crowd and take them away. There was no resisting, they turned around and offered their hands. Then a riot cop with a classic cop mustache announces, "You're all under arrest. You will all be charged and you cannot leave. "

We can't believe we're about to be arrested. They won't tell us why we are under arrest, which they legally have to. We were on the sidewalk the whole time. People from the condo above The Keg throw things down at the group. We throw nothing back and a few riot police laughed. The workers in The Keg are all at the window, confused, one of them starts crying a walks away. Everyone is trying to find out why we just can't go home. Then the riot squads form a half circle around us, shield to shield. People angry, afraid. We were nowhere close to the fence; there was no violence - what was this? People singing a John Lennon song all arrested? Confusing. Upsetting. I want to get out of there with Kate and go home and I can't. I hate the way this made me feel. I didn't do anything. Nothing was happening here with these people, whom I was now a part of. Some sat down, many were on dying cell phones trying to call family and friends, some kids trying to call parents and asking to borrow phones, journalists calling their offices for help...scary.

The unmoving riot officers had arm badges saying they were from Calgary. Then all at once, they took some pill and took a sip from the tubes attached to their riot gear. It became clear they were a little confused, a supervisor was yelling at them they were in a wrong formation, some of them tripped over each other. I noticed the street was blocked off at both ends, no media anywhere at either end...denied access to see what was happening down here. Soon the street was full of buses and paddy wagons and riot cops outnumbered people 5 to 1. Many of the cops behind the semi-circle took off gear and lay down, sweaty on the sidewalk, obviously overworked. One by one, officers would come through the shrinking semi-circle line and take people roughly away. People would turn and offer their hands peacefully, waiting to go.

Next to us was a guy with a green mohawk, punky looking guy, two approaching arresting officers laughed and said "I want to get this guy right here", they pushed through the other people, grabbed and spun him around and pushed him away roughly. He didn't say anything or resist in anyway. Jesus. Another male officer says to the gay couple "I'll go find some lady officers to arrest you boys." His patch says Toronto. Really? Surely, two female officers take one of them away. We can see people put into paddy wagons, or filling buses. I use Ben's phone to call my parents, who were out. I call the legal aid number, no answer. I call my friend Chris Legacy (we were going to hang out on Sunday, now maybe not) he is out. I tell his mom, Linda what is happening, she is worried and hope were okay and wants us to call when we can. They push through the crowd and pick out Ben (who is a bright yellow shirt, his work uniform shirt, he's Brazilian with long black hair and a beard). Kate and I kiss, then they take Kate away and there is not a thing I can do except watch them handcuff her and make her walk away backwards. I hated the feeling I had at the moment, I never felt it before and I hated I was being forced to feel it.

My new Name!

I turned and offered my hands, I was handcuffed and made to walk backwards across the street to officers in front of the Novotel. I'm handed over, searched, asked my name - all very peaceful. My arresting officer, Toronto Constable Caesar, asked me if I understood I was being arrested - I said I understood, but I didn't know why. He paused. "You're being charged with - " He stops, talks with someone else, moves me, and says "Mischief". Another officer comes over with a form and a clipboard, Caesar says "Finally got a clipboard huh?" the officer replies "Yeah, this thing is fucked up".

My evidence bag.

My official arrest time is 12:48am. But they've held me since 10:30pm. They search me, take my house keys and a post it note from my pocket (that's all I had). I give the answers to the form questions and am put in metal handcuffs (hands in front now), Caesar says they need my shoe laces, so sits me down on the curb and takes them off and bags them. He helps me up; I can see Kate with other officers, random people all over, forms being filled out, and handcuffs going on. I see officers in bucket hats, and ask, "Who are those guys with the Gilligan hats?" I'm told those are officers from Saskatoon, an officer then jokes, "yeah, those hats are gay." Another adds, "Well most of them are faggots anyway. Except the dykes." They laugh. Real police solidarity there. Cops everywhere are chugging bottles of Gatorade and water and throwing the bottles to the ground. We all had stickers with numbers stuck on us and pink wristbands with the same number. I was #0106. No one has read me my rights. I hoped I would end up in a wagon with Kate.

Our wristbands.

Here are two videos from some people who were in the condo. Listen to the Rocket Scientists who yells, "You guys are dumb!" then breaks into a Beavis and Butthead laugh. No media was allowed to see what was happening to us, so, here's what it looked like:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2KEou7WFV8&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tTCXuxhVGXM&NR=1

PART 4: Taken on a Ride

So, handcuffed and waiting around I see cops on the sidewalk lying on their shields, gulping Gatorade. Kate is put into a paddy wagon. I'm brought over to a different one and put in after a young guy. The back of the wagon has two seating areas, dived by a steel wall. There are no lights; the back wall is angled so you have to hunch over. I introduce myself to my fellow prisoner, he does the same. His story is much like mine. 45 minutes later we now have 6 guys on the bench. The last one in is a photojournalist, the officers toss in his evidence bag (with big fancy camera and case) "That's my camera!" he yells, they laugh and slams the door. The police's attitude is very relaxed, casual, many smiling and laughing. I overheard many talking about the confusion they faced in the day and right now. The other guys tell me they never had their rights read either and were all told different reasons for the arrest "Disturbing the peace" "Obstructing Justice" and so on. No one clear reason we were all there. I can only make out their silhouettes when they lean forward, no lights.

We can hear the guys on the other side of the truck. One of my 6 guys shouts "Tim?!", "Yeah?" we hear back. Turns out they went to elementary school together in rural Ontario way back when. The ages of the guys in the truck range from 15-47. The only light that comes in is from tiny circles in the metal doors, the glass is dirty, so we can't make out too much. We drive for 1 minute and stop. They turn off the truck and leave. The truck behind us backs over and stays put, still on. Our truck now begins to smell of fumes..I don't think this was on purpose, as the drivers seemed confused about where to go, we could make out there was many discussion happening between all kinds of officers outside. But diesel fume headaches started in. After another 10 minuets we drove to a large prisoner transfer bus.

One by one we were let out of the small truck and lead aboard the bus.

Our bus looked a lot like this.

The first portion of the bus had sectioned off pairs of seats with plastic and metal cages with their own doors. Inside were female prisoners, two by two. I saw Kate sitting with another young girl. She didn't see me, she looked so sad. The back section was all open seating. They told us it was two to a seat and move to the back. We filled up all the seats and were left with one extra guy. They yelled at him "Sit down now!" he told them there were no more seats, they yelled "GET IN A SEAT NOW!". So he sat on the floor. Some girls were asking about a bathroom, as we've been in police custody for almost 4 hours now. No reply. "Where are we going?" No reply. "Will we get a phone call?" No reply. Some of the guys had no shoes, some had no laces and some still had their shows fully intact. The mix on the bus was great. All ethnicities, ages and genders. Protesters, pedestrians, media, the homeless, tourists - but mostly everyone in there was from Toronto. So, with about 12 girls up front and about 20 guys in the back - all in handcuffs, off we went. I tried calling to Kate, but she couldn't hear me. No one had any phones, cameras, no way to record anything from here on out.

Everyone couldn't believe what was happening to us. We all talked about our rights, what phone number to call, where we might be headed (the general thought was the new detention centre they built inside the Toronto Movie Studios at Pape and Eastern. And sure enough, as the bus left the St. Lawrence Market area, we headed east. There was a sense of outrage on the bus, but when we got our phone call and legal counsel, this would be exposed for the farce it was. A girl started getting really wild and screaming - it was a bit much, a few guys laughed, and I heard a "Shut-up" - it was unmistakably Kate, she wasn't into the girl next to her loosing her mind just yet. I called out "I love you!" another guy jokes “Will you be my prison wife?”

We arrived outside of the wet and dark Toronto Film Studio, with its large gates and armored guards and dozens of police cars and fenced off areas. It was creepy. The buildings were huge and grey with red signs with white numbers on them. It was something from a George Orwell novel. Large spotlight pointing down from posts, in the rain. Our bus was stopped in front of a large garage door to one of the hanger-sized buildings. The door rolls open a light pours out from it. We drive inside.

PART 5: Behind the Grey Door.

As we go in there are rows of cages on left hand side. About 12'x20' and around 10' high. They were cages. Chain cages full of people. From what I could see they were all young people in these cages, maybe the young offenders. I have never seen anything like this, only in holocaust films, sci-fi films or pictures of Guantanamo Bay (and no, am I not comparing this to those events, I'm just sharing what came to mind and the only things I can reference it to).

There are skids of bottled water and Gatorade the police are drinking from. The men on the bus are talking about how the police cars were abandoned and no police officers stopped the infamous Black Bloc - to learn more about that here:
http://www.prisonplanet.com/peaceful-protesters-attacked-arrested-while-cop-car-arsonists-left-alone.html

We all agreed that we were the hundreds of protesters left at the end of the day; long after the violence was done that afternoon. But hey, how do you justify to the people of Canada that we spent 1.2 Billion dollars? You arrest all the protesters. We thought we might held for 24 hours so that the streets would be cleared from people demonstrating their right to free speech. I mean, they closed down the "Free Speech Zone" in a public space, so... why were we there? Finally an officer comes on the bus and states “come forward and give your number". So one by one we go. Outside we are handed off to a Court Service officer, all with "Special Constable" patches. Some have removed their nametags, others have them still on. Some are Barrie Court Services, some Toronto. I'm given to a shorter female constable who removed my metal cuffs and put me in the plastic binds - she had trouble getting them tight enough "My gloves are too sweaty" she says, a male office grabs the tie and pulls them - tight. My wrists are already raw from the cuffs; I say they are too tight. "You’ll live" I'm told. Oh.

She asks where I'm supposed to go, no one really knew. Everyone there seemed a little overworked and confused. Someone told her to make sure I read 'the sign'. She takes me towards an ominous black corridor - it was this pocket of darkness in this hanger that lead to another section. Kate had already disappeared inside it. She stops in front of a sign, which states that all video and audio would be recorded in the cells and could be used as evidence, etc etc. She asked if I understood and I said I did. I was actually happy to read that, in case anything in violation of the law happened to me inside. We walked into the darkness...

PART 6: Welcome to Cell Block OL 6 in Detention Level 2 Prisoner #0106, or
Come for the cup of water, stay for the condom-ball.

Inside the former movie studio, I almost can't believe it. I've never seen this outside of movies. It is almost unreal. There are no windows to be had. The cavernous ceiling is 200 ft high, I can barely see it. It makes the warehouse from the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark look small. Hanging about down to about 15 ft off the ground are rows of intense florescent lights. Dozens of rows as far as I can see in either direction. Over each cell is a small black pod container a camera. It appears to be a maze made of industrial shelving, construction office trailers, wooden decks and walkways and cages. The cages are roughly 12' by 20' and around 10' high. There is sheet metal on 3 sides; the front side has a sliding door section that locks. Inside each cage is a porto-potty with the door removed, no toilet paper. It reaches close to the ceiling is about 4'x4' around. Those potties -bright orange, with an elaborate art deco style molding. A 1.2 billion dollar porto-potty to be sure. I pass rows of the cages with people bleeding, crying slumped on the concrete floor. Huddled, asking to call family, asking for water, asking what the charge is, wanting to know their rights. All the officers were ignoring them and laughing. Laughing at people. I have never seen anything like this.

Like this, but little bigger with one bench and huge outhouse.

My officer was asking where to take me - no officers knew. One officer tells her "Who knows? This place just got fucked up. Good luck". She sighs. Finally it's decided and I'm taken down a row of cages, I see Kate in a cage with about 30 girls, huddled, still wet and in this place (which I just notice is freezing). She smiles - 'I love you!" I call to her, I hear "I love you too!" as I'm brought around the corner. I see the girls have no door on their potty, with mostly male officers around them walking by, looking in. We're near the wall and I see a cage full of about 35 men. Cell Block OL 6 says a white sign on the cage door. In I go. I recognize some of the guys from the bus and paddy wagon. Hello agains are said. We are still handcuffed with the vinyl ties; I now have a cut on my wrist. I see the guy with the green mohawkish cut - he looks troubled.

Soon enough, a few more guys are brought. There are no 40 men in the cell. The young, short male office with spiky orange hair and a shirt labeled Toronto Police jokes to us "What do they think this is Auschwitz?" This is what he said. 40 witnesses and the video/audio equipment that was right above us. They have since stated this footage would be made public. Amazing, I can't wait. There is one steel bench in the cell that seats five. There is standing room only. The floor is cold concrete, dirty and covered in chipped splotches of bright green paint - from when the movie studio would use green screen. Anyone who sat was covered in a bright green dust.

The camera - I hope you're getting all this up there.

I was now around 2:00am. I've been held since 10:30pm, not read my rights, not explained anything, not yet charged, no phone call. And in an overcrowded cell with no access to water. Every guy had to pee; there was a line around the inside of the cell to piss. Trying to pee with your hand cuffed together was horrible...but we all managed...the outhouse was messy. No toilet paper. So, here we all were. Ages from 16-78. Three German men asked why the guard made a joke about Auschwitz. They were here from Germany, left a bar, got arrested. They said they had no idea Canada was like this; they said the world thought we were free. The said "poor Canadians, this is shame".

The stories from the men in the cell were all very similar. Some were protesters in the Novotel March, one man was having dinner at the Keg with his girlfriend (who was also arrested), there were two journalists, a homeless old man with a big grey bird and long hair with scruffy clothes- he was almost in tears and confused, he said they grabbed him walking on Carlton. He then asked us "What's a G20?" Sick. The 16 year old kid hasn't been able to call his parents and now he's locked up with 39 men. The cage houses all kinds. There's a young gay couple curled up together. Some men have no shoes, some no laces and some still have both. Wet socks and feet and clothes in this freezing, unending hanger. And now we're thirsty.

Stories are exchanged, we all discuss what to say to our lawyers or legal aid when we call. One guy explains how he was working at a music store up at Ossington, left work, saw his buddy across the street gave him the rock and roll horns with his hand, then a cop saw him and said 'Don't give the cops the finger!" while running at him and then tackling him. He was bleeding and his clothes ripped. He was shocked. Still thirsty. We ask why were in here. 'Because you committed a crime." quips a Barrie Court Services officer - a tall, bald man with one hell of mean streak. It looked ugly. Some officers were laughing and joking at us. I was feeling the crowded cell growing tense and angry. One black, shorter male Toronto Officer came over as we began pleading for an explanation, for water and for some of use to be moved into another cell. He came over and said, "This is wrong. Guys, I'm sorry, this is fucked up. But there's nothing I can do. This place is just chaos. I'm sorry." he leaves. Very thirsty.

In police custody for 6 hours now, no water, no anything. We start to get worried. We are still very polite guards "Please, we need water. Please help us. Please help this 16-year-old kid. Please split us up, we can't even all sit in here". We look at the camera and beg for help. We can hear people in the other cells yelling and begging for water. We hear a girl 'Please! I need my medication! HELP ME!". I yell "Help that girl, what the hell is going on here!" Other cages begin to yell. I find out later this girl was in my girlfriends cell and was way passed her medication time. The male officers were laughing in at her and tapping their keys along the bars leering at the girls in wet clothes. Finally two female officers took the girl away. They also had a 17-year-old girl in her cage as well. Still thirsty.

7 hours into custody, the people break. A shout for water breaks into a little riot, all cells yelling water, shaking the cages, and kicking at the doors. People with cracked lips and cracking voices - I've been awake for 22 hours now. Luckily a guy in our cell kept a watch. The place is going insane, we are told by guards “We're working on it!" some are apologizing, some are obviously lost and confused, others are laughing.

Finally water reaches our cell. They have a blue jug on an office chair, rolling it around with one officer pushing, one with a key, and one holding styrofoam dixie cups. We are told to line up. Many of the men say "Thank-you". I had to beg for water. BEG FOR WATER. For 9 hours. I hated being made to feel grateful for this tiny sip of water. Many gulped their cup down, some took it slow. "So shut-up now." said the officer. Well, guess who was starting to get hungry after 8 hours in custody?

An older First Nations man produces a condom and blows it up into a balloon. We all laugh - the water did us good. In fact we all got along really well, making the best of things we could. Quiet guys, big loud guys, punks, well dressed men, journalists, people who were at work, protesters, homeless, gay guys. We all got along, totally united. So, with this condom balloon, we started bouncing it around, like volleyball. We then called it Condom-Ball. The rules were to bounce it with your elbows or legs, and try and catch the tip in your empty dixie cup (as they were tied together, like a volleyball bump already - too easy). Some guys got really into it, some were laughing, some thought it was gross, but funny. We joked about starting a condom-ball league. We'd rent the cages and have teams of 40 guys in each one. I'm looking forward the security footage from our cell - look at these crazy violent protesters....playing games. So, some dude popped the condom with his cuffs, we all jokingly booed him and someone said "Now you'll have to pay child support, never break the rubber!" Then the First Nations guy pulled out another condom. We cheered. They guy who broke the last one volunteered for blow-up duty. Someone said " When we get out I'm gonna say being in a cell with 40 guys sucked, until we found a condom" we all laughed our asses off. Soon people tired of the game, as we were wet, crowded and hungry and still didn't know anything.

PART 7: Awake for 25 Hours, Imprisoned for 10 of them.

It was weird feeling being locked in a cage like. Told by my captors that it was wrong (but also laughed at by others), begging for food and water. Then, down the hall across from my cell I saw this: the bald Barrie officer was dragging in a kid with mild cerebral palsy (I saw him with a friend while they were arrest, he was so scared). He pushed and then they said something to him, his clothes were torn and his eyes read from crying. I guess they wanted his shoes, because he struggled to lift his leg (his pants were falling down) when the officer slammed his leg down 'Never mind. Stop being stupid" he laughed at the kid, as did the other officer. Away they went. Heard a door slam.

The guy who took his girlfriend to the Keg tells us how he told her it would be safe out "The violence was long over, and even the Mayor had said to go and enjoy Toronto.." he called out for his girl "Trudy!?!" we hear a "Yeah!? Is that you Sean?" he looks happy and yells "Yeah Baby!" she yells back "It's over!!!" we all start laughing. Later I find out from Kate that Trudy was in her cell and also yelled, "Just joking!" but he didn't hear because we were all laughing. The laughs were hard to come by. I was still sick that I begged for water and had been here for 11 hours and I hadn't done a thing. And that I watched helpless as they roughed up a kid with CP. This was like some sick, twisted social experiment. All handcuffed, we ask "what if we have shit? No toilet paper!" 45minutes later they push a few sheets threw the fence "We're bound, we can't even wipe!" the male officer says "Figure it out boys." Laughs. We make a pact that none of us will shit. I find out from Kate that the girls had to make a human wall when using the bathroom and help wipe each other. They also had to beg for toilet paper. Apparently they didn't think girls needed much for the bathroom. So women asked for tampons or pads, the male guards laughed and said, "that explains your attitudes."

Haha, cerebral palsy is hilarious. BEG FOR WATER!

It was 6am, we couldn't lie down or even all sit. We tried rotating on the steel bench. It was freezing. The Germans missed their flight. Another guy visiting his girlfriend from Manitoba misses his bus. Trudy's boyfriend tells us she was to be on a bus up north to camp where she would be a counselor to children with disabilities. Good thing those kids are now safe from her, I mean, the woman had dinner at The Keg! Oh no! We hear that one cell contains a lawyer who has stated all our rights had been violated. Another holds a TTC Streetcar Driver in full uniform whose streetcar was caught in a blocked off zone, he left his vehicle and was arrested. What?

People are hungry. We plead to the passing guards for food or and explanation, or to tell us what's happening - even too split us up so we can lie on the cold concrete. They say will be processed, interviewed, charged and released in about maybe 3 hours - we can also make a call then to legal aid. And food? "We're working on it." We ask they guards how they could be a part of this. Some look guilty as hell, some laugh. We get the attention of Toronto Special Constable White, a short balding man with glasses. He comes to us; we all desperately and calmly explain what's happening to us. White listens, apologizes, admits that it's wrong and says, "I'm just a pea in a pod. I can't help." So, the old "I'm just following orders", which followers of human right violators have used for ages - wrong is wrong, whither it's your paycheck or not. But hey, this is the G20, blood money for all!

White leaves us, apologizing and saying he's going to try and help. 10 hours, a sip of water, no food, nothing. The gay couple has curled up on each other trying to sleep and keep warm. The man next me says, "I'm jealous." I say "Me too." he says, "I'm starting to look for the cutest guy in here." I say, "Well, when in prison..." we chuckle, but it's an empty chuckle.

PART 8: "Food" for the disillusioned.

You know what smells? 40 guys who haven't showered in 30 hours with an open door outhouse and wet socks. I wonder what happened to Ben? Tension is mounting in the cell, some guys are getting wild-eyed. Some are starting to freak out. We've been in the cage for 10 hours, crammed together. Finally food arrives in the form of a plastic wrapped dinner roll with a slice a processed cheese in it, and slathered in butter. Everyone digs into their food, devouring them. It's around 8:30am. One guys asks "Why is there so much butter?" the officer replies "It's not butter, it's margarine." he jokes back " I can't believe it's not butter!" Some us laugh, some are too into the sandwich to notice anything else.

I suggest we write a message in the chain ceiling with our dixie cups for the people watching on the camera. We all decide "HELP" is the best option - maybe they'll do something and at least split us up. A quiet young guy in glasses puts it up. Nicely done. I find out that Kate's cell (Cell Block OL 5) made a peace symbol and that Ben's cell block (OL 2) made a chandelier from some danger tape the pulled inside, the cups and the ends of the plastic handcuffs the chewed off. Fancy. I hope the officers on the other sides of the cameras saw the dangerous people they had. Then two officers arrive and take away the green mohawk guy. We ask about the rest of us and we're told "Soon." That's all. We ask about our rites and and Toronto Court Services Special Constable # 99257 says, "We can hold you for as long as it takes to process you." I ask him "is that the law? What if it takes four years to process, you can hold us?" He says, "Yes". I tell him he's lying. I demand to know his name (his name tag was off) and says "Your fault if you believe me." looks nervous and quickly leaves. Never gave a name. We were told many times about being processed and we'd reach what they called "the Otherside". What was there? I don't know. They said that we'd have to wait again there anyways. What was this Otherside? Someone suggested we'd be turned into cheese slices. I said I would make terrible Soylent Green. A few guys laughed emptily.

PART 9: No Help for a Broken Heart.

We are thirsty again; it's been 15 hours in police custody. Still 39 guys overcrowded. Getting very scary. Awake for around 30 hours. Had one sip of water and cheese shit-bun. The 16 year old hasn't been able to call his parents. We yell for someone to help us, to help this 16 year old kid - for someone to do anything, to please help us. We get the attention of black female Toronto Special Constable Ottey, with short hair and glasses. We tell her about the 16 year old, she writes down his information and says she'll do something about it. I see her several times in the next few hours, ignoring us as we ask for an update. Poor kid. His poor parents. We see officer White a few more times, he always apologizes. They say they are looking for people they suspect of bigger crimes first - an officer comes by and yells "Islam! Is there an Islam in here?" Nope, no one by that name here.

We start loosing it a little bit. Saying to every office 'You know this is wrong look at us in here!" We hear from the other cells that some only have 20 or 15 guys. Why is this happening? How is this happening? Some guys start screaming, kicking the cage, and shaking it. We can hear this happening all over the place. We yell for help, some cops are laughing, some look devastated and helpless. I'm so thirsty and I'm screaming for water. It felt like nothing I've ever felt before. A prisoner. Innocent. Screaming at my captors for water. Right then my heart broke.

I looked around at the screaming men, the scared kid, the huddled couple, the disgusted Germans, the confused old man, the First Nations man who didn't seem surprised at all, the guards laughing, the others dismayed. Thought about the peaceful things I saw at the park, the grandmothers with AIDS orphans, Kate taken away in handcuffs, the kid with CP roughed up, begging for water and my heart simply broke. That's the only way I can describe it. My beloved country, my city. I looked down at my t-shirt - bright blue with a big white maple leaf and in bold, caps letters below: FREEDOM. I kid you not. I was proud to wear that shirt earlier that day. Now it stung. I was so helpless and empty. For those of you who may not think this sounds like much, or is justified, you weren't there. People from all walks of life were breaking in that place, including police officers. One guy lost it and went into "Fucking pigs! Fucking giving us swine flu! Fuck you!" I always thought people who said things like this don't appreciate that the police have a hard job and deal with so much crap. But right then, I got this guy and those people. People who have been victims of the police. Are all bad? No. But they give into their own kind of mob mentality. I saw the blood lust in those Riot Cops eyes and the disregarded from some of these guards. One man yelled 'We are people! We pay your salary through taxes!" the officer yelled "You don't paying any fucking taxes, look at you!", the university educated, employed man in awe asked "What the hell do you mean?" He walks away laughing.

We yell and scream, beg and cry out. Eventually officers arrive and say "You've been in here too long. Sorry, we'll move some of you" and take six guys, then another six. I went with the second six.

PART 10: Meet the New Rat Cage, Just Like the Old Rat Cage

I'm lead down to Cell Block OL 2. Across from us are large sections of industrial shelves and we can see into deck area where 4 trailers meet, they each have a door. The door I can see says "Booking Room 10" with a red light above it. Cops lean on the railing, laughing, and dancing when people chant slogans from their cells. They think it's hilarious. Coming on 15 hours in custody. There are already around 15 men in this cell. They tell us some guys got removed a while ago. There are many similar stories in here and another journalist. There is one guy in an English soccer jersey that tells me he was at a bar, stepped out for a smoke and was arrested. He was a huge soccer fan and was about to miss the big Germany/England match. The 16 year old was now in this cell. Around 10am there was a shift change in officers and we began begging for water again, maybe these guards would help us. I notice the evidence shelves under label OL 6, there are 5 bags - but there were 40 guys in that cell...where's all our stuff?

My mouth was pasty and dry. Some guys mouths were cracked. We were once again ignored and told to wait. More promises of the Otherside. Some try to sleep on the concrete and share the single metal bench. Officers wander the hallways aimlessly, some calling out names, asking each other what happened to certain prisoners -confused. Several officers repeatedly pass our cell asking for the same names and numbers. Why don't they know where they put anyone? There were hundreds of officers in this place. Why so slow to process? What was the charge? Where is our phone call? I beg for more water. I'm getting dizzy and have been up for 31 hours. The lights never dimmed, no blankets. The majority of everyone I've met so far lives in Toronto.

Another cheese sandwich arrives. My mouth was so dry I had trouble swallowing. Some guys used theirs as pillows. One man asks a guard if he has any kids, the guard says he does and so what? The man says that his two kids have no idea where he is and were expecting him two hours ago. The guard writes some info down and says he'll see what he can do. I'm seeing some spots and getting woozy.

PART 11: Lights Out Tommy Taylor

The next thing I know, I'm outside the cell, surrounded by a few guards. An older female guard with short dark hair and glasses is offering me a cup of watered down Tang and instructing my binds be cut. I'm given a second cup of juice and new, looser cuffs. They ask if I'm ok, I'm so confused about why I'm outside the cell and ask "what's going on?" they ask if I'm alright, and I say "I guess so" then they open the cage and put me back. The guys make room on the bench and sit me down. Asking if I'm ok. "What happened?" I ask with a now splitting headache. "You passed out man!" they tell me. Timber. Over I went, boom to the ground. They yelled to the guards for help, the officers wouldn't come in to get me so the guys had to pick me up and take me to the door. I was then up on my feet and being given juice...so the blanks were now filled in.

I passed out. After begging for water. I passed out and fell over in jail. What was happening to me? No sleep, no water. They men went nuts "Is this what it takes, a guy passing out! Christ!! What's wrong with you monsters!" My head kills, they ask for medical attention for me, I second the motion and we're told "Not right now". Guys slump to the floor in defeat. The female officer who helped me aids in bringing some watery orange Tang to all the cells. We line up, quietly and broken for our drink. I find out from Kate that this same female officer broke down and cried with the women at their cell. She was sobbing and apologizing "This is wrong, you shouldn't be here. This is all so wrong". There own officers couldn't handle it, she was worn down by the injustices she was being ordered to do. This happened in Toronto.

Across from our cell Special Constable C. Smit, a short white female officer with blonde/brown hair stands guard. We nicely talk with her through the cage. "Please tell us how you can do this? We are begging for water in here. This guy is only 16 and this guy passed out. Your co-workers laugh. They are joking to us about our rights and laughing at a disabled kid. You know this is wrong, what's happening" after too much of this, with tears in her eyes she breaks "I don't know anything, no one here knows anything! I'm not even a cop.." she then leaves in a hurry. Madness.

PART 12: Live from Cell Block OL 1, it's Test Their Logik!

So, from out of the blue in the cage next ours a rap starts. About the G8/G20. It's awesome, and holy hell. It's the rap from a video I watched about rap duo appearing at the party supposed to happen Saturday night. And holy hell, those rappers, Test Their Logik are in jail. And now they are singing live in prison. Every cage joining in the chorus "G8, G20, they few, we many!". They do the whole song, the place gets pumped and they finish with everyone singing. Then when it's over well clap, yell, cheer and rattle our cages. It was so awesome; it reminded me of when the prisoners hear the opera song in Shawshank Redemption. Brilliant moment for all of us in detention hell. The song is "Crash the Meeting", see it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ninV5yx7FW4

PART 13: See you in the Parking Lot Special Constable Milrod

The "fuck the pigs" guy is loosing his damn mind. A young guy on the new officer shift, with reddish hair and a goatee seems ready for a fight. He says to the guys in our cell "I want to see all you guys outside in the parking lot, then we'll see what's what. I'll take you down." Wow. He walks way laughing. I inform an actual Toronto Police Officer of what he said and his name. Next we saw Milrod, his nametag was gone and he didn't look at us our speak to us. It's on camera Milrod, with 30 witnesses.

The cops are stilling searching for random names. They claim processing is taking long. One officer says, "We had to arrest 1,000 people, so wait". We theorize that we'll be held until just before the legal 24 hours they can hold without charging, which coincides with the end of the G20 Summit. Spirits are broken, guys lying all around. Two are removed for processing and they tell us they are clearing our cell next. Finally. It's almost 3pm we're told when we ask for the time.

The only evidence I can see that it's the day is a tiny hold 200 feet up with light on the outside. I wonder if anyone knows what happened down at the Novotel or what's happening in here? We've only seen officers - no lawyers, medics or media (other than the ones in cages). It's getting close to 24 hours in custody. I haven't slept in 40 hours and new prisoners are being brought in.. We're told they are trying to process the women first, as they are out of room for female prisoners. I find a silver lining in that, hoping Kate might have gone home.

PART 14: Time to rush and time for rain.

So, they tell us they've doubled the staff and will be moving quickly. Some guys have pulled their hands out of the plastic cuffs. Some are too tight. Some guys are still in metal cuffs. 22 hours in cuffs. Bloody wrists. My head is in hell, my elbow hurts, and my wrists kill. I pull my one hand finally out. Finally I can stretch my arms, after 22 horrid hours. Rub my wrists, but it stings. I guess I always saw people rub their wrists in movies after removing handcuffs - that's bull, it hurts too much. The guards don't care that we're doing this. Why were we all in handcuffs if we were already locked up?

So, bags of evidence are rushed around as officers call out names, holding photographs of some guys, looking around. They mostly just call numbers. My wrist tag is pretty worn out by now, but I remember my number, 0106. The crazy fuck the police guy has exactly 12 stickers on his body with his name. Looks like the police had fun with him. I hear them say "Santos!" That's Ben's last name! I few minutes later I see Ben taken down a hallway with his evidence bag. Awesome I think. See you soon buddy!

We're told we're being taken straight outside. No processing, no interview, no phone calls. We're leaving. The officer who was there when we first arrived and made the Auschwitz joke comes back in for his next day of work, sees us and says, "Holy shit, you guys are still here? What the fuck is going on here?" and walks away. A few more guys are taken from our cell, we're all calling each other brother now, pounding our handcuffed fists and reminding each other of how we'll stay in touch and to tell everyone what's happening in here. Then there is a loud steady booming. A rainstorm. The sound fills the entire chasm. Sounds like heavy rain. They finally take the 16-year-old kid.

As time passes I think about what do when I'm out. Then I hear my name. I almost can't believe it. 23 hours. Was it over? I answered questions about my date of birth and address. They opened the door and led me away. Around the corner, back through another area to the fabled Otherside.

PART 15: Break on Through to the Otherside.

So, just after the G20 was officially over, just before the legal 24 hours they could hold me, I was being rushed out. Convenient. They found a way to keep 500 legal protesters from their Constitutional rights. In this country. Canada. My shirt feels dirty. When I make it to the Otherside I see signs that let me know I was a Level 2 Detainee and I was heading in Levels 3 & 4.

Inside this hanger, more cages and metal detectors. The L3 area housed small groups of men and women, looking battered, some bleeding. They all made peace sign and told me to tell everyone about them. Down another hall, rows of single person cells. These look like leaders, organizers, many bloody. I see the green mohawk guy. He says "Adios". I'm then put into another cage with some former cellmates. They tell me now to worry; they are taking us out one by one from here. There is a younger black guy with an awesome baseball cap; an officer asks, "How'd you get to keep that hat?" "Because I look good in it." he replies smoothly. We all laugh, including the officers. I'm taken out, cuffs cut off and put against a wall to have my photo taken again.

Against the wall I'm told that was arrested for "breach of peace", I will not be charged, but if I am arrested for this or a similar crime again, I will be charged and appear in court. Do not join any more protests and assemblies during the G20. Do you understand these terms." I said I did. He then said "And the bad news is it's raining cats and dogs out there. Take him out" Then, I try to take my jacket from my evidence bag, but am told to head out, don't stop.

I'm out in the pouring rain, it's around 9:30pm, still a little light. I'm told to cross the parking lot. There are large gates with a turnstile to the side. GO through the turnstile riot cops tell me. Out I go. A crowd across the street under tarps and umbrellas cheers for me. I see a basket of apples, I eat 4 and gulp a glass of water. Pats on the back. My mind is ablaze, I can't focus. I don't see Ben or Kate.

PART 16: Scream.

The detention centre was as Eastern Ave. and Pape. I have no money, no wallet, no phone. My head is aching, my wrists raw, body sore and awake for 43 hours. I walk up Pape to Queen. I have a long walk home to Jarvis/Gerrard. My keys and shoelaces are in a bag. Some people didn't get their shoes back. Standing in the rain. No shoes. The angry is whelming up inside, my brain is exploding, tears are filling my eyes and I scream and punch the construction wall next to me. How did this happen? Where are my friends? What did I do? Who was in charge in there? I'm crushed, lost and might as have been hit like by a truck.

I make my way finally to a pay phone by a bar. It's raining and dark. I make a collect call home, Kate answers. She's was out around 4pm and told nothing about myself. I have trouble speaking when she asks if I'm okay. I can barely keep it together. I tell her I'm fine. I'm not. She asks if they beat me - I don't know. I'm standing soaking wet in the rain on a collect call on a payphone with cars whizzing by. It took everything not to fall to my knees. She says take a cab, she's called my parents and the Legacy's are worried. Come home. She hasn't heard from Ben. He's not answering his phone. I finally hail a cab and fall into it.

PART 17: Homecoming.

I arrive home at 11:00pm. Kate's waiting outside. We hug and kiss. I'm starving, soaked, thirsty and sore. We go inside, I call my family and my friend Chris. I can't talk long, I just tell them I'm home and safe. Ben's mom hasn't heard from him, he's not answering his phone. We finally hear from him at 1:00am. They detained him and accused him of being Black Bloc. He was still in bright yellow shirt from work. Horrible things happened to him and Kate. I peel off my soaking wet Canada Freedom t-shirt. I throw it on the ground and get a lighter. I want to burn it. I don't. I drink juice, we eat. We're so sad. Our lives have changed. I was shivering and couldn't form sentences. A shower. I couldn't sleep. I had 38 emails. Where are you? My production team for the show I'm directing at SummerWorks wonder where I am, we have things to do. I send brief messages, make a note on facebook. I also notice how many people are raging about the protesters on facebook. Of course, the news is all about burning cop cars and broken windows. Things went exactly as I said when I saw those photos the previous afternoon. Jesus, it worked. Everyone got spoon fed a justification for the 1.2 Billion spent.

NOW:
That's all true. Think about it. Is this Canada? Do you think this is right? You don't want to live in a country where this happens. It's changed my whole outlook and attitude on life. My responsibility to every human being in this world. Plato said, "The Price of Apathy towards public affairs is to be Ruled by Evil Men." I used that as a tagline for a play I co-wrote and directed in the 2006 Toronto Fringe, called Lifeboat. Back then I felt pretty good that I explored these issues in my theatre work. Now I know it has to be a part of my life. The World needs you. Educate yourself. Your comfort is shame; your looking away kills people. You're not small. You're not helpless. You can something. You have a voice, don't let them silence you before you even try to speak.

This guy, Dan, was in my cell, he’s gay and was segregated by homophobic police:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ntcr5E_LE7M&feature=related

Think this is bullshit? Fine, stick with the mainstream media, but look what they say:

Read what happened to other at The Toronto Star:
http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/torontog20summit/article/829921--i-will-not-forget-what-they-have-done-to-me

Read what happened to National Post photographers:
http://news.nationalpost.com/2010/06/27/12572/

FInd some truth:
http://www.prisonplanet.com/peaceful-protesters-attacked-arrested-while-cop-car-arsonists-left-alone.html

Watch an account from a prisoner, jump to 2:20 minutes:
http://www.youtube.com/user/Nostos5#p/a/f/0/J1rfVnllhTU

Read all the news you and be your own judge:
http://2010.mediacoop.ca/

Added comments by Tommy: This report has appeared on Blogs and facebook pages in 21 different countries to date (it was posted June 29) and translated into 7 languages. I myself have received 4,922 messages of love, support, shame and hope from Canadians and the rest of the world. My story has been featured in almost every major news outlet in Canada, as well as all the independents. All I ask is for the Detention Centre footage be shown, not to mention the street CCTV footage. We need a public inquiry into G20.

I wrote this when I got home, please forgive spelling and grammar issues..

The future of the euro and Germany's role.

2010-06-25T11:36:00.001-04:00

A discussion with David Creelman about the international financial crisis and the future outlook for the Euro based on a lecture by George Soros at Humbolt University, Germany, June 23rd 2010

Donald Currie June 24th wrote:

An outstanding address by Soros, long but worth reading. He is saying essentially the same thing as Krugman and Siglitz, namely you can't penny pinch your way out of this financial mess if the euro is to survive. The alternatives for Germany and the rest of Europe will be much worse.

The same argument is taking place in Britain and the US. With the Republicans likely to gain control of Congress this fall with their grab bag looney and light weight supporters in the Tea Party, evangelicals, and naive libertarians (and any good Republicans in hiding for fear of losing their seats to this anarchic mob), it won't be a pretty picture. Dumping social security and leaving the bankers and polluters untouched is hardly a solution during a time when real unemployment is 16% and double that amongst the young.

David Creelman June 24th replied: Here are a few thoughts:
1. The overall financial system
It's good to let people take on some debt; it makes the economy function. However if you let someone take on millions of dollars of debt you create a huge crisis, not only for them when they go bankrupt, but also for all the other people who provided goods and services and were never repaid.

The financial system is totally out of control and needs to be run in an incredibly conservative manner to avoid these blow ups.

2. We may be too far gone to avoid anything but a real f**-up
Much the same point: If someone owes $100k to friends and family then they may never be able to pay it off, but with some debt forgiveness and hard work on part of the debtor then you can reach a solution. But if they owe a million then the losses are too large, lots of innocent people will be going bankrupt; there is simply no reasonable solution, it's a catastrophe. It's like a bad marriage where so many hurtful things have been said that it is beyond redemption, without even hope of a friendly divorce, it's a catastrophe with no solution.

Our big problem may be that every economic solution presented will lead to catastrophe and it becomes impossible even to make a rationale choice between the huge catastrophe and the huger one.

3. Innocent people are going to pay big time
In the end there are trillions of dollars on the books directly or indirectly representing debt that will never be paid back. If you think you have $1000 in the bank you are wrong. A good hunk of that is actually bad debt.

The questions are: How do write this debt off? and of course Who takes the loss?

There are only two ways to write debt off -- bankruptcy (or some equivalent) or inflation.
Inflation while a huge catastrophe may be the gentler of the two methods; the risk being hyper-inflation.

Who loses is the central battle arena. The Chinese will lose trillions, the Germans billions, the American workers gazilllions.
Many Greeks will lose everything.

I think a huge problem is that this is something that cannot even be talked about or negotiated in the open. As in an ugly divorce it's a fight to the death that destroys the assets rather than finds a way to share them.

4. Is this possible?
I know this is not possible in practice but let's talk theory. If Obama put in a special tax of 50% on the wealth of the top 1% of Americans then he could probably write off all the bad debt in the US. The rich would still be insanely rich but instead of having millions of individuals and businesses on paper owing money they can never repay, all debts would be in the range where they are being serviced.

This all revolves around my sense that the key is getting bad debt off the books.

Is China is winning a war without firing a shot?

2010-04-08T14:46:00.003-04:00

My comments and friend's rebuttals

The Republicans are playing up a potential meltdown coming because of the immense national debt. Curious that they don't hesitate to approve expenditures when the flag is involved; deathly against any regulation seeing it as a government intrusion into freedom, and never suggest any form of tax increase to pay for anything. They see the dismantlement of government and it's social support systems as the way out. Libertarianism creeps into all of this.

The Democrats see heavy debt loaded investments ( Stiglitz, Krugman, Obama) as the way out. They also shun raising taxes and Democrats never hesitate to fund flag waving.

The public is suffering, angry, confused and scared. In short the political process is deeply divided and heading for a collision course..Hopefully violence will be avoided.

In the meantime China is winning a war without firing a shot. The yuan is estimated to be undervalued by at least 40% and this has resulted in a massive transfer from Western countries of manufacturing and services, including the jobs and technology that goes with it. China is building an immense cash reserve while the US and European countries face a crisis of increasing debts. A significant portion of these funds are now being directed to placing investments in corporations and resources in the indebted countries. These funds are also financing an improvement in the internal infrastructure and services within China but in this area they have a long way to go.

Financial centres in the west are demanding that the Yuan be fairly evaluated or at least floated in currency markets. Meanwhile corporations who have moved their jobs to China are improving their competitive position in the short term while offering lower prices domestically. They are happy with the status quo and will use their influence to resist any changes.

In the meanwhile China will continue to build investments in the West and predictably this will increasingly influence ( and in some sectors control) any policy positions governments might wish to make. It represents the eventual demise of Western dominance and with China and its Asian neighbours becoming the new America. They are doing it the smart way through education and investments. Let the West waste their energies while playing in the sandbox with their bombs while Rome burns.

David's response,

I have a professor friend who is just got back from China (he visits several times a year) and what struck him were the challenges:
- drought is a big issue and Beijing has to take it's water from the drought ridden country side
- a large cadre of yuppie brats has got rich very quickly
- a large cadre of people in government have got very rich through corruption
- pollution makes it hard to breath in some places...

But all this just makes it worse. China is not cruising to dominance in a comfortable way. They have serious problems which will make it difficult for them to deal with the world in a measured way. They fear mass unemployment, unrest, resource crises...lots of reasons for them to take an unenlightened view of the needs of other countries.

Economists think that China and India will just catch up to the US someday and everyone will be vastly richer; but it looks a lot like a zero-sum battle where every gain by someone is a loss by someone else.

Peter's reply.

Yes, economists think that China and India will eventually catch up to the US someday and everyone will be vastly richer; but it looks a lot like a zero-sum battle where every gain by someone is a loss by someone else.

David that is the basis of "the world's population will stabilize at 12 billion". What a load of malarkey. Whether it be global warming or pollution or water or food or employment, the elephant in the room is over population. The only way it will stabilize is by disaster keeping up with the birth rate.

Until all the religions can get over their sexual hangups (Dear God, RECREATIONAL SEX) and birth control is accepted universally and becomes a universally accepted "solution" the planet is perpetually taking one step forward and two steps back.

I have seen global warming scientists and others state that when they raise this issue they become pariahs. The reason I suspect it is ignored is religiosity and it is a problem to which there is no workable (scientific)solution (or a least a workable one that does not confront "rights " issues). It in fact has an easy solution, scientifically, but it is so wrapped up in religion and rights that it will create violent conflict.

There is no way out.

The Music of Alfred Tokayer

2009-06-22T04:45:00.021-04:00

ALFRED TOKAYER: (1900-1943) A COMPOSER CAUGHT IN THE MAELSTROM OF HISTORY

Sixty eight years after Irene’s father’s deportation to Germany in 1943 his yellowing manuscripts are coming to life with a CD made of his compositions. The process was started in 2006 by my son and daughter, Peter and Cathy, who met up with three very fine and well known Canadian musicians, Norman Hathaway, violinist, Catherine Wilson, pianist and Leslie Fagan, soprano who gathered some other musicians and shortly thereafter from these ageing manuscripts put together a concert in Toronto of several pieces. This concert represented the first hearing of this lovely music, and for us, and I know for many in the hall, it was a moving experience.

In the meantime in France a concert pianist, Bertrand Giraud, who was giving a concert in our home town in southern France, Rieux-Minervois, met with Irene and took copies of the manuscripts back to Paris, was impressed and in collaboration with Amaury du Closel, a well known conductor prepared a CD in 2007 of about twenty pieces. This preparation kept Irene busy researching libraries in England, France, Morocco and Germany about her father’s past and including finding another manuscript (added to the CD) and copyright evidence of other pieces that as yet we haven't recovered.

In May 2008 we attended our first a concert in Paris of some pieces of Alfred Tokayer’s music. Amaury du Closel had written a book entitled Les Voix Etouffées du IIIe Reich (The Voices Stifled by the Third Reich). It provided the basis for the formation of the ensemble of musicians who have since undertaken an ongoing series of concerts to present this music in towns and cities throughout Europe. As of June 2009 there have been approximately 15 concerts, 12 by ensemble Voix Etouffées, and three independently by the pianist, Bertrand Giraud. These concerts have taken place in France (Paris 3, Rieux- Minervois, Orleans), Germany (Koethen, Magdebird, Halberstadt, Rostock, Permasens), Roumania (Bucharest), Austria (Vienna) and Poland (Auschwitz). The program for the remainder of the 2009 season and 2010 will be announced shortly.

Irene was hoping that someday she would just hear this music and what has occurred has exceeded her wildest dreams.

The following history of Alfred Tokayer was written by Amaury Du Closel
“Alfred Tokayer, conductor, composer, born march 21, 1900 in Koethen”- an entry as banal as this could well have been found, among thousands of others in the DICTIONARY OF JEWS IN MUSIC’, published in 1940 by Theo Stengel and Herbert Gerigk. This sinister pamphlet clearly reflects the single-mindedness with which Nazi Germany, basking in the glow of its victories, applied itself to the persecution of Jews on every level of the social scale. By making itself the instrument of a policy which used denunciation in the service of the Final Solution, and targeting, in particular, the musical community, it contributed to the deportation and assassination of countless musicians, many of whom were simple folk -from music teachers to Cabaret artists - who had neither the means, nor the contacts which might have allowed them to take the road into exile. Some years ago the German musicologist Eva Weissweiler, attempted to discover the fate of almost two hundred of those victims whose story ends in most cases with the mention “died. in Riga, in Majdanek, in Auschwitz”. Alfred Tokayer died in Sobibor” Yet Alfred Tokayer was the victim of another denunciation, that of the country in which he sought shelter with his daughter – France.

That it should have taken 65 years for his music to be revived, says much about the efficiency of the cultural policies of the Nazis, which for a long time survived the collapse of the Third Reich. When Hitler published “Mein Kampf”, he seized on a theme that had become central in German debate since 1918: that of its cultural identity. The revolutionary movements following the defeat, the humiliation of the Treaty of Versailles and the economic crisis which followed, the occupation of the Ruhr by French Troops, all contributed, and in particular in the more conservative classes, to the fear that due to the influence of foreign forces, Germany was about to lose its soul. In this fertile and paranoid soil, a new nationalism developed and found its way into the musical sphere. In 1919 Hans Pfitzner denounced not only the influence of Bolshevism and Americanism but also of “Degeneration” that were becoming aspects of modernity in theArts.

In the chapters dealing with Modern Art, Hitler, in Mein Kampf used the terms “bolshevist” and “degenerate”. These concepts were distilled into anti-Semitism: Bolshevism becoming the weapon by which the Jews seek to dominate the world, and “Degeneration” the natural proclivity of the Jewish Race that would make it “the destroyer of culture” When he came to power, the cultural policies of the Nazis where built on these theories and would soon, as early as the end of 1933, result in a cultural apartheid. An organisation named “Juedischer Kulturbund” was created in Berlin and other German cities. It was reserved for Jews only, a farce, since after the Nuernberg laws of 1935, Jews had already become second class citizens who were no longer permitted to perform in German Opera Houses and Concert Halls. In May and June 1938, when the Reich stepped up its campaign of anti-Semitism, an exhibition named Entartete Musik (Degenerate Music) organized by friends of Alfred Rosenberg and modeled after the Exhibition Entartete Kunst (Degenerate Art) held the previous year in Munich(1937), decried the influence of the Jews on German music.

Alfred Tokayer did not wait for the Kristallnacht to leave his homeland.. He was born in Koethen, a town in Sachsen-Anhalt - where Johann Sebastian Bach was chapel master at the court from 1717 to 1723 - into a Jewish family originating from Bistritz, a town in Transsylvania at that time part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, but today part of Roumania. There, the family lived in abject poverty, in conditions resembling those described 40 years later by Albert Londres in his book, ‘The Wandering Jew’, in which he investigates Jewish populations all over the world. This poverty, coupled with the fear of pogroms, and repeated violence against Jewish communities in the easternmost sector of the empire, led many families at the turn of the century to seek a better life in Western Europe. This was the case of the family of Norbert Glanzberg, future composer of songs for Edith Piaf and Yves Montant. Coming from Galicia that family settled in the town of Wurzbuerg in Germany in 1910. Moritz Tokayer, future father of the composer, is ahead of this wave by almost 20 years, arriving in Berlin in 1891. In 1899 he marries Gertrud Simon, a cousin of Bruno(Schlesinger )Walter. The couple settles in Koethen where Alfred is born on March . It is there that he begins the study of music. During the year 1919/20 he continues at the Hoch’sche Konservatorium in Frankfurt where he also attends courses in philosophy and economics, subjects he had studied at the university of Berlin the previous year.

It must be said that much of the life of Alfred Tokayer is almost devoid of documentation, because many archives have either been lost during his exile, or destroyed in the war. For example, it has been impossible to retrace his whereabouts between 1920 and 1924 at which time he obtains his first professional engagement at the Opera of Bremen. We know that he studied piano, chamber music, accompaniment, orchestration, conducting and composing with some of the most prominent musicians of the time, among others, Ernst Toch, a great and as yet too little known composer who was forced to flee Germany in1933.

In Bremen, where he remains until 1930 he is conductor and voice coach. The musical director of the Opera is none other than Manfred Gurlitt, the creation of whose opera “Wozzeck’ unfortunately coincided, that same year, with the work of Alban Berg . In 1938, when he can no longer exercise his profession, Gurlitt emigrates to Japan. Alfred
Tokayer, is voice coach and conductor of operetta and light musical entertainment, and is well received by the critics of the day. In 1927 he marries a colleague, the singer Lucie Rena.

From 1931 to 1933, they are both engaged at the Volksoper in Berlin. Alfred Tokayer collaborates with Max Reinhardt, Oskar Strauss, Theo Mackeben, the brothers Vladigerov. He becomes voice coach to Kaethe Dorsch and again conducts operetta and light music (Note: Kaethe Dorsch was then to Germany what Gertrude Laurence was to the English speaking public). Like many musicians with modest incomes, he works on orchestrations, in particular the operettas of Kuennecke. Lucie, while being the understudy of Kaethe Dorsch, helps make ends meet as an usherette at the cinema.

When Hitler comes to power, and the Chamber of Music of the Reich is put into place, Alfred Tokayer is most likely deprived of any remaining possibility to exercise his profession. Simultaneously, the application of the legislation depriving Jews of legal status gets underway, making his family one of its first victims. On Mai 5, 1935 their German citizenship, so proudly acquired in 1919, is cancelled and their possessions given to “more deserving” Aryans. On december 16, 1935 the once prosperous business built by Moritz Tokayer is forced into bankruptcy.and the family takes the road into exile: Alfred flees to France, his parents to Yugoslavia.

The waves of immigrant musicians, mostly Jewish, who arrive as conditions in Germany worsen, are not welcomed into the French musical community. On November 26, 1933 the composer Florent Schmitt interrups a concert of the works of Kurt Weill at the Theatre des Champs-Elysees with cries of “Long live Hitler! We have enough bad musicians in France without taking in all the Jews of Germany”, and some journalists, in the name of defense of the national culture, support this view, denouncing the “vulgarity” of the songs of Silver Lake, performed that night by Madeleine Grey. Reviewers like Rene Dumesnil, Alfred Bruneau, Pierre-Octave Ferroud, Lucien Rabatet lead the charge in attacking “this Jewish-German Virus, ..this large contingent of émigrés”, “these germs of decadence brought with the invasion of the German Jews.” A hitherto latent anti-Semitism is suddenly revealed and not only in musical circles, but in the society as a whole. Even the “anti-boche” feelings of World War I are revived. When rules and regulations are put in place to restrict employment for foreign musicians, “to work at all is something of a tour de force”, writes the composer and conductor Hans Walter David ) as early as 1933. He continues:…”first of all, there is a large stamp in my passport stating that all professional activity is forbidden. Furthermore, the exercise of the profession is dependant on a membership in a professional association: conductors need to be members of the conductors’ guild, composers of the association of authors etc.
Since these organisations admit only French citizens, the immigrant alien is excluded from all work, from all income.”

And yet, Tokayer seems to adapt reasonably well to his new life in Paris. He keeps in contact with his fellow immigrants, but gravitates to French musicians such as Manuel Rosenthal and Reynaldo Hahn. Through them, he meets the countess Lili Pastre who during the occupation sponsored and protected many Jewish artists in her property at Montredon near Marseille. She provides him with some income, and also finances the education of his daughter, Irene, who has come to join him in 1938. He accompanies recitals, works on arrangements, among others, for the composer Maurice Thiriet, who wrote much of the music for the films of Marcel Carne. While prisoner of war in Germany, Thiriet will lend his name to several Jewish composers working underground, among them Joseph Kosma, so that they might receive the copyright income that is otherwise blocked by the Sacem .(Societe des Acteurs, Compositeurs et Editeurs de Musique) Why would Tokayer have registered his works with the SABAM (Society of Belgian authors and composers) when he was living in Paris? One might guess that his candidature (if there was one) was rejected, because of policies put in place by SACEM to discriminate against composers, especially Jewish, fleeing the Nazi regime. A subsequent study on the spoliation of Jews led by Jean Matteoli states: “ For ten years prior to the arrival of the Germans in Paris, the management of the Sacem, targeted foreign members thought to be too numerous in the society. This Xenophobia led to the implementation of discriminatory rules, which caused several foreign composers living in France to join more liberal organisations, in Belgium or Italy”. In the case of Tokayer however, these questions must remain hypothetical.

In 1936 Tokayer is called to London to orchestrate and conduct the music for the film “The Robber Symphony” directed by Friedrich Feher ) This is to be the first film – before Walt Disney’s “Fantasia” to be based on music. The film, at the time, is not well received (it has to-day ardent defenders) yet the music is unanimously applauded. While in London, he meets one of his fellow-students, the conductor Heinz Unger, who had made his debut with the Berlin Philharmonic in 1919, but was forced into into exile in l933. In 1948, he creates and becomes musical director of the North York Philharmonic Orchestra in Toronto. It seems both Unger and Tokayer were students of Ernst Toch.

At the end of 1938 he is chosen to participate in the broadcast of laureates organised by Radio 37. This private radio station had been opened the previous year by Jean Prouvost, director of the daily ‘Paris Soir’ and folded with the arrival in 1940 of the German troops in Paris. In a letter dated December 27, 1938, Tokayer alludes to the concert that was broadcast from the Tour Eiffel. The letter also mentions the various steps he is undertaking in order to bring his parents to France. In this he receives help from Marcel Monteux, the son of the industrial who founded a large shoe manufacturing industry, an art lover whose villa in Antibes was decorated by Ker-Xavier Roussel a painter of the Nabi school of Art, and who, in 1931, sponsored La Chienne by Jean Renoir. Another source of help is a Mr.Singer the nephew of the Princess Polignac, nee Singer whose salon played such a great part in musical creation in France between the two wars. His efforts seem to have been succesful, since in 1940, when he joins the Foreign Legion, Moritz and Gertrud Tokayer reside at 12, Rue Fenoux in the 15th arrondissement. In the same letter, Tokayer mentions that he is rehearsing Offenbach’s “La Chatte Metamorphosee” for the New Year’s concert, probably in his own arrangement for 2 pianos and four voices.

When war is declared on September l, l939, Alfred Tokayer, considered an enemy alien, is interned in the camp of Sourioux, near Vierzon in the Cher that was originally built to house Spanish refugees. Here he shares the fate of several composers –Erich Itor Kahn, Marcel Rubin, Louis Saguer, Eric-Paul Steckel, Rudolf Goehr……all interned to allow the French authorities to determine “ who presented a danger to the country and who could be used in the war effort”. Voluntary engagement in the Foreign Legion reduced official suspicion of any fifth column activity. Like many others (Max Deutsch volunteered as soon as war broke out, as did Erich Itor Kahn, Paul Arma or Joseph Kosma but who were rejected as physically unfit) Tokayer joins the Legion on December 8 1939. He arrives at the Legion Headquarters -Sathonay - on december 17 and remains there until March 1940: it is probably here that he writes the Cantique de Sathonay. He is then sent to Sidi-Bel-Abbes in Algeria, and later to Khenifra, in Morrocco. He is assigned to teach music at the conservatory of Meknes where he also conducts, in 1940 ,“Une Journee de mon Enfant” for a local station of Radio Maroc.

When he is demobilized in 1940, he settles near Limoges where friends and colleagues from Paris had fled. He continues to make music, gives concerts, plays the village harmonium, brings music into a nearby home for Jewish refugee children, even mounting a production of Offenbach’s “Chanson de Fortunio”. In 1942, the Allies land in North Africa and the Germans reply by invading the whole of France. The anonymity of a large city now looks safer and he decides to return to Paris. The Abbe Robert, priest of the village where he had found refuge and who has become a friend, helps him acquire a false identity. Now called Andre Tharaud he returns to Paris with his partner, Mado. Early in 1943, he leaves Paris again, hoping to reach England via Portugal. He and Mado are arrested at the demarcation line. Mado is freed, but Alfred Tokayer is sent to the camps of Beaune-la-Rolande and Drancy- where, by miracle, he meets his parents, Moritz and Gertrud. A few days later all three board the convoy to Sobibor….

It is to-day impossible to ascertain whether the pieces on this recording constitute the entire musical output of Alfred Tokayer , especially since the only work preceding his exile is ‘Das Lied vom Wein’. All others were composed later. We know that when he registered his work with the SABAM on July 18, 1939, almost all the other pieces on this recording had already been composed. These include the four melodies that constitute the suite Une Journee de Mon Enfant: Teddy, Quand je suis mechante, Hirondelle and Berceuse. The Symphonic Suite, based on the same work dates from 1936 and does not seem to have been registered with the SABAM. La Petite Musique pour Clavecin et Orchestre a Cordes is composed after 1939. The orchestrations for 2 of the songs, “Arriere Ete” and “Une Femme a Passe” are added in that same year. This catalogue of works created in exile, which includes most of the vocal pieces, could be seen as, a hommage to its adoptive country, because the influence of the French School of that day is so profound. There are echoes of Ravel, the Group of Six, especially Poulenc. Alfred Tokayer masters the French language very shortly after his arrival. He choses French texts for all his works: Maurice Merillot, “Une Journee de mon Enfant” Theophile Gautier, the Belgian poet Fernand Severin, Emile Pauly and his partner, Mado. He is determined to adapt to his new life and to become part of French musical life. Yet his music has echoes of his family’s roots in central Europe. In particular, some of the orchestrations of “Journee de Mon Enfant” evoke strong memories of Gustav Mahler. This piece is, incidentally, rather unusual: each movement starts with a song and continues with several progressions played by the orchestra; yet the songs are not a central theme upon which variations are built and the Suite takes on the form of a collage. The seven songs, in their brevity, are inspired by the French model. Their somber aspect leads us to believe that they are composed after 1940 and reflect the dark side of the times.

The Stifled Voices of the Third Reich have long been relegated to silence. Many composers who became the victims of the brown terror were not only eliminated from the world of the living, but also from the memory of generations that followed. To this day, perseverance and a solid dose of optimism are required of a family who dares demand that the voice of the victim be heard. Thanks are due to Irene and her children, the descendants of Alfred Tokayer, for finding a way.

Everything Up For Sale

2009-06-12T17:04:00.174-04:00

January 15th 2014
Announcement by the Right Honourable Stephen Crapaud, Prime Minister of Canada and leader of the Libertarian Party

My fellow citizens we have been elected on a platform to lead a government that gives all Canadians the God given right to run their own lives. To this end we are committed to a major reduction in the size and power of government. I promise you a much smaller government with lower taxes for all our citizens. As part of this reduction we will eliminate regulations on businesses and banking thereby allowing our good business leaders to freely manage their businesses. The remaining members of the Conservative Party who were defeated in their re-election bid in 2013 are in full support of these objectives thus giving us a solid majority to carry out this mandate.

Smaller Government means of course selling off government owned assets. This first sell-off initiatives will include opening bids for all national parks, lakes and highways. In the spirit of Globalization and of course to gain the highest prices, the bids will be open to foreign investors. Asian, US, Middle Eastern and Venezuelan state and private investment funds have already expressed a keen interest. On this grand scale we estimate that these sales will pay down the national debt and foreign royalties will eliminate any need to place a tax burden on the citizens of Canada.

Let me remind you that our successful 2010 campaign was based on these commitments. May I also remind you that this reform was enthusiastically supported by 65% of Canadian voters. We can take great pride in our accomplishments to date. Here are some of our achievements to date.

Major tax reductions have already been achieved by integrating our medical services with the privatized Obama plan of our great neighbours to the south and thus eliminating socialized single payer medicine. Your personal costs may rise but this is a small price to pay to turn back socialism.
A contract has been signed with Blackwater to manage and expand our prison system. As part of this expansion Blackwater will be adding prisoners from foreign wars. This means more revenue from abroad for Canada and Guantanamo Bay will finally be finally closed.
We have also begun the process of eliminating the Old Age Pension and turning the Canada Pension over to investment houses.This may cause some hardships but we must all contribute to making a stronger Canada less dependent on government. If necessary soup kitchens will be expanded so no one need starve.

June 26th 2014 Announcing the Sale Of Crown Properties

I am pleased to announce the following successful bids

1. The Dubai Investment Group (DIG) has won the bid to acquire the Trans Canada Highway from Manitoba to the West Coast. After much negotiation a price of 650 billion dollars was agreed upon. Mr Rasheil bin Mahoody, of DIG has been appointed to the Chairman's position and will shortly appoint his board members and executives to run this enterprise.
2. The China Investment Fund (CIF) was the winning bidder for the National Parks located in British Columbia and Alberta. The agreed price was 1.7 trillion dollars and will include all hunting, fishing, timber and mineral rights. Mr Lee Con Lee of Shanghai has agreed to assume the position of Chairman of the Board. He will be bringing his executive team, yet to be announced, from China.

As expected the Manitoba and Ontario Governments are raising some objections about selling off their sections of the Trans Canada Highway and Ontario adds the Great Lakes and and the St Lawrence River to this dispute. Quebec politicians object to everything and are threatening independence again, but we are nevertheless confident we will resolve all these disputes shortly so that the bidding for these assets can get underway. As for Hudson's Bay and the Arctic Islands and Northwest Passage their sale is off the table for now until disputes between Russia and the USA are resolved.

July 12th 2014 Announcement

We are pleased to announce that the Chairmen of DIG and CIF have jointly submitted to the Federal Government their business plans for developing and managing these acquisitions,. The Trans Canada Highway will become a toll road. The roads, rail lines, pipelines and waterways entering the park will exact revenue from people and vehicles on entry and royalties will be applied to all shipments of minerals, and timber leaving these properties. In order to encourage the high price CIF was willing to pay and in accordance with Libertarian principles these operations will be unhindered by any form of regulation over the exploitation and methods employed. The Greens, NDP and some Liberals are agitating for environmental regulations and demonstrations are planned across Canada. Be assured that our police and military will be in attendance and will firmly deal with any trouble makers. In the spirit of Ayn Rand and the inspiration of Milton Friedman and Alan Greenspan, we have complete confidence that leaders of DIG and CIF will do the right thing.

August 17th 2014 PM's Progress Report

My fellow citizens, I am pleased to announce that DIG report that the tolls on the highway have been working successfully these past months. Traffic has continued to build. It has become clear however that operating costs are above expectations and the DCF Board have decided that it will be be necessary to lay off 40,000 employees to be replaced with less costly labour brought in under contract from the Philippines.

CIF have reported that the Parks are encountering serious problems with many campers and Native People entering via trails and through the brush and refusing to pay the fees. CIF have announced that they have no alternative but to build an electric fence around these properties. This will require 6,700 miles of electrified fencing. We are pleased to announce that a contract has been signed with India Steel of New Delhi to undertake this project.

December 5th 2014 Progress Report

My fellow citizens, this is a plea for the public's cooperation. There have been Native Peoples uprisings and violence over the park fencing project and a large group of unruly leftists have joined them. It has something to do with their hunting rights and the migration of animals. It is unfortunate that the NDP, Green Party, some Liberals and even some Conservatives are supporting their misguided cause. There have been reports of threats and violent confrontations. The employees of India Steel in fear for their lives have elected to go home. The RCMP have been called in to monitor the situation, Dick Cheney has been contracted as a consultant to offer advice on where we go from here (I understand he is very dangerous with a gun) and he is advising that we negotiate with Blackwater to see what can be done. You can appreciate that with the World watching our Global reputation is at stake here.

December 15th 2014 update

DIG report that the highways in Alberta and through Rogers Pass were closed for ten days owing to heavy snow storms. A 175 mile traffic back up of cars and trucks occurred and two sections of the highway have experienced serious avalanches that have yet to be cleared. We now realize that Dubai management and their Philippine staff had never encountered snow before and were staying indoors. We are currently bringing back some Canadian staff on a part time basis to tackle this problem. Needles to say this will be expensive and in order to sustain profit objectives tolls will be increased, Jan 1st 2015 by 30%.

June 12th 2015

My dear citizens, due to the public's unfortunate resistance to our new rates, highway usage has seriously dropped with excessive loads now backing up on secondary roads. DIG reports the TC highway has become unprofitable until this resistance is resolved. We have also learned that some automated toll booths have been blown up and traffic is entering freely, This must stop. Since the RCMP are fully committed to the problems in the parks we have asked the the Canadian Military as peace keepers to monitor the situation along the highways.

June 19th 2015

Mr Rasheil bin Mahoody of the DIG has announced that the toll system has broken down and traffic is defiantly moving freely again despite the presence of the military who are simply sitting by. Without funds the DIG has no alternative but to close the highways and send the Philippine workers home. Many are seeking asylum and the Immigration Department has this under review.

June 26th 2015

As for the parks it has become an all out war with our Native People and their leftist supporters doing battle with Blackwater. This is the height of the mosquito and black fly season and it has been reported that this is causing a great deal of suffering amongst Blackwater's mercenaries who have never encountered such a siege before. They have therefore asked permission to employ Drone aircraft (that have proved to be so successful in killing and terrorizing civilians and a few of the enemy in Afghanistan and Pakistan and can be courageously operated from comfortable offices in Texas).

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police in protest and in fear of the Drones have gone on strike. It is their first strike since their mutiny in 1876 to protest against an unsavoury leader in Bow River, a location now known as Calgary, If Blackwater and their Drone attacks fail to win this struggle soon, all national parks will be closed until further notice.

August 7th 2015. Final report from The Right Honourable Stephen Crapaud

My fellow Canadians, I am speaking to you from the bunker under the Parliament buildings. The Native Canadians now supported by so many leftists have taken control of the buildings. I am watching on my television the large, noisy and ugly crowds outside celebrating this disaster, undoubtedly NDPers, Greens, some Liberals and a few Conservatives. The RCMP and Military are standing aside; simply peace keepers and lacking backbone. My fellow Canadians, you have let this government down, I see on the TV monitor that this mob is now burning me in effigy and I fear for my life. This leaves me with no choice but to accept the Governor General's request for this Government to resign and for me to fly to Columbia in South America where their democratic government will welcome and protect me.

Aftermath as reported in The Globe and Pail. October 22nd 2015

The public is in an uproar. The elections of 2014 based on tax reforms were overwhelmingly supported by wealthy Canadians and most Albertans. Pensioners and the working class were deeply divided and it was looked upon negatively by box store employees and the unemployed. Since this latter group rarely cast a vote, the results from the election were inevitable. As for religious fundamentalists this chaos seemed to have all the signs of the Rapture. The Governor General has called for a temporary coalition government (in my opinion The Tower of Babel) to attend to immediate business until an election be called.

Quebec announced separation on Sept 17th and has formed a political alliance with France and will be adopting the Euro. Both the English and French populations in Quebec are solidly behind this.

The DIG and CIF ( the sell-off projects) have been declared bankrupt and the Royal Bank and the Bank of Montreal and a host of hedge funds and their bond holders are left holding the bag. These losses combined with the elimination of income taxes have left the Feds strapped. They hope to raise four trillion dollars to cover ongoing government expenses and to bail out the banks. Income from the taxpayer will be raised to pay for this. The bankrupt ventures(CIF and DIG),the banks and the government are currently working with a variety of foreign venture capitalists, Russian oligarchs, and the Chinese to find solutions.

To complicate matters the Greens, NDP and some Liberals have entered into discussions with Chavez and Morales to join Latin America's Bolivarian Revolution, the Native people have declared Nationhood in the parks, and Alberta, Saskatchewan and BC are seriously considering the formation of a Western Nation that will include the NW Territories and the Yukon. The Maritime Provinces have been lying low in all this until it all sorts out. Major oil findings have just been announced off the coast of Nova Scotia so they just might go the way of Norway.

When last heard from Stephen Crapaud is living comfortably on the coast of Colombia. His very young third wife found the past two years very stressful and decided not to join him. The were subsequently divorced and she is now happily married to her ex tennis coach who has been her good friend for many years.

Latest Report: December 3rd 2015

Stephen Crapaud and an 18 year old woman who was visiting with him at the time have been kidnapped. FARC claims responsibility and has taken them off into the jungle. They are asking for an undisclosed sum from the Canadian Government for their release. What remains of the Canadian Government has this situation under review.

Assessing Obama's First 100 days - conversation with friends

2009-05-19T05:00:00.014-04:00

George, thanks for passing on Matts thoughtful note to me. There is no question in my mind that Obama was clearly the best choice for America and it is too early to pass judgement. His words during the campaign raised exceptionally high expectations not only in America but throughout the world, a sense that a remarkable leader was emerging that would vigorously bring about much needed changes. My reading of the first hundred days is that many on the left have been disappointed by his incessant compromising and with some of his selections of key advisers he is listening to. The next hundred days will begin to answer whether this caution reflects a conviction that for political reasons big goals must be achieved by taking small steps, or whether he is simply a clever and moderate man with good intentions but devoid of any deep convictions in contrast to those that guided Jefferson, Lincoln, Teddy and Delano Roosevelt, Gandhi, De Gaulle, Mandela, Trudeau and some others I'm sure you could add to this list. Being less than pragmatic these leaders often blundered but on the whole the world benefited from their leadership and example. Obama has this opportunity. Here is an elaboration of some of my concerns:

* The Banking and Derivatives crisis - My biggest concern is the explosive growth of Hedge Funds and derivative products that have turned the financial world into a gambling casino. There were about 300 hedge funds in the 70's largely geared to managing the futures risk of businesses and currencies. Today there are over 10,000 hedge funds whose trading represents 50 times that of the entire world's GDP. To make matters worse most operate from tax havens. Entry fee to enter the casino is usually about 5 million dollars so if you are rich you can play. These Hedge funds produce nothing of value but someone wins and someone loses in this game; it is simply theft. They can destroy companies and bring down nations and reward themselves with yachts and mansions. Summers and Rubin led the charge to deregulate and merge merchant and conventional banking during Clinton's final days and thus this grotesque result. Its made Summers ( 8 million $ in 2008) and of course Rubin very rich - and Geithner is their protegé. This Casino mentality led to the irresponsible lending and spending frenzy that produced the bubble, impossible risk taking and a worldwide collapse. James Tobin had it right; a small transaction tax - say 0.1% of each transaction would virtually close up the casino. The modest changes lately recommended are a reflection of Obama's acceptance - or maybe lack of understanding - of what is happening. As for the many multi millionaires in congress and those beholding to the casinos, does a voting block actually exist for this to change? If we don't break the back of this and simply repair it, this theft will go on draining the nation's wealth while these thieves get richer.
* Afghanistan: Pakistan - When Obama made the decision to launch a drone attack on the day after his taking office that blew to bits a party of women and children I began to wonder how that loving father surrounded by his lovely family explained to them what he did. Now these cowardly attacks are a regular occurrence with a soccer mom or dad in Texas firing these off before getting back to the kids - an adults video game. Recently 147 more killed in one attack and 47 in another. How are we going to win the hearts and minds of 40 million Pashtuns by randomly killing innocent people. http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/05/17-6 We murdered 3.5 million in Vietnam, another half million in Combodia and then had to flee; Reportedly about a million have died in Iraq , 4 million Sunnis have fled the country and we are still stuck there with no end in sight. Obama listens to his military tacticians who worry no farther than about the next days battles and American casualties so nothing seems to have changed from the Bush era. Oh Yes! there has been one change. He has fired the general in charge of Afghanistan/Pakistan and appointed General McChyrstal, reportedly Cheney's chief assassin http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/05/18 I suppose the goal is that if we kill everyone who doesn't want us there including blowing up or maiming their women and children those remaining will either be terrified or thankful. What in hell are we trying to do there? http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/05/16
* Cuba - Obama failing to lift the sanctions with some timid half measures, frightened by ageing Cuban exiles, hangers on from the dictator Batista's days. We recognize a large number of non democratic countries throughout the world plus some unsavoury so called democracies, so why was Obama so cautious in not ending these unjust sanctions. The Miami Cuban vote lost the election for Gore so maybe he has is eye on 2012. Again he has taken a tiny rather than a bold and obvious step that would immensely benefit both countries.
* Guatanamo, Abu Ghraib and Torture - Seems to be a policy of forgetting and forgiving and currently rationalizing while maintaining the military courts. What a disgrace! American justice after WWII ensured that Germany exposed its sins for the world to see and punished its leaders. America walks away from its guilt and the world isn't fooled and websites abound that show many of these pictures. As for the guilty, we jam up the jails with minor drug offenders in America while these murderers and torturers go free. Its off the table. Obama, where are you?
* Misc Internal issues - The big issue is health care and apparently Obama guided by his experts has rejected single payer despite the apparent overwhelming public support for it.http://robertreich.blogspot.com/I guess the political right see Europeans and Canadians as essentially a victimized lot in an evil socialist world. As for gun control, the gun lobby and their nutty adherents devoutly believe that the citizenry must be prepared to rise up against the government at any time. Evidently the latest nonsense is that they will now be able to bring the most modern rapid firing weapons into the nation's national parks. Bears beware! As for paying taxes to pay for anything this is just another government plot; leave those tax havens alone and debt is clearly the way to go (as long as the Chinese are prepared to finance it in return for now making all those things that American workers used to make). In short, Obama has been dragging his feet on some of this although he has taken some easy decisions like approving stem cell research and calling an end to the War on Drugs. Canada ended that nonsense when Trudeau decided that he wasn't going to fill our jails with minor drug offenders. I can take some pride in contributing to that decision when our research firm was commissioned by Trudeau to conduct a study on the Drug Culture and the Law.
* Israel - a real test to see whether Obama becomes the first President since Carter to take a firm stand. Leiberman their foreign minister is just another Le Penn, although much worse. Netanyahu obviously shares his values if he is using Leiberman as his attack dog. This will be a test for Obama. The left will be looking for the end of colonization, a two state solution, no preemptive strike against Iran, and Israel joining the nuclear club rather than remaining a rogue on the outside. If Israel resists then severe sanctions are in order. There will be no peace in the middle east if Obama waffles on this one. Simply rapping Netenyahu on the knuckles will leave the mess in place;

Before the year is out I think we will know whether Obama has the commitment and political power to change the direction in America. America seems to be on a permanent war time footing with an ever increasing military investment that employs directly and indirectly millions of Americans. It is America's Keynesian make work project and fills the air with patriotic fervour. We aren't much for history and have forgotten about Korea, put the unpleasantness of Vietnam out of our mind, are building compounds away from the cities in Iraq to house our permanent troops, because they don't like us there, and it is now on to Pakistan and Afghanistan. The killing toys will change but the wars will go on. Aside from the carnage it is a terrible waste of human creativity, effort and money that could be better employed to compete in an overcrowded and increasingly polluted world.

I was hoping that Obama could begin to lead America out of this wilderness and I am beginning to have my doubts.

Don

From: George

Hi Don,
I took the liberty of forwarding your recent note to Matt _. Matt and Cass recently returned to the States after some 25 years living in Provence. They are both opinionated and passionate leftists who have never toed the Democratic party line. Cass is (was?) an accomplished professional artist, while Matt was an exec in the rag trade. They now live near family in LA. They are good, caring friends who live and breathe politics (in the broadest sense of the word), and I have always found his opinions to be, at least, provocative (like yours)
G

Hi George, I don't think his sentiment is widespread and I do think he's too negative. I do understand what he is saying and agree with him primarily when he criticizes Obama's selections as his economic team as a whole and there he only mentions the big banking decisions..I think Obama is very pragmatic but nevertheless very strong. He dances to his own music and is making some ground(hard to see) with his bipartisanship. He's also preparing to attack using the people who worked for him during his campaign across the country. He's gradually building that resource as a grass roots pressure group which he will use. As for his criticism of not having kept out left wingers, that's a very blind sighted comment. He's surrounded himself, cabinet and tons of his selections in key positions to enforce the principles they've been hired to clean up and also reverse Bush's policies many of which he's already done. His use of the military is not puzzling as he's got to pull out as he's declared but getting out of Afghanistan and having it become a stronghold of terrorism again would be a mistake. Let's give him more time.He has plenty of support from people like Frank Rich, Maureen Dowd and support as well as criticism from Krugman. He never had single payer health plan on the table but always had his own plan which I think is not as good but hey, he's in the drivers seat. Your friend is looking for a miracle and the miracle is Obama. We got the best choice elected, would he have preferred Hillary? I think he knows and thinks better than he's expressing. He's not recognizing that this is a political world and Obama is moving in HIS WAY and I hope he's right. I have many concerns but I also recognize the unbelievable movements he's already made. Don't forget we're dealing with the democratic party which isn't as united and filled with greed and hate at the same level as are the republicans. Step back and keep up the hope, that's the only game we have.. Contribute to the groups he believes in whether they are move-on, PDAmerica, People for The American Way, and others who are lighting candles under Obama to move stronger but don't crawl into a negative inactive hole. I have to convince myself to have patience and watch this president work; they are something and I do respect a number of his close advisers.. Learn to appreciate what you have Don and give him more respect. The world view is a lot more favourable toward him than what you're showing. Did we have a better choice?

We Broke it and Have to Change to Fix it

2009-01-28T15:05:00.003-05:00

"The Goose That Laid the Golden Eggs" by Aesop

A man and his wife had the good fortune to possess a goose which laid a golden egg every day. Lucky though they were, they soon began to think they were not getting rich fast enough, and, imagining the bird must be made of gold inside, they decided to kill it. Then, they thought, they could obtain the whole store of precious metal at once; however, upon cutting the goose open, they found its innards to be like that of any other goose.

Sounds just like the story of our bankers and CEO's. Their greed tore apart the system that had worked and they "killed the goose that laid the Golden Egg". That Goose was the buying power of 300 million Americans. When the bubble burst and they lost 16 trillion dollars in the stock market and housing meltdown (an average of 50 thousand dollars for every man woman and child)they couldn't keep the Goose alive.

The economy has gone into the tank and we are investing trillions worldwide into quick starting a recovery to return everything back to what it was, but it can't return to what it was because we face two insurmountable problems:

1. Globalization in its present laissez-faire form has undermined the earning power of consumers in America and Western Europe, namely their domestic workforce, while shifting the nation's wealth into the hands of a small favoured elite. With the collapse of the housing bubble there simply isn't enough earning power in the hands of the public to sustain these economies. A handout in terms of tax relief or mortgage support might temporarily put off the damage but greed at the top has seriously crippled the very financial system that made them wealthy in the first place.

2. The American way of life is admired and copied around the world and this small planet can't handle it. The issue here is a progressively deteriorating environment and with it human suffering and dislocation, and eventually the issue of human survival. We simply must reshape how we intend to live and get on with it now.

In short, the system is badly wounded, we can' return to what it was before, and we have only a limited time to fix it.

It's an Economic Disaster. Where to Now?

2009-01-27T05:43:00.051-05:00

David Says:
Scenario A
- my expectation for the US is 15% unemployment, 15% inflation, 15 months to bottom, 15 years until it feels behind us.
- the rest of the world will suffer too, but in general not as dire.

Scenario B
- there is a risk that things will be much worse than my 15-Plan. What "much worse" means is hard to say, but perhaps inflation in excess of 20% such that it leads to food and petrol shortages, partial closing of the banks (i.e. you can only take out $100 / week), widespread disorder. The outcome of this blacker scenario is that after 15 years the ranks of the truly impoverished will have swollen enormously and many in the middle class will have lost all their savings and now be poor. America may end up feeling more like Argentina or Greece or Thailand -- it's not Kenya or Myanmar but still it's a long way down for many, many Americans.

- how this will affect the rest of the world is hard to say. Still, I think the rest of the world will re-organize so that they don't depend on the US anymore, not unimportant but not enough to hold your whole economy to ransom.

- there is also the possibility that the US would slip into true fascism. Luckily Bush did a good job of discrediting the fascist movement and this may in fact save democracy.

Just to summarize a few generalities that caught my attention:
- political risk means everything is a little to a lot worse than we would otherwise expect
- the US & UK will be driven to high inflation eventually, it's the only way to get rid of the debt
- all in all we are heading for an L recession not a U
- even as we get settled into the L we need to recognize that many aspects of both our national and international economic & political orders are failing.
- Global warming is going to cause even greater political and economic disruption perhaps just as we are at the end of the financially caused L-recession.
- we need ideological, technological and institutional innovation

My Comments and Conclusion

Your Scenario A as the melt down accelerates now seems quite likely. We haven't seen the bottom yet. In today's Reuters (Jan 29th) they report a Goldman Sachs estimate that the cost of restoring confidence in the US banking system could reach four trillion dollars. That amounts to one third of US GDP. If this is true the US banking system is bankrupt so the end is nowhere in sight. If a trillion of this is left on the Federal books they claim that the economy is dead. Its not reassuring to hear that our rich experts in Davos who created this disaster are in a state of utter confusing about this.

Scenario B will happen if Democrats join Republicans in a state of denial and fail to come to grips with the cumulative consequence of a failed culture, values and its excesses. This gluttonous disaster was a long time in coming but when the Russian economy collapsed in the mid 80's a wave of euphoria swept the capitalist world. We had won and led by the USA we set out on a voyage of self indulgence. Reaganomics was in, Ayn Rand an icon, and the Chicago School and Harvard led the ideological charge.

Deregulation, an unsustainable easy credit culture, laissez-faire Globalization and the creation of financial instruments to bury risks became the tools to enhance personal wealth, particularly for the chosen few with power. The business schools of America taught a generation of leaders that finance and marketing is what it is all about and that manufacturing should be shipped off to sub continents to eliminate costly employees, taxation and the nuisance of environmental demands. It didn't take genius to realize how quickly this model shifted wealth in America to the top. It worked so well that business leaders in Great Britain and Europe quickly latched onto it as well. It was all about "ME".

The working class were seduced into participating in this self destructive fiasco by easy credit terms that fed the housing bubble hiding their stagnant incomes beneath ballooning gains in property values. In the final years of this myth of plenty, in order to keep it going "nothing down and payments later" and "credit cards for everyone" encouraged even the minimum wage box store and field workers to climb on board this eternal gravy train. In the meantime the public was diverted by a Keynesian thrust into endless wars that appealed to their patriotic fervour while neglecting those essential public investments that contribute to achieving a fair and civilized society. They willingly set aside investments in the environment, social benefits, education, health care and infrastructure because they represented a government intrusion into their insatiable pursuit of personal gratification. In dumbing down the public they came to believe that these public investments represented a "socialist threat to our freedom".

We have created a worldwide mess that is out of control. Confusion reigns. Can we return things back to where we were by throwing money at it? I don't think so? It would only lead to further collapse of the working class and result in David's Scenario B. Is a new direction for America needed to rebuild the nation? Definitely yes. This is a time for self criticism and finding a better model for running the Nation. I want to believe that Obama has a vision of a very different America calling for an end to cowboy capitalism and demanding that the government plays a much larger and more aggressive role in setting and managing policies and the nation's goals. Americans have to get over their hang ups about words like liberalism and socialism and accept the vital role of a government to lead with vision, policies and regulations and thus serving the interests of its citizens. The past twenty years has clearly demonstrated that CEO's and major shareholders in the private sector preoccupied with personal profits and shareholders equity act in their own interest even if it is at the expense of the nation. The libertarian view that no government is good government is an absurdity. As David points out we urgently need to explore ideological, technological and institutional innovation to find some answers. The system as we know it is broken and we have to find a new one.

The Israeli/Arab Nightmare

2009-01-03T07:54:00.017-05:00

A response to a friend

Your friend in Israel is of course right in saying that fundamentalism is the root problem. Fundamentalism inevitably invites a clash between religion and the state. When neither side has power, chaos is inevitable. Fundamentalists of all faiths, ever since man invented religion, believe that God is on their side and they posses divine rights. There can be no reasoning with Fundamentalists since it is God's hand that guides them. In the US evangelical fundamentalism is a political menace that has destroyed the Republican Party and for insane reasons interferes in Middle Eastern affairs; Israeli Fundamentalists spread colonies throughout the West Bank because it is their Holy Land, and In Muslim countries it is a holy crusade to recapture the Holy Land that was finally lost to them with the partitioning of Israel in 1947.

If God backed out of the picture then I think a solution could be achieved. The Jewish Sate of Israel is a modern state that exists and will continue to exist. Its existence, in a rational world would provide an immense and beneficial influence to its Arab neighbours. And in return for safety guarantees for The Jewish State the settlers who have spread their colonies throughout The West Bank would pack up and go home. No country in the world would accept this unwelcome intrusion. Will the Arabs and Israeli's agree to this? No, because Fundamentalists have a disproportionate influence on both sides and it has become a Holy war.

I ran our consulting practise in Malaysia for three years. My consultants were a mix of Malay, Chinese and Indian - mostly with MA's from British Australian and US Universities - plus myself and one other Canadian. My clients included the Central Bank, The Government of Malaysia, mega large industrial organizations such as the National Oil Company and Airlines, plus clients in other countries in SE Asia. I lived in a modern predominately Muslim world but where other races and religions were tolerated and shared neighbourhoods and power. The Prime Minister, Dr Mahathir, firmly stamped out religious extremism and ran the country with a firm hand to create a modern state. All races and religions are welcome members of the Malaysian community. My Malaysian clients and friends would live comfortably in any seaboard part of the USA (not so sure about Utah). Was this easy to accomplish? No. Was he at times dictatorial? Yes, but in the space of twenty years he brought the country from fanaticism to a progressive society. It parallelled what Lee Kuan Yew accomplished in Singapore. Did he make nasty comments about Jews? Yes, but no worse than what I am hearing about Muslims in Europe and North America, and Irene (my Jewish wife) was fully accepted in Malaysia. In short a prosperous and well functioning modern state with the Fundamentalists more on the fringe now than they are in the United States and on both sides of the partitioned State of Israel.

There is a growing belief in the Western World that the Muslim faith is inherently violent and intolerant. We are becoming anti-Muslim. If we look at the last thousand years of Christendom we were a murderous and vengeful bunch as well and it hasn't let up in the past century. Our preachers are just ordinary members of our tribe and our God follows our armies against their God.

The farces of borders in the Middle East were largely drawn up in British and French boardrooms. They imposed leaders that served their selfish commercial objectives and people were thrown together that had little in common. The Pakistan/Afghan border a pure invention. Kabul never was the capital in the eyes of various Afghan factions; Kurds, Shiites and Sunnis were tossed together in half a dozen countries and detested tyrants and rulers like the Shah, Saudi Kings, Saddam and others were either imposed or supported by us to hold it together. In short a breeding ground for fanaticism and unrest as citizens looked to their mosques rather than their hated leaders. To a large extent we have created a Frankenstein and now Israelis and the Arab people and with the support of major nations stepping in, will have to deal with it.

Where I take issue with your Israeli friend is when she states that no imposed solution can have durability. I agree that imposed settlements leave open wounds but there are examples of where they have worked. I can't see the world standing aside as Israelis and Arabs continue slaughtering each other while the hatreds deepen as the conflict spreads to other parts of the Arab world, including Iran. The world is watching with horror and it will surely breed anti-Muslim and anti-Semitic feelings everywhere, a guaranteed recruiting climate for violence and terrorism. As Arab strength grows over time and as hostilities deepen this can only lead to a disastrous end. Both sides must accept an imposed settlement and help with a firm hand from third parties. There is no other acceptable option.

Israel - a Plan to Inflame the Middle East?

2008-12-27T16:37:00.014-05:00

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — Israeli warplanes retaliating for rocket fire from the Gaza Strip pounded dozens of security compounds across the Hamas-ruled territory in unprecedented waves of airstrikes Saturday, killing more than 200 people and wounding nearly 400 in the single bloodiest day of fighting in years.

Israeli air strikes hit Gaza for a second day, Hamas calls for a third Intifada ...

Is it a coincidence that this attack on Gaza preceded Obama's inauguration by a few weeks? Was this timing preplanned to present him with a fait accompli in Gaza while inflaming the Middle East and in particular Iran? Israel has repeatedly stated their intention to bomb Iran and this will preempt any attempt of Obama's team to open up discussions with Middle Eastern leaders. I suspect that Cheney, Perle, Lieberman and Wolfowitz are popping open the champagne as I write this.

"We need to finish this once and for all and strike back hard," said next-door neighbor ....

Maybe this neighbour has in mind a genocide to kill all of them. After all they are thugs and terrorists to fight back and resist us. Israeli settlers continue their illegal expropriation of land throughout the Palestinian territories. Evidently they claim that Jehovah of the Old Testament has decided this "Holy" land belongs to the Israelites and should be taken away from the Palestinian people. Evangelicals support these beliefs only because their Jesus needs this land as the landing site for his imminent Second Coming when he will descend filled with wrath and all but a chosen few will die in a fiery Holocaust. Not sure how Jesus will work this out with Jehovah (his dad), since he has decided that people of all faiths and non believers will perish.

It staggers the imagination that any functioning human being can believe such utter rubbish but in many democracies the voting strength of this lot wins many elections and they must be treated seriously. In the Americas 90% of the native population was systematically eliminated through genocide and disease following the arrival of European settlers. Our genocide back then was called "God's work" and things haven't changed much since then.

Three weeks is a long time for the Democrats to sit this one out. Hopefully leading nations who have a vital interest in this matter such as Germany, France, Britain, Russia and China and will immediately unite with American, Israeli and Hamas leaders in a common cause to control the damage. The stakes are too high to do otherwise. It's not clear to me what direct role Obama's team will have before his inauguration but I am sure their voices will be heard.

Something to think about

2008-12-15T12:51:00.005-05:00

My friend David emailed this to me. I liked it because it provokes some thinking "outside the box", so here it is. If you want to add your comments just click on the comments section at the bottom of the article so that the readers can share in what you have to say.

Here's a little thought experiment
- Imagine a tribal society that got most of it's calories from the hard work of farming and this is what most people worked on most of the time.
- However, just off shore there was a little island and every day a few fish would get trapped in a tidal pool where there could be easily caught.
- Each day in the spirit of free competition people would swim out to the island to get a few fish.
- Each day Joe, the fastest swimmer, would get there first and get all the fish.
- Joe, as the result of his skill and effort became unbelievably wealthy in this free market system.
- Then one day, the tribe got tired of Joe, hacked his head off, and came up with a new system: everyone would get their turn to go out to the island to get some fish.
- In this new system the society as a whole got just as many fish with the added bonus that they didn't have Joe lording it over them anymore.

Analysis
It doesn't take a genius to think up scenarios like this that show the creation and distribution of wealth can be managed in different ways through social regulation.
What is crazy is that this is not mainstream economics and that people come out of economics departments as radical free market zealots.

Remedy
I don't think anyone should be given a Ph.d unless they have achieved the equivalent of a Masters in an unrelated subject. This would help limit narrow mindedness. I'd go further and say that to keep your job as a professor you'd need to keep up in an unrelated area as well.

Secondly, I like John Ralston Saul's idea of demanding social impact. Professors should have to have some engagement with the real world to make it a better place, beyond their research & teaching. Perhaps we should be explicit in that we demand they work with the people in the bottom 20%. I'd make this a requirement for corporate leaders as well. Anyone in the top 10% of earning needs to spend at least 4 hours a month working directly with the poor (sitting on a board for a charity doesn't count).

The intellectual stretch of being strong in a second discipline and the gritty reality of working with the disadvantaged would go along way towards ending the narrow elitist stupidity we see.

It's Theft and Feudalism is Back

2008-12-12T16:04:00.023-05:00

Ayn Rand: The only social system that fully recognizes individual rights is capitalism. When I say "capitalism," I mean a full, pure, uncontrolled, unregulated laissez-faire capitalism—with a separation of state and economics.

the proper moral purpose of one's life is the pursuit of one's own happiness or rational self-interest

The disciples of Ayn Rand and laissez-faire capitalism, Milton Friedman, Alan Greenspan and Reagan were the culprits who kicked off this mess and for the next 20 years Bush I, Clinton and Bush II ably guided by Greenspan and a dominant Republican congress joined the ride. It was quite a trip with a systemic enrichment of 1% of the population while flattening middle class earnings and reducing the buying power of another 40% of the population. It's what happened in the period leading up to the Great Depression.

I don't know what the outcome is going to be from this meltdown but I can't see a simple turnaround because in America greed has trashed the system and it has to be rebuilt.

We have returned to an 17th century feudal model where the wealth of the nation has gravitated to a small number of powerful people. The reality is that deregulation released those with power from any constraints on their desire to have more. Like the dukes and kings of old they took as much as they could; and if there was more they would take that too.

It's theft when a young hedge fund manager can earn in 10 minutes what the average worker earns in a year or many times the income of a Nobel Prize winner, the President of his country or that of an internationally renowned artist. It's theft when CEOs of merchant banks and hedge funds become overnight billionaires and Presidents of large organizations now average incomes eight hundred times that of an average worker. Forty years ago it was only 30 to 40 times an average workers wages. Its theft when they influence politicians to remove inheritance taxes and promote flat taxes so they and their children can take it all home. It's theft when they hide their ill gotten gains in offshore tax havens (and most do) so that they and their corporations can avoid paying their fare share. And its theft when each year they manage to gain a bigger share. (A 2007 study of the Congressional Office Bureau found the wealth of the richest 1 percent of Americans totalled $16.8 trillion, $2 trillion more than the combined wealth of the lower 90 percent of the population)

Now dumping public funds on financial institutions to flood the market with easy credit again and subsidizing mortgages and car buying avoids the basic issues facing working families and will at best put a temporary halt in the inevitable collapse that is bound to continue. The reality is that the wealth of the nation has been stolen, workers have lost buying power over the past twenty years, and unless that changes another frenzy of credit buying will just repeat the cycle.

America has to rebuild with a different model and I have my doubts they can do it. Too many powerful people have an inbred belief in laissez_faire capitalism and have too much to lose. That means, I believe, despite the good intentions of Obama, it is going to get a lot worse.

Once Upon a Time

2008-11-27T16:32:00.004-05:00

Once upon a time there was a big beautiful country with fertile farms that grew and raised almost everything their people ate and factories that made almost everything they needed including their processed food, their clothing, their furniture their appliances and cars.

The farms needed many workers to tend and harvest the crops and look after the poultry, and cattle, and in the towns the factories needed semi-skilled and skilled workers for production, and workers with trade skills, engineers, clerks and accountants. There were many good jobs to choose from and people could select the job they were best suited for based on their aptitudes and education. And in these fields and factories if you were good enough you could advance to become lead hands, foremen and even the general manager. With passing years as these companies grew and prospered workers, often with the help of unions, were able to gain a share of this wealth with better wages, retirement benefits and health coverage. As the years past and the businesses grew the workers and people benefited and became increasingly secure and satisfied with their lives and committed to where they worked.

Then one day the owners of these businesses got the bright idea that if they shipped all this work far away to countries where people would work for much less and without benefits and where there were no laws governing working conditions or hours worked, their companies could earn much more money. No longer would they have to put up with unions and the wage demands of their workers. And the politicians agreed with this and used terms like free trade and globalization to glorify it.

And now with cheap labour the profits of businesses greatly increased and the owners and their bankers greatly prospered. The population of multi millionaires and billionaires increased like dandelions in an unattended field and the result was an unparalleled demand for the things great wealth could buy such as giant yachts, aircraft, and many mansions.

The manufacturing plants were now closed, their workers gone and the life in the towns was greatly changed as the plants became silent shells. Many of the workers who were let go were fortunate to find work in the great shopping areas outside the towns where there were vast shopping plazas and box stores selling food and goods from far away countries. The problem was that the work paid far less than what they had been earning before but with two or more family members working long hours and with fewer benefits and belt tightening life carried on.

Governments don't like belt tightening because people spend less and this isn't good for the economy. The solution was reducing interest rates and encouraging lenders to offer easy credit terms: no credit check required, nothing down and next to nothing to pay for the first two years. That enabled people on small incomes to start buying again with borrowed money. This money felt just the same as additional tax free income. They bought houses, put big cars in the garage, or in the driveway for the neighbours to see, and filled their houses with the things they always wanted. With all this buying, housing prices continued to rise and the people were borrowing even more against this, and so it went for many years. People came to believe it would always be this way as they continued to borrow to finance their new life. So the policy worked for a while. Flat or declining earnings for workers but lots of easy money on credit to keep them buying. There was lots of money going around so the community and everyone benefited.

Then one day the loan payments started to come due and many discovered that they didn't have the money and in desperation began walking away from their homes and the many things they had bought on credit. This caused housing prices to start declining rather than growing so people couldn't borrow anymore to meet their obligations. Then everything began to collapse. The banks faced billions in unpaid debts, business performance declined because fewer people were buying, many businesses failed and millions of people became unemployed.

The government, like Mary Mapes Dodge's Little Dutch Boy, kept plugging the holes as best they could with pots of money but unlike the Dutch Boy they didn't succeed because all those good paying jobs on the assembly lines were gone and along with them many of the research, engineering and skilled service jobs. The obvious had happened; without these jobs the country had lost its buying power and the housing bubble couldn't be blown up again.

This formerly great country subsequently went into an economic decline for many years, faced political turmoil, and faded away as an industrial power.

But the story has a happy ending. The far away countries became very rich and the people prospered. Then one day the owners of their businesses got the bright idea that if they shipped all this work far away to a country where people would work for much less and without benefits and where there were no laws governing working conditions or hours worked, their companies could earn much more money . No longer would they have to put up with unions and the wage demands of their workers. And the politicians agreed with this and used terms like free trade and globalization to glorify it.

And so, the work came back again to that big beautiful country and the cycle started all over again.

Meltdown, CEOs and Pirate Ships

2008-11-21T06:28:00.021-05:00

Citibank is currently in the headlines as the latest financial disaster reporting a 65 billion dollar loss. A proposed 30 billion dollar bailout by the Feds may not be enough to save them. The cause? An insatiable culture of greed. So far 75,000 jobs lost and the ex CEO, Charles O. Prince III ( with a name like that sounds like a member of the traditionally "rich and famous") when he lost his job walked away with 80 million dollars in salary and bonuses. His earnings pale in comparison with the average pay packet for the top 20 private equity and hedge fund managers who Forbes reported average earnings of 657 million dollars for 2006 or 22,255 times that of an average American worker and about 160 times that of the President of the United States. Its pretty clear that this level of income is simply theft, a giant vacuum cleaner sucking unearned wealth out of the financial system. Let's face it, many in the financial community at the top take whatever amoral risks they want with the public's money in their frenetic pursuit of getting rich.

http://www.finfacts.com/irishfinancenews/article_1011485.shtml

President Reagan, Milton Friedman and others led the charge to deregulate big business. They believed that if we removed all regulations companies would regulate themselves. It was an utterly naive and dumb belief that rejected everything we know about the selfish drive of homo sapiens and inevitably led to our present worldwide financial disaster. When Congress voted a few weeks ago to bail out Wall Street banks and investment houses, they were also indirectly voting to repair the damage lawmakers themselves had caused during a decades-long era of deregulation. It seems obvious now: banks and corporations, which exist solely to make a profit, when not overseen by regulators, in their frenzied pursuit of wealth eventually take too many risks and screw up. Deregulation simply released those with wealth and power from all of the rules and controls that we normally accept in our daily lives. They took advantage of it to extract billions for themselves. Now the public must pay again to bail out the organizations this worthless lot bled dry.

Freedom doesn't mean that we can cut loose and be totally free. Regulations start within the first year of our life with toilet training. It is the beginning of a regulated life. As we grow older, in order to become a civilized member of society we learn to accept the rules of our parents, the school, and eventually the many regulations set by the community. When we step out of line we face some form of admonishment to bring us back in line. In other words our freedom is limited by an established set of guidelines or regulations that respect the lives of others. Lets' face it we all have to be regulated. We have to obey the rules of the road, pay our taxes, not steal from our neighbours, separate our garbage for recycling and not trespass where we have no right to go. And yes, if we live within the rules we can enjoy a fair amount of freedom.

With deregulation we have transformed captains of industry into captains of pirate ships. Their pirate crews includes a select army of youths from our best universities, congress members, lobbyists, lawyers, and PR specialists all lured by the prospect of riches. And like the pirates of old they hide their ill gotten treasures in offshore islands. Why settle for less when no one is watching? What is the limit? There is none. When will it end? It just has; at least for awhile.

T Hobbes, J Locke, JC Rousseau vs Ayn Rand

2008-09-27T05:33:00.013-04:00

Dave's Observation
I don't find the usual attribution of the US financial meltdown to greed to be particularly helpful.
By and large people were just trying to maximize their sales, hit their targets or whatever. There is greed there but I don' t know that it expressed itself in a different way than in normal times. One wonders if it is even useful to ascribe a human vice to something like a financial system.

My Response

The word "Greed" clearly reflects the anger and resentment of a public who feel betrayed and exploited by a collapsing financial system. It's true, as you point out, that the people involved were simply maximizing their performance as they have always been inclined to do, but you have to accept that free of constraints, self interest inevitably leads to excesses. This is what has happened.

The belief that dismantling regulations would free the entrepreneurial spirit and thereby benefit humanity has proved to be utterly naive. The philosophers,Thomas Hobbes, John Locke and Jean Jacques Rousseau who profoundly influenced Western thinking and the formation of our governments understood that man is driven by self interest and by necessity had to enter into a social contract with his fellow man to control his behaviour by establishing governments for societies protection.

Ayn Rand took the opposite view that self interest should be the foundation of morality. Since all participants are acting selfishly the market is self correcting. She chose to be blind to the fact you could harm others while pursuing your self interest. The Chicago School and Greenspan were captivated by this ideology and thus the disaster we have today. In short, you need rules of the road to prevent disasters; regulations to restore our confidence in the integrity of the fiscal system

Yes, there is a moral element in all this. A social contract saves us from ourselves and makes for a fairer society. A world run by corporate interests is unlikely to have any collective moral compass.

The neo-conservatives and their Republican friends really believe that no government is good government and by starving tax revenues all public effort to set a social agenda and offer regulatory controls will be starved into extinction. Thus man can again be restored to his "noble savage" state of freedom.

I think the answer to "what does it all mean and what needs to be resolved" will only be found by America shifting politically to the radical left. Leftist values invariably respect intellect and education, and demand a fair redistribution of the nation's wealth through universal health coverage, adequate minimum wage policies, taxation commensurate with earnings, arts subsidies and the list goes on. It is fair to say that this sense of fairness eventually becomes a universal public value and spills over into international relationships.

Would it happily end there? Obviously not. Our world changes, our environment is threatened, in the absence of any weapons agreement the proliferation of atomic weaponry goes on, and our vastly expanded global trade has us tripping over each other. The social contract to manage the pursuit of self interest becomes increasingly a vital global concern. It is now self evident that the US role of "The World's Policeman" by necessity must give way in an increasingly multipolar world.

A Mea Culpa from The Economist

2008-09-14T12:48:00.017-04:00

The Economist
"This is a black week. Those of us who have supported financial capitalism are open to the charge that the system we championed has merely enabled a few spivs to get rich. But it helped produce healthy economic growth and low inflation for a generation. It would take a very big recession indeed to wipe out those gains. Do not forget that in the debate ahead."

My Comment:
A rather simplistic defensive statement, but I would expect it of the Economist. Growth? Yes, but who benefits? A temporary illusion of wealth for the masses from real estate gains despite stagnant incomes, but yachts for 28 year old traders. Lots of illegal wars, a denial of social reforms and a neglected environment that threatens us all. A grotesque result of altering power in the world for people who care only for themselves; a frenzy of selfishness.

Georgia in NATO? Are we nuts?

2008-09-14T05:48:00.010-04:00

David's Observations

I can't believe Georgia is being put on track to join NATO. I'm not surprised the US would opt for this but where are the Europeans?

For the first time in a long time I think the risk of global nuclear war is on the rise.

Ronald Wright (author of "What is America" and "Short History of Europe") talks about crisis cults -- how groups faced with disaster follow messianic leaders possibly to their doom. The US is primed for this sort of thing.

If Obama wins will they let him live?

http://www.gwynnedyer.com/articles/Gwynne%20Dyer%20article_%20%20South%20Ossetia%20REVISED.txt

My Response

David, it's an age old story; The Pied Piper of Hamelin and Moby Dick. Unfortunately our politicians are swept up in popularity contests and know how to use these sentiments to gather public support. Hitler, Mussolini, Napoleon, Bush/Cheney and others exploited this to great effect. And now our current lot of politicians on both sides of the Atlantic feeling the heat from their citizens, are unable to free themselves from this rhetoric. Thus the irrational confusion and stampede to raise the Iron Curtain again with Russia. Extending NATO commitments with unstable countries, placing a missile shield smack against against the Russian border, US ships steaming about the Baltic and now I see that Russia is planning a response by conducting with Chavez naval manoeuvres in the Caribbean. In short, a senseless parade of Peacocks on both sides that could lead to nuclear war.

Only great leaders like Mandela, Ghandi and Martin Luther King can stem the publics' irrational fears and anger and motivate them to accept a more enlightened direction. I see some potential for this greatness in Obama but I wonder whether he would be overwhelmed by the deeply embedded warlike culture in Washington and the American Public. The fact that he may be rejected in the coming election is a reflection of public hostility to enlightened leadership. Americans want a warrior. For most, life is just another football game to win.

It confirms my belief that the intelligence of the human race simply isn't up to the challenge of thinking logically about national issues. It's all about tribal loyalties, heroism, the glories of going off to war, and the satisfaction of revenge, thus lifting the masses from the hum drum of their existence. How else to explain the popularity of McCain and Palin.

Palin, a Heartbeat Away from the Presidency

2008-09-08T13:33:00.033-04:00

I'm bloody mad. Its time to stop being nice. Let's face it, Sarah Palin is shallow, poorly educated, intellectually dishonest and a religious bigot. She would be a disaster if called upon to fill the Oval Office. The World is anxiously waiting for American citizens to finally end the nightmare of the Bush era and if polling trends are any indication here they go again. I can only conclude that after 8 years of Bush and now the lying team of McCain and Palin, the majority of voters are incapable of making rational decisions. Like monkeys they are driven by their hormones, emotions and instincts. Here are a few of her beliefs that clearly spell out her shallowness:

Claims The Lord is behind the Invasion of Iraq and associates Iraq with 9/11. Even Bush refutes this now. The Lord also supports the crisscrossing of Alaska with pipelines. How does she get all this information from The Lord? Does she have a direct line to Him? Religious cranks of all denominations regularly repeat this lie so why be polite about it.
She questions whether global warming is being influenced by the Human race. Now where did this poorly educated woman get the expertise to have any opinion whatsoever on this subject? The scientific evidence is overwhelming that we are threatening this planet. Maybe her preacher is passing on the opinion of the Lord. (Her speech writers have asked her to back off on this so her latest comments have been more reasonable)
Doesn't support the protection of endangered species when it gets in the way of drilling for oil. That includes Beluga Whales and Polar Bears.
Suggest that Georgia and the Ukraine immediately join NATO and if a confrontation with Russia leads to war, so be it. A mushroom cloud looms over this one. An ignorant loose cannon with her finger on the button. She makes Bush look like a pacifist. With an undisciplined leader in Georgia and political chaos in the Ukraine this would become international suicide and for what? Russia the United States and every other major Nation in the World don't want or need this war, America is not being threatened, so what does she think she is doing? The US, the new rogue state?
She is an Evangelical Christian. They believe the ancient texts in the Bible are sacred and to be taken literally. Their preachers love to cherry pick the texts, but let's face it, if the texts are sacred then you buy the whole package. http://justtryingtosortitout.blogspot.com/2007/02/scary-bible-quotes-applied-to-law.html
As a Canadian her domestic positions aren't my problem but I feel sorry for most Americans when the majority blindly follow the Pied Piper. Tax breaks favouring the rich and a widening gap between rich and poor, no likelihood of universal health care, guns everywhere, Creationism taught in the schools and maybe book burning back, a packed Supreme Court of neo cons, outlawing abortion, and if her past behaviour is any predictor of the future, random firing of anyone who disagrees with her.

In short, what in hell motivates Americans to vote for this trashy woman? Granted she is adept at reading tightly crafted scripts written for her. This is a nightmare scenario for America and the world.

Family Values

Republicans Awakening the Brain Dead Again

2008-09-04T10:57:00.017-04:00

Scary, but we might see the Republicans in power again. They sure know how to cynically awaken the brain dead, and motivate them to lash out in all directions. My friend David summed it up very well.

David: "One thing we've discussed is this sense that surely there has got to be some backlash by the American people in response to how badly the country has gone off the rails. Perhaps we have already seen it and it's face is the Republican voter. There seems to be a deep nastiness and wilful stupidity amongst the supporters. They have given up on looking for solutions, they just want to hurt someone, they just want to see everyone around them go to hell. The fact that the Republican elite caused the problems does not seem to matter."

Just finished listening to the convention speech of Sarah Palin written for her and read from the teleprompter. I have to give her credit for a good delivery that rallied the rabid party faithful. Forty two minutes of of vacuous platitudes, false claims, gross distortions, and outright lies plus raving about John McCain war hero, a maverick in action intent on victory (whatever that means - but it sounds nice) and Obama someone who just writes and doesn't care about victory and wants to read those nasty Guantanamo prisoners their rights. In short, her speech was drivel devoid of any serious content from start to finish.

I don't think the Republican leadership and their talking heads are as stupid as they sound. Why talk about the real issues? They simply understand that if you can raise the ire and warrior passions of an angry mob of religious cranks, single issue voters ( guns, gay rights, abortion, death penalty etc) and uninformed people you can win elections. It's all about God, the glories of war and hating those others who see the world differently.

Demagogues all! H.L.Mencken defined a demagogue as "one who will preach doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots."

The American Public will do it again

2008-05-01T03:17:00.008-04:00

It looks like the Democrats will again snatch defeat from the jaws of victory and John McCain will become the next President. The country faces a myriad of critical issues such as a financial collapse, perpetuation of endless wars, a crisis in health care, inflation, the shift of the nations wealth to an already wealthy few, and a deteriorating relationship with the rest of the world. The Democratic Party in the meantime is preoccupied with irrelevant issues such as who loves America the most, who wears a lapel pin, and whether to choose between a Woman or a Black as President. Who is most willing to bomb Iran into oblivion and which despot in the Middle East would choose one candidate over the other just adds to the dishonesty and confusion in this debate. And the icing on this cake that might just tilt voters is a political bribe being offered by Hillary to eliminate the road tax for the summer months thereby encouraging gluttonous consumption, and adding to an already disastrous national debt and bloated oil company profits. The mainstream press in the amoral pursuit of ratings, encourage this nonsense because it reduces the debate to a version of the "Gerry Springer" show thereby ensuring mass audience appeal.

The outcome: A deeply divided and angry Democratic party. On one side, Obama's ardent supporters, the young, the urbanites and entire Black community, and Hilary's, the feminists, the elderly, small town and rural dwellers including those with lingering racist reservations about a Black becoming President. The outcome of this pathetic debate is at best a Pyrrhic victory for the winner with large numbers of Democrats either staying at home on voting day or turning in disgust to John McCain.

I am writing this from Europe where the public is deeply concerned about an outcome they believe will shape their future. Polls here overwhelmingly indicate their preference for a Democrat in the White House who they hope will bring about much needed changes.

America can't face its Guilt

2008-03-23T13:30:00.003-04:00

Why can't America face its past? The Germans after WWII had to at Nuremburg and today we have a well informed and comparatively enlightened population. Germans recognize their dreadful past and wish never to repeat it. Jacques Chirac publicly attempted the same cleansing in France but unfortunately his successor, Sarkozy, in order to gain favour with Le Penn's extreme right wing voters in the 2007 elections refuted Chiracs claims.

Obama is being condemned by Bill Clinton for supporting his pastor who at one point said "Damn America" for a past that has reaped the problems America faces today. In other words the pastor clearly stated the obvious and what every American needs to understand. Instead we here again observe the flag waving of Hillary and McCain who claim to love America more than Obama does. The US election campaign has truly hit the gutter with most of the press joining in. If Americans fail to come to grips with their sordid past the younger generations will go on making the same mistakes.

I recall that when the shoe bomber was sentenced the judge made the comment, "you hate us because of our freedom" It was a statement much heralded in the US and I received several copies via email "to send it on" No guilt or reflection on the many millions that have suffered in the Middle East, Vietnam, Cambodia and throughout Latin America over the past 100 years through US actions. Just "we love freedom and they hate us for it"

Like the pastor I am stating the obvious to most non Americans and am bewildered by their blindness. Maybe the impeding financial collapse will tear people away from their escapist TV and a majority will put their flags away and actually begin to think. I have my doubts.

The Sorcerer's Apprentice and Globalization

2007-12-27T08:11:00.000-05:00

Power over Wisdom

The Sorcerer's Apprentice - a concert piece by French composer Paul Dukas was originally an ages-old fairy tale that had been interpreted as a poem by Goethe.

You may recall Walt Disney’s version in Fantasia where Mickey Mouse is the mischievous apprentice-magician to the Sorcerer, Yen Sid (Disney spelled backwards). Yen Sid assigns Mickey the task of filling a large vat with water which requires using buckets to collect it from an outdoor fountain. Yen Sid then departs leaving Mickey to the task. He is soon bored and by putting on Yen Sid’s magical hat uses his powers to put arms and legs on a broomstick and commands it to fetch the water. Mickey sits back and proudly waves his arms like conductor as he watches the broomstick merrily going back and forth with overflowing buckets. Mickey falls asleep and dreams of controlling the clouds, the planets and the universe. Mickey suddenly awakes with water crashes over him in the flooded room. Mickey doesn’t know how to command the broomstick to stop. In desperation he smashes the broomstick into many pieces. They come alive and now he has an army merrily carrying water and a swirling flood threatens to drown everything. The story has a happy ending when the Sorcerer returns and put an end to the flood

The lesson? Don’t start what you don’t know how to finish or know your limits. The story illustrates the dangers of power over wisdom.

Globalization is a replay of this story with many thousands of tiny apprentices turned loose to use their magical powers. The only problem is that we don’t have the Sorcerer or Wizard that can tell them when to stop. Like Mickey they dream about their power and lead their little assigned activities to expand and grow. They have no idea where it will end.

One billion people in the world at the beginning of the 20th century have now become six billion at the beginning of this century and there isn’t much room any more for the animal kingdom. In another 100 years at this rate there will be standing room only and the wild animals will be gone. In the meantime our tiny apprentices will build more of everything, strip the land of our forests and voraciously dig into the earth’s crust to extract whatever remains to in order to satisfy their ambition and to supply the needs and wants of this ever increasing and demanding human army. Temperatures will rise, the coastlines will flood people from their homes and the mountain glaciers will disappear thus drying up the fertile valleys below that feed millions of people. In a world of scarcity people will flee increasingly uninhabitable lands. Tiny apprentices in political roles will rally their citizens to gain control of a portion of this unstoppable momentum and wars will be inevitably fought over what remains.

There is a lot of wisdom out there but who can stop the tiny apprentices?

Maybe we have to hope for a Sorcerer to arrive before it is too late?

Progress as seen from France

2007-12-09T08:33:00.000-05:00

It's Sunday morning and raining and windy so it's a good time to unload a few thoughts.

For most of this world a better quality of life is equated with having more. In the third world this urge addresses basic needs for food, shelter, education, health services and social security. In Europe it's mostly about "wants" rather than "needs" and it is encouraging to see that environmental issues are beginning to enter into political planning. Our new Napoleonic President, Sarkozy, is aggressively pursuing a program of modernization of the state using a North American model. This means a massive cut back in the role of the state. As you know villages and towns still maintain a way of life here that allows you to walk to the post office, the bank, the clinic, small retailers, cafés and a central open market. In many parts of France you can actually survive without a car. It's part of the charm of European lifestyles and in conflict with his political agenda. City dwellers in droves escape to the country on weekends and vacations to share in this small community lifestyle.

If Sarkozy has his way we will soon begin to see the closing up of local gendarmeries and courts, local taxation offices, small hospitals and post offices; the banks will inevitably follow. Some of these measures are already in progress. At the same time policy papers are being put forward to remove restrictions on the development of large space retailing such as represented by Carrefour and Walmart. No doubt these moves have to do with lowering the cost of goods and services. Aside from the protests about the destruction of small businesses and the small community way of life here, environmental issues are now being aggressively discussed in the European community and this raises question about the real offsetting costs and pollution issues related to forcing people to travel to these large service centres ringing suburban areas. Just as a comparative measure, the USA, Canada and Australia are the world's leading gluttons for metric tons CO2 emissions per capita. They average about 20 as compared with about 10 in Germany and 5.5 in France. In gross pollution terms the USA, China, Russia, Japan, India, Germany, in that order, account for about 62% of worldwide CO2 emissions. In Africa where it is all about "needs" rather than "wants" per capita figures read more like a miniscule <0.1 despite the fact that these are the regions in the world that will suffer the most from climate change

Clearly the suburban way of life enjoyed in North American countries has to change and can't be the model for the rest of the world. A world scale model of large homes, central heating and air conditioning, washers and dryers, swimming pools and the need for two big cars in the garage to travel to shops, to work, and deliver the kids to wherever will suffocate the planet. As for Mr Sarkozy's American dream the traffic implications with their pollution and excessive energy consumption are seriously in conflict with plans to reduce emissions and hopefully a non starter.

If we actually believe that pollution threatens the quality of human existence on this planet then the traditional neo conservative economic and political models driven solely by GNP growth no longer fit. Our political systems will have to find in short order ways to ensure that nations will work together to harmonize a vast range of policies. It represents another set of international pressures to resolve major conflicts between free trade philosophies and what must be done to tackle this issue. Nothing Utopian about this. It's going to get messy and will undoubtedly create international tensions and conflicts. How we will manage to incorporate the philosophies driving globalization, as we know it, with aggressive environmental goals and regulations is anyone's guess. It will be a struggle between laissez faire and tighter controls. This isn't going to be solved by a few magic bullets.

Can our democratic institutions that cater to the public's "wants" survive this challenge? Can a majority of citizens, given a free choice between political parties, accept one demanding a radically altered lifestyle vs one that praises the Lord, avoids asking anything of them and diverts attention to irrelevancies. I am pessimistic. I predict that it is more likely that a more totalitarian Asian style leadership facing suffocation in their own pollution, will finally lead the charge for change. Wait and see.

Job Outsourcing Everyone

2007-06-01T11:56:00.000-04:00

President George W. Bush on March 6th 2006 defended job outsourcing to India during a whistlestop tour of an Indian technology city as Muslims clashed with Hindus and police in protests against his visit.

Well I have good news for everyone from a highly reliable source. George Bush's job will be outsourced to India on June 9th; that's just a week from now. Mr. Bush was informed by e-mail this morning of his termination.

Gurvinder Singh of Indus Teleservices, Mumbai, India, will be assuming the office of President. Mr. Singh was born in the United States while his Indian parents were vacationing at Niagara Falls , thus making him eligible for the position. He will receive a salary of $320 (USD) a month but with no health coverage or other benefits.

A Congressional spokesperson noted that while Mr. Singh may not be fully aware of all the issues involved in the office of President, this should not be a problem since Mr. Bush was not familiar with the issues either.

This important move has got me to thinking. Why not outsource all office jobs in North America (including, of course, all politicians and CEO's)? The manufacturing jobs are already gone so progress has been made.

My idea is that each eligible person here would be assigned an Indian- there are a lot of them over there hungry and eager to learn and to work. Based on today's rates the Indian worker would be paid about 10% of a US wage so the remaining 90% would be rewarded to the American non worker. Yes I know that the American non worker would net about 10% less than what they would earn working, but they wouldn't have to work any more. Prices in North America would go down because we wouldn't have as much money to spend, so it would even out somehow. Certain jobs would have to stay in the USA of course, such as bus drivers, policemen, doctors, barbers, janitors and prostitutes. I guess we could import replacements for these jobs from the world's poor . We already import fruit pickers this way and the US military now has almost as many contract soldiers in Iraq as regular army so we have a lot of experience with this. Also I hear that we can look to Canada for advice because they import their lap dancers.

The objective would be to have a nation that doesn't work any more. Yes the global corporations would complain because they would have to pay America's non workers as well as foreign labour who do the work. But that is just a detail to be worked out. The good news is that all adults could then relax and spend their days playing golf ,watching television, eating and making babies. Most children wouldn't have to go to school because there wouldn't be any work to train for. A few would go to school for an education, although schools have been moving away from this for many years now. The pre adolescents could spend their time with television and video games while eating popcorn, munching on potato chips and drinking pop. During the teen years they would start drinking alcohol, enjoy drugs and lots of sex. The few avoiding obesity might even play some sports now and then.

As for the very rich, most of them have inherited their wealth, hire people to look after them and don't work much anyway, so this wouldn't be much of a change for them.

We are half way there now, so why not go all the way?

The Human Race isn't Smart Enough to Survive

2007-03-02T08:31:00.000-05:00

Conversations with a friend.
David, like you I am left of centre and dream of a fairer world. Unfortunately the human race is a seriously flawed species. It is clear that our collective capacity to reason is inadequate. For many thousands of years our brains evolved to deal with simple survival skills like hunting, planting, the gathering of nuts, fornicating and protecting our families. We eventually discovered that by joining with a few others our chances of surviving improved, and by destroying our neighbours we expanded our opportunities. By necessity we became heirarchally organized with a few leaders and most others assigned the humble roles of spear throwers and diggers. If we accept Darwin, it took a very long time to evolve this far and civilization - whatever that means - is a very recent event. Our brains are no larger and the issues more complex now. Because our survival instincts were refined in the dank caves of antiquity we continue to ruthlessly exploit and exterminate each other. The only difference with this prehistoric past is the arrival of literacy that has allowed us to organize, live longer, acquire more, and introduce methods for mass destruction. Our tribes are prepared for the inevitable battles with images, poetry, songs and exhortations.
We can clearly predict that our primitive instinctive drive for acquisition and conflict will destroy our human world in the not too distant future because we are powerless to change. We will suffocate in our own waste. We can look at this as quite an accomplishment; the only living species to destroy itself. Collectively man worships and blindly follows their generals and distrusts their wise men. Power reigns over wisdom. Fortunately when we are gone, the animals and insects that remain will take this world back, the empty cities will remain as silent monuments to our misdeeds, life will return to the seas, snow to the mountain tops, and the forests and plains will be green again.

Scary Bible Quotes Applied to the Law

2007-02-19T11:57:00.000-05:00

I've just read Scary Bible Quotes http://home.earthlink.net/~owl233/biblequotes.htm

To all those Christian fundamentalists out there who believe the ancient scriptures show the way. Just imagine if our legal system and foreign policies applied these quotes.

Leviticus 20:9

If anyone curses his father or mother he must be put to death. Wow! this one is a dandy. When I was a kid my mom used to wash out my mouth with soap and water when I said those words, and that was bad enough. It would certainly reduce the kid population if parents got serious about this. It would take quite a legal system to draw up the rules and I don't envy the role the police would have to play. Not sure how many kids would be left.

Leviticus 20:10

If a man commits adultery with another man's wife - with the wife of a neighbour - both the adulterer and the adulteress must be put to death. This sure gives a lot of power to betrayed spouses. This is going to put a lot of people to death and here again the courts and police must carry a heavy burden. And how if the death penalty is applied, is the offended party going to get any alimony? Also I am not sure what the punishment is if the adulterer is caught with a single woman.
I must say that the Muslim Shira laws are much better because I understand that they only put the adulteress to death and the man gets off the hook..

Leviticus 20:13

If a man lies with a man as one lies with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They must be put to death. Well, this will put an end to the gay community. Hopefully there might be a few exemptions for some creative people like Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and Leonard Bernstein and maybe a good politician like Barney Frank.

Deuteronomy 22:10-1

If, however, the charge is true and no proof of the girl's virginity can be found she shall be brought to the door of her father's house and there the men of the town shall stone her to death. There needs to be some rewording of this because single moms raise a lot of kids now. I wonder what the role of the police will be in all this. Are they spectators? and who cleans up after? And my understanding is that there aren't too many virgins left anymore so this law will get really nasty to apply.

Exodus 35:2

For six days, work is to be done, but the seventh day shall be your holy day, a sabbath of rest to the LORD. Whoever does any work on it must be put to death. Well there goes Sunday shopping! Walmarts and the Big Box stores will be in trouble. Same goes for the flea markets. And how will this law apply to those who practice the sabbath on other days of the week?

Deuteronomy 7:1-2

When the Lord your God brings you into the land you are entering to possess and drives out before you many nations . . . then you must destroy them totally. Make no treaty with them, and show them no mercy. This sounds like George Bush and Cheney.

Deuteronomy20:10-17

When you march up to attack a city, make its people an offer of peace. If they accept and open their gates, all the people in it shall be subject to forced labor and shall work for you. If they refuse to make peace and they engage you in battle, lay siege to that city. When the Lord your God delivers it into your hand, put to the sword all the men in it. As for the women, the children, the livestock and everything else in the city, you may take these as plunder for yourselves. . . . This is how you are to treat all the cities that are at a distance from you and do not belong to the nations nearby. This is quite a foreign policy!! We are obviously making some progress in Iraq and the men and women can certainly be used as cheap labour which fits in with the goals of Globalization. Problem is we are killing too many men because they won't give up and you know what the Lord says about that. Not so sure however what we can do with the kids. As for the livestock, why pay for it if this law is on our side and we can get it for free. Everthing else I guess would include the art we have already plundered

However, in the cities of the nations the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, do not leave alive anything that breathes. Completely destroy them as the Lord your God has commanded you. Not so sure this foreign policy applies anymore. Maybe the British, French and Dutch felt this way about their empires at one time and how the USA still feels about Latin America and some countries that have a lot of oil. Sounds like a formula for atomic warfare.

Ephesians 5:22-24

Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything. This is going to be a really hard law to enforcel. Women are going to get very mad. Maybe we will need a different kind of government to pull this one off.

1 Peter 2:13

Submit yourselves for the Lord’s sake to every authority instituted among men. Dictators and armies have always liked this one. Now corporations, governments and school teachers will like this too. No more messy protest movements and demonstrations.

Jesus, on His Second Coming

Matthew 24:29-34

[T]he sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light; the stars will fall from the sky, and the heavenly bodies will be shaken. . . . They will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of the sky, with power and great glory. . . . I tell you the truth, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened. [Emphasis added.]

16:27-28

For the Son of Man is going to come in his Father’s glory with his angels, and then he will reward each person according to what he has done. I tell you the truth, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom

This is going to be THE BIG EVENT. They say when this happens that the chosen few will rise up from whatever they are doing - through the roof of their car or from the dining table, the bath tub and even making love - and zoom up bodily into heaven while the rest of us will perish in the fiery end.

How it will end for Human Life

2007-01-09T15:52:00.000-05:00

Environmental Scientists are telling us that we are polluting this world at an ever increasing rate and we have about 10 years left to alter these trends before much of this earth will become uninhabitable. Polar and glacial ice will melt away, the seas will rise and our coastal cities will be submerged, storms will ravage our lands and tropical regions will lose their fertility as the mountain streams running off the glaciers will dry up. Populations will desperately flee to regions where the soil remains fertile. Governments will be unable to prevent this unplanned migration. Increasingly scarce resources such as arable land, oil, water and minerals will be fought over thus ensuring an escalation of world conflict.

Just finished an interesting book by P.D.James entitled “The Children of Men” The story begins in 2021 in England. Worldwide men became sterile in 1995 and as the story begins the final generation has just turned 25. In another 60 years the human race will have disappeared, the cathedrals, libraries and factories will become silent and the animal kingdom will carry on. I will not tell you how the story ends but it got me thinking about how it affects our pollution problem. Forests and fields would cover the land, the air would become sweet again, lakes and rivers would fill, and the animal kingdom would repopulate. Unfortunately no human would be around to appreciate it but it clearly would present a solution to our pollution problem.

A less drastic solution would require leaders of major nations enforcing draconian policies that would drastically alter how we travel, how we live, what we eat and produce and what we dispose of. Leaders need public support and that means making popular policies and decisions that fit into a four year electable time frame. The time frame doesn’t fit even with the modest Kyoto plan, a fair predictor of how the environmental challenge will unfold.

In the PD James story a dying population doesn’t care about the future on this earth because there is no future. They live a futile life simply waiting for the end. Their goal is simply to hang on to what they have and to collect more as generations die off and leave their possessions behind. Presumably the last person alive will own everything, albeit in a cleaner world..

In the real world I think most of us in our own way do care about the future.. Why do we care? Clearly because we see life as a continuum from past to future generations; we will die but our family and others will carry on in the future. The problem is we are inexpert individuals preoccupied with the here and now. In the absence of visionary leaders a disaster is inevitable.

Maybe the religious fundamentalists have it right. At some point the end will abruptly come.. As an agnostic I have my doubts however about the Rapture when those born again Christians who have already died will have their bodies restored, ascend through the air, and meet Jesus in the sky. This supposedly will be followed by a mass migration of the born-again who are currently living. It will be quite an event. Mom will disappear from the bathtub, people from their automobiles, some will disappear from the dinner table and lovers from the bedroom and rise up through the roof and through the air. Babies are innocent so maybe they will rise too.

Presumably the rest of us, including my dog, will wave good bye before Jesus returns on a horse leading an army who will exterminate most of the earth's population in a massive genocide. It will be numerically the largest mass extermination of humans in history. Certainly this represents another solution to global warming. but it isn’t the loving Jesus I read about.

An Insider's view of the Human Disaster in Baghdad

2007-01-09T15:47:00.000-05:00

Her latest,

I believe that if this young woman's courageous blogs, written in her home in downtown Baghdad, had been published regularly in US papers from the outset of this war, Mr Bush and his gang would have lost their support long before US journalists were gutlessly still waving the flag. Here is her latest written Dec 29th 2006

Baghdad Burning

... I'll meet you 'round the bend my friend, where hearts can heal and souls can mend...

Friday, December 29, 2006

End of Another Year...

You know your country is in trouble when:

The UN has to open a special branch just to keep track of the chaos and bloodshed, UNAMI.
Abovementioned branch cannot be run from your country.
The politicians who worked to put your country in this sorry state can no longer be found inside of, or anywhere near, its borders.
The only thing the US and Iran can agree about is the deteriorating state of your nation.
An 8-year war and 13-year blockade are looking like the country's 'Golden Years'.
Your country is purportedly 'selling' 2 million barrels of oil a day, but you are standing in line for 4 hours for black market gasoline for the generator.
For every 5 hours of no electricity, you get one hour of public electricity and then the government announces it's going to cut back on providing that hour.
Politicians who supported the war spend tv time debating whether it is 'sectarian bloodshed' or 'civil war'.
People consider themselves lucky if they can actually identify the corpse of the relative that's been missing for two weeks.

A day in the life of the average Iraqi has been reduced to identifying corpses, avoiding car bombs and attempting to keep track of which family members have been detained, which ones have been exiled and which ones have been abducted.

2006 has been, decidedly, the worst year yet. No- really. The magnitude of this war and occupation is only now hitting the country full force. It's like having a big piece of hard, dry earth you are determined to break apart. You drive in the first stake in the form of an infrastructure damaged with missiles and the newest in arms technology, the first cracks begin to form. Several smaller stakes come in the form of politicians like Chalabi, Al Hakim, Talbani, Pachachi, Allawi and Maliki. The cracks slowly begin to multiply and stretch across the once solid piece of earth, reaching out towards its edges like so many skeletal hands. And you apply pressure. You surround it from all sides and push and pull. Slowly, but surely, it begins coming apart- a chip here, a chunk there.

That is Iraq right now. The Americans have done a fine job of working to break it apart. This last year has nearly everyone convinced that that was the plan right from the start. There were too many blunders for them to actually have been, simply, blunders. The 'mistakes' were too catastrophic. The people the Bush administration chose to support and promote were openly and publicly terrible- from the conman and embezzler Chalabi, to the terrorist Jaffari, to the militia man Maliki. The decisions, like disbanding the Iraqi army, abolishing the original constitution, and allowing militias to take over Iraqi security were too damaging to be anything but intentional.

The question now is, but why? I really have been asking myself that these last few days. What does America possibly gain by damaging Iraq to this extent? I'm certain only raving idiots still believe this war and occupation were about WMD or an actual fear of Saddam.

Al Qaeda? That's laughable. Bush has effectively created more terrorists in Iraq these last 4 years than Osama could have created in 10 different terrorist camps in the distant hills of Afghanistan. Our children now play games of 'sniper' and 'jihadi', pretending that one hit an American soldier between the eyes and this one overturned a Humvee.

This last year especially has been a turning point. Nearly every Iraqi has lost so much. So much. There's no way to describe the loss we've experienced with this war and occupation. There are no words to relay the feelings that come with the knowledge that daily almost 40 corpses are found in different states of decay and mutilation. There is no compensation for the dense, black cloud of fear that hangs over the head of every Iraqi. Fear of things so out of ones hands, it borders on the ridiculous- like whether your name is 'too Sunni' or 'too Shia'. Fear of the larger things- like the Americans in the tank, the police patrolling your area in black bandanas and green banners, and the Iraqi soldiers wearing black masks at the checkpoint.

Again, I can't help but ask myself why this was all done? What was the point of breaking Iraq so that it was beyond repair? Iran seems to be the only gainer. Their presence in Iraq is so well-established, publicly criticizing a cleric or ayatollah verges on suicide. Has the situation gone so beyond America that it is now irretrievable? Or was this a part of the plan all along? My head aches just posing the questions.

What has me most puzzled right now is: why add fuel to the fire? Sunnis and moderate Shia are being chased out of the larger cities in the south and the capital. Baghdad is being torn apart with Shia leaving Sunni areas and Sunnis leaving Shia areas- some under threat and some in fear of attacks. People are being openly shot at check points or in drive by killings… Many colleges have stopped classes. Thousands of Iraqis no longer send their children to school- it's just not safe.

Why make things worse by insisting on Saddam's execution now? Who gains if they hang Saddam? Iran, naturally, but who else? There is a real fear that this execution will be the final blow that will shatter Iraq. Some Sunni and Shia tribes have threatened to arm their members against the Americans if Saddam is executed. Iraqis in general are watching closely to see what happens next, and quietly preparing for the worst.

This is because now, Saddam no longer represents himself or his regime. Through the constant insistence of American war propaganda, Saddam is now representative of all Sunni Arabs (never mind most of his government were Shia). The Americans, through their speeches and news articles and Iraqi Puppets, have made it very clear that they consider him to personify Sunni Arab resistance to the occupation. Basically, with this execution, what the Americans are saying is "Look- Sunni Arabs- this is your man, we all know this. We're hanging him- he symbolizes you." And make no mistake about it, this trial and verdict and execution are 100% American. Some of the actors were Iraqi enough, but the production, direction and montage was pure Hollywood (though low-budget, if you ask me).

That is, of course, why Talbani doesn't want to sign his death penalty- not because the mob man suddenly grew a conscience, but because he doesn't want to be the one who does the hanging- he won't be able to travel far away enough if he does that.

Maliki's government couldn't contain their glee. They announced the ratification of the execution order before the actual court did. A few nights ago, some American news program interviewed Maliki's bureau chief, Basim Al-Hassani who was speaking in accented American English about the upcoming execution like it was a carnival he'd be attending. He sat, looking sleazy and not a little bit ridiculous, his dialogue interspersed with 'gonna', 'gotta' and 'wanna'... Which happens, I suppose, when the only people you mix with are American soldiers.

My only conclusion is that the Americans want to withdraw from Iraq, but would like to leave behind a full-fledged civil war because it wouldn't look good if they withdraw and things actually begin to improve, would it?

Here we come to the end of 2006 and I am sad. Not simply sad for the state of the country, but for the state of our humanity, as Iraqis. We've all lost some of the compassion and civility that I felt made us special four years ago. I take myself as an example. Nearly four years ago, I cringed every time I heard about the death of an American soldier. They were occupiers, but they were humans also and the knowledge that they were being killed in my country gave me sleepless nights. Never mind they crossed oceans to attack the country, I actually felt for them.

Had I not chronicled those feelings of agitation in this very blog, I wouldn't believe them now. Today, they simply represent numbers. 3000 Americans dead over nearly four years? Really? That's the number of dead Iraqis in less than a month. The Americans had families? Too bad. So do we. So do the corpses in the streets and the ones waiting for identification in the morgue.

Is the American soldier that died today in Anbar more important than a cousin I have who was shot last month on the night of his engagement to a woman he's wanted to marry for the last six years? I don't think so.

Just because Americans die in smaller numbers, it doesn't make them more significant, does it?

- posted by river @ 1:00 PM

Sunday, November 05, 2006

Greed and "off with their heads"

2007-01-09T15:42:00.000-05:00

In its present form Globalization has taken on a neo liberal flavour that assumes naively that increases in Gobal GNP will eventually benefit everyone. It has been the US model preached by the late Milton Freidman and his disciples and known as The Washington Consensus. It promotes internationally a uniform neo liberalizing of markets and banking with governments divesting of assets and getting out of the way. As we now know this has been a disaster for Russia, Latin America and Africa. It has allowed a handfull of oligarchs in each country ( rich, powerful and often corrupt) to run away with it all, at the expense of the population, thus widening the gap in wealth in the name of GNP growth. It is happening now in United States as well and we will pay dearly for it in years to come. Gains in wealth at the top are now running out of control while half the population is deprived of decent incomes, health services; social security and education. Asians nations in the meantime are investing heavily in these values while we squander the money on military toys with illusions of world dominance.

Having managed an Asian consulting practice with post gaduate degreed Malaysians whose parents picked vegetables in the fields or worked on plantations, just as our Mexican workers do, has made me realize how pathetic our selfish and self defeating neo con approach is. It is a formula for losing. I am currently reading Making Globalization Work by Joseph Steiglitz. It talks about these issues at length. There are economic models for implementing globalization other than The Washington Consensus that are better suited for most nations. China and India are prime examples of nations that have rejected it's banking principles outright and have chosen more suitable mixed public and private management of their economies and massive investments in education, while Putin, much vilified in the West, is desperately trying is recapture Russia's wealth from the thieves that plundered the system thanks to The Washington Consensus.

In short, globalization is inevitable but it needn't become an irrational ideological rush to an exploitation of this planet and it's population for immediate GNP growth and the accumulation of obscene wealth for a handfull of very greedy families, CEO's and dictators. This can only lead to social discontent with all of the consequences.

I guess it comes down to globalization yes, but a need for regulation by nation states and internationally so that that we won't give it all away to a rich few - and maybe at the same time we can save this planet. We have ample experience throughout history that the rich will take as much as they can get. There is never enough. Robespiere gave up on them and rightfully cut off their heads To rely on their collective good will is nonsense. We all know now that Trickle Down economics is crap. The neo conservatives don't seem to read history.

Get Out! Get Out! Get Out!

2007-01-09T15:33:00.000-05:00

A discussion with a Muslim friend about the disaster in Iraq and why we must leave. Another friend, Richard, on reading my previous blog about Baghdad Burning raised question about how we should leave.

Don

Richard, unfortunately I am inclined to agree with you that the US can't quickly run away. This war has destroyed a country, and killed more than half a million people. There is a civil war going on. It is quite understandable that they hate us and want us to leave. Their neighbours hate us too and want us to leave. We must leave, of course, and sacrifice the neo con dream of establishing permanent bases in Iraq in order to control the oil. The Green Zone is a symbol of oppression; it must go along with the military bases scattered about Iraq. The days of the Empire builders who manipulated weaker nations at will, are a thing of the past. Our first step is to clearly announce that we are going to leave and establish some rules and a timetable. Not sure that sending more troops in will help. It will simply attempt to place a temporary lid on a faulty pressure cooker that will eventually blow with many more killings. Iraq is like Humpty Dumpty, it's broken apart and all Mr Bush's men, including another 20,000 troops,won't put it back together again. We have created a tragic mess.

Baker is right; we should start talking with the Syrians, Iranians and possibly the Saudis because I think there has to be an Arab solution rather than one imposed by a foreign power. Arab leaders have to knock Iraqi heads together and make it clear that with the US leaving there is an opportunity to work together to build a new Iraq. They should be demanding from leading industrial nations technical and financial support for this because their interests and security are at stake. If they can’t get Iraqis to put aside their sectarian differences then maybe the solution is to break up Iraq or parcel it out between rival countries where there is religious compatibility. The British and French have interfered in this region for the past century and at one point drew up most of the borders. The logic, other than self-serving oil interests, has never made any sense, so there is nothing sacred about present border alignments. In any case what should happen should be hammered out by Arab Leaders. Somewhere in all this the Arab world will drag in the issues of Israel and Palestine as part of the solution and we will have to be prepared for this.

The alternative could become a war spreading across the Middle East with the Iranians supporting the Shiites in Iraq and the Saudis and Syrians supporting the Sunnis. We created a senseless mess in Vietnam and walked away; The Vietnamese after having lost 3 million people got on with life and we now see under their own direction a modern Vietnam emerging. It won't be that easy in the Middle East because the region is rife with religious and tribal differences. Shiites, Sunnis and the black hatted Israeli settlers in Palestine all believe that God is on their side. We all know of course that God is really on the side of the Religious Right in the US. With the second coming of Christ imminent we will soon know about this when the Rapture is here and they will rise up into heaven while the rest of us perish in an everlasting burning hell. Problem solved.

David
The US has no credibility in the Middle East--or most of the world for that matter. As such they cannot be part of the solution, they just need to leave. This is almost impossible for American's to understand since they see themselves as kindly helpers and the rightful leaders of the world. Somehow we have to break it to them that they have no more business in the Middle East than China has in the midwest. Maybe their should be Chinese troops in Louisana to clear up the terrible mess there as well as to safeguard the strategic oil platforms in the Gulf of Mexico. Most Americans would think that a nutty idea, but it's no more nutty than the US being in the Middle East. The US has to get out of the empire business, out of the world leader business, and out of the manifest destiny delusions. They should adopt a quiet international role just as China has. While it's a dramatic change in policy I think most Americans would be happy to look inward for a while. North Korea nukes? Not their problem. Venezula leftists? Not their concern. Israel? Who cares? Leave Al Qaeda alone and the Al Qaeda will leave America alone--war on terror over. Saddly there will be no more $10 million bat mitzahs on the back of the American taxpayer, but I suspect Americans will put up with better health care instead.

Sorry this has turned into a rant so let's return to the key point. The US should get completely out of Iraq (and the rest of the middle east) right now.

Don
David, when you say to get out now, are you talking about today, next week? I agree that they should immediately announce their intentions but there surely has to be a relatively short transition period of
several months to a year to wind things down. It's time needed to logistically move out US troops and contracted personnel and to protect Iraqi personnel and politicians in the Green Zone who collaborated with the Americans and will undoubtedly be immediately assassinated if left behind. It would also give sufficient time for other Arab nations to get together and organize whatever resources they might need to take a leading role in supporting the transition and rebuilding. Without that collaboration in place it will simply end up being a bloodbath between Shiites and Sunnis with the Kurds on the sidelines firming up their control over the Kirkuk oil fields. As well someone has to take a firm hand over Israel who still maintain the right of a first strike against Iran. I was reading somewhere that they have developed small tactical nuclear missiles for digging deeply into four nuclear sites in Iraq. It could drag all of us into WWIII. If they believe their survival is at stake they will surely be prepared to act unilaterally if unchecked.

Who knows how all of this works out. One thing is clear; we have senselessly invaded and destroyed a country, are bitterly and justifiably hated for it, and must leave.

David
I don't think there is any kind of transition the US can arrange, so they might as well just get on the bus today. The Green Zone politicians should be given the opportunity to get on the bus as well.

At that point the various groups with power would fight it out but I actually suspect they would get it over with fairly quickly. Right now no one can negotiate since there is this puppet gov't supposedly on top.

It might be a good idea for Iran just to step in a take over, but that would be up to their own feelings about what they could do there.

Israel is another matter, let's just hope we muddle by.

Richard
People keep talking about a blood bath if we leave, but Don, I suspect that your Muslim friend is right. --R

My Strawberries and Globalization

2006-07-16T09:53:00.000-04:00

I have a garden in southern France where I grow fruit and vegetables. The sun is hot where I live and to use my strawberries as an example, when they reach my table fresh from the garden they are fragrant and with an unmatched rich and sweet flavour. Small producers in our area sell similar locally grown strawberries in the market square.

The supermarkets like Carrefour, Walmart’s and others don’t buy these strawberries of course and sell larger and beautifully shaped red strawberries that they have purchased at the lowest possible price from some distant country. It’s part of globalization. If the cheapest price is from large greenhouses in Southern Spain, California or an oligharch’s estate in Brazil, then this is where they will buy it. They are undoubtedly genetically modified, chemically treated and harvested early to avoid any blemish and to withstand the long voyage to markets. If it is bigger than a strawberry they even paste a label on it. I suspect the store buyer is given a bonus if he finds a lower price somewhere else. The problem with this is that they don’t taste like strawberries.

Perfectly shaped and unblemished tomatoes from California tast like red and slightly sour cucumbers in Toronto, apricots unlike our juicy variety arrive dry and tasteless – but they are cheaper ! Let’s face it, locally grown fruit and vegetable tastes better and I think that has something to do with the quality of life. The global experts don’t know how to measure this, and probably most of them are rich enough to not care anyway because they can go to their gourmet shops.

If we carry this globalization argument further France should logically give up growing everything because there is always somewhere in the world where the local currency is depressed plus large landowners assisted by generous Wold Bank loans can hire penny labour and harvest more cheaply. The economists in Brussels and writers for business publications who are devoted to globalization believe this is a good thing. They obviously accept that traditional farmers in France and throughout Europe should give up their land, or sell it off for golf courses, and invade the cities to take up modest labour where it is available.

Let me see if I can understand what global advocates are saying. By freeing up markets from any government imposed constraints the capacity to generate wealth will be greatly enhanced. This will occur because companies will be free to invest, buy and sell wherever it is most profitable and this will support the growth of mega businesses and mega farms that will be more profitable. The question is; profitable for whom ? I guess it is the handful of oligarchs in most third world countries who control most of the land and who pay pennies to their workers, plus additional profits for the World Bank, transportation companies, and the mega retailers like Walmarts and Carrefour. To many buyers this makes sense since the wages in the areas where Walmarts and carrefour exists are depressed and the buyer can partly benefit from lower prices. It is like going there to shoot yourself or your neighbour in the foot.

Getting back to strawberries an article in LeMonde today claims that strawberries from China vs from Perigod in France requires 20 times more fuel to get it to market. It goes on to say that farm produce shipped thousands of miles by ship, rail and trucks for the cheapest price has become a major factor in rising CO2 gas emissions in the atmosphere. Destroy the planet but get a better price ! It’s something to think about.

In conclusion I don’t really understand all this enthusiasm for Globalization, and as I originally stated, locally grown strawberries taste so much better. I guess I’ll follow the seasons and buy locally. Saving a few farms and eating well makes it worthwhile.

Rubbish by the Heritage Foundation about Chavez

2006-07-16T08:27:00.000-04:00

Mr Brookes, was your article pulished May 5 2005 in the Heritage Foundation's Press Room written as propaganda or do you honestly believe the less than objective drivel that you wrote? Hugo Chavez: Castro's Mini-Me Whether you like Chavez or not he was popularly elected and his current popularity rating is running around 70%. A lot better than the questionable numbers supporting your friend Mr Bush. Chavez tossed out a small self serving oligarchy that has exploited the country for years and is diverting substantial sums to providing investments, land, medical care and education for the masses as well as providing financial support to several other Caribbean and Latin American countries. Pat Robertson wants him assasinated but I think that Jesus would have liked him. As for his military build up, compare his figures with the military investments the US has made annually to Colombia, Venezuela's narco neighbour.

The socialist movement in Latin America is a logical and inevitable outcome of the outrageous and growing gap between the few rich and many poor that exists in these countries. Is it any surprise that America is increasingly despised by the masses for having historically supported these oppressive and corrupt regimes. I have said for many years that the Republican dream is a deregulated society with a weakened central government where the rich can run away with it all. The gap is widening rapidly in the US today and the figures on income distribution illustrates you are well on the way to realizing your Republican dream. Unfortunately in Latin America under new leaders they are beginning to threaten your dream. Maybe the American public will wake up some day too.

Don Currie
France