Friday 5 November 2010
Quote of the week
'You should never trust experts. If you believe the doctors, nothing is wholesome: if you believe the theologians, nothing is innocent: if you believe the soldiers, nothing is safe. They all require to have their strong wine diluted by a very large admixture of insipid common sense.'
Bad seeds, bad science and fairly black cats
The endless reiteration of the message that DNA tests, targeted drugs, stem cells, or gene therapy have stopped the sky from falling is a menace to research, to the reputation of those who do it, and to the public understanding of what has and has not been achieved
23 October 2010 — A couple of weeks ago the press reported, with impressive unanimity, that “Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder is genetic”. To the rolling of publicists' drums (and geneticists' eyes) came the news that some children behave outrageously because they inherit damaged DNA. The Daily Mail—the UK equivalent of Fox News—came out with a lengthy and hand-wringing piece entitled “Are some children just born bad?”, which told dreadful tales of uncontrollable teenagers and claimed that “previous thinking was flawed and that some children, through no fault of the parents, are simply bad seeds”.
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Cartoon by Keith Knight, comics.com, 3 November 2010 |
No respect: How Obama saved capitalism and paid a terrible political price for doing so
2 November 2010 — If I were one of the big corporate donors who bankrolled the Republican tide that carried into office more than 50 new Republicans in the House, I would be wary of what you just bought.
For no matter your view of President Obama, he effectively saved capitalism. And for that, he paid a terrible political price.
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The Great Mother must be pleased!
In her article "What does your Hallowe'en costume say about you?", I loved how Alberte Villeneuve-Sinclair took the opportunity to weave in information about the witch hunts/Catholic manifesto vs paganism and the concept of past lives! The Great Mother must be quite pleased so watch out for some new blessings coming your way! — Mirella Zanetti, Ottawa, Ont.
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Reader brought to tears by "Spirit of the Saints"
Hanns Skoutajan's message ("The Spirit of the Saints also walks the streets ...") brought tears. I don't believe in the death penalty for anyone ever! Williams is a human being and should be treated with the same dignity as anyone .We can hate the crime but still have compassion. Somewhere deep down inside of me I keep wondering if some day medical science will discover some kind of chemical link in the brain to this strange behaviour and that there will be a treatment such as insulin for diabetics. In the meantime I hope that we as a society will be able use common sense and not hate to treat these people.Williams is broken and needs to be kept away from society and mended, but who am I to make judgement on him as I have not walked in his shoes for the last 45 years.Yes I do have great compassion for the families who have lost their daughters but hate will not bring them back or make anything right. Thanks Hanns for your message. — MC, Creemore, Ont. _____
Hanns Skoutajan offers the only sensible comment I have seen on Williams - and the only one imbued with a real understanding that we are not asked to "forgive" him but only to recognize his humanity in common with ours - after all it is a question of degree - he happens to have fallen to an extreme." — KH, Athens, Ont.
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'People rightly want answers, and they are not getting them except from voices that tell tales that have some internal coherence—if you suspend disbelief.'
Outrage, misguided — America's Tea Party movement ignores Capitalism's doomsday cycle
Canada's Magna opens new parts plant
in Kaluga, Russia, to serve Volkswagen
By Irina Filatova
The St. Petersburg Times
2 November 2010, KALUGA — Canadian auto parts maker Magna on Thursday launched its new plant in Kaluga, and said this demonstrated its belief in the strong potential of Russia’s automotive market.
The facility, with a total production area of 15,000 square meters, will manufacture bumpers and front-end modules, and assemble radiator grills and instrument panel-beams.
The company said it was against corporate policy to disclose the volume of investment in the project.
Magna, which already has plants in St. Petersburg and Nizhny Novgorod, chose to build the new factory in Kaluga because its major customers — the world’s biggest carmakers — are located in the region, said Hubert Hoedl, the company’s vice president for corporate marketing and business development in Europe. — Read the full article at The St. Petersburg Times, 261 words.
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-- PBS journalist Bill Moyers.
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Dozens of police face discipline over G20 ID badges
Bill Blair made the comment during an appearance in Ottawa at a meeting of the House of Commons' public safety committee, which is looking into issues surrounding the G8/20 summits that took place in Huntsville and Toronto.
Blair told MPs that failing to wear an ID badge was a violation of his personal rule, and that any officer who chose not to wear ID would be held accountable.
"If an individual officer chose not to wear it, he is breaking a rule," Blair said.
— Read the full article at CBC News, 261 words.'Another day older and deeper in debt ...'
The bill was long since paid, but the harrassing phone calls and damaging hits to her credit rating never stopped — sound familiar?
25 per cent of Canadian collection agencies said to engage in 'illegal' behaviour
CBC News
31 October 2010 — Canadians are getting deeper and deeper into debt. Since the mid-1980s, the average household debt load has climbed to 146 per cent of disposable income from 50 per cent, according to a recent TD Economics report.
With rising debt comes debt collectors. They buy debt from credit card companies, utilities and other firms, and then try to get consumers to pay it back along with fees and penalties — sometimes using questionable tactics.
Shauna Major's nightmare began with a $140 phone bill.
Join international campaign to rescue Iranian woman from medieval execution
Her son has been imprisoned for trying to help
In July of this year more than 385,000 from around the world signed on to Freesakineh.org in an effort to stop the Iranian regime from stoning Mohammedi Ashtiani to death.
Thanks to this Sakineh is still alive. But yesterday news came, following a secret call from the prison where she is held that an execution order by hanging has been delivered to her. Her situation is truly precarious.
Please join hundreds of thousands and use your voice. Sign the petition below so that we can let the Iranian regime know that we have not lost our resolve.
Know too that almost every single person in Iran who has worked on behalf of Sakineh has either been imprisoned or forced to flee the country. Most sadly, her son Sajaad, who has devoted his life to saving his mother, is now also in jail – guilty only of trying to bring justice to his mother. Our petition to the Ayatollah Khameini asks for both to be immediately released.
We must be bold and steadfast. We must make our voices heard. We made a difference this summer. We can again.
Please sign the petition by visiting http://www.freesakineh.org.
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Whatever happened to ... Lakshmi Sundaram ? Readers have been asking, whatever happened to our rising-star columnist Lakshmi Sundaram? Lakshmi, performed strangely during the record-breaking heatwave in Canada's capital, Ottawa. Like one determined to beard the lion in its den she went 500 kilometres south to Georgia south of the even more sweltering U.S. capital, Washington. On the way back she was distracted to Montreal where she took shelter and became as busy as the proverbial all-get-out. Meanwhile both columnists assure me that they'll be back at their keyboards in November. Looking forward. — Carl Dow.
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Leave the monsters behind — you are more beautiful than you think!
5 November 2010 — Halloween Sunday, eighty-one assorted monsters, zombies, heroes and princesses, including lions and a cute little unicorn knocked on my door, looking for treats.
Spirit Quest
The Spirit of Peace seems often wounded and enfeebled but nevertheless, it is alive!
War, I suppose, is an international conflict while fighting in Afghanistan is against insurgents to pacify the country. We are fighting on the side of that state’s forces. Whether in fact Afghanistan is a democracy or whatever other factors are at play is beyond this topic.
On November 11 Canadians will gather at the National War Memorial in Ottawa as well as at many cenotaphs across the country, to remember and honour the fallen. A Silver Cross Mother chosen by the Royal Canadian Legion will lay a wreath on behalf of all mothers who have lost loved ones in the conflicts of our time.
— Read the full article inside, 692 words.| The Incredible Seven prepare to neutralize the Wolf Wind | ||
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These intrepid weather watchers are mindful that the Wolf Wind is stirring in its Arctic lair, making ready to charge its snarling way south. So they have gathered at Ray's Rock north of Havelock, Ontario, Canada, to prepare the cottage for winter's worst. Above they have been gathered together for this historic occasion by Ken Jeffries of Campbellford, True North Perspective's star photographer. From left are: David Dauphinee, Randy Ray, (True North Perspective contributing editor) Brian McAndrew, Bill Thompson, Bob LeVoir, and Jimmy Heaney leaning on the car. About to lead the group in prayer is Gord Kent. |
Always worth repeating
'Give us the tools and we'll finish the job'
— Winston Churchill
Let's say that news throughout human time has been free. Take that time when Ugh Wayne went over to the cave of Mugh Payne with news that the chief of his group had broken a leg while chasing his laughing wife around the fire. That news was given freely and received as such with much knowing smiles and smirks to say nothing of grunts of approval or disapproval. — 688 words.
Knowing no shame, George W. Bush doesn't admit to being a war criminal, he brags about it
'Politics in America has become spectacle. It is another form of show business. The crowd in Washington, well trained by television, was conditioned to play its role before the cameras. The signs —“The Rant is Too Damn High,” “Real Patriots Can Handle a Difference of Opinion” or “I Masturbate and I Vote”—reflected the hollowness of current political discourse and television’s perverse epistemology. The rally spoke exclusively in the impoverished iconography and language of television. It was filled with meaningless political pieties, music and jokes. It was like any television variety program. Personalities were being sold, not political platforms. And this is what the society of spectacle is about.'
Once imprisoned and tortured by right wing rulers Dilma Roussef is now Brazil's first woman president
1 November 2010 — The fact that President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva enters the final three months of his Presidency with a 79 per cent approval rating says it all. It therefore comes as no surprise that the transition within the PT (Workers' Party) from President Lula to Dilma Roussef, now Brazil's first woman President, has run so smoothly as Lula's popularity overflowed to his Chief of Staff.
The US desperation during those years to subordinate countries in its “backyard” led to a series of coup d’etats, brutal dictatorships, sabotages, political assassinations, mass torture and disappearances, and the implementation of neoliberal, capitalist models that caused the worst misery, exclusion, poverty and alienation known in the region throughout history.
Under the limited US vision, strategies and tactics of aggression achieved their goal by the end of the century, and in almost all Latin American nations, with the exception of Revolutionary Cuba, subservient governments were put in place, hailing the US-imposed economic and political model of neoliberal representative democracy.
— Read the full article at ChavezCode.com, 1,424 words.
3 November 2010 — Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez and his Colombian counterpart, Juan Manuel Santos, met on Tuesday for the second time since Santos became president just three months ago.U.S. waives sanctions against four countries that use child soldiers
Notes from the twilight of a Republic
'Why isn't Julian Assange dead?'
The wretched mind of the American authoritarian
29 October 2010 — Decadent governments often spawn a decadent citizenry. A 22-year-old Nebraska resident was arrested yesterday for waterboarding his girlfriend as she was tied to a couch, because he wanted to know if she was cheating on him with another man; I wonder where he learned that? There are less dramatic though no less nauseating examples of this dynamic. In The Chicago Tribune today, there is an Op-Ed from Jonah Goldberg -- the supreme, living embodiment of a cowardly war cheerleader -- headlined: "Why is Assange still alive?" It begins this way:
I'd like to ask a simple question: Why isn't Julian Assange dead? . . . WikiLeaks is easily among the most significant and well-publicized breaches of American national security since the Rosenbergs gave the Soviets the bomb. . . .
So again, I ask: Why wasn't Assange garroted in his hotel room years ago?
It's a serious question.
4 November 2010 — I'm a pragmatic humanist , and so I don't really believe in absolutes when it comes to morals. Could I support the use of torture in some contrived situation? Yes, definitely, and it would be irrational to say otherwise. If mutilating John Doe's balls is going to stop a nuclear bomb going off in my favourite London pub then hand me the curling tongs.
Kentucky stomping victim offers an olive branch to her attacker — but no absolution
By Lauren Vallen
Near-infinite money + absolute secrecy = eternal campaigning and a get-out-of-jail-free card for corporate criminals
3 November 2010 — The votes are in, and while some close races are still being tallied, there is a clear winner from the 2010 elections: Secret corporate cash.Such unaccounted for political donations may end up allowing those accused of wrongdoing to go free. As Joshua Holland details for AlterNet, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission may have provided a lifetime supply of get-out-of-jail-free cards to corporate criminals.
The Kentucky senate race serves as a prime example. The Democratic candidate, Jack Conway, is currently Kentucky’s attorney general. Conway is also currently prosecuting a nursing home for allegedly covering up the sexual abuse of one of its residents.
But that nursing home is owned by Terry Forcht, a millionaire who gives prodigiously to right-wing causes. He poured money into Karl Rove’s organization, American Crossroads GPS, which ran ads backing Conway’s Republican opponent, Rand Paul. Guess who came away with the victory last night? — Read the full article inside, 829 words.
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Third Ways
Microlending in a war zone
3 November 2010 — In a small storage shed at the edge of town, we watched as 14-year-old Sayed Qarim signed a simple contract agreeing to borrow and repay a no-interest, 25,000 Afghani loan (roughly $555). Daniel from the Zenda Company, the loan originator, counted out the crisp bills and handed them to Qarim, who smiled broadly and shook hands. Qarim, whose family farms potatoes and wheat, plans to use the funds to purchase a cow and her calf. "There are great benefits of owning a cow," Qarim explains. "Our family gets to use the milk and we can sell the calf for a good profit."
Young Chinese farmers sowing seeds for organic revolution
1 November 1, 2010, CHONGMING ISLAND, China — The small-scale farmer is a dying breed in China, made up mostly of the elderly left behind in the mass exodus of migrant workers to much higher-paying jobs in industrial cities.
But on an island called Chongming, a two-hour drive east of Shanghai, a group of young urban professionals has begun to buck the trend. They are giving up high-paying salaries in the city and applying their business and Internet savvy to once-abandoned properties. They are trying to teach customers concepts such as eating local and sustainability. And they are spearheading a fledgling movement that has long existed in the Western world but is only beginning to emerge in modern China: green living.
"What we are trying to create is like a dream for us," said Chen Shuaijun, a young banker who, with his wife, has rented eight acres on Chongming.
Agence France-Presse
Money and Markets
3 November 2010 — The real message from voters was “Fix this stinking economy.” But Republicans have no intention of doing so.
With Republicans in control of the House, forget spending increases or tax cuts to stimulate the economy.
Of course, Mellon was dead wrong. Nothing was purged. Instead, the economy sunk into deeper and deeper depression.
3 November 2010 — Jammie Thomas-Rasset, the Minnesota woman who has been fighting the recording industry over 24 songs she illegally downloaded and shared online four years ago, has lost another round in court.
A jury in Minneapolis decided today that she was liable for $1.5 million in copyright infringement damages to Capitol Records, or $62,500 for each song she illegally shared in April 2006.
The Recording Industry Association of America--the trade group that represents the four major music labels — applauded the verdict.
Nine helicopters and 70 men were involved in the raid, Viktor Ivanov, head of the Federal Drug Control Service, said Friday, adding that his agency told the United States where the labs were located.
Just a week earlier during a trip to Washington, Ivanov accused the United States of failing to dismantle such labs and slow down the flow of heroin into Russia.
— Read the full article at The St. Petersburg Times, 556 words.U.S. Tea Party's Deep Ties to Oil Sands Giant
Owners of Koch Industries, a major processor of Alberta crude, spent millions to foment and support a movement against Obama's climate change policies
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| Laughing all the way to the tar sands: Billionaire oil barons David and Charles Koch |
Do bans on smoking in bars and restaurants really work? Sometimes
The advertisers know what they're doing; smoking in movies leads to kids smoking later in life
27 October 2010 — The barkeep and blogger who writes as “Scribbler50” was outraged when, in 2003, New York City enacted one of the first comprehensive smoking bans in bars and restaurants: “How can a guy and some board just kick us in the teeth like this? This smacks of fascism.” If people are aware of the consequences of smoking (or visiting places with lots of secondhand smoke), should the government really have to tell us what to do? Won’t people just vote with their feet and smoke even more when they’re at home and away from restrictions?Can exercise cure the common cold? No — but regular exercise might keep you from catching one in the first place
CBC News
1 November 2010 — Keeping physically fit helps reduce the likelihood of falling sick with a cold, a new study suggests.
The U.S. study, published in Tuesday's issue of the British Journal of Sports Medicine, was based on 1,002 adults up to age 85.
Participants at Appalachian State University in Kannapolis, N.C., reported on how often they got aerobic exercise equivalent to a brisk walk.
Science
No sex please, we're serpents!
At least one boa constrictor produces fatherless children
CBC News
Book Review
Please allow me to correct yourself ...
'Mick Jagger' responds to Kieth Richards' new autobiography (and how!)
From this, Wyman surmised that the package was intended for Jagger and Richards' former bandmate, the bassist Bill Wyman, who has assiduously overseen the band's archives over the past five decades and with whom Wyman the journalist coincidentally shares the same name. Wyman the journalist, a longtime rock critic, was once threatened with a cease-and-desist letter from Wyman the bassist's Park Avenue attorneys and felt no compunction about perusing the contents of the package. The manuscript he received is reprinted below.
5 November 2010 — I am, I see here, marginally endowed, if I read Keith's sniggering aright. I do not sing well, either. I am not polite to employees; indeed, I have even been known to say, "Oh, shut up, Keith," in band meetings. I do not appreciate the authenticity of the music or the importance of what we do. I want to "lord it over" the band, like James Brown. I am "insufferable." I slept with Anita.
Most of that is in just the first quarter of this overlong book, but a tattoo of my failings sounds all through it and culminates in almost 20 full pages of rambling invective near the end.
I don't mind this, really, for reasons I hope are understandable and will get into later. This is all from a guy pushing 70 for whom gays are still "poofters" and women "bitches." — Read the full article at Slate.com, 5,145 words.
The Old Man's Last Sauna
A collection of short stories by Carl Dow
An eclectic collection of short stories that will stir your sense of humour, warm your heart, outrage your sense of justice, and chill your extra sensory faculties in the spirit of Stephen King. The final short story, the collection's namesake, The Old Man's Last Sauna is a ground-breaking love story.
The series begins with Deo Volente (God Willing). Followed by The Quintessence of Mr. Flynn, Sharing Lies, Flying High, The Richest Bitch in the Country or Ginny I Hardly Knows Ya, One Lift Too Many, The Model A Ford, the out-of-body chiller, Room For One Only and O Ernie! ... What Have They Done To You! The series closes with the collection's namesake, The Old Man's Last Sauna, a groundbreaking love story. All stories may also be found in the True North Perspective Archives.
