Anti-Olympic protesters blamed for virulent outbreak of media fever, diarrhea

Anti-Olympic protesters blamed for virulent outbreak of fever, diarrhea
Yesterday at 10:29pm
Cantrest News Service
November 9, 2009



MLA Harry Bloy, reportedly recovering after bout with anti-anti-Olympics flu

Anti-Olympic Torch marchers and their demands for indigenous rights, social justice, and free speech caused last week's epidemic of "spastic delirium" and "verbal diarrhea" in BC news offices, production studios and even the Legislature, reports say.

Toxic rhetoric began fouling newsrooms across Victoria last Saturday after No 2010 Victoria's successful rally and march that disrupted the Torch Relay and its one-day celebration that cost taxpayers an estimated half a million dollars.

The disease - known as "anti-anti-Olympic fever" - first felled CHEK News producer Kristin Robinson, then struck Times Colonist reporter Joanne Hatherly with a vengeance.

"She flatlined, basically," said a source close to the paper. "Her brain completely shut down."

Lucinda Chodan, Times Colonist editor-in-chief, disputed the reports.

"You're making a big assumption, that Hatherly even has a brain in the first place," she said, before refusing further comment.

Burnaby-Lougheed MLA Harry Bloy's attack of verbal diarrhea in the BC Legislature on Wednesday drew disgusted reactions from across the region.

"Yes, we've had lots of messages, dozens," said a constituency assistant at Bloy's office. "Harry is resting now and we hope he recovers."

Jody Patterson was the first Vancouver Sun journalist to fall victim to the fast-moving plague, which causes lapses in judgment, ethical breaches, and loss of cognitive function.

Most affected were the Sun's editorial staff, who spewed bile and vitriol of a particularly vile nature in Friday's edition, shocking thousands of readers.

"It's the readers who suffer most," said a source close to the Sun.

"It's traumatic to see once-respected news sources humiliate themselves like this. They attack people in public, foam at the mouth, piss themselves, and shriek like banshees. It's just horrific."

Experts say this new "anti-anti-Olympic fever" typically only lasts one to two days. But Robinson and other CHEK staffers were gripped by the malady for four full days, raising concerns that a longer-lasting, more virulent mutation is possible.

The epidemic is expected to peak in February of 2010 and will likely leave many major news agencies reeling from a loss of credibility, reports say.

The contagion may be a result of over-reliance on authority figures and over-exposure to corporate hype. Those affected suffer a severe form of cognitive dissonance when confronted with people protesting against the corporate agenda and in favour of civil liberties and indigenous rights.

News desks and opinion pages are equally vulnerable to the subsequent eruptions of toxic language and verbal excreta, which can infect anyone who comes into contact with them.

Doctors warn that while the epidemic continues, news from media conglomerates - especially corporate Olympic sponsors -- should be taken with a grain of salt. Citizens are urged to wash their hands and dose themselves with independent media sources like B Channel, subMedia, Victoria Indymedia, and No2010.com

Google Eyes Future of News Delivery

How news will change in Google's eyes

Google's Eric Schmidt gives eight ideas on the future of journalism

Google chief executive Eric Schmidt on where journalism is heading

When Google's CEO Eric Schmidt sat down on Thursday evening at the MIT in Boston, one topic that came up in the discussion with the audience was the future of news. As was reported by several journalists, Schmidt appeared to have a lot sympathy for newspapers and magazines and, well, interest. This might be no surprise, since delivering the news in the future seems to be an issue that Google is brainstorming about.

Their interest in news grew from a nice small idea that Krishna Bharat had about story ranking in 2001 to something which obviously keeps its CEO busy as it became a part of their future business. Indeed, Schmidt talked of "about 10 news stream ideas" they have for the future of news. What could they be?

To answer that, we need to understand fundamentally how Google addresses the issue, which is very much in a technology-driven way. As Schmidt joked at the Gartner Symposium, that in order to study the consumption of information in the future, you should find an early technology adopter, hence a teenager in your house, or borrow one, if you don't have one. So how can news be consumed in the future? The points Schmidt comes up with are convincing, although not totally new.

Always online: "...the reading will presumably be online not offline, just because of the scale of it."

Mobile: "The Kindle is a proto of what this thing could look like. People will carry these things around."

On a smallish display: "...probably on a tablet or a mobile phone"

Personalised: "It'll be highly personalised, right? So you'll know who the person is."

Semantic: "capable of deeper navigation into a subject"

Cross-financed: "It'll be advertising-supported and subscription-supported, so you'll probably have a mixture."

While we have heard of most of these ideas, there are two aspects which seemed to be new and less decrepit: integrated storytelling and differentiated news display.

"There'll be a lot of integration of media – so video, voice, what have you," said Schmidt rather briefly, but indeed, integrated storytelling might be the next step after the convergence of television, radio and newspapers. Since the way we told a news story has changed in the past, it is quite certain that it will change in the future as well.

While now we display text, video and audio next to each other there might be a future where the stories are told in a new medium that emerges out of a deep convergence of these three. Indeed, the development of integrated formats might change journalism fundamentally in terms of how to set out the line of a story, what to begin with and where to end, or how to provide additional information. The ways video games structure stories might give us a slight hint what could lay in front of us.

"...show me the differential. Since you know what you told me yesterday, just tell me what changed today. Don't repeat everything." What Schmidt is talking about here is a rather useful feature in a world of information overload. Indeed, every news site should have a button to mark articles as read or seen. Think of something like the "I like" button on Facebook, which would send an article to be stored in your personal archive.

In addition, the unsatisfied experience you make today when reading a news website could vanish by this feature. A list of looked at articles gives you a feeling that you have actually done something while now the only feeling that is left after scanning a website is that there is soo much more which you missed.

Of course, a flipped-through magazine or newspapers already gives you that satiesfied "been there, seen that" feeling today. Sometimes the future lies in the past.

(Via NiemanLab.)

No2010 Victoria calls event "a victory for rights and justice"

Anti-Olympic Festival and March disrupt Torch Relay send-off in Victoria:
No2010 Victoria calls event "a victory for rights and justice"

Victoria, Coast Salish Territories, November 1, 2009 - Over 400 people gathered to oppose the 2010 Olympic Torch Relay in Victoria on Friday, October 30th at an "Anti-Olympics Festival" and "Zombie March" organized by No2010 Victoria. The march succeeded in disrupting the relay, and security personnel were forced to extinguish the torch, load it in a van, and reroute it in order to reach the Legislature.

"Our events were a victory for rights and justice," said No2010 spokesperson Zoe Blunt. "We took a strong strand on respecting indigenous rights to land, defending civil rights, and ending poverty, and people across the country are thanking us for our dedication."

The day of action against Torch Relay celebrations began with a "Five Ring Circus" featuring speakers, performance art, puppets and satirical competitions such as the "Binners' Olympics," the "Tour de Misplaced Finance" and "Queer Wrestling."

"It was a lot of fun!" said Bitey the Bed Bug, one of the anti-Olympics mascots.

Later in the afternoon, a "Zombie March" replete with stilt walkers, a marching band and a giant "Ghost Salmon" puppet wove through city streets and blocked a major intersection outside an RBC bank for over 30 minutes. RBC is one of the Vancouver Winter Olympics' most important sponsors and a major investor in the tar sands, the most environmentally destructive project in Canada.

"We wanted to expose the empty rhetoric of a Green Games," said No2010 organizer Kim Croswell. "Parading a giant Ghost Salmon was our way of pointing out how wrong-headed government priorities are in the midst of global warming and the collapse of salmon runs on the West Coast."

Continuing along the relay route, hundreds of marchers braving rain and cold weather cheered loudly when it was announced that the Torch had been diverted in order avoid the procession. Marchers ended at the site of the corporate-sponsored Torch Relay Celebration, where they infiltrated the crowd chanting "No Olympics on Stolen Native Land" and "Homes Before Games."

"Disrupting the Torch sends a strong message that blowing $6 billion on a sports extravaganza is far from popular," said No2010 Victoria spokesperson Tamara Herman. "The people profiting from the Olympics are not the people most affected by cuts to sectors such as welfare, affordable housing, harm reduction, health care, education, the arts and-ironically-amateur sports."

"The day of action was a day of solidarity uniting a broach spectrum of people," added No2010 spokesperson Danielle Hagel. "It sent a strong message that the Olympic Torch Relay will face opposition right across the country."

"This action demonstrates how effective we can be when we act together, even in the face of police aggression and unwarranted surveillance", said Blunt. "The group was strong, and showed remarkable self-control and commitment to the cause. We want to congratulate everyone who joined in."

A Few Choice Words on the CPP IB

Notes for an Ape Interview
by Erik Andersen

A matter of "first Principles". The design of the CPP Investment Plan makes it impossible for the investment managers to comply with a cardinal rule for regular investment advisors; the "Know your client rule".

Given this non-compliance condition, making investments at the CPP IB should not include the use of public or private common shares or any other form of private investment.

The avoidance of conflict of interest situations should not be entertained if for no other reason than it has very bad optics. The temptation to "socialize" private sector losses, or as I call it, going to the CPP Fund as "investor of last resort", is too great for even the saintly to resist.

It was and is my hope that the Minister of Finance will soon accept my characterization of the dangers in the investment design they are presently using. So far the very few replies I have were mostly relying upon the Chief Actuary's report indicating the Fund was sound for at least 75 years. I have raised the issue of the now-invalid assumptions used by the Actuary and have had only deafening silence.

Several examples of investments that bear out my concerns and illustrate why I think the CPP Fund is in harms way. Extending this criticism to other pension funds is equally valid as they all "eat from the same bowl", one provided by the international banking community.

Emerging Investigative News Networks

An Emerging Investigative News Network

BY CHARLES LEWIS
http://www.investigativereportingworkshop.org/ilab/investigative_news_network/
June 29, 2009

According to a May 2009 report written by Jan Schaffer, executive director of J-Lab: The Institute for Interactive Journalism (“New Media Makers ”), “since 2005, 180 foundations, large and small, have contributed nearly $128 million to U.S. news and information projects.” And that excludes the substantial funding given annually to public broadcasting.

These surprising numbers reflect the precise extent of the philanthropic response to the current crisis in journalism and the widening perception that America faces a larger, civic crisis as well, for local communities and for the nation. For without information, without an informed citizenry, how can citizens hold their elected officials accountable in a representative democracy?

Roughly half of that philanthropic support has gone to support investigative journalism, and more than $56 million went to three nonprofit organizations: the Center for Investigative Reporting, begun in 1977, the Center for Public Integrity, founded in 1989, and ProPublica, which started in 2008. But more broadly, and in direct response to the commercial news media meltdown, something historically stunning has been occurring – nonprofit investigative reporting centers are proliferating throughout the nation, a new entrepreneurialism brought about largely by the diaspora of working journalists simply searching for a hospitable milieu in which to do their important work.

Increasingly, the most ambitious reporting projects will emanate from the public realm, not from private, commercial outlets. And if present trends continue, which appears likely, by 2010 the amount of nonprofit journalism funding annually supporting “public service journalism” via these centers may rival and possibly even exceed what America’s newspapers spent on investigative reporting “I-teams” in the apogee of print journalism. And that is a historically significant, tectonic shift in the working dynamics of investigative reporting in the United States.

Robert Rosenthal, executive director of the Center for Investigative Reporting, and Bill Buzenberg, executive director of the Center for Public Integrity, recently initiated unprecedented conversations about the growing need for collaboration among the nonprofit investigative centers. These efforts were applauded by the Columbia Journalism Review (“All Together Now,” May/June 2009): “Collaboration needs to become central to journalism’s mission – and the mainstream press needs to get on board. From foreign capitals to U.S. statehouses, it is a way to extend our shrinking newsrooms, begin to rebuild public trust, and ensure that the standards of the professional press help shape the development of new journalistic endeavors.”

On June 11, at the national Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE) conference in Baltimore, the founders and directors of several nonprofit investigative reporting centers met and talked over roughly 11 hours at a special session organized by Brant Houston, Knight professor at the University of Illinois and former IRE executive director, and Mark Horvit, IRE’s current executive director. Never before in the more than 30-year history of IRE national conferences have nonprofit investigative news publishers ever met for a day-long program of discussion panels and conversation. The special session [Special track: Building investigative journalism centers and funding your own projects ] was made possible by the Knight Foundation. Officials from the Ethics and Excellence Foundation and the McCormick Foundation also participated.
Historic Pocantico meeting brings nonprofits together

On June 29, 2009, roughly three dozen people including the leaders of 20 U.S. nonprofit news organizations began meeting over three days at the Pocantico Conference Center at the Rockefeller estate north of New York City. The co-organizers of this remarkable event were Buzenberg and Rosenthal, with Houston and yours truly also comprising the de facto “steering committee” for the conference and its agenda, and it was all made possible by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the Surdna Foundation and the William Penn Foundation.

The setting for the historic meeting could hardly have been more ironic – the 120-acre estate created by John D. Rockefeller a century earlier, America’s richest man whose company was famously skewered by investigative reporter Ida Tarbell in her classic work, The History of the Standard Oil Company . With a conference website for participants auspiciously entitled “Building an Investigative News Network ,” not-for-profit muckrakers mulled over how to enlarge the public space for serious journalism. Several groups and individuals wanted to attend and participate in the conversation but could not because of the strict meeting space limitations of the Pocantico Conference Center – obviously there will be many more, larger discussions in the future.

Can the new collectivization but also increasing editorial, financial, operational collaboration of these nonprofit journalistic organizations result in greater dissemination and public impact? Can a new Investigative News Network platform provide creative new ways to generate earned, shared revenue which will improve the financial sturdiness and self-sustainability of these respectable, well-intentioned enterprises? That is certainly the hope.

Of course, the impulse toward organizing news outlets, into a news-sharing, not-for-profit cooperative is hardly new. It should be noted that some of our largest, oldest and most venerable media institutions in the U.S. are nonprofit corporations, such as the Associated Press (which began as a cooperative syndication service among a few newspapers in 1846), National Public Radio, the Public Broadcasting System (including the longest-running television documentary program Frontline ), National Geographic , Consumer Reports , Mother Jones , Foreign Affairs , Harper’s , the Christian Science Monitor and numerous other newspapers. The two largest, most respected nonprofit news organizations, AP and NPR, while certainly honored over many decades for the consistently high quality of their daily reporting, do not devote substantial resources to investigative journalism. Nonetheless, they and other major news outlets are becoming increasingly aware of the changing landscape of nonprofit, investigative news content.

For example, on June 13, 2009, the Associated Press announced that beginning in July, it will make investigative stories from four nonprofit news organizations – the Center for Investigative Reporting, the Center for Public Integrity, the Investigative Reporting Workshop and ProPublica – available to its member newspapers. That came six months after the December 8, 2008 announcement that the Pulitzer Prizes , for the first time since their inception in 1917, may be awarded not just to newspapers, but other news organizations that publish only on the Internet, which are “primarily dedicated to original news reporting and coverage of ongoing stories;” and that adhere to “the highest journalistic principles.” These two seismic events are a direct response to the incredible shrinking newspaper industry crisis and the new emerging ecosystem. What does it mean? That in the foreseeable future, more investigative content from more respected nonprofit news organizations will likely be added by the AP to its wire service offerings. And a story or series of stories published by a nonprofit investigative news organization will win a Pulitzer Prize.
Outlines of an Investigative News Network

One thing that is quite obvious from the recent months of exciting ferment is that there is confusion and ambiguity over exactly what an Investigative News Network ought to be and which organizations ought to be included. Some news organizations obviously are much more investigative-minded than others, for one thing – how and where is the line exactly drawn, and is that even possible or a good idea? After all, it has never really been done in traditional, commercial journalism. We are present at the creation of something significant and auspicious, yet in our nanosecond, warp-speed world, its precise definition is still unclear and cannot be glibly explained in a clever tweet. There is a public need to identify the most notable nonprofit news publishers operating today in the United States, some large, well-funded and established, some quite small and only just begun, some hard-core muckrakers to the exclusion of all other forms of journalism, winners of numerous national investigative reporting awards, some in just their first year of operation or only occasional publishers of investigative stories.

The epidemiology of quality investigative information from its original sources to its release into the major national news stream has not been precisely studied by anyone, yet. Some of the organizations included here are predominantly data, documents and research-oriented, their illuminative information made available online or in studies or books, sometimes making national or international news. Others also rely on primary source documents but also then contact and interview people who can shed additional light on the subject at hand, all combined into a written news story. Some publish investigative historical accounts, revealing insightful, contextual, longitudinal information going back decades to today. Others almost entirely do daily reporting, locally, regionally or nationally.

The media platforms for the content, along with the exact subject matter and even the inherent quality of the reporting and writing, vary as they always do from journalist to journalist, publisher to publisher. But all of the organizations represented at Pocantico and beyond are quite capable of producing serious, high quality journalism, and they thus represent an oasis in the growing desert of hollowed out newsrooms and facts-deficient, blogosphere blather.

Besides nonprofit legal and tax exempt status (directly or indirectly) and a serious, circumspect modus operandi to produce substantive research and reporting, all of the organizations which might presumably comprise a new, extraordinary Investigative News Network were founded or co-founded and are led by professional journalists, responsible for overseeing the editorial process from the very beginning, from the story idea and assignment stage to publication. None of the groups is an advocacy organization or a 501(c) (4) lobbying entity. And all of the member organizations would disclose their major sources of funding online.

As this new nonprofit investigative journalism world continues to develop, so too will its collective, de facto sensibilities become clearer, about building credibility and ensuring public trust overall, about the importance of basic organizational transparency and “best practices,” editorial independence and exacting standards regarding the newsgathering process.

However tangible and constructive the outcome of the Pocantico conference and its afterglow towards journalistic collaboration, whether or not an Investigative News Network of public service news publishers actually comes to pass, the Investigative Reporting Workshop will, at the very least, monitor, analyze and chronicle this fascinating evolution, in the United States and around the world. What else happens, and what precise leadership role the Workshop itself might play in helping to establish and develop this new model for investigative reporting, will become much clearer in the months ahead.

Il Duce Esq.: MI5 and Mussolini

Recruited by MI5: the name's Mussolini. Benito Mussolini

Documents reveal Italian dictator got start in politics in 1917 with help of £100 weekly wage from MI5



Tom Kington in Rome
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 13 October 2009


Benito Mussolini in Dress Uniform

Benito Mussolini was paid £100 a week by MI5 to keep Italy in the first world war. Photograph: Bettmann/Corbis

History remembers Benito Mussolini as a founder member of the original Axis of Evil, the Italian dictator who ruled his country with fear and forged a disastrous alliance with Nazi Germany. But a previously unknown area of Il Duce's CV has come to light: his brief career as a British agent.

Archived documents have revealed that Mussolini got his start in politics in 1917 with the help of a £100 weekly wage from MI5.

For the British intelligence agency, it must have seemed like a good investment. Mussolini, then a 34-year-old journalist, was not just willing to ensure Italy continued to fight alongside the allies in the first world war by publishing propaganda in his paper. He was also willing to send in the boys to "persuade'' peace protesters to stay at home.

Mussolini's payments were authorised by Sir Samuel Hoare, an MP and MI5's man in Rome, who ran a staff of 100 British intelligence officers in Italy at the time.

Cambridge historian Peter Martland, who discovered details of the deal struck with the future dictator, said: "Britain's least reliable ally in the war at the time was Italy after revolutionary Russia's pullout from the conflict. Mussolini was paid £100 a week from the autumn of 1917 for at least a year to keep up the pro-war campaigning – equivalent to about £6,000 a week today."

Hoare, later to become Lord Templewood, mentioned the recruitment in memoirs in 1954, but Martland stumbled on details of the payments for the first time while scouring Hoare's papers.

As well as keeping the presses rolling at Il Popolo d'Italia, the newspaper he edited, Mussolini also told Hoare he would send Italian army veterans to beat up peace protesters in Milan, a dry run for his fascist blackshirt units.

"The last thing Britain wanted were pro-peace strikes bringing the factories in Milan to a halt. It was a lot of money to pay a man who was a journalist at the time, but compared to the £4m Britain was spending on the war every day, it was petty cash," said Martland.

"I have no evidence to prove it, but I suspect that Mussolini, who was a noted womaniser, also spent a good deal of the money on his mistresses."

After the armistice, Mussolini began his rise to power, assisted by electoral fraud and blackshirt violence, establishing a fascist dictorship by the mid-1920s.

His colonial ambitions in Africa brought him into contact with his old paymaster again in 1935. Now the British foreign secretary, Hoare signed the Hoare-Laval pact, which gave Italy control over Abyssinia.

"There is no reason to believe the two men were friends, although Hoare did have an enduring love affair with Italy," said Martland, whose research is included in Christopher Andrew's history of MI5, Defence of the Realm, which was published last week.

The unpopularity of the Hoare-Laval pact in Britain forced Hoare to resign. Mussolini, meanwhile, built on his new colonial clout to ally with Hitler, entering the second world war in 1940, this time to fight against the allies.

Deposed following the allied invasion of Italy in 1943, Mussolini was killed with his mistress, Clara Petacci, by Italian partisans while fleeing Italy in an attempt to reach Switzerland two years later.

Martland said: "Mussolini ended his life hung upside down in Milan, but history has not been kind to Hoare either, condemned as an appeaser of fascism alongside Neville Chamberlain."

Afghanistan 'Mission' to Exceed 2011 Withdrawal "Deadline"

BREAKING: Harper Lies Exposed:
Afghanistan 'Mission' to Exceed 2011 Withdrawal "Deadline"
by C. L. Cook
The man whose friends need more than a little help from Canadian taxpayers, (already in the hole on the Afghanistan adventure to the tune of billions of dollars, albeit Canadian dollars, with no clear accounting discernible) now says the 2011 "withdrawal" agreement hammered out in the parliament is as illusory as the caves of Osama bin Laden.

State broadcaster, the Canadian Broadcast Corporation (CBC online) is today doing service for the "New Government of Canada," sending media trial balloons o'er the Autumnal Canadian skies declaring a redefinition of what they meant those long months ago when intoning the words "mission" and "withdrawal."

Quoting the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) spokesperson, Dimitri Soudas, the CBC reveals there will in fact be Canadian soldiers stationed in Afghanistan beyond the parliament mandated expiry date of late 2011. Soudas adds though a caveat, saying there will be "fewer."

"I would caution you against saying dozens or hundreds or a thousand, there will be exponentially fewer. Whether there's 20 or 60 or 80 or 100, they will not be conducting combat operations."

So much for parliament.

Of course, like Osama and the cave-dwelling masterminds of 9/11, Harper's promise of an end finally for Canadian entanglements within benighted Afghanistan is just so much shadow-play on the walls; to be shared for public consumption, and not to be taken seriously.

Plainly and simply, all said so far are lies told to incrementally continue Canada's relentless march towards a permanent state of militarization in union, (or harmonization) with the United States and the rest of the desperate West. Between the lines of the latest communique from his bunker in Ottawa, Harper asks us to keep faith in 'The Mission' and its missionary's position saying laying atop the people of Afghanistan with boots and bayonets will usher forth the birth of democracy, and all that prostituted term stands for.


How Many Bodies, How Many Billions?


"When we have men and women in uniform, diplomats and development workers who are putting their lives on the line, the government will spend what is necessary to make sure they are safe and successful."

"Well, let me be very clear …Canada's military mission in Afghanistan will end in 2011."

— Prime Minister Stephen Harper


Some in parliament that voted in 2008 to extend Canada's participation in Quagmiristan past the originally past due date of 2009 are squawking now about the New Government's shifting position-through redefinition. The CBC cites befuddled New Democrat foreign affairs critic, Paul Dewar begging, before the latest pronouncement for clarity, saying;

"We have one minister, minister MacKay, saying we're going to be there after 2011, there will be a role for the military. We have the prime minister and other ministers — minister [Lawrence] Cannon — getting up and saying, it's all over in 2011. What do you say to the men and women [serving there]? And what do you say to Canadians? And, finally, what do you say to our allies?"

Despite enjoying the political immunity low expectations confer, and confident it will likely never form a government within living potentiality, the NDP has still sat on the fence on the Afghanistan file. While NDP leader, Jack Layton has been the most forceful among the three national parties (the Bloc Quebecois being the most outspoken) against the war and continued occupation, he has consistently fallen short of calling for immediate withdrawal. That reluctance may be coming to an end, with Dewar demanding;

"We should be putting our allies on notice in written form that we are out and the date. If we don't do that, we're not being responsible to our allies, we're not being responsible to the men and women who are serving, and we're not being accountable to Canadians."

As of writing, 131 soldiers, two aid workers, and one Canadian diplomat are officially listed as killed in Afghanistan. Numbers of physically and emotionally wounded are more difficult to come by, but as with every war, the tally can never reflect the true costs to the individuals and their families, or to the nation. Canada does not release, if indeed it records, the estimated numbers of locals and fighters killed and maimed through its actions.

With two years left on the parliamentary "mandate" yet to run, the prime minister added his murky comments to the muddied waters of Canada's future intentions, saying;

"We set out some time-lines there for training and for exit and the government has no intention of asking for an extension of that mission. By the time we reach 2011, we will have been in Afghanistan longer than we will have been in both world wars combined, so I think it is time to transform that mission towards development and humanitarian efforts."


That Depends on the Definition of "That"


Though it's difficult to imagine Stephen Harper having had sexual relations with that mission, the "that" qualifier twice appearing in his parting statement are pure meal. Harper's sleight of hand and sidling into legalese regarding the nature of this mission and that is, in the opinion of one cynical reader, merely another slap in the face of parliament and the vaunted democratic process Harper and his allies repeatedly claim to wish for the people of Afghanistan.

It's also a bare-faced rebuke to the majority of Canadians who continue now to oppose Canada's involvement in this disastrous misadventure as they have from the beginning. And, if Mr. Harper's latest statement is to be believed, it means a coming of full circle too for how "The Mission" was first presented to Canadians as a humanitarian effort so long, and too many lives, ago.



Chris Cook is managing editor at www.pacificfreepress.com and broad/webcasts Gorilla Radio from the studios of CFUV Radio at: http://cfuv.uvic.ca

Dumb Intel

On the Unintelligent Uses of Intelligence
Written by Chris Floyd
Friday, 02 October 2009

I urge you most strenuously to repair immediately to Arthur Silber's site, and there set yourself to school on the dangerously unintelligent uses of "intelligence" – not only by ever-deceitful regimes and their sycophantic courtiers, but also, most grievously, by staunch opponents of the imperial system as well: "Fools for Empire (II): The Inescapable Pervasiveness of the Ruling Class Paradigm."

The essay is eloquent, cogent, deeply informed, insightful – and important. In addition to his own unique insights, Silber mines wisdom from such trenchant observers as Chalmers Johnson, Ray McGovern, Barbara Tuchman and Gabriel Kolko to give the lie to the corrosive belief that any output from the "intelligence" agencies can or should be relied upon – and the accompanying lie that our leaders and their spies possess super-secret knowledge which we peons must defer to. As Silber notes, the historical facts demonstrate overwhelmingly and irrefutably that "intelligence" always has been – and, more importantly, cannot avoid being – manipulated, incompetent, corrupted and wrong. Thus his observation:

This is why I maintain that you must always argue the policy, and that you must never argue about the intelligence. To the extent you argue the intelligence, you are doing the ruling class's bidding. They can change the intelligence quickly enough when they think doing so is necessary, as they have done in the past and as they will again. If you grant the legitimacy and accuracy of intelligence assessments on even one occasion, and if you utilize those assessments in making your own arguments, you're making your own work that much harder, and your future arguments will be far less convincing than they would be otherwise.


But a brief excerpt risks doing the post an injustice. You should head over there now, and read the whole thing.

GR 05-19

101.9 FM 104.3 Cable 'cfuv.uvic.ca'

Monday September 28, 2009

5:00:00 3:00 Welcome to GR, etc. It's well known, empires and civilizations rise and fall. In between that inevitable ebb and flow, societies go through several identifiable stages. One of those stages, one near civilization's end, is the age of corruption, deceit, and treachery.

One of the hallmarks of the end days is tyranny; the rich pray upon the poor, government turns on the citizenry, and the armies of empire return home to practice the brutality perfected abroad on the people who sent them.

If any of this sounds like something limited to antiquity, you must have missed the footage of the police riots attending the G20 summit in Pittsburgh over the weekend.

If you think the age of tyranny is something limited to the United States, you missed the last eight years of Gordon Campbell's destructive reign in B.C. The latest outrage the B.C. Liberals plan for the hard-bitten citizens is the sudden adoption of the HST, an unrepresentative and regressive tax hike against all who spend money, coming at a time when there is markedly less money to spend.

Brad Slade is a long-time, Victoria-based labour activist who thought his skills could be useful mobilizing opposition to the HST. He's now the Victoria organizer for FightHST.com and played a principal role organizing last week's first Victoria protest against the proposed tax. Brad Slade in the first half.

And; what connects we here in out of the way Victoria with the police rioters in Pennsylvania, or the imperial guards of the garrisons in Afghanistan, and Iraq? What happens to us individually and collectively when we allow military conquest be the agency of our promised prosperity? The death of democracy in three short acts in the second half.

And Victoria Street Newz publisher and CFUV broadcaster, Janine Bandcroft will be here at the bottom of the hour for a view of what's new on your city's streets. But first, Brad Slade and singing out of tune with Gordo and Stephen's harmonized tax grab.

5:03:00 22:00 Discussion w/ Brad Slade

"Welcome to the program, Brad; what is the HST?"

5:25:00 1:00 Cart(s)
5:26:00 11:00 Janine Bandcroft
5:37:00 5:00 Music (The Fire This Time) #4 Get Thee Behind Me
5:42:00 5:00 Diatribe (Fascist Attacks for Those Who Remain)

The world order George Bush the elder intoned after America's first military engagement with Saddam Hussein is not really new. In one form or another, the operatives of the rulers of the world have been with us forever. CUE Whether the brutish centurions of the latter day Roman empire, or the banal little grey men who merely followed orders, the mass of humanity has always been subject to the pathological impulse to power of a dedicated and ruthless minority. There can be no final victory over this evil, it is a part of us that cannot be removed, but we can resist. In Pittsburgh this weekend, a few people braved the Hydra headed beast, insisting democracy be saved.

5:47:00 5:15 Music (TFTT) #10 Church Bells
5:52:00 7:00 Music (Midival Punditz - repeat) #1 under Bill Quigley

It's been remarked before, the evils of empire always come home to roost. Over these last few years we've witnessed a hardening of attitudes by police and government against the people they profess to represent. We've witnessed police killings, both in custody and on the streets balloon, even as the arsenals of those serving and protecting us have swelled with exotic devices promised to spare unnecessarily fatal encounters with citizens.

We've witnessed an impunity after the fact of crimes and deadly actions committed by law enforcement, and an apparent immunity to criticism. There is now an impervious air about these fractured pillar institutions whose perverse function seemingly seeks first to only serve and protect its own.

American human rights lawyer, Bill Quigley has borne witness to the deterioration of his country's stated principles. He has reported on the human rights abuses of Canada, America, and the United Nations' mission in Haiti, and he was in Louisiana in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. He writes of the police riots in Pittsburgh: Quigley piece at PFP.

5:59:00 1:00 Thanks to Brad Slade, J9; Bill Quigley; upcoming.
6:00:00 --:-- -0-

Republicans beaver yet

Republicans at work
by William Davies

If management rhetoric is anything to go by, the post-industrial workplace should be a pristine model of participative democracy. Strict, Taylorist routine has been has been out of favour, both economically and culturally, for well over thirty years now. It has been replaced by an emphasis on ‘teamwork', ‘the psychological contract', ‘dialogue' and ‘participation'.

William Davies is a Demos Associate and a Research Fellow at the Institute for Science, Innovation & Society, Said Business School. He blogs at potlatch.org.uk

Earlier this year, the UK's Department for Business, Innovation and Skills commissioned David MacLeod, a management guru, to carry out a review of ‘employee engagement' as a necessary factor in Britain's future prosperity. Again, the case for flatter, more interactive relationships was made.

But what does any of this have to do with democracy or dispersal of power? The republican agenda, advanced by theorists such as Stuart White, Quentin Skinner and Philip Pettit, stresses the need to tackle forms of domination and restraint on positive freedoms, in all facets of society. The workplace can not be exempt from this sort of political critique. And yet a common assumption about the status of firms in society suggests that they sit in a political vacuum, allowing their decisions and structures to be only evaluated in terms of economic efficiency.

The problem with the managerial ‘participation' rhetoric is that it only values human autonomy to the extent that it contributes to productivity and business performance. Hence a growing feeling of irony pervades our workplaces, as described eloquently in the sociology of Richard Sennett, and conveyed brilliantly in the BBC sit-com, The Office.

We no longer mean the words we speak to each other at work. The rhetoric of equality and power appears to exert no friction on the dominant, Anglo-Saxon capitalist model, in which management power is unchallenged, so long as value is constantly returned to external shareholders. Some recent studies have shown a gradual decline in the number of employees who feel they have considerable control over their work.

The republican agenda privileges a distinctly political form of autonomy, and demands to see it within firms just as much as anywhere else. What is truly radical - and potentially disruptive - about this is that there will be cases in which political autonomy and democratic empowerment is privileged over economic autonomy and productive empowerment. There may be cases where workforce representation and consultation should exist, regardless of any discernible economic benefit.

Co-operative structures, in which labour hires capital rather than vice versa, are one institutional form that republicans such as White and Nien-He Hsieh, have celebrated. The original meaning of ‘profit-sharing' is also worth returning to: the notion is that, once both capital and labour have received their ‘wage', that any remaining surpluses should be split equally between the two. Companies that were organised to uphold this principle would still be capitalist and profit-making, but they would not be profit-maximising. This represents a positive departure from the neo-liberal, shareholder value-oriented model of the firm.

Yet these are difficult arguments to mobilise in a policy culture that still seeks to diagnose all social ills using neo-classical economics and its derivations. Management theorists are perhaps even harder to reason with, given that many of them falsely believe that they are already committed workplace democrats.

Perhaps, then, a more plausible political-economic agenda for the firm would be to define a concept of employee autonomy that could deliver or balance empowerment as both a political good and an economic good. New Labour's obsession with the ‘win-win' option has left many critics jaded, once it emerges that the interests of capital are never in practiced compromised. But there are sincere opportunities.

Various forms of mutualism and employee ownership deliver exactly this balance between political and economic goods. They demonstrate that a private sector organisation can be high-performing, well managed and profitable, while offering employees tangible forms of control over their working lives and environments. Ownership, as republicans frequently argue, brings with it political freedoms as well as economic rights. Virtuous circles are possible, in which the higher levels of deliberation and responsibility within companies spills over into higher levels of employee commitment and knowledge-sharing.

In an age when declarations that ‘our staff are our number one asset' are met with cynicism, a whole new ownership model is needed if workplace democracy is to be taken seriously once again.

William Davies's report Reinventing the Firm is published by Demos

source
http://www.opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/william_davies/republicans_at_work

Canada's Draconian Bill C-6

Bill C-6 returns Bill C-52, after 40th Elections.
Cannabis & Codex: evil legalized lies
2009

Bill C-6
The Standing Committee on Health (HESA) Report tabled in the House of Commons, June 8, 2009.

The Senate gave it first reading on June 16, 2009.

http://www2.parl.gc.ca/Sites/LOP/LEGISINFO/index.asp?Language=E&Chamber=N&StartList=A&EndList=Z&Session=22&Type=0&Scope=I&query=5655&List=stat

http://www2.parl.gc.ca/Sites/LOP/LEGISINFO/index.asp?List=ls&Query=5655&Session=22&Language=e

40th Parliament - 2nd Session

Legislative Summary of Bill C-6:

An Act respecting the safety of consumer products

WITH LINKS THROUGH TO ADDITIONAL INFORMATION THERE.

As with Bill C-15, the only apparent hope is that there might be the 41st general elections called in the Fall of 2009, before Bill C-6 becomes law.

Right now, it is still

Code Red for Natural Health Industry:

The Bill C-6 Missile has been launched!

Protect Your Constitutional Rights

Health Canada Needs Checks and Balances

Government has introduced Bill C-6 which is a repackaged Bill C-52.

At present, the government has not yet re-introduced Bill C-51, perhaps because there was too much resistance against Bill C-51, thanks to the hard work of thousands of Canadians who understood the importance of having a separate and distinct Act for natural health products.

Contrary to what politicians may be telling you, Bill C-6 certainly is not there to increase our access or to increase public safety with regards to natural health products. We have already lost tens of thousands of safe natural health products from health food store shelves. It is evident that our government is marching to the drum beat of the multi-national drug corporations.

Bill C-6 is being introduced in the name of "public safety," however, it paves the way for our government to have foreign regulations brought in simply under regulation changes without the scrutiny of parliament (we the people), thus eroding our rights and freedoms as sovereign beings.

Schedule 1 of Bill C-6 specifically EXEMPTS both "drugs" and "foods". "Natural Health Products" are not specifically mentioned in Schedule 1.

NHPs are treated for regulatory purposes as a sub-category of "drugs;" however, one wonders if the omission from Schedule 1 may be a deliberate semantic loophole? In order to avoid confusion, we must insist that Natural Health Products be specifically named in Schedule 1. Failing to do so, could further jeopardize and eliminate thousands more natural health products.

Bill C-6 gives powers to inspectors to stop the importation or sale of a product and to seize property and documents, based entirely on the inspector’s "belief" that a product may be harmful. There is no requirement for the inspector to produce any documented proof nor scientific evidence of harm. There is a requirement to get a warrant if the goods and evidence to be seized are in a personal dwelling; however, such warrant could be issued over the telephone by a judge who would base his decision entirely on the unsubstantiated "belief" of the inspector.

Fines are exorbitant:

up to $5,000,000 and/or imprisonment for 2 years.

Bill C-6 gives Health Canada the power to levy criminal penalties for what are nothing more than alleged violations of departmental regulations. All a person has to do to commit a "violation" is to contravene a bureaucratic "order". It does not matter if the violation was unintentional, if no one was harmed, if there was no intention to harm, if there was no victim and no crime. Inspectors are also given the right to enforce "on the spot" fines much like parking tickets. Picture this newly formed army of inspectors running around handing out $5000 fines for even minor infractions. All appeals are handled by the Minister as opposed to the Courts.

Learn more:

www.freedomcanada.com

http://nhppa.org/?page_id=70

http://www.billc6.com/www/stopc6/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7_0HlCwb8A

PART 1 Restricting Our Freedoms - Shawn Buckley About Bill C-6

For BACKGROUND, see this 40 minute video:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5266884912495233634&hl=en-CA

Nutricide - Criminalizing Natural Health, Vitamins, and Herbs
from Rima Laibow MD:

Or this hour and a half video from 2007

Codex Alimentarius

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5800206429960925518&hl=en

For another overview from Dr. Rath, see:

http://www4.dr-rath-foundation.org/THE_FOUNDATION/thebigpicture.php

Or, watch the "We become Silent" - Documentary

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOOMwOyBSCU

http://www.rense.com/general87/codex.htm

"On December 31, 2009, Codex standards will be globally mandated unless legal challenges prevent it."

Bill C-6 is merely one more step that implements the overall agenda of the banks, and the corporations around them, taking more complete control of every aspect of life, to extract profits, while nobody will be left that could effectively resist. That is an imminent danger! Everything that enables the established money system to control Canada today, (through our already corrupted political processes) continues to enable enormous global corporations taking control of every aspect of how Canadians will live.

Unfortunately, about the only things left you can do is to try to beg big political parties that serve the banks and big corporations to do something different.

Write to YOUR Members of Parliament?

No stamp is necessary.

Link to your local MP offices info:

http://canada.gc.ca/directories-repertoires/direct-eng.html

Write to other Members of Parliament?

The Prime Minister,

The Right Honourable Stephen Harper,

80 Wellington Street, Ottawa, Ontario K1A 0A2

Harper.S@parl.gc.ca or pm@pm.gc.ca

Fax 613-941 6900

The Minister of Health;

The Honourable Leona Aglukkaq,

House of Commons Ottawa, Ontario, K1A 0A6,

Telephone: 613-992-2848,

Fax: 613-996-9764,

Email: Aglukkaq.L@parl.gc.ca

Even a significant group of Conservative MPs
are getting enough pressure from their people
to put some pressure upon the Health Minister?

Without adequate action from concerned citizens,
these laws might become the law inside Canada.

You may lose your access to dietary supplements.

More importantly, each of these kinds
of laws are steps to advance agendas.

Things keep on coming around, so that
the worst accomplished in one country
then becomes the next standard down,
in insane races towards the bottom ...

There is a clear warning to Canadians that vitamin consumers globally may be affected by the European Food Safety Authority, combined with the European Commission, that will be unleashing more regulations from hell.

Those regulations from hell may make their way into the Codex Alimentarius because the EU seems to politically dominate that Codex.

The worst restrictions anywhere tend to become
the worst restrictions applied everywhere else ...

There may be ’Maximum Safe Upper Levels’
that will be only slight multiples above RDA.

Vitamins may become less available & more expensive.

Another example of worse legislation in the USA:

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Monsanto-bills-being-rushe-by-Linn-Cohen-Cole-090217-758.html

http://foodfreedom.wordpress.com/2009/06/16/hr-2749-totalitarian-control-of-the-food-supply/

For an example of the USA FDA administration, see:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeffrey-smith/youre-appointing-who-plea_b_243810.html

These American laws are now already passing through their Congress.

Every additional step on that agenda
advances lies backed up by coercion,
& long-term results are
collapses and genocide.

International trade treaties are being used to advance the profits of corporations, against the interests of most other people. The realities these kinds of laws create will be more steps towards enabling international regulations to control what kinds of vitamins and herbs Canadians can consume. This will ultimately be done to benefit private profit, although those laws will be be promoted by professional liars hypocritically promoting "public health and safety."

Protecting the public against bad products is a typical excuse used to implement controls and regulations that force people to abide by inferior products that profit some, while superior products, that would not have been as profitable, tended to be discredited or destroyed by government/corporation propaganda/regulation campaigns.

Relentless pressures from the people with the most money to campaign for their interests set in motion measures that will ensure they will make the greatest amount of profits, by making their products the preferred ones, while others are discriminated against.

Generally, "trade treaties" are for the benefit of investors to obtain profits through their corporations.

Overall, agribusiness is interested in profits, and the power to control culture to maximize profits for the owners of those businesses. It does not care about the health of consumers, nor any other aspect of the long-term future. The strategy of the agribusinesses and pharmaceutical companies etc. is to maximize short-term profits, regardless of any other consequences. Controlling people to benefit shareholders is their primary purpose. Some of the profit made has been systematically used to corrupt the political process, and every aspect of food and drug law has been corrupted by that funding of the political process, driving vicious spirals of money and political power.

Each controlling law or regulation will tend to be another step down that spiral staircase of political corruption, taken by professional liars and immaculate hypocrites to actually accomplish the opposite of what they claim they are doing.

Step by step, all controls over foods and drugs are being directed to benefit the pyramidion people at the top of the social pyramid’s fascist plutocracy, while harming everyone else more and more. That fascist plutocracy already controls Canada, and Canada is already integrated as a small component of the global fascist plutocracy.

In a sense, cannabis laws were the most
extreme examples of the overall pattern
of political facts demonstrated by Codex.

Unfortunately, there IS a real pattern.

Canada is NOT some genuinely
"free and democratic society."

Canada is a fascist plutocracy.

That is true everywhere one looks,
and the people who controlled all
of the governmental regulations
have a relentless agenda going.

An overview of evolution of North American diets:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YkNkscBEp0

How the Food Industry is Deceiving You Part 01:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXAZ_7JO7EA

Why Economics Drives Most Food Options You Have:

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2009/02/05/why-economics-drives-most-food-options-you-have.aspx

7 minute video on the Price-Pottenger story:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPCOGSnjP5w

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2009/06/02/Do-You-Really-Know-Where-Your-Food-Comes-From.aspx

Dr. Mercola on the increasing insanity of established agribusiness.

Larger overview of what is legal and what is not:

What agribusinesses systems DO allow,
while at the same time they also want
to limit all access to natural herbs etc.:

http://www.meat.org/

http://www.themeatrix.com/

What truly controls our food supply
is private profit for a tiny minority.

Every other consideration has been
systematically defeated by the long
history of corrupted political funding.

http://www.larouchepub.com/other/1995/2249_windsor_food.html

THE MOST EXTREME EXAMPLE IS CANNABIS!
Cannabis should be food first.

Hemp seeds are the single best source
of protein, and oil, for human diets ...

However, we all are now actually living inside of a
Bizarro Mirror World, where things are backwards.

In principle, plant-based protein sources might about
10 to 20 times cheaper to produce than animal ones.

That makes one have to wonder what is the BIZARRE
cultural history, that has ended up inverting us all???

It makes one realize how, again and again,
the triumphs of lies and coercions control
how cultures have developed in society.

Cannabis should be food first, & the way
that cannabis food was criminalized is the
most extreme example of general patterns.

The ways people live inside North American civilization
ARE controlled by triumphs of dishonesty, backed up
with violence, & EVERYTHING about how they live
has become integrated aspects of that evil whole.

The lifestyles of the vast majority of people
are due to triumphs of political corruptions.

The single best plant source
for protein and oil IS hemp!

However, hemp was made totally illegal for decades,
and hemp is still suffering from insane restrictions
applied against marijuana to limit growing hemp.

That fits inside of an overall pattern of agribusiness. Everything that the global fascist plutocracy got away with doing to cannabis, it intends, and is now prepared to do, to all other herbs and nutrients. The total package of perversity that is exemplified in the case of cannabis is set to be systematically applied to all other food stuffs and drug substances. The same ways that the truth about cannabis has never made any difference to cannabis laws, because those laws were always based on huge lies, backed up with coercion, those patterns of abuse are now in the pipeline to be applied to everything else. The same ways as that inferior products were promoted, by wiping out cannabis as a competitor, are going to be repeated throughout every other domain of food and drugs.

There is already set up to be an almost total triumph of the global forces of evil over the lives of all Canadians. At the present time, it looks just as probable that Canadians will be as idiotic and incompetent to stop these developments from impacting on every aspect of food and drugs in their lives, as they were unable to prevent or fix the insane situations created by cannabis laws. The path we are on now seems to be for the total triumph of legalized lies, backed up with legalized coercions, to be applied against Canadians, while most of those Canadians will be brainwashed to believe in the bullshit that this is being done for reasons of “public health and safety.” Everything we have seen in decade after decade of pot prohibition is set to be repeated on an enormous scale, as applied to all other foods and drugs.

The familiar patterns of social facts which
worked to make cannabis criminal are
set up to be repeatedly applied to
everything else that is similar.

The same patterns of the uselessness of the political processes, already controlled by the corrupted big political parties, is set up to be repeated, to make protests fail to work to prevent these evil things the wealthy elites are planning to implement. The same ways that we are stuck in a vicious spiral of mass media promoted propaganda, and biased editing of the news, are likely going to be repeated again, & again, in every other similar domain. The same ways as the vast majority of Canadians will continue to have NO way to organize to resist that actually works will probably replay itself with respect to all other food stuffs and drug substances. At the present time, there are no reasonable grounds not to expect everything will continue to get worse and worse, faster and faster, while Canadians will continue to NOT find any effective ways to be able to respond to resist. Everything that enables the banks and enormous corporations to control the political processes, by controlling the mass media, etc., which determines electoral success, which delivers political power only, and almost totally, to the big political parties, which then can continue to use that power to make the political processes even more unfair and slanted in favour of them, and against any real opposition, will likely continue to unfold. All alternatives will probably continue to be fragmented, and unsuccessfully squabble, while the agenda that divides and conquers them runs amok. Thus, there is currently a deep connection between Bill C-6 and Bill C-15. The ONLY hope now is for a snap election before they become law. Otherwise, all the same reasons why cannabis will get even more criminalized, with relatively trivial exceptions, will soon also be applied in similar ways to other foods and drug substances. All the problems manifested in pot politics are likely to repeat themselves again, on an astronomically larger scale.

All the reasons why we have failed to stop criminalizing cannabis are probably going to reoccur as we fail to stop Codex Alimentarius effectively criminalizing all good foods and drug substances, while it enables the inferior products to be promoted and sold for greater profits. Thus, the vicious spirals of money and political power will feedback into themselves. Thus, there will probably not be any effective opposition possible, since only the big, more mainstream, political parties, that are dependent on the established banking and other corporate powers for their continued electoral success, will maintain their systems, run by professional liars and immaculate hypocrites, as our civilization declines and falls, from too much "success" from the triumphs of lies, backed up with coercions, as we saw developed against cannabis, and now, more & more, we are seeing the same methods applied against everything else that are foods or drug containing substances.

There is clearly a war against consciousness going on, and the vast majority of people are clearly losing that war. Indeed, they are losing so badly that most of them do not even know that they are already the victims of that war.

Some steps inside the cycle use food as a weapon,
since controlling the food controls people, while
controlling money then controls food & people.

Social facts that cultivating cannabis was criminalized
illustrate these overall patterns of political corruption
where a variety of natural alternatives were systematically
discredited and destroyed, in order to make sure that other
inferior products, that could be patented, and monopolized,
were promoted, & given every possible advantage by the
biased systems of the governmental laws and regulations.

The pattern of government subsidies for food production
is an inverted pyramid where the more healthy the food,
the less likely that kind of food is going to be subsidized.

While the less healthy any ‘food’ may be,
the more likely that was to be subsidized.

Prohibition of pot merely takes that trend
to the logical extreme, in the Bizarro Land.

The single best food for people was criminalized!

Lies and hypocrisy about "safety and public health"
where employed to justify all the legislation which
had mostly opposite effects upon the public health.

The profits made from deceitful monopolies
then return as more political corruption ...
enabling funding of the political processes
to take another turn towards corruption.

http://www.pcrm.org/magazine/gm07autumn/health_pork.html

We treat food animals in immoral & inhumane ways.

Animals that we eat for food are now raised
in industrial production places, where they
are fed things that governments prop up.

Factory farms have destroyed family farms.

We should apply more science and technology to food.

However, we should not have the decisions about how
to apply science and technology to food supplies be
controlled by the imperatives of fascist plutocracy.

All together, we end up with very low quality animal food,
that have their unreasonably low price in the supermarket.

People are eating too much animal protein,
due to some systematic political corruption
that has distorted the entire food system.

In general, people could become healthier
IF they ate more plants, and that applies
to eating more plant-based protein & oil.

But, inside a Bizarro Mirror World “reality,”
everything has been perverted / inverted.

Boiling it down to an over-simplistic statement:

THE WORLD IS BEING CONTROLLED BY

TRILLIONAIRE MASS MURDERS!!!!!!
The most important things are

death control and debt control,

or murder and money systems.

Science and technology tend to be applied
to enable greater dishonesty and robbery.

That is not inherent in science itself,
but rather, inherent in the structure of
the social pyramid systems we have now.

That is illustrated everywhere one looks!

“Health Canada” deliberately created
an extremely bad medical marijuana
access program, & they would likely
to do that to other herbs, and so on.

“Health Canada” is really concerned with
the ‘health’ of the corporate bottom line.

The phrase "Health Canada" is Orwellian Newspeak.

Make no mistake that private profits
for the big corporations is the main
thing which shall guide new laws.

It is the same pattern everywhere one looks!

The unethical treatment of human beings
goes around & around to cause more of
the unethical treatment of all animals.

That entire system is getting sicker ...

We need better human ecology,
and an industrial ecology, to be
able to save natural ecology.

However, the entire political debate is
dominated by the big bullies’ bullshit.

Criminalization of cannabis
is the single worst example.

But, criminalizing chamomile,
and so on and so forth, may be
on an agenda for the real system.

Governments had gotten away with
huge lies that marijuana was almost
as bad as murder, and therefore, our
cannabis cultivation was criminalized,
for sixty years in Canada, and thereby
the single best food source became
unavailable, and is still now expensive,
and of inferior quality, due to it being
restricted by marijuana law madness.

IT ALREADY DID HAPPEN THAT
THE SINGLE BEST PLANT FOR
HUMAN FOOD WAS ILLEGAL!

We ARE living in a runaway fascist plutocracy.

BE WORRIED THAT PATTERN SHALL
REPEAT ITSELF, AGAIN AND AGAIN!

All current political debates are hypocritical.

We need solutions to chronic political problems.

We should democratize the death controls more.

That possibly sustains more democratic debt controls.

However, at present, with all potential laws like C-6
there is almost total triumph of egregious hypocrisy.

Everything that is being done
is a total opposite of excuses
given for why it is being done.

Orwellian Newspeak is rampant throughout Parliament.

What they say law should do
is not what is really intended.

Every aspect of our society was dominated
by a worsening runaway fascist plutocracy.

The best professional liars and immaculate hypocrites
control the government to implement this evil agenda.

The long-term consequences will be extremely tragic ...

Codex Alimentarius Commission

Gorilla Radio with Chris Cook, Zoe Blunt, David Swanson, Janine Bandcroft Sept. 14, 2009

This Week on GR
by C. L. Cook
This week: Zoe Blunt is a Victoria-area based environmental and rights defender, independent journalist, and one of the principals behind the website, WTF? Langford, the closest watchdog of the ongoing Bear Mountain development (visible from Victoria as the scabrous scar in the heart of the Sooke Hills). She and her colleagues are currently focused on the coming games and the attendant abuses of the ostensible tenants of Canadian society it demands. Zoe Blunt in the first half.

David Swanson is an American political activist without peer. He is a former journalist, press secretary for one of Dennis Kucinich's presidential runs, creator of numerous activist websites and campaigns and the author of the recently released book, 'Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union.' David Swanson and putting We the People back in the political drivers seat in America in the second half.

And; Victoria Street Newz publisher and CFUV radio broadcaster, Janine Bandcroft will join us at the bottom of the hour to keep us current with some of the goings on from the streets of our fair city.

But first, Zoe Blunt and "talking about: the biggest circus of corporate pimping, police harassment, wasted tax money, military exhibitionism, and winter sports - the 2010 Olympics and the Torch Relay", slated to start here in Victoria."


Chris Cook hosts Gorilla Radio, airing live every Monday, 5-6pm Pacific Time. In Victoria at 101.9FM, 104.3 cable, and on the internet at: http://cfuv.uvic.ca. He also serves as a contributing editor to the web news site, www.pacificfreepress.com. Check out the GR blog at: http://GorillaRadioBlog.blogspot.com


As the Olympics draws nearer, nervous police intelligence operatives are nosing around, poking into to the lives of citizens on the record as opposing the infamous "five ring circus." Evidently, uninvited police visits to law-abiding Canadians is not illegal, otherwise they wouldn't continue despite the objections of civil rights organizations, right?

Zoe Blunt is a Victoria-area based environmental and rights defender, independent journalist, and one of the principals behind the website, WTF? Langford, the closest watchdog of the ongoing Bear Mountain development (visible from Victoria as the scabrous scar in the heart of the Sooke Hills). She and her colleagues are currently focused on the coming games and the attendant abuses of the ostensible tenants of Canadian society it demands. Zoe Blunt in the first half.

And; last November, millions across United States believed the gathering gloom the eight years of ruinous rule by the George Bush regime represented was finally giving way to the sunrise of a new American era. The election of Barack Obama, and the winning of control of both houses of Congress by the Democrats, made the hope of that bright new future seem a slam dunk; but since taking office, the Obama administration has done little to validate the trust progressives put in him.

David Swanson is an American political activist without peer. He is a former journalist, press secretary for one of Dennis Kucinich's presidential runs, creator of numerous activist websites and campaign and the author of the recently released book, 'Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union.' David Swanson and putting We the People back in the political drivers seat in America in the second half.

And; Victoria Street Newz publisher and CFUV radio broadcaster, Janine Bandcroft will join us at the bottom of the hour to keep us current with some of the goings on from the streets of our fair city. But first, Zoe Blunt and "talking about: the biggest circus of corporate pimping, police harassment, wasted tax money, military exhibitionism, and winter sports - the 2010 Olympics and the Torch Relay", slated to start here in Victoria."


G-Radio is dedicated to social justice, the environment, community, and providing
a forum for people and issues not covered in the corporate media.





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Honduran Resistance Leader Chavez Seized

by IFCO / Pastors for Peace
René Chavez, a leader of the resistance movement against the coup d'etat in Honduras, was captured and jailed on Friday, September 11.


Chavez is the former president of the Primer Colegio Magisterial de Honduras (PRICMA), a leading Honduran teachers' union. He also is currently a candidate for deputy to the National Assembly from the Atlantic Coast region of Honduras. He has been a coordinator in the Atlantic Coast region of the Frente Nacional, the national front against the coup.

Chavez was captured yesterday and taken to the Central Penitentiary of the Barrio Inglés in La Ceiba. He was taken to court today for an immediate trial, was charged with organizing illegal demonstrations, and was taken back to prison.

Dr Luther Castillo, communications secretary for the National Resistance Front Against the Coup d'Etat, said;


"We are very concerned about this dangerous situation, because once he's in jail, they can do anything to him, including paying someone to kill him. We are asking for solidarity from international organizations to demand his immediate freedom."


*****
IFCO / Pastors for Peace
An ecumenical agency whose mission is to help forward the struggles of oppressed peoples for justice and self-determination

MEDIA ADVISORY
from the National Resistance Front Against the Coup d'Etat in Honduras
(version en español sigue abajo)

September 12, 2009 --- for immediate release
CONTACT: Ellen Bernstein: 646/319-5902
NOTA DE PRENSA
del Frente Nacional de Resistencia Contra el Golpe de Estado en Honduras

12 Septiembre 2009 -- para difusion inmediata
Contacto: Ellen Bernstein: 646/319-5902

REPRESION CRECIENDO EN HONDURAS:
LIDER DE RESISTENCIA CAPTURADO Y ENCARCELADO

Rene Chavez, un lider del movimiento de resistencia contra el golpe de estado en Honduras,
fue capturado y encarcelado el viernes 11 septiembre.
Chavez es ex-presidente del Primer Colegio Magisterial de Honduras (PRICMA), un sindicato Hondureño de maestros.
Tambien es candidato actual para diputado a la asamblea nacional desde la region de la Costa Atlantica de Honduras.
Ha estado coordinador por la region de la Costa Atlantica para el Frente Nacional de Resistencia Contra el Golpe de Estado.
Fue capturado ayer y llevado a la Penitentiaria Central del Barrio Inglés de La Ceiba.
Fue llevado al corte hoy para un juicio inmediato, cargado con organizar manifestaciones ilegales,
y devuelto al carcel.

Dr Luther Castillo, secretaria de comunicaciones para el Frente Nacional de Resistencia Contra el Golpe de Estado,
dijo, "Estamos muy preocupados por esta situacion peligrosa, porque mientras esté encarcelado,
se le pueden hacer cualquier cosa, hasta pagar alguien para matarle.
Estamos pidiendo la solidaridad de las organizaciones internacionales para exigir su liberacion inmediata."


http://pacificfreepress.com/news/1/4684-honduran-resistance-leader-chavez-seized.html

Barack and Bibi

Has Bibi Won the First Round?
by Patrick Seale

On two key issues of Barack Obama’s foreign policy -- Palestinian statehood and reconciliation with Iran -- Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel’s Prime Minister, has chosen to fight the American President. He has refused to bend to Obama’s will, and is instead seeking to outwit and defeat him.

Thus, to save his right-wing coalition -- and his own job -- Netanyahu has not hesitated to offend Obama and even put at risk Israel’s vital relationship with the United States. The fact that he has done so suggests that he thinks he can win the present battle of wills. Indeed, Netanyahu may already have won the first round.

The evidence is fragmentary, but seems to be there nevertheless. If a State Department spokesman is to be believed, the United States is softening somewhat its demand for a total Israeli settlement freeze before Israeli-Palestinian negotiations can begin. Washington also seems to have embraced Israeli demands for tougher sanctions against Iran, if it refuses to halt uranium enrichment by a September deadline. Obama had earlier mentioned September as a tentative date when the situation would have to be reassessed.

These apparent concessions to Israeli demands may be only tactical. In squeezing Netanyahu, Obama has proceeded with great caution. The American president has not yet revealed his own battle plan. It is as if he has wanted the Israelis to reach certain conclusions by themselves, rather than be pushed.

To Netanyahu’s way of thinking, however, it is Obama who is beleaguered -- not himself. After all, from Netanyahu’s standpoint, Obama has committed the cardinal sin of daring to equate Israeli and Palestinian interests, and of reaching out a hand of friendship to Iran, a country Israel has long identified as a dangerous rival. Netanyahu wants Iran struck down, much as Israel and its friends pressed the United States to strike down Saddam Hussein’s Iraq for seeming to pose a long-term strategic threat to the Jewish state.

It is now clear that Netanyahu has no intention whatsoever of ending the occupation and settlement of the West Bank, or of conceding Palestinian statehood in any meaningful sense. Regarding Iran, he has spared no effort to press the international community to punish Iran with paralysing sanctions, while hinting that Israel would itself strike Iran, with or without America’s green light, if Tehran did not put an end to its nuclear programme.

These are arrogant and short-sighted positions. They point to a lack of fresh security thinking in Israel. It is as if Netanyahu and his civilian and military colleagues were blind to the evolution of international (including American) opinion regarding Israel, and to the looming changes in Israel’s strategic environment.

Indeed, it is as if Israeli leaders remained persuaded that harsh and brutal methods -- the continued seizure and settlement of Palestinian land, the repeated assaults on Israel’s neighbours, the political assassination of Arab opponents -- would continue to work in the future as they have done in the past. In other words, that Israel would always be able to dominate the entire region militarily, and would therefore have no need to make concessions.

Netanyahu was in Europe this past week. After meeting Britain’s Gordon Brown and Germany’s Angela Merkel, he declared that no settlement freeze had been agreed; and that he would certainly not accept a freeze in East Jerusalem, where building has, in fact, been speeded up. Meanwhile Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman has warned Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayad that Israel would not tolerate him declaring a de facto Palestinian state by 2011, if negotiations had not progressed by then.

Netanyahu may indeed have boxed himself into a corner, lulled by the fact that Obama has not yet published his peace plan. There is talk of a tripartite meeting between Obama, Netanyahu and Mahmud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority, in New York at the end of September.

This may be when Netanyahu could face some real heat. To outside observers, Obama has not retreated an inch from the position he outlined in Cairo on June 4. “Israelis must acknowledge,” he then declared, “that just as Israel’s right to exist cannot be denied, neither can Palestine’s. The United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements. This construction violates previous agreements and undermines efforts to achieve peace. It is time for these settlements to stop.”

Obama might have added that Israel’s land grab must not only be stopped, but put into reverse. For the conflict to be resolved, settlements will have to be evacuated; borders defined; Jerusalem shared; and a solution agreed for the refugees. To focus on Israel’s security alone, as Netanyahu evidently prefers, would be to elude and fudge other key problems which will need to be addressed.

Netanyahu will need to be persuaded that it is dangerous for him to subvert the central planks of Obama’s Middle East policy; dangerous to take on a regional power such as Iran, with its prickly nationalism, ancient civilization, a population ten times that of Israel, and a land area vastly bigger; dangerous to reject the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative, which is still on the table (but for how long?); dangerous to keep building in Arab East Jerusalem; dangerous to seek to destroy Hamas by the pitiless siege of Gaza; dangerous to delay liberating Gilad Shalit by a prisoner exchange; above all, dangerous to keep on piling up hate against Israel by a callous indifference to Arab interests and to Arab life.

However difficult it may seem, the time for a settlement of the Arab-Israeli conflict has arrived. Barack Obama is the one world leader -- indeed the only one in our lifetime -- who has a chance of pulling it off. He knows that it holds the key to America’s future relations with the Arab and Muslim world, and that it is the only way to exorcise the curse of terrorism, which is spreading like an epidemic.

A comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace would stabilise the region, introduce a new era of prosperity, guarantee Israel’s long-term security, bring Iran into the circle of friendly nations, and even allow Washington, with the enhanced authority of a successful peace-maker, to bring an honourable end to its costly and misguided war in Afghanistan.

Netanyahu may have won an early round against Barack Obama, but he has by no means won the war. We have seen only skirmishes so far. The real battle is yet to come.


Patrick Seale is a leading British writer on the Middle East, and the author of The Struggle for Syria; also, Asad of Syria: The Struggle for the Middle East; and Abu Nidal: A Gun for Hire.

Copyright © 2009 Patrick Seale – distributed by Agence Global

Funeral of Muhammad Nayef

Israeli troops kill West Bank boy

Nayef was buried in the Jalazun refugee camp where he lived

A Palestinian youth, 15, has been shot dead by Israeli forces in an incident outside a settlement near the West Bank town of Ramallah.

The Israeli military said Muhammad Riad Nayef was among a group of youths that troops fired on after they hurled firebombs at a guard post.

But Palestinian police quoted witnesses who said stones and firebombs were only thrown after the boy was shot.

The incident comes amid moves to restart peace talks later this months.

The wounded teenager was transferred to an Israeli hospital in Jerusalem, where he later died.

Palestinian medical sources said another four people, three youths and one ambulance driver, were injured in the incident at the Jalazun refugee camp, near the settlement of Beit El.

West Bank map

The death comes as the US is pushing to restart Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.

Israel's largely ceremonial president, Shimon Peres, said on Monday that US President Barack Obama may chair a proposed meeting between the Israeli and Palestinian leaders in September.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas may meet on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York in late September, Mr Peres told Fox News.

The EU's foreign policy chief Javier Solana said he expected "some kind of statement, some kind of proposal" on fresh negotiations around that time.

The US and Israel have been trying to reach agreement over Palestinian demands for a complete halt to building in settlements in the occupied West Bank, before they will restart peace talks.

Israel wants to keep building to allow what it calls the "natural growth" of settler communities, and has refused to stop building in East Jerusalem.

But Nabil Shaath, a former Palestinian prime minister and a senior member of Mr Abbas's Fatah movement, said the Palestinians would reject calls to negotiate if Israel only implemented a limited freeze.

"I would say, Mr Obama, we love you... but I am sorry this is not enough to bring us to the peace process."

He said a freeze must include all of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and must last until a final peace agreement was reached.

At least 450,000 Israeli settlers live in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.

The settlements are illegal under international law, although Israel disputes this.



source

Bear Mountain Monies Misappropriated by Barrie Accountants Charge

Barrie accused of misusing funds


Report claims Lightning co-owner misappropriated monies from Bear Mountain Resort, using $2.5-million to buy his share of NHL team

David Shoalts
Globe and Mail ??http://www.theglobeandmail.com/sports/barrie-accused-of-misusing-funds/article1271363/
Tuesday, Sep. 01, 2009


A report by the former auditor of Bear Mountain Resort (a massive golf, hotel and commercial and residential project near Victoria headed by Canadian Len Barrie) has accused the Tampa Bay Lightning co-owner and other senior members of the complex's management team of misappropriating funds.

The Victoria accounting firm of Norgaard Neale Camden Ltd. made the report to Bear Mountain?s executive committee last January and then resigned as the auditor on April 15 because it felt some financial transactions were illegal and because Bear Mountain's directors did not take action.

Some of those transactions, according to the report, involved at least $2.5-million that Mr. Barrie, a former NHL-player-turned-owner, used to pay for his part of the Tampa Bay Lightning. The report raised questions about more than $25.8-million paid to Mr. Barrie or companies under his control going back at least two years by the partnership that owns Bear Mountain.

"We brought to your attention a number of instances where senior members of [Bear Mountain] management had engaged in a number of activities that, in our view, were improper and, in some cases, illegal," the auditor stated in its resignation letter, which was signed by Allan Neale, a partner in Norgaard Neale Camden.

Katrina's Hard Choices

Comments on 'Deadly Choices at Memorial'
by Arthur Caldicott
That is an engulfing story, Delores. Thanks for posting it.

No fault to find with anyone in those extreme circumstances - exhausted, in a 100 degree hospital without power or water or virtually any necessary resources, left to fend for themselves in a dreadful situation, and well-intentioned to the end, the actions of all of them seem heroic. The extraordinary behaviour of these people, shines through the awfulness.

Until the attorney-general opened investigations 14 days after Katrina. Then it gets ugly, as lawyers and medical investigators start trying to uncover evidence, performing autopsies on rotting corpses.

I followed the link to the two YouTube videos of Sheri Fink talking about the story.

In the second part, starting at about 3:27 she is asked about the details she amassed in her research and interviews and what was left in and what was left out in the final edit. Her response to the question made me smile and feel right at home.



Part I. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DmLY6K7gAUk




Part II. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1iG_dsElhs

Arthur

Noam Does Caracas

Noam Chomsky in Venezuela: 'A better world is being created'

By James Suggett | August 28, 2009

U.S. author, dissident intellectual, and Professor of Linguistics at the Massachussetts Institute of Technology Noam Chomsky met for the first time with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez in Caracas and analyzed hemispheric politics during a nationally televised forum on Monday.

Chomsky is well known in Venezuela for his critiques of U.S. imperialism and support for the progressive political changes underway in Venezuela and other Latin American countries in recent years. President Chavez regularly references Chomsky in speeches and makes widely publicized recommendations of Chomsky's 2003 book, Hegemony or
Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance.

"Hegemony or survival; we opt for survival," said Chavez in a press conference to welcome Chomsky. He compared Chomsky's thesis to that of German socialist Rosa Luxemburg in the early 1900s, "Socialism or Barbarism," and referred to Chomsky as "one of the greatest defenders of peace, one of the greatest pioneers of a better world."

Through an interpreter, Chomsky responded, "I write about peace and criticize the barriers to peace; that's easy. What's harder is to create a better world... and what's so exciting about at last visiting Venezuela is that I can see how a better world is being created."

During Monday's forum, which was broadcast on the state television station VTV, Chomsky pointed out that the ongoing coup in Honduras, which began on June 28th, is the third coup the United States has supported in Latin America so far this century, following the coup against Chavez in 2002 and Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 2004.

The nearly finalized deal to allow the U.S. to increase its military presence on Colombian bases "is only part of a much broader effort to restore Washington's capacity for intervention," said Chomsky.

According to Chomsky, the region has the capacity to unite and form a "peace zone" in which foreign militaries are forbidden to operate. "Venezuela can help to advance this proposal, but it cannot do it alone," he said.

"The transformations that Venezuela is making toward the creation of another socio-economic model could have a global impact if these projects are successfully carried out," said the renowned author.

Aporrea.org, a popular Venezuelan news and pro-revolution analysis website, described Chomsky as oriented toward "libertarian socialism" and "vehemently anti-Stalinist" in an introduction to a recent interview in which Chomsky said U.S. President Barack Obama's foreign policy will be similar to that of the second administration of former U.S. President George W. Bush.

Chomsky addressed this issue during Monday's conference as well, commenting that Obama "could have much to offer Latin America if he wanted to, but hasn't given any signals that he does." He cited the U.S.'s indecisive posture toward the coup in Honduras as evidence.

Chomsky also addressed the media and freedom of expression in the U.S.

"In the United States the socio-economic system is designed so that the control over the media is in the hands of a minority who own large corporations... and the result is that the financial interests of those groups are always behind the so-called freedom of expression," he said.

Chomsky said the growing disappointment with the Obama administration in the U.S. was predictable because the corporate media marketed Obama's presidential candidacy on the slogan of "Change We Can Believe In" but omitted concrete proposals for effective changes, and the Obama administration has since shown an incapacity to institute such changes.


James Suggett is a Melman Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies and a writer for venezuelanalysis.com.