breed-specific insanity continues in ontario; tea partiers support animal abuse in missouri

Breed-specific insanity continues in Ontario, under the radar of the media and most of the public, but inflicting lifelong pain on the families it tears apart.

Someone claims your dog is a banned breed, and it's up to you to prove she's not. And how do you prove such a thing? You can't. So your dog is taken from your home, and killed. Now, with a later amendment to the law, the dog can now be re-homed out of the province. But what will happen to the dog? And what of your family?

This almost happened to me, a week after we moved to Canada. In the story below, note the day the law went into effect: August 29, 2005. That's the day before we landed. Two days earlier, and we would have been safe. As it was, we were at the mercy of a kind Animal Services person, who may have showed leniency because we had just moved to the country.

Without this, I can't imagine what we would have done. We spent years healing Buster from the tortures he endured, and nursing him through his many chronic illnesses. To think our life with him could have been ended just days after we moved to Canada...! It's too terrible to contemplate.

A family in Cobourg, Ontario, is suffering this way right now. The dog Chaos (pictured above) has caused no trouble. He is not aggressive. He's not even a banned breed! But if you read the story carefully, you might discover what is really going on. The dog is barking. And someone found a way to fix the problem.

Stop K9 Profiling - End BSL (here on Facebook) is asking people to contact Ross Barth at Animal Services at 905.885.7808 and politely ask that Chaos be released.

Those of us who oppose breed-specific dog laws are asking for only one thing: that all dogs be treated equally. It's illegal to arrest people and lock them up because they might do something wrong in the future. (It happens, but it's still illegal.) Why can we do this to dogs?

Dog lovers protest breed ban after pet seized
By Pete Fisher, Northumberland Today

COBOURG/PORT HOPE - Punish the deed, not the breed: that was the message of a protest Saturday in front of the Northumberland County courthouse in Cobourg.

Tracey Van Slyke organized the protest after Animal Control officer Ross Barth and four Port Hope Police officers served a warrant at her home on Wednesday, March 9, and subsequently seized her 11-month-old dog, Chaos.

Officers said Chaos appears to be a pit bull, and therefore falls under banned breed legislation which states that no pit bulls are to be born after the legislation was enacted in August 2005.

"So, we've got an 11-month-old dog that shouldn't be here based on what I determined as to be a pit bull-type dog," said Barth, who was acting as a result of a complaint he received.

Though the dog wasn't at the home, it was later seized at a Cobourg residence.

"I don't believe I ever had an illegal dog," Van Slyke said at Saturday's protest.

Approximately 30 people from Cambridge to Kingston took part in the rally to call for changes to the Dog Owner's Liability Act.

As of Aug. 29, 2005, that restricts ownership of American pit bull terriers, American Staffordshire terriers, Staffordshire bull terriers and any dog that is deemed to be substantially similar can be seized.

All pit bulls born before August 2005 were to have been sterilized, tagged and registered. Any dog born after can be seized and destroyed or sent to a research facility for animal testing.

Van Slyke said she has two dogs and is doing her best as a "responsible dog owner," but has also been informed her dogs are "interrupting the enjoyment of other tenants" with their barking.

"My dogs occasionally bark," she said. "I've been working with them to get them to stop.

"I have contacted the legal clinic and they are going to assist me in my eviction notice.

"We need our dog back," she said.

"He's never done anything aggressively other than bark and we've been working on behavioral management with him. He doesn't deserve to die just because someone doesn't think he should be where he is."

. . .

Barth said he has to act under the law when a complaint is made, and if the owners can prove the animal is not a pit bull it would be released back to them.

"I can't say whether I agree with the law or not," he said. "That's not for me to decide. The law is in place and I have to enforce the law."

Barth said nobody involved in this incident wants to see the dog destroyed, "but we know if the court decides we have no option."

Chaos is currently being housed at the Shelter of Hope on Theatre Road in Hamilton Township because Barth couldn't find another place to keep the dog.

Some shelters are shipping the dogs like this to Quebec because that province has no ban on the breed.

Barth is an animal lover himself said it's a disturbing case for all involved.

"It's breaking my heart. I had the dog in my lap. I watched the police officers doing their job and I don't think anyone of us want to see the dog taken away from its owners."

Elsewhere, anti-government freaks will bring suffering and death to countless puppies and dogs, because even the most basic, bare-bones animal protection laws are really just "government meddling" in citizens' lives.

I wrote about this back in October, when tea-party activists were trying to block legislation that would limit some of the most egregious abuses of puppy mills in the state of Missouri. Despite those efforts, that legislation passed. And now they're trying to get it repealed.

For years, Missouri earned the dubious distinction as the nation’s “puppy mill capital” because its lax humane regulations and enforcement allowed dog breeders to raise puppies at low costs in terrible, overcrowded conditions. Last fall, Missouri voters approved a referendum to finally solve this problem — the Puppy Mill Cruelty Prevention Act — which mandates regular veterinarian inspections of breeding facilities and ensures a basic level of treatment for dogs, such keeping temperatures between 45 and 85 degrees. Tea party groups stridently opposed the referendum, arguing it was “just another example of big government meddling in people’s lives.” Now, capitalizing on the big gains they made in November, Republicans in the state legislature are poised to repeal the regulations Missouri’s voters enacted. . . .

The bill still has to make it through the state House, and Gov. Jay Nixon (D) has not yet said whether he would sign or veto the bill. Editorializing against the state Senate vote, the Kansas City Star wrote that the “senators showed an arrogant disrespect for Missourians” who voted for better treatment of the animals. “The state legislature, held hostage to interests that regard dogs as just another form of livestock, has ignored the problems for years,” the paper added.

By this light, we should be well on our way to repealing child labour laws, fire codes and minimum wage laws (a cruel joke in most US states anyway).

For more on puppy mills, go here. "Overcrowding" doesn't begin to describe the tortures these dogs are subjected to.

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must-watch video: michael moore to wisconsin protesters: america is not broke

Michael Moore gives the progressive troops in Wisconsin a great boost.

"America is not broke, and neither is Wisconsin. . . . America is awash with wealth, it's just not in your hands." Don't miss this, it's very good.

I wish Moore had mentioned the trillions of dollars the US is spending on the largest military budget in history. But it's still great stuff, and worth watching the whole thing.

Story here on TPM.

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democracy now: inside the wisconsin state capitol

Here's a brilliant and inspiring video from "Democracy Now!", bringing you inside the Wisconsin State Capitol.



These are thrilling times, watching people all over the world discover their voices and their power.

How 'bout it, Canada?

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wisconsin police say "we are workers, too"

Last night's news from Wisconsin was the best yet. Governor Scott Walker ordered the capitol building cleared of sleeping bags, saying he would close the building for the weekend. Police said: No.

The union representing Wisconsin's police officers issued this statement (click to enlarge):

Law enforcement officers know the difference between right and wrong, and Governor Walker's attempt to eliminate the collective voice of Wisconsin's devoted public employees is wrong. That is why we have stood with our fellow employees each day and why we will be sleeping among them tonight.

When police officers recognize that they have more in common with other workers than with the state whose edicts they are asked to carry out, we are really onto something. These cops are the civilian equivalent of war resisters. More power to them!

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scott walker reveals himself to not-david koch; indiana official reveals his fascism on twitter, calls for protesters to be shot

Scott Walker, the embattled union-busting Governor of Wisconsin, had a little chat with his favourite ultra-rightwing financier, David Koch. Or so he thought. From AMERICAblog:

Last night, the Republican Governor of Wisconsin, Scott Walker, delivered an address to the people of his state. But, yesterday, Walker also got on the phone with someone who really matters to him - billionaire GOP activist David Koch, who is behind much of what is happening in Wisconsin, but also funds far-right GOP activism nationwide. Well, that's who Walker thought he was talking to. . . . .

Ian Murphy, a blogger at Buffalo Beast, managed to talk to Governor Scott Walker by pretending to be Koch. . . . [Ed note: the Buffalo Beast site is down. The post, called "Koch Whore", should be here. The call has been confirmed by the governor's office.]

More details from the call are emerging - Greg Sargent at the Washington Post has a few:

* Walker doesn't bat an eye when Koch describes the opposition as "Democrat bastards."

* Walker reveals that he and other Republicans are looking at whether they can charge an "ethics code violation if not an outright felony" if unions are paying for food or lodging for any of the Dem state senators.

* Walker says he's sending out notices next week to some five or six thousand state workers letting them know that they are "at risk" of layoffs. "Beautiful, beautiful," the Koch impersonator replies. "You gotta crush that union."

Listen so you'll know that Walker really is one of Koch's minions. And, this is about crushing unions and workers. In fact, you'll hear Governor Walker admit that he "thought about" it when fake Koch suggested the idea of "planting some troublemakers" among the protesters in Madison. Were they going to come in on horses and camels?

AMERICAblog has the audio and the transcript: here, and scroll down.

Walker's frank talk is small potatoes compared to the deputy attorney general of Indiana calling for the Wisconsion protesters to be massacred. From Mother Jones:

On Saturday night, when Mother Jones staffers tweeted a report that riot police might soon sweep demonstrators out of the Wisconsin capitol building­ - something that didn't end up happening­ - one Twitter user sent out a chilling public response: "Use live ammunition."

From my own Twitter account, I confronted the user, JCCentCom. He tweeted back that the demonstrators were "political enemies" and "thugs" who were "physically threatening legally elected officials." In response to such behavior, he said, "You're damned right I advocate deadly force." He later called me a "typical leftist," adding, "liberals hate police."

Only later did we realize that JCCentCom was [Jeff Cox], a deputy attorney general for the state of Indiana.

Cox says liberals hate police, but it looks like this legal eagle isn't too keen on the US Constitution, with all those guarantees of free speech, the right to peaceably assemble, and all that silly stuff. And a man advocating the use of deadly force against peaceful protesters is calling those protesters "thugs". Project much?

Update from Mother Jones:

Update: The Indiana attorney general's office has confirmed to Mother Jones that Jeff Cox was terminated Wednesday. The full statement and screen captures of the now-defunct blog re posted here.

Both items with thanks to James.

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ted rall on the limits of leftist humour

I meant to include this in my earlier post about Ted Rall's new book. Just as well, it's worth reading on its own.

Advo­cate: Speak­ing of the Left: in your book you are pretty harsh on some very well liked and admired fig­ures on the Left. Michael Moore, for instance, and the Yes Men, whom I think are really hilar­i­ous...

TR: They are hilarious.

Advo­cate: So, what’s up with that? What’s the prob­lem with what they do? Aren’t they allies in your cause?

TR: I would say the rea­son I picked them is because they are so good. They are the best that the offi­cial Amer­i­can Left has to offer, in the same way that Obama is the best, in terms of the main­stream polit­i­cal sys­tem, that the sys­tem has to offer.

Michael Moore has got this immense audi­ence of tens of mil­lions of peo­ple, his movies can open up in hun­dreds of the­atres, he can talk about things that no one else can talk about, he’s got this great Mid­west­ern folksy sen­si­bil­ity, he has a gen­tle deliv­ery; he’s really kind of a genius. And his TV show was even bet­ter than his movies I think. And the Yes Men are great too.

And I am sure you’re ask­ing your­self, ok what are you talk­ing about, why are you down on these guys so much, and it’s because they don’t go there. Like Jon Stew­art and Col­bert, this kind of dis­sent val­i­dates the offi­cial sys­tem by say­ing “look at the Amer­i­can polit­i­cal sys­tem; it’s so big and open minded that it even allows a guy like Michael Moore or the Yes Men or John Stew­art to oper­ate.” And the impli­ca­tion is, it’s not that bad.

But you notice that they mar­gin­al­ize peo­ple who actu­ally call for rad­i­cal change, like Howard Zinn or Ralph Nader. Those peo­ple are not allowed to get their mes­sage out. So you’re allowed to go up to the edge of ridi­cul­ing, but you can’t call for real change; all you can do is poke gen­tle fun, or not so gen­tle fun, but it’s got to be all in fun. You can’t call for the actual sys­tem to be replaced, and that was really the argu­ment I was try­ing to make there.

I would argue that Michael Moore has indeed called for the system to be replaced, but as Rall says, he has couched these demands in humour. People like Moore, Stewart, Stephen Colbert, Chris Rock and others function like court jesters: they are given freedom to ridicule leaders and speak truths others can't get away with, but no one in power takes them seriously. Stewart, with his softball interviews with right-wing celebrities and obeisance to some false notion of balance, is especially jester-like.

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ted rall, tunisia, egypt, wisconsin and revolution

I've been meaning to post this interview with cartoonist and activist Ted Rall ever since Allan said, "You must read this - he sounds exactly like us."

Rall's new book is The Anti-American Manifesto; this interview is in the CUNY [City University of New York] Graduate School Advocate.

Reluctant Revolutionary: An Interview With Ted Rall

Advo­cate: . . . In your new book you explic­itly advo­cate the use of rev­o­lu­tion­ary vio­lence. It’s hard to get any more rad­i­cal than that and I can’t imag­ine the deci­sion to write such a book was an easy one to make. Indeed, in con­ver­sa­tions with friends about the book I’ve found that even the men­tion of rev­o­lu­tion­ary vio­lence is almost uni­ver­sally greeted with dis­dain, shock, or dis­be­lief. I am really inter­ested in how you came to this deci­sion to write the book, the events or ideas that led you to this argu­ment, and why you felt com­pelled to write this book now?

Ted Rall: Well, it was a very dif­fi­cult deci­sion, from a career stand­point as well as from the stand­point of being a sim­ple Amer­i­can cit­i­zen. As a stu­dent of his­tory I am well aware of the fact that rev­o­lu­tion is dan­ger­ous and vio­lent and bru­tal and can make things worse before they make things bet­ter, so it’s not a deci­sion to be taken lightly. I want to be very clear that even though the book is a call to arms and a call to get rid of the cur­rent gov­ern­ment, and it does def­i­nitely defend the use of vio­lence (I would say that there is no such thing as non-violent rev­o­lu­tion; no rad­i­cal change has ever taken place with­out vio­lence or the cred­i­ble threat of vio­lence), but I think there is a ten­dency to sen­sa­tion­al­ize the vio­lent aspect of the book. Most rev­o­lu­tion­ary activ­ity is inher­ently non-violent actu­ally. It’s just that vio­lence is part of the revolutionist’s tool­box; it has to be, oth­er­wise there is no way to cred­i­bly remove the state. The rich and the pow­er­ful don’t give up wealth and power vol­un­tar­ily so you can’t fight it non­vi­o­lently with­out effec­tively tying one hand behind your back.

In terms of the deci­sion to write the book I kind of fol­lowed a sim­ple, log­i­cal process, which is to ask myself and many other peo­ple whether there was any pos­si­bil­ity that this sys­tem, the Democ­rats and the Repub­li­cans and the cor­po­ratist cap­i­tal­ist sys­tem that they sup­port, could or would address any of the really seri­ous press­ing prob­lems that are faced by the Unites States today  —  whether those are income inequal­ity or the envi­ron­ment and cli­mate change, or sky­rock­et­ing deficits, or war and mil­i­tarism, or health­care  —  and I don’t think so.

. . . When Obama refused to be the new FDR I knew that, Obama being about the best most pro­gres­sive, smartest pres­i­dent we were gonna get out of this sys­tem, I knew that the time had arrived to call for rev­o­lu­tion. Now I wish that other peo­ple were doing it, I wish that I could join some­one else’s move­ment. I don’t want to stick my neck out; it’s not fun to attract all of this heat, but no one else is doing it. There’s no Left what­so­ever in the United States. All there is is wimpy lib­er­als. So, I wrote this book in order to start a con­ver­sa­tion. This is not rev­o­lu­tion for dum­mies, this is not a how-to guide, this is not the anar­chists’ cook­book. If you are pick­ing this up look­ing for how to over­throw the US gov­ern­ment buy another book; this is not that book. This is a book that cre­ates the space to have a dis­cus­sion that is just not even part of Amer­i­can pol­i­tics. Amer­i­can pol­i­tics occurs strictly between the Ds and the Rs. We don’t even talk about the Greens and the Lib­er­tar­i­ans, much less the pos­si­bil­ity of get­ting rid of the sys­tem entirely.

Advo­cate: Along those same lines, how has your life changed since the pub­li­ca­tion of the book? What’s the last month been like for Ted Rall? What have you learned about Amer­ica, par­tic­u­larly con­cern­ing the sub­ject of this book?

TR: I guess many things did not come as a sur­prise. The fact that the media and the polit­i­cal sys­tem are so deeply entrenched and unwill­ing to con­sider actual change came as no sur­prise. The fact that there are many very reac­tionary, hate­ful peo­ple who defend the sta­tus quo no mat­ter what came as no sur­prise either. But what did come as a sur­prise were the huge crowds that came out to my book sign­ings, which indi­cated to me that there is a thirst for talk­ing about these sorts of options. Many, many peo­ple have been over the sys­tem for a long time, but that con­ver­sa­tion doesn’t take place, so I pro­vided a forum for that kind of dia­logue to hap­pen. What I’ve learned, and it’s kind of what I sus­pected, is that there are a lot of peo­ple out there like me. I wouldn’t have writ­ten the book if I thought I was alone. I don’t think I’m such a unique thinker. A lot of peo­ple can look at the same set of cir­cum­stances and draw sim­i­lar con­clu­sions, and they have. So in terms of how my life has changed, I mean, it hasn’t really, except for being very, very busy doing inter­views, but that’s about it.

I've always said that, despite the persistent, ignorant and usually imaginary fear of socialism and communism that runs through US history, the real danger to US democracy has always been from forces on the right. I've blathered about this ad nauseum on wmtc, no need to flog the "fascist shift" theme here. Now, events in the Middle East, the successful leftist movements transforming South America, and the sudden spark of progressive engagement emanating from Wisconsin and rippling through other states, are combining to give me new hope. These events are reminders that none of us can predict the future.

No people's movement, no matter how successful, has ever known the outcome of their struggle in advance. All we can do is keep on keepin' on.

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reading list redux: taibbi in rolling stone, elliott in mother jones

A few weeks ago, I highlighted three long magazine articles that, taken together, demonstrate so much of what is wrong with the profit-driven system that dominates our world. They document how capitalism is destroying the environment, health care, and in general, people's lives.

Well, I'm back to repeat myself. This story by Matt Taibbi in Rolling Stone is a brilliant piece of investigative journalism almost guaranteed to amaze you. The depth and breadth of corruption - in both financial and legal systems designed to increase the wealth and power of giant banks while destroying low- and middle-income Americans - are simply mind-boggling. Do yourself a favour and read this: "Invasion of the Home Snatchers: How the courts are helping bankers screw over homeowners and get away with fraud".

If you are interested in health care, and why it needs to be publicly financed, why profit needs to be removed from the system, don't miss "Making A Killing," by Carl Elliott in Mother Jones. An excerpt and links to important sidebars are in my post here.

And the third story I had highlighted is really a series of articles and analysis about the BP disaster, also in Mother Jones. It may be the definitive investigation of how BP is burying the evidence of their crimes against our planet.

I will try to post about these stories again, but I can't guarantee anything.

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the uterus police: georgia politican wants every pregnancy loss investigated by law enforcement

[allan guest post]

There are far too many US politicians - on both sides of the aisle - who despise equality, hate women, and have no shame in pushing legislation that would sound right at home in any of the world's worst dictatorships. Here are what two of them are doing.

Georgia Representative Bobby Franklin wants abortion classified as murder (of course), but he also wants to force the police to investigate all "miscarriages" (the antiquated term for a spontaneous abortion) to make sure that they were indeed spontaneous. From Daily Kos:

Franklin wants to create a Uterus Police to investigate miscarriages, and requires that any time a miscarriage occurs, whether in a hospital or without medical assistance, it must be reported and a fetal death certificate issued. If the cause of death is unknown, it must be investigated. If the woman can't tell how it happened, than those Uterus Police can ask family members and friends how it happened. Hospitals are required to keep records of anyone who has a spontaneous abortion and report it. ... Needless to say, there are no exceptions allowed. Not for rape victims. Not for incest victims. Not to save the life and health of the mother ...

(I first saw this at Care2.)

Two weeks ago, it was reported that Franklin has filed a bill that would remove the term "victim" from rape, stalking, and domestic violence cases and replace it with "accuser". A post at Creative Loafing notes that Franklin once actually

conjured the phrase "My body, My choice" while discussing a piece of legislation he introduced that would prevent the government from making vaccinations compulsory in the event of a pandemic. Irony at its worst.

Franklin is also not keen on having homosexuals in the military:

The Bible says it's a capital offense. You want someone with unrepentant criminal behavior? And it's not just that, neither should adulterers, neither should thieves, neither should a lot of things.

Well, I actually agree with this. Let's have the US military conduct a rigorous weeding out of its troops by strictly applying the 10 Commandments.

Have you ever said "goddamn it"? Out! Have you ever worked on Sunday? Out! Did you ever disobey your parents? Out! Have you ever stolen anything, ever? Out! Have you ever looked at anyone else in the world who was not your wife/husband and had a sexual thought? Out! Have you ever wished you had the same cool gadget as that guy over there? Out! And even if you somehow passed the test and were sent off to fight in a war, as soon as you killed one person ... Out!

Get 'er done, Congress!

Mother Jones reports that the South Dakota GOP-dominated House of Representatives will soon vote on House Bill 1171, which is sponsored by Representative Phil Jensen. The bill would

expand the definition of "justifiable homicide" to include killings that are intended to prevent harm to a fetus - a move that could make it legal to kill doctors who perform abortions. ...

[The bill seeks to alter] the state's legal definition of justifiable homicide by adding language stating that a homicide is permissible if committed by a person "while resisting an attempt to harm" that person's unborn child or the unborn child of that person's spouse, partner, parent, or child. If the bill passes, it could in theory allow a woman's father, mother, son, daughter, or husband to kill anyone who tried to provide that woman an abortion - even if she wanted one.

The bill has already passed out of committee on a 9-3 party-line vote.

Sara Rosenbaum, a law professor at George Washington University: "It takes my breath away. Constitutionally, a state cannot make it a crime to perform a constitutionally lawful act."

The magazine continues:

South Dakota already has some of the most restrictive abortion laws in the country, and one of the lowest abortion rates. Since 1994, there have been no providers in the state. Planned Parenthood flies a doctor in from out-of-state once a week to see patients at a Sioux Falls clinic. Women from the more remote parts of the large, rural state drive up to six hours to reach this lone clinic. And under state law women are then required to receive counseling and wait 24 hours before undergoing the procedure. [There are ongoing attempts to increase this to 72 hours. - ed.]

Before performing an abortion, a South Dakota doctor must offer the woman the opportunity to view a sonogram. And under a law passed in 2005, doctors are required to read a script meant to discourage women from proceeding with the abortion: "The abortion will terminate the life of a whole, separate, unique, living human being." Until recently, doctors also had to tell a woman seeking an abortion that she had "an existing relationship with that unborn human being" that was protected under the Constitution and state law and that abortion poses a "known medical risk" and "increased risk of suicide ideation and suicide." In August 2009, a US District Court Judge threw out those portions of the script, finding them "untruthful and misleading." The state has appealed the decision.

But, remember: the procedure is still legal -- even though the state has not had anyone able to perform the procedure practicing in the state in almost 20 years. (Also, see this Common Dreams article from 2005.)

An update to the story states that Jensen is considering adding specific protections for abortion providers to the bill. "There's no way in the world that I or any other representatives wish to see abortion doctors murdered," Jensen told the Washington Post.

Oh, my goodness gracious, no.

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herbert and dobbin: where is democracy at home?

It's been a very long time since I posted a column by Bob Herbert. He's an excellent thinker and writer with a difficult beat: the liberal readers of the not-so-liberal New York Times, who he challenges to step outside their comfortable, 10-degrees-left-of-centre box.

As the throngs celebrated in Cairo, I couldn’t help wondering about what is happening to democracy here in the United States. I think it’s on the ropes. We’re in serious danger of becoming a democracy in name only.

As the throngs celebrated in Cairo, I couldn’t help wondering about what is happening to democracy here in the United States. I think it’s on the ropes. We’re in serious danger of becoming a democracy in name only.

While millions of ordinary Americans are struggling with unemployment and declining standards of living, the levers of real power have been all but completely commandeered by the financial and corporate elite. It doesn’t really matter what ordinary people want. The wealthy call the tune, and the politicians dance.

So what we get in this democracy of ours are astounding and increasingly obscene tax breaks and other windfall benefits for the wealthiest, while the bought-and-paid-for politicians hack away at essential public services and the social safety net, saying we can’t afford them. One state after another is reporting that it cannot pay its bills. Public employees across the country are walking the plank by the tens of thousands. Camden, N.J., a stricken city with a serious crime problem, laid off nearly half of its police force. Medicaid, the program that provides health benefits to the poor, is under savage assault from nearly all quarters.

The poor, who are suffering from an all-out depression, are never heard from. In terms of their clout, they might as well not exist. The Obama forces reportedly want to raise a billion dollars or more for the president’s re-election bid. Politicians in search of that kind of cash won’t be talking much about the wants and needs of the poor. They’ll be genuflecting before the very rich.

In an Op-Ed article in The Times at the end of January, Senator John Kerry said that the Egyptian people “have made clear they will settle for nothing less than greater democracy and more economic opportunities.” Americans are being asked to swallow exactly the opposite. In the mad rush to privatization over the past few decades, democracy itself was put up for sale, and the rich were the only ones who could afford it.

. . . .

I had lunch with the historian Howard Zinn just a few weeks before he died in January 2010. He was chagrined about the state of affairs in the U.S. but not at all daunted. “If there is going to be change,” he said, “real change, it will have to work its way from the bottom up, from the people themselves.”

I thought of that as I watched the coverage of the ecstatic celebrations in the streets of Cairo.

On the subject of democracy abroad and at home, Canadian Murray Dobbins has some similar thoughts. Canada's democracy issues, however, are more specific: Stephen Harper and his anti-democratic Conservative government. The US's issues are more structural: the collapse of the entire system. That's fortunate for us. We can still fix things.

As tens of millions of Egyptians celebrated their victory over a brutal dictator and began the task of creating democracy, the story from Canada was of democracy going backwards. For five years under Stephen Harper, Canada has been subjected to a systematic erosion of democracy (as I document here). Canada is not Egypt and Harper is no Mubarak, but he is nonetheless a ruthless autocrat in the Canadian context, too often showing contempt for democracy and the aspirations of the people he governs.

It can hardly be surprising that almost alone among western leaders, Stephen Harper was so grudging in his response to the wonderful victory of the Egyptian people. Rather than praise the millions in the street, Harper actually praised Mubarak: “Canada respects President Mubarak’s decision to step down in order to promote peace and stability in the country.” Damning by faint praise?

The day that Mubarak finally resigned to the deafening cheers of a million people in Tahrir (liberation) Square was also the day that another repugnant example of the Harper government’s casual abuse of power was highlighted. This time, it was a scathing ruling against the government from the Speaker of the House, related to Harper’s decision to eliminate funding to the ecumenical development group, KAIROS. It was a fitting coincidence: KAIROS’s funding was cut due to its alleged anti-Israel bias. Harper’s barely disguised opposition to the revolution in Egypt is linked to his blind support of Israel and the recognition that democracy in Egypt is seen as a threat in the Jewish state.

. . . .

Is it simply that you don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone? In Egypt, years of oppression, brutality, humiliation and the simple lack of any semblance of real government drove the massive support for democracy in the streets. Maybe only the promise of democracy can motivate people in this profound way.

Or have Canadians simply lost faith in democracy as they increasingly lower their expectations of what government can or will do for them? Ultimately we judge democracy by what it delivers — and it used to deliver, and promise, a lot more. Are Canadians more and more just circling the wagons around their individual or family lives, looking for individualist solutions? With wages flat since 1980, 92 per cent of private pension funds in deficit (total $350 billion, almost double the 2003 figure) and holding record levels of debt, this solution must surely look just as bleak as hoping for political change.

Or could it simply be that there are too few venues and opportunities for Canadians to express their dismay at the loss of democracy? After Harper’s second prorogation of Parliament (over the Afghan detainee issue), virtually every political pundit and analyst in the country predicted that no one cared and most couldn’t even pronounce the word. Yet almost overnight (in organizing terms), over 220,000 people signed on to a Facebook page opposing prorogation, and within a few weeks there were simultaneous demonstrations in 61 cities across the country featuring 25,000 people. These were not organized by existing social justice groups or unions (though they came to help) and were as spontaneous as reserved Canadians get. They did care about democracy. They knew — or took the time to find out — what prorogation meant, and they were angry.

This should have been the signal for the Opposition parties to take up the cause, but it wasn’t enough to cut through the cynicism of the political operatives who run the Liberals and the NDP. By their pusillanimous calculations, if an issue doesn’t affect the pocket book (home heating oil), people don’t care. Would hundreds of thousands of people come into the streets if these parties called on them to defend democracy? Probably not. But they might come to the polling booths and rid the country of its own autocrat.

Read more: Bob Herbert, "When Democracy Weakens" and Murray Dobbin, Harper, Autocrat.

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capitalist destruction: our health, our environment, our communities: three great articles

I've been working my way through a trio of long magazine articles, courtesy of our public library, that I must share with you.

From a writer's perspective, these are exactly the kind of journalism I once aspired to (and had a small taste of). Enormous amounts of time and work go into pieces like this - background interviews that don't appear in the story, hours tracking down leads, many more hours spent simply observing, reams of interview transcripts, countless rounds of editing. This is something no blogger or reporter can do on her own. Magazines have to pay for this, or it can't be done - which is why it has become so rare.

From a political perspective, these stories are about widely different subjects, but one common thread runs through them all.

If you read only one of these stories, I strongly recommend "Making A Killing," by Carl Elliott in Mother Jones, an exposé of the corrupt, profit-generating business of clinical drug trials. If there was ever an argument for getting the profit motive out of health care, this is it.

Documents unsealed in related civil suits suggest an alarming pattern of deception. Sales reps were instructed to tell doctors that Seroquel doesn't cause diabetes, even though the company knew about the link to diabetes as early as 1997. Internal correspondence reveals company officials discussing how to hide or spin potentially damaging studies. "Thus far, we have buried trials 15, 31, 56," wrote a publications manager in 1999. "The larger issue is how do we face the outside world when they begin to criticize us for suppressing data."

One of those potentially damaging studies led back to the University of Minnesota. . . . In the late 1990s, a clinical trial known as Study 15 unexpectedly failed to show that Seroquel was any better than Haldol, a generic antipsychotic that's been on the market since the 1960s. In fact, on the main measures, Seroquel performed worse than Haldol. The study also showed that Seroquel increased the risk of weight gain and diabetes. Internal correspondence repeatedly refers to Study 15 as a "failed study," and company officials discuss possible ways to spin or bury it. "I am not 100% comfortable with this data being made publicly available at the present time,". . . .

Even more alarming are internal documents suggesting that AstraZeneca was designing clinical trials as a covert method of marketing Seroquel. In 1997, when Dr. Andrew Goudie, a psychopharmacologist at the University of Liverpool, asked AstraZeneca to fund a research study he was planning, a company official replied that "R&D is no longer responsible for Seroquel research — it is now the responsibility of Sales and Marketing." The official also noted that funding decisions would depend on whether the study was likely to show a "competitive advantage for Seroquel."

Another set of documents from 2003 describes a glucose metabolism study apparently designed to fend off the charge that Seroquel causes patients to gain weight and become diabetic. One slide describes two purposes for the study: a "regulatory" purpose and a "commercial" purpose. The regulatory purpose was to "produce data that will help us defend the Seroquel label." The commercial purpose was to "produce data that will enable us to generate commercially attractive and competitive messages in relation to diabetes and weight." . . .

Many clinical studies place human subjects at risk—at a minimum, the risk of mild discomfort, and at worst, the risk of serious pain and death. Bioethicists and regulators spend a lot of time and energy debating the degree of risk that ought to be permitted in a study, how those risks should be presented to subjects, and the way those risks should be balanced against the potential benefits a subject might receive. What is simply assumed, without much consideration at all, is that the research is being conducted to produce scientific knowledge. This assumption is codified in a number of foundational ethics documents, such as the Nuremberg Code, which was instituted following Nazi experiments on concentration camp victims. The Nuremberg Code stipulates that an "experiment should be such as to yield fruitful results for the good of society," and "the degree of risk to be taken should never exceed that determined by the humanitarian importance of the problem to be solved by the experiment."

But what if a research study is not really aimed at producing genuine scientific knowledge at all? The documents emerging in litigation suggest that pharmaceutical companies are designing, analyzing, and publishing trials primarily as a way of positioning their drugs in the marketplace. This raises a question unconsidered in any current code of research ethics. How much risk to human subjects is justified in a study whose principal aim is to "generate commercially attractive messages"?

If you read Elliott's story, don't miss these two important sidebars: "What Happens When Profit Margins Drive Clinical Research?" and "Poor Reviews: Profit pressures gut guinea pigs' only safeguard: institutional review boards".

Next, also from Mother Jones, a series of reports and analysis on the BP disaster and cover-up: BP's Deep Secrets. This was a cover-story package of six different articles; the lead story by Julia Whitty is especially important.

And finally, from the November 2010 issue of Rolling Stone, Matt Taibbi reports from Florida: "Invasion of the Home Snatchers: How the courts are helping bankers screw over homeowners and get away with fraud".

The foreclosure lawyers down in Jacksonville had warned me, but I was skeptical. They told me the state of Florida had created a special super-high-speed housing court with a specific mandate to rubber-stamp the legally dicey foreclosures by corporate mortgage pushers like Deutsche Bank and JP Morgan Chase. This "rocket docket," as it is called in town, is presided over by retired judges who seem to have no clue about the insanely complex financial instruments they are ruling on — securitized mortgages and laby­rinthine derivative deals of a type that didn't even exist when most of them were active members of the bench. Their stated mission isn't to decide right and wrong, but to clear cases and blast human beings out of their homes with ultimate velocity. They certainly have no incentive to penetrate the profound criminal mysteries of the great American mortgage bubble of the 2000s, perhaps the most complex Ponzi scheme in human history — an epic mountain range of corporate fraud in which Wall Street megabanks conspired first to collect huge numbers of subprime mortgages, then to unload them on unsuspecting third parties like pensions, trade unions and insurance companies (and, ultimately, you and me, as taxpayers) in the guise of AAA-rated investments. Selling lead as gold, shit as Chanel No. 5, was the essence of the booming international fraud scheme that created most all of these now-failing home mortgages.

The Real Reason America’s Cities and Towns Are Broke

The rocket docket wasn't created to investigate any of that. It exists to launder the crime and bury the evidence by speeding thousands of fraudulent and predatory loans to the ends of their life cycles, so that the houses attached to them can be sold again with clean paperwork. The judges, in fact, openly admit that their primary mission is not justice but speed. One Jacksonville judge, the Honorable A.C. Soud, even told a local newspaper that his goal is to resolve 25 cases per hour. Given the way the system is rigged, that means His Honor could well be throwing one ass on the street every 2.4 minutes.

. . . When I went to sit in on Judge Soud's courtroom in downtown Jacksonville, I was treated to an intimate, and at times breathtaking, education in the horror of the foreclosure crisis, which is rapidly emerging as the even scarier sequel to the financial meltdown of 2008: Invasion of the Home Snatchers II. In Las Vegas, one in 25 homes is now in foreclosure. In Fort Myers, Florida, one in 35. In September, lenders nationwide took over a rec­ord 102,134 properties; that same month, more than a third of all home sales were distressed properties. All told, some 820,000 Americans have already lost their homes this year, and another 1 million currently face foreclosure. . . .

You've heard of Too Big to Fail — the foreclosure crisis is Too Big for Fraud. Think of the Bernie Madoff scam, only replicated tens of thousands of times over, infecting every corner of the financial universe. The underlying crime is so pervasive, we simply can't admit to it — and so we are working feverishly to rubber-stamp the problem away, in sordid little backrooms in cities like Jacksonville, behind doors that shouldn't be, but often are, closed.

And that's just the economic side of the story. The moral angle to the foreclosure crisis — and, of course, in capitalism we're not supposed to be concerned with the moral stuff, but let's mention it anyway — shows a culture that is slowly giving in to a futuristic nightmare ideology of computerized greed and unchecked financial violence. The monster in the foreclosure crisis has no face and no brain. The mortgages that are being foreclosed upon have no real owners. The lawyers bringing the cases to evict the humans have no real clients. It is complete and absolute legal and economic chaos. No single limb of this vast man-­eating thing knows what the other is doing, which makes it nearly impossible to combat — and scary as hell to watch.

Have you spotted the common theme? Clinical drug trials that produce both unsafe drugs and massive profit for university researchers, pharmaceutical companies - and the people who are supposed to be overseeing them. The destruction of the environment by one the world's largest corporations and the bottomless resources they've committed to avoiding responsibility. Millions of Americans losing their homes because of massive financial fraud, in which the perpetrators walk away without losing a penny, the public pays for their privilege, people the world over suffer extreme deprivations, and finally, the corrupt financial and legal systems will profit further from the loss.

What drives each of these human-made disasters? Profit.

Capitalism is collapsing, and we are all paying the price.

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blog for choice 2011: back alley abortions happening right now, thanks to anti-choice movement and the govts it controls

I hear people say, "We can't go back." And I think, We are back. We have gone back.

Not all of us. We're hanging on in Canada, and in some places in the US. But how many American women must lose access to safe abortion services before we are officially "back"?

Today, the 38th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, we see, once again, that the Constitutionally protected right of US women to choose whether or not to carry a pregnancy to term has been gutted and rendered useless. And when there are no safe, legal services, women will resort to unsafe, illegal ones, because bearing an unwanted pregnancy is torture, and an unwanted person is a tragedy, and women will go to any avoid that.

Daniel Denvir, AlterNet: Back-Alley Abortions in 2011: How Anti-Choice Zealots Force Women to Go to Dangerous Clinics Like Dr. Kermit Gosnell's

Jill, Feministe: What Kermit Gosnell tells us about late-term abortion

And me:

The real - seldom-seen - face of third-trimester abortion (Roe v Wade Day, 2009)

The US as anti-abortion backwater

Roe Is History (Roe v Wade Day, 2005)

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politically motivated violence in the u.s. ... and you are surprised?

I understand that some people are amazed at the recent massacre and assassination attempt in Arizona. I'm amazed that anyone is amazed. As the activist Rick Telfer said on Facebook, "Gee, why would anybody get the idea to gun down a political opponent in the USA?!" He posted a link to Sarah Palin's now infamous target map, but obviously that is but a tiny shred of evidence of the huge violent tapestry. It's a wonder this hasn't happened sooner, and more often. (And of course, in a less overtly political context, it does.)

In case you missed these:

Paul Krugman:

Climate of Hate

When you heard the terrible news from Arizona, were you completely surprised? Or were you, at some level, expecting something like this atrocity to happen?

Put me in the latter category. I’ve had a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach ever since the final stages of the 2008 campaign. I remembered the upsurge in political hatred after Bill Clinton’s election in 1992 — an upsurge that culminated in the Oklahoma City bombing. And you could see, just by watching the crowds at McCain-Palin rallies, that it was ready to happen again. The Department of Homeland Security reached the same conclusion: in April 2009 an internal report warned that right-wing extremism was on the rise, with a growing potential for violence.

Conservatives denounced that report. But there has, in fact, been a rising tide of threats and vandalism aimed at elected officials, including both Judge John Roll, who was killed Saturday, and Representative Gabrielle Giffords. One of these days, someone was bound to take it to the next level. And now someone has.

It’s true that the shooter in Arizona appears to have been mentally troubled. But that doesn’t mean that his act can or should be treated as an isolated event, having nothing to do with the national climate. [Read more.]

And Keith Olbermann, strong as ever, generously including himself as he calls on both right and left in the US to denounce violent rhetoric, rightly calling out those who don't as complicit in violent acts.

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airport sexual assault, cadets for christ and the bleating heart of the usa

The only thing that scares me more than the fascist shift are all the sheeple who willingly march to the bleat.

In December, Claire Hirschkind, a 56-year-old rape survivor who has a type of pacemaker implant, was arrested and banned from an airport for refusing to submit to having her breasts handled by a stranger. Emphasis mine.

Hirschkind said because of the device in her body, she was led to a female TSA employee and three Austin police officers. She says she was told she was going to be patted down.

"I turned to the police officer and said, 'I have given no due cause to give up my constitutional rights. You can wand me,'" and they said, 'No, you have to do this,'" she said.

Hirschkind agreed to the pat down, but on one condition.

"I told them, 'No, I'm not going to have my breasts felt,' and she said, 'Yes, you are,'" said Hirschkind.

When Hirschkind refused, she says that "the police actually pushed me to the floor, (and) handcuffed me. I was crying by then. They drug me 25 yards across the floor in front of the whole security."

An ABIA spokesman says it is TSA policy that anyone activating a security alarm has two options. One is to opt out and not fly, and the other option is to subject themselves to an enhanced pat down. Hirschkind refused both and was arrested.

Other travelers KVUE talked to say they empathize with Hirschkind, but the law is the law.

"I understand her side of it, and their side as well, but it is for our protection so I have no problems with it," said Gwen Washington, who lives in Killeen.

"It's unfortunate that that happened and she didn't get to fly home, but it makes me feel a little safer," said Emily Protine.

Claire Hirschkind being sexually assaulted is "for our own protection" and "makes me feel a little safer". I keep reading and re-reading these words, marveling at how thoroughly brainwashed USians are, how perfectly their government has instilled fear in their hearts, how weak, compliant and complicit in their own oppression they have become.

Speaking of sheep, have you heard about this? A Christian cult called Cadets For Christ is operating within the United States Air Force. Cadets for Christ is part of the "shepherding" movement, which teaches that females are sheep, males are shepherds, and you do the math. Go read Ed Brayton, with links to the Military Religious Freedom Foundation and HuffPo.

I was a bit suspicious when I read the family name of the people who have gone public about their daughter's brainwashing: they are Peter and Jean Baas. But this has been documented for at least a year. It is not a hoax.

Thanks to James for sending. I couldn't resist the juxtaposition of these various ruminants.

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from the u.s. third-world country files

In the US, one in seven people - and in some states, one in five - are now receiving food stamps.

The use of food stamps has increased dramatically in the U.S., as the federal government ramps up basic assistance to meet the demands of an increasingly desperate population.

The number of food stamp recipients increased 16% over last year. This means that 14% of the population is now living on food stamps. That's about 43 million people, or about one out of every seven Americans.

In some states, like Tennessee, Mississippi, New Mexico and Oregon, one in five people are receiving food stamps. Washington, D.C. leads the nation, with 21.5% of the population on food stamps.

Some months ago, Maclean's ran a story called "Third World America" - subtitled: "Collapsing bridges, street lights turned off, cuts to basic services: the decline of a superpower". It was interesting to see a theme I've written about for so many years tackled by mainstream media, especially Canadian media, which consistently views the US through the country's own press releases.

In February, the board of commissioners of Ohio’s Ashtabula County faced a scene familiar to local governments across America: a budget shortfall. They began to cut spending and reduced the sheriff’s budget by 20 per cent. A law enforcement agency staff that only a few years ago numbered 112, and had subsequently been pared down to 70, was cut again to 49 people and just one squad car for a county of 1,900 sq. km along the shore of Lake Erie. The sheriff’s department adapted. “We have no patrol units. There is no one on the streets. We respond to only crimes in progress. We don’t respond to property crimes,” deputy sheriff Ron Fenton told Maclean’s. The county once had a “very proactive” detective division in narcotics. Now, there is no detective division. “We are down to one evidence officer and he just runs the evidence room in case someone wants to claim property,” said Fenton. “People are getting property stolen, their houses broken into, and there is no one investigating. We are basically just writing up a report for the insurance company.”

If a county without police seems like a weird throwback to an earlier, frontier-like moment in American history, it is not the only one. “Back to the Stone Age” is the name of a seminar organized in March by civil engineers at Indiana’s Purdue University for local county supervisors interested in saving money by breaking up paved roads and turning them back to gravel. While only some paved roads in the state have been broken up, “There are a substantial number of conversations going on,” John Habermann, who manages a program at Purdue that helps local governments take care of infrastructure, told Maclean’s. “We presented a lot of talking points so that the county supervisors can talk logically back to elected officials when the question is posed,” he said. The state of Michigan had similar conversations. It has converted at least 50 miles of paved road to gravel in the last few years.

Welcome to the ground level of America’s economic crisis. The U.S. unemployment rate is 9.5 per cent. One in 10 homeowners are behind on their mortgage payments. Home sales are at record lows. While the economy has been growing for several quarters, the growth is anemic—only 1.6 per cent in the second quarter of this year—and producing few new jobs.

Maclean's doesn't quite get it right, unaware or uninterested in how bad things were in the US before the current economic crisis, and just how bad things truly are right now.

Paul Krugman and others - such as those radicals at the Wall Street Journal - put the true unemployment rate at around 17%. A recent "60 Minutes" report showed unemployment in California at 22%, more than one out of every five; of those, one in five is university educated. Krugman has shown that long-term or permanent unemployment is at the highest rate ever recorded.

At the same time:

• In 2010 US businesses earned profits at the highest rate since statistics have been kept, totaling $1.66 trillion in the third quarter alone.

• The economic policies of the last 30 years have benefited the very few at the expense of the many.

[Economists Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez] found that from 1950 through 1980, the share of all income in America going to everyone but the rich increased from 64 percent to 65 percent. Because the nation's economy was growing handsomely, the average income for 9 out of l0 Americans was growing, too – from $17,719 to $30,941. That’s a 75 percent increase in income in constant 2008 dollars.

But then it stopped. Since 1980 the economy has also continued to grow handsomely, but only a fraction at the top have benefited. The line flattens for the bottom 90% of Americans. Average income went from that $30,941 in 1980 to $31,244 in 2008. Think about that: the average income of Americans increased just $303 dollars in 28 years.

• Between 1979 and 2006, the bottom 20% of the US population had real income growth of 0.3%, the middle 20% income growth of 0.7 percent - while the top 1% enjoyed income growth of 260%.

• The US just cut taxes again for the wealthiest Americans.

...an environment in which their tax rates on income and investments remain at historic lows. . . .

"The climate we'll have after this legislation is extremely favorable for wealthy families," says Jeffrey Cooper, a professor at Quinnipiac University School of Law and a former estate planner who has studied the history of U.S. tax law.

The good news for the rich starts with income tax rates, which for top income groups would remain 35 percent, a rate enacted by former President George W. Bush in 2003. Except for a period from 1988 to 1992, the top tax rate has never been this low since 1931.

• Most US corporations pay no taxes.

• A full 54% of the US federal budget feeds the military-industrial complex, which is mostly privatized. Meaning, working USians' income taxes not only support two foreign wars and a military presence in 75 countries; those same taxes continue to transfer wealth upwards.

My thoughts on where Canada figures into this, coming soon.

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rage against the library machine

Yesterday in my "Foundations of Library and Information Science" class, we discussed the role of the librarian in the digital era. It's a fascinating and important issue for librarian students to unpack, as there are vast implications for public services, education, equal access - and our future employment. I can't do it justice here, but I will pass along this alternative vision: the robo-library.

Wall Street Journal:

New Library Technologies Dispense With Librarians

In this suburb of St. Paul, the new library branch has no librarians, no card catalog and no comfortable chairs in which to curl up and read.

Instead, the Library Express is a stack of metal lockers outside city hall. When patrons want a book or DVD, they order it online and pick it up from a digitally locked, glove-compartment- sized cubby a few days later. It's a library as conceived by the Amazon.com generation.

Faced with layoffs and budget cuts, or simply looking for ways to expand their reach, libraries around the country are replacing traditional, full-service institutions with devices and approaches that may be redefining what it means to have a library.

Later this year Mesa, Ariz., plans to open a new "express" library in a strip-mall, open three days a week, with outdoor kiosks to dispense books and DVDs at all hours of the day. Palm Harbor, Fla., meanwhile, has offset the impact of reduced hours by installing glass-front vending machines that dispense DVDs and popular books.

The wave of innovation is aided by companies that have created new machines designed to help libraries save on labor. For instance, Evanced Solutions, an Indianapolis company that makes library software, this month is starting test trials of a new vending machine it plans to start selling early next year.

Read it here. Even some of the comments on that story are surprisingly worth reading.

In this vision of the library, there is no serendipitous discovery of a new book - or a new idea. There is no one to help with research. There is no children's storytime, ESL classes, or resume-writing workshops. No quiet, safe space for teens and tweens to study after school. No free internet access for the millions who cannot afford it at home. No private internet access for people who need to research something without their family's knowledge. No help for those confused about computer use but too embarrassed to ask anyone they know for help. No place for seniors to read magazines.

Really, there is no library at all.

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brain snatchers on the move again: using your children as billboards

Continuing on the advertising theme, we have another answer to my perennial rhetorical question: Is there any space that isn't covered in advertising these days?

This time I also ask a related question. How does the US government help support small businesses? By spending trillions on war and pennies on education. From the Boston Globe:

Ads for cigarettes and liquor won't make the cut.

But ads for local ice cream shops or hair salons could soon be appearing on permission slips, class calendars, and school notices sent home with Peabody elementary school students after a unanimous School Committee vote this week.

The novel plan to sell ad space on school communications marks the latest twist in how commercialization of schools — from the sale of billboard space to ads on buses — is generating cash in lean times.

The ads, possibly the first of their kind in Massachusetts, "will have to be age-appropriate, but we’re thinking about ads from local pizza and ice cream shops, dance and karate schools, maybe from a florist or a college," said Superintendent C. Milton Burnett. The initial program aims to earn at most $24,000.

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in u.s., raids on peace activists; in canada, raids on... who?

In case you didn't hear elsewhere, the FBI raided and vandalized the home of peace activists in Minnesota, claiming they had links to terrorist organizations. This wouldn't be big news if not for the current so-called anti-terrorism laws - under which these peace activists could be imprisoned indefinitely without charges. Local coverage:

The homes of six Twin Cities activists, including three prominent leaders of the Twin Cities antiwar movement, were raided Friday by the FBI in what an agency spokesman described as an investigation into activities concerning the material support of terrorism."

An FBI spokesman Steve Warfield confirmed that six Minneapolis homes were raided this morning.

Among the homes raided were the apartments of Jessica Sundin, who was a principal leader of the mass antiwar march of 10,000 on the opening day of the Republican National Convention two years ago, and Mick Kelly, who was prominent in that protest and among those who announced plans to march on the Democratic National Convention in Minneapolis, if the city is selected to host it in 2012. Neither has been arrested.

Kelly said in an interview this morning he had "absolutely not" been involved in illegal activities.

A raid was also in progress at the home of Meredith Aby, another local antiwar leader who was frequently the spokeswoman for the march on the GOP convention. Sundin and another source said that a fourth raid took place at the home of Tracy Molm, a leading activist in Students for a Democratic Society, an organization at the University of Minnesota.

The source said raids occurred at the addresses of two other activists whose names he did not disclose.

Supporters of Sundin, Kelly and Aby had gathered on the sidewalks outside each of the residences.

Ted Dooley, an attorney, said he had reviewed the search warrant issued in the raid on Kelly's apartment. "It's a probe into the political beliefs of American citizens and to any organization anywhere that opposes the American imperial design," he said.

Kelly said he was the subject of a similar early raid.

“They broke down a door, smashed a fish tank, and went through my books and papers,” Kelly said.

Kelly described himself as a 40-year veteran of the peace movement . . .

Lest you think this is only a US issue, and could never happen in Canada, please read this important post by Alison, writing at Dawg's Blawg.

On the same day the nation was preoccupied with the national Lib/Con competition for votes to preserve/kill the long gun registry, the Libs and Cons combined forces to slip the Combating Terrorism Act through second reading in the House - 220 votes to 84 in a classic Lib/Con vs NDP/Bloc split -just ten minutes before the long gun vote.

The Libs and Cons may disagree on whether it is either useful or an egregious invasion of privacy and civil liberties that Canadians should have to spend a few minutes registering a long gun online, but when it comes to locking Canadians up for 12 months without a warrant or compelling them to appear before a court based on some anonymous tip, they're both just fine with that.

The right to remain silent, the right not to be jailed without charge, the right to know what the charges are against you - pfft!

In reintroducing Bill C-17 for the third time on Monday to reinstate provisions from the Anti-terrorism Act of 2001, Justice Minister Rob Nicholson emphasized a fabulous new feature:

"The key here is that the person required to attend an investigative hearing is treated as a witness, not someone who is accused of a crime."

True, as long as your definition of "witness" includes being arrested if you don't comply and being detained for up to 72 hours if you do.

But what if you are also suspected of being likely to commit a terrorist crime some time in the future. Over to you, Mr. Nicholson :

"a judge can order the person's detention for up to 12 months."

Go to the original for more plus full linkage.

As you may recall, I don't care very much about the long-gun registry. I think gun registration is a good idea, but I also know it does very little to reduce crime. I view the whole kerfuffle as a lot of overheated political grandstanding on both sides, and misplaced enthusiasm on the part of many activists. So while many people were behaving as if the gun registry is the ultimate determinant of Canadian civilization, the Liberal-Conservative coalition continued to support the deterioration of your basic human rights and civil liberties.

Progressive bloggers flogged Jack Layton for not toeing their party line on the gun registry, but only the NDP was standing up against "slipperysloping into 12thC pre-Magna Carta sensibilities" (Alison). Why was that?

By Wednesday Libby Davies wondered aloud in the House why there were hundreds of articles in newspapers across the country dealing with the gun registry but no mention of the debate on the Combating Terrorism Act.

Good question, Libby.

Gee, do you think it has anything to do with who is affected by the so-called anti-terrorism laws? Hmmm.

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for-profit libraries creeping into u.s.

The march of privatization goes on. In a country with money for war and nothing else - where most corporations get taxpayer subsidies but pay zero taxes themselves - corporate interests profit from empty public coffers. And in some cases, they profit from public ignorance.

A private company in Maryland has taken over public libraries in ailing cities in California, Oregon, Tennessee and Texas, growing into the country’s fifth-largest library system.

Now the company, Library Systems & Services, has been hired for the first time to run a system in a relatively healthy city, setting off an intense and often acrimonious debate about the role of outsourcing in a ravaged economy.

A $4 million deal to run the three libraries here is a chance for the company to demonstrate that a dose of private management can be good for communities, whatever their financial situation. But in an era when outsourcing is most often an act of budget desperation — with janitors, police forces and even entire city halls farmed out in one town or another — the contract in Santa Clarita has touched a deep nerve and begun a round of second-guessing.

Can a municipal service like a library hold so central a place that it should be entrusted to a profit-driven contractor only as a last resort — and maybe not even then?

“There’s this American flag, apple pie thing about libraries,” said Frank A. Pezzanite, the outsourcing company’s chief executive. He has pledged to save $1 million a year in Santa Clarita, mainly by cutting overhead and replacing unionized employees. “Somehow they have been put in the category of a sacred organization.”

. . . .

L.S.S.I. got its start 30 years ago developing software for government use, then expanded into running libraries for federal agencies. In the mid-1990s, it moved into the municipal library market, and now, when ranked by number of branches, it places immediately after Los Angeles County, New York City, Chicago and the City of Los Angeles.

The company is majority owned by Islington Capital Partners, a private equity firm in Boston, and has about $35 million in annual revenue and 800 employees. Officials would not discuss the company’s profitability.

Some L.S.S.I. customers have ended their contracts, while in other places, opposition has faded with time. In Redding, Calif., Jim Ceragioli, a board member of the Friends of Shasta County Library, said he initially counted himself among the skeptics.

But he has since changed his mind. “I can’t think of anything that’s been lost,” Mr. Ceragioli said.

The library in Redding has expanded its services and hours. And the volunteers are still showing up — even if their assistance is now aiding a private company. “We volunteer more than ever now,” Mr. Ceragioli said.

Key phrase here: "...while in other places, opposition has faded with time." That's how it works.

This guy volunteers for a private, for-profit company and he can't think of anything that's been lost? Maybe his pride and common sense are under the bed with the lost socks. When library hours and services are cut because they're not sufficiently profitable, he won't find them there, either.

That "overhead" they cut is another word for your services. Why would you rather put money into shareholders' pockets than into good jobs in your own community? The for-profit library isn't going to cost any less, and you won't see a penny of the profit it turns.

There are many services that - done properly - can never and should never create profit. Health care and education are tied for first on that list. Public access to information is another.

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it is so time to be over 9.11

Enough about September 11.

Not for those who lost loved ones that day. Not for those who suffered serious trauma and need to mark the anniversary for emotional and spiritual reasons. That's a personal matter.

But for the US. For the world. Enough already.

On September 11, 2001, the people of the United States got a small taste of the terror and pain that so much of the world has lived with for so long, and continues to live with. The people of the United States got a small sample of what their own country has done to dozens of nation-states over decades and centuries of its history. That includes "its own people," as some are so fond of saying.

There are, and may always be, very real and unanswered questions about why the several official stories of what happened that day make absolutely no sense. (If you think "conspiracy theorists" are nuts, you should hear what the government says!) If you are interested in my thoughts and feelings about that, these posts might be a good start: part one, part two, part three, part four. See comments in those posts for more links. The search for truth should never end.

But as some kind of iconic day of remembrance, some touchstone of world history, September 11 is a teardrop in an ocean.

September 11, 2001 was one day. About 3,000 people were killed.

The United States invaded Iraq seven years ago. About 100,000 Iraqis and 4,700 occupying troops have been killed.

And that's just Iraq. How about this list?

As a New Yorker, I lived through September 11 in a way many Americans did not. Not the way people working in the World Trade Center that day did, or the people on the planes. Not the firefighters and their families. Not my co-worker whose uncle was a window-washer, working the moment the plane hit. Or the classmate of my niece who left for school that sunny morning and never saw her parents again. Despite my good fortune, the memory of the event feels deep and personal to me. I understand the gravity of the day; I witnessed the aftermath.

But what business do I have publicly commemorating the day, nine years later? And even more so, what business do I have expecting the rest of the world to do so?

On September 11, 2001 the people of the United States learned that war isn't only something that happens in faraway places. Then their government - predictably, inevitably - used that lesson as an excuse to advance a police state at home, and conquest and occupation abroad.

It is a symbol of United States arrogance and Americentrism that the US government, the media and so many Americans continue to mark the day.

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