joe posts

It’s that time of year again. The upside of being poor is that you get a nice refund from the government. Hopefully. It’s the rich that have to pay! Or is it?

In 1990, Canada’s overall tax system was more progressive, meaning families with higher income contributed relatively more through higher tax rates, to help pay for the things that benefit all of us: health care, education, roads, buses and subways.

Truth be told, things flattened out from the middle of the income distribution to the top – families at the top paid about the same share of their income in taxes as families in the middle.

But by 2005, the system has become far less progressive at the bottom of the distribution, and at the very top it has become regressive. Staggeringly, the top 1% pay total tax rates as much as six percentage points of income lower than families in the middle.

As a number of studies have found, the richest 1% of Canadians are getting the lion’s share of market income gains from a decade of remarkable economic growth. Yet, astonishingly, the richest 1% of families also now pay a lower tax rate than the poorest 10%. – Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives

Something to think about next time the boss bitches about taxes, and drives home in his Porsche.

Ah, John Baird. You tried hard with this one:

“Our government believes that the cost should be borne by those who use the service, not by Canadian taxpayers.”

That’s our minister of transportation explaining how the fifty percent increase in security fees (which we need to buy X-ray specs) are definitely not taxes. So it’s not a tax, because taxpayers won’t be paying it, ergo, people who fly aren’t taxpayers. Simple logic. Or did I get that wrong? It might just be some slimy fake-logic to trick us into thinking Canada’s New Government™ hasn’t broken yet another election promise.

True, not everyone flies. But Canada is a huge country and it’s a popular way of getting around. I guess they could use this same reasoning to introduce non-tax fees for anything – health fees are only paid by sick people, not taxpayers! Road maintenance fees for anyone who leaves their home, not the taxpayers! Policing fees for anyone who expects police help, not taxpayers! Income tax filing fees are only paid by people who file income taxes, not taxpayers! The great thing about flat fees to neoconservatives is that they are inherently regressive.

Maybe if we wanted a safer country we could stop spending billions following Americans around on their crusade against Islam. The fact is we’re at war; we should have no expectation for security. We’re killing people in Afghanistan, our government supports the Iraq war. It doesn’t matter if we’re polite people who only accidentally kill civilians. People will still fight back. That’s just a reality of war.

I thought this was a refreshing article on the ongoing Vale Inco strike up in Sudbury.

Pathetic or powerful: Can politicians put an end to the Vale Inco strike?

excerpt:

[Professor David Leadbeater]  said he thinks major mining companies donate to the governing Liberals, which makes them hesitant to intervene.

“They basically agree with what the mining companies are doing. They think this is the way to have development. They think that communities and working people are a secondary consideration,” Leadbeater said.

“This has to be challenged. They have to take a position that’s more based on democratic needs of communities, of unions and the majority of the population. I don’t think it will happen, though, without a lot of protest.”

The province’s official line is that they are ready to intervene and that they have to be impartial – not favouring the striking workers or the foreign corporations demanding concessions – because of legislation that requires MPPs not take sides between employers and employees in labour disputes. Which makes government as useful as a wet paper machete when it comes to labour disputes. No matter what party is at fault, or how wrong they are, politicians can’t do or say anything about it. No wonder neither side wants their help, Bartolucci can barely say ‘boo’ about the scabs they’ve brought in to keep the mines running without real workers. The company benefits from provincial impartiality, and mediation would almost certainly mean significant concessions on the part of the workers – something they went on strike to avoid. Meanwhile the strike gets uglier and uglier.

I’m guessing Vale will win this one – nobody can stop them. They made over five billion in 2009, even with the strike and the global economic crisis. And they make money even though they’re spending more on running the mines now (scab and security costs) than if they had just kept the same old contract with the union. At this point it looks like they just don’t want the workers to come back without severe punishment.

A strike can’t stop Vale, because they can use scabs. Violence won’t stop the scabs, because anti-scab violence is hard to defend and the province and police will protect them. Vale’s HQ is on another continent, which makes it impossible to protest against, and the distance means the corporation has no reason to care about the people of Northern Ontario. The province brags to the world that it can’t do anything but mediate, meaning it will try to hammer out a centre position between a foreign company that doesn’t give a shit about Canadians and actual Canadians who depend on the work to keep them off of welfare rolls and out of food banks.

The Libs and Tories encouraged this kind of development through tax breaks, relaxed ownership rules, regressive taxation, cuts to government agencies and their hands-off approach to labour disputes. This dispute, I think, is just ‘globalization’ coming to Northern Ontario. And globalization is not about making it easier for people to live, it’s about making it easier for the wealthy to make money and it’s about making sure power is out of reach for the working class and the poor, because they’d probably do things differently. They might be more concerned with community.

“You can only push people so far. When you can’t feed your kids, you can’t put food on the table, you can’t put clothing on them, they come home from school and they can’t participate in what’s going on, you think that’s good for a community?” Steelworker Pat Digby

I’ve read about the huge prison industry in the United States, but I was surprised to hear that now the judges have gotten in on the action.

Two US judges charged with taking more than $2m (£1.4m) in kickbacks from a privately-run detention centre have pleaded guilty to fraud.

Prosecutors say Judges Mark Ciavarella and Michael Conahan took the money in return for giving young offenders long sentences to serve in the centre. – BBC

Fraud?! That’s just product promotion! This wise investor had a captive audience. Poor kids:

A spokeswoman for the non-profit Juvenile Law Center said 1,000-2,000 juveniles who came before the judge between 2003 and 2006 received excessively harsh sentences.

Many of the children were first-time offenders and had no lawyers to defend them.

Get Tough on Crime! Make Millions!

He’s a hero. They should put those shoes on display in an Iraqi museum. Unfortunately they were blown up by the bomb squad. Really. I guess they were worried the shoes might be thrown again and not blow up again. There’s nothing more dangerous than a non-exploded non-explosive.

It sounds silly to deify a shoe-thrower (seriously, who throws a shoe?!) but it certainly worked as an attention getter as he called Bush a bitch and reminded him of all the people he’s murdered with his neoliberal crusade to remake the Middle East. I hope this reporter lives a long and healthy life and gets to enjoy all the benefits of being ‘the guy who threw a shoe at Bush.’ But not before the goons torture him and we have the obligatory false confession – pretty much the regular War Against Terror Treatment:

He said he visited his brother Sunday and found him missing a tooth and with cigarette burns on his ears. He also said his brother told him that jailers also doused him with cold water while he was naked. – AP

So rest assured, America, that your pResident will not be harmed by this shoe-thrower ever again. If he survives American-sponsored torture and sexual assault and imprisonment he’ll certainly be traumatized and possibly very very angry at those who’ve ruined his country and his life.

And here’s exactly what he said, and why it matters. Who else has gotten away with ten seconds of truth with this pResident?:

Contrary to most media coverage, the 28-year-old TV reporter Muntadhar al-Zaidi made history not by merely throwing a pair of shoes, the highest expression of insult in Iraqi culture, at the US president, but by what he said while doing so and as he was smothered by US and Iraqi security men. He groaned as they dragged him out of the press conference. They succeeded in silencing him – and according to his brother he was beaten in custody – but he had already said enough to shake the occupation and Nouri al-Maliki’s Green Zone regime to their foundations.

Strip the words away, and his and the Iraqi people’s cry of deep pain, anger and defiance would amount to no more than a shoe-throwing insult. But the words were heard. “This is the farewell kiss, you dog,” he shouted as he threw the first shoe. The crucial line followed the second shoe: “This is from the widows, the orphans and those who were killed in Iraq.” Once those words were heard, the impact of a pair of shoes became electrifying. A young journalist has put aside the demands of his profession, preferring to act as the loudest cry of his long-suffering people. If one considers the torture and killings in Iraqi and US jails that Muntadhar often mentioned in his reports for al-Baghdadia satellite TV station, he was certainly aware he risked being badly hurt. – The shoes we longed for

“To me it looks like they’ve invented a perfect propaganda machine, one that chews up bodies and churns out justifications for everything the Bush administration desires.” – Me

When I wrote that blog back in February, it was because the little information that I could find about prisoner interrogation in “The War Against Terror” reminded me of the techniques used by repressive regimes like the Soviet Union during the cold war to elicit false confessions from anti-Soviet or anti-communist captives. It just seemed like the purpose of “enhanced interrogation” or torture wasn’t to get information, good or bad. Some seem to think the problem with torture is simply that it doesn’t elicit the truth. But it’s not necessarily a problem if the false confession matches the story the interrogator expects to hear, because that makes for some convenient propaganda. “See? He confessed. He can now be convicted. The war on terror works.” Still, I never really expected that there would be hard evidence of a program to elicit false confessions on purpose.

This morning I hit the good old StumbleUpon button and the first ’stumble’ was a telegraph.co.uk article, entitled “Guantanamo Bay interrogations based on faulty Chinese communist methods.” That’s a misleading title. The methods weren’t necessarily faulty, they were just completely evil, but useful for breaking down a human being. Here’s a short excerpt:

American military trainers gave a class to camp interrogators in 2002 on how to use “sleep deprivation”, “exposure” and other “torture” methods to reduce captives to “animals” and obtain information.

But it has emerged that the techniques presented in the class were copied word-for-word from a 1957 US Air Force study which focused on Chinese techniques – that did not work.

The study by sociologist Alfred Biderman, Communist Attempts to Elicit False Confessions From Air Force Prisoners of War, commented on methods that led to false confessions and “brainwashing”. – Telegraph

The Telegraph is a pretty right-wing newspaper, so it’s not like this is some wild fringe conspiracy theory. Even the centre-right U.S. Democratic Party has clued in and mentioned this scary tidbit of info. Senator Levin was quoted in the article as saying, “What makes this document doubly stunning is that these were techniques to get false confessions. People say we need intelligence, and we do. But we don’t need false intelligence.”

No? I think that perhaps they DO need it. How else can a state justify the curbing of civil liberties, the expansion of military powers, the insidious government propaganda, endless war, the suspension of habeas corpus… etc?

People have to be scared into allowing the authorities to play us like suckers.

One way to do that, apparently, is to take a tip from the Commies and torture some brown folks until they say what the U.S. government wants to hear. I’m a little freaked out by this kind of democracy.

This is why I don’t have much faith in Barack Obama, or really any of the nominees or candidates. Can anyone resist this kind of power? You know, the unlimited kind? Already Obama’s going with the Republicans on telecom immunity (see Glenn Greenwald’s excellent reporting), which legitimizes government spying on law-abiding citizens. He has vague plans to end the Iraq war, which isn’t a good sign. Obama calls himself a “uniter” which I naively used to think meant he’d unite the fractured Democratic Party. But now I think it just means he’ll play ball with whatever lunatic fascist sits across from him. What will he do with a bunch of damaged prisoners who’ve been brainwashed into confessing acts of terrorism? Repair and release them? Or make use of them?

Of course I say that, but if I lived there, I’d vote for him. Forget all that stuff, actually.

Americans, (please) Vote Obama..

heheh.. Barack Obama: Better than Dementia.

ARS Technica has the story of a feud between a scientist who tracked the evolution of a bacteria culture for twenty years and Conservapedia – a Wikipedia clone, where all the information is pretty much batshit insane. The problem, you see, is that showing how a bacteria evolves over time means that God is Dead.

Clearly, Lenski’s bacteria appear to have evolved a significant new capacity. Fortunately, the residents of Conservapedia found a way out of this logical conundrum: Lenski was either misinterpreting his data, or he faked it. In an open letter to Lenski, Conservapedia’s Andy Schlafly (an attorney with an engineering background) wrote, “skepticism has been expressed on Conservapedia about your claims, and the significance of your claims, that E. Coli [sic] bacteria had an evolutionary beneficial mutation in your study.” Their solution? Show them the data: “Please post the data supporting your remarkable claims so that we can review it, and note where in the data you find justification for your conclusions.”

Lenski replied, noting that the whole purpose of scientific paper is to discuss and display data and to use it to justify conclusions; the data were in the paper itself. He also pointed out he’d placed a copy of the paper on his website for those without subscriptions to PNAS. Lenski also spent some time reexplaining some of his conclusions, and pointing out errors and misconceptions in the letter he had received. This response prompted a second letter from Schlafly, suggesting he wanted to review the data underlying the data presented in the paper, and noting that the work is taxpayer funded, giving him a right to it as a taxpayer.

From here on out, standard Internet drama ensued. By the time of his next reply, Lenski had apparently read the discussion pages attached to the letters, and discovered that Schlafly hadn’t actually bothered to read the paper he was demanding the data for. He has also discovered that some Conservapedia members were simply calling the whole thing a hoax, and accusing him of having engaged in research fraud. As a result, Lenski was apparently very annoyed, and his second letter is far more assertive.

Lenski again notes that the paper actually contained the relevant data, and that Schlafly’s complaints suggested he wouldn’t know what to do with any further data were Lenski to provide it to him. – ARS Technica

Schafly’s just using an ancient conservative thought management technique – when hard evidence contradicts a strong belief… for the love of god, don’t look at the evidence. Because scientific evidence is like opening the Ark of the Covenant to conservatives; look at it and – shlchleshp! – they are melted down into a little puddle of nazi soup.

I wish this wasn’t turning into a rant against conservatives. Really I do.

There’s nothing that I can see in the general conservative worldview that says you have to be an idiot to call yourself conservative – you just have to be cold-hearted, a bit of a sucker, and tremendously short-sighted (that’s why they always wear rose-coloured glasses). But plenty of high ranking Republicans believe in creationism or intelligent design and want it taught “scientifically.” Bush, the Ultimate Conservative if there ever was one, wants to “teach the controversy” with creationism/intelligent-design taught in science courses. Canada’s own Conservative public safety minister favours Flinstonianism; Stockwell Day apparently believes humans walked alongside the dinosaurs, despite just a bit of evidence to the contrary. One would think they’d find a skeleton of a T-Rex with a partially digested human skeleton stuck inside… unless they were our pets? That would be SO COOL!!!

Sigh.. I’m such a tolerant liberal pussy.. I actually feel bad for picking on creationists. People can believe what they want, as far as I’m concerned.

But trying to destroy a scientist’s career by accusing them of fraud simply because their evidence makes it slightly harder to be an ignoramus is worrying, especially as more and more people with anti-science views rise to the top. In Canada, we’re seeing the Conservatives fight against extending the license for Insite, because buying into the scientific evidence (and general public opinion) that supports what those brave science-type people are doing would mean re-examining Conservative beliefs (ie ‘a dead junky is better than a living one’). I would hope that they have the balls to do that. But I doubt it.

At any rate, I hope these conservatives are consistent. Just as many American doctors must push Republican talking points at women whenever they discuss abortion, perhaps doctors should encourage conservative patients to avoid newer antibiotics and vaccines. Any drug that has to change to keep up with the evolution of the organism it’s designed to fight is obviously “fraudulent” or a “hoax.”

Here’s an update to an older post, “Debating Afghan War Kills Canadian Soldiers.”

The Globe and Mail followed up on some reporting they did back in February on the Department of National Defense’s funding of a ‘think tank’ that puts out pro-war propaganda at the taxpayer’s expense. Here’s an excerpt:

The Department of National Defence sets quotas for how many times a year a military think tank it subsidizes must appear in the news media, a contract made public at the request of the NDP shows.

Critics say the five-year, $500,000 deal with the Conference of Defence Associations crosses the line from promoting debate to paying for supportive commentary – especially troubling when the Harper government is trying to sustain public backing for the Afghan mission.

They say it also raises questions about the millions spent by National Defence each year on grants to other think tanks and universities and called on the department to disclose the terms of those deals as well.

A contract the Conservatives tabled in Parliament this week says the department considers the CDA’s key goals to include the need “to consider the problems of National Defence” and “to support government efforts in placing these problems before the public.”

The March, 2007, contract says the grant is part of a program to ensure an “independent voice for discussion and debate on security and defence issues outside of the academic sphere.” It sets out 13 “expected results” for the CDA, including the requirements to:

“Attain a minimum of 29 media references to the CDA by national or regional journalists and reporters;”

“Attain the publication of a minimum of 15 opinion pieces (including op-eds and letters to the editor in national or regional publications).” – Globe and Mail

But it’s no big deal.

It’s just our government paying a select group of individuals to help convince Canadian citizens that the government’s war is hunky-dory by planting stories in the “free” press without revealing to readers that their tax dollars partly funded the lobbying group that is repeatedly quoted in the stories they read.

I love how ‘in sync’ the government and the CDA are when they’re quoted in the same story. I guess it just looks better to have the government agreeing with an outside, “impartial” source. Like this:

Mr . Pellerin [the Executive-director of the Conference of Defence Associations] said Canada should continue to lobby reluctant allies to do more in the south, between now and the Romanian summit. But the pressure should be discreetly applied behind the scenes because that is how the Dutch were able to pry a couple of hundred Afghan National Army trainers out of the French and Germans for the south, he added.

The chief spokesman for Defence Minister Peter MacKay signalled that will be the approach in the coming months. – National Post

Or this:

Defence Minister Peter MacKay accused the Liberal opposition of “histrionics and hyperbole” when they demanded to know if the government investigated the allegations against the governor.

…

Retired Colonel Alain Pellerin, the executive director of the Conference of Defence Associations, an advocacy group for the military, told CTV Newsnet that there have been several accusations against Governor Khalid, but there was not “much foundation” to the allegations. – CTV.ca

Here’s the CDA proving how non-partisan they are:

Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay quickly brushed off Layton’s proposal.

“Canada will not go back on its word to its allies and people of Afghanistan to fight terrorism and help to develop and stabilize the region,” he said.

MacKay pointed out that the Commons voted last spring to extend the Afghan mission to 2009.

“It’s unfortunate that Mr. Layton cannot accept the will of Parliament.”

The NDP voted against that motion, but it passed with support from a splintered Liberal party.

Paul Manson, a retired general and president of the Conference of Defence Associations Institute, said Layton’s suggestion would be a “catastrophe.”

Manson said he sensed “partisan politics at work here.” (REALLY?!?!?!?!?!? – Joe)

“A precipitous, unilateral pullout by Canada, in the short term, would reflect very badly on Canada, but more importantly it would have a very serious effect on the people of Afghanistan,” he said.

Both NATO allies and the Afghan people and government would feel betrayed, Manson said. – CTV.ca

There’s really not much of a difference between the words of our elected officials and the words of our unelected officials. Scary? Naw, it’s how things work in Ottawa. This sort of thing happens all the time, right? All kinds of groups get funding from the government to promote their views!

“To cite a contentious area, the 2007-08 federal guidelines for women’s groups make domestic advocacy and lobbying ineligible for any funding support.” – Macleans.ca

Well, unless you’re fighting for human rights and not for the right to fight humans.

I guess it took the Olympics to make our leaders realize there’s not much being independently produced by Canadians these days. Some MPs are upset that Canadian athletes aren’t wearing Canadian-made uniforms for the Summer Olympics. That doesn’t surprise me at all, but it sounds like it surprised a lot of people who are supposed to be in charge of trade policies and such…

Like the 2008 Olympic Games, most of the Canadian Olympic team’s uniforms are made in China — and that has some MPs crying foul.

“This is a no-brainer,” New Democrat MP Paul Dewar said Friday.

“This is our Olympic team. We should be ensuring that all of our Olympic athletes are proudly wearing Canadian-made textiles and all of their uniforms should be made in Canada.”

Liberal MP Denis Coderre said Canada is missing a golden opportunity to promote its textile industry on the world stage. He said it’s particularly unfortunate that the “unacceptable” snub to Canada’s homegrown clothing-makers should occur at a time when the industry is struggling.

Bloc Quebecois MP Pierre Paquette said the snub reflects the “laissez-faire” attitude of the Conservative government, which he asserted is not interested in boosting the prospects of the primarily Quebec-based textile industry.

…

Where possible, Rudge said, the COC tries to use Canadian suppliers. But he said it’s becoming increasingly difficult to find Canadian manufacturers who can supply the volume of clothing required to dress the athletes and provide the replicas sold to the public.

“Times have changed considerably,” Rudge said.

“The reality is that there’s no longer manufacturing capacity in Canada that can meet the volume needs that are necessary to manufacture particularly the replica clothing that is sold to the public.”

Canada’s manufacturing industry has been decimated by cheap foreign imports — especially from China — and the rising Canadian dollar. – CBC

There’s really enough internet stuff on the upcoming American election (is it here yet?!??!?!?!?!?!??!?!?!?!?!??!?!?!?!??!!??!!) so I haven’t been interested in writing about it.. I can barely bring myself to read about it. Thank god for The Daily Show.

But this was funny.. Barack Obama made a ‘private comment’ at a fundraiser, saying that many American voters are so disenchanted with Washington that they don’t believe politicians can actually help them – so instead they decide their votes based on single issues like gun control or gay marriage or illegal immigration. I was surprised to hear actual intellectual commentary coming out of a presidential candidates face. Which means he made a mistake – now he’s an “elitist” who “looks down” on voters! LOL. Uh huh.

I wouldn’t call that elitist, personally. I’d call it the Republican Campaign Strategy. “We can’t actually help ya, but we’ll punish those liberal fag mexicans if it’ll make you feel better.” Boom! – Votes roll in; wars are launched, taxes are cut for the rich, social services are gutted, New Orleans drowns. But oh no, Barack Obama’s the elitist – not the ones who have fucked over the poor time and time and time again.

Too bad he couldn’t be completely honest, but I guess a “Obama says ‘American voters are pussified suckers!’” headline wouldn’t play well on right-wing pussified sucker radio. Limbaugh would have a hissy fit and break a nail – necessitating an oxycondone binge… for the pain, of course…

The Nation: Obama is Right. People are Angry.

Vote Nader!

Vote for the corpse of Bill Hicks!