June 2008
Monthly Archive
June 20, 2008
Next Monday a report will be released in London that looks at trends in population, development and reproductive health in today’s India.
The report, Disappearing Daughters, prepared by the NGO Actionaid and Canada’s International Development Research Centre, outlines India’s growing “sex selection” crisis. This arises out of the spreading practice of sex selection abortion used to ensure male children by aborting female fetuses. From Reuters Alternet:
“Findings from sites across five states in north and northwest India reveal that the sex ratio of girls to boys has not only worsened but is accelerating compared to the last national census in 2001.
Latest figures from one site in the Punjab, India’s richest state, show the number of girls has plummeted to just 300 compared to 1000 boys amongst higher cast families.
In a culture that predominantly views girls as an expense rather than an asset, women are put under intense pressure to produce sons.
The trend for smaller families is also deepening the aversion to daughters, with the use of ultrasound technology now being used to plan families. This is despite the existence of laws banning prenatal sex detection and sex selective abortion.
ActionAid has also found that girls are more likely to be born but less likely to survive in areas with more limited access to public health services and modern ultrasound technology. In rural Morena and Dhaulpur, deliberate neglect of girls, including allowing the umbilical cord to become infected, is used as a way to dispose of unwanted daughters. Such neglect ensures fewer surviving daughters, with the best chances of being born and surviving as a girl depending on the birth order in your family. “
June 20, 2008
Writing in today’s Asia Times Online, regular Grist contributor and PhD Jonathan Rynn explains how America’s decline is being driven, in large part, by his nation’s profligate defence spending.
“When New York City wanted to make the biggest purchase of subway cars in US history in the late 1990s, more than US$3 billion worth, the only companies that were able to bid on the contract were foreign. The same problem applies to high-speed rail today: only European or Japanese companies could build any of the proposed rail networks in the United States.
The US has also ceded the high ground to Europe and Japan in a broad range of other sustainable technologies. For instance, 11 companies produce 96% of medium to large wind turbines; only one, GE, is based in the United States, with a 16% share of the global market. The differences in market penetration come down to two factors: European and Japanese companies have become more competent producers for these markets, and their governments have helped them to develop both this competence and the markets themselves.
But Europe and Japan’s dominance in renewable technologies is really based in a broader domain of competitive competence. They dominate the most fundamental sector of the economy, namely the production of machinery for manufacturing industries in general (often referred to as the mechanical engineering sector). The European Union produces almost twice as much industrial equipment overall as the United States, according to data compiled by the EU, Japan produces almost as much as the US, with about half the population. The split among the EU, US, and Japan, which together produce most of the world’s machinery, is 52%, 27% and 21%, respectively.
The different niches of an economic ecosystem, such as the various machinery and equipment sectors, thrive as a self-reinforcing web of engineers, high-skill production workers, operational managers and factories. As of 2003, Europe’s manufacturing sector made up 32% of its nonfinancial economy, while the manufacturing sector of the United States comprised only 13% of its nonfinancial sectors. The decline of American machinery and manufacturing sectors, in conjunction with the on-again/off-again nature of American renewable energy policy, explains why Europe and Japan are so far ahead of the United States in the transition to a more sustainable economy. And America’s decline can be traced to one overriding factor: a military budget that comprises nearly half of the world’s military spending. For decades, as the late Professor Seymour Melman showed in many books (such as After Capitalism) and in numerous articles, the Pentagon has been draining not just money but also the engineering, scientific and business talent that Europe and Japan have been using for civilian production. As Melman often pointed out, the US military budget is a capital fund, and American citizens can use that fund to help finance the construction of the trains, wind and solar power, and other green technologies that will help us to avoid economic and environmental collapse.
That economic collapse, if it comes, will be caused by two major factors: the end of the era of cheap oil, coal and natural gas; and the decline of the manufacturing and machinery base of the economy. Both problems can be addressed simultaneously, as Europe and Japan are showing, by moving the economy from one based on military and fossil fuel production to one based on electric transportation and the generation of renewable electricity.”
June 20, 2008
Stephane Dion’s Tax Shift initiative is going to be pounced on by the far-right and the far-left as an unwarranted tax grab that’ll harm the country. Right, sure. This stuff is perfect fodder for the denialists and those who’ll harp on about how Canada can’t make a difference globally anyway.
Maybe we ought to be looking at our greenhouse gas problem from the perspective of others who don’t have the luxury of attributing blame among big emitters for their global warming plight. Finger pointing isn’t of much interest to the people of Bangladesh. An article in today’s Indepedent reveals the price already being exacted by our greenhouse gas emissions:
“Ten years ago, the village [of Munshigonj] began to die. First, many of the trees turned a strange brownish-yellow colour and rotted. Then the rice paddies stopped growing and festered in the water. Then the fish floated to the surface of the rivers, gasping. Then many of the animals began to die. Then many of the children began to die.
The waters flowing through Munshigonj – which had once been sweet and clear and teeming with life – had turned salty and dead.
Arita Rani, a 25-year-old, sat looking at the salt water, swaddled in a blue sari and her grief. “We couldn’t drink the water from the river, because it was suddenly full of salt and made us sick,” she said. “So I had to give my children water from this pond. I knew it was a bad idea. People wash in this pond. It’s dirty. So we all got dysentery.” She keeps staring at its surface. “I have had it for 10 years now. You feel weak all the time, and you have terrible stomach pains. You need to run to the toilet 10 times a day. My boy Shupria was seven and he had this for his whole life. He was so weak, and kept getting coughs and fevers. And then one morning…”
Her mother interrupted the trailing silence. “He died,” she said. Now Arita’s surviving three-year-old, Ashik, is sick, too. He is sprawled on his back on the floor. He keeps collapsing; his eyes are watery and distant. His distended stomach feels like a balloon pumped full of water. “Why did this happen?” Arita asked.
It is happening because of us. Every flight, every hamburger, every coal power plant, ends here, with this. Bangladesh is a flat, low-lying land made of silt, squeezed in between the melting mountains of the Himalayas and the rising seas of the Bay of Bengal. As the world warms, the sea is swelling – and wiping Bangladesh off the map.
Dr Atiq Rahman’s office in downtown Dhaka is a nest of scientific reports and books that, at every question, he dives into to reel off figures. He is a tidy, grey-moustached man who speaks English very fast, as if he is running out of time.
He handed me shafts of scientific studies as he explained: “This is the ground zero of global warming.” He listed the effects. The seas are rising, so land is being claimed from the outside. (The largest island in the country, Bhola, has lost half its land in the past decade.) The rivers are super-charged, becoming wider and wider, so land is being claimed from within. (Erosion is up by 40 per cent). Cyclones are becoming more intense and more violent (2007 was the worst year on record for intense hurricanes here). And salt water is rendering the land barren. (The rate of saline inundation has trebled in the past 20 years.) “There is no question,” Dr Rahman said, “that this is being caused primarily by human action. This is way outside natural variation. If you really want people in the West to understand the effect they are having here, it’s simple. From now on, we need to have a system where for every 10,000 tons of carbon you emit, you have to take a Bangladeshi family to live with you. It is your responsibility.” In the past, he has called it “climatic genocide“.
June 20, 2008
The US government’s top climate scientists have just released the first comprehensive analysis of projected weather and climate change effects on North America. As expected, the US Climate Change Science Program is predicting an increase in the number, severity and duration of extreme weather events including heat waves, floods, droughts and hurricanes. Welcome to the new reality, the one we’re seeing in mid-west floods, southern droughts and California wildfires.
From ENN:
“Among the major findings reported in this assessment are that droughts, heavy downpours, excessive heat, and intense hurricanes are likely to become more commonplace as humans continue to increase the atmospheric concentrations of heat-trapping greenhouse gases.
The report is based on scientific evidence that a warming world will be accompanied by changes in the intensity, duration, frequency, and geographic extent of weather and climate extremes.
Global warming of the past 50 years is due primarily to human-induced increases in heat-trapping gases, according to the report. Many types of extreme weather and climate event changes have been observed during this time period and continued changes are projected for this century. Specific future projections include:
Abnormally hot days and nights, along with heat waves, are very likely to become more common. Cold nights are very likely to become less common.
Sea ice extent is expected to continue to decrease and may even disappear in the Arctic Ocean in summer in coming decades.
Precipitation, on average, is likely to be less frequent but more intense.
Droughts are likely to become more frequent and severe in some regions.
Hurricanes will likely have increased precipitation and wind.
The strongest cold-season storms in the Atlantic and Pacific are likely to produce stronger winds and higher extreme wave heights.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, an agency of the U.S. Commerce Department, is dedicated to enhancing economic security and national safety through the prediction and research of weather and climate-related events and information service delivery for transportation, and by providing environmental stewardship of our nation’s coastal and marine resources.”
The complete text of the reports, including proposals for adaptation and remediation, can be found here: http://www.climatescence.gov/.
If Dion needs ammunition to bolster his Tax Shift/climate change initiative, there’s plenty of it in these reports.
June 20, 2008
Stephane Dion has belatedly unveiled more details of his Tax Shift platform upon which the Liberals will either stand or fall in the next election.
The idea, overall, seems pretty good but I’m going to wait to see what intelligent criticism it draws. If there are serious holes in the idea, problems that haven’t been foreseen or taken into account, then it might be doomed from the outset.
Then there’s the issue of salesmanship. The Harpies are going to go full-bore negative on this and, following the Bush/Cheney playbook, they’ll resort to as much fear-mongering as they can persuade an indulgent media to tolerate. Pretty much everybody now realizes that the Cons are flush out of ideas but that’s not a problem when a campaign is going to be fought over another party’s Big Idea.
The trouble with Big Ideas is that they’re usually pretty tough to sell. There’s a mountain of truly good ideas that never got off the ground and we’re scrapped. You have to be able to sell them to your market. Can Dion sell his Tax Shift?
Once again the Layton NDP will ride to Harper’s side to oppose the Liberal/Green policy, in other words to keep Harper in power for years to come. Of course, being Dippers, once they manage that, they’ll duck all responsibility for the aftermath of their duplicity and try to blame it on the Libs instead. Slimy, sure, but that’s the nature of Jack Layton and those who follow him.
So, Stephane has unveiled his baby. Now the real work begins. This is his chance to show that he can lead the LPC and our country itself. The cost of failing on this could be bigger than we imagine.
June 19, 2008
What in God’s name is wrong with Manitoba judges? Doctors are resigning rather than force treatment on an essentially-dead man knowing that would be nothing shy of grotesque torture.
This is being portrayed as a clash of medical ethics but it’s much more than that, it’s a collapse of the will of our legal system.
The Manitoba court ordered hospital physicians to keep 84-year old Samuel Golubchuck alive, regardless of the consequences, until the court can get off its fat, lazy ass and hear the question in late September? This poor man is already essentially dead and the Manitoba court wants to keep him on some respiratory and circulatory treadmill until “cottage time” has comfortably ended. And his very flesh is rotting away before our own eyes. Doesn’t Sam deserve a lot better than this? What kind of people could, quite knowingly, subject another human being to this fate? I sure couldn’t, could you?
If this court has a shred of integrity, it’d get off its sackcloth and silk backside and direct expedited argument, perhaps within a day. A court with even a modicum of courage would respect any ( and definitely your and mine) Canadian’s life enough to expedite this. If the victim was us, would any of us not want just that degree of respect and consideration?
There’s a powerful smell about this. Judges who aren’t willing to put Golubchuk where he deserves to be – front and centre – but who will duck and weave and dodge, seemingly hoping that he’ll be gone before they can possibly be forced to rule.
If the courts won’t stand up for Golubchuk and his right to face inevitable death without outside contrivance tantamount to torture, then we’re going to have to.
This just has to stop. People – we can’t have this in Canada!
June 19, 2008
The United States Army general who investigated the Abu Ghraib torture scandal has accused the Bush regime of war crimes and challenged American prosecutors to act.
Retired Major General Antonio Taguba, who claims he was forced into early retirement for his outspoken findings, says Bush and his minions have disgraced the honour of the United States and its military:
“This report tells the largely untold human story of what happened to detainees in our custody when the Commander-in-Chief and those under him authorized a systematic regime of torture. This story is not only written in words: It is scrawled for the rest of these individuals’ lives on their bodies and minds. Our national honor is stained by the indignity and inhumane treatment these men received from their captors.
The profiles of these eleven former detainees, none of whom were ever charged with a crime or told why they were detained, are tragic and brutal rebuttals to those who claim that torture is ever justified. Through the experiences of these men in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, we can see the full scope of the damage this illegal and unsound policy has inflicted – both on America’s institutions and our nation’s founding values, which the military, intelligence services, and our justice system are duty-bound to defend.
In order for these individuals to suffer the wanton cruelty to which they were subjected, a government policy was promulgated to the field whereby the Geneva Conventions and the Uniform Code of Military Justice were disregarded. The UN Convention Against Torture was indiscriminately ignored. And the healing professions, including physicians and psychologists, became complicit in the willful infliction of harm against those the Hippocratic Oath demands they protect.
After years of disclosures by government investigations, media accounts, and reports from human rights organizations, there is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes. The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account.
The former detainees in this report – each of whom is fighting a lonely and difficult battle to rebuild his life – require reparations for what they endured, comprehensive psycho-social and medical assistance, and even an official apology from our government.
But most of all, these men deserve justice as required under the tenets of international law and the United States Constitution.
And so do the American people.”
Read the summary of the Taguba report here:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4894001/
Look, people, here’s another challenge. These draft-dodging despots, beginning with Cheney and working on down through the ranks of the neo-con vultures, are war criminals, plain and simple. Why, then, are we still treating them as legitimate members, nay leaders, of the community of nations of the free world? Bush/Cheney have caused the slaughter of far more people than Mugabe ever did, more than Ghadaffi, more than Arafat, more than al-Qaeda or Osama bin Laden, more than just about anyone save for Nixon, Stalin and Hitler.
These people, and the right-wingers in other nations who serve as their enablers, are vermin and if our world is to heal the wounds they’ve torn into us, the leadership must be denounced and condemned, charged and tried. The hundreds of thousands of dead and millions displaced deserve nothing less.
Before you dismiss this call as histrionic or hyperbole, at least read this:
http://physiciansforhumanrights.org/
Then, those of you interested in seeing the complete mosaic of how the American people and the rest of us were neo-conned into the War Without End on Terror, throw 75-bucks at PBS and get a copy of their 4.5-hour DVD “Bush’s War.” If you still have some hold on your senses and integrity, it’ll make your blood boil.
June 18, 2008
Another “foot in sneaker” find, this one in Campbell River on the east side of mid-Vancouver Island.
From the Globe & Mail:
“RCMP in Campbell River on Vancouver Island said a local woman strolling a beach found an Adidas sneaker this morning, containing what appears to be a man’s foot.
“It’s certainly suspicious,” Sergeant Mike Tresoor said in an interview.
“A lady walking on the beach alerted us to this. … It appears to be human remains. We haven’t absolutely confirmed it – it will be confirmed through a pathologist.”’
Nothing particularly sinister about this one, though. Like the first four, it’s a right foot, male, about size 10.
June 18, 2008
Harpo scumbag philanderer, the oh-so-self-righteous Vic Toews, has lambasted UN Human Rights Commissioner Louise Arbour, calling her “a disgrace.”
The numbnutted bastard who recently fathered a bouncing out-of-wedlock bastard baby with a much younger woman to the chagrin of his faithful wife of 30-years ought to know what a disgrace really is as he’s reminded of it so fulsomely every morning when he gazes into the mirror to trim his old man/new dad moustache.
It seems this pathetically unaccomplished jerk, who has single-handedly elevated hypocrisy to near religious dimensions, objects to Ms. Arbour’s legitimate criticisms of Israel.
June 17, 2008
Another foot – the fifth in the span of a year – clad like all the others in a running shoe has washed up on the British Columbia shore.
This time, however, it’s a left foot. All the others have been rights. The Latin word for left is, of course, “sinister.” As though four right feet weren’t sinister enough.
No word yet on whether the leftie is a match for any of the righties.
The police, as ever, have no idea what this is all about. I will resist the urge to pun this one silly. Weird, just plain weird.
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