Daily Musings -- Feb 11th

An article in Truthout, this week, has an excerpt from Max Haiven's new book Crises of Imagination, Crises of Power: Capitalism, Creativity and the Commons (Zed Books, March 2014)

I want to quote many paragraphs but will just leave you with this one. 

"The crises of our age, like the crises of ages past, are the crises of capitalism. In this book, capitalism represents a cancerous disorder in the 'fabric' of social reproduction, one that works by perverting our sense of what and who is valuable and conscripting us to reproduce a system that works in the short-term interests of the few and against the interests of the vast majority of humanity. The failure to acknowledge that the many global crises we now face are, inherently, crises of capitalism represents a massive failure of the imagination. And without the radicalization of the imagination, we have no hope of overcoming these crises." 

With slightly more exciting news and a little sneak peak -- Looks like the book launch will be part of this year's Mayworks Festival!!
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On the environmental front more bad news. . . 

Even a single polar bear can devastate all the eggs on a single island where birds such as common eiders nest. This unfortunate colony was visited by three bears at once. (Courtesy Steve Marson)

Polar bears cannot get to seals -- In northern Hudson's Bay the ice is frozen 60 days less per year.  The freeze is thirty days later and breakup is thirty days earlier.   So, in bad news for both birds and polar bears -- they are raiding bird nesting islands and eating eggs in huge numbers in some cases more than decimating the population.   In this piece on CBC it says: 

Iverson, a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Biology at Carleton University, recalled one rampage he witnessed in which a polar bear ate its way through an eider duck nesting colony with 300 nests, each containing about four or five eggs. The eggs were nearly "completely consumed within about a 48-hour period."

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And on the Harper Cons. . . the story of how our national resources including water are going to be essentially sold off -- as soon as you tie public funding to P3's for municipal water you have essentially transferred control over water - a public good and something we need to survive -- to for-profit companies.  This is not more efficient or cheaper,  it just transfers a public good into private profit and should not be contemplated by any municipality in Canada (some have private sector involvement already!   )  Read more about on Rabble.

and there there is the elections act - something yesterday - more tomorrow -- this is bad. .  very bad. . .   This piece on Rabble is terrifying -- when even the Chief Electoral Officer calls it "an affront to democracy"   something is terribly wrong and we need to be reacting.  Unfortunately I heard today (Feb 11th ) about an action by the Council of Canadians yesterday -- where everyone was supposed to contact their MP but since my partner and I are social media mavens and news hawks and we didn't know about it. . . I think it must have been kept too quiet!
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Then there is this NYTimes story about Snowden -- love you Eddie -- come by anytime.  You will go down in history as a hero --- hope they give you the Nobel (which he has been nominated for by two Norwegian Parliamentarians.)

Using “web crawler” software designed to search, index and back up a website, Mr. Snowden “scraped data out of our systems” while he went about his day job, according to a senior intelligence official. “We do not believe this was an individual sitting at a machine and downloading this much material in sequence,” the official said. The process, he added, was “quite automated.”

The findings are striking because the N.S.A.’s mission includes protecting the nation’s most sensitive military and intelligence computer systems from cyberattacks, especially the sophisticated attacks that emanate from Russia and China. Mr. Snowden’s “insider attack,” by contrast, was hardly sophisticated and should have been easily detected, investigators found.

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A coupe of nice ones from the Olympics -- and pushing gay rights -- no matter that Russia doth protest too much. . . 


One is a story about the Greek team in blue and white as usual but with rainbow gloves to give the Russian state the finger, with. . .


And the other is a CBC story about how there has been more prominent LGBTI press and support as a result of the anti-gay law in Russia. . . in fact, says CBC they may be the gayest games ever!  Which says in part: 

"You look around Canada today and there's municipalities flying rainbow flags all over in support of the LGBT population," said Helen Kennedy, executive director of Égale Canada, a charity promoting LGBT rights."

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 No comment on these two - but they interested me and may interest you too . .

http://feministcurrent.com/8585/woody-allen-and-the-persistent-myths-of-rape-culture/



http://consortiumnews.com/2014/01/14/israels-hand-in-guatemalas-genocide-2/

Daily Musings Feb. 9th

Best laid plans of blogging instead of sharing on FB. . .  but it is so much easier to just hit like and share -- to write this takes takes time and thought - I have been too busy at work to think of anything else -- though I, of course, do think about other things -- but no time to write -- so here is what I am musing about today. . . and for the last few days.
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Upworthy published the video, below, with the headline  - Canada makes a great point about the Olympics in thirty seconds, which sounds like it is something the government of Canada did (ie Harper Cons!) .   It is a nice little video but has nothing at all to do with the Canadian Gov't.

Upworthy got it a little wrong -- this is a private sector organization (with a good goal) but private nevertheless, and in the same business as HR and business management consultants, as near as I can determine. . .  still loved the ad. From their website:

The Canadian Institute of Diversity and Inclusion (CIDI) is a made-in-Canada solution designed to help employers, and diversity and inclusion (D&I), Human Rights and Equity (HR&E) and human resources (HR) practitioners effectively address the full picture of diversity, equity and inclusion within the workplace.

And here's the 30 sec clip: 



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I wish I could recap what is in the piece by Chantal Hebert about the new bill on elections. .  but it is all important, an easy read, and I couldn't do better -- so please just go and read this piece from The Star.   Harper Cons are striking one more blow against democracy.


And there is another great piece on Global, here, about the NDP trying to filibuster to stop them from ending debate.  Once again the Harper Cons are taking what should be a non-partisan issue that all parties and the people get some say in. . . turn it into a piece of legislation that is very partisan (the people that they are denying the vote to are disadvantaged and generally not likely to vote for them) plus they are taking away rights from Elections Canada. . . like the ability to promote voting. . . and then, there is this -- 

And then yesterday on "the House" with Evan Solomon on CBC radio the Chief electoral Officer called the act an "Affront to Democracy".   More in this CBC website piece which says in part: 

The government's proposed overhaul of the Elections Act includes elements that constitute an affront to democracy, according to Canada's Chief Electoral Officer Marc Mayrand.

 In an interview airing Saturday on CBC Radio's The House, Mayrand said "my reading of the act is that I can no longer speak about democracy in this country."

 "I'm not aware of any electoral bodies around the world who can not talk about democracy," Mayrand told host Evan Solomon.

Chief Electoral Officer Marc Mayrand says the government's proposed Fair Elections Act puts severe restrictions on the information he is able to communicate to the public. (Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press)