The Galloping Beaver

Skullduggery abounds

2009-11-21T14:21:00.000-08:00

THE NEW YORK TIMES has a report about what has been called a "computer hack" into the University of East Anglia’s Hadley Climatic Research Centre.

Why should you care? Well, according to the Times, the revelations:

are causing a stir among global warming skeptics, who say they show that climate scientists conspired to overstate the case for a human influence on climate change.

In one e-mail exchange, a scientist writes of using a statistical “trick” in a chart illustrating a recent sharp warming trend. In another, a scientist refers to climate skeptics as “idiots.”

Some skeptics asserted Friday that the correspondence revealed an effort to withhold scientific information. “This is not a smoking gun; this is a mushroom cloud,” said Patrick J. Michaels, a climatologist who has long faulted evidence pointing to human-driven warming and is criticized in the documents.

FABIUS MAXIMUS has a page about the hack, with numerous links, as does WATTS UP WITH THAT?

There is going to be so much knee-jerk on both sides over this, rehab clinics are going to have to hire more staff.

Shoes dropping

2009-11-20T19:32:00.000-08:00

Colvin's testimony was alarming and the Conservative Party response, true to form, abysmal and disgusting. But there are shoes yet to drop regarding Afghan prisoners. So far the discussion seems to be around what happens to prisoners after Canada hands them to the ANP or ANA. The next shoe to drop will be when the stories come out about what Canadian soldiers have done to Afghan prisoners.

Right now the Canadian Forces are something of a boundary object. Left and right have taken pains avoid directly criticising or negatively commenting on the CF. True, the right confuses supporting the troops with supporting the war, and others do not, but I definitely sense a reluctance to directly criticise the military in reference to Afghanistan. All sides, no matter the stance on the war, seem to view the armed forces as something in need of support both in voice and action, it is only the mission that is questioned. Missing among the images of flag draped coffins, troops on patrol, troops in vehicles, yellow ribbon magnets and the like, and narratives about how hard it is in Afghansistan, are descriptions of what actually happens when a firefight turns deadly, or a suspicious local is picked up. Maybe this is partly the success of a propaganda machine, or maybe it is the public and political pendulum swinging the other way post-Somalia. Maybe something else. Whichever the case, it's only gonna get worse from here.

Most human beings, given enough time in a new place, adopt its norms of thinking and custom. It should therefore come as no surprise that one of the effects of deploying soldiers in a corrupt and poorly defined war, is that eventually the nature of the war will be reflected in the troops fighting it.

GOP goes nuts over ACORN

2009-11-20T09:37:00.000-08:00

TPM HAS A REAL THIGH-SLAPPER — Poll: Majority Of Republicans Think Obama Didn't Actually Win 2008 Election -- ACORN Stole It! According to Eric Kleefeld,

The new national poll from Public Policy Polling (D) has an astonishing number about paranoia among the GOP base: Republicans do not think President Obama actually won the 2008 election -- instead, ACORN stole it.

The poll asked this question: "Do you think that Barack Obama legitimately won the Presidential election last year, or do you think that ACORN stole it for him?" The overall top-line is legitimately won 62%, ACORN stole it 26%.

Among Republicans, however, only 27% say Obama actually won the race, with 52% -- an outright majority -- saying that ACORN stole it, and 21% are undecided.

Teabaggers and Birthers and Nutters. As MeMeMeMeMe observed in the DAILY KOS,

This is the state of today's GOP: it counts as some sort of triumph of reason that only four out of ten of them are birthers. At this rate we'll be handing out gold stars to them for not making poopie in their pants.

One last thought: pause for a moment and ponder how they'd be handling things if they'd lost the election by, say, 500 votes. In a state run by Obama's brother.

Agora Agony

2009-11-19T14:18:00.000-08:00

Last Rites: Even with God's help, this shopping center in Pahrump, Nevada, probably cannot be revived.

THE DESIGN OBSERVER is one of the more thoughtful web sites dedicated to the appreciation of design of all kinds. Mark Dery has an article, titled "Dawn of the Dead Mall", where he proclaims "The landscape is littered with the giant carcasses of failed retail emporia. Ideas for what's next are no less visionary. But are they any more practical?"

The multitiered, fully enclosed mall (as opposed to the strip mall) has been the Vatican of shiny, happy consumerism since it staked its claim on the crabgrass frontier — and the public mind — in postwar America. The nation’s first enclosed shopping mall, the Southdale Center, opened its doors in Edina, outside Minneapolis, in 1956. Southdale was the brainchild of the Los Angeles– based architect (and Viennese refugee from the Anschluss) Victor Gruen. A socialist and former student of the modernist designer Peter Behrens, Gruen saw in the covered mall a Vision of Things to Come.

But it wasn’t Gruen’s Mad Men take on the Viennese plazas he remembered so fondly that made his Ur-mall go viral. Developers liked the way Gruen used architecture to socially engineer our patterns of consumption. His goal, he said, was to design an environment in which “shoppers will be so bedazzled by a store’s surroundings that they will be drawn — unconsciously, continually — to shop.” (Remember, Gruen was from Freud’s Vienna, where psychoanalysis was a growth industry.)

Unfortunately, Gruen made the fatal mistake — fatal for an arm-waving futurist visionary, anyway — of living long enough to see American consumer culture embrace his idea with a vengeance. In a 1978 speech, he recalled visiting one of his old malls, where he swooned in horror at “the ugliness...of the land-wasting seas of parking” around it, and the soul-killing sprawl beyond.

Good thing he didn’t survive to see the undeath of the American mall. Most economic commentators attribute its dire state to the epic fail of the American economy. In April of this year, one of the country’s biggest mall operators — General Growth Properties, owner and/or manager of over 200 properties in 44 states — filed for bankruptcy, mortally wounded by the exodus of retail tenants.

Anyway, Mark has lots to say. Along the way, check out DEAD MALLS.COM, an eponymous web site with interesting stuff, including a Dead Mall Dictionary, with situationally-relevant entries like

Labelscar: Fading or dirt left behind from a sign on or in a mall. Labelscars leave a readable marking, which is very helpful when identifying former stores.

It is also interesting to see how Europeans look upon the situation. DER SPIEGEL has a great piece with some neat photos, like the one at the top. Originally published in German, you sure have to love that Google Translation.

Be Careful What You Ask For . . . .

2009-11-18T17:36:00.000-08:00

It appears members of the GLBT community in Texas will be enjoying a bit of schadenfreude in the near future.

You're gonna love this one, gang, via McClatchy today:

Texas' gay marriage ban may have banned all marriages
Dave Montgomery | Fort Worth Star-Telegram | November 18, 2009

AUSTIN — Texans: Are you really married?

Maybe not.

Barbara Ann Radnofsky, a Houston lawyer and Democratic candidate for attorney general, says that a 22-word clause in a 2005 constitutional amendment designed to ban gay marriages erroneously endangers the legal status of all marriages in the state.

The amendment, approved by the Legislature and overwhelmingly ratified by voters, declares that "marriage in this state shall consist only of the union of one man and one woman." But the troublemaking phrase, as Radnofsky sees it, is Subsection B, which declares:

"This state or a political subdivision of this state may not create or recognize any legal status identical or similar to marriage."

Architects of the amendment included the clause to ban same-sex civil unions and domestic partnerships. But Radnofsky, who was a member of the powerhouse Vinson & Elkins law firm in Houston for 27 years until retiring in 2006, says the wording of Subsection B effectively "eliminates marriage in Texas," including common-law marriages.

She calls it a "massive mistake" and blames the current attorney general, Republican Greg Abbott, for allowing the language to become part of the Texas Constitution. Radnofsky called on Abbott to acknowledge the wording as an error and consider an apology. She also said that another constitutional amendment may be necessary to reverse the problem.

_______________

Radnofsky, the Democratic nominee in the Senate race against Kay Bailey Hutchison in 2006, said she voted against the amendment but didn’t realize the legal implications until she began poring over the Texas Constitution to prepare for the attorney general’s race. She said she holds Abbott and his office responsible for not catching an "error of massive proportions."

"Whoever vetted the language in B must have been asleep at the wheel," she said.

Was I right?

Do you love it?

Thought you would . . . .

(Cross-posted from Moved to Vancouver)

Time bomb . . .

2009-11-17T13:46:00.000-08:00

THE BORDER BETWEEN CONGO AND RWANDA has had a lot of nasty things happen over the years. Well, it seems God thinks this should continue into the future, too. You see, there's this lake, called Lake Kivu, part of the freshwater lake system bordering Rwanda and the Republic of Congo. Well this lake has a problem, in that it appears it could explode.

According to Science Daily:

Scientists can't say for sure if the volatile mixture at the bottom of the lake will remain still for another 1,000 years or someday explode without warning. In a region prone to volcanic and seismic activity, the fragility of Lake Kivu is a serious matter. Compounding the precarious situation is the presence of approximately 2 million people, many of them refugees, living along the north end of the lake.

Vodacek likens the contained pressure in the lake to a bottle of carbonated soda or champagne. "In the lake, you have the carbon dioxide on the bottom and 300 meters of water on top of that, which is the cap," he says. "That's the pressure that holds it. The gas is dissolved in water."

When the cap is removed, bubbles form and rise to the surface. More bubbles form and create a column that drags the water and the gas up to the surface in a chain reaction.

"The question is, and what's really unknown, is how explosive is that?" Vodacek says.

so sell a few Michelanglos and feed Africa

2009-11-16T20:49:00.000-08:00

I think most reasonable people, where ever they are on the political spectrum, would agree that hunger and poverty are objectively bad things and the fact that one in six people on this planet does not get enough to eat is pretty awful, especially when we in the wealthy developed world look at the plenty that surrounds us.

So when I saw this story about the UN food conference in Rome, it perturbed me. As usual, all the diplomats sitting at the banquet table agree that hunger in the poorer nations is a terrible thing and "somebody ought to do something about it" - at least, they all agree until coughing up some money to irrigate fields in Africa or start fish farms in South East Asia or build better dykes in Bangladesh is discussed and then suddenly everyone is full of excuses.

But then I read a little further and got really ticked off.

"Despite endorsing the strategy in the first hours of Monday's meeting, the 192 participating countries did not commit to the $44 billion a year for agricultural aid that the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization says will be necessary in the coming decades.
Soon after the delegates approved the declaration, Pope Benedict took the floor to decry "opulence and waste" in a world where the "tragedy" of hunger has been steadily worsening. Benedict's speech marked the first time a pontiff attended such a gathering since Pope John Paul II took part in a 1996 food summit.
The pontiff, lending his moral authority as head of the world's 1 billion Catholics, also called for access to international markets for products coming from the poorest countries, which he said are often relegated to the sidelines."

The Pope, who insists that every sperm is sacred and his flock must keep having lots and lots of Catholic babies, who lives in a golden palace full of priceless art in his own nation-state in the middle of Rome with his own private army and bank (estimated to have at least $10 billion invested in foreign corporations), who presides over a global organization that brings in an estimated $50 to $100 million a year in donations alone, who made sure that the Church spent millions defending pedophiles in the U.S. and elsewhere and who wears simply fabulous hats, is decrying "opulence and waste."

Yeah, right.

Sure, the Catholic Church is one of the world's largest charitable organizations and Catholic charities do a lot of good work, but how many of "Peter's Pence" get spent on running a parallel religious school system where there is already a perfectly good public school system? How much of that money is going to the pay for the Monsignor's Cadillac? What is the ratio of bibles to bags of rice that are getting shipped to starving nations? How much is getting spent on making women feel bad about seeking an abortion or using birth control? How many lives, how many man-hours of labour, skull-sweat and angst have been dedicated to appeasing an invisible sky-daddy instead of helping humans in the here and now?

I'm not saying the Catholic Church (or any other church for that matter) doesn't do good works -- it does provide some vital services in some pretty grim places around the world. But for God's self-proclaimed spokesman on Earth to sit in the lap of luxury and start railing about "opulence and waste" is just a bit rich.

Crossposted from the Woodshed

H1N1 details

2009-11-16T16:36:00.000-08:00

NATURE weighs in with details on H1N1. Nature reports from three laboratories scrutinizing the pandemic flu virus. One is working to find out what it might do . . .

The profile emerging is of a distinctive virus. Although seasonal flu tends to infect just the cells high in the upper airway, H1N1 penetrates down into the terminal air sacs called alveoli.

Columbus, go home

2009-11-15T22:20:00.001-08:00

the General shows us someone who knows how to best handle the teabagger/minutemen xenophobic dingbats, with mockery.

Help! It's Here Now ! ! ! !

2009-11-15T17:40:00.000-08:00

If you think the influence of the US christian ~~right~~ "wrong" is creeping north across the 49th, there's now proof.

On a trip to the US southland last summer I was not surprised to see this ad on television down there. Unfortunately, it is now here.

Two, count 'em two ads for the item within the past hour on "ahem," "choke," "gasp" CTV.

It appears harper is winning, ya'll . . . .

(Cross-posted from Moved to Vancouver)

Joya to the World . . . .

2009-11-14T22:34:00.000-08:00

Since my friend was singing in the pre-show choir for Malalai Joya's Vancouver book tour kick-off, I walked up the hill to her performance this evening.

I had previously heard Ms. Joya on a PBS program in the US, but to hear her story live in person was very moving. It is something I would recommend to anyone that has the opportunity to attend one of her appearances on this tour.

Be advised that neither bush, harper nor obama are positively portrayed. The woman knows where the real element of change for her country lies: Within it's people.

In answer to a question from an Afghani-Canadian woman in the crowd:

"What will happen to Afghanistan if all the foreign troops leave?"

was:

"The Afghani people will work it out. Slowly, they will begin to see that democracy and equal rights for all people, genders, religions is the thing to do. It won't be easy. It won't be fast. But it will happen. Having foreign troops there only more firmly entrenches the Taliban and the war lords in power. Make them leave, and the situation will slowly begin to change."

I'm thinking the military/industrial/congressional complex would not like her answer.

The Lady Alison has the details of the tour . . . .

(Cross-posted from Moved to Vancouver)

How the US funds the Taliban

2009-11-14T12:42:00.000-08:00

From Aram Roston at The Nation :

"Welcome to the wartime contracting bazaar in Afghanistan. It is a virtual carnival of improbable characters and shady connections, with former CIA officials and ex-military officers joining hands with former Taliban and mujahedeen to collect US government funds in the name of the war effort."

An example : NCL Holdings, a licensed security company in Afghanistan, has been awarded hundreds of millions of dollars - a 600% increase for the proposed new "surge" - to handle the bulk of US trucking in Afghanistan. Its chief principal is Hamed Warduk, the American son of Afghanistan's current defense minister, who graduated as valedictorian from Georgetown University in 1997, earned a Rhodes scholarship, and interned at the American Enterprise Institute, where "he forged alliances with some of the premier figures in American conservative foreign policy circles, such as the late Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick".

Watan Risk, another security company run by Karzai's family relatives - convicted heroin traffickers, controls the road to Kandahar because of its principal's alliance with a local warlord who really controls the route, extorting $1500 per truck for passage to Kandahar.
NCL pays Watan Risk $500,000 a month for protection.

Roston :

"The security firms don't really protect convoys of American military goods here, because they simply can't; they need the Taliban's cooperation.
"Most escorting is done by the Taliban," an Afghan private security official told me. "Now the government is so weak," he added, "everyone is paying the Taliban."
To underline the point: NCL, operating on a $360 million contract from the US military, and owned by the Afghan defense minister's son, is paying millions per year from those funds to a company owned by President Karzai's cousins, for protection."

Afghanistan - the "good war".
Would the Taliban collapse entirely if not financially supported by the US government?
Is all that is necessary for the collapse of the Taliban is for the troops to leave?

Malalai Joya has been telling us this for years.
She is speaking in Vancouver tonight at 7pm at St. Andrew's Wesley Church at Nelson Street and Burrard.
West End Bob will be there - naturally he'll be wearing a disguise.

Gay Eternity

2009-11-13T22:23:00.000-08:00

The Guardian UK today reveals:

Censored gay sex scenes in From Here to Eternity revealed

Daughter of author James Jones discloses details of cuts insisted upon by the novel's original publisher

* Alison Flood | * guardian.co.uk, Friday 13 November 2009

It is one of the most celebrated images in cinema, an icon of heterosexual romance: Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr kissing as the waves crash over them in the 1953 film From Here to Eternity. But behind the Hollywood gloss is a tale of censorship and repression, with the author of the award-winning novel on which the film was based forced to remove scenes of gay sex from the manuscript before publication.

Kaylie Jones, a novelist in her own right, says her father, James Jones, was told by his publisher Scribner to eliminate both expletives and homosexual scenes in From Here to Eternity, which was based on his own experiences in Hawaii in the army on the eve of the Pearl Harbour bombing.

The original manuscript of From Here to Eternity went into "great detail" about the kinds of sexual favours soldiers like Private Angelo Maggio, played in the film by Frank Sinatra, would provide to rich gay men for money, Kaylie Jones revealed in an article written for US news website the Daily Beast.

"'I don't like to be blowed [by a man]'," the novel's hero Private Robert E Lee Prewitt tells Maggio in a section cut from the novel. "Angelo shrugged," writes James Jones. "'Oh, all right. I admit it's nothing like a woman. But it's something. Besides, old Hal treats me swell. He's always good for a touch when I'm broke. Five bucks. Ten bucks. Comes in handy the middle of the month ... Only reason I let Hal blow me is because I got a good thing there. If I turned him down I'd blow it sky high. And I want to hang onto that income, buddy.'"

________________

James Jones, she wrote, "believed that homosexuality was as old as mankind itself, and that Achilles, the bravest and most venerated fighter ever described, was gay, and to take a younger lover under your wing was a common practice among the soldiers of the time". "He also believed also that homosexuality was a natural condition of men in close quarters, and that it in no way affected a soldier's capabilities on the battlefield. What would have amazed him is that the discussion still continues to this day, cloaked in the same hypocrisy and silence as it was 60 years ago," she wrote. The US military's current "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy allows gay men and lesbians to serve only if they keep quiet about their sexuality. President Obama has previously announced his intention to revoke the rule, but for the moment it remains in force.

It's time for Eternity to be Here, Mr. President.

Let the women and men in the US military "ask" and "tell" . . . .

H/T Penelope ;-)

(Cross-posted from Moved to Vancouver)

Jason Kenney's Guyed For New ConserCanadians

2009-11-12T12:23:00.000-08:00

h/t Holly Stick at Bread 'n Roses

When the Mexican toilet flushes . . .

2009-11-12T10:05:00.000-08:00

FABIUS MAXIMUS is an American who has an eponymous blog which is "a discussion about geopolitics, broadly defined, from an American's perspective". Over the years, I have found a sage perspective.

Anyway, Fabius has a page on the current debacle that is Mexico, leading with the comment, "Mexico continues to fall apart in slow-mo. There seems to be little we can do to help, so our government pretends all is fine — rather than take defensive measures." Fabius is not given to hyperbole, so, just how bad is it?

He cites an article in THE ATLANTIC, by Philip Caputo, titled "The Fall of Mexico":

In the almost three years since President Felipe Calderón launched a war on drug cartels, border towns in Mexico have turned into halls of mirrors where no one knows who is on which side or what chance remark could get you murdered. Some 14,000 people have been killed in that time—the worst carnage since the Mexican Revolution—and part of the country is effectively under martial law. Is this evidence of a creeping coup by the military? A war between drug cartels? Between the president and his opposition? Or just collateral damage from the (U.S.-supported) war on drugs? Nobody knows: Mexico is where facts, like people, simply disappear. The stakes for the U.S. are high, especially as the prospect of a failed state on our southern border begins to seem all too real.

14,000 people killed in 3 years? Wow. Here there be dragons. As well, the Fabius page has links to other articles about this festering problem. As Pete De Lorenzo says at Autoextremist, "a heaping, steaming bowl of Not Good".

Others concur. William S. Lind is what you could call a "paleoconservative", which seems somewhat whacko to my milquetoast weltanschauung, but, Willie is something of an avant-garde theorist, when it comes to things military. His take is that La Familia, one of the Mexican drug outfits, is different from the rest, in that it is the acquiring the shape of a "4GW" entity. That's 4th Generation Warfare. He is a major contributor to Defense and the National Interest, and what he has to say is worthy of attention:

An article in the October 23 Washington Times points to what I think may be the next important evolution in Fourth Generation war. The piece concerns Mexico’s third-largest drug gang, La Familia. La Familia is best known for beheading people it does not like. But according to the article, its real claim to fame may be as a pioneer in seizing the mantle of legitimacy previously worn by the state.

Learning how

2009-11-11T20:15:00.000-08:00

CITY JOURNAL is a thoughtful magazine that covers issues of concern. Sol Stern has a worthy article, titled "E. D. Hirsch’s Curriculum for Democracy". So, who is E. D. Hirsch, and why should you care?

E. D. Hirsch is an American educator who is concerned about the decline in acadenic performance of most American students. Simply, he believes that a content-rich pedagogy makes better citizens and smarter kids.

This has what might be called the politically-correct pedagogical elite rather upset. But, testing scores seem to indicate that Hirsch is right, and they are wrong, If you have kids in school, this article is worth the read.

The “Massachusetts miracle,” in which Bay State students’ soaring test scores broke records, was the direct consequence of the state legislature’s passage of the 1993 Education Reform Act, which established knowledge-based standards for all grades and a rigorous testing system linked to the new standards. And those standards, Massachusetts reformers have acknowledged, are Hirsch’s legacy.

Though UVA’s admissions standards were as competitive as the Ivies’, the reading and writing skills of many incoming students were poor, sure to handicap them in their future academic work. In trying to figure out how to close this “literacy gap,” Hirsch conducted an experiment on reading comprehension, using two groups of college students. Members of the first group possessed broad background knowledge in subjects like history, geography, civics, the arts, and basic science; members of the second, often from disadvantaged homes, lacked such knowledge. The knowledgeable students, it turned out, could far more easily comprehend and analyze difficult college-level texts (both fiction and nonfiction) than their poorly informed brethren could. Hirsch had discovered “a way to measure the variations in reading skill attributable to variations in the relevant background knowledge of audiences.”

“Cultural literacy constitutes the only sure avenue of opportunity for disadvantaged children,” Hirsch writes, and “the only reliable way of combating the social determinism that now condemns them to remain in the same social and educational condition as their parents. That children from poor and illiterate homes tend to remain poor and illiterate is an unacceptable failure of our schools, one which has occurred not because our teachers are inept but chiefly because they are compelled to teach a fragmented curriculum based on faulty educational theories.”

Jalopnik would like to know . . . .

2009-11-10T13:24:00.000-08:00

JALOPNIK WOULD LIKE TO KNOW — and so would I — just what is that woman doing in the back seat of her $524,000 (US) Maybach Zeppelin? Sorry to be a fountain of ignorance, but I haven't the faintest idea. What do you think? Coke? Crank? Crack?

'Lympic loudspeakers and wars coming home

2009-11-10T09:48:00.000-08:00

This morning's bullshit (emphasis mine):

Vancouver police have a new crowd control device capable of emitting painfully loud blasts of sound, just in time for the 2010 Winter Olympics, CBC News has learned. The Long Range Acoustic Device (LRAD) can use sound as a weapon, emitting tones that cross the human threshold of pain and are potentially damaging to hearing. But it is also designed as a communications device that's clearly audible up to 1,000 metres away.
Const. Lindsay Houghton said the device was first tested this summer as a public address system during the Celebration of Light fireworks events in Vancouver.

Houghton said police don't plan to use the device for anything more than communication. "The primary function we're using the device for is its ability to communicate with very large groups with respect to crowd control, evacuations, tactical situations where we may need the loudspeaker portion of it," he said.
...

The device, labelled as non-lethal, was designed for the American military and was first used publicly in North America in September as police in Pittsburgh tried to control anti-G20 demonstrators. The device, which weighs about 40 kilograms, can be mounted on top of a vehicle. It is reported to be capable of emitting a blast of directional sound measuring an estimated 150 decibels at one metre away and an estimated 90 decibels at 300 metres.

Sound above the range of 120 to 140 decibels is considered painful and damaging to human hearing. The device has reportedly been used in ship defence systems to repel would-be pirates, by the U.S. military to drive away insurgents in Iraq and by Japanese whaling ships to drive away protesters. But police in Vancouver have no plans to use the sonic weapon feature of the device, said Houghton."We have no plans to look at that portion of the device. It was looked at solely for its effectiveness at delivering a message to a large number of people," said Houghton.

It should go without saying that if the cops had simply wanted a new public address system, they'd have bought one that wasn't weaponised. And the ethics behind testing an undeclared weaponised loudspeaker at a public event are questionable at the very minimum. My conspiratorial guess is the fireworks show gave the police an live crowd event where they could test the deployment and operation of the device in a relative safe "walk through" scenario where they could plausibly hide their intent. Described another way, unknown to the public, the police levelled a weapon against them, but kept the safety on. I don't know about you, but I certainly wouldn't have consented to being a police guinea pig.

SFU criminologist David MacAlister, whose research focuses on police powers and civil liberties, said the public should be concerned about the police bringing in new tactics just months before the 2010 Winter Olympic Games,

Protesters have threatened to hold large public demonstrations and possibly attempt to disrupt the Games.

"We want to be concerned whenever we're putting a new weapon in the hands of the police and they're basically telling us 'trust us, we're not going to use it,'" said MacAlister.

Yes, Dr. MacAllister, watch these people like hawks. Owelympic protestors and members of the public: be sure to wear ear defenders, gas masks and hockey pads when nearing five ring circus venues without tickets.

Quebec recently showed us the police infiltrating and attemping to provoke violence amid peaceful demonstrators before their boots gave them away (something they've probably done for a while, but they were caught with their pants down this time). We are to trust that police agents provacateurs will not be infiltrating Olympic protests so the police can then justify using force against them? Are we to trust the police won't try engineer an incident to justify flicking the safety off on their new boom box?

There's some big picture questions that come to mind over this. We're seeing Canadian police acquire a weapon designed for and used by the occupying military against hostile groups of civilians in wartime counterinsurgency operations. There is now a direct relationship between COIN in Iraq and Afghanistan and policing in Canada, the United States and other countries. Extending the relationship between overseas wars and domestic policing, one might also view the incredulous police resistance to inquiries stemming from the use of new weapons as representative of a de facto police view of the public and civilian institutions as the enemy and something to be controlled and resisted, least of all trusted.

This I think, is part of the larger trend of increasing weaponisation and 'tactical' focus (read militarisation) of domestic policing. Police are acquiring weapons for every occassion and type of incident, from firearms, to tasers, to pepper spray, and batons, to water cannon and CS gas for larger groups, and now new sonic devices to damage your hearing. It is not hard to see that the more specialised the weapons become, the more occassions they can be deployed, and the more reliant on weapons their users become. The end result of this techno-fetishism is a dehumanisation of the policing process and a focus entirely on the tactical control element of a given scenario and an utter ignorance of context. Violence more often becomes a question of relative degree versus one of actual necessity for resolving an issue, to the point now where police will incite the scenario that allows them to deploy violence for control. Are we moving to a situation where the only tools police understand and use involve the application of a weapon system?

More from Alison and Dr. Dawg.

Martian Landscapes

2009-11-09T18:07:00.000-08:00

THE BOSTON GLOBE has a picture section on their web site, and this week, it's about Martian landscapes. These are not the dreary rover pictures of rubble-strewn plains, but an exciting variety of views. The Boston.com has links to the respective science labs responsible.

Random Associations...

2009-11-09T16:41:00.000-08:00

This video (Sen. Mike Duffy calling Peter Stoffer MP, a "faker" prior to dashing off an RCMP mess dinner), and this post at Dawg's, caused me to imagine a near future headline reading "Mike Duffy appointed RCMP Commissioner".

I hope I haven't ruined anyone's dinner.

The Tea Party Party!

2009-11-09T12:39:00.000-08:00

"It’s time for real change," says Orlando lawyer Frederic O’Neal, the new Tea Party Party's chairman, promising to run candidates against Republicans and Democrats in state and national races. Yes, the Teabaggers are now an official "Tea Party" registered with the office of the Secretary of State.

Let the nationwide tea-bagging begin!

Grannies Flee to Canada . . . .

2009-11-09T11:33:00.000-08:00

As published today at The Borowitz Report:

Fox News Reports: Millions of Grannies Flee U.S. as Death Panels Loom

Glenn Beck: "Run For Your Lives"

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report) - With the establishment of government-mandated death panels just days away, grandmothers began fleeing the United States in record numbers today, reports Fox News.

"I am never one to yell ‘Fire' in a crowded theater," said Fox News host Glenn Beck. "But run for your lives!"

Across the country, slow-moving caravans of 1980s-era Cadillacs with turn signals blinking were making the torturous journey to the Canadian border, their back seats laden with cats, knitting projects, and bottles of Ensure.

Fox News may have set off the mass exodus by warning grannies that if they did not flee quickly enough they would face government-mandated organ harvesting.

Elsewhere, anti-healthcare protesters objected to the language of the House bill, saying there were too many polysyllabic words.

Be afraid.

Be very afraid . . . .

(Cross-posted from Moved to Vancouver)

Quarrelling Queens . . . .

2009-11-07T10:20:00.000-08:00

Today's Toronto Star has the in-depth account of beauty queens in England duking it out:

Beauty queen busted for bar brawl with rival
November 07, 2009 | Toronto Star

You might expect pageant queens to demonstrate their talent, beauty and poise, but Miss England has added fisticuffs to her resumé. Rachel Christie, 21, has relinquished her crown after being arrested on suspicion of punching Miss Manchester, 24-year-old Sara Beverly Jones, at a nightclub.

_______________

The dispute arose when the two beauty queens encountered each other at a bar on Monday.

The BBC reported Jones was allegedly punched in the face after an argument said to be about a TV personality from the Gladiators program, which airs in the U.K.

It is believed that Jones is an ex-girlfriend of TV gladiator Tornado, whose real name is David McIntosh.

Christie, McIntosh's current girlfriend, has been released on bail until January 2010.

Someone might want to throw that gladiator into the lion's den . . . .

(Cross-posted from Moved to Vancouver)

Staring at Goats Dep't.

2009-11-06T13:06:00.000-08:00

WIRED'S DANGER ROOM covers all sorts of stuff that is of interest to those of us concerned about security. David Hambling has a very interesting report titled "Inside the Army’s Far-Out Acid Tests" that almost defies belief, if you aren't already acquainted with programs like MK Ultra.

The CIA sure jumped in with both feet: apparently, they acquired some forty pounds of LSD — a couple of hundred million doses.

Who knows where the massive supply went? Certainly the CIA had something of an obsession with LSD, at one point believing it was an effective truth drug. In the infamous Operation Midnight Climax, unwitting clients at CIA brothels in New York and San Francisco were slipped LSD and then monitored through one-way mirrors to see how they reacted. They even killed an elephant with LSD. Colleagues were also considered fair game for secret testing, to the point where a memo was issued instructing that the punch bowls at office Christmas parties were not to be spiked.

Anyway, worth the read, with all sorts of entertaining links. Wiki's LSD entry has interesting background, too.

LSD (d-lysergic acid diethylamide), commonly called "acid," is the most powerful known hallucinogen - a drug that radically changes a person's mental state by distorting the perception of reality to the point where, at high doses, hallucinations occur. Even in very minute doses 0.05g LSD can significantly alter one's perceptions to the point of hallucination. Although it is derived from a fungus that grows on rye and other grains, LSD is semi-synthetic and has to be chemically manufactured in illicit laboratories.

Pure LSD is a white, odorless crystalline powder that dissolves in water. Because an effective dose of the pure drug is almost invisible, it is mixed with other substances, such as sugar, and packaged in capsules, tablets, or solutions, or spotted on to gelatin sheets or most commonly on pieces of blotting paper.

LSD is ingested orally. A microdot tablet or square of the perforated LSD paper is placed in the user's mouth, chewed or swallowed. Paper squares are most common because their small size makes them easy to conceal and ingest. Also, because LSD is not injected or smoked, paraphernalia are not required.

Formal Chemical Name (IUPAC)
(6aR,9R)-N,N-diethyl-7-methyl-4,6,6a,7,8,9-hexahydroindolo[4,3-fg]quinoline-9-carboxamide

The Fat Lady practices the Mikado

2009-11-05T09:40:00.000-08:00

THE TELEGRAPH IN THE UK has an article by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, titled "It is Japan we should be worrying about, not America", that is worthy of your consideration.

Japan is drifting helplessly towards a dramatic fiscal crisis. For 20 years the world's second-largest economy has been able to borrow cheaply from a captive bond market, feeding its addiction to Keynesian deficit spending – and allowing it to push public debt beyond the point of no return.
• • • • •
Simon Johnson, former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), told the US Congress last week that the debt path was out of control and raised "a real risk that Japan could end up in a major default".
• • • • •
The savings rate has crashed from 15pc in 1990 to near 2pc today, half America's rate. Japan's $1.5 trillion state pension fund (the world's biggest) has become a net seller of government bonds this year, as it must to meet pay-out obligations. The demographic crunch has hit. The workforce been contracting since 2005.

Like Count Floyd used to say, "Scary stuff, kids"