Iran Protests are Increasingly Revolutionary

I'm taking a break from a weekend full of articling applications (ugh) to note a new development in Iran. There seems to have been a sea-change in the protests there. They have gone from being about an election result to about bringing down the government. This is a good thing. Iran's system of theocracy is deeply corrupt and needs to change. A revolution is the only true way to do that.

Persiankiwi (http://twitter.com/persiankiwi) has some very interesting tips on how to disable the Iranian government, which indicate this trend.

I promise I will try to get to something on domestic politics, but that might be a few days off. Suffice to say, Iggy = Stephane II.

Developments in Iran

The situation in Iran seems to continue to degenerate. I am getting worried for the tweeter at Change_for_Iran since he last tweeted that he was going to the Mousavi rally and hasn't tweeted since. I hope he is alright. Another excellent twitter is persiankiwi. He has been reporting increasing violence by both state police and civilian militias. It sounds like the opposition is not backing down. New marches are planned for tomorrow. This is beginning to resemble a revolutionary moment. This may be the chance that Iran needs to throw off the shackles of their reactionary theocracy.

My hope now is for a relatively peaceful revolution, but that is looking increasingly unlikely, as the state appears to be using steadily increasing violence as it attempts to maintain control. This uprising is driven by new media, and increasingly resembles the lead up to the massacre in Iiananmen Square in 1989. That uprising was driven by cellphones and faxes. This one appears to be driven by Twitter, as students share information and knowledge. I haven't heard anything more about the members of Ansar-e Hezbollah captured at Tehran University.

I'm doing my best to keep abreast of the situation.

Later tonight I will try to put together something on today's developments in federal politics.

I'm Back

It's been far to long, but I'm back.

I stopped blogging for a while because of school and then got caught in the intertia. I've been dragged back in by the events in Iran.

I've been monitoring a twitter feed by a student in Tehran. It is something that could turn out to be to the stolen election what Riverbend's blog was to the occupation of Iraq. You can find it at twitter.com/change_for_iran

The latest tweets from him suggest that he is being attacked by pro-government militias:

bastards just attacked us for no reason, I lost count of how much tear gas they launched at us!

my friend saying more than 100 students arrested, I can't confirm this but the numbers are high

to other sources: this isn't the police! police is still outside! we're under attack by Ansar-Hezbolah

unfortunately the entrance door is completely destroyed and there is no way of barricading it

typing as fastest as I can in both English & Farsi, Still we need outside help, I really don't want to be captured by Ansar

For some unknown reason there is still power in here and DSL line is working. but there is no dial tone

Stop burning tires & trash cans! come to our aid it's getting worse than 18tir already!

We're trying to stop Masood from going outside! there is no way they will listen to us right now.

the other buildings are now chanting "Ey Iran" song

This sounds like an increasingly brutal crackdown in progress.

As I've said elsewhere, I could see Ahmedinejad winning, but not with a ridiculous margin like that claimed. To suggest that he got 63% of the vote is absurd and smacks of vote rigging.

I'm going to keep following this. In the coming days I'll also blog about my response to the Nova Scotia election.

Update: Iranian Student is now reporting that two paramilitaries from Ansar-e Hezbollah (the group leading the siege of Tehran University) have been captured by students. Not sure what this will mean, but it's a big event.

I Deeply and Sincerely Hate My Computer

Sorry in advance, but this is going to be a rant.

I hate my fucking computer. About five days ago, it started acting weirdly, refusing to access certain sites, sites that have nothing to do to each other, as different as www.tsn.ca and www.halifax.ca. Now at first, it seemed like Flash might be a common denominator. But no. I can open some pages that have Flash elements, like www.addictinggames.com. So then I think it might be a virus of some kind. Run a full system scan with McAfee (or try to, that software takes forever), give up on that, get new anti-virus software which is much faster, and there is no virus. So then I figure something deeper must have changed. So I use the Windows Vista (how I hate Vista) restore tool. I go back 48 hours before I started having problems. But no good. I just can't figure out what is going on.

Then I hit on the idea that it might be a problem with my internet connection, so I plug my laptop into the connection (same ethernet cable, same modem, same everything) and it works just fine. Fuck. That means something is wrong with my computer itself.

So then, I physically open up the tower, and reseat the network card, something I have never done before, but I pulled it off, giving the interior a good cleaning with the blow-function of the vacuum cleaner while I'm at it to get rid of the dust. Turn the computer back on, and still nothing happening. GAH!

At that point, I give up for a few days out of frustration. After all, only some websites aren't working, the Internet is still usable.

Today I come back to it, and get on the phone to my ISP to see if they have any idea what might be wrong. They run me through a batter of tests that solve nothing. Then they suggest that I can almost definitely fix the problem by reinstalling Windows Vista. Well doesn't that just sound like a fun proposition. But if it's what I have to do, it's what I have to do. Now, my computer didn't come with a rescue disk, but it did come with a restore utility that says it will reset everything to factory settings. Surely this should fix the problem.

So I go through the entire rigmarole of backing up my files on an external hard drive, and reinstalling Vista on my computer. All the while, I'm thinking great, when all this hassle will be done, everything will be fine. After about an hour, it's all done. I open up Internet Explorer (since reinstalling got rid of Firefox), and check one of the sites that wasn't working for me. Son of a bitch! It still doesn't work! All that work, all those programmes that have to be reinstalled, and it still doesn't fucking well work.

I am now utterly and completely at wits end. I'm approaching the point of giving up and dragging the demonic machine down to the store where I bought it and getting them to fix it. The problem with this is that whenever I take a computer with a problem to be fixed, they can never replicate the problem, so it doesn't get fixed (and reappears when I get it home) and they charge me anyhow. It's extremely annoying.

The urge to throw this machine off my balcony is steadily rising, but I am restraining myself because I can't afford to replace it.

If anyone reading this thinks they might know what is wrong, and what I can do to fix it, please leave a comment or e-mail me at ts-blog@live.ca.

Update on Feb. 26: I officially give up trying to understand computers. Over night, without me doing anything, the problem resolved itself. I don't understand, but I'm not going to question it. If only it had corrected itself before I reset my computer to factory.

Tell Me Again how the Occupation is Going Well

The New York Times is reporting that in 2008 civilian deaths in Afghanistan rose by forty percent. 40%!

This should put the lie to the bullshit spun by imperialists and colonialists who support the occupation of Afghanistan. When we look at these numbers, we also need to bear in mind that the occupying powers routinely deflate the number of civilian dead by citing many of those killed by the occupation powers as suspected enemy combatants. Killed a child? He was holding a grenade. Blew up a wedding? It was actually a terrorist cover. Shot up a car full of kids? They refused to stop when you screamed at them in English which they don't understand.

The occupation is a colossal scam job. It is a neo-colonialist adventure inscribed on the bodies of the Afghans, whether it is those killed by high altitude bombs, or those tortured into psychosis at Bagram Airbase or Guantanamo Bay. Installing a former Unocal executive a man with highly limited experience (his highest post in any government before 9/11 being deputy foreign minister) as President, and then keeping him in place through elections organized and run by occupying powers is a sham. You can't have free and fair elections under occupation.

But of course, the interest in free and fair elections is part of the myth. If they tried to sell the occupation as securing a pipeline route for oil from the Caspian Sea or as a device to hand over colossal amounts of money to private contractors running a private war, the public would have none of it. Only by running a campaign of lies has public consent for the occupation been mobilized.

Bring the occupation army home now. No more death, no more lies for capitalism.

Thanks to anonymous for the comment below, and I've edited this piece to incorporate that, as well as for a few little spelling errors.

Chavez Wins Venezuela Referendum

Just a quick note to say that Hugo Chavez has won the referendum in Venezuela. This is great news, and an excellent step toward making the revolution in Venezuela permanent. Now the people will be free to re-elect Chavez if they wish.

Congratulations, Venezuela.

The American Stimulus Package

Otto von Bismark said "laws are like sausages. It's better not to see them being made." That maxim definitely applies to the excruciating process of watching the American stimulus package wind its way through the Congress. If anyone still wonders why the Democrats need that 60 vote majority in the Senate that they came ever so close to, this was why.

The Republicans took a good run at destroying everything good in Obama's proposed package. They reduced the overall value by $80 billion. They stripped out the limits on pay for employees of companies receiving a government bailouts. They turned something like $100 billion of the spending proposals into tax cut proposals instead. They stripped out the heart of the "buy American" clause (more on this in a bit). And the Democrats capitulated. But I'll give them credit for at least proposing some decent measures.

The Republicans seem set to filibuster everything with which they disagree in the Senate. And the bad news - the Senate Repugs are far more ideological on average than the House Republicans. Essentially, everything comes down to the two Maine Senators, both Republican and both relative moderates. Right now, and until Al Franken gets seated as the Senator for Minnnesota, the Democrats need two votes to break a fillibuster. This means that the two Republicans must be appeased. Even once Franken is seated, and it really is a matter of when not if, they will still need one Republican.

One of the biggest losses was the meat of the "buy American" clauses. It cracked me up to hear the wailing and gnashing of teeth coming out of Europe particularly, but also the Canadian centre and right about this. I wanted to smack some of them upside the head. Seriously. The point of a stimulus package in the US isn't to send money to European and Canadian business who employ European and Canadian workers, it is to send money to American workers, put Americans to work and support demand for American products. The people wailing about it are stupid idiots. Now, I know that stupid =/= conservative necessarily, but conservative = stupid a surprising percentage of the time. Why, for gawd's sake, would the American government be sending borrowed money overseas to support foreign economies when the US economy going into the shitter is what caused the current recession, and the US economy getting out of the shitter is the only thing that will make it better? Honestly these people are morons. It shouldn't be a surprise really, that the same people who gave us $100 = daycare think that stimulus money should be flowing out of the country. Stupid, stupid, stupid. And now, just for a change, I won't hold back and I'll tell you how I really feel. Oh. Wait.

To go back to Bismark's bon mot at the beginning, watching laws get made really is like watching sausages gets made (I am making an assumption about the making of sausages, since I have never seen it done). Both will make you nauseated, and eliminate your desire to have anything to do with the end product.

One post I am planning to write in coming days is about the inquiry into the extra-judicial execution of Robert Dziekanski by the RCMP, and how it is exposing a major web of lies. One outrage at a time though.

Ignatieff Disgraces the Liberal Party, Harper Helps

I know it takes some doing, but Iggy has disgraced the Liberal Party of Canada once again. By voting in favour of the budget, he and his party voted in favour of the roll back of pay equity for women. The Liberals are now against equal pay for work of equal value. It's a sad day.

Pay equity is not some frill that can be cut in hard economic times. It is the absolute right of all women. The Harper-Ignatieff proposal cuts off women's access to the courts. Their alternative? The collective bargaining table. Bzzzt, sorry, try again. This proposal leaves behind all the women who work in non-union workplaces, a staggering 41% of all women who work outside the home.

Obviously, it would be nice if all women worked in unionized work places, but even if they did, denying access to the courts is not an acceptable approach to pay equity.

The Conservative-Liberal attack on pay equity also plays the ostrich when looking at the history of pay equity at the bargaining table. Federal civil servants negotiated pay equity almost twenty years ago, but since then have had to fight tooth and nail in the courts to force successive Liberal and Conservative governments to honour that pledge. Why would anyone be taken in and believe that now will be different. The corporate world is no more friendly to pay equity than our corporate government. They will fight as hard as can be to avoid pay equity obligations.

When pay equity is something to be gained at the negotiating table, it becomes something that can be negotiated away. That is an unacceptable possibility. Further, when pay equity is the subject of negotiation, it loses its rights-based aspect. It occurs to me that this is precisely what the Conservatives and their Liberal lackeys want. They want to move the discussion of equal pay for work of equal value away from a rights discourse. Because they don't seem to favour women's rights at all. Oh, the Liberals mouth the words when the camera is on, but their actions belie them. If they had any positive principles at all, they would have refused to vote for a budget containing the attack on pay equity, especially when they could have had it excised in exchange for their support.

The Liberals are lying, hypocritical assholes, at least their party brass is. We should be ashamed that our country has vacillated between dumb and dumber for better part of 150 years.

The Coalition is Dead

Ignatieff has, today, killed the chance to remove the Conservatives from power. He has killed the coalition by supporting the Conservative budget, and that means that the NDP will no longer enter coalition with the Liberals. With the coalition option off the table, then the only choice when Harper falls is an election, which the Liberals are unprepared to fight and have no money to fight it with. This means we are set for a re-run of Milquetoast Dion propping up the Conservatives while they run roughshod over Canadian values.

Iggy has failed the test of leadership, and has ended that moment of hope that there was in late 2008.

The Budget is a Bust

As I feared, there are major tax cuts in this budget. The Conservatives are cutting taxes by $1.9 billion this year, and $2 billion on a continuing basis by moving the tax brackets upward. I will admit, that these are not the worst tax cuts there could have been, there could have been corporate income tax cuts, or cuts for the top tax bracket. The cuts that are in this budget do help to fight bracket creep, and that is generally speaking a good thing. These cuts are not, however, targeted to help the poorest of the poor, and those earning the least, those for whom tax cuts flow directly back into the economy in the form of spending on staples like food and clothing.

Also bad, is $4 billion over two years in tax credits for home renovations. This is a stupid way of doing things. Firstly, the credit isn't tied to any environmental objective. Someone expanding their monster home to build a heated swimming pool would get this credit the same as someone who is renovating their home to put in solar panels, geothermal heat sinks and improved insulation. Secondly, this programme requires individuals to outlay, and then claim back on their tax returns. This is stupid and produces unnecessary paper shuffling. The better way is simply for the government to directly reimburse for costs of pro-environmental renovations.

A good thing is to see extended EI benefits, to fifty weeks. But very bad is that there is no expanded eligibility. Part of the problem with the EI programme now is that only a tiny percentage of people who pay into it will ever be able to collect. The government should have expanded eligibility rules to ensure that more laid-off workers have access to the plan.

The budget includes $4 billion over two years for new infrastructure projects. This is paltry compared to the demand that is out there, and the massive infrastructure debt that this country faces. Public transit projects alone could gobble up all of this money.

Where is the money for social housing? Where is the money for retraining programmes for laid-off workers?

The deficit for this year is expected to be $33.7 billion, for 2010-2011 $29.8 billion, for 2011-2012 $13 billion and for 2012-2013 $7.3 billion. That means that the government expects to lose $83.8 billion over the next four years. That undoes almost a decade of debt repayment that was bought with the suffering of Canadians from slashed healthcare transfers, cuts to education, the outright theft of the EI surplus and a myriad of other cuts.

This budget is a bust, and if the Liberals support it, as far as I am concerned the coalition is dead.

Update: On further review, this budget is even more garbage than I thought it was. It places a huge load on the provinces and the municipalities to provide matching funds for infrastructure projects, which is insane since cities can't run deficits. The feds can borrow at a much lower interest rate than provinces. Those jurisdictions that cannot come up with the matching funds will be unable to access the federal money. This budget is a sham. Further, it is based on the 2008 fiscal statement (you know, the one that produced the first major constitutional crisis in a decade), and therefore includes by reference the elimination of pay equity, the attack on workers' rights and the ending of public campaign financing.

With regard to EI, I should add that the lack of increased eligibility is a disgrace, since the government blatantly stole $50 billion from the EI surplus during the 1990s and 2000s to pay for corporate tax cuts.

For an excellent explanation of why this budget will not stimulate the economy, see The Progressive Economics Forum.

The Budget, and the Coalition's Last Chance

Tomorrow, Finance Minister and Flim-Flam-Artist-in-Chief Jim Flaherty will deliver the federal budget for the 2009-2010 fiscal year. Much of the budget has already been leaked, in defiance of long-standing trends of budget confidentiality. The Conservatives appear to be set to spend like drunken sailors on a variety of areas. The spending seems, for the most part, to be focussed on good things (though as the NDP has been pointing out all day, the Conservatives can't really be trusted to deliver on this stuff, since they keep re-announcing the same money over and over). Concerningly, however, is that it has been indicated that the budget will contain broad-based tax cuts.

As I wrote a while ago, tax cuts are not stimulus, no matter how much the government would like us to believe the Chicago School, neo-liberal orthodoxy that if you free the market, greater prosperity will follow. That has been proven time and again, from the Southern Cone of Latin America to the post-Communist economies of the former Soviet Block, to the former Asian Tigers. Neo-liberal orthodoxy produces fantastic riches for an elite few, but produces planned misery for the vast bulk of the population. Neo-liberalism produces a massive wealth transfer from the poor to the rich, and produces the most astonishingly unequal societies on the face of the earth.

If this budget includes broad-based tax cuts, those will not be stimulus, those will drag the federal curent accounts budget into a structural deficit. Reducing revenue is the most astonishingly inappropriate thing for the government to do when major fiscal stimulus is needed.

The Liberals have this one opportunity to prove that they have grown a spine. If they vote for this budget, and for the con artists who have put it together, they will have proven themselves cowards, shrinking in the face of Conservative lies and bullying. However if they vote against, they will have proven a willingness to find an alternative within our constitutional structures, and without forcing the expense of another election on the people of Canada. Of course, all of that depends on the Governor General not disgracing herself again when Harper asks her for dissolution and a new election.

If the Liberals knuckle under, that will be it for the coalition. There is no point in any kind of cooperation with a Liberal Party that is staggering drunkenly to the right under Michael Ignatieff who is quickly proving once again that the Liberals will say anything and stand for nothing.

Tomorrow will be interesting.

Obama Going in the Right Direction

I must say, I've been pleasantly surprised by President Obama's first days in office. He has issued an executive order to close down the torture camp at Guantanamo Bay within a year (good, but not perfect - it should close now), he has frozen all of Bush's "midnight regulations" ordered between Nov. 4 and Jan. 20. which would have done enormous damage, and today the FDA cleared the way for the first study on embryonic human stem cell therapy, and more importantly Obama lifted the global gag rule that stops US government funding from going to groups that discuss abortion abroad.

Ending the global gag rule is particularly important, because it denied so many women around the world access to the full array of family planning options. According to International Planned Parenthood, they've lost more than $100 million because of this rule.

This is a very encouraging sign that Obama will take a stand to protect the rights of women from the encroachments of conservatives, and I applaud him for that. Well done!

Na Na Na Na, Na Na Na Na, Hey Hey Hey, Goodbye

This is going to be my last post before George W. Bush leaves office, and with it I will retire my personal countdown that I've been running at the end of each post since before I was blogging at Blogger.

George W. Bush has been the most disastrous President in American history, leading an unprecedented assault on the American Constitution, on regulation of the economy, and on progressive taxation. He has ripped to shreds whatever remnants of credibility the United States had on the world stage, and has turned the entire Muslim world vehemently against citizens of Western nations. He has turned a projected 10 year surplus of $5.6 trillion into a projected 10 year deficit of $10 trillion, a $15.6 trillion swing in eight years. His reckless lack of regulation has killed Americans through tainted food (and through regulatory harmonization efforts has dragged down similar standards in Canada and Mexico), led to a collapse of capitalism parallelled only by the Great Depression, and privatized enormous swathes of formerly public services.

George W. Bush also invaded and occupied two countries, supported brutal dictators in a dozen others and dramatically worsened the AIDS crisis through mandating abstinence only education to get access to US money.

While Obama will not fix all of these problems, he seems to intend to take a swing at most of them. And that will be a refreshing change.

Goodbye, Mr. Bush. It's been depressing.

The Last Day

I'm taking a moment to revel in the fact that this is the last full day of George Bush's presidency. The sunset I just watched was the last one of his presidency. Never again will the sun set on a world where George Bush is President. The worst president in American history is just about done.

Good bye George, and don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.

'Cause Obama doesn't want ass-prints on his new door.

Days Remaining in Bush Presidency: 1

Montreal to Ban Masks at Protests

Of all the foolish stupidness in the world, this may not rate that high, but it is pretty damn foolish and stupid. The Montreal Gazette is reporting that the City of Montreal plans to ban the wearing of masks or face coverings at public demonstrations (as a side note, why this is in the "Business" section of the Gazette is beyond me).

This bylaw is quite possibly unconstitutional on two grounds. First, and more questionably, this bylaw is potentially in violation of the constitutional division of powers. This law bans a behaviour and attaches a penalty, with no connection to any provincial head of power that I can think of under the Constitution. This risks a finding that the law is, in pith and substance, criminal law and therefore ultra vires the province (and therefore the city, which derives all of its powers from the province). This is more shaky, because a good constitutional lawyer can make arguments for connection to a provincial head of power surprisingly easily. Second, this bylaw clearly runs afoul of the guarantee of freedom of expression in s. 2 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Many people wear masks to protests to parody a politician or world figure with whom they disagree. That is clearly conveying meaning, and therefore it fits within the rubric of s. 2. There may also be an issue of denial of liberty without the principles of fundamental justice since a law like this is dramatically over-broad, and would catch far more people the occasional yahoo that starts trouble a rally. The real question is whether it would survive the s. 1 test of being demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.

I don't see any real or pressing need for this ban. Sure, at some protests a few masked idiots decide to start violence, but many people who wear masks or face coverings do so only to convey a political meaning, without any sinister intent. This is a massive and unnecessary intrusion into the civil liberties of protesters in Montreal.

A tightly focused law is the only way this would be acceptable, and to write such a law would be almost impossible. Any such law gives enormous discretion in enforcement to police officers. Frankly given the behaviour of police officers in Quebec, most damningly the agents provocateur placed by the Surete du Quebec at the Security and Prosperity Partnership summit in Montebello a while ago, I don't see any reason to trust Quebec police with such discretion.

A law like this is also unnecessary. If the masked individuals are causing property damage or assaulting people, then arrest them and charge them with that. Arrest for wearing a mask is simply a form of guilt by association and preventative arrest. Our legal mechanisms have always been sufficient to deal with idiot anarcho-vandalists in the past, and they remain so now. This law is offensive, excessive and redundant, serving only to provide prosecutors with a means of loading the bill against defendants. The City of Montreal should see sense, and drop this law.

Days Remaining in Bush Presidency: 1 (oh dear gawd, I can't wait for it to be over)

Israel Declares Unilateral Ceasefire (Sort Of)

Today the Israelis finally called a halt to their offensive against the Palestinians in Gaza. The Israelis have said that they are ending offensive operations so long as their soldiers in Gaza don't come under attack. On the face of it, that sounds reasonable. But you have to dig a bit deeper to find the major problem with what is going on here.

Functionally, the Israelis have re-occupied Gaza. Their troops have taken up positions across the strip, and it has been declared that they are not leaving any time soon. The Israelis have regressed the situation to what it was prior to the evacuation of Gaza by Ariel Sharon, and that is not an acceptable state of affairs.

Hamas has vowed to keep fighting until Israeli soldiers leave, and the siege of the Gaza strip is lifted. They are entirely within their rights to resist an illegal occupation.

Israel has essentially made a play for the moral high ground through this action. Unfortunately, the brutality of the Israeli state has foreclosed on any such possibility. By killing 1200+ Palestinians in three weeks, the Israelis have forfeited any claim to moral superiority, especially when many of those killed, if not most were non-combatants/civilians and children. Neither side is morally perfect in this war, but at least the Palestinians are fighting for national liberation (the vast majority are not fighting to drive the Israelis into the sea). The Israelis are fighting for the right to subjugate millions of people for territorial aggrandizement and settlement lands, as well as for domestic political consumption for the coming elections. One is a rather more ethical struggle than the other.

We shall see if Israel successfully maintains this sham end to the war. Hamas may not let them.

Days Remaining in Bush Presidency: 2

[Update] Well, it looks like I spoke a little precipitously. Hamas has now declared a week long ceasefire and says that Israel should use the time to withdraw its soldiers and lift the siege.

We Get it CBC, There's a Deficit Coming

I don't know about anyone else, but I'm getting really tired of CBC's constant stories about how the upcoming budget is going to run a deficit. My reaction is generally something along the lines of "no shit, Sherlock." Everyone and her dog knew that a deficit was coming, except for the Conservatives well before the failed fiscal update that triggered a constitutional crisis. CBC seems determined to try to scare people with horrible economy stories. It's very reminiscent of Fox News and it's fear factory approach to reporting.

My message to CBC: give it a rest. We know the economy is bad, and we know a deficit is coming. You need to stop telling us to be afraid, to be very afraid, and start treating the Canadian public like a group of rational adults (no matter that we may not behave like it sometimes).

On a positive note, the window for George Bush to pre-emptively pardon his torture-cronies is closing quickly. He's only got eighty-two hours left as Preident.

Days Remaining in Bush Presidency: 3

A Momentous Time

As we approach the end of the reign of George Bush II, it becomes evident, to all but the most-close-eyed conservatives the hell to which we've been carried in Bush's hand-basket.

Human disasters are unfolding across the world. In Afghanistan and Iraq, the imperial west is brutally occupying, whether to extract oil or to protect pipeline routes. In Gaza the Palestinians are being slaughtered for political gain, in an appallingly crass, hubristic and hypocritical display. The genocide in Darfur continues to unfold, and American ally states from Lebanon to Pakistan to Georgia have been declaring states of emergency and clamping down on democratic opposition.

The great glory of modern capitalism, our globalized economy, is coming apart at the seams as economies across the world melt down, throwing workers out on the street, and bringing new protestations of Keynesian faith, despite the fact that the supposedly socialistic policy of bailouts simply enriches those already bloated with ill-gotten wealth. Bush and his wild-eyed acolytes of laissez-faire and the unfettered free market have proven to be unspeakable failures at managing the economy, as the ideological bankruptcy of their economic ideologies is proven to be matched only by its moral bankruptcy as in engages in one last orgy of upward redistribution of wealth. Executives get golden parachutes and workers get the soup kitchen line.

As laid out by the late, great, and incomparable Molly Ivins and Lou Dubose in their book Bill of Wrongs, the Bush regime has encouraged an all out assault on the principles of constitutional government in the United States, and this has had knock-on effects across the world. Canada puts in place Gitmo North and imprisons four men for eight years without charge, the opportunity to face their accusers or to know the evidence against them. Great Britain collapses into an agonized security state in which the average citizen of London is recorded on camera three hundred times every day, which would make Big Brother jealous. States in eastern Europe hold and torture men who have been kidnapped by the American government, in a practice called, with a chilling sterility, extraordinary rendition. American puppet regimes in the Middle East torture others, including Maher Arar who was confirmed to have committed no crime.

Bush and his flunkies have radically undermined the emergence of an international legal order, attempting to scuttle the International Criminal Court after securing major concessions. They have sabotaged attempts to save our climate from radical and disastrous change by recanting America's signature on the Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. They have undermined the Geneva Conventions on the Law of War by creating the status of illegal enemy combatant that has no basis in law and is simply an excuse to hold the racialized other forever in a legal black hole.

This is but a brief and incomplete catalogue of the worst excesses, and high crimes, of George Bush, called Dubya. But not all is dark.

In the election on Nov. 4, 2008 Americans spoke resoundingly of a desire for change. While they likely will get only cosmetic change out of Barack Obama, Americans were mobilized and involved in politics in a way not seen since the election of John Fitzgerald Kennedy. Americans have been jolted out of political apathy, and it is to be hoped that their awakening will be transmitted to the slumbering populations of the rest of the industrialized world.

In Latin America a radical transformation of both economics and politics is gaining steam. A truly democratic and socialist movement has arisen, and is demanding justice and equality for their people, and an end to the domination of their states by their wealthy paleo-colonialist elites and foreign corporations. The people of Venezuela resisted an American-sponsored coup in 2002 that was eerily reminiscent of the coups in the southern cone during the 1970s. The workers and the indigenous populations have reclaimed control of their countries in Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador. Centre-leftists have been elected by wide margins in Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Uruguay and Paraguay. South America faces a revolutionary moment, and it provides a template that can be followed across the South.

As the economy melts down, that defining revolutionary moment spreads into the industrialized economies. It is a self-evident failure of capitalism. Socialists must be ready with alternatives to present, or we will lose this moment, as we lost the moment of the Great Depression.

The last days of George W. Bush are a time for celebration, as the global tyrant leaves the scene. But we can't stop at celebration. We must push for a true revolutionary moment, to bring democratic socialism to all the people of the world.

Days Remaining in Bush Presidency: 6

Israeli War Crimes Confirmed in Gaza

Wide confirmation (see e.g. here) is beginning to come in that Israel has used, and is continuing to use white phosphorous (WP) against the civilian population of Gaza. Human Rights Watch observers in southern Israel (they are barred by Israeli forces from entering Gaza), saw shells fired over a Gazan refugee camp that left trails characteristic of WP shells, and exploded in a manner consistent with WP, which produces unique looking explosions.

WP is a weapon banned from use in civilian areas by the 1980 Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons, Protocol III. Wikipedia lists the following as effects on humans of exposure to WP:

Effects of Exposure to WP Weapons

Incandescent particles of WP cast off by a WP weapon's initial explosion can produce extensive, deep (second and third degree) burns. Phosphorus burns carry a greater risk of mortality than other forms of burns due to the absorption of phosphorus into the body through the burned area, resulting in liver, heart and kidney damage, and in some cases multi-organ failure. These weapons are particularly dangerous to exposed people because white phosphorus continues to burn unless deprived of oxygen or until completely consumed. In some cases burns are limited to exposed areas of skin because the smaller WP particles do not burn completely through personal clothing before being consumed...

Exposure and Inhalation of Smoke

Burning WP produces a hot, dense white smoke. Most forms of smoke are not hazardous in the kinds of concentrations produced by a battlefield smoke shell. Exposure to heavy smoke concentrations of any kind for an extended period (particularly if near the source of emission) does have the potential to cause illness and even death.

WP smoke irritates the eyes and nose in moderate concentrations. With intense exposures, a very explosive cough may occur. However, no recorded casualties from the effects of WP smoke alone have occurred in combat operations, and to date there are no confirmed deaths resulting from exposure to phosphorus smoke...

As you can see, this is a worse weapon than napalm in terms of damage to the human body. Once you are hit with it, you can't get it off. It literally burns its way into the skin. The fact that it reacts with oxygen means that it cannot be put out with water, and trying to do so only makes the problem worse.

WP was used against the people of Fallujah by American occupation forces in Iraq during the 2004 massacre. That is one of the best documented uses of WP against a densely concentrated area of civilians. The USA violated the laws of war in Fallujah, and Israel is doing so now, using WP in a banned capacity. This is at least as terrorist as anything Hamas has done, including suicide bombings. This is a weapon used without fear of consequences designed to kill civilians and terrorize them into behaving in the desired manner. This is terrorism.

Israel claims to want peace, but with every action it takes, it undermines the chance for that peace, driving home the message to the Palestinians that they are not to be allowed to live in peace themselves. Israel's version of peace requires that the Palestinians be subjucated, racialized and imprisoned in an enormous open-air concentration camp called Gaza, in which they will be left to starve in the dark. If Israel is unwilling to live in true peace, how can it expects the colonized and brutalized people of the occupied territories to be willing to do the same?

There can be no peace without justice. Justice for Palestine!

Days Remaining in Bush Presidency: 8

[Update] White phosphorus shelling has been confirmed in the Israeli destruction of a United Nations compound in Gaza.

Israel, Gaza, Hamas and a Look at Causes

I think it's time I wrote something a bit more fleshed out about the situation of the Palestinians in Gaza. At the beginning, I should make my view of the entire Israeli-Palestinian history clear. I view it as an essentially colonialist enterprise after the point at which Zionist philosophy enters the picture. I don't pretend to a balanced point of view, or to neutrality. I am anti-imperialist and anti-colonialist, and this means that I am pro-Palestinian. I should also state that I think Israel is here to stay, and the people of Israel should have a state within their pre-1967 borders. There won't be any functional reversal of the expulsion of Palestinians in 1948, and Israel isn't going anywhere. I don't go to the extremes of some who believe that there is an organized campaign of ethnic cleansing against the Palestinians, but I do believe that Israel's policies toward the Palestinians are not functionally different than those of the white government of Apartheid South Africa. I also don't believe that all Israeli citizens, or all of Israel's Jewish population, support the actions of their government with regard to the Palestinians. There is a peace movement within Israel with both Jewish and Arab members, and I wish them the very best with their work.

To find the beginning of the current fighting in Gaza is an exercise in nearly infinite chicken-and-egg reasoning. Causes and effects can be traced back before the founding of Israel, and I don't have the time or the inclination to go into that. To find the immediate cause, I look to the ceasefire deal negotiated indirectly about seven months ago between Israel and Hamas, the legally elected governing party of the Palestinians. In this deal, there were a couple of essential points for each side. Essentially, Israel wanted an end to rockets into the south of Israel. Essentially Hamas wanted an end to bombings/missile strikes, and the opening of the borders of the Gaza Strip. Neither side seemed to have been making unrealistic demands.

Beginning in early November of 2008, Israel killed eleven Hamas personnel (militants or security personnel depending on who you ask) over eleven days, leading Hamas to fire rockets into Israel once again. This is an undisputed fact, as reported by the International Herald Tribune. The Israeli response to these rockets was to tighten the economic blockade of Gaza, which had never really been lifted, despite the deal, essentially placing Gaza under siege and cutting supplies of food and fuel. These events set off a spiral of violence that, over about two months, developed into the brutalization now taking place in Gaza.

In the light of those facts, it is clear that the cease-fire was never properly implemented, as Israel did not fulfil it's side of the bargain. This means that it is Israeli bad-faith negotiation that is the intermediate cause of the current violence, and Israeli breaches of other terms of the cease fire that is the immediate cause. Increased rocketing by Hamas was certainly unhelpful, and likely provoked a more extreme Israeli response, but it is clear that Israel expected complete compliance with the terms of the cease fire deal from Hamas without delivering the same itself.

That is an unfortunate pattern in Israeli dealings with the Palestinians, that has been repeated time and again. As an example, the Oslo Accords agreed to a right of passage between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, but this was repeatedly infringed upon by Israel. The history of bad faith negotiation on the part of the Israelis makes it hard to believe that they will keep any new agreement that is reached to end this current attack on Gaza.

Israel's approach to Gaza in particular has been highly unethical and immoral. Beyond the bad faith negotiations, Israel has inflicted collective punishment on the people of Gaza both in the form of the blockade and in the form of bombing civilians. It has violated principles of international law protecting civilians. A civilian population does not lose its protected status at international law because an army's enemies are hiding amongst them, despite the claims of Israel, and of every other modern occupier from the United States in Iraq, Canada in Afghanistan, Russia in Chechnya and so forth. This is exemplified by the bombing yesterday of a United Nations school that was clearly marked as such, killing at least 39 people. Israel claimed that mortar shells were fired from that location, as if that excused knowingly killing civilians.

As Devin Johnston says, the only way to peace is for one side to let bumps in the road to peace pass, and not use them as an excuse for renewing or escalating the cycle of violence. As I see it, it must be Israel that does this. Israel is the occupier, and it faces no existential threat from the Palestinians. Israel has the capacity to destroy all society in the occupied territories. The Palestinians have no such capacity with regard to Israel. Despite the number of rockets fired into Israel in December (approximately 3,000) only five Israelis were killed. Contrast that with the first week of the Israeli bombing of Gaza in which 400+ people died, and that fact comes into focus. However, this is only one necessary condition. Israel must tear down the Apartheid walls it has built, and withdraw settlements from the West Bank. Israel is going to have to return East Jerusalem. Without these things, it is difficult to see how the Palestinians can consent to an agreement.

As an aside before I wrap up, Israel demands as a precondition of peace that Hamas recognize the right of Israel to exist. No state has the right to exist at international law. Israel is demanding something that no other state has, or can have at international law. What Israel can legitimately demand is that Hamas recognize the right of the people of Israel to live in peace - but Israel must recognize the same for the people of Palestine.

Ultimately, you cannot fight for peace. Peace must come through dialogue, and negotiation. Peace will not come from the barrel of a tank cannon or the explosion of a Quassam rocket. Peace will come when both sides are willing to make concessions, and to realize that each will have to give up some of what it wants in order to have peace. I believe it is possible and necessary. As John Lennon put it:

Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace...

You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will be as one

Days Remaining in Bush Presidency: 12

EI and Stimulus

On Wednesday, the Liberals decided to announce that they want the Harper government to improve EI as part of the budget in order to obtain their support. That's all well and good, but coming from the Liberals, it seems like a rather last minute trip along the road to Damascus. Liberals are the same party that effectively gutted EI in the 1990s to finance their deficit reduction. They stole billions from Canadian workers, and used it to pay down the debt and deficit. I'm glad they've finally seen the light, but it seems rather late.

Improving EI is an excellent way to stimulate the economy, because it keeps families who have lost jobs able to buy their essentials, and pay their bills, which flows money back into the economy. It's also the right thing to do, because these workers have been paying EI premiums for years, and deserve the security it brings, so that losing one's job does not mean an instantaneous disaster. Workers have given their sweat, tears and (far too often) their blood, for this county. It's time for the country to give back to them.

In their Alterative Budget, the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives called for the injection of $3.4 billion into the EI programme, to increase benefits to 60% of insurable income, and coverage to fifty weeks. EI is the very definition of counter-cyclical spending, since it spends money when the economy is bad, and saves money when the economy is doing well (at least it saves when the feds don't steal its surplus).

Canadian workers deserve the support of their government, and enriching EI is a good way to give that support. If the Liberals want to get on the pro-worker train, the more the merrier. But they're going to have to prove that they have earned their seats.

Days Remaining in Bush Presidency: 12

Tax Cuts Aren't Stimulus

The Finance Minister is an idiot. I'm going to put that out there now. He's also a liar and a crook, but that's a different story. This one is about how Jim Flaherty thinks that tax cuts are a form of counter-cyclical stimulus. He is talking about including tax cuts in the federal budget due at the end of January.

I'm sorry, this is a moronic move. The kind of tax cuts that Conservatives like are narrowly focused on the capitalist class, and emphasize trickle-down voodoo economics. Supply-side tax cuts are unequivocally not what we need in this economic climate. I don't think we generally ever need them, but that is, again, something for another entry, but we especially don't need them when our economy is staring massive over-production in the face. Providing tax cuts intended to increase capital investment is an inappropriate move in the current economic environment. If the Conservatives are bound and determined to have tax cuts in the budget, then cut marginal taxes for the lowest tax bracket, and maybe raise the basic personal exemption. This is the kind of tax measure that might be helpful. Those who would benefit from the measure are the people who live from paycheque to paycheque, and spend every cent they get. This money goes right back into the economy, and stimulates demand, easing the crisis of overproduction, without sacrificing jobs.

But I don't think tax cuts are the way to go right now. Tax cuts aren't a good method of counter-cyclical stimulation of the economy. Counter-cyclical stimulation, in the typical Keynesian mode, requires that the stimulation be capable of easing off when the economy no longer requires stimulation. Tax cuts cause a major problem in this regard, because in the current political climate it is very difficult to raise taxes, when the economy no longer needs the stimulation. We have seen a practical example of this in Canada. In the last election, Stephane Dion mused about the possibility of raising the GST back to 7%, and the howling across the country was deafening.

The best way to stimulate the economy is infrastructure spending. Infrastructure spending has five aspects that make it good for counter-cyclical stimulation:

1. It is capable of getting to work quickly, since most cities and counties have some kind of infrastructure project just waiting for funding to go into effect. An example is the Transit City proposal in the City of Toronto, envisioning many more streetcar lines to greatly increase the available transportation in the city.
2. It puts people to work, both in the immediate construction industry and in the feed-in system, creating a ripple effect across the economy. By putting people to work, more money is earned, and that helps to ease the overproduction crisis.
3. It stimulates demand for products manufactured in Canada, helping to keep well-paid manufacturing jobs in Canada.
4. Building infrastructure leaves something that will be useful for decades. A new subway line can be used for a hundred years or more (see London and New York), a new streetcar line for decades. Building infrastructure is a part of long-term economic planning.
   
5. It can be easily eased off when the economy recovers.

Obviously, infrastructure spending can't be the whole deal, but it is a far better way than idiotic Conservative tax cuts that will be secreted in bank accounts, and not put to work on products made in Canada. We need real stimulus in this budget.

Days Remaining in Bush Presidency: 14

Back to Blogging

Hi everyone. This is just a quick note to apologize for the long absence from the blog. When I was home over the holidays I didn't blog due to a combination of only sporadic Internet access and not having the inclination. But I'll be getting back to it now.

I also want to take a moment to unequivocally condemn the bombardment and now invasion of the Gaza Strip by Israel. Israel is exacting vastly disproportionate revenge through collective punishment. It claims that this most recent brutalization of the Palestinians is a necessary response to the rockets launched from Gaza over the last eight years, some thousands of them. Sure, when you give the number of rockets, it sounds bad, but then think about the number of deaths. From eight years from 2000 to 2008, rockets fired from Gaza killed 21 Israelis. In the eight days this offensive has lasted, more than 440 Palestinians have been killed. In the month of December, rockets killed four Israelis. This means that in December, Israel killed 110 Palestinians (including at least 100 people with no connection to Hamas) for every Israeli killed. How that is defensible to anyone is beyond my understanding. Israel is engaging in an Orwellian effort to brutalize the people of Palestine into turning against Hamas. They tried that in Lebanon in 2006 vis-a-vis Hezbollah. Anyone want to remind me how that turned out? If Israel wants peace, they must also create the conditions for Palestinians to live in peace, and this includes withdrawing from occupied territories, tearing down the apartheid wall and lifting the seige of Gaza.

Days Remaining in Bush Presidency: 16