Panglossian Notes

From awhile back: Joe Stiglitz and Jim Chanos on the limits of markets

Something to really scare you? - from the CBC and Gwynne Dyer

"Global warming is moving much more quickly than scientists thought it would. Even if the biggest current and prospective emitters - the United States, China and India - were to slam on the brakes today, the earth would continue to heat up for decades. At best, we may be able to slow things down and deal with the consequences, without social and political breakdown. Gwynne Dyer examines several radical short- and medium-term measures now being considered - all of them controversial.

GWYNNE DYER'S 3 PART CBC IDEAS PROGRAM ON HIS BOOK CLIMATE WARS

Technorati Tags: Climate Change, Climate Disruption

So, what do you think? One is smiling and one is trying to hide.

Kinda funny, eh. But he's not my chief executive eh. My chief is bad enough but like George W. Bush most here know he is an ... . My question is why is Obama smiling, isn't he already close to being another failed President and doesn't he know it yet. Maybe he has something up his sleeve but golfing with a banker tells me he, Obama, is in the bag. Even his famed PR machine seems to be in denial why else would he be with a banker.

Gads Obama wake-up:

[Obama] ... with Nowhere to Run and Nowhere to Hide. Having fumbled on finance, Obama has to show the American people why we elected him, or be at risk of losing his job. He could have relied on the people that he inspired to elect him. Instead he was cautious and did business as usual in inside the Beltway. He took care of industry groups. Now it will be harder for him to inspire all of us.

Trust has diminished.  A crisis was wasted. It is sad that in a very short time we are a long, long way from hope we can believe in.

Squandered Honeymoon:
How botched bailouts hamper healthcare reform
Robert Johnson
August 27, 2009
new deal 2.0

As an aside, and following on the hilarious Afghanistan elections and the comedy known as THE MISSION over there, I think Mr Fish maybe says things about our conjoint NATO states better than any of my laboured words. What a waste on THE MISSION as a new school year begins here again.

Technorati Tags: Fool, Funny, Shnoring, Shnoring?

Should war criminals from past conflicts be pardoned?

It is a serious question, I think.

But, maybe a better question, rhetorical though it maybe, would be to ask:

Will Cheney, et al, the celebrators of "I was only following orders", begin a campaign to provide restitution to the war criminals the allies, in Europe, and the Americans, in the Pacific, executed or jailed after WWII whose defense in a variety of ways, was that famous phrase?

Come-on, the celebrators of torture and war crimes - that's Cheney et al - should also maybe be trying to have people like Eichmann restored as a national teutonic hero, shouldn't they? After all, it must have been a trial to labour under the constraints of such a banal governance structure as the Third Reich and then to get hung for it to boot.

As Dick says, and lets get real, eh:

“ ... people [were asked] to do some very difficult things”

“Nobody’s going to sign up for ... [these] kinds of missions.”

Good gads! Holding people - or should that be volks folks - accountable might be looking backwards and no self-respecting place ever does that type of nambee pambee thingy. [That should be a rhetorical question for the current POTUS]

Fair is fair, isn't it. And besides, if Cheney et al could orchestra the paying of restitution to the WWII wrongfully convicted, aka enhanced interrogators or their families, that would help overturn that awful de rigueur precedent the allies had set at Nuremberg. Remember the one that assumed civilized human beings were responsible, moral thinking, entities, and not just banal bureaucrats who carry out acts for the good of the fatherland homeland.

Technorati Tags: Sarcasm, Shmucks

So, what's to make of this summer?

Was it confusing, clarifying in some way of some key matter, or just normal?

I'd vote for a bit of all three.

I found the weather was confusing. We had only one, 5 or 7 day, stretch of humid weather in this part of North America. Generally a nice, cool, wet summer, to my taste but confusing and could be a sample of the climate disruption to come.  I understand it was a poor growing season and certainly noticed that in what was and is available at local markets.

It was clarified for me, over the summer, that we, in this part of the continent, are not like those in the middle, at least ideologically, and at least yet. We do have our periods of looking peaked but generally haven't had our collective mental functions impaired for long periods of time. What clarified this for me: We think that health care is a fundamental need, to which all our citizens should have access, regardless of how wealthy they maybe. We have thought like this since the late 50's, early 60's. Our neighbours to the South still seems to struggle with this civilizing concept.

The summer was normal because no one here got too upset, and generally ignored politics and politicians, even though we have a federal government in situ that appears to consider that some of our citizens, those with coloured skin or non-anglo-european names, can be treated like shit, when they are outside our borders.

My awful country - Canada

The terrain hasn't changed but the place I call my country seems to be changing under my feet. And this is happening under the Harper government.

I want an election or I want Parliament shut down until any opposition party thinks they can muster enough votes to throw out Harper and his gang of hiding ministers and  "nobodies" to copy PET. Their Canada isn't my Canada.

The funny thing is that I know some in the Harper government and they don't see nor understand what is happening. Of course they also didn't understand why anyone was upset last November and December when Flaherty tabled his budget update followed shortly after a parliamentary crisis by an 180 degree flip-flop 2009 budget.

"After all", one said to me, "it was only an update it was not the real thing".

My head still reels from that gem, so I'm not sure why now I'm becoming really distrubed that any conservative is actually sitting in Canada's House of Commons.

Well, for a small taste of what Canadian conservatives, or maybe they should be called Harperites, are check out the the first part of CBC's The Current:

Today's summer guest host was David Michael Lamb.

It's Wednesday, August 26th.

Canada's Foreign Affairs department has banned the use of the phrase "child soldiers."

Currently ... They will now be simply known as "teen terrorists."

This is The Current.

Child Soldier Language - Mendes

Some powerful words are disappearing from the hallways of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Among them are "international humanitarian law," and "child soldier" ... phrases that are especially relevant in the case of Omar Khadr -- the Canadian being held in Guantanamo Bay. And the words are disappearing at a time when the Federal Government is appealing a court ruling ordering it to press for Khadr's release.

The phrases have been barred from use by Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon. Minister Cannon wasn't available to speak to us this morning. But in an interview with Embassy Magazine, Minister Cannon said that the language changes -- quote -- don't change anything. When asked why the changes were going ahead, he said -- quote -- "in some circumstances, it's semantics. In other circumstances we're going to be changing policies so that they reflect what Canada's values are and what Canadians said when they supported us during the last election. -- End quote.

That kind of talk has Errol Mendes worried. He teaches Constitutional and International Law at the University of Ottawa. And he was in Ottawa.

Semantics - History
Now this isn't the first time that politicians have tried to change the language of politics. So for some historical perspective, we were joined by Desmond Morton. He's a historian, retired professor and the former Director of McGill University's Institute for the Study of Canada and he was in Georgeville, Quebec. 

And all of this talk of changing language got us thinking of George Orwell's classic novel, 1984. In it, the protagonist Winston befriends a man whose job it is to re-write language ... to pluck hundreds of words from the dictionary and destroy them.

I haven't always been a fan of Desmond Morton, if a historians can have fans, but I might become one after listening to him this morning.

Technorati Tags: Canada, CBC, Conservastive Party of Canada - awful, Elections

When do truly serious people openly start laughing at Obama?

Never, is likely the probable answer.

Though, today's hilarious grade school pantomime, with Ben Bernanke, in white pants, proudly showing his thick thighs and looking like an over sized antiques road show figurine, along side the not-a-care-in-the-world Obama, fresh from the links with bankers and other American worthies, who was anointing him as the chairperson of the federal reserve for a next term, could have been the start, in any serious country, with a sense of humour, eh.

Oh well. maybe something will surface down South to help everyone through these very very funny times.

Technorati Tags: BS and cheap trick, Celebrity, Cheap tricks, Classic, Confused, Hot Air

A new delicious tag - "disappointment"

I have 960, or so, separate delicious tags.

I don't know if this shows on my part befuddlement, lack of consistency, changing interests, or simple confusion as I read what's out there.

I just increased the number by 1.

My new tag is named "disappointment".

I expect to track under this banner various pieces I think I'd classify as displeasure caused by the nonfulfillment of one's hopes or expectations.

I could have chosen any of the following synonyms:

sadness, regret, dismay, sorrow; dispiritedness, despondency, distress, chagrin; disenchantment, disillusionment; displeasure, dissatisfaction, disgruntlement, but

I'll stick with disappointment for now.

Just a couple of pieces I've bookmarked with this new tag and the additional tags I used to be reasonably, in my mind, precise about my classification:

Obama and Politics - disappointment.

Netroots Nation And Afghanistan - disappointment; expected; hypocrisy.

How liberals learned to stop worrying and love the bomb - disappointment; expected; hypocrisy.

Netroots Nation frustration and the impediments to progressive change - disappointment; spin; bs; journalism; climate_change.

And of course my "what's_new_eh" tag is starting to get loaded down but that's another story.

Casting Call - what's_new_eh.

(via immediately above) Thoughts on the town hall disruptions - what's_new_eh.

Technorati Tags: Disappointment

The "dirty bums" crowd is at it again

So it seems no matter what or who are resident in our Prime Minister's Office (PMO) they just can't avoid naming the capital of Nunavut the place of dirty bums.

"A news release sent out Monday outlined Prime Minister Stephen Harper's itinerary as he began a five-day Arctic tour.

The release repeatedly spelled the capital of Nunavut as Iqualuit - rather than Iqaluit, which means "many fish" in the Inuktitut language.

The extra "u" makes a world of difference.

"It means people with unwiped bums," said Sandra Inutiq of the office of the Languages Commissioner of Nunavut.

PMO Iqaluit bumble draws smiles, frowns
By Terry Pedwell (CP)

The gaff was made twice under the Chretien government. Once by some junior person in his PMO and once by his Heritage Minister Sheila Copps.

For a time, jeez a long time, the Nunavut Department of Finance's Pitney Bowes postage machine stamped all out going mail as having come from Iqualuit.

It was only after some CBC reporter got a cheque in the mail from the department for some reason or other that the gaff was officially raised. Thought the director of the department at the time wondered that he was guessing how long it would take someone to notice the mistake but only under his breath unofficially, of course.

Is it just me

or is there something strange, to say the least, about statements that have been made by the Israeli leadership about the abominable murders this weekend in Tel Avi:

"I would like to take this opportunity to say to all of Israel's citizens: We are a democratic country, a country of tolerance, a law-abiding state, and we will honor every person regardless of his or her beliefs,"

Netanyahu

"... a murder which a civilized and enlightened nation cannot accept."

Shimon Peres

The rest of these amazing statements are here.

I guess we can take for granted that none of the Tel Avi dead are Palestinians of any age.

Yes, I know, I need to keep context in mind. I shouldn't think about Gaza, I know. But I can't help it. So I'm not sure whether to laugh at the pontifications or vomit.

Maybe to help me decided, the Fates had arranged today, from Peres's "civilized and enlightened nation" that Netanyahu's gem of a "law-abating state" evict Palestinians from their homes.

Those Fates, eh. They also piled on the hypocrisy of Israel, and some Israeli's, the congruent mealy-mouth diplomatic claptrap from the UN and foreign affairs offices in Western capitals to make matters worse.

Such tenacious words as : "deplorable", "incompatible", 'totally unacceptable" are being used to gallantly defend Palestinians and describe Israeli actions by the battle weary suits before they head to their lovely secure homes for tea or drinks.

It must be just me.

I think I will vomit instead of laughing this time as I rail at the Fates.

Technorati Tags: Amusing?, Israel, Shmucks