From today's Globe & Mail:
"The World Health Organization estimates a third of the world's population is infected with TB."
Wednesday, May 30, 2007
Wednesday, May 23, 2007
Bring 'em Home, Jimbo!
Waterloo's resident billionaire Jim Balsillie has purchased an NHL team - the unfortunately named Predators - from Nashville. It is all we were hoping for and more - not some venerable old team like the Penguins, but an upstart outfit from a town that couldn't care less about hockey.
We have done absolutely none of the heavy lifting, but we're rooting for having our team moved back to Waterloo where it belongs... pronto. We even have some names in mind - howsabout "The Grand"? "The Loons"? "The Great Blue"? The enigmatic "Bento Box"? Or what about "The Diaspora" (check out the Predator roster; over half the team's Canadian).
In a great stroke of luck, it even looks like the Predator team colors are gold and black... just like, Eureka!, the University of Waterloo. (Our motto: "They say "why?" We say "whatever".)
Note: My previous plan to build the stadium on the site of a ski resort or the current Waterloo dump has turned out to be unfeasible. Ideas, anyone?
###
We have done absolutely none of the heavy lifting, but we're rooting for having our team moved back to Waterloo where it belongs... pronto. We even have some names in mind - howsabout "The Grand"? "The Loons"? "The Great Blue"? The enigmatic "Bento Box"? Or what about "The Diaspora" (check out the Predator roster; over half the team's Canadian).
In a great stroke of luck, it even looks like the Predator team colors are gold and black... just like, Eureka!, the University of Waterloo. (Our motto: "They say "why?" We say "whatever".)
Note: My previous plan to build the stadium on the site of a ski resort or the current Waterloo dump has turned out to be unfeasible. Ideas, anyone?
Monday, May 21, 2007
Academic Journals Do Not Understand the Concept of Free Information
Recently I've been doing some research on passenger pigeons. My ancestors lived in northern Mississippi, one of the places where passenger pigeons were so populace until the 1880s that the sky would be dark for two days during their migration and tree branches would snap under their weight when they roosted. The ancestral "Big House", as we call it, was on Pigeon Roost Road.
Most people and organizations seem to get the spirit of the web - that information should be universally and freely available. The Mormons supply a treasure trove of genealogical information free on their web site. A variety of sites have made millions of out-of-copyright books available. Most newspaper material is freely available. Even magazines that have subscriptions often post articles after a couple of months have gone by. Individuals devote great amounts of time and effort updating free resources such as wikipedia. We freely offer up information in our web sites, blogs, comments, and reviews.
The sad realization whenever I research the web is that a major category that should be free isn't: academic articles.
Academic journals are not only frequently not free - they're beyond the price that most individuals would pay. They frequently charge $20 or $30 to read a single article, or hundreds of dollars a year to subscribe.
Think about it a minute. The academics who wrote the articles were not paid. Other academics donated time to peer review the article. In most cases the editor of the journal is an unpaid position. And that's not even considering the government grants these journals get. So how do they get off charging so much and effectively prohibiting access to all but a few?
No doubt they have their reasons - the cost of the print edition, for example. (I honestly can't think of another one.) They have all sorts of options beyond prohibitive per-article fees. They could host ads. They could charge for extra features like an index or newer articles. They could make articles free after a year.
The real problem is that they just don't get it - ideas and information should be freely available to everyone. It's not just an ideology; it's an ideology backed up by a business model. They lose on all fronts.
Most people and organizations seem to get the spirit of the web - that information should be universally and freely available. The Mormons supply a treasure trove of genealogical information free on their web site. A variety of sites have made millions of out-of-copyright books available. Most newspaper material is freely available. Even magazines that have subscriptions often post articles after a couple of months have gone by. Individuals devote great amounts of time and effort updating free resources such as wikipedia. We freely offer up information in our web sites, blogs, comments, and reviews.
The sad realization whenever I research the web is that a major category that should be free isn't: academic articles.
Academic journals are not only frequently not free - they're beyond the price that most individuals would pay. They frequently charge $20 or $30 to read a single article, or hundreds of dollars a year to subscribe.
Think about it a minute. The academics who wrote the articles were not paid. Other academics donated time to peer review the article. In most cases the editor of the journal is an unpaid position. And that's not even considering the government grants these journals get. So how do they get off charging so much and effectively prohibiting access to all but a few?
No doubt they have their reasons - the cost of the print edition, for example. (I honestly can't think of another one.) They have all sorts of options beyond prohibitive per-article fees. They could host ads. They could charge for extra features like an index or newer articles. They could make articles free after a year.
The real problem is that they just don't get it - ideas and information should be freely available to everyone. It's not just an ideology; it's an ideology backed up by a business model. They lose on all fronts.
Saturday, May 19, 2007
102 Official Languages?
According to CBC Radio's The House this week, the Canadian Senate is looking into providing translation services for their speeches. The translators will cover a number of aboriginal languages so that aboriginal senators can speak in their native tongue in the senate.
The House interviewed a Liberal Senator from New Brunswick who is pushing the idea. When The House asked about the high cost of such a service, the senator said that these are living languages that we should preserve, and compared to the cost of digging up dinosaurs and building museums, this will not cost much.
That, of course, begs the question of how speaking in the senate will help preserve a language.
More importantly, it shows remarkable short-sightedness. We have two official languages, French and English. Will we now add a hundred-odd aboriginal languages to our list of official languages? When asked whether this will set a precedent that the House of Commons will also have to meet, the senator said, "Of course. It will be difficult for anyone to back away from that practice once it is accepted."
###
The House interviewed a Liberal Senator from New Brunswick who is pushing the idea. When The House asked about the high cost of such a service, the senator said that these are living languages that we should preserve, and compared to the cost of digging up dinosaurs and building museums, this will not cost much.
That, of course, begs the question of how speaking in the senate will help preserve a language.
More importantly, it shows remarkable short-sightedness. We have two official languages, French and English. Will we now add a hundred-odd aboriginal languages to our list of official languages? When asked whether this will set a precedent that the House of Commons will also have to meet, the senator said, "Of course. It will be difficult for anyone to back away from that practice once it is accepted."
Monday, May 14, 2007
The Fluid Supply of Labor
A year or so ago people were saying that off-shoring had peaked. The argument was that companies were starting to realize that North Americans did a better job. Or that all the best Asian professionals were already hired and so wages were rising there. Or that companies couldn't cope with the problems of time difference and the need to travel half way around the world on a regular basis.
But the decline in hiring off-shore didn't happen. And now even if it did
it wouldn't matter much because Asian countries are developing their own indigenous companies in a broad range of sectors. If North American companies didn't hire Asians, then Asian companies would just under-sell them. The only way to stop the internationalization of labor would be to go back to high tariffs. That's not a winning proposition in any event, but it is unfeasible in the current situation because China, Japan and Korea own so much US debt.
The internationalization of the labor market has happened and it's here to stay. I once thought my job (software technical writer) was immune because the software market is still mostly English and hey - English is my native tongue - but in my company a large part of the writing team is in Singapore. I heard on As It Happens tonight that even journalism jobs are being out-sourced to Asia, and that Reuters has had over a hundred business reporters in Singapore for years - writing about North American business.
All that brings me to the purchase of Chrysler by Cerberus. Some people are arguing that Cerberus is a strip-and-flip specialist, but there's more to it than that. The private equity company makes its money by buying a company that is nearly insolvent, restructuring and making large cuts to the company, and eventually selling it for a profit. Cerberus is dead serious about restructuring companies and it has a lot of management expertise.
Cerberus is not a new investor in Detroit, probably because the US car industry is, in general, completely in the crapper. The Detroit Free Press writes, "In southeast Michigan, Cerberus already has purchased a controlling interest in General Motors Corp.'s finance arm, GMAC, as well as Michigan auto suppliers CTA Acoustics in Madison Heights and GDX Automotive in Farmington Hills. It has offered to invest $3.4 billion in parts giant Delphi Corp., which is in bankruptcy. And earlier this month, a judge gave auto supplier Tower Automotive, also in bankruptcy, preliminary permission to sell nearly all of its assets to Cerberus for $1 billion."
It's like this: The unions and the government have been holding their finger in the US car manufacturing dyke for years, keeping change at bay, maintaining not just high salaries and benefits for workers but also lousy workmanship, lousy design, and second-rate management. Not to mention a steadily eroding workforce as the companies crumbled. The resistance to change also extended to not reforming health care in the US, taking out some of the many profit-takers who contribute to the crippling health costs of unionized companies.
And that's all over now. Cerberus is a private company that doesn't have to disclose its doings to the SEC and doesn't have to answer to shareholders. It isn't going to follow the old car manufacturing paradigms. The future for Chrysler is far different than if Frank Stronach had been successful in his bid.
Change is coming. Not just to US car manufacturers, but to all of us who earn a salary in a rich western country. And isn't that what we always said we wanted? - Better education in developing countries. Equalization of pay scales around the world. An end to the western countries hogging all the world's wealth?
###
But the decline in hiring off-shore didn't happen. And now even if it did
it wouldn't matter much because Asian countries are developing their own indigenous companies in a broad range of sectors. If North American companies didn't hire Asians, then Asian companies would just under-sell them. The only way to stop the internationalization of labor would be to go back to high tariffs. That's not a winning proposition in any event, but it is unfeasible in the current situation because China, Japan and Korea own so much US debt.
The internationalization of the labor market has happened and it's here to stay. I once thought my job (software technical writer) was immune because the software market is still mostly English and hey - English is my native tongue - but in my company a large part of the writing team is in Singapore. I heard on As It Happens tonight that even journalism jobs are being out-sourced to Asia, and that Reuters has had over a hundred business reporters in Singapore for years - writing about North American business.
All that brings me to the purchase of Chrysler by Cerberus. Some people are arguing that Cerberus is a strip-and-flip specialist, but there's more to it than that. The private equity company makes its money by buying a company that is nearly insolvent, restructuring and making large cuts to the company, and eventually selling it for a profit. Cerberus is dead serious about restructuring companies and it has a lot of management expertise.
Cerberus is not a new investor in Detroit, probably because the US car industry is, in general, completely in the crapper. The Detroit Free Press writes, "In southeast Michigan, Cerberus already has purchased a controlling interest in General Motors Corp.'s finance arm, GMAC, as well as Michigan auto suppliers CTA Acoustics in Madison Heights and GDX Automotive in Farmington Hills. It has offered to invest $3.4 billion in parts giant Delphi Corp., which is in bankruptcy. And earlier this month, a judge gave auto supplier Tower Automotive, also in bankruptcy, preliminary permission to sell nearly all of its assets to Cerberus for $1 billion."
It's like this: The unions and the government have been holding their finger in the US car manufacturing dyke for years, keeping change at bay, maintaining not just high salaries and benefits for workers but also lousy workmanship, lousy design, and second-rate management. Not to mention a steadily eroding workforce as the companies crumbled. The resistance to change also extended to not reforming health care in the US, taking out some of the many profit-takers who contribute to the crippling health costs of unionized companies.
And that's all over now. Cerberus is a private company that doesn't have to disclose its doings to the SEC and doesn't have to answer to shareholders. It isn't going to follow the old car manufacturing paradigms. The future for Chrysler is far different than if Frank Stronach had been successful in his bid.
Change is coming. Not just to US car manufacturers, but to all of us who earn a salary in a rich western country. And isn't that what we always said we wanted? - Better education in developing countries. Equalization of pay scales around the world. An end to the western countries hogging all the world's wealth?
Thursday, May 10, 2007
(Rant) - We're All Gonna Die
If the world's environmental scientists are correct that the world faces disaster if we don't avert global warming, then we're all going to die.
We are doing nothing. Less than nothing - we're dicking around with irrelevant policies, having arguments, getting into partisan bickering matches - while greenhouse gas emissions continue to go up, up, up.
We pat ourselves on the back for having hybrid car technology while the average fuel efficiency of new cars purchased in North America continues to fall. That's right: year on year, average mileage continues to get worse.
New housing is built with insufficient eaves or attic venting so that air conditioning is required. The widespread use of home air conditioning in Canada is crazy, and yet it grows.
Subdivisions proliferate that make efficient public transit impossible. Zoning allows store placement to require long car trips.
We blame China for pollution, even though Chinese pollution is only high in absolute terms, not per capita terms, and much of the pollution is generated from manufacturing - China is producing all the cheap disposable consumer crap that we cycle through our lives at increasing speed. It is North American consumers who are responsible for pollution caused by Chinese manufacturing.
The only way we're going to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is by raising fuel prices. But there is absolutely no public support for raising fuel prices. Just the opposite - citizens all over North America are hopping mad about "sky-high gas prices" and demanding government action to reduce them.
Everyone's blaming Jean Chretien for not doing more to meet our Kyoto targets, but he governed at a time when voters didn't want environmental action. Now voters are starting to panic and they want something to be done, but they still have their eye on that shiny new SUV and they still want to commute 100 kilometers a day.
Europe has done its part and led the way. It is North America that seems hell-bent on destroying the world.
###
We are doing nothing. Less than nothing - we're dicking around with irrelevant policies, having arguments, getting into partisan bickering matches - while greenhouse gas emissions continue to go up, up, up.
We pat ourselves on the back for having hybrid car technology while the average fuel efficiency of new cars purchased in North America continues to fall. That's right: year on year, average mileage continues to get worse.
New housing is built with insufficient eaves or attic venting so that air conditioning is required. The widespread use of home air conditioning in Canada is crazy, and yet it grows.
Subdivisions proliferate that make efficient public transit impossible. Zoning allows store placement to require long car trips.
We blame China for pollution, even though Chinese pollution is only high in absolute terms, not per capita terms, and much of the pollution is generated from manufacturing - China is producing all the cheap disposable consumer crap that we cycle through our lives at increasing speed. It is North American consumers who are responsible for pollution caused by Chinese manufacturing.
The only way we're going to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is by raising fuel prices. But there is absolutely no public support for raising fuel prices. Just the opposite - citizens all over North America are hopping mad about "sky-high gas prices" and demanding government action to reduce them.
Everyone's blaming Jean Chretien for not doing more to meet our Kyoto targets, but he governed at a time when voters didn't want environmental action. Now voters are starting to panic and they want something to be done, but they still have their eye on that shiny new SUV and they still want to commute 100 kilometers a day.
Europe has done its part and led the way. It is North America that seems hell-bent on destroying the world.
Tuesday, May 08, 2007
A Big Mess is Brewing
China and the US have entered an unholy alliance: China finances the US war in Iraq and in compensation the US keeps its markets open to Chinese consumer goods. Marcello De Cecco, an expert in the international monetary system, calls this Bretton Woods Two. Another way of describing it is that the US is forcing foreign central banks to finance the US trade deficit in order to keep their exchange rates from appreciating and their export-based economies from collapsing.
De Cecco, who is a professor at the University of Pisa, advisor to the Italian government, newspaper columnist and author of Money and Empire, gave a lecture this week at Waterloo's Center for International Governance Innovation (CIGI).
De Cecco argues that the current situation has some parallels to the years leading up to the First World War. Then, the pound sterling was the international currency, backed by gold, but the UK was in decline. The two emerging superpowers were the US and Germany, neither of which had ambitions to replace the pound with their own currency. It was France who challenged the pound as world monetary standard, and France that also threw instability into the system, sometimes deliberately (in 1907-14 there were several episodes where France removed money from German markets for political reasons, forcing Germany to hoard gold). The dollar became the world currency after WWII.
Now, it is the US that seems to be in decline. China is the emerging superpower, but again it is not interested in replacing the dollar as the world currency. In fact, China is behaving very responsibly, doing its best to keep the current system working. The euro is the challenger to the dollar. Half of all world assets are held in private hands in Europe, and European investors may dump the dollar if the dollar starts to decline - as may Americans and everyone else, including even China. Of the many sources of instability in the current system (not the least being the behavior of the US government), Russia, a country that is on the decline and bitter about it, may prove to be a problem.
Professor De Cecco called his talk "From the Dollar Standard to a Multiple Currency Standard: Current Developments in the Light of Pre-1914 Experience" and summarized it as: "The world in which we live today is in many ways similar to, and in other ways different from, the one which existed in the two decades before 1914. New world powers are in the making now, as they were then. Power politics seems to have superseded the politics of alliances based on ethics and values. Is the multiple currency world towards which we seem to be going bound to prove as dynamically disastrous as the one which came to an end in 1914?"
De Cecco ended his talk with the ominous statement, "A big mess is brewing."
Related post:
The Unsustainable World Economy
Update: Gwynne Dyer
###
De Cecco, who is a professor at the University of Pisa, advisor to the Italian government, newspaper columnist and author of Money and Empire, gave a lecture this week at Waterloo's Center for International Governance Innovation (CIGI).
De Cecco argues that the current situation has some parallels to the years leading up to the First World War. Then, the pound sterling was the international currency, backed by gold, but the UK was in decline. The two emerging superpowers were the US and Germany, neither of which had ambitions to replace the pound with their own currency. It was France who challenged the pound as world monetary standard, and France that also threw instability into the system, sometimes deliberately (in 1907-14 there were several episodes where France removed money from German markets for political reasons, forcing Germany to hoard gold). The dollar became the world currency after WWII.
Now, it is the US that seems to be in decline. China is the emerging superpower, but again it is not interested in replacing the dollar as the world currency. In fact, China is behaving very responsibly, doing its best to keep the current system working. The euro is the challenger to the dollar. Half of all world assets are held in private hands in Europe, and European investors may dump the dollar if the dollar starts to decline - as may Americans and everyone else, including even China. Of the many sources of instability in the current system (not the least being the behavior of the US government), Russia, a country that is on the decline and bitter about it, may prove to be a problem.
Professor De Cecco called his talk "From the Dollar Standard to a Multiple Currency Standard: Current Developments in the Light of Pre-1914 Experience" and summarized it as: "The world in which we live today is in many ways similar to, and in other ways different from, the one which existed in the two decades before 1914. New world powers are in the making now, as they were then. Power politics seems to have superseded the politics of alliances based on ethics and values. Is the multiple currency world towards which we seem to be going bound to prove as dynamically disastrous as the one which came to an end in 1914?"
De Cecco ended his talk with the ominous statement, "A big mess is brewing."
Related post:
The Unsustainable World Economy
Update: Gwynne Dyer
Saturday, May 05, 2007
2,4-D Redux
As we head into summer a number of Waterloo Region residents are up in arms about new by-laws that restrict the use of chemicals on lawns. How times have changed. Parents battled for decades to stop the government from spraying 2,4-D on schoolyards. Here's an article I wrote about the issue nearly 30 years ago, detailing what I saw to be a concerted effort by government to dismiss citizens' concerns.
Spraying with 2,4-D
The Sun tries to get to the bottom of the 2,4-D weed spray controversy and finds only one thing for certain: The Ministry of the Environment hasn't been much help.
by Ruth Haworth, Kawartha Sun, July 3, 1979
School is over, and the controversy raging over 2,4-D spraying in local schoolyards will probably fade into memory as another lost cause.
Parents in the Northumberland-Newcastle School District battled all spring with the Board of Education and Ontario Ministry of the Environment, trying to protect their children from the shortrun effects (nausea, fever, pain) and longrun effects (cancer, birth defects) that are the suspected results of 2,4-D herbicide poisoning. The Ministry repeatedly claimed that there is no evidence that 2,4-D is harmful, and so refused to take action.
The Ministry's attitude shocked and puzzled many concerned parents. Environment Minister Harry Parrott not only refused to take action - he refused to take seriously reports of the harmful effects of the schoolyard spraying. The Warkworth-based group PASS (Parents Against Senseless Spraying) compiled and publicized a list of students who became ill after spraying took place, and documented an instance of spray blowing off the school property and on to nearby gardens. They informed Parrott of their findings, but the Ministry has still not investigated.
The battle reached provincial proportion when NDP leader Mike Cassidy argued in the Ontario Legislature this spring that 2,4-D spraying was an unnecessary hazard to children and urged Dr Parrott to restrict its use in schoolyards. Dr Parrott retaliated by accusing Cassidy of arguing without evidence. So PASS sent a questionnaire out to parents in the Warkworth area and received 20 reports of children who became ill after spraying - with symptoms of headaches, fevers, swollen eyes, nausea and sore throats. Mr. Cassidy presented the list to Dr Parrott in the Legislature and asked for an investigation.
Dr Mikel, Health Officer for the Haliburtion-Kawartha-Pine Ridge district, was supposed to undertake the investigation, but he needed the list of names. He said he expected Nick Whitehead, the leader of PASS, to send him the list. Dr Mikel said he waited and waited, but now it's too late to check the children because their symptoms will have disappeared. He still doesn't know who they are.
The Sun asked Dr Mikel why he didn't obtain the list from Dr Parrott. His reply: Dr Parrott told him that the list he had been given was completely illegible - not a single name could be understood. But when the Sun phoned Mike Cassidy's office, we were told that the list Cassidy gave Dr Parrot was fully legible - "and in any event, if they were really serious they could have got the names from us - we have them."
So the Ministry, who has throughout the debate been arguing that 2,4-D spraying should continue because there is no evidence that it is harmful, did not follow up on concrete reports of children suffering from herbicide poisoning.
Dr Mikel argues that the issue really wasn't very serious, anyway. He said that children probably only had the flu, since herbicide poisoning doesn't usually entail fever (which seven of the twenty children had); that the progress of technological society necessitates some risks ("If we worried about the risk of rooves falling on our heads, we'd still be in mud huts," he said); that parents complain about weeds that children are allergic to, and then about the means of killing the weeds ("We can't win"); and that the parents are just troublemakers ("If they were really concerned about hazards to their children... they'd be campaigning against drunk drivers and that sort of thing").
Dr Parrott at one point argued that the children probably only had the flu, and on another occasion accused parents of deliberately subjecting their children to 2,4-D spray so they would develop symptoms.
Dr D.N. Huntley is the chairman of the Ministry of the Environment's Pesticides Advisory Committee. Dr Huntley told the Sun that he had concluded that 2,4-D was safe. He emphasized that the herbicide was legal, had been widely used for 30 years, and that none of the dozens of studies concluding that 2,4-D can lead to cancer or genetic defects are conclusive.
The other investigation urged by PASS concerned the spraying of 2,4-D in high winds. Whitehead has alleged that "the whole town stank after one spraying." One of the Ministry guidelines on the use of herbicides is that spraying be done in winds no higher than seven miles per hour to prevent the drifting of the chemical on to other property. But the Ministry's Pesticide Division Supervisor, Doug Wilson, told reporters that if a licensed applicator does the spraying, "then we can't stop it. He's doing nothing illegal."
PASS continues to fight 2,4-D spraying because it believes that there is evidence that it is harmful.
David Carlisle, a scientist with the federal ministry Environment Canada, has conducted tests in the Warkworth region and concluded that children who played on the grass within 48 hours of of spraying were exposed to 1,000 times the acceptable limit. Warkworth area doctor George Astaphan has commented that doctors would not suspect children they examined to be suffering from herbicide poisoning unless they knew of exposure because the symptoms are not unlike dermatological rashes and the flu - spraying has never been publicized before, so related illnesses likely went unnoticed.
2,4-D is primarily used in agriculture, and particularly in grain production. Saskatchewan's Minister of Agriculture, Edgar Kaeding, has announced that because of the herbicide's suspected hazards he will act to ban 2,4-D when a substitute is available.
The irony of the situation is that only one of the Northumberland-Newcastle District's 55 schools is sprayed for a serious weed - and that is poison ivy. In the other 54 playgrounds, 2,4-D is used to kill dandelions. PASS and the NDP have emphasized that they are not trying to get 2,4-D banned: they simply want to restrict its use on playgrounds. Whitehead has argued that, after accidents, the number one killer of children is cancer, and numerous studies indicate that 2,4-D causes cancer.
The Warkworth Journal recently wrote, "We feel quite strongly that if there is any doubt, or any possibility of harm... then the spraying should be halted." Linda Bird, the Warkworth mother of one of the sick children, has commented, "I don't see why they don't just mow the lawn. There would be no danger in that."
PASS has not given up. on July 11 the group will meet with Mike Cassidy at NDP candidate Hugh Jenney's Warkworth home and discuss their plans. As Mr. Whitehead says, "There's always next year."
###
Spraying with 2,4-D
The Sun tries to get to the bottom of the 2,4-D weed spray controversy and finds only one thing for certain: The Ministry of the Environment hasn't been much help.
by Ruth Haworth, Kawartha Sun, July 3, 1979
School is over, and the controversy raging over 2,4-D spraying in local schoolyards will probably fade into memory as another lost cause.
Parents in the Northumberland-Newcastle School District battled all spring with the Board of Education and Ontario Ministry of the Environment, trying to protect their children from the shortrun effects (nausea, fever, pain) and longrun effects (cancer, birth defects) that are the suspected results of 2,4-D herbicide poisoning. The Ministry repeatedly claimed that there is no evidence that 2,4-D is harmful, and so refused to take action.
The Ministry's attitude shocked and puzzled many concerned parents. Environment Minister Harry Parrott not only refused to take action - he refused to take seriously reports of the harmful effects of the schoolyard spraying. The Warkworth-based group PASS (Parents Against Senseless Spraying) compiled and publicized a list of students who became ill after spraying took place, and documented an instance of spray blowing off the school property and on to nearby gardens. They informed Parrott of their findings, but the Ministry has still not investigated.
The battle reached provincial proportion when NDP leader Mike Cassidy argued in the Ontario Legislature this spring that 2,4-D spraying was an unnecessary hazard to children and urged Dr Parrott to restrict its use in schoolyards. Dr Parrott retaliated by accusing Cassidy of arguing without evidence. So PASS sent a questionnaire out to parents in the Warkworth area and received 20 reports of children who became ill after spraying - with symptoms of headaches, fevers, swollen eyes, nausea and sore throats. Mr. Cassidy presented the list to Dr Parrott in the Legislature and asked for an investigation.
Dr Mikel, Health Officer for the Haliburtion-Kawartha-Pine Ridge district, was supposed to undertake the investigation, but he needed the list of names. He said he expected Nick Whitehead, the leader of PASS, to send him the list. Dr Mikel said he waited and waited, but now it's too late to check the children because their symptoms will have disappeared. He still doesn't know who they are.
The Sun asked Dr Mikel why he didn't obtain the list from Dr Parrott. His reply: Dr Parrott told him that the list he had been given was completely illegible - not a single name could be understood. But when the Sun phoned Mike Cassidy's office, we were told that the list Cassidy gave Dr Parrot was fully legible - "and in any event, if they were really serious they could have got the names from us - we have them."
So the Ministry, who has throughout the debate been arguing that 2,4-D spraying should continue because there is no evidence that it is harmful, did not follow up on concrete reports of children suffering from herbicide poisoning.
Dr Mikel argues that the issue really wasn't very serious, anyway. He said that children probably only had the flu, since herbicide poisoning doesn't usually entail fever (which seven of the twenty children had); that the progress of technological society necessitates some risks ("If we worried about the risk of rooves falling on our heads, we'd still be in mud huts," he said); that parents complain about weeds that children are allergic to, and then about the means of killing the weeds ("We can't win"); and that the parents are just troublemakers ("If they were really concerned about hazards to their children... they'd be campaigning against drunk drivers and that sort of thing").
Dr Parrott at one point argued that the children probably only had the flu, and on another occasion accused parents of deliberately subjecting their children to 2,4-D spray so they would develop symptoms.
Dr D.N. Huntley is the chairman of the Ministry of the Environment's Pesticides Advisory Committee. Dr Huntley told the Sun that he had concluded that 2,4-D was safe. He emphasized that the herbicide was legal, had been widely used for 30 years, and that none of the dozens of studies concluding that 2,4-D can lead to cancer or genetic defects are conclusive.
The other investigation urged by PASS concerned the spraying of 2,4-D in high winds. Whitehead has alleged that "the whole town stank after one spraying." One of the Ministry guidelines on the use of herbicides is that spraying be done in winds no higher than seven miles per hour to prevent the drifting of the chemical on to other property. But the Ministry's Pesticide Division Supervisor, Doug Wilson, told reporters that if a licensed applicator does the spraying, "then we can't stop it. He's doing nothing illegal."
PASS continues to fight 2,4-D spraying because it believes that there is evidence that it is harmful.
David Carlisle, a scientist with the federal ministry Environment Canada, has conducted tests in the Warkworth region and concluded that children who played on the grass within 48 hours of of spraying were exposed to 1,000 times the acceptable limit. Warkworth area doctor George Astaphan has commented that doctors would not suspect children they examined to be suffering from herbicide poisoning unless they knew of exposure because the symptoms are not unlike dermatological rashes and the flu - spraying has never been publicized before, so related illnesses likely went unnoticed.
2,4-D is primarily used in agriculture, and particularly in grain production. Saskatchewan's Minister of Agriculture, Edgar Kaeding, has announced that because of the herbicide's suspected hazards he will act to ban 2,4-D when a substitute is available.
The irony of the situation is that only one of the Northumberland-Newcastle District's 55 schools is sprayed for a serious weed - and that is poison ivy. In the other 54 playgrounds, 2,4-D is used to kill dandelions. PASS and the NDP have emphasized that they are not trying to get 2,4-D banned: they simply want to restrict its use on playgrounds. Whitehead has argued that, after accidents, the number one killer of children is cancer, and numerous studies indicate that 2,4-D causes cancer.
The Warkworth Journal recently wrote, "We feel quite strongly that if there is any doubt, or any possibility of harm... then the spraying should be halted." Linda Bird, the Warkworth mother of one of the sick children, has commented, "I don't see why they don't just mow the lawn. There would be no danger in that."
PASS has not given up. on July 11 the group will meet with Mike Cassidy at NDP candidate Hugh Jenney's Warkworth home and discuss their plans. As Mr. Whitehead says, "There's always next year."
The EVC is Dead (Long Live the EVC)
Over the last year I have been trying to negotiate with my company to start an Employee Volunteer Committee. This week I finally threw in the towel. Perhaps someone else out there may have better luck implementing the idea.
What I wanted to do was start a committee that organized volunteer activities - say one a month for an afternoon. Employees would volunteer on company time (so the company is really volunteering the time). There are three goals: (1) Help out in the community; (2) Improve camaraderie among employees; (3) Provide good public relations for the company in our community. Some months the events could be held on a weekend, but the basic idea is that it's on company time. In return the EVC will try to think of events that provide good publicity for the company.
The EVC should be fairly large and all members should contribute to events so that the volunteer choices reflect the interests of the employee body. Examples might be: packing food a the local food bank; cleaning up a park in the spring and fall; running a children's craft tent at a summer festival; helping an environmental group to clean up a river; judging at a school science fair; and so on.
When I made the proposal to my company I thought they would want to scale back the idea, and I was prepared to do that (having, say, one event a quarter, or having only half the events be on company time). I was quite suprised that HR took a different stance: they wanted to greatly expand the idea and offload some of their work onto the committee. They wanted the EVC to be responsible for vetting all requests for funding that came into the company (not to make the final decision, but to make recommendations) and they wanted to start a program where every employee got time off to volunteer with the EVC finding volunteer opportunities for everyone and running the whole program.
We went around and around on the same points for months and finally this week I said I was out. Luckily the process was congenial so who knows, something might still come of the idea somewhere in the future.
Or somewhere else?
###
What I wanted to do was start a committee that organized volunteer activities - say one a month for an afternoon. Employees would volunteer on company time (so the company is really volunteering the time). There are three goals: (1) Help out in the community; (2) Improve camaraderie among employees; (3) Provide good public relations for the company in our community. Some months the events could be held on a weekend, but the basic idea is that it's on company time. In return the EVC will try to think of events that provide good publicity for the company.
The EVC should be fairly large and all members should contribute to events so that the volunteer choices reflect the interests of the employee body. Examples might be: packing food a the local food bank; cleaning up a park in the spring and fall; running a children's craft tent at a summer festival; helping an environmental group to clean up a river; judging at a school science fair; and so on.
When I made the proposal to my company I thought they would want to scale back the idea, and I was prepared to do that (having, say, one event a quarter, or having only half the events be on company time). I was quite suprised that HR took a different stance: they wanted to greatly expand the idea and offload some of their work onto the committee. They wanted the EVC to be responsible for vetting all requests for funding that came into the company (not to make the final decision, but to make recommendations) and they wanted to start a program where every employee got time off to volunteer with the EVC finding volunteer opportunities for everyone and running the whole program.
We went around and around on the same points for months and finally this week I said I was out. Luckily the process was congenial so who knows, something might still come of the idea somewhere in the future.
Or somewhere else?
The Bad Guys Always Win
It was with a deep pang of bitterness that I read that Thomson Newspapers is bidding to take over Reuters plc. I have worked for both companies. In the 1980s I worked for a Toronto company called IP Sharp Associates. Reuters purchased IPSA and I continued to be a Reuters employee until I was laid off in the early 90s. Later on in my career I had a contract as a business analyst in the IT department of Thomson's head office, then in Toronto. I left for a job opportunity in Africa, but my boss at Thomson nearly wooed me to stay as a permanent employee. Luckily I didn't, as Thomson moved its headquarters to the US a few months later and laid off most of the Toronto staff.
Both Reuters and Thomson are layoff-happy organizations. Layoffs are seemingly part of regular annual plans. They don't just get rid of deadwood. In fact, at least at Reuters my impression was that internal politics were so ferocious that layoffs had little to do with merit.
When Reuters took over IPSA they sent over an HR manager from their UK headquarters who was obviously chosen for her vicious ruthlessness. Layoffs began with tearful employees being escorted from the building by two big beefy security guards. We all knew that layoffs were coming when we saw those guys enter the lobby. By the time I got the axe, a year or more into the purge, the system was a little more humane, but still pretty brutal.
At the time I was laid off I was in a management team of more than half a dozen extremely bright, extremely dedicated people. Most of our careers never recovered. Some went into sales, some took jobs with much lower responsibility. Only a couple eventually worked their way back up to lesser management positions.
If Thomson is successful in taking over Reuters, life does not look good for employees at either company. Lives will be uprooted, people will be traumatized... all for what? Layoffs are inefficient, a quick jolt to the balance sheet with heavy long-term costs. It's bad business and it's a completely unacceptable way to treat a workforce that has given a company loyalty and dedication.
It's insane that as voters we don't demand that there be regulations protecting employees from layoffs, along with regulations curtailing the outrageous compensation of senior managers. France has such rules and still manages to maintain a vibrant capitalist system.
###
Both Reuters and Thomson are layoff-happy organizations. Layoffs are seemingly part of regular annual plans. They don't just get rid of deadwood. In fact, at least at Reuters my impression was that internal politics were so ferocious that layoffs had little to do with merit.
When Reuters took over IPSA they sent over an HR manager from their UK headquarters who was obviously chosen for her vicious ruthlessness. Layoffs began with tearful employees being escorted from the building by two big beefy security guards. We all knew that layoffs were coming when we saw those guys enter the lobby. By the time I got the axe, a year or more into the purge, the system was a little more humane, but still pretty brutal.
At the time I was laid off I was in a management team of more than half a dozen extremely bright, extremely dedicated people. Most of our careers never recovered. Some went into sales, some took jobs with much lower responsibility. Only a couple eventually worked their way back up to lesser management positions.
If Thomson is successful in taking over Reuters, life does not look good for employees at either company. Lives will be uprooted, people will be traumatized... all for what? Layoffs are inefficient, a quick jolt to the balance sheet with heavy long-term costs. It's bad business and it's a completely unacceptable way to treat a workforce that has given a company loyalty and dedication.
It's insane that as voters we don't demand that there be regulations protecting employees from layoffs, along with regulations curtailing the outrageous compensation of senior managers. France has such rules and still manages to maintain a vibrant capitalist system.
Tuesday, May 01, 2007
State of Denial (Review)
Bob Woodward's third book about the Bush presidency, State of Denial, is well written, factual, unbelievably thorough, and a great record of events around the waging of the Iraq war. He had unprecedented access to Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and a zillion other major players in the White House and military. As one reviewer said, this a book that historians will use as a major resource in 100 years.
And yet, and yet. This book is a dense pile of facts without premise or conclusion. But a book like this must have premises and conclusions. At a minimum, they permeate the questions he asked and how he reported the responses. Either Woodward is hiding his conclusions, or he is confused himself.
The closest he gets to a conclusion is on page 490 (the second last page of the book), when he lists some of the questions he asked. "Didn't anyone at the White House notice that the actions being implemented on the ground in the months after the invasion were almost diametrically opposed to the plan that had been briefed to Bush?" And so on. But most of the questions are not just too obvious, but also dependent on other assumptions. The question "When did they realize that there would likely never be weapons of mass destruction found in Iraq?" implies that they truly believed at some point that there were WMD in Iraq - a premise that defies credulity once you read other sources.
At other points, Woodward is so deep in the projected world view of the Bushies that he loses sight of how the world works. He seems flabbergasted that in his interviews, Bush and Rumsfeld refuse to admit how dire the situation is in Iraq. But why would they? It's not shocking that the President and Defence Secretary put a brave face on a war during the war. It doesn't mean that they're in a state of denial. Does Woodward really think that he has such stature that nobody would prevaricate when he interviews them? Seemingly so.
Woodward's lack of credulity (or unrealistic belief in his own abilities) means that the book presents (in part) a picture of Bush & co. that is exactly what they wanted him to see. The impression that Woodward gives is that all the three-word slogans used during the war were completely heartfelt. These are a bunch of good guys doing what they think is best. The only reason they invaded is to protect the world from attack by Saddam Hussein. True, Rumsfeld comes in for some heavy drubbing, but I got the impression that Rumsfeld's biggest crime is that the war went badly.
In terms of revelations in the book, the thing that really blew me away is how much of the problem was basic mismanagement. Again and again there were multiple bosses and no clear chain of command. On several occasions in the book Bush gave direct orders that were ignored (it seems that his subordinates have very little respect for him). Bremer acted as if he reported directly to Bush, but Bush said he reported to Rumsfeld. At one time Rumsfeld declares that Bremer reports to him and at another time Rumsfeld says that Bremer reports to Rice. Some of this stuff is just big government bureaucracy, but there are giant gaffes like having a theater of war that had two supreme commanders. Even Condoleeza Rice calls the government "dysfunctional".
Don't get me wrong. I learned a lot from the book and I enjoyed reading it. But when I was finished I had to give my head a shake to correct some misimpressions of Bush and his White House. That's not the way it should work.
###
And yet, and yet. This book is a dense pile of facts without premise or conclusion. But a book like this must have premises and conclusions. At a minimum, they permeate the questions he asked and how he reported the responses. Either Woodward is hiding his conclusions, or he is confused himself.
The closest he gets to a conclusion is on page 490 (the second last page of the book), when he lists some of the questions he asked. "Didn't anyone at the White House notice that the actions being implemented on the ground in the months after the invasion were almost diametrically opposed to the plan that had been briefed to Bush?" And so on. But most of the questions are not just too obvious, but also dependent on other assumptions. The question "When did they realize that there would likely never be weapons of mass destruction found in Iraq?" implies that they truly believed at some point that there were WMD in Iraq - a premise that defies credulity once you read other sources.
At other points, Woodward is so deep in the projected world view of the Bushies that he loses sight of how the world works. He seems flabbergasted that in his interviews, Bush and Rumsfeld refuse to admit how dire the situation is in Iraq. But why would they? It's not shocking that the President and Defence Secretary put a brave face on a war during the war. It doesn't mean that they're in a state of denial. Does Woodward really think that he has such stature that nobody would prevaricate when he interviews them? Seemingly so.
Woodward's lack of credulity (or unrealistic belief in his own abilities) means that the book presents (in part) a picture of Bush & co. that is exactly what they wanted him to see. The impression that Woodward gives is that all the three-word slogans used during the war were completely heartfelt. These are a bunch of good guys doing what they think is best. The only reason they invaded is to protect the world from attack by Saddam Hussein. True, Rumsfeld comes in for some heavy drubbing, but I got the impression that Rumsfeld's biggest crime is that the war went badly.
In terms of revelations in the book, the thing that really blew me away is how much of the problem was basic mismanagement. Again and again there were multiple bosses and no clear chain of command. On several occasions in the book Bush gave direct orders that were ignored (it seems that his subordinates have very little respect for him). Bremer acted as if he reported directly to Bush, but Bush said he reported to Rumsfeld. At one time Rumsfeld declares that Bremer reports to him and at another time Rumsfeld says that Bremer reports to Rice. Some of this stuff is just big government bureaucracy, but there are giant gaffes like having a theater of war that had two supreme commanders. Even Condoleeza Rice calls the government "dysfunctional".
Don't get me wrong. I learned a lot from the book and I enjoyed reading it. But when I was finished I had to give my head a shake to correct some misimpressions of Bush and his White House. That's not the way it should work.
Sunday, April 29, 2007
Get Out
US administration officials like to say that if they leave Iraq now, there will be civil war and regional instability. This is untrue. If they stay in Iraq there will be civil war and regional instability. If the US pulls out, Iraq has a chance to pick up the pieces.
Violence in Iraq is aimed against the American occupation. Thousands of people are dying because of this resistance to the US occupation, and the resistance is only going to spread to more and more moderate Iraqis. Here are the casualty estimates as of today:
US military deaths (Iraq): 3,346
US military wounded (Iraq): 24,912
Iraqi civilian deaths (minimum): 62,570
Iraqi deaths related to the war and occupation: 655,000
In addition to the US military deaths, there are untold military contractors on the US payroll who have been killed in Iraq and whose deaths go unreported.
In addition to Iraqi deaths, there are millions of Iraqi refugees who have fled the country, many to Syria.
US attempts to reconstruct infrastructure that it bombed in 2003 have been a disaster, in part because of widespread fraud among contractors friendly to the Bush administration. The New York Times reports today: "In a troubling sign for the American-financed rebuilding program in Iraq, inspectors for a federal oversight agency have found that in a sampling of eight projects that the United States had declared successes, seven were no longer operating as designed because of plumbing and electrical failures, lack of proper maintenance, apparent looting and expensive equipment that lay idle."
The US owes Iraq a lot. The illegal invasion and destruction requires reparation. Occupation is not reparation: just the opposite. By staying in Iraq, the US just continues to kill people and destroy infrastructure.
The Bush administration doesn't want to leave Iraq because they don't want to admit defeat. But defeat has happened and it's not getting better. Thank heavens there's a Democrat-led congress now to make the military leave.
###
Violence in Iraq is aimed against the American occupation. Thousands of people are dying because of this resistance to the US occupation, and the resistance is only going to spread to more and more moderate Iraqis. Here are the casualty estimates as of today:
US military deaths (Iraq): 3,346
US military wounded (Iraq): 24,912
Iraqi civilian deaths (minimum): 62,570
Iraqi deaths related to the war and occupation: 655,000
In addition to the US military deaths, there are untold military contractors on the US payroll who have been killed in Iraq and whose deaths go unreported.
In addition to Iraqi deaths, there are millions of Iraqi refugees who have fled the country, many to Syria.
US attempts to reconstruct infrastructure that it bombed in 2003 have been a disaster, in part because of widespread fraud among contractors friendly to the Bush administration. The New York Times reports today: "In a troubling sign for the American-financed rebuilding program in Iraq, inspectors for a federal oversight agency have found that in a sampling of eight projects that the United States had declared successes, seven were no longer operating as designed because of plumbing and electrical failures, lack of proper maintenance, apparent looting and expensive equipment that lay idle."
The US owes Iraq a lot. The illegal invasion and destruction requires reparation. Occupation is not reparation: just the opposite. By staying in Iraq, the US just continues to kill people and destroy infrastructure.
The Bush administration doesn't want to leave Iraq because they don't want to admit defeat. But defeat has happened and it's not getting better. Thank heavens there's a Democrat-led congress now to make the military leave.
The Scary New World of Irrational US Retaliation
Canada dodged a bullet on 9/11. If the US had uncovered any connection between the 9/11 terrorists and Canada - even a minor one - they would have slammed Canada and slammed us hard.
Even though not a single piece of evidence was found linking Canada to 9/11, many Americans believed for years afterwards that Canada was a major security threat to the US. Even though the US let the terrorists into the country, taught them how to fly airplanes, and missed warnings that they were trouble, it was Canadian immigration and domestic security policies that were under fire.
The American populace suffered a mass derangement after 9/11 that lasted for four years. In their derangement, they thought that invading a completely unrelated country and killing hundreds of thousands of people was a justified response. Hardly anyone in the whole world believed the lies justifying the war - with the exception of the vast majority of Americans. Even Britons didn't believe it.
Over the last year or so American media has finally started to question the war, but now it's too late. The frightening thing is that the Americans could do it again. It might not be a military invasion. There are other ways to attack a nation.
We even know where they're going to do it next time: China.
Even though not a single piece of evidence was found linking Canada to 9/11, many Americans believed for years afterwards that Canada was a major security threat to the US. Even though the US let the terrorists into the country, taught them how to fly airplanes, and missed warnings that they were trouble, it was Canadian immigration and domestic security policies that were under fire.
The American populace suffered a mass derangement after 9/11 that lasted for four years. In their derangement, they thought that invading a completely unrelated country and killing hundreds of thousands of people was a justified response. Hardly anyone in the whole world believed the lies justifying the war - with the exception of the vast majority of Americans. Even Britons didn't believe it.
Over the last year or so American media has finally started to question the war, but now it's too late. The frightening thing is that the Americans could do it again. It might not be a military invasion. There are other ways to attack a nation.
We even know where they're going to do it next time: China.
Saturday, April 28, 2007
Other Questions About the War in Iraq
I am baffled not only about why the US invaded Iraq, but also about other things concerning that war:
Why did Tony Blair support it?
Unlike many people, I really like Tony Blair. He's my kind of politician: a pragmatic lefty - fiscally conservative, socially progressive, and someone who knows that the devil's in the details. He talked straight and he knew what he was talking about. He spoke from the heart and with conviction. Plus, he came into power and solved the Irish problem - after more than 100 years of strife and terrorism, he just fixed it. And he gave limited sovereignty to Scotland and Wales - not as much as your average province or state has, but better than hundreds of years of English rule has allowed.
Then he went and got all buddied up with Bush.2. At first I thought that this was a requirement of the US-UK "special arrangement" (or whatever they call it now) - the secret sharing of intelligence info and general quid pro quo between the two powers. But Blair seemed to be legitimately, even passionately, in support of the invasion. If he was coerced, he's the world's greatest actor.
Could it have been naivete and stupidity? That doesn't fit my image of Blair.
The big problem is how to reconcile Blair's war values with what his values seemed to be prior to the war. Was he lying before? Did he change? It just doesn't make any sense. There wasn't even any political expediency. He knew that his support for the war was so unpopular that he was wrecking his popularity and his legacy. And yet... he did it.
Did the Bushies ever really think they could win?
There has been a lot of criticism of Bush for not having an exit strategy. But an exit strategy is just another way of saying you have a vision for how to win and finish something. They didn't.
They didn't have one in Afghanistan either. They started out really well in Afghanistan: without a lot of bombing, CIA agents with bags of cash and some special forces troops managed to buy off warlords and topple the Taliban. It looked good on the news for a little while... until it became obvious that toppling the Taliban isn't the same as defeating the Taliban. Now we're all bogged down in Afghanistan like the Russians and many other invaders before them, and I don't know that anyone has had much success at that strategy.
They went into Iraq with half the troops that experienced war strategists said they needed, they blew up more infrastructure than they should have, and they dismantled all the Iraqi security forces. They never had a chance. They cared a lot - to the point of panic - that they didn't find any WMD to justify their invasion, but did they care that they were losing?
It's as if the Bush gang can't plan beyond the next headline. Like someone who gleefully takes your rook, not realizing that they've opened themselves up for checkmate. But they can't be that stupid. When it comes to outfoxing the Democrats in elections, they're 3 for 4. They have the most highly trained military in the world advising them. It just doesn't seem possible that they could have thought they'd win the war that they planned.
Is it possible that they didn't care whether they won or lost? If their goal was to create a Pax Americana - a new world order based on America being the sole superpower - then maybe winning seemed secondary, and the whole point was just to show the world they would use their military might unilaterally. But if that were true, it has backfired big time. Being defeated by an impoverished country of 30 million (pre-war population) is hardly the way to look tough.
###
Why did Tony Blair support it?
Unlike many people, I really like Tony Blair. He's my kind of politician: a pragmatic lefty - fiscally conservative, socially progressive, and someone who knows that the devil's in the details. He talked straight and he knew what he was talking about. He spoke from the heart and with conviction. Plus, he came into power and solved the Irish problem - after more than 100 years of strife and terrorism, he just fixed it. And he gave limited sovereignty to Scotland and Wales - not as much as your average province or state has, but better than hundreds of years of English rule has allowed.
Then he went and got all buddied up with Bush.2. At first I thought that this was a requirement of the US-UK "special arrangement" (or whatever they call it now) - the secret sharing of intelligence info and general quid pro quo between the two powers. But Blair seemed to be legitimately, even passionately, in support of the invasion. If he was coerced, he's the world's greatest actor.
Could it have been naivete and stupidity? That doesn't fit my image of Blair.
The big problem is how to reconcile Blair's war values with what his values seemed to be prior to the war. Was he lying before? Did he change? It just doesn't make any sense. There wasn't even any political expediency. He knew that his support for the war was so unpopular that he was wrecking his popularity and his legacy. And yet... he did it.
Did the Bushies ever really think they could win?
There has been a lot of criticism of Bush for not having an exit strategy. But an exit strategy is just another way of saying you have a vision for how to win and finish something. They didn't.
They didn't have one in Afghanistan either. They started out really well in Afghanistan: without a lot of bombing, CIA agents with bags of cash and some special forces troops managed to buy off warlords and topple the Taliban. It looked good on the news for a little while... until it became obvious that toppling the Taliban isn't the same as defeating the Taliban. Now we're all bogged down in Afghanistan like the Russians and many other invaders before them, and I don't know that anyone has had much success at that strategy.
They went into Iraq with half the troops that experienced war strategists said they needed, they blew up more infrastructure than they should have, and they dismantled all the Iraqi security forces. They never had a chance. They cared a lot - to the point of panic - that they didn't find any WMD to justify their invasion, but did they care that they were losing?
It's as if the Bush gang can't plan beyond the next headline. Like someone who gleefully takes your rook, not realizing that they've opened themselves up for checkmate. But they can't be that stupid. When it comes to outfoxing the Democrats in elections, they're 3 for 4. They have the most highly trained military in the world advising them. It just doesn't seem possible that they could have thought they'd win the war that they planned.
Is it possible that they didn't care whether they won or lost? If their goal was to create a Pax Americana - a new world order based on America being the sole superpower - then maybe winning seemed secondary, and the whole point was just to show the world they would use their military might unilaterally. But if that were true, it has backfired big time. Being defeated by an impoverished country of 30 million (pre-war population) is hardly the way to look tough.
Why Did They Go to War in Iraq?
Such a simple question... and such a baffling one.
Here are all the reasons I can think up for why American war planners wanted to invade Iraq:
* They really believed Iraq had WMD: None of the insiders could have believed this. More and more US and British officials have exposed just how little evidence there was - and how much counter-evidence. Even George Tenet has said that his "slam dunk" comment only referred to how easy it would be to convince Americans that there were WMD. Insiders knew that Sadaam had not had WMD since 1991, and that UN sanctions since then had crippled him. He was no threat. If anything, Iraq was probably seen as an easy target. (Why would the US have massed its troops within Scud range of Iraq for months before the invasion if they believed Sadaam could attack them?) It seems likely that they thought they could find enough weapons to justify their invasion, but not likely that it was ever a reason for war.
* They really believed Hussein had ties with al Qaeda: Ditto: they knew that he didn't have any such ties and that Sadaam and bin Laden were fierce enemies. In addition, planning for the attack started in the first National Security Council meeting of Bush's presidency, nine months before 9/11. The Bush presidency showed no interest in terrorism before 9/11.
* Bush's floundering presidency: Like Thatcher in the Falklands, Bush used the war to win a second term, but I'm not cynical enough to believe that Republicans would kill hundreds of thousands of people to win an election.
* They wanted to finish the Gulf war: Embittered Republicans felt Bush.1 had been to soft when he didn't invade Baghdad and they wanted to finish the job. Or: Bush.2 wanted to one-up his dad. Or... various other explanations of the father-son relationship. Sounds unlikely. Most indications are that Bush policy does not emanate from Bush, but from his advisors. And the advisors surely can't be stupid enough to want to fight a war that had been over for more than 10 years.
* US neoconservatives wanted to start a new world order with the US as the global dominator, and they needed to attack someone as a show of force: This is Gwynne Dyer's main thesis in his book Future: Tense, and his arguments are persuasive. It also fits with why they decided to break with the Geneva Convention (the US is showing itself to be above all that on grounds of moral necessity). Still, I find it too cynical to be credible.
* They wanted to undermine the UN: This is related to the last item - they want to supplant the international power of the UN. This is true, although again it seems more of a side-effect or means rather than a motive.
* Iraq was a threat to Israel: It is true that several of Bush's key advisors had close ties to the Likud Party. But again, the lack of immediate threat and the toothlessness of Sadaam's regime make any argument based on threat to seem unlikely.
* They wanted to control Middle East oil: There is no reason to worry about oil supplies anymore. Even Iran has never held back oil sales from whoever wants to buy it. There was a theory that the US needed to invade Iraq in order to build an oil pipeline, but it has been discredited. Instability of oil supply was more of a Cold War issue, and could resurface if the US starts a cold war with China, but it isn't an issue now.
* Saddam Hussein refused to allow WMD inspectors to work in Iraq: Not true. He was very cooperative and they were able to do a thorough job.
* Sadaam threatened the US or US interests: Just the opposite. Hussein was quite cordial towards the US. Sadaam even consulted the US amabassador to Iraq before invading Kuwait, and appeared to get the green light to go ahead with the plan. (This was revealed in the New Yorker shortly after the Gulf War.)
* They wanted to make the Bush oil industry and military contractor base rich: That seems to have been a motivation in the way the war was planned, but it's hard to believe that even this crew would go to war for that reason.
* They wanted to create a permanent military base in Iraq so troops could be withdrawn from Saudi Arabia: It's true that the military presence in Saudi Arabia has caused some instability in the country, but the US could move more forces to Bahrain or Qatar.
* Humanitarian reasons: Bush? Ha, ha. Also, while I don't condone Sadaam in the least, the Americans have immensely overstated Sadaam's atrocities. The nerve gas deaths for which he was executed were part of the Iraq-Iran war. Most of the mass graves that have been found in Iraq were due to a 1993 uprising against him. Sadaam was no Pol Pot, not even a Milocevic.
To me, it just doesn't add up. You might say that it's difficult to see why anyone would start a war, but actually I can think of motivation for most wars, even if they're evil or irrational. You might also say that it's hard to see any reason for starting a war after it has been lost, and that might be my problem. Except I'm not sure that they ever cared about winning this war. More on that later.
###
Here are all the reasons I can think up for why American war planners wanted to invade Iraq:
* They really believed Iraq had WMD: None of the insiders could have believed this. More and more US and British officials have exposed just how little evidence there was - and how much counter-evidence. Even George Tenet has said that his "slam dunk" comment only referred to how easy it would be to convince Americans that there were WMD. Insiders knew that Sadaam had not had WMD since 1991, and that UN sanctions since then had crippled him. He was no threat. If anything, Iraq was probably seen as an easy target. (Why would the US have massed its troops within Scud range of Iraq for months before the invasion if they believed Sadaam could attack them?) It seems likely that they thought they could find enough weapons to justify their invasion, but not likely that it was ever a reason for war.
* They really believed Hussein had ties with al Qaeda: Ditto: they knew that he didn't have any such ties and that Sadaam and bin Laden were fierce enemies. In addition, planning for the attack started in the first National Security Council meeting of Bush's presidency, nine months before 9/11. The Bush presidency showed no interest in terrorism before 9/11.
* Bush's floundering presidency: Like Thatcher in the Falklands, Bush used the war to win a second term, but I'm not cynical enough to believe that Republicans would kill hundreds of thousands of people to win an election.
* They wanted to finish the Gulf war: Embittered Republicans felt Bush.1 had been to soft when he didn't invade Baghdad and they wanted to finish the job. Or: Bush.2 wanted to one-up his dad. Or... various other explanations of the father-son relationship. Sounds unlikely. Most indications are that Bush policy does not emanate from Bush, but from his advisors. And the advisors surely can't be stupid enough to want to fight a war that had been over for more than 10 years.
* US neoconservatives wanted to start a new world order with the US as the global dominator, and they needed to attack someone as a show of force: This is Gwynne Dyer's main thesis in his book Future: Tense, and his arguments are persuasive. It also fits with why they decided to break with the Geneva Convention (the US is showing itself to be above all that on grounds of moral necessity). Still, I find it too cynical to be credible.
* They wanted to undermine the UN: This is related to the last item - they want to supplant the international power of the UN. This is true, although again it seems more of a side-effect or means rather than a motive.
* Iraq was a threat to Israel: It is true that several of Bush's key advisors had close ties to the Likud Party. But again, the lack of immediate threat and the toothlessness of Sadaam's regime make any argument based on threat to seem unlikely.
* They wanted to control Middle East oil: There is no reason to worry about oil supplies anymore. Even Iran has never held back oil sales from whoever wants to buy it. There was a theory that the US needed to invade Iraq in order to build an oil pipeline, but it has been discredited. Instability of oil supply was more of a Cold War issue, and could resurface if the US starts a cold war with China, but it isn't an issue now.
* Saddam Hussein refused to allow WMD inspectors to work in Iraq: Not true. He was very cooperative and they were able to do a thorough job.
* Sadaam threatened the US or US interests: Just the opposite. Hussein was quite cordial towards the US. Sadaam even consulted the US amabassador to Iraq before invading Kuwait, and appeared to get the green light to go ahead with the plan. (This was revealed in the New Yorker shortly after the Gulf War.)
* They wanted to make the Bush oil industry and military contractor base rich: That seems to have been a motivation in the way the war was planned, but it's hard to believe that even this crew would go to war for that reason.
* They wanted to create a permanent military base in Iraq so troops could be withdrawn from Saudi Arabia: It's true that the military presence in Saudi Arabia has caused some instability in the country, but the US could move more forces to Bahrain or Qatar.
* Humanitarian reasons: Bush? Ha, ha. Also, while I don't condone Sadaam in the least, the Americans have immensely overstated Sadaam's atrocities. The nerve gas deaths for which he was executed were part of the Iraq-Iran war. Most of the mass graves that have been found in Iraq were due to a 1993 uprising against him. Sadaam was no Pol Pot, not even a Milocevic.
To me, it just doesn't add up. You might say that it's difficult to see why anyone would start a war, but actually I can think of motivation for most wars, even if they're evil or irrational. You might also say that it's hard to see any reason for starting a war after it has been lost, and that might be my problem. Except I'm not sure that they ever cared about winning this war. More on that later.
Thursday, April 19, 2007
The Unsustainable World Economy
We live in precarious times. The US dollar is the official world currency - around the world, over two-thirds of all national reserves are held in US dollars - and yet it is very, very vulnerable. The vulnerabilities of the US dollar include:
* Supply-side financial markets: Enormous amounts of US debt are being held by East Asian countries, notably China, Japan and Korea. These countries are keeping their currencies artificially low (thus propping up the dollar) to fuel their growing export market. If they change their policies, the US dollar could crash.
* Supply side politics: If countries lose faith in the dollar, they could start moving their reserves and transactions to other currencies, causing the US dollar to crash.
* Demand-side US markets: US consumers are fueling the current world financial system by buying enormous amounts of cheap imported goods. (Ninety percent of Wal-Mart's sales are from imports.) If US consumers reduce their demand, say because of a housing market crash or rising interest rates, the whole financial system could topple.
The current system evolved somewhat by accident. There were a series of financial crashes in 1997, notably in Russia, East Asian and Brazil. Countries responded by building reserves of dollars in case of future crises. This caused the US dollar to rise, which fueled exports from those countries. The countries liked that and started to manage their exchange rates to keep their exchange rates low against the US dollar, which caused them to hold more US currency and debt.
Meanwhile, back in the US an ideological president was elected who didn't believe in government intervention. To be fair, currency exchange intervention had been declining in the US before Bush, but Clinton's Treasury Secretary, Robert Rubin, did intervene in the currency market a couple of times. Under Bush, there has been no currency market intervention whatsoever. The US dollar - a key component of economies the world over - has been largely ignored by the US government.
This has had some benefits. The US has enjoyed a ton of cheap goods, and the reliance on cheap imports has helped dampen inflation. East Asia has seen enormous growth. Multinational corporations are making a ton of money off the cheap labor. Stock markets are booming.
But there is a huge downside. While US consumers are getting great prices, this situation is keeping their wages down. East Asian exports are growing, but the wealth isn't flowing to citizens who could in turn create a domestic market for goods. In fact, we're in a bizarre situation where capital is flowing from poor countries to the US.
Furthermore, the whole system is becoming increasingly unsustainable and could result in a huge crisis. If it does, the world economy is very vulnerable. The problems of capital flight which caused the 1997 currency crisis have not been addressed and could happen again, worse. The countries who rely on exports will be devastated if the US dollar collapses. The US currently has a huge deficit and will not be in a good position to help soften the blow for its citizens.
In addition (and this may be meandering into the genre of conspiracy theory), the US could react to such a financial crisis in a very bad way. I'm not just talking about protectionism and nationalism. Is it a coincidence that the Bush administration is trying to position China as a national threat to the US? China holds enormous amounts of US debt and the US seems to be positioning China as an enemy. Who knows what might happen.
I went to a lecture today by Thomas Palley, who argued that the solution is to create a revised Bretton Woods system. He proposes two main mechanisms:
* Managed capital flows: Put in place systems that will avert currency collapse due to capital flight. For example, a "speed bump" law on capital inflows: when someone brings capital into a country, they have to park it for a set period of time with the central bank at a set interest rate. Another example of this sort of safeguard is to require hedging on foreign exchange-denominated borrowing.
* Managed exchange rates: Currency rates should be managed to ensure sustainable trade deficits/surpluses. But the onus must be on the strong currencies to bail out the weak currencies: financial markets are now so strong that they can muster more financial clout than just about any economy, so the weaker currencies can't defend themselves. Also, the stronger currencies are reaping a benefit that they should pay for.
Palley wants these innovations to be put in place before there is a crash, to avert it. However he sees no political will in the US or elsewhere to do so. He suspects there will be a worldwide financial crash, and soon, and hopes that we can put his policies in place at least after the fact.
###
* Supply-side financial markets: Enormous amounts of US debt are being held by East Asian countries, notably China, Japan and Korea. These countries are keeping their currencies artificially low (thus propping up the dollar) to fuel their growing export market. If they change their policies, the US dollar could crash.
* Supply side politics: If countries lose faith in the dollar, they could start moving their reserves and transactions to other currencies, causing the US dollar to crash.
* Demand-side US markets: US consumers are fueling the current world financial system by buying enormous amounts of cheap imported goods. (Ninety percent of Wal-Mart's sales are from imports.) If US consumers reduce their demand, say because of a housing market crash or rising interest rates, the whole financial system could topple.
The current system evolved somewhat by accident. There were a series of financial crashes in 1997, notably in Russia, East Asian and Brazil. Countries responded by building reserves of dollars in case of future crises. This caused the US dollar to rise, which fueled exports from those countries. The countries liked that and started to manage their exchange rates to keep their exchange rates low against the US dollar, which caused them to hold more US currency and debt.
Meanwhile, back in the US an ideological president was elected who didn't believe in government intervention. To be fair, currency exchange intervention had been declining in the US before Bush, but Clinton's Treasury Secretary, Robert Rubin, did intervene in the currency market a couple of times. Under Bush, there has been no currency market intervention whatsoever. The US dollar - a key component of economies the world over - has been largely ignored by the US government.
This has had some benefits. The US has enjoyed a ton of cheap goods, and the reliance on cheap imports has helped dampen inflation. East Asia has seen enormous growth. Multinational corporations are making a ton of money off the cheap labor. Stock markets are booming.
But there is a huge downside. While US consumers are getting great prices, this situation is keeping their wages down. East Asian exports are growing, but the wealth isn't flowing to citizens who could in turn create a domestic market for goods. In fact, we're in a bizarre situation where capital is flowing from poor countries to the US.
Furthermore, the whole system is becoming increasingly unsustainable and could result in a huge crisis. If it does, the world economy is very vulnerable. The problems of capital flight which caused the 1997 currency crisis have not been addressed and could happen again, worse. The countries who rely on exports will be devastated if the US dollar collapses. The US currently has a huge deficit and will not be in a good position to help soften the blow for its citizens.
In addition (and this may be meandering into the genre of conspiracy theory), the US could react to such a financial crisis in a very bad way. I'm not just talking about protectionism and nationalism. Is it a coincidence that the Bush administration is trying to position China as a national threat to the US? China holds enormous amounts of US debt and the US seems to be positioning China as an enemy. Who knows what might happen.
I went to a lecture today by Thomas Palley, who argued that the solution is to create a revised Bretton Woods system. He proposes two main mechanisms:
* Managed capital flows: Put in place systems that will avert currency collapse due to capital flight. For example, a "speed bump" law on capital inflows: when someone brings capital into a country, they have to park it for a set period of time with the central bank at a set interest rate. Another example of this sort of safeguard is to require hedging on foreign exchange-denominated borrowing.
* Managed exchange rates: Currency rates should be managed to ensure sustainable trade deficits/surpluses. But the onus must be on the strong currencies to bail out the weak currencies: financial markets are now so strong that they can muster more financial clout than just about any economy, so the weaker currencies can't defend themselves. Also, the stronger currencies are reaping a benefit that they should pay for.
Palley wants these innovations to be put in place before there is a crash, to avert it. However he sees no political will in the US or elsewhere to do so. He suspects there will be a worldwide financial crash, and soon, and hopes that we can put his policies in place at least after the fact.
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
Apple Goes Bad
Okay, the Mac-PC ads were funny at first. They didn't start out as attack ads. At first Mac poked gentle fun at PC for thinking that his graphic add-ons were easy to use. The message was that PCs are designed for business purposes but that Macs are better for home use. Very congenial, ha ha, very nice.
The last few weeks the tone has changed. Now Apple is running full-bore attack ads against PCs. They're nasty and unpleasant and inaccurate. (I say the latter as a current Vista user and a former user of Mac. I didn't expect to like Vista but I do - very much. The Allow/Deny dialogs are not a problem, and except for a minor bug in the email import wizard, I haven't had any problems with it.)
It's too bad Apple didn't quit while they were ahead. They had a really good thing going, and they blew it. They started out looking like the cool company, and now they just look like another bunch of big business jerks.
The last few weeks the tone has changed. Now Apple is running full-bore attack ads against PCs. They're nasty and unpleasant and inaccurate. (I say the latter as a current Vista user and a former user of Mac. I didn't expect to like Vista but I do - very much. The Allow/Deny dialogs are not a problem, and except for a minor bug in the email import wizard, I haven't had any problems with it.)
It's too bad Apple didn't quit while they were ahead. They had a really good thing going, and they blew it. They started out looking like the cool company, and now they just look like another bunch of big business jerks.
Saturday, April 14, 2007
Losing the Lord... and Gaining a Bpllllfff
From time to time, those of us in the Commonwealth talk about dumping the monarchy. Australia almost did it in 1999; even in Britain there was some discussion of it during the hoariest days of the Charles-and-Di soap opera.
Me, I don't mind the monarchy. I liked licking the back of the Queen's head - until they made self-stick stamps. If you have to have a head of state, an empty figurehead is as good as the next guy. At least it isn't Steven Harper.
What I hate, hate, hate is these damn dames. Loser lords. Boring barons. The whole concept of titles is crass and insulting, like expecting us to touch a forelock or drop a curtsey when our superiors pass by.
If we can't stop the Queen from promoting these charlatans and if we have to put up with media outlets like the Globe & Mail using them incessantly, then maybe we can adopt a new pronunciation for titles. My spelling of this new pronunciation would be like this: Bpllllfff. For example: Bpllllfff Elton is throwing an Oscar party. Pllbbfll Paul is taking a private helicopter to the ice floes to stop poor people from making a living. PBlfffff Black Bplf Bplf Bplf is awaiting the jury's verdict.
I was going to suggest how we could salute them but I thought it might seem impolite.
Me, I don't mind the monarchy. I liked licking the back of the Queen's head - until they made self-stick stamps. If you have to have a head of state, an empty figurehead is as good as the next guy. At least it isn't Steven Harper.
What I hate, hate, hate is these damn dames. Loser lords. Boring barons. The whole concept of titles is crass and insulting, like expecting us to touch a forelock or drop a curtsey when our superiors pass by.
If we can't stop the Queen from promoting these charlatans and if we have to put up with media outlets like the Globe & Mail using them incessantly, then maybe we can adopt a new pronunciation for titles. My spelling of this new pronunciation would be like this: Bpllllfff. For example: Bpllllfff Elton is throwing an Oscar party. Pllbbfll Paul is taking a private helicopter to the ice floes to stop poor people from making a living. PBlfffff Black Bplf Bplf Bplf is awaiting the jury's verdict.
I was going to suggest how we could salute them but I thought it might seem impolite.
Not NIMBY - Just Good Planning
Today's Kitchener-Waterloo Record has a report of a recent public planning meeting. Some politicians are calling for another soup kitchen in downtown Waterloo.
I believe in a strong social safety net, in affordable housing and subsidized services for people who need them. I have done extensive volunteer work at food banks and give generously to my local food bank every year without fail.
But I'm a single woman who lives in downtown Waterloo and in recent years I have felt unsafe walking by myself downtown. The reason is that I am threatened by strange men. Most recently it was after dark (about 9 PM this winter) and I was walking on King Street. Noone was around when a man emerged from the shadows of a doorway and asked me for money. I said no but he continued to walk beside me, pestering me. My mother, who gets around very slowly with a walker, had a worse experience when a man who seemed to have severe mental problems planted himself in front of her, blocking her way on a narrow sidewalk while yelling at her. It doesn't take many of these experiences for a woman (quite rationally) to be reluctant to go out on her own.
AND THAT REALLY SUCKS. Both my mother and I live downtown (in different places) because we like the freedom of walking to shops and entertainment. Both of us are without male escorts. Thanks to these experiences, both of us have limited freedom to go out.
We already have a mess in downtown Kitchener, which has a lot of scary people. I have witnessed fights twice in the last couple of years, once where a bunch of teens were beating up a homeless man in the square in front of City Hall. Downtown Kitchener has several institutions to help homeless teenagers and adults - and that's great and we all praise them for their good work - but a side effect is that downtown Kitchener is no longer a place where most citizens can safely and comfortably spend any time. I do go there (occasionally, always in a group and always parking close to my destination), and I see a lot of shady characters.
The Political Correctness Police can tell me that I have no right to question any help we provide to the underpriviledged, but I'm underpriviledged here too. I know that most people who use soup kitchens are good people who wouldn't cause me any trouble, but it's just a fact that a soup kitchen will attract a percentage of people whose presence will make the downtown more unsafe for me. I know this because of some of the people who live in a halfway house near downtown or who go to a soup kitchen near my house. It's probably the case that the people who cause problems are people with severe mental problems or people with criminal records.
If these politicians (none of whom, I'd bet, walk alone downtown at night) insist on putting another soup kitchen or shelter in my neighborhood, then they should also pay for increased police foot patrols at night... enough police that a woman can walk on her own without fear.
###
I believe in a strong social safety net, in affordable housing and subsidized services for people who need them. I have done extensive volunteer work at food banks and give generously to my local food bank every year without fail.
But I'm a single woman who lives in downtown Waterloo and in recent years I have felt unsafe walking by myself downtown. The reason is that I am threatened by strange men. Most recently it was after dark (about 9 PM this winter) and I was walking on King Street. Noone was around when a man emerged from the shadows of a doorway and asked me for money. I said no but he continued to walk beside me, pestering me. My mother, who gets around very slowly with a walker, had a worse experience when a man who seemed to have severe mental problems planted himself in front of her, blocking her way on a narrow sidewalk while yelling at her. It doesn't take many of these experiences for a woman (quite rationally) to be reluctant to go out on her own.
AND THAT REALLY SUCKS. Both my mother and I live downtown (in different places) because we like the freedom of walking to shops and entertainment. Both of us are without male escorts. Thanks to these experiences, both of us have limited freedom to go out.
We already have a mess in downtown Kitchener, which has a lot of scary people. I have witnessed fights twice in the last couple of years, once where a bunch of teens were beating up a homeless man in the square in front of City Hall. Downtown Kitchener has several institutions to help homeless teenagers and adults - and that's great and we all praise them for their good work - but a side effect is that downtown Kitchener is no longer a place where most citizens can safely and comfortably spend any time. I do go there (occasionally, always in a group and always parking close to my destination), and I see a lot of shady characters.
The Political Correctness Police can tell me that I have no right to question any help we provide to the underpriviledged, but I'm underpriviledged here too. I know that most people who use soup kitchens are good people who wouldn't cause me any trouble, but it's just a fact that a soup kitchen will attract a percentage of people whose presence will make the downtown more unsafe for me. I know this because of some of the people who live in a halfway house near downtown or who go to a soup kitchen near my house. It's probably the case that the people who cause problems are people with severe mental problems or people with criminal records.
If these politicians (none of whom, I'd bet, walk alone downtown at night) insist on putting another soup kitchen or shelter in my neighborhood, then they should also pay for increased police foot patrols at night... enough police that a woman can walk on her own without fear.
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