Power: its pursuit and punishments

In his interview on MSNBC with Chris Hayes, filmmaker Oliver Stone noted a significant military build-up in space, under the Obama administration. According to Stone, between the 50-mile and the 250-mile limits above the earth, the United States is militarizing/weaponizing space, in a not-so-covert attempt to gain the upper hand in any space/cyber conflict, especially with a country like China which, according to Stone, is following the U.S. developments closely.
Politically, Obama is justifiably confident that if he follows a vigorous national security approach, including maintaining the pentagon budget, or, if absolutely necessary, cutting only sparingly, he will not incur Republican opposition, while presenting a public face of "protecting the American people". National Security is the one file on which there is unlikely to be a political skirmish between Obama and the Republicans in Congress. And, unfortunately, another opportunity to down-size both the size and the importance of military spending will be missed, just as a significant opportunity to establish the single-payer fiscal foundation for the health care bill was missed by Obama's giving away too much to his Republican opponents during that protracted public debate.
Hollywood producers, directors, actors and the film-making industry generally contributed significantly to Obama's two presidential election bids. On social policy, Hollywood, like Obama, is more liberal than conservative. It is the apparent 'outlier' Oliver Stone, at least to the Hollywood community, who exposes Hollywood's move to producing 'vigilante' movies as a component in the anatomy of violence that infests American culture. Not only is there violence, but it is a specific 'individual-gang' operated violence, without regard to any principles, except the pursuit of power, perhaps revenge, and the wasting of human life.
So on the ground, Hollywood is exposed as an agent in incubating violence at the street level, and Washington, under Obama, is exposed as incubating military/cyber violence in space. Anyone who has watched the movie Wall Street cannot help but notice and absorb the violence in the pursuit of greed by men in suits and ties, masquerading as white-collar professionals, while they are really only sophisticated 'hit-men' seducing the weak and innocent and eliminating any who fail to follow orders.
Much of the abuse of others, under the guise of competition and the pursuit of personal and corporate greed, is considered both normal and acceptable, in a country whose primary purpose is the pursuit of the literal and metaphoric "gold" at the end of the rainbow. And, as a not-insignificant corollary of that pursuit, is a culture of competition, based on the pursuit of being "number one" in everything.
Well, certainly, with 5% of the world population, the United States holds 50% of the world's weapons.
That would make them number one in gun ownership.
With that 5% of the world's population, the U.S. also spends more on military spending than all other developed countries combined...so once again, that would make them number one in weapons, in weapon research, in recruitment and deployment of those weapons, at least potentially.
There are undoubtedly more billionaires per capita in the U.S. than in any other country; so that would also make them number one in the accumulation of wealth competition.
All of this competitive, acquisitive, and addictive pursuit of being 'top dog' in anything and everything is clear manifestation of a male culture that refuses to acknowledge the value, purpose and meaning of anything that looks like vulnerability, weakness, smallness, uncertainty and insecurity. Any recognition and admission of those qualities would constitute nothing less than heresy, if not treason, in the collective eyes of the American culture. The pursuit of power, as a defining male characteristic, has been adopted unquestioningly by the feminist movement, as the model to achieve in order to attain equality with males, while all the while, it is that very quality that imprisons men in suits, in uniforms, in offices, boardrooms, laboratories, and on athletic fields.
So, the American culture has produced both male and female models of convention and social acceptance that are based on a definition of success that fails to integrate the complexity of the human personality. And, without paying attention to its own blindness and hubris, Americans are locked in a phony political battle which merely gives voice to the charade of the pursuit of power, rather than the pursuit of national self-respect, health, respect for one another, sharing, generosity and community.
And both genders and both political parties, and from what is evident across the border, all religious organizations, all corporations and all universities and colleges are fighting to dominate their "field" whether that field is geographic, or intellectual or demographic or financial or political. Temporary "insiders" fight like hell to keep the "outsiders" out of the "gravy" of power, and the "outsiders" fight like hell in their attempt to penetrate the protective shield of the insiders, in order to bring them down.
And they call this normal!
It is not normal nor is it a conscious, ethical and rational approach to nation building. It has been allowed to be perceived as 'normal' without questioning the very cornerstones on which the 'paper-mache house' is built. Those who advocate greater sharing of the national wealth are despised as "socialist" or "europeans" or worse, "communists"...in order to preserve the "sacred cow" of capitalism, linked like a siamese twin to "christianity" as if the faith were the philosophical footings for the pursuit of power, wealth, machismo, and a male-dominated culture.
Those who advise less spending on military are despised, demonized as naive, weak, innocent and immature, as if such political positions were akin to what these people called "gay" or "fag" in high school. One presidential candidate even spoke as if God had ordained that American remain the number one in world dominance, thereby "sacralizing" his (and many others') concept of superiority among the hundreds of nations in the world. Wrapping the pursuit of power and wealth in both bible and flag masks the pursuit only in the eyes of the person who has succumbed to such wrapping. It is still the unadulterated, unabashed and blatant pursuit of power and wealth and it bodes ill for those participating, those emulating the pursuit and for those of us who have to live under the rubrics of such a faux-faith.
What would happen to American children if they were to learn that America and Americans would still be honourable and needed and respected in the world if their country did not dominate? Would they not learn a more valuable lesson that they are equal and not superior, and not thereby pressured by the need to remain dominant, among the peoples and countries and cultures and faith communities in the world?
Would they not come to accept some of the realities not currently being tabulated by "science" like the impact on the health care budget, from the imposition of the pressure to "achieve" and to be "perfect" and to "dominate" and to "defeat" perceived enemies and to "win" all encounters?
Societies and cultures that are more committed to sharing both wealth and the pain of sacrifice produce men and women who strive for and achieve excellence in all human activities including the arts, science, leadership, athletics and both national and human security and safety. They also absorb set-backs more maturely, and more resiliently and with more access to support, for both men and women.
America has willingly put itself on a pedestal, as a phony motivator for its continued achievements.
Unfortunately, that pedestal, like the culture atop its alabaster, is open to erosion, decay, crumbling and eventual atrophy. And only if and when Americans themselves come to their senses and accept that no human culture or human being can sustain the perch required on top of such an ill-conceived pedestal, will they begin to open their eyes to all of the "grounded" human experience they and generations before them have missed through the greatest pursuit of hubris/inferiority in human history.
And only then will the world begin to trust that dominance is no longer the only way to measure power and success,and wealth and influence, and Americans and many millions of men and women throughout the world can be unshackled from the chains that have bound us for centuries. And it would be the irony of ironies for the Americans to lead the parade from the top of their pedestal to the ground where we all live, in amazement at the discoveries of authentic life that abound with less of everything and more of each of us.

Oliver Stone: America is a war state

Whether Oliver Stone, the filmmaker is a credible historian may, to the professional historians, be a mute point. If, however, the interview he just engaged in with Chris Hayes, on MSNBC's "UP" is an indication of some of the cornerstones of his view of American history, then he makes more sense, as a 'counter-historian' or a 'revisionist' historian than many who have written and documented the American experience.
Some of his views expressed in the MSNBC interview are summed here:

• America is a "war" state
• America did not have to drop the Hydrogen bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to 'end the war' in 1945, but did so as a warning to the then Soviet Union, 'not to mess with us'
• Colonialism, imperialism including the retention of colonies like India and Pakistan was more important to Great Britain's Winston Churchill's conception of World War II than defeating the Nazi's. In Stone's words, "Stalin was no fool and he certainly got the message!"
• The United States film industry has evolved into a series of 'vigilante' dramas which serve as both a mirror and a lamp to the 'vigilante' society, armed and dangerous that is the U.S. political and social culture. An example is the killing of Osama ben Ladin, and the dropping of his body into the sea, rather than, as in Nuremberg, and the film "Judgement at Nurenberg" which unmasked the Nazi's and provided considered information for the world to get to 'know' what they were all about.

Stone has produced a ten-part video series airing on Showcase (plus a 700+ page tome) outlining the details of his case, entitled the Untold Story of American History.
Seems to me it is a series worth watching.

CSIS: Radical extremists active and growing in Canada

CSIS REPORT: Islamist extremists, "left-wing extremists," "Freemen of the Land," "neo-Nazi's"....all operating inside Canada....
There is something distasteful about mentioning the names of radical terrorist extremist groups. Any publication gives them hope, and renews their energy to achieve even more carnage.
The fact that radical extremists are actively recruiting, planning and, as opportunity presents itself, carrying out attacks on behalf of their distorted, perverse "political and religious hate" campaigns against individual Canadians, and against the Canadian "way of life" in the case of Islamic radical terrorists.
At the same time, First Nations chiefs, including Shawn Atleo, are peacefully protesting living conditions of their people, treaty rights and in general the relationship between First Nations people and the government of Canada. The Prime Minister has, thankfully, agreed to meet with the Chiefs on January 11; however, Chief Spence will continue her hunger strike until the day of the meeting.
The timing of this juxtaposition, of both violent and peaceful protests, points to the breadth of the however segmented and disconnected groups committed to violence, change and protest.
Idle No More today threatens to block the border between Canada and the United States, a move that the Prime Minister was quick to condemn, preferring instead to deal with peaceful protests.
While social media is one of the primary instruments used by all those seeking to generate any political action, including radical training and indoctrination, there is something much more virulent about the continuing evidence of radicalization inside the Canadian community.
I have written many words of serious criticism of the Harper government and will likely find many similar opportunities to continue my protest. Large insensitive and profit-driven corporations that care less than they once did about the environment and the rights of their own workers have also found their attitudes, behaviours and policies the target of acidic criticism in these pages. Other organizations like universities, churches, hospitals and banks have also been political targets in these pages.
However, if and when radical resorting to violence and terrorism replaces respectful political discussion, debate and intellectual push-and-pull, the whole country must become engaged in rejecting the violence and terrorism. The United States, the victim of the attacks on September 11, 2001, has over-reacted in the generation of its Homeland Security Department, creating a hybrid pentagon/criminal investigation unit, and in the process, spent billions of dollars in buildings, equipment and personnel. That is not a path for Canada to use as a model when facing the radical extremist/terrorist threat.
We already know that thousands, if not millions, of assault weapons march secretly across the 49th parallel, many of them finding homes among the potential terrorists inside Canada's borders. We also know that frustrated and gullible young people who are unemployed, poor, disconnected and alienated are "ripe" receptors of radical ideology, radical faith promises, radical transformation and the opportunity for radical adventure. Even respected "christian" organizations use the opportunities in society's 'underbelly' to recruit trainees, disciples, adherents and members, sometimes for life-long commitments. And many of these "converts" are the most energized and passionate about their new ideology, belief system, intense socialization, community and make the most committed and passionate recruiters of new followers. So there is a form of instant gratification, instant learning, instant learning, instant engagement, money, community and the opportunity to work hard on behalf of the chosen group.
And what could be more radical than the opportunity to 'share' an experience of terrorist training, weapons training, religious indoctrination, even brain-washing, potential travel to foreign lands like Pakistan or Afghanistan, Yemen, or even potentially the United States for additional training, especially in the case of the Freedom of the Land radicals.
This "turbulence" and fracturing of the body politic, to include growing numbers of radical movements, on the radar of C.S.I.S., and even part of the public media stories, while not linked together when a single incident occurs and achieves headlines, both regionally and nationally, the problem of violence, as a political instrument, requires increased vigilance, public funding and research, and perhaps even more stringent legislation to deter and contain these movements.
This is one "peace, order and good government" application with which conservatives and liberals can agree, must agree, and generate appropriate measures to deter more recruits, and in the long term, to protect the Canadian people, including parents who might fear the recruitment of their adolescent children, from the growth of this kind of attitude, ideology and violence.
The enemy "within" can and sometimes will be equally as dangerous as any enemy "without"....and Canadians would do well to monitor hate crimes, in their own communities, in their schools, on their athletic teams, in their churches (yes, there is too much violence and hate inside many church communities!) in their universities, corporations and public venues. They would also do well to learn about those forces seeking to destroy our way of life, and teach their children, having learned themselves, how to protect themselves, individually, and collectively.
Islamist extremists radicalizing Canadians at ‘a large number of venues,’ secret report reveals
By Stewart Bell, National Post, January 3, 2013
Islamist extremists are now radicalizing Canadians at “a large number of venues,” according to a secret intelligence report released to the National Post under the Access to Information Act.

While mosques with hardline imams are often singled out for spreading violent Islamist ideology, the study found that radicalization has been taking place at a much longer list of locales.
“Radicalization is not limited to religious centres,” says the Canadian Security Intelligence Service report, titled Venues of Sunni Islamist Radicalization in Canada.
The heavily censored report identifies the role of prisons, the Internet and foreign travel in turning some Canadians into extremists who wage or support violence. But it also points a finger at the family home.
“Parents have radicalized children,” reads the Intelligence Assessment, “husbands have radicalized wives (and some wives have radicalized or supported their husbands) … and siblings have radicalized each other,” it says.

“As this assessment has demonstrated, a large number of venues have been, and continue to be used to further Islamist extremist ideology. … As radicalization is usually a social process, it can occur wherever humans interact, in the real world or virtual ones,” it says.
Since al-Qaeda’s attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, an increasing number of Canadians have become lured into Islamist extremism, an intolerant, anti-democratic and virulently anti-Western worldview that preaches that violence against non-Muslims is a religious duty and a path to paradise.
Several Canadian extremists have travelled abroad to countries such as Pakistan and Somalia with the intention of engaging in what they call jihad, while others have plotted mass casualty attacks in Canada, although none has succeeded.
‘Left-wing extremists,’ anti-government Freemen among Canada’s top domestic terror threats, report reveals
By Stewart Bell, National Post, January 3, 2013
Canadian domestic extremists are capable of orchestrating “serious acts” of political violence, according to a newly released federal intelligence report that blames such groups for nine bombings since 2004.

The incidents catalogued in the “secret” report include attacks on Alberta oil pipelines and three bombings by a Quebec group called the Initiative de Résistance Internationaliste (IRI) that espouses a broad leftist agenda.
While Islamist extremists have consistently ranked as the country’s top terrorist threat since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the report shows that most of Canada’s recent politically motivated attacks were the work of domestic extremists.
The Intelligence Assessment, 2012 Domestic Threat Environment in Canada: Left-Wing/Right-Wing Extremism, was written by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service in March. A declassified version was released under the Access to Information Act.

It describes the activities of Canadian fringe groups that use or advocate violence, ranging from “eco-extremists” and “pro-insurrection anarchists” to “revolutionary communists” and the anti-government Freemen on the Land.
The report said 2010 had seen an “unusually high” level of left-wing extremist activity, which it attributed to the G20 summit in Toronto and the Winter Olympics in British Columbia. Attacks that year included the firebombing of a Royal Bank branch in Ottawa and the IRI bombing of a Canadian Forces recruiting centre in Trois-Rivières, Que.

“In contrast, the level of activity in 2011 was low,” the report said. “The relative quiet of 2011, however, should not be viewed as permanent. Canadian left-wing extremists can exploit the negative consequences of the current economic downturn in order to bring attention to perceived policy failures or negative effects of capitalism.”
According to the report, left-wing groups have begun targeting companies linked to the correctional system. For example, a Kingston architectural firm that designed a provincial prison was repeatedly vandalized in 2011 and “wanted posters” featuring photos of architects appeared downtown.

“Since 2010, left-wing extremist publications in Canada have called for the ‘end of the prison industrial complex’ and ‘solidarity with political prisoners.’ In a post-G20 context, left-wing extremists considered comrades sentenced to jail as ‘political prisoners’ and the prison system as ‘oppressive,’” the report said.
The study also examined the threat posed by the Freemen on the Land, who claim they can opt out of Canadian laws by destroying their government-issued identification. An Alberta judge has called the concept “pseudo-legal nonsense” and a “scam” promoted by profiteering con men.
Nonetheless, the report said published estimates put the number of Freemen in Canada at 30,000, a concern because in addition to asserting they are not bound by the law, some also claim the right to defend themselves with deadly force.
The report dismissed the current neo-Nazi and white supremacist threat to Canada, saying such groups were so marginalized they did little but organize poster campaigns and harass minorities and “do not overly propose serious acts of violence.”
But since the report was issued, racist attacks have occurred in cities such as Edmonton. Two alleged members of the neo-Nazi group Blood and Honor Canada were arrested in B.C. last December following alleged attacks on minorities. In one case, a Filipino man was set on fire.
In Ontario, a man with a swastika tattooed on his chest has drawn complaints for recruiting for the White National Front on YouTube, Twitter and Facebook. His group does not appear to be active outside the Internet but has encouraged attacks.

“Attack non-whites whenever and however you can, we will pick dates to go on a blitzkrieg, get as many as we can,” read one post on his Twitter page that used the Nazi-era term for a military assault. “We have to show non-white immigrants that its dangerous to come here, and anyone who supports them cops or whatever burn their houses down.” These posts have since been taken down and Durham Region police said they were investigating.
Daryl Johnson, a former U.S. Department of Homeland Security analyst and the author of Right Wing Resurgence: How a Domestic Terrorist Threat is Being Ignored, said the post-9/11 focus on Islamist terrorism has left the extreme right wing neglected by investigators.
“I mean, I was just amazed when I worked at Homeland Security how much emphasis was put on the homegrown Muslim radicalization,” he said in an interview. “I just think that threat was over-hyped. And it’s become quite apparent as the far right has kind of reemerged that we’ve had too few resources, particularly in Homeland Security, and lack of interest on Capitol Hill.”

Canada now selling assault weapons to Columbia..WHY?

Canada opens Colombia to ‘new opportunities’ for its automatic weapons sellers
Read more: http://www.ottawacitizen.com/business/Canada+opens+Colombia+opportunities+automatic+weapons+sellers/7767835/story.html#ixzz2GuUImVC5By By Mike Blanchfield, The Canadian Press, in Ottawa Citizen, January 2, 2013
OTTAWA — Just one day before last month’s elementary school massacre in Newtown, Conn., Canada offered its gun merchants “new market opportunities” to export banned assault weapons to Colombia, one of the world’s most violent countries.
Canada quietly eased its ban on the export of assault-style weapons to Colombia after Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird recommended an order amending the Automatic Firearms Country Control List (AFCCL).
That opened the door for Canadian gun merchants to sell fully automatic weapons with high-capacity magazines — banned in Canada — to Colombia.
“Colombia’s addition to the AFCCL opens new market opportunities by providing residents of Canada with the opportunity to explore and compete for contracts in Colombia for items controlled under the AFCCL,” says a government notice, posted Tuesday.
The amended order places restrictions on the permits required for the weapons exports, including a case-by-case review by Ottawa.
The notice says that Canadian weapons exporters will face “very strict controls” under the Export and Import Permits Act before they will be allowed to export “prohibited weapons and prohibited devices (as defined in the Criminal Code of Canada), examples of which include fully automatic firearms, electric stun guns and large-capacity magazines.”
The change went into effect on Dec. 13, one day before a gunman walked into Sandy Hook Elementary School and killed 20 first-graders and six school employees, sparking fresh debate about gun control in the United States.
Canada recently completed a controversial free trade deal with Colombia, which has been plagued by a half century-long guerilla insurgency, serious human rights abuses and its emergence as a world leading cocaine producer.
Colombia is gradually overcoming its violent legacy, becoming relatively more peaceful, while developing one of the fastest growing economies in the Americas.
The Harper government’s pursuit of a free trade deal with Colombia was opposed by rights groups, but the deal was ultimately approved in 2011.
Now, Colombia has been added to a list that includes Canada’s 27 NATO allies, along with Australia, Finland, New Zealand, Saudi Arabia, Sweden and Botswana, where prohibited firearms manufactured in this country may be sold.
“The amendment to the AFCCL will formally add Colombia to the list of countries that the Governor in Council deems appropriate to export prohibited firearms, prohibited weapons and prohibited devices and to which the Minister of Foreign Affairs may issue an export permit for such items,” the notice says.
“The inclusion of Colombia on the AFCCL does not guarantee that a permit will be issued for the export of these items and all applications will remain subject to the Government of Canada’s case-by-case review process.”
In October, Foreign Affairs, along with the Defence and Justice departments, conducted a public consultation over the Internet on the possibility of adding Colombia to the list.
There were three responses.
One favoured the addition of Colombia, while two were opposed.
The two objectors “cited concerns relating to the long-time armed conflict and human rights issues within Colombia as the reasons for their objection,” says Tuesday’s notice.
Foreign Affairs dismissed the objections after conducting an analysis.
“This consultation process included a review of multiple issues, including a review of potential human rights and existing conflicts issues,” says the notice.
“As stated previously, the addition of a country to the AFCCL does not guarantee that an export permit will be issued. All applications are reviewed on a case-by-case basis, including a review of any human right concerns.”
Canadian arms manufacturers will now be able to submit applications to export the banned weapons to Colombia.
The government notice says the amendment is “consistent with the aim of the AFCCL to promote transparency in the export and transfer of prohibited firearms, prohibited weapons and prohibited devices by making public that Canada will now consider export permit applications for the export of those items to Colombia.”
Colombia has endured half a century of violence, pitting its U.S.-backed government forces against a leftist guerilla insurgency led by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).
Despite its impressive economic growth, Colombia continues to suffer from serious human rights violations. For example, more union leaders are killed in Colombia than anywhere else.
The Colombian justice system is clogged with more than 1,700 cases involving extra-judicial executions that have claimed the lives of 3,000 people, most from the last decade.
In late November, the Conservative government repealed Canadian gun show regulations, a move that Ontario’s chief firearms officer has said could bring American-style gun-show problems to Canada.
The regulations would have required the sponsor of a gun show to notify local police and the chief firearms officer of the province before an event, and to ensure the security and safety of the location and the firearms.
The changes killed a set of rules that were introduced by the Liberals in 1998, but never came into force after years of consultations and deferrals.
The Canadian Press
© Copyright (c) The Ottawa Citizen
Read more: http://www.ottawacitizen.com/business/Canada+opens+Colombia+opportunities+automatic+weapons+sellers/7767835/story.html#ixzz2GuTQFa

Saunders: 870 million live in "chronic undernourishment"

The new famine is a crisis of undersupply
By Doug Saunders, Globe and Mail, December 22, 2012
By the most recent estimate of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, there are now 870 million people living in “chronic undernourishment.” Almost half of them are children, for whom hunger is deadly: A third of all child deaths are caused directly by malnourishment. Some 10 million people, mostly children, died of hunger in 2012.
This year has been a bad one: An abbreviated monsoon in India has left crops dying; poor rainfall in South America has slashed yields; soybean and grain output in Asia have been cut in half; a drought in the U.S. has dropped its corn reserves to a fifth of their normal level.

This has set international food prices soaring – 7 per cent higher than last year, and grain 12 per cent higher, close to the 2008 historic peak – and left even more people hungry.
How can this be? After all, it’s not as if people are becoming more vulnerable. The UN’s first Millennium Development Goal – to halve the number of people in the world living in absolute poverty by 2015 – was accomplished ahead of schedule, four years ago.
But the second half of that goal – to halve the number suffering from malnourishment by 2015 – is nowhere near being met. There are still millions of underweight children and weak adults, most of them in sub-Saharan Africa, Southeast Asia and some corners of the Indian subcontinent.
Is this a catastrophe of the sort that took place a generation ago, when mass famines in the 1950s, 1960s and early 1970s killed hundreds of thousands of people at a time? No. This time around, the cause is much simpler, and the solution much more readily at hand. We’re experiencing a basic crisis of undersupply: After three decades of worldwide food surpluses, starting in 2008, the world’s farms have not produced enough food to meet demand.
People no longer doubt, as they did 40 years ago, that the world is capable of producing enough food for all of humanity, even if our numbers grow to nine billion. We know it can, and we know how to make it happen. Farms in Africa and the Indian subcontinent – where the land is fertile and the growing season long – should be producing much more food than their European counterparts. Instead, India produces half as much per hectare, and Africa hardly anything. They could easily feed the world.
This isn’t hard to solve, and farmers know what’s needed: better transport and market infrastructure, new seeds engineered for their climates and needs, an end to subsidies and trade barriers, a shift from survival-based to commercial farming practices. And these things are being done (in part because farming is suddenly profitable), albeit too slowly. This decade may well be remembered as the unfortunate gap between the first Green Revolution (which ended mass famines and widespread Asian starvation in the 1970s) and the second (which is poised to make even bigger changes in Africa and Asia). Until supply catches up to demand, we have a crisis.
What stands in the way, this time as last time, is misunderstanding. Aid organizations in the West and governments in the developing world, motivated by myths of village tranquillity, pay people to stay rural rather than to consolidate their holdings and modernize their farming. Too many people believe, falsely, that a shift to commercial agriculture means a shift to big or exploitative farms, rather than more income for small farmers. We allow superstitions about engineered crops to become progress-blocking policies. We let meaningless middle-class fetishes for “organic” or “local” foods pollute the debate, when what’s needed is more protein, now.
Forty years ago, the same myths were popular. As the Nairobi-based crop researcher Alastair Orr writes in a new essay on the Green Revolution, there was a consensus among scientists and politicians in the 1970s and 1980s that the mass introduction of hybrid seeds and irrigation would benefit capitalists and destroy small farms, that expecting commercial farming to help the poor was “like expecting water to run uphill.”
That’s not what happened. Farms, he notes, became profitable but not big. Peasants benefited hugely from becoming productive farmers. Starvation became much less common. “The share of people living in poverty had fallen,” he writes. “Water was running uphill.”
Having more food is good for everyone. That simple idea, more than anything else, deserves a toast.

Minimal soap opera in Washington by micro-men

If anyone in the Capitol building thinks s/he has participated in some epic drama of reform legislation, by passing the "fiscal cliff" bill, they need to think again!
This is, to put it bluntly, the "least" they could do. With all the hype, and all the public wringing of hands and wailing of protests and gnashing of teeth, the mountain roared and produced a mouse.
Nothing was really done to cut spending; nothing was done to prevent the "debt ceiling" debacle that repeats like a sad and mournful 'riff' in a political tune that will never make it to the top 100.
There is a kind of adolescent and yes, "macho" irrelevance to so much of the talk coming from the House of Representatives mostly, and mostly from that body, from the Republican 'rump' that wants to hijack the government for the purposes of their exclusive funding agents, those rich barons whose cheques greased their election campaigns, and promise to repeat, should their limited, narrow and excessively selfish interests be enacted in legislation.

• No environmental protection
• No tax increases
• No reductions in pentagon spending
• No infrostructure projects, especially on green energy
• Cuts to social programs, directed at the most needy
• Cuts to Medicare and Medicaid

These together constitute a prescription for slow or no growth...just when the U.S. economy is creeping back from the hole the financial services sector, with Congressional help, created in 2008-9.
Next the Republicans can be expected to shout out for another military operation, in order to justify their addiction to the Pentagon's need for additional funds, linked not so incidentally to the military contracts that so support too many members of Congress back home.
War is not a "jobs-creation plan"!
War is not an "investment in infrastructure"!
War is not an investment in research and development!
War is, nothing more and nothing less than war!
And when the Pentagon is reduced to a size commensurate with the legitimate need for protection and for limited engagements, the rest of the budget cuts will be unnecessary.
Do you think such a perception can even penetrate the thick skulls in the Republican Party? Clearly not!

Catastrophizing demonstrates need for absolute control

There is something devastatingly distorting and self-aggrandizing, yet desparate, about the current debates in the U.S. Congress over the "fiscal cliff"...
First, it is not and never has been a sign of superior responsibility to argue for spending cuts as the highest priority of any family or organization, including the federal government. Appealing to fear, especially to the fears of a "worse-case-scenario" is one of the most irresponsible approaches to the solution of any problem. Used as a motivator, the "worse-case" scenario is merely a "nuclear bomb" of rhetoric that is used, too often with impunity, by those seeking absolute control. It is the people who start from such a position who are desperate to quiet their own fears and even their own terror, should they not be in control of whatever situation the community/family/government/church faces. And every time the "cliff" argument, or the desperate outcome as the most likely if the approach advocated by these intemperate voices is not adopted, is deployed, there is a not-so-covert insult of those who do not share their position. Anyone who cannot or will not comply with the spectre of the disaster we all face, if we do not "cut spending," or "stop eating" or "declare a moratorium" on whatever "they" argue is being over-deployed, is demonized as arrogant, short-sighted, narcissistic, a "liberal" or worse, stupid, by those whose conviction of their "disaster-based" rationale is so deep, profound and unshakeable that they hold to it as a matter of a cornerstone of their 'faith' in the correctness of their position.
I have seen the argument used in families, in churches, in schools and more recently in both the U.S. and Canadian governments, excessively, contemptuously and neurotically, by those whose self-perception includes membership in a 'higher order' of human being.
And of course, those of us liberals, are usually so disparate, so disorganized and so busy with other interests and pursuits, that no frontal counter-attack is offered, presumbably because there is a shared belief that such an attack would be counter-productive, given the granite quality of the other side's conviction.
It is true of the evangelical fundamentalist christians whose hard-core beliefs are held as "the word of God" as if they have privileged access to His mind, heart, spirit and vision. It is true of the treasurers in too many parishes whose parsimony and whose need for control is absolute, to the point of blindness to legitimate needs inside the church community, and more importantly in the church neighbourhood where people could easily be starving, without stirring even a glance from those frozen-cold treasurers.
It is true among too many accountants who have and continue to inflict their "values" on the many volunteer organizations whose prospects for enhanced fundraising have never interested or captivated their hollow imaginations, in order to insert some optimism into the usually moribund projects, made more so by the very "absolute parsimony" disguising the need of those accountants for absolute control.
It is true of the Tea Party, in the House of Representatives, whose capacity to take the longer view is aborted by their clinging to a position of scarcity, hopelessness and impending disaster, if their myopia does not become the accepted "wisdom" of the whole body. And, of course, united in their specific dysfunction of being imprisoned by their absolute need for absolute control, in whatever situation they find themselves participating in, they impose their "limits to growth" as a weapon of mass destruction.
No one can talk with them; no one can penetrate their holy yet hollow mind-set; no one can show them the narrowness and shortness, and tragedy of their insatiable need for control and perfection in the achievement of that need; and no one can provide legitimate options of nuance in an effort to loosen their grip on their own form of unreality, cloked as it is in sediment layers of both training and experience, based on little more than the fear of those who held similar positions in mostly different situations some time in the near or distant past.
Many of these people also have an insatiable appetite for seeking, holding and aggrandizing their "achievment" of positions of power. They would call it leadership and they would be just as out of touch with reality in that judgement as they are in their assessment of any situation requiring their absolute, and absolutely correct response.
They are a danger to every classroom in which they serve as instructor, to every family in which they serve as 'adult/parent', to every church in which they serve as leader, treasurer, priest, deacon or bishop (or pope), to every organzation in which they serve as a 'keeper of the purse' and in every government in which they serve as one of many members, elected or appointed.
And the next time I hear another of their many voices cry "catastrophe" I want someone nearby to shout out, "We have had it up to hear with your catastrophizing! And  we have stopped listening!"