THE MYTH OF CARBON CAPTURE AND STORAGE,

IT’S NOT CLEAN OR GREEN

Eugene Plawiuk,

5^th Class Certified Power Engineer

Last week Saskatchewan Power announced with much fanfare the first ever North American Carbon Capture and Sequestration or Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) project at Boundary Point Power Plant.

This coal fired power plant will capture carbon dioxide (CO2), hence the name carbon capture, compress it and place it in geological formations underground to be held infinitum. The federal government and provincial government of Saskatchewan touted this as great for the environment, for the climate, for Green House Gas (GHG) reduction and for creating some strange alchemical beast called clean coal.

I am afraid that like clean coal and other unicorns, Carbon Dioxide Capture and Storage have nothing to do with cleaning anything from the climate, to coal. In fact what most news reports, especially those from the home province, did not report the real reason for the creation of this vastly expensive, untested technology.

While reporting almost verbatim the talking points of Sask Power and the conservative provincial and federal politicians touting this project, the media overlooked one simple fact, dirty coal goes into the power plant, dirty coal is burned giving off toxic gases to create electricity for our homes there is nothing clean about it.

An extension on the exhaust towers and use of scrubber technology has been around a lot longer would also reduce toxic emissions and is cheaper. But utility companies have resisted these retrofits in the past, so why their sudden enthusiasm for the expensive greening of dirty coal fired power plants using Carbon Capture and Storage?

For oil, oil in the Bakken shield in Saskatchewan but more importantly for oil still insitu underground in conventional wells. And potentially in oilsands in Northern Saskatchewan and Alberta, and in heavy oil in the provinces southern city of  Lloydminister. In fact along with Saskatchewan and the federal government, Alberta too put money into these projects.

However this fact was hardly ever mentioned in the media boosters of this project, or if it was it was thought of en passant, as they say in chess. Perhaps a sentence or two three quarters down the page.

The headlines said nothing at all about oil, it was all about how this magical process still to be put on line and proven to work, would clean coal, scrub clean the climate and cost taxpayers billions. This is and will be the constant claim by the coal and oil industries and their backers in the government

The Alberta government in 2008 announced a whopping $2 Billion dollar investment fund for Carbon Capture and Storage technology development, supposedly for the oilsands industry to reduce its carbon footprint. It is this fund that invested in the Sask Power project that still exists and has yet to fund a single oilsands project around CCS technology.

Why, well because Carbon Capture and Storage, sounds great, doesn’t it, it rolls off the tongue of politicians especially right wing ones who promote business over the environment. Why would these folks who call opponents of dirty energy like coal and bitumen, radical environmentalists, eco terrorists, embrace a green anything.

Because it is not green, does not clean coal, and does nothing for climate change contrary to all claims made for it. It is about taking Carbon Dioxide (CO2) from coal emissions from power plants and then compressing it into a liquid pumping it through a pipeline and then pumping it into underground chambers full of fractures that absorb the carbon dioxide and hold it forever.

The story often stops here. What does the carbon dioxide displace underground?

Oil, the storage areas are oil fields that can no longer be tapped using conventional methods. Yet almost 60% of the oil remains making it viable for extraction by a variety of methods, including fracking as well as steam extraction such as done in the oilsands now.

Once the carbon dioxide is sequestered it displaces the oil pushing it to the surface along with some residual carbon dioxide. The rest remains underground; the residual CO2 that escapes with the oil to the surface is minimal according to several scientific studies.

And here is the point not a single scientific study, easily found by Googling Carbon Capture and Storage, says that this process is about doing anything other than being used to create what the industry calls Enhanced Oil Production (EOP) and in fact many industry and scientific  studies are entitled CCS for EOP.

Search Results

Summary of Carbon Dioxide Enhanced Oil Recovery

Is CO2 storage safe position paper - DNV

The most recent studies state that any so called green impacts are minimal, from reducing the impact on climate change to magically turning dirty coal clean. 

That is not its purpose never has been never will be. For the Alberta government the big lie they used was that Carbon Capture and Storage will reduce carbon emissions from the oilsands. And yet when oilsands researchers were offered money for CCS projects they all said no because it has nothing to do with oilsands or reducing their carbon footprint.

When coal powered utilities claim they are creating a cleaner form of energy and helping green the environment because they are capturing storing and pumping CO2 from coal into oil fields, well that’s more than a fib it’s a big lie.

The engineering and science behind CCS has always been part of the process of extracting oil from old fields. It was developed fifty years ago at the same time the oil industry was developing fracking and  steam extraction technologies. It was used with existing naturally occurring and some man made CO2. Eventually the natural sources of CO2 have disappeared and in order to extract more oil we would need to produce what the industry calls, ironically enough, ‘anthropogenic’ CO2, this man made CO2 can only be effectively made by coal fired power plants.

The coal, oil and utility companies and their allies in  engineering and scientific R&D in post secondary institutions and private industry have all known about the potential of this technology for half a century, why have they waited till now to develop it.

Because our conventional oil and gas reserves will be tapped out by 2020 in Alberta, Saskatchewan as well as in Europe and the US the conventional oil fields are drying up. They still contain lots of oil it’s just harder to get to.

Fracking is big right now and is being widely used in these fields as it has for fifty years, it is controversial because now it is being used for shale gas and oil fields, and currently CCS will not replace it because CCS is so expensive. But if CCS could be developed for use in conventional as well as shale oil fields and eventually even tar sands then it becomes more cost effective.

How does old King Coal the oldest of our fossil energies, benefit from this, after all oil and gas are its competitors. It’s about keeping the existing coal fired power plants working rather than replacing them with natural gas fired ones, or nuclear powered ones.

While Canada, the US and Europe are reducing the use of coal fired plants they are increasingly being used in India, China and the BRICS where they have produced a Fordist manufacturing economy of coal, steel, cars.

The potential for this technology is that it will be needed in the future for use on EOP fields, and it can benefit countries that want to reduce their emissions, while still using coal. It’s a win-win-win except for the environment, and you and me.

The environmental concerns we have with fossil fuel use both coal and oil, will not be addressed by CCS. But you and I will be told it will be because we are paying for it.

The industry has not developed CCS for EOP because it is too costly, so who better to pay for it than you and I, the taxpayers of Canada, Alberta and Saskatchewan.

Billions of tax dollars as credits, loans, subsidies, research and development grants, university funding for CCS projects etc all this has not cost the coal or oil industries a penny. But it is costing us.

In order to sell us on this waste of money, doing nothing for the environment while investing in more oil production, business, lobbyists, politicians, oil, gas and coal spokespeople and their  paid  scientific talking heads do not deny this is for Enhanced Oil Recovery, its just that they talk about Clean Coal and Green Energy and stopping Climate Change more. The benefits they tout are the same as those for the Emperors clothes.

It is the ultimate in Green Washing, the advertising campaign to make things appear healthy and good for you when they aren’t. It’s a way of directing more taxpayer money to the already ludicrously wealthy energy industry.

It is also good for right wing politicians to pretend to be doing something for the climate and environment in a single sound bite Carbon Capture and Storage sounds so Green until you finish the sentence; ‘for Enhanced Oil Production’.

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Olivia Chow for Mayor

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THE STRANGE CASE OF THE MISSING TERRORIST SCIENTISTS IN THE NEWS

In April of this year the RCMP announced that they had uncovered a bio-terrorist threat involving two Canadian scientists working for the innocuous sounding: Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA). The agency itself had been in the news lately due to regulatory failures leading to a number of food poisoning cases from bacterial outbreaks in a packing plant in Alberta.

The two CFIA scientists were busted for attempting to sell Brucellis virus to China. In fact one of the scientists, herself Chinese, had gotten away to China.1 They were under investigation for two years when it became known that they were trying to commercialize the bacteria they had developed with CFIA. 3

Last October 24, RCMP and Ottawa police intercepted Nielsen, a well-respected scientist, on his way to the Ottawa airport. Officers found 17 vials of pathogens in Nielsen’s possession that “he was attempting to export in an unsafe manner.“These vials were analyzed by the PHAC and found to contain live brucella bacteria that can infect livestock and humans.”
University of Guelph Prof. Keith Warriner said humans who come in contact with the bacteria can develop flu-like symptoms “that go on and on for months and months.” Warriner told CTV’s Power Play Wednesday that brucella is what is known as a select agent, because it is “very nasty” and highly contagious.

This bacteria is common in domesticated animals, mammals in general and can impact human health. it was also the first bacteria to become weaponized in 1954 by the US army.2

"Three types of the bacteria that cause brucellosis – Brucella abortus, Brucella melitensis andBrucella suis – are designated as select agents. This means that they have the potential to be developed as bioterrorism agents due to their ability to undergo aerosolization."     Center for Disease Control 

So we have a case where a world renowned specialist in the field of burcellosis, Dr. Nielsen  is busted for trying to smuggle weaponized potential bacteria out of Canada with his research partner in order to sell it to China.

Nielsen had been a seasoned researcher of the bacteria and was part of a team scientists that won a CFIA Technology Transfer Award in 2003 for developing a 15-second test for detecting brucellosis in cattle, the disease caused by brucella.
He is set to appear in a Canadian court on April 17, while Yu, a resident of Ottawa, is believed to be in hiding in China. Local police declined to confirm if extradition would be an option if Yu is apprehended overseas.

Now you would think this would be front page news; "Bio Terrorists Busted In Canada.", but it wasn't. In fact after barely a week in the press, as various news agencies picked up the story and repeated it in the inside pages, the story disappeared from the press. 

It is now three months later and there is no mention of these two lab coated terrorists in the Canadian press. Yet the press and the government have made a big deal over home grown terrorists, including the two complete losers who were set up for the alleged Canada Day bombing,  including this recent timeline by CBC which fails to include Nielsen and Yu.

In fact the RCMP charges themselves underplayed the importance of this as bio-terrorism, instead charging them with crimes around intellectual property. Nielsen was carrying 17 highly toxic vials of bacteria on himself, he was going to get on a plane, he was busted in a busy national airport. Had those vials broken or otherwise released their contents who knows what kind of serious bacteriological outbreak could have occurred. 

Backed up by its clandestine laboratory response team, the Ottawa Fire Services hazmat response team, and Ottawa Police Service first responders, RCMP "intercepted" Nielsen on Oct. 24. According to Rollings, Nielsen at the time was on his way to Ottawa's airport and was scheduled to leave Canada for China.
Upon arresting and searching Nielsen, RCMP said, they found in his possession 17 vials of pathogens which they allege he was "attempting to export in an unsafe manner." PHAC later analyzed the vials and found them to contain live brucellabacteria. Nielsen was then arrested for breach of trust and for "unsafe transportation of a human pathogen."

The other problem with this story has been the delay in releasing information, Dr. Nielsen was busted last October, yet the RCMP did not release any information about this until shortly before he was to go to trial April 17. Meanwhile his fellow accessory and partner had apparently gotten away to China. The investigation itself had been going on for two years. 

Now compare that with the instantaneous news about the Canada Day bombing plan, a bombing that never occurred, ( if it ever was even a real threat, it has all the makings of a  false flag operation) yet the B.C. couple busted for this were in the news for weeks, and still are in the news. Not so our two CFIA scientists.

Is it because of the lab coats? If you are a scientist does that make you special? Clearly in this case it does. First there is the fact that the charges do NOT explicitly deal with bio-terrorism,  or terrorism at all, they have to do with commercial property and breach of safety. 

Yet clearly this was a bacteria that could be weaponized. It was being sold to a foreign country in violation of the criminal code section on Treason.4  That's right the actions taken by Dr. Nielsen and his partner, could be construed as treason, let alone more serious charges around bio-terrorism, than what they have been charged with.

Is it because this had to do with China rather than AL-Qaeda? And while Chinese corporate or state espionage may be involved, that seems to have been deemed less of threat to Canada than supposed Al-Qaeda sympathizers, actually no proof of this allegation ever surfaced after it was made by the RCMP,  who lived in a hovel in B.C. and planed to supposedly make pressure cooker bombs, 

Is it because the media can't make an issue of two scientists being home grown 'Muslim' terrorists, because they aren't.

While the media went into great detail about the lives of the B.C, couple, no such story ran about Dr. Nielsen and his female Chinese assistant. Were they more than just lab partners?

Why would he risk his entire career? Was it  for love? How did she get away, was she a plant, did she seduce him as is common in spying. No research, no details were ever released. Go ahead Google it, nothing, zip, nada, all you can find about her is the story in press about the bust.

University of Montreal professor Christian Baron says he and his colleagues are wondering why Nielsen would take the risk of transporting such a readily available bacteria on a plane.
“Brucella is actually a bigger problem in Chinese agriculture than here [in Canada],” said Baron, who is the director of the university’s biochemistry department.
“I really don’t see what the reason would have been.”
The Chinese could easily have found their own bacteria in cattle that are widely infected with the disease in their own country, he sai

Now this is more than just lazy journalism, this is a media blackout it is also being downplayed by the RCMP and the Government.  Why? Because of Harper's new friendly relationship with China? Because this is another embarrassment surrounding the  CFIA?

Perhaps. But I believe it's because it's about commercialization of public research, the privatization and  selling of public research as intellectual property, something that the neo-liberals have been promoting and continue to promote for universities and other science and research facilities. it is that dark murky world of scientific research paid for by you and me but profiting others, the scientists and their pharmaceutical company allies and sponsors.

This story cries out for in depth coverage, it has all the elements of an espionage thriller, the potential to expose foreign spying in Canada and corporate espionage ala the Constant Gardner, and yet it has effectively disappeared from the news.

FOOTNOTES

1. RCMP intercepts dangerous pathogens from being exported out of the Country

OTTAWA – April 3, 2013 – The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) has charged Dr. Klaus Nielsen and Ms. Wei Ling Yu, both former researchers with the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA), with Breach of Trust by a Public Officer. These charges stem from a criminal investigation called Project SENTIMENTAL, which was completed with the assistance of the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) and the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade.

The matter was originally reported to the RCMP by the CFIA in March 2011. The investigation focused on Dr. Nielsen and Ms. Yu’s unlawful efforts to commercialize intellectual property belonging to the CFIA and a private commercial partner. 

On October 24, 2012, the RCMP with the assistance of the Ottawa Police Service (OPS) first responders intercepted Dr. Nielsen as he was heading to the Ottawa airport.  The RCMP’s Clandestine Laboratory Response Team, accompanied by the Ottawa Fire Services Hazardous Materials Response Team, arrested and searched Dr. Nielsen.  In his possession, Dr. Nielsen had 17 vials of pathogens he was attempting to export in an unsafe manner.  These vials were analyzed by the PHAC and found to contain live brucella bacteria that can infect livestock and humans.   Dr. Nielsen was arrested for Breach of Trust by a Public Officer and the unsafe transportation of a human pathogen. 

This complex investigation drew on resources from a variety of federal departments, law enforcement agencies and first responders. The RCMP, in collaboration with their partners, were able to quickly and efficiently mobilize and respond to this threat which helped minimize the public’s risk of exposure to these contagious substances.

Dr. Nielsen faces one charge under the Criminal Code and several under the Export and Import Permits Act, the Transportation of Dangerous Goods Act and the Human Pathogens and Toxins Act. His next court appearance is scheduled on April 17, 2013 in Ottawa.

A Canada wide warrant has been issued for Ms. Yu.

-30-

2 Biological warfare[edit]

In 1954, B. suis became the first agent weaponized by the United States at its Pine Bluff Arsenal near Pine Bluff, Arkansas. Brucella species survive well in aerosols and resist drying. Brucella and all other remaining biological weapons in the U.S. arsenal were destroyed in 1971–72 when the Americam offensive biological warfare (BW) program was discontinued by order of President Richard Nixon.^[6]

The experimental American bacteriological warware program focused on three agents of the Brucella group:

• Porcine Brucellosis (Agent US)
• Bovine Brucellosis (Agent AB)
• Caprine Brucellosis (Agent AM)

"Agent US" was in advanced development by the end of World War II. When the U.S. Army Air Forces (USAAF) wanted a biological warfare capability, the Chemical Corps offered "Agent US" in the M114 bomblet, based on the four-pound bursting bomblet that was developed for spreading anthrax during World War II. Though the capability was developed, operational testing indicated that the weapon was less than desirable, and the USAAF designed it as an interim capability until it could replaced by a more effective biological weapon.

The main drawbacks of the M114 with "Agent US" was that it was an incapacitating agent, whereas the administration of the USAAF wanted deadly weapons. Also the stability under storange was too low to allow for storing at forward air bases, and the logistical requirements to neutralize a target were far higher than originally planned. This would have required an unreasonable amount of logistical support.

Agents US and AB had a median infective dose of 500 organisms/person, and for Agent AM it was 300 organisms/person. The time-of-incubation was believed to be about two weeks, with a duration of infection of several months. The lethality estimate was based on epidemiological information at one to two percent. Agent AM was believed to be a more virulent disease, and a fatality rate of three percent was expected.

3 SEROLOGICAL DIAGNOSIS OF BRUCELLOSIS 

Nielsen K., Yu WL. 

Ottawa Laboratories (Fallowfield), Canadian Food Inspection Agency, 

Nepean, Ontario, Canada 

Review of Detection of Brucella sp. by Polymerase Chain Reaction

Wei Ling Yu and Klaus Nielsen

4. Treason - The Canadian Encyclopedia

 discloses, without lawful authority, military or scientific material to agents of a foreign state, if he or she knows or should know that the material may be used to impair Canada's safety or defence, 

Climate Change and Super Bugs

It appears that climate change/global warming is causing an outbreak of opportunistic infectious diseases from microbes, bacteria and fungi. Traveling with the dust clouds raised by desertification and air pollution, they rain down on us and begin to take up residence in our built environment.. The dangers of these infectious bacteria and fungi is that they collect in the indoor environment and are adapting. 

The result is increasing outbreaks of super bugs, fed by over use of antibiotics as well as improper disinfection. They originate in the dust clouds produced by industrial pollution, these clouds of dust rise into the higher earth atmosphere where bacterial and fungal microbes  collect and continue to mutate. These dust clouds return to earth to spread new mutated microbes into the air we breath. 

The super-bugs continue to mutate as they build resistance to antibiotics and disinfectants. I will go into more detail on this problem in a later blog post.

In the study below  Cryptococcus is a form of fungi that is mutating as a result of living in the earth atmosphere in dust clouds.

Unlike diseases transmitted strictly via an animal vector or from person-to-person, the ubiquity of opportunistic pathogens like Cryptococcus presents a new and daunting set of challenges for scientists and medical professionals. Any organism small enough to be lifted into the air has the potential to achieve a cosmopolitan distribution, provided it can survive where it lands. In the cool climates of a temperate zone, untold numbers of potentially pathogenic bacteria and fungi may subsist—but fail to thrive—just below the level of detection. Microbial ecologists have a saying for this: Everything is everywhere, but the environment selects.

Biologists now recognize that this dogma is only partly true, particularly in the face of Earth's warming climate. For example, over 50% of Kazakhstan's croplands have been sucked dry, while the Sahara expands into Nigeria and Ghana at a rate of 3,500 km2 per year. This global process of desertification is increasing the number of dust storms that ferry microbes across continents and oceans.

Meanwhile, in the temperate zone, rising temperatures have rendered some regions more hospitable to colonization by microbial hitchhikers arriving on soils from tropical climes. This new fungal strain cropping up in people and other animals with healthy immune systems may have been a new arrival to Vancouver Island, or it may have always been tucked away in some hidden valley for many years, until one balmy summer triggered its unfortunate bloom. And there are hints that it is steadily furthering its progress. "The question we've been asking over the last 10 years," Hoang says, "Is it going to get to the mainland and will it spread across the Pacific Northwest?"

A key moment in aeromicrobiology, or the study of airborne microbes, came in 1933, when Fred Meier of the US Department of Agriculture convinced Charles Lindberg to collect samples during an arctic flight from Maine to Denmark. Upon finding everything from fungal spores to algae and diatoms, Meier wrote, "the potentialities of world-wide distribution of spores of fungi and other organisms caught up and carried abroad by transcontinental winds may be of tremendous consequence."

We now know that particles of dust, organic matter, and aerosolized water droplets support hardy communities of bacteria, fungi, and viruses—a mere 0.08% of which have ever been cultured.Some 10,000 bacteria are present in every gram of airborne sediment, and the atmosphere contains at least one billion metric tons of dust.That translates to a quintillion dust-borne bacteria—enough, according to Dale Griffin of the USDA office in St. Petersburg, Fla., "to form a microbial bridge between Earth and Jupiter."

Over the course of five days in 2001, NASA tracked a large dust cloud that originated in the Gobi Desert as it moved east across the Pacific, North America, and the Atlantic, before petering out over Europe. Frequently, during African dust storms, a smoke-like strand is visible in satellite photos swirling off the continent, and looming over Italy, Spain, and southern France.

One of the most surprising new findings about airborne microbes is that far from being passive passengers of the wind, some are truly adapted to life in the mesosphere—70 km above the earth's surface—where they must constantly repair their DNA following bombardment by direct UV radiation. Or take a 2008 study that found that airborne microbes haunting Singapore shopping malls are not a random sample of what's outside, but are specialized for survival in the indoor air environment.

SEE:

Boreno is Burning

Capitalism Creates Global Warming

My Return To Blogging

I have updated the look of the blog thanks to the new template designs that are now available, one of the reasons I have not been updating my blog, was the clumsy design I made years ago and had to live with. 

So now that I am home with tales to tell and analysis and articles to write. 

Pithy commenting on Facebook is not enough, I have longer analysis and comments to make which blogging allows me to do.

So for the moment let me say that starting now, the summer of 2013, I am returning to blogging.

You have been warned. 

Jack Layton 1950-2011

Jack Layton passed away today. He fought the good fight politically as well as against cancer. His final letter to Canadians should inspire us all to continue that fight in these dark days. To send condolences go to http://www.ndp.ca/home

A letter to Canadians from the Honourable Jack Layton

August 20, 2011
Toronto, Ontario

Dear Friends,

Tens of thousands of Canadians have written to me in recent weeks to wish me well. I want to thank each and every one of you for your thoughtful, inspiring and often beautiful notes, cards and gifts. Your spirit and love have lit up my home, my spirit, and my determination.

Unfortunately my treatment has not worked out as I hoped. So I am giving this letter to my partner Olivia to share with you in the circumstance in which I cannot continue.

I recommend that Hull-Aylmer MP Nycole Turmel continue her work as our interim leader until a permanent successor is elected.

I recommend the party hold a leadership vote as early as possible in the New Year, on approximately the same timelines as in 2003, so that our new leader has ample time to reconsolidate our team, renew our party and our program, and move forward towards the next election.

A few additional thoughts:

To other Canadians who are on journeys to defeat cancer and to live their lives, I say this: please don’t be discouraged that my own journey hasn’t gone as well as I had hoped. You must not lose your own hope. Treatments and therapies have never been better in the face of this disease. You have every reason to be optimistic, determined, and focused on the future. My only other advice is to cherish every moment with those you love at every stage of your journey, as I have done this summer.

To the members of my party: we’ve done remarkable things together in the past eight years. It has been a privilege to lead the New Democratic Party and I am most grateful for your confidence, your support, and the endless hours of volunteer commitment you have devoted to our cause. There will be those who will try to persuade you to give up our cause. But that cause is much bigger than any one leader. Answer them by recommitting with energy and determination to our work. Remember our proud history of social justice, universal health care, public pensions and making sure no one is left behind. Let’s continue to move forward. Let’s demonstrate in everything we do in the four years before us that we are ready to serve our beloved Canada as its next government.

To the members of our parliamentary caucus: I have been privileged to work with each and every one of you. Our caucus meetings were always the highlight of my week. It has been my role to ask a great deal from you. And now I am going to do so again. Canadians will be closely watching you in the months to come. Colleagues, I know you will make the tens of thousands of members of our party proud of you by demonstrating the same seamless teamwork and solidarity that has earned us the confidence of millions of Canadians in the recent election.

To my fellow Quebecers: On May 2nd, you made an historic decision. You decided that the way to replace Canada’s Conservative federal government with something better was by working together in partnership with progressive-minded Canadians across the country. You made the right decision then; it is still the right decision today; and it will be the right decision right through to the next election, when we will succeed, together. You have elected a superb team of New Democrats to Parliament. They are going to be doing remarkable things in the years to come to make this country better for us all.

To young Canadians: All my life I have worked to make things better. Hope and optimism have defined my political career, and I continue to be hopeful and optimistic about Canada. Young people have been a great source of inspiration for me. I have met and talked with so many of you about your dreams, your frustrations, and your ideas for change. More and more, you are engaging in politics because you want to change things for the better. Many of you have placed your trust in our party. As my time in political life draws to a close I want to share with you my belief in your power to change this country and this world. There are great challenges before you, from the overwhelming nature of climate change to the unfairness of an economy that excludes so many from our collective wealth, and the changes necessary to build a more inclusive and generous Canada. I believe in you. Your energy, your vision, your passion for justice are exactly what this country needs today. You need to be at the heart of our economy, our political life, and our plans for the present and the future.

And finally, to all Canadians: Canada is a great country, one of the hopes of the world. We can be a better one – a country of greater equality, justice, and opportunity. We can build a prosperous economy and a society that shares its benefits more fairly. We can look after our seniors. We can offer better futures for our children. We can do our part to save the world’s environment. We can restore our good name in the world. We can do all of these things because we finally have a party system at the national level where there are real choices; where your vote matters; where working for change can actually bring about change. In the months and years to come, New Democrats will put a compelling new alternative to you. My colleagues in our party are an impressive, committed team. Give them a careful hearing; consider the alternatives; and consider that we can be a better, fairer, more equal country by working together. Don’t let them tell you it can’t be done.

My friends, love is better than anger. Hope is better than fear. Optimism is better than despair. So let us be loving, hopeful and optimistic. And we’ll change the world.

All my very best,

Jack Layton

Consumption Crisis

Remember after 9/11 G W Bush told America that the best thing to do was to go shopping? America listened and now faces the consequences of this disasterous neo-con advice.

Shop for victory. Buy for Bush and Blair. What to get? Big, expensive stuff, clearly, now that Vigilance rather than Prudence stalks the Treasury, and the £2.2 billion contingency reserve has largely gone on fighting foot and mouth and other pre-Taliban adversaries. But conspicuous spending seems obscene when the first flurries of war begin and when Afghan refugees eat grass or weeds.

Through out the eighties and ninties as the neo-con agenda took over governments around the world those proclaiming the new rights agenda continually promoted globalization reminding us that the advanced industrialized capitalist countries were now transfroming from fordist manufacturing economies to service industries. No longer were we to be workers, we were consumers. Others would work for us. With the great crash of 2008 the chickens have come home to roost for that bankrupt ideology.

Furthermore the ideology of the neo-cons was that we should no longer be renters but owners. Thatcher began the transformation in England, with the selling off of row housing to those who rented.

In America the ideology of home ownership began with Clinton and continued under Bush. Congress pushed the idea of homeownership as self reliance and responsibility. It conincided with both Thatchers push and Clintons push to adopt the neo-con agenda of work for welfare. They go hand in hand.

Of course during this past presidential election republicans and right wing commentators focused on this push for homeownership and lowering the mortgage credit limits as being for African Americans. Forgetting that most working poor could not afford thier own homes without a more liberal mortgange scheme.

However all this is moot. The reason for America's economic collapse is twenty years of promoting credit based consumption. Unemployment and corporate restructuring has been continous since the eighties. Offshoring and contracting out, privatization of public services, all the practices of the neo-con agenda have resulted in a growth in credit and consumption and a decline in manufacturing production.

The result was the ultimate in credit crunch economics; the war in Iraq.

The Irrelevance of Protests

As I have said in the past mass demonstrations would not be violent if armed police, riot cops and Swat units were not present. But of course then they would be a carnival that resulted in nothing much than another day out in public solidarity. The FT has a satirical look at the recent protests in the UK against the Cameron Austerity measures and attacks on the public sector unions.

The point is well made, however a real difference is not that violence attracts more attention, as the writer implies, but rather what is a more effective form of resistance to state sanctioned measures we oppose.

Union and Civil Society/NGO endorsed marches, end up being a call to vote out the bastards, which neither challenges the system nor the institutional form of politics.

What does work is mass occupations of the legislature, as occurred in Alberta in the nineties during the attacks on medicare, and the recent occupation of the Wisconsin legislature. But they need then to be followed up with the Mass Strike, of workers and citizens. As we have seen in Egypt.

For it does seem a basic rule of modern British democracy that if you are marching against something you’ve already lost. Parading one’s discontent through London is the political equivalent of a fly bashing its head against a window pane. Of course there’s a terrific sense of community on a march – 250,000 flies with the same headache; it’s hugely empowering. But short of handing out placards with slogans such as “Mildly Miffed” or “I’m so angry I walked peacefully through London”, it is hard to imagine what more the protesters could have done to signal their acceptance of defeat.

It’s irresponsible to admit it, but this kind of peaceful protest is pointless. The system has all the shock absorbers necessary to handle a law-abiding demonstration. The next day ministers were already clear they would ignore the entire event, while insisting that they would be happy to discuss the issues with marchers, though sadly not over tea at Fortnum’s as it seems to be attracting the wrong sort these days.

It’s not that I’m advocating violence and disorder, just dispassionately noting that in Britain it is more effective. What last weekend’s thugs grasped is that ministers can’t ignore anarchists daubing the Cenotaph and bringing a bit of havoc to the capital. Once or twice they might be able to turn on the rioters, but not if it keeps happening. There’s nothing like stoking voters’ fears about the rule of law and the fabric of society to get the government’s attention.

You have to think of this in management terms. On key deliverables peaceful marching just doesn’t cut it. It’s all inputs and no outputs. But violent protest can be measured on key performance indicators. How many shops did you smash up? What percentage were banks? Did you manage to scare the Duchess of Cornwall? I’m sorry Dave; you are below target; do you want to nip over the road and vandalise that RBS?”

Plawiuk for Premier

As I announced on Facebook this morning
Eugene Plawiuk announced today that he is throwing his hat into the ring for leader of the Alberta Progressive Conservative party...."I am the only progressive in the race" he said, "the rest are Conservatives" His hat did not comment....

Meet the new boss Same as the old boss

Well that didn't take long, did it.

Human Rights Watch denounces Egypt's ban on strikes and protests

Strike ban plan is a 'betrayal'

The International Trade Union Confederation has branded a plan to outlaw strikes by Egypt's military government "a betrayal of the revolution." It demanded on Tuesday that Prime Minister Essam Sharaf scrap the proposed decree.

Egypt urged to scrap draft law outlawing protests and strikes

Last week’s decision by Egypt’s military rulers to criminalize the kind of protests and strikes that drove Hosni Mubarak from office makes one wonder whether that country has just experienced a democratic revolution, or a military coup that rode into power on the coattails of the popular uprising.

The new anti-strike law does not prohibit strikes and protests, Minister of Justice Ahmed El-Guindy told a press conference today.

“We as a government believe in the right to protest as long as it does not disrupt work, cause chaos and are held through legitimate channels,” El-Gunidy said in the press conference held at the cabinet offices.

El-Guindy added that he wants to “assure” Egyptians that they still have the right to protest. He said that the ministry has noticed that chaos broke out during recent protests and strikes and that they ask the Egyptian youth to help stop some of the strikes, which are ignited by members of the old regime.

Since the law was approved by the cabinet last Wednesday, nationwide protests have broken out against a law that many believe violates the values of the January 25 Revolution. The Egyptian Federation of Independent Trade Unions has organized a march for later today from the Journalists Syndicate to the cabinet offices in protest at the law.

Political groups and activists are angry about the law which bans strikes, protests, demonstrations and sit-ins which interrupt private or state-owned businesses and carry a maximum sentence of one year in prison with fines of up to LE500, 000 to anyone who calls for or incites these actions.

Many have claimed that the law violates all the values of the January 25 revolution, in which the right to freedom of expression was one of the core demands.

Another protest is to be organised in front of the Radio and TV headquarters in Maspero, in what protesters dubbed as the ‘Friday of Cleansing.” They are demanding that all media personalities loyal to the old regime be removed. Already three were arrested this morning in front of the building.

Protesters are also showing their solidarity with students from the Faculty of Mass Communications at Cairo University, who have been protesting for two weeks demanding that Sami Abdel Aziz, dean of the faculty, steps down because of his ties to the former ruling National Democratic Party.

On Wednesday evening military police stormed the university's grounds and forcibly dispersed the protesters and arrested and beat several students.

On the Facebook page of the Revolution Youth Coalition, the group announced that this protest will be to voice their anger over “the military police storming of the Cairo University campus, cutting off the electricity from the mass communication students, the physical attacks on students, their professors and those who joined their protests, and the use of electric batons to beat them and throw them out of their own university”.

The coalition added that “the Egyptian people have sacrificed many martyrs to get rid of Mubarak’s repressive regime and they are ready to sacrifice again if their freedom is taken away from them once more.”

Egypt

Protesters took to Egypt's streets in January, demanding the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak. Mubarak supporters clashed with demonstrators in Tahrir Square, which became the focal point of protests in the capital, Cairo. More than 300 protesters were killed in the uprising. Although Mubarak pledged not to run again, fired his government and appointed a vice president for the first time in his three decades of rule, the protests intensified until Vice President Omar Suleiman announced that the president had handed over power to the military.

Protesters have continued to demand that the military rulers carry out reforms. On March 19, Egyptians voted in favor of constitutional changes that include limiting how long presidents can serve and determining who can run for office. However, many opposition leaders said the vote was rushed. The military government has said it will lift the country's three-decades-old state of emergency before parliamentary elections scheduled for September. Presidential elections are slated to be held by November at the latest. Bloggers and activists have called for 1 million Egyptians to gather in Tahrir Square on April 1.

Wont Get Fooled Again