Monday, October 15, 2007

Policing Mental Illness

Once again we have incompetent untrained police dealing with folks who suffer from mental illness. The result is nearly always tragic. This is apparently becoming more of a problem as folks travel by air, in airports which are now modeled on old style State Security Gulags.

Vancouver RCMP uses Taser and kills man at Vancouver Airport


And this brings up again the dangers of tasers which can be another form of lethal force despite claims to the contrary.


Don’t Faze Me, Bro? Taser Business Rolls

OC inmate dies after being struck by Taser gun
A 28-year-old transient incarcerated at Orange County Jail for drinking in public has died after being subdued with a stun gun, authorities said Saturday.

"He was scheduled to be released today," said Damon Micalizzi, a spokesman for the Orange County Sheriff's Department. The man's name was withheld pending notification of relatives.

The death was the county's second associated with a Taser gun in a little more than a month.

Officer injured in Taser demonstration

A police officer in the US who volunteered to be the subject of a Taser demonstration has suffered possibly lasting damage, including spine fractures after receiving a five-second discharge, according to a respected medical journal.

The 38-year-old victim was rushed by ambulance to hospital where a scan showed he suffered compression fractures in his spine caused by muscle spasms triggered by being Tasered in a training class.

Nine weeks after his injury he has continued to report significant pain.

Student shocked by school officer's Taser

Did a local school district police officer go too far by shocking an unruly student with a Taser? Some Katy ISD parents are sounding off.

Taser-happy?

The problem is a mind-set that excuses stun-gun abuse

Police Tasers, or stun guns, are the common denominator in a growing list of questionable, sometimes outrageous, incidents of police violence on individuals who appear to pose little danger, and on whom, in the same situations, the police would never take out a gun.

The case of David Shea (see box at right), whom Volusia County Sheriff's deputies Tased repeatedly, in his home, is just one such incident. The case of the University of Florida student who was Tased during a town-hall meeting last month is another. The case of a Flagler County special education student Tased for refusing to leave a classroom last year is another. The list quickly grows long. So does the list of names of victims, now longer than 200, who died when electrocuted by Tasers. The company that makes the guns, and the police agencies that use them, insist the weapons are nonlethal, that the deaths are the result of other causes -- drugs in the victims' systems, for example.


A lesson learnt from Gotbaum case – do not travel by air unless you have to and never lose your patience because they can do anything they like

Commentary: Lacking Mechanisms to Deal With the Mentally Ill

I couldn’t help being shaken by the “accidental death” of Carol Ann Gotbaum, in a holding cell at a Phoenix airport. From what I can gather, she acted in an erratic and irate manner, a similar manner to a mentally ill person in crisis. It brought back memories of friends and acquaintances who are mentally ill and who died either while being restrained or in some other way because of the illness.

It is a universal story that goes along with mental illness that police or other authorities often treat an ill person roughly, and sometimes in a humiliating or even dangerous manner. I have heard a story of a young man in custody who died in the transport van due to overheating. I can remember three other mentally ill who died of a heart attack, either because of their psychotic episode or because of the health problems associated with their medication. I know of several others who committed suicide. Mentally ill people have died while tied down on a four-point restraint table; repeated checking is legally required in California to prevent this. It doesn’t always work.

TOO MUCH DEADLY FORCE?

ANOTHER POLICE SHOOTING FATALITY - AND THE SAME QUESTIONS REMAIN

ONLY A FEW people know what really happened Monday inside Ronald Timbers' home in Crescentville.

And one of them is dead.

Did Timbers, 15, pose such a threat to police and his mother that police had to shoot him in the chest and kill him? Did they try to talk him down and de-escalate the situation? Was he shot at the top of the stairs while holding a clothes iron, or when he charged down the steps toward the police, the iron held over his head like a weapon?

Man shot by police after Aug. chase dies

L.A. police shoot, kill mentally ill man


SEE

Cops and Tasers

Ban Tasers

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This Is Better Than Rent Controls?

Instead of accepting the Government appointed Public Panel on Affordable Housing recommendation that the province introduce rent controls, the government instead did what it loves to do; create a subsidization fund. And as usual with the these kind of Tory schemes this of course was so loosy goosey that it was open to abuse. Not by the users but by the bureaucrats in charge.

And while the internal audit by the department found no fraud, which is irrelevant, what they found was business as usual in this Tired Old Tory government.

And note that the average payment made was $827 dollars while provincial average rental rates are over $1000 per month for a one bedroom apartment. Not only a drop in the proverbial bucket, but less than what is needed for one months rent. And for the rest of the eleven months of they year......nothing. And this is better than rent controls, ha, ha!

Nearly three-in-10 claims granted from a fund to help stave off homelessness were improperly approved -- but no fraud has been found, a provincial audit has concluded.

An internal investigation into the $7-million fund -- which is expected to balloon to $21 million by the end of the year -- found more than $60,000 of the nearly $200,000 put under the microscope was handed out without proper checks and balances.


The Government of Alberta, through Municipal Affairs and Housing, introduced

the Homeless and Eviction Prevention Fund (HEPF) in response to the
recommendations of the Alberta Affordable Housing Task Force. Alberta
Employment Immigration and Industry (AEII) began delivering the program on
May 11, 2007. The program is designed to assist Albertans at risk of losing their
homes due to rent increases and to assist those who require assistance in
establishing a residence.

On July 17, 2007 Global News aired a story alleging that the HEPF was being
abused by individuals presenting inadequate and fraudulent documentation for
rent increases, eviction notices, and utility arrears, and that AEII staff were not
taking sufficient steps to verify the authenticity of the claims. On July 18, 2007,
Minister Evans asked the department’s internal auditors to undertake a review of
the administration of the fund to ensure accountability for the program’s
procedures.

2. Program Description
The Homeless and Eviction Prevention Fund (HEPF) is designed to assist
Albertans with limited resources who are at risk of losing their homes due to rent
increases and to assist those who require assistance in establishing a residence.
The authority to determine eligibility and to provide benefits under the HEPF is
provided under the Income Supports, Health and Training Benefits Regulation.Review the administration of the HEP Fund to ensure compliance with
program directives, policies, and procedures regarding client’s eligibility and
entitlements.

During this period, payments from the HEP Fund totalled $4,866,406 for 5,880 clients for an average of $827 per client


Of the 239 files reviewed from all regions of the province, 171 files (72%) were
processed in accordance with program directives, policies, and procedures. The
documentation (eviction notices, tenancy agreements, notices of arrears, clients’
bank statements, etc.) in these files and staff comments entered into LISA were
sufficiently detailed to support the HEP Fund benefits issued.

In the remaining 68 files the following observations were noted:

• There were 51 files, totalling $50,462 where there was incomplete
documentation detailing the client’s situation for the auditor to confirm that the
client qualified for benefits from the HEP Fund.

• There were 14 files where benefits issued from the HEP Fund were incorrectly
determined resulting in overpayments totalling $6,357. Included in this group
was one case where $3,923 (62% of total overpayments) was incorrectly issued
to cover mortgage arrears. This occurred within 10 days of the start of the
program which suggests the worker may have inadvertently applied the
Income Support policy which allows shelter benefits to be applied to mortgage
arrears.

• Three files totalling $5525 were identified by the audit team for supervisor
review and possible referral to the Investigation and Review Branch. It was
noted that two other files ($2524) of the 171 files processed correctly had
already been referred to the Investigation and Review Branch prior to the
commencement of the audit.


See

The Autumn Of Our Discontent

Transparency Alberta Style

Pay 'Em What They Want

And New York Has Rent Controls

Stelmach Blames Eastern Bums

He Can't Manage

Drumheller Bell Weather

Stelmach Tanks

Alberta Deja Vu

Padrone Me Is This Alberta

Income Trusts

Housing


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The Autumn Of Our Discontent


It appears that the Alberta Advantage is not all it is trumped up to be. At least to Martha and Henry. I guess we are all malcontents now.

a portrait of disquiet reflected in a new Harris-Decima survey of western Canadians conducted for The Canadian Press.

The online survey looked at the attitudes of 1,400 westerners, but found the most angst and unhappiness in Alberta, the province that leads the nation in growth and per capita wealth.

One in four Alberta respondents said they found people in the province generally grumpier and less civil compared with two years ago.

And despite multibillion-dollar budget surpluses and a provincewide construction boom to try to accommodate the teeming inflow of newcomers:

-24 per cent said the post-secondary education has worsened.

-28 per cent said grade-school education has deteriorated.

-51 per cent said their community has not improved or, in some cases, even worsened.

-70 per cent said there has been no improvement in their family's health and well-being.

The survey, conducted Sept. 10-12, is considered accurate within 2.6 percentage points 19 times out of 20. When just the 350 Alberta respondents are counted, the sampling error is plus or minus 5.2 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

So I guess a Fall/Winter election is not a good idea for Prince Eddie.

Don't Let Big Oil Set Our Royalty Rates make sure Ed hears from you

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Dialectics, Nature and Science

Bloggers Unite - Blog Action Day

A defense of dialectical materialist science.

Notes and Fragments for Dialectics of Nature. Engels 1883

Dialectics in Nature?

Is Nature Dialectical?

Dialectics and Modern Science

Towards a New Dialectics of Nature

JOSEPH DIETZGEN (1828-1888)

Joseph Dietzgen Internet Archive, also see: Joseph Dietzgen and the History of Marxism
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Ambartsumian, Arp and the Breeding Galaxies

Apeiron, Vol. 12, No. 2, April 2005

In the case of terrestrial nature we observe that matter, life, history
and thought evolve through a series of revolutionary changes
(qualitative leaps) according to the dialectical law of the negation of
the negation or a triad of thesis—antithesis—synthesis mediated by
chance and necessity, and brought forth through the conflict of the
opposites or the contradiction of heredity and adaptation in its very
own units. Chance is blind only when it is not realized in a necessity.
If a seed from a plant falls on a stone or by chance carried to the
moon, it will not grow there, because there is no necessity for it, i.e.,
no scope of its further development. So this chance is sterile and
things end there. But when a chance brings the same seed into a fertile
soil, it develops due to the exacerbation of the conflict of the
opposites within the seed, it negates itself into a plant, which in turn
negates itself (the negation of the negation) to give an increased
quantity of the seed itself. All change, motion, development in this
view proceeds through nodal points or leaps (governed by specific
laws) where dialectical opposites either mutually annihilate each other
or are sublated (aufheben) into a new synthesis and so on (the
negation of the negation) and where changes in quantity leads to a
qualitative change and vice versa. It is the task of natural science to
discover these specific laws and not to impose laws on nature created
in the brain of man.

A dialectical view of the universe as proposed recently (Apeiron,
Vol 10, No. 2. 165-173(2003)) can provide a plausible basis for an
understanding of the evolution of the galaxies in particular and the
phenomenology of the cosmos in general. According to this view,
matter in the form of elementary particles comes into being and
passes out of existence (with a finite amount being present at any
particular time) as a dialectical and quantum mechanical necessity in
the universe, which is void and infinite in space and time. Persuasive
evidence from quantum electrodynamics suggests that virtual
particles inhabit empty space with an increasing concentration close
to an atomic nucleus. Some of these virtual particles can become real
(and the real pass back to virtual) as chance events and necessities, by
tunneling effects, and/or as pair production by quantum fluctuation in
the vacuum and so on, to give rise to both matter and antimatter. Out
of the innumerable possibilities, the law of chance and necessity
determines which particles eventually prevail. Chance accumulation
of matter and/or antimatter at certain points can then provide the seeds
for further growth and development of galaxies, following physical
laws. Since the appearance/disappearance of matter is enhanced
where mass concentration is high, the galactic centers form the most
active sites where new matter accumulates and these centers become
the theatre where other random and periodic cosmic events can
manifest themselves, such as those that we see as the Active Galactic
Nuclei (AGNs), quasars, etc. This basic process then can form the
fundamental dynamics through which the universe evolves.
Everything in this universe from the galaxies to man are

Dynamic logic:

At the dawn of science, Heraclitus introduced the concepts of becoming and union of opposites as principles that govern reality and hence should govern thought. Similar process views had been developed by Buddhist and Taoist philosophers ("Tao," becoming as the cosmic law, is the Chinese equivalent of logos). The recognition of evolution in cosmology, biology, and history, has recreated an interest in the process approach. Evolutionary science requires a process logic that deals with action and change, not stable entities; with actual oppositions, not abstract separation of opposites; and with creative processes in nature and thought, not only linearly determined causality and implication. Quantum mechanics also suggests a departure from traditional logic insofar as it postulates that (1) the universe is made up of quanta of action (Plank constant); (2) particle and wave properties coexist (principle of complementarity) [1]; and (3) interactions create qualitative, non-linear leaps.

Although process philosophies have been also developed by Spencer, Whitehead and Teilhard du Chardin, a process approach to logic is largely limited to the dialectics developed by Hegel. Dialectic logic, which in our century came to be fostered almost exclusively by Marxist thinkers, had the advantage of recognizing empirical facts essential to scientific understanding which are obscured and denied by mathematical logic, namely, the ever present becoming (so an entity becomes unequal to itself), the existence of coexisting opposites in nature, history, and mind (denied by the principle of no contradiction), and the existence and generation of a multiplicity of alternatives (excluded as third cases). On the other hand, dialectic logic was not mathematically formulated except in very partial ways, and by a limited number of thinkers [11, 17, 26-28]. Some systems theorists [42] and trialectics [14] have explicitly incorporated dialectic logic. Temporal [25], and fuzzy [16] logic, may also be understood as partial formalizations of dialectic logic under another name.

The Dogmatic Dialectic and the Critical Dialectic

Scientific research can in fact be unaware of its own principal features. Dialectical knowledge, in contrast, is knowledge of the dialectic. For science, there is not any formal structure, nor any implicit assertion about the rationality of the universe: Reason is developing and the mind prejudges nothing. In complete contrast, the dialectic is both a method and a movement in the object. For the dialectician, it is grounded on a fundamental claim both about the structure of the real and about that of our praxis. We assert simultaneously that the process of knowledge is dialectical, that the movement of the object (whatever it may be) is itself dialectical, and that these two dialectics are one and the same. Taken together, these propositions have a material content; they themselves are a form of organised knowledge, or, to put it differently, they define a rationality of the world.

Igor I. Kondrashin - Dialectics of Matter (Part I)

"The universe always contains the same quantity of motion." - R. Descartes.
"The motion is the only way of existence of matter. There was nowhere and never and there is no matter without motion... Matter without motion is as inconceivable as motion without matter. Therefore the motion is as increatable and undestroyable as matter itself - ... : the quantity of existing motion in the universe is always the same." - F. Engels.
"There is nothing in the universe except matter in motion." - V.I. Lenin.
These three postulating quotations put the corner-stones to our cognition of the general theory of evolution of the universe.
So Matter is the objective reality, the nature of which are different forms of motion, being itself her attribute. Hence there is nothing in the universe except motion, all existing construction material is motion. Matter is woven with motion. Any particle of any substance is a regulated motion of micro motions; any event is a determinated motion of elements of the system of motions. It is possible to resolve mentally any phenomena, events or substance into different forms of motion as well as out of different forms of motion in conformity with certain Laws it is possible to synthesize any phenomena, event or substance of Matter. Therefore in order to know how it happens it is necessary to learn the Laws, that regulate different forms of motion of Matter.

Dialectic, Systems, and Organization: The Philosophical Implications of the New Science

By Anthony Mansueto

Abstract:

There has been growing interest in recent years in the philosophical implications of complex systems theory and such related disciplines as cybernetics, artificial life, and artificial intelligence. Among theorists working in this area, there is a growing tendency to regard complex systems theory as providing scientific sanction for what amounts to a sophisticated neoliberal philosophy centered on "the spontaneous emergence of higher levels of organization or control (metasystem transitions) through blind variation and natural selection (Principia Cybernetica Project, Symposium on the Evolution of Complexity, Call for Papers)." This interpretation of complex systems theory has its roots in the "negentropic" or "information theoretical" interpretation of organization first advanced by von Neumann, Shannon and Weaver, and finds parallels in the positivistic interpretation of the new physics advanced by Frank Tipler (1986, 1989) among others.

This paper will argue that the neoliberal interpretation of complex systems theory is marked by serious errors. Neoliberal interpereters of complex systems theory fail to situate the new discipline properly in the context of equally important developments in physics (unified field theories) and biology (especially postdarwinian theories which stress the role of problem solving genetic algorithms and symbiosis, as against blind variation and natural selection in the evolutionary process). There are powerful theoretical and empirical grounds to support the idea that competition and natural selection (whether in the ecosystem or in the marketplace) are not only an inadequate basis for explaining development, but in fact hold back the emergence of dynamic, organized complexity.

The paper will advance an alternative dialectical interpretation of the new science (including complex systems theory). Specifically it will argue for

a) a radical, dialectical holism which recognizes being as system, structure, and organization, and treats "things" (particles, individuals) as merely the nodes at which complex relationships intersect,

b) a cosmology which stresses the role of underlying, implicit structures, complex relational interaction, and emerging conscious creativity rather than blind variation and natural selection as the motive force behind the emergence of complex organization and thus the whole cosmohistorical evolutionary process, and

c) a theory of value grounded in the immanent teleology of the cosmos itself, in which complex organization, and not the survival of particular elements, is the telos and thus the highest value of the system.


A Philosophical Naturalism

With a few notable exceptions, the Platonic dualism of identity and change reverberated in one way or another throughout Western philosophy until the nineteenth century, when Hegel's logical works largely resolved this paradox by systematically showing that identity, or self-persistence, actually expresses itself through change as an ever-variegated unfolding of "unity in diversity," to use his own words.2 The grandeur of Hegel's effort has no equal in the history of Western philosophy. Like Aristotle before him, he had an "emergent" interpretation of causality, of how the implicit becomes explicit through the unfolding of its latent form and possibilities. On a vast scale over the course of two sizable volumes, he assembled nearly all the categories by which reason explains reality, and educed one from the other in an intelligible and meaningful continuum that is graded into a richly differentiated, increasingly comprehensive, or "adequate" whole, to use some of his terms.

We may reject what Hegel called his "absolute idealism," the transition from his logic to his philosophy of nature, his teleological culmination of the subjective and objective in a godlike "Absolute," and his idea of a cosmic Spirit (Geist). Hegel rarefied dialectical reason into a cosmological system that verged on the theological by trying to reconcile it with idealism, absolute knowledge, and a mystical unfolding logos that he often designated "God." Unfamiliar with ecology, Hegel rejected natural evolution as a viable theory in favor of a static hierarchy of Being. By the same token, Friedrich Engels intermingled dialectical reason with natural "laws" that more closely resemble the premises of nineteenth-century physics than a plastic metaphysics or an organismic outlook, producing a crude dialectical materialism. Indeed, so enamored was Engels of matter and motion as the irreducible "attributes" of Being that a kineticism based on mere motion invaded his dialectic of organic development.

To dismiss dialectical reason because of the failings of Hegel's idealism and Engels's materialism, however, would be to lose sight of the extraordinary coherence that dialectical reason can furnish and its extraordinary applicability to ecology--particularly to an ecology rooted in evolutionary development. Despite Hegel's own prejudices against organic evolution, what stands out amid the metaphysical and often theological archaisms in his work is his overall eduction of logical categories as the subjective anatomy of a developmental reality. What is needed is to free this form of reason from both the quasi-mystical and the narrowly scientistic worldviews that in the past have made it remote from the living world; to separate it from Hegel's empyrean, basically antinaturalistic dialectical idealism and the wooden, often scientistic dialectical materialism of orthodox Marxists. Shorn of both its idealism and its materialism, dialectical reason may be rendered naturalistic and ecological and conceived as a naturalistic form of thinking.

This dialectical naturalism offers an alternative to an ecology movement that rightly distrusts conventional reason. It can bring coherence to ecological thinking, and it can dispel arbitrary and anti-intellectual tendencies toward the sentimental, cloudy, and theistic at best and the dangerously antirational, mystical, and potentially reactionary at worst. As a way of reasoning about reality, dialectical naturalism is organic enough to give a more liberatory meaning to vague words like interconnectedness and holism without sacrificing intellectuality. It can answer the questions I posed at the beginning of this essay: what nature is, humanity's place in nature, the thrust of natural evolution, and society's relationship with the natural world. Equally important, dialectical naturalism adds an evolutionary perspective to ecological thinking--despite Hegel's rejection of natural evolution and Engels's recourse to the mechanistic evolutionary theories of a century ago. Dialectical naturalism discerns evolutionary phenomena fluidly and plastically, yet it does not divest evolution of rational interpretation. Finally, a dialectic that has been "ecologized," or given a naturalistic core, and a truly developmental understanding of reality could provide the basis for a living ecological ethics.


"The Attack on Mead and the Dialectics of Anthropology" (1990)

The well-publicized attack by Derek Freeman (1983) on the Margaret Mead study of Samoa (1928) has raised a number of questions about anthropological research and communication, ranging from professional ethics to the dialectical understanding of science. These questions involve substantive matters as well as methodological canons. Now we have the long-awaited assessment of the Mead-Freeman controversy by Lowell Holmes (1987), a valuable intervention that provides answers to a number of these questions, especially those relating to professional and substantive issues. Their two books are briefly reviewed in panels on the facing page. Here we focus on some areas of philosophical interest in the development of U.S. anthropology: the history and role of the doctrine of `falsifiability' in anthropology and in the sciences in general, the relationship between Boasian anthropology and biologism, and the relation between both these doctrines and historical materialism.

To anticipate somewhat, we will first show how the `falsifiability' canon has a longer and perhaps more interesting history than the popular accolades to Karl Popper would acknowledge, and that it entails a dialectical conception of science and its development. Next, in light of these dialectical considerations, we will show that Boasian anthropology is indeed the negation -- the simple negation -- of biologism. While giving our attention to such biologistic contemporaries of Franz Boas as Herbert Spencer and Karl Pearson, we remark that today's chic variant of the same biologism is called "sociobiology." Finally, the dialectical negation of both these doctrines (biologism and Boasian anthropology) is shown to be social evolutionism and its philosophical recapitulation, historical and dialectical materialism.

Thus, as class struggle intensified during the later decades of the 19th Century, we see that Socialism, Marxism, historical materialism, Morgan's social evolutionism, etc. -- virtually any aspect of science revealing the significance of dialectics -- all became increasingly disreputable in `higher circles.' And their reputations in those circles only worsened with the onset of the general crisis of capitalism and the Bolshevik Revolution. As evidence of the latter, we find the persons and the periods hopelessly confounded. For instance, we find Engels described as "the most explicit Bolshevik spokesman" (Leslie and Kerman, 1985:116), though he died in 1895, some years before the 1903 split between Bolsheviks and Mensheviks. The primary task of `reputable' academics in the West -- and even aspiring academics -- came to be the promotion of doctrines and Metaphysical Worldviews which did not threaten the bourgeois order. Thus the popularity for both the two competing approaches of Boasian anthropology and biologism.

All this bears on our understanding and practice today, as the 20th Century wanes and along with it, Imperialism as well. As we have seen throughout this essay, it is essential to recognize the dialectical considerations and implications of science and its development. We must first assess the ideological significance of a discipline such as anthropology -- as well as its artifacts (e.g. monographs, essays, etc.) -- in class terms, and only then weigh the merits of the controversies between the several forms of apologetics and obfuscations. And that caveat seems to bear on our understanding of the anthropology of the 1980's no less than that of the 1880's.

SEE:

Engels Was Right

Dialectics of Extinction

(r)Evolutionary Theory

Dialectical Science-JBS Haldane


Dialectical Anthropology-AP Alexeev

Design Yes But Not ID

A Lesson in Mutual Aid

For a Ruthless Criticism of Everything Existing

Goldilocks Enigma

9 Minute Nobel Prize


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Big Oil Rips Off Ethanol Subsidies


Bloggers Unite - Blog Action Day

Talk about biting the hand that feeds you. Big Oil is using Ethanol subsidies, corporate welfare, to fight Ethanol blending. The U.S. taxpayer is subsidizing big oils fight against Ethanol another good reason NOT to have corporate welfare for Ethanol.

For some industries, the prospect of $3.5 billion in federal subsidies now, and double that in three years, might be a powerful incentive. But not, apparently, for the oil industry, which is seeing crude oil prices soar to record highs. Despite collecting billions for blending small amounts of ethanol with gas, oil companies seem determined to fight the spread of E85, a fuel that is 85% ethanol and 15% gas. Congress has set a target of displacing 15% of projected annual gasoline use with alternative fuels by 2017. Right now, wider availability of E85 is the likeliest way to get there.

At the same time the industry is collecting a 51 cents-per-gallon federal subsidy for each gallon of ethanol it mixes with gas and sells as E10 (10% ethanol and 90% gas), it's working against the E85 blend with tactics both overt and stealthy. Efforts range from funding studies that bash the spread of ethanol for driving up the price of corn, and therefore some food, to not supporting E85 pumps at gas stations. The tactics infuriate a growing chorus of critics, from the usual suspects—pro-ethanol consumer groups—to the unexpected: the oil industry's oft-time ally, the auto industry.

The industry collects the subsidies, but didn't lobby for them—Congress created them to encourage a larger ethanol market. While oil reps say they aren't anti-ethanol, they are candid about disliking E85. Says Al Mannato of the American Petroleum Institute (API), the chief trade group for oil and natural-gas companies: "We think [ethanol] makes an effective additive to gasoline but that it doesn't work well as an alternative fuel. And we don't think the marketplace wants E85."

One prong in the oil industry's strategy is an anti-ethanol information campaign. In June the API released a study it commissioned from research firm Global Insight Inc. The report concludes that consumers will be "losers" in the runup to Congress' target of 35 billion gallons of biofuel by 2017 because, it forecasts, they'll pay $12 billion-plus a year more for food as corn prices rise to meet ethanol demand. The conclusions are far from universally accepted, but they have been picked up and promoted by anti-ethanol groups like the Coalition for Balanced Food & Fuel Policy, made up of the major beef, dairy, and poultry lobbies. Global Insight spokesman Jim Dorsey says the funding didn't influence the findings: "We don't have a dog in this hunt."
SEE:

Bio-Fuel B.S.

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Eat Roo Not Seal

Bloggers Unite - Blog Action Day

Some folks would like us to go vegan, while saving seals from being culled. And then again some of these same folks say this.

Greenpeace: Eat more kangaroos
More kangaroos should be slaughtered and eaten to help save the world from global warming, environmental activists say. The controversial call to cut down on beef and serve more of the national symbol on our dinner plates follows a report on curbing greenhouse gas emissions damaging the planet. Greenpeace energy campaigner Mark Wakeham urged Aussies to substitute some red meat for roo to help reduce land clearing and the release of methane gas from flatulent cattle and sheep. "It is one of the lifestyle changes we can make," Mr Wakeham said. "Changing our meat consumption habits is a small way to make an impact."
I think Canadian fishers should remind them of this when the annual Green NGO anti-sealing campaign begins.


SEE:

Vegan Myth Busting

PETA Kills Cats & Dogs


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Green Blogging

Bloggers Unite - Blog Action Day

Today is Green Blogging Day. And so in celebration I am linking to my critique of the myth of sustainable capitalism, which is what the dialectical dance of environmentalism and its opposite is all about.

I will be posting some more today on nature and the environment with that little bug up in the left hand corner, which links to the bloggers publishing today.

The right wing attack on Rachel Carson this past summer is a good example of this dialectic. Carson wrote the earliest popular work on ecology and the environment; The Silent Spring. 2007 is the 100th anniversary of her birth. The result of her work led to much needed public education about the dangers of chemicals; especially pesticides. Her work would inspire the ultimate capitalist reformer; Ralph Nader.


The dance of the dialectic is that both those who promote environmentalism and those who oppose environmentalism are both trying to protect capitalism as it is. One group is promoting sustainable capitalism, by restricting and ameliorating its worst aspects, while the other groups opposes any restrictions that would impeded capitalisms unbridled expansion.

Why Brown is the New Green



Brownfield sites are the gaps in urban areas where factories once stood. They cover a significant, if scattered, amount of land in the old industrial areas of East and South East London, stretching far into Essex and Kent along the Thames estuary. Bordered by housing estates and industrial parks, these sites have in some cases been neglected and unused since as far back as the Second World War.

To the disinterested eye they are spare ground, home to nothing but weeds, rubble, burnt-out cars and dumped appliances, and an obvious place to build new homes in a region where housing is so scarce essential workers cannot afford to buy a home.

This policy has long been seen as an environmentally sound way of dealing with the housing crisis. Green belts, areas of countryside surrounding the UK's major cities, were created in the 1950s to stop the spread of urban sprawl, and the government is reluctant to build on them. Filling in the gaps left by defunct industry in urban areas seems like the obvious answer to the problem.

However, naturalists have increasingly noted that brownfield sites not only provide a haven for wildlife, but are amongst the most important ecological sites in England. Furthermore, hard against built-up areas and open for public access, these sites are a valuable resource for England's majority urban population.

In the green belt around London industrial crop farming has created a monoculture more barren for wildlife than the city itself. Made up largely of private land closed to the public, and saturated in pesticides, these EU-subsidised farms cover a disproportionate area of a crowded region.




This was dialectical contradiction was best shown this summer with the Live Earth Concert organized by Al Gore and his capitalist friends.


Out came the forces of the ultimate in consumer capitalist culture; the rock bands last weekend to save the earth.

After saving the starving in Bangladesh, then Ethiopia, and ultimately the African Continent, now the fearless Rock and Roll Inc. (tm) (c) types are out to save the the earth from Climate Change.


Sorry but coming one week after the mud fest that was Glastonbury, the Concert for Princess Di's Trust Fund and the Canada Day concert in Ottawa, and on the same day as Oxfam Canada and End Global poverty were doing a cross Canada gig, well I must be getting jaded.

All I could garner was a ho hum and switched the channel to see the Canadian U20 team lose to the Congo in the FIFA World Cup.


I would take this whole Rock Concert To Save the World a lot more seriously if all that 'energy' output had been created by solar and wind power rather than using power generated by nuclear, coal, hydro, gas and diesel, as living examples of what could and can be done. I would have been a lot more impressed.

Forty years after the first DIY love ins and be ins I expect more than another attempt to recreate Woodstock for a good cause.

And considering how important this issue is in Canada the lack of a venue, or any critical comment from the MSM and pundits,about that over sight, shows how irrelevant Live Earth was.

Like Kyoto, carbon markets, biofuels, and Harpers 'Made in Canada' green plan, Live Earth was another dud.

In fact what is often overlooked by both sides is the fact that Harpers Made in Canada Green Plan is already in effect in Alberta.

Don Braid, Calgary Herald

Published: Friday, March 09, 2007

Well, some things you thought you'd never live to see. And one of them is an Alberta carbon tax, imposed by an Alberta government on Alberta energy companies, with the companies quietly nodding acceptance.

That's what the government introduced Thursday -- a surprisingly tough bill that will force companies to reduce their CO2 emissions per barrel by 12 per cent starting July 1, or pay $15 per tonne into a technology fund.

Call it a user fee. Or call it a technology incentive. Please go right ahead.

But what it is, actually, is a tax on carbon users and producers that will fall most heavily on oilsands companies and coal-fired electricity plants.

So it's a carbon tax, the very spectre that made Alberta shudder when the federal Liberals mentioned it.

But this carbon tax has an environmental goal. It will give companies a real incentive to lower emissions, while fostering technology that makes the job easier. And the money stays inside Alberta.

Companies can't escape by lowering production. What counts is emissions per unit, not total emissions. So the tax can be skimmed without bringing the industry to a halt.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper was on hand to announce his own green initiatives when the Alberta bill came out.

He professed not to know what was in it. That may be, but he's sure aware of the politics behind it.

The goal is to paint Harper and Alberta green
Environmentalism is not anti-capitalism it is just another market giving consumers choice.

North America's biggest solar farm set for Ontario

Homeowners look to go off electrical grid- Environmental self-sufficiency driving market

Green process makes brown coal the new black

One of the problems with the environmental lobby that gives its opponents on the right ammunition to use against them is their uses of prohibition as the basis of regulation. For instance the issue of public health. Rather than deal with the toxic emissions that result from capitalist production they ban smoking in public.

Another example of this dialectical dance is Green NGO campaigns against GMO's and the Seal Hunt.

What do Genetically Modified Organisms, genetically modified grains, soya and corn have in common with the seal hunt?

Why the likelihood of them being banned in Canada is zero, nada, zip, not bloody likely.

The same Green NGO's lobby Europe and other countries to ban seal pelts and GMO's.

Except the fact is that both the anti-seal hunt and the anti-GMO campaigns impact on producers, fishers in the case of seals and farmers in the case of GMO's. The majority of canola crops in Canada are GMO.

The reality is that the call for bans on the seal hunt or GMO crops are counterproductive, they harm producers not the State or multinational corporations.


Ban GMO food crops

US Humane Society Asks Americans to Boycott Canadian Seafood on Eve of Seal Hunt

Don't hold your breath for Quebec to act on GMO labelling


The Supreme Capitalist Court in Canada ruled on GMO crops versus farmers rights in the Schmeiser case. It was a significant attack on property rights versus patent rights/intellectual property rights. Something that not only upsets farmers, and anti-GMO activists but should also upset any right thinking libertarian.

Regarding the question of patent rights and the farmer's right to use seed taken from his fields, Monsanto said that because they hold a patent on the gene, and on canola cells containing the gene, they have a legal right to control its use, including the replanting of seed collected from plants with the gene which grew accidentally in someone else's field. Schmeiser insisted his right to save and replant seed from plants that have accidentally grown on his field overrides Monsanto's legal patent rights.

Canadian law does not mention any such "farmer's rights"; the court held that the farmer's right to save and replant seeds are simply the rights of a property owner over his or her property to use it as he or she wishes, and hence the right to use the seeds are subject to the same legal restrictions on use rights that apply in any case of ownership of property, including restrictions arising from patents in particular. That is to say, patent rights take priority of the right of the owner of physical property to use his property, and the entire point of a patent is to limit what the owner of physical property may do with that property, by forbidding him or her from using it to duplicate, produce or use a patented invention without permission of the patent owner. Overriding the rights of the physical property owner for the protection of the intellectual property owner is the explicit purpose of the Patent Act. As property rights are not constitutional rights they do not override statutes such as the Patent Act.



In the U.S. on the other hand they have had some success with challenging Monsanto.

Monsanto, its seed distributors and growers stand to lose up to $250 million if the alfalfa, which was designed to survive the company's Roundup herbicide, is taken off the market for the two years it takes to complete the study, the company said in court papers filed late on Friday.

Earlier this month, U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer halted the sale of the modified alfalfa at the request of farmers, environmentalists and consumer advocates who say that it could harm the U.S. economy and the environment.

The judge voided the U.S. Department of Agriculture's 2005 approval of Roundup Ready Alfalfa, finding the agency had not conducted a full environmental impact statement. Breyer banned seed sales and gave farmers until March 30 to plant seeds they had already purchased.

Alfalfa, a fodder crop pollinated by bees and wind, is among the most widely grown crops in the United States, along with corn, soybeans and wheat.

The Center for Food Safety, which is among the groups that sought the injunction, said Breyer's order marks the first time a federal court has overturned a USDA approval of a biotech seed and halted planting.

The Center and other plaintiffs have argued that the biotech alfalfa could create super weeds resistant to herbicides, cause farmers to lose export business and contaminate natural and organic alfalfa.

They also alleged that Monsanto could try to force farmers whose crops were contaminated with Roundup Ready Alfalfa to pay for the company's patented gene technology whether they wanted it or not.

But unfortunately many of these campaigns are another form of capitalism, that of fund raising for Green NGO's.

Like Greenpeace's recent anti-Tar Sands campaign, they have no possibility of realistically closing the tar sands but they gain funding for their endeavours. Nor does the campaign effectively challenge capitalism, it merely appears to workers and citizens as being an outrageous publicity campaign. And one that limits its educational value by being deliberately provocative.
In doing so it discredits any alternatives to capitalism or discussion of them it makes any such alternative appear unrealistic.

Finally one only has to look at the Canadian Green Party to see that environmentalism is not anti-capitalism. Their recent increase in popular support in the Ontario election showed that it came from disgruntled Progressive Conservatives. In fact Green politics have been embraced by conservatives and the extreme right.

For a truly sustainable environment one must oppose capitalism and offer an alternative; self managed socialist democracy.

The Ecology of Work

Environmentalism can't succeed until it confronts the destructive nature of modern work—and supplants it

by Curtis White

For instance, as a matter of conscience we should be willing to say that the so-called greening of corporate America is not as much about the desire to protect nature as it is about the desire to protect capitalism itself. Environmentalists are, on the whole, educated and successful people, many of whom have prospered within corporate capitalism. They’re not against it. They simply seek to establish a balance between the needs of the economy (as they blandly put it) and the needs of the natural world. For both capitalism and environmentalism, there is a hard division between land set aside for nature and land devoted to production.



SEE:

Junque Journalism

Blogging Green Day


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