first death in war

was reading an article from Harper's and it gave insight into why the Bush administration is refusing to comment on the Pat Tillman death

his was the first death of a prominent figure in Bush's war in terror

this article indicates that the first death in a war is often used to gather support from the people to demonstrate how someone in the public eye would give his/her life to defend their country, the country they loved and for a cause they believed in

well, Tillman was critical of the Bush administration and was killed by friendly fire - not the best example to use as a first death

so, Bush and his cronies continue to tell their lies and Pat Tillman's death becomes a rallying point for those that see through the lies

transit thoughts

have been taking the bus lately and thinking about the approved bus fare hike in the lower mainland

as long as the money is used to improve transit than i accept the fare increase but if skytrains are still packed during rush hour then i'm not sure if it is worth it

this compounded by the total lack of a presence by transit/skytrain staff at skytrain stations and on the skytrain itself

i believe this presence is necessary for several reasons, including: to provide security presence, asking for directions, and as ambassadors for the region to tourists

i've witnessed several times people approaching the ticket machines with no clue on how to operate the machine or figure the whacked zone system

if you want to get more people on transit then it has to be made more friendly

and translink has to force the drivers' union to accept part time drivers

until these things happen, people will still sit in their cars, making traffic worse and harming the precious environmental conditions necessary for maintaining human existence at its current level

Pier Luigi Sacco - economics of identity

was listening to a podcast from cbc ideas about economics and social justice

one of the speakers was Pier Luigi Sacco who spoke of the economics of identity

after an individual's or society's basic economic needs of shelter, food supply, energy are provided there is an economic of identity that emerges

this works by applying the rules of scarcity that emerge in basic economics - supply and demand, etc. to basically luxury items - this emerges are branding, marketing...essentially the process of making non-needs needs

this is where social justice issues evolve? when more time and energy is put into obtaining these non-needs instead of focusing on needs for everyone


i'm not an economist and only listened to the podcast once but it has provided a branching off point for me to further investigate and perhaps further comment on in the future

why must we be rewarded

it is bike to work week in the lower mainland this week

some sponsors are providing incentives to people by setting up tents/booths to provide food and water

the irony for me is that much of this food and water (bottled) is trucked around in CO2 spewing SUVs

why can't people be happy doing the right thing and not get a big pat on the back? sure, children need positive reinforcement to learn that doing the right thing is rewarded but adults? adults should know what is right and good - doing what is right and good should be in itself the only reward

is climate change all there is to talk about?

so, should we be truly worried about climate change as much as we are led to believe?

i'm not saying climate change is not happening or that something shouldn't be done about greenhouse gases but perhaps other issues should be forgotten such as HIV/AIDs, women's rights, lack of nutrition for many around the world, totalitarian agriculture, the path of consumption, the depletion of oil, etc.

and then the national post has an article about al gore's inconvenient truth and some of the errors within it and then retorts by mentioning the great global warming swindle movie which in itself is full of s**t

yet, i wonder why people challenge climate change - is it because of the bad science? i doubt that because so many peer reviewed journals publish scores of articles on the topic and its effects

the bottom line is $$$ - big oil, big pharma, big agriculture, and the sweat shop phenomenon depends profit and the myth of progress; without it the rich don't get richer

see, in my opinion, climate change isn't the problem - the culture we are all slowly being enveloped in, smothered in promotes and is dependent on growth

your RRSPs, your pension funds, your net worth is all dependent on growth - it is a futile pursuit because resources are limited

life will go on whether we address climate change or not - nature is resilient; now whether us humans will continue to thrive is a separate issue; and if we do, sure climate change should be addressed but fixing climate change won't feed 6, 7, 10, 20 billion people - only an attitude change and a realization that the world's population before the industrial revolution as maybe a billion which is what a non-oil culture is limited to +/- a few hundred million

people will die even if we reduce our greenhouse emissions, reduce our carbon footprint, turn off our lights, buy CFLs because there aren't enough energy sources and resources to keep the world's population at its current levels

growth will slow and things will change because nature will dictate change

only once people accept this will real change initiated by humans be seen

hopefully we don't act too late

it or us

so, what are we saving the earth for? life goes on, whether us humans are here or not...

is the concern for the environment simply a way of conserving conditions for human existence at its current population levels?

well, that won't work

so, what will?

i'm not sure but i think focusing on social justice issues such as narrowing the gap income, wealth and power - and i think this should be done by pulling down the roof, rather than raising the floor

inequality needs to be leveled out because those without harms everyone; health issues attack the impoverished more seriously because of their lack of sanitation, access to medical help and poor nutrition

by fighting these issues then the health of all will be improved giving everyone a chance at establishing authentic existence - something with meaning and hope

HIV/AIDS

i've been reading AIDS in the Twenty-First Century by Barnett and Whiteside and i've learnt a few things

- HIV only has 10 genes

- the aids pandemic is especially damaging because it affects the demographic that is economically important (15-50 year olds) unlike most diseases that affect the young, elderly or sick

- the delay between infection with HIV and full on AIDS that can range from 5 to 10 years; this allows a lot of time for the infected individual to infect others

yup, HIV/AIDS is a much bigger issue than i previously thought and should be a growing concern for everyone

my comments for this week

actually, i just had to put something here - my brain is mostly idling this week tossing ideas of AIDS, military industrial complex, cultural studies, pierre eliot trudeau, attacks on skytrain, trips to get groceries (with its consequent connections to consumption)

and why don't people bring their own shopping bags to the store?

ugh, this will continue at a better time at a later date

to shoot or not to shoot

so, one thought i've heard from a coworker is if people were allowed to carry guns at virginia tech, perhaps they could have intervened and shot Cho Seung-Hui

this makes a bit of sense as we don't have the ideal situation where no one has guns at all but gun control debates are something that won't go away anytime soon

perhaps the focus should be on acknowledging that some people are troubled and that they should not be excluded from society, instead they should somehow be included so that future incidents such as this are something we only see in history books

remembering the message

visited my sister in-law's on the weekend in deepest darkest maple ridge...

their family lives in a 3800 square foot home which is very nice and i can see the attraction to living in a large home with lots of space

i almost got sucked into "the dream" but some anchored portion of me said "hey, wait a minute"

home builders still don't use methods to reduce environmental impact on a large enough scale - passive heating, solar water heating, grid tied power supplies, heat pumps, triple glazed windows, and as little wasted space as possible

and how much room does a family of four need?

i find it sad that the whole message of less; simplicity; decluttering; respect just isn't working and it pushes me to thinking that things are going to get a lot worse before they even approach being better

LBJ and the vietnam war

Lyndon Johnson in a speech to the American Bar Association of New York City:

It is right that the strong should help the weak defend their freedom...

It is right that nations should be free from the coercion of others.

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this leads me to ponder what freedom is and the importance of nations

also, put into context of the present, does the current american administration believe in this credo or is there some other agenda

there is no easy answer but motives must always be questioned and hopefully the people of the united states that vote for their representatives and president get the necessary information to pick the lesser of two evils in 2008

my thoughts for this day

so, the books on my desk today include

Short History of Tibet by Richardson
The Pan-African Nation by Andrew Apter
Perspectives on Growth and Poverty - van der Hoeven
The Dragon in the Land of Snows - Tsering Shakya
The Status of Tibet - van Walt & van Praag

with respect to Nigeria and Africa in general part of my interests lay in the attempt by indigenous folk to reclaim their resources and the story of Ken Saro-Wiwa in particular

to that end there is a book by his son Ken Wiwa - In the Shadow of a Saint (2000)
[VPL 966.905 S24w]; another one for the list

till next time

what are facts?

i've been thinking about this whole tibet thing and trying to find out more about what happened but this led me to discover that facts are hard to discover, especially about politically charged topics

the britannica website describes the geography, climate, industry of the tibet but only has a brief mention of the conflict between tibet and china; other websites done on google lead to politically charged pages that seek the freeing of tibet from chinese rule

what was the reasoning for the chinese government to "incorporate" tibet - strategic positioning in the geopolitical realm? resources?

and what about the lack of international response by britain and india, supposed tibetan allies?

obviously more research is needed on my part

this questioning leads into the psychology of why people do nothing, or at least very little, in matters that are so distant yet where human rights issues are involved - understanding these situations would help prevent them from occuring in one's own backyard and they can, just look at the PATRIOT Act in the good old U.S. of A.

buying into credentialism

i'm reading the vancouver sun today and come across an article about how some grade 12 students are going to private schools after school to get better english marks to ensure they have a good mark on their transcript for university entrance applications

students are allowed to replace their public school mark, which is often lower, with this new mark yet when these same 'A' students fail their provincial exams

i see this as students and their parents buying into credentialism, described by jane jacobs in her book dark age ahead

this ties into something else i read about the masters degree being the new bachelor's with respect to the work place; it's ridiculous how you needed a high school education, then a university degree, and now it's a post-graduate degree - that's a ridiculous way to judge a person's ability to work and think because from my personal observations of university students, they don't seem to have learned much

student's are so focused on the credential they forget to learn; it is in part why plagiarism rates are increasing; student's are so pressured into performing well that they will do almost anything to get a good mark and they forget that part of the purpose of going to university is to actually learn

aiming for good grades is a commendable goal but to cheat to achieve that goal defeats the whole purpose; one should aim to actually learn something rather than going through the motions because if you didn't actually learn anything from a class why did you take it in the first place?

i think what this rant is about is go to school for yourself and learn something; don't do it to impress future employers or your parents

why we fight

i watched why we fight by Eugene Jarecki a while back - it describes the military industrial complex (coined by Dwight D. Eisenhower) and the possible necessity to start wars in order to maintain the war machine

so i went down to the local libary and read a little bit from The military-industrial complex: a historical perspective by Paul A.C. Koistinen; i'll admit i got into the first article but it raised an interesting question about how the military is designed to support and protect a democracy yet it in itself is a non-democratic organization with the possible danger that it cannot truly identify with what it is protecting

it was a curious observation and perhaps it makes it easier to understand why "civilians" and the "military" are at odds at times

population growth and economic ruin

well, the title was longer than i wanted...

i keep reading articles (one from the guardian weekly in particular - 2007/02/09, John Vidal, Fuelling the Future feature) that talk about the growth of population to 10 billion by the middle of the current century and how competition for resources will lead to economic collapse

is "economic collapse" a new euphemism for massive deaths? and why do we place so much faith in these projected population numbers?

oil will run out before that time, at least at affordable prices and with no oil the whole foundation that the current capitalist society is based on will collapse and there will be deaths associated with that collapse; who really cares about some rich people losing money? aren't human lives more important...yet i worry the problem will be dealt like all crises, in a reactionary way

by focusing on "economic" issues people are only thinking about themselves and their own well being; people need to shift towards social/human issues such as HIV, malaria, woman's rights, poverty, justice, equality

well, this soap box is getting wobbly so i'll return to the multiplicity of issues at a later time...

robert mcnamara

i've been reading in retrospect by robert mcnamara which is his telling of the events surrounding the vietnam war

i was surprised by the revelation that u.s. military policy in the late 50's was based upon nuclear deterrence and that non-nuclear forces were most likely inadequate; to have a policy based on nuking the enemy was/is frightening

and i'm no expert but it seems to me that many of mcnamara's observations about the vietnam war parallel many things occurring in iraq right now

i guess it is true, those that don't study history are doomed to repeat it

more to come...

praise or scold?

so, i'm lined up at choices waiting to pay for my stuff, dutifully carrying my cloth bags and the women in front of me has amongst her purchases tissues and toilet paper made from recycled paper which i thought was great of her but then she gets her purchases placed in plastic bags even when there are paper bags openly available and cloth bags ready for purchase

i'm wondering, is she truly conscious of her choices or does she get the recycled paper products because someone else in the household asked for it?

that's part of my issue with so called environmentalists like al gore and his $30000 utility bills or sustainability pushers in hollywood

nickel and dimed continued...

some excerpts from ehrenreich's nickel and dimed

Any emphasis is by me...

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Work is suppposed to save you from being an "outcast,"...but what we do is an outcast's work, invisible and even disgusting. Janitors, cleaning ladies, ditch diggers, changers of adult diapers - these are the untouchables of a supposedly caste-free and democratic society. (p 117)

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How do they feel...about the owners, who have so much while others, like themselves, barely get by? This is the answer from Lori..."All I can think of is like, wow, I'd like to have this stuff someday. It motivates me and I don't feel the slightest resentment because, you know, it's my goal to get to where they are." (p. 118)

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So if low-wage workers do not always behave in an economically rational way, that is, as free agents within a capitalist democracy, it is because they dwell in a place that is neither free nor in any way democratic. When you enter the low-wage workplace - and many of the medium-wage workplaces as well - you check your civil liberties at the door, leave America and all it supposedly stands for behind, and learn to zip your lips for the duration fo the shift. The consequences of this routine surrender go beyond the issues of wages and poverty. We can hardly pride ourselves on being the world's preeminent democracy, after all, if large numbers of citizens spend half their waking hours in what amounts, in plain terms, to a dictatorship.

Any dictatorship takes a psychological toll on its subjects. If you are treated as an untrustworthy person - a potential slacker, drug addict, or thief - you may being to feel less trustworthy yourself. If you are constantly reminded of your lowly position in the social hierarchy, whether by individual managers or by a plethora of impersonal rules, you begin to accept that unfortunate status. To draw for a moment from an entirely corner of my life, that part of me still attached to the biological sciences, there is ample evidence that animals - rats and monkeys for example - that are forces into a subordinate status within their social systems adapt their brain chemistry accordingly, becoming "depressed" in humanlike ways. Their behaviour is anxious and withdrawn; the level of serotonin...declines in their brains. And - what is especially relevant here - they avoid fighting even in self defense. (p. 210-211)

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Ehrenreich references two articles that relate to the animal depression and lack of self defense mentioned above

Shively CA, Laber-Laird K, Anton RF Behavior and physiology of social stress and depression in female cynomolgus monkeys. Biological Psychiatry 41(8): 871-882, 1997.

Blanchard DC, Spencer RL, Weiss SM, Blanchard RJ, McEwen B, Sakai RR. Visible burrow system as a model of chronic social stress: behavioral and neuroendocrine correlates. Psychoneuroendocrinology 20(2): 117-134, 1995.

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i've always found it strange that we (in the West) live in democratic societies but that the work environment is typically non-democratic; we fit into a hierarchy and fill our roles often without question even if it endangers our health and well being

and all for what?

the american "dream"

i've been reading nickel and dimed by barbara ehrenreich - it's a book about her attempt to live as a slave wager in america and seeing how people actually manage to get by

her basic conclusion is you don't - you would need at least two jobs to get ahead and the main reason is the cost of housing; in her conclusion/evaluation at the end of the book she questions why people don't just look for a better paying job if they're stuck in a shit job

it comes down to dealing with the devil you know versus the one you don't, transportation issues, and finding the time to seek out a new job, drug testing, applications, and interviews

once you're stuck in a place it is really hard to leave - the human mind has an incredible yet self defeating mechanism to deal with misery and accepting a bad situation; it's similar to a woman that's being beaten by her husband/boyfriend yet does not leave

those that live at the bottom in north america have it hard and this book helped me understand just a little bit what it is like

but the ironic thing was in one of her "exit" interviews/discussions with her fellow employees she asks what that person wants in life and they fall into the trap of wanting the fancy things that they see rich people have; they buy into the myth of western civilization - that we can all be rich and enjoy a nice life; so many of those automatons out there realize that somebody cleans the building you work in, serves you your food, builds your widgets, takes care of your children and most of these people get paid peanuts

i'll leave that rant for another time although i would suggest reading anything on the myth of progress including ronald wright's a short history of progress