Entries Tagged 'politics' ↓

The warmongers manage to drag decent people into war with lies and by dehumanizing the “enemy”.

Amidst all the insanity of the Israeli-Palestinian war, there are people that want peace, and refuse to see another person or group as an enemy because of ethnic and religious divisions.

One of those peace makers is Izz el-Deen Aboul Aish, a Palestinian gynecologist who used to work in one of Israel’s biggest hospitals. He also regularly apeared on Israeli TV. One of the show’s hosts called him recently, just as his family had been shelled. The host decided to broadcast the phone call, live. It’s now available with subtitles on youtube; go watch it now.

Should we have more bridge-builders like the doctor and the show’s hosts, the war-mongers couldn’t operate.

Sadly our foreign policy is rather one-sided in its support for the most extremist Zionists. Even burying people alive in their houses does not rouse Canada’s indignation. Friends shouldn’t let friends seed so much hatred.

What’s a foreign peace maker to do? Some temeritous souls put their bodies in front of Israeli bulldozers to prevent houses from being flattened. I am no such hero and wouldn’t ask anyone to do such a thing.

But the conflict isn’t just “over there”. Here are ways we could help:

-Demand our elected officials take a balanced position in their foreign policy.
-Insist our media get facts straight and stop calling people names.
-Stop censorship in our schools

Protecting our ability to see the conflict clearly and refusing to dehumanize one side are objectives we should have for every foreign conflict to which we have ties. What else could we do?

Colektivo was just announced (StartupNorth, Hacker News), a new P2P financing site for small and medium sized enterprises.

I’d like to be excited about it but I smell a rat. Maybe it’s the arthritis making me cantankerous, or vague similarities with Capazoo.

Here’s the deal: if you’re going to make outrageous claims you better be able to back them up. You can have a few days grace while your web site gets spiffed up. If you want months it’s probably so you can rope in rich chumps.

Colektivo promises “more stable and better returns than mutual funds” to lenders and better interest rates for borrowers. I’d like to know what typical interest and default rates are in their financial universe. And what regulators will approve that kind of language on an investment vehicle brochure?

I love peer-to-peer finance, having lent through kiva and consulted for CommunityLend. For this model to succeed we need transparency and accountability.

I hope my gut feeling is wrong on this one, and I invite anyone from Colektivo to provide information that would reassure skeptics that these grandiose claims are legit.

Our single most urgent task today is to imagine a future after oil. A future without cars.

zelaurent is rightfully outraged that Canada is spending $4 billion to bail out car manufacturers. He accurately points out that the financial crisis is being used as a political expedient.

So let’s point out the obvious which politicians will never do: we’ve built a deadly machine.

There were 2,778 deaths due to motor vehicle traffic collisions in the year 2001 - a rate of 8.9 deaths per 100,000 population.1,2  In 2000-2001 there were 24,403 hospital admissions for traffic-related injuries, corresponding to a rate of 79 hospitalizations per 100,000 population. (tc)

We deal with the issue by campaigns against drunk driving, forcing drivers to use a seatbelt and extolling the virtues of air bags.

How about planning cities so we could walk every where? Fast and convenient transit options between cities?

Besides the deadly toll excised by collisions many people suffer premature death or lifelong respiratory diseases. Consider simply the cost to our health care system:

A recent study examined the economic value of reducing the health effects of air pollution by introducing cleaner vehicles and fuels in Canada.  This study found that the economic value of avoiding these health effects was $24 billion over a period of 24 years,  compared to a cost of $6 billion to implement the program. (hc)

This bailout is just the most recent contribution everyone is making to keeping these old industries alive. We’re paying in lives lost and shortness of breath.

Even those costs will seem small compared to the effects of climate change. The scale of the issue is vast and frightening: runaway climate change could kill hundreds of millions of our fellow humans.

It may be possible to eliminate 90% of our emissions by 2050 while still keeping cars around. Some prototypes already get 300 miles per gallon. If we continue bailing out car manufacturers, if we continue enabling their vision, will they ever build comparable machines?

For now most of the moral debate rests upon what will happen to workers.

Many people will be out of jobs. We as a society need to help people reconvert. Expect a fight: unions want to protect their nearly $34 an hour.

My grandfather was a barber, one of the last to shave customers. My father was in the last generation that received an SOS by Morse code. Not too long ago 98% of workers were agricultural. I don’t know anyone who is a tinker or a blacksmith. Very few people fish whales for oil.

Occupations change and economies evolve. We can ease the transition for affected workers if our politicians can see that the car era must come to a close. Throwing more money at the problem or extracting more empty promises of fuel efficiency from manufacturers is merely a delaying tactic.

Our financial crisis was built on the assumption that we could grow our economy safely and indefinitely, ignoring natural limits. Companies padded their balance sheets by externalizing monstrous and ballooning costs.

Let’s not quibble about a few more billion dollars. Let’s ignore the inflated job figures for people we can help reconvert.

It’s time our politicians showed real vision. We need a future where we breathe easier and climate changed is checked. A future where ecological destruction is not counted as a positive because GDP goes up. If they can’t provide that, they have no business calling themselves ‘leaders’.

I’ve already accused them of showing contempt for democracy when they would have refused May a place in the leaders debate. Now Conservatives would have us believe that a coalition government would not have democratic legitimacy.A quick look at the election results shows the Liberals and NDP got over 44% of the popular vote while the Conservatives got under 38%.

The Bloc adds 10% of the popular vote.

We do not need to go to the polls again; Canadians have spoken and we didn’t want to give Harper a majority. The Governor General should use her power to avoid another election.

I have concerns that the Liberal-NDP coalition will be spending money bailing out auto-makers instead of making public transit and green jobs their priority. I do not believe this will be a great government.

There should be no doubt however that they are much better than the Conservatives and have a clear right to form government.

About a month ago, STM and Google announced the launch of Google Transit for Montreal. Both bloggers (Patrick Tanguay, Fagstein, Daniel Lemire, Roberto Rocha, Tristan Péloquin), and mainstream news sites covered the event.

I want the same data that was given to Google, so I can create isochrone or “travel-time” maps. So far I’ve put in two days of work on the imaginatively named isochrones project. It’s open-source and accessible on github. It was all written pair-programming, first with William Lachance, then with François Beausoleil.

It took the STM a few days to answer my call, and when they did I was informed it was “impossible” at this time for them to share the data. Release of said data would be considered in the medium-term, but my caller wouldn’t say how long the medium-term is. Incredibly helpful.

My options are apparently to write a partnership proposal or go to their monthly administration meeting

If you have the patience to fight a bureaucracy, you have my admiration. I no longer have the stomach for it: all I want to do is write code.

Everyone is watching the US election.

Fraud could be the real story. Many states -including some swing states- have extremely hackable voting systems. An unclear result could have dire consequences for the US.

I wish more non-US citizens would have the decency not to take sides. Wouldn’t you be annoyed if an American had the chutzpah to tell you who to vote for? I might vote for someone else just to spite them. We have to trust they will make an informed decision; it is what democracy is all about. US readers: please do go and vote.

The pollsters are more wrong than usual. Most pollsters are under-sampling youth vote as well as underestimating their likely turnout and skew for Obama.

Many impacts of this election campaign will be non-obvious. Recently bookmarked in politics, a story about Obama’s organization. It will serve as a template and inspiration to political organizers the world over. If that network stays active in the US, there’s no saying what can happen.

Republicans will self-destruct, but how? The odd alliance of neo-cons and religious fundamentalists is unraveling, and tonight looks like their coup de grâce. While the real conservative might come back and oust the neo-cons, the fundamentalists are more unpredictable. All I know is there will be gnashing of teeth, frothing at the mouth and more gay pastors being outed.

Is it any surprise media are increasingly ignored?

Then cbc.ca wants to help you make up your mind, by showing platforms side by side:

The Globe and Mail also compares platforms.

Here’s news for the mainstream media: most people don’t believe political promises. By suggesting we should use politicians’ promises about what they would do if in power, they imply that politicians are to be trusted.

Obviously, it just means we also don’t trust media.

If you’re still undecided in this election, here’s an idea: don’t vote. Democracy is not an obligation to vote every 4ish years. It’s a responsibility to pay attention in between elections so you can exercise your privilege. If you fail to pay attention, you are not a better person for cramming at election time.

If you must, go spoil your ballot so we know you care.

Lest I be accused of encouraging apathy: you should pay attention so you can vote sanely next time. While some will see not voting as a symptom of apathy, encouraging people to vote based on meaningless platforms or without knowing politicians track records will only encourage cynicism.

Wall Street bail out: $700 billion

Total debt owed by world’s 49 poorest countries: $375 billion

I wasn’t going to vote, but today’s news made me angry:  Greens can’t participate in leaders’ debates, networks rule

In recent days, the Conservatives, Bloc Québécois and the NDP have all expressed their opposition to May joining the debates.

They are bluffing, also known as “lying”. It also makes me angry they could have such contempt for democracy.

Dion, for his part, said he would have welcomed the presence of May, but he would not participate if Harper were to boycott the debates.

“I will say that I would like her to be there,” Dion said.

Dion no doubt would also like to be Prime Minister, but “would like” is a weak, asinine response. How about: “Harper is afraid of another voice calling him out for his anti-environment policies that are accelerating global warming. It is pathetic and anti-democratic.”

Am I the only one hoping for another minority government?

Microblogging, ambient awareness and maintaining weak ties has the sideeffect of making it impossible to move away and “reinvent yourself” as your past will always be with you.
If you don’t “get” Facebook and Twitter, read this NY Times article

The very idea of being limited by the folly of our youth should itself be a sufficient motivator to reinvent ourselves loudly and publicly.

It’s just like living in a village, where it’s actually hard to lie because everybody knows the truth already… If anything, it’s identity-constraining now

People in villages change. You can’t get a new bunch of friends to ‘reinvent’ yourself every few months, but then again you are more accountable.

Romanticism, mixed with hatred of the freedom that the city gave us won’t help us understand phenomenons like Facebook. There is a moral panic in some quarters, people worried that your booze party pics of university days will somehow prevent you from getting a real job and becoming a responsible adult. That’s wrong: Facebook and Twitter will simply chronicle the transformation.