Friday October 21 2011

13 OCTOBER 2011 — The Obama Administration has decided that it has the authority to kill citizens at its discretion, ignoring any and all Constitutional rights that get in the way. Last month, the government assassinated two American citizens in Yemen with no due process, no trial, no charges and no legal justification. The deaths of Anwar al-Awlaki and Samir Khan were hailed by the President as “another significant milestone in the broader effort to defeat al Qaeda and its affiliates,” but it would have been more accurate to call it a milestone on the road to authoritarianism. 

 

As American citizens, we are supposed to be protected by the “due process of law.” The Fifth Amendment guarantees that the government will respect people’s rights when it decides to prosecute, fine, incarcerate or kill them for a crime. Despite their ties to al Qaeda, al-Awlaki and Khan had the same rights as every other citizen. They had the right to be informed of their crime. They had the right to a trial by jury. They had the right to face their accusers and the right to legal representation. The Obama Administration decided to skip all those minor Constitutional hurdles—trials can be so annoying sometimes—and jump straight to the execution. — 611 words.

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Military madness has overwhelmed Washington

 

We have two stories in this issue that illustrate the military madness that has infected Washington, U.S. combat troops descend on Africa and the other is Drones over the world: America's secret empire.

 

With the end of the cold war about 20 years ago, there was hope that the world would embrace peace. No longer was there a Soviet Union determined to bury us. China was already friendly. It was a signal opportunity for the U.S. to become a beacon for peace.

 

But what happened to the United States was exactly that about which General and President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned Americans against. He said, in effect, beware of the military-industrial complex. —442 words.

 

True North Perspective publishes in the best traditions of Canadian journalism If you think it's too radical, please read www.truenorthperspective.com/Friday_15_April_2011/editors_notes

Our readers write Cuban reader sees the depths hidden in 'simple' ParkTales Although it's been over a month since I read this story (ParkTales, Sept. 30, 2011), it's never too late to say something nice - or perhaps to say something at all, eh? In short, this is indeed a lovely story. And if in our candidate's meetings, electioneering, leafleting, talking our heads off, etc. we don't also remember that it's all about helping someone in need of help — gee, can you imagine what the world would be like with just that as a guiding principle? — then what are we doing at these candidates' meetings, electioneering, leafleting, talking our heads off???    Thanks, Frances, for yet another one of your lovely little stories. So simple and yet with such profound messages.    — Abrazotes de Susana, Havana, Cuba

Mark well what I do say: Alex Binkley is a foremost political and econcomic analyst. Readers will be aware that his columns in True North Perspective have foreseen the political problems for the Harper government in shipbuilding contracts and, among other alerts, Lowell Murray's ideas on Senate reform. Today he brings to our attention critical developments in the Seaway-Great Lakes sytem. — Carl Dow, Editor.

New NY state law would shut the system down

Seaway-Great Lakes shipping invisible

But are of major economic importance

Largely unseen and seldom mentioned in the media, marine shipping through the St. Lawrence Seaway and Great Lakes plays a major role the economies of Ontario, Quebec and eight American states.

The law, formally called the “Law to Sanction Crimes, Disappearances, Torture, and Violations of Human Rights for Political Reasons in the Period 1958-1998,” was passed by the socialist majority in the AN. The legislation will establish a “Truth and Justice Commission” in order to identify and sanction the perpetrators of human rights violations, as well to discover the identity and number of victims who were tortured and killed during the Fourth Republic. — 991 words.

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19 October 2011 — As the autocratic regime in Syria brutally cracks down on a pro-democracy opposition, it is using technology developed by an American company, Blue Coat Systems, to suppress dissent and block access to the internet, tech experts say.

 

Two weeks ago, Telecomix, a tech activist group, released information from the Syrian government-run Syria Telecommunications Establishment. The release revealed gigabytes of electronic records, called log files, dating back to late July and early August of this year, and the material indicates that Syria's government is using Blue Coat's devices to prevent its citizens from accessing social media, video-sharing, and other websites. By using the devices, the Syrian regime can block information about its abuses from getting out of the country and monitor web activity.. — 757 words.

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18 October 2011, WEST POINT New York — On Wednesday, when the Army holds its 12th-annual Diversity Leadership Conference at West Point, gays and lesbians will be well represented for the first time.

 

But so will another disparaged military minority: self-identified atheists and freethinkers in uniform, as many as 40,000 of them. In an unorthodox move, the academy has invited Jason Torpy, an Iraq vet and president of the Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers, to plead the case for — among other things — adding atheist chaplains to the armed forces. — 1,700 words.

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In a 115-page book titled Islamic Sex, Fighting Jews to Return Islamic Sex to the World,the group calls on Muslim husbands to have sex with all their wives simultaneously, The Daily Star reported. — 352 words.

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17 October 2011 — Conservatives in the United States' toughest crime-fighting jurisdiction — Texas — say the Harper government's crime strategy won't work.

"You will spend billions and billions and billions on locking people up," says Judge John Creuzot of the Dallas County Court.

"And there will come a point in time where the public says, 'Enough!' And you'll wind up letting them out."

Adds Representative Jerry Madden, a conservative Republican who heads the Texas House Committee on Corrections, "It's a very expensive thing to build new prisons and, if you build 'em, I guarantee you they will come. They'll be filled, OK? Because people will send them there.

"But, if you don't build 'em, they will come up with very creative things to do that keep the community safe and yet still do the incarceration necessary.". — 2,015 words.

 

 

 

14 October 2011 —  Job seekers with common anglophone names such as Greg Brown on their résumés get more responses from employers in Canada’s three largest cities than applicants with foreign-sounding names – regardless of work experience, education or language proficiency, new research shows.

According to University of Toronto researchers Philip Oreopoulos and Diane Dechief, applications submitted by people with English-sounding names are 47 per cent more likely to receive callbacks than those with Indian or Chinese ones in Toronto, 39 per cent more likely in Montreal, and 20 per cent more likely in Vancouver. — 448 words.

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20 October 2011 — Support for immigration in Canada is at an all-time high, suggests a new study that tracked attitudes about newcomers to the country over the last 40 years.

The study by the Institute for Research on Public Policy found that Canadians think favourably of immigration despite recessions, terrorism and a changing political landscape over the years.

The attitude is unique in western countries and stems from two strong Canadian beliefs. — 554 words.

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19 October 2011 — The Supreme Court of Canada today issued its much anticipated ruling in Crookes v. Newton, a case that focused on the issue of liability for linking to allegedly defamatory content. The court provided a huge win for the Internet as it clearly understood the significance of linking to freedom of expression and the way the Internet functions by ruling that there is no liability for a mere hyperlink. The key quote from the majority, written by Justice Abella:

I would conclude that a hyperlink, by itself, should never be seen as “publication” of the content to which it refers.

This is an enormous win for the Internet since it rightly recognizes that links are just digital references that should not be viewed as republication of the underlying content. As Abella states: — 1,014 words.

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21 October 2011 — I was immersed in the subject of intimidation and bullying as Le génie de Jessie was first introduced at the Salon du livre de Lefaivre this weekend.

 

My granddaughter, who participated in writing the story with five of her classmates, came along on Saturday and truly enjoyed her first experience as a young writer. Little did I know that very weekend, we would learn of another teen committing suicide after suffering many instances of intimidation. — 531 words.

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Now this particular experience is almost something unreal.

 

I have a friend who about six years ago lost her cat. This meaning the cat passed on. Deceased. Dead.
 
I consoled her and told her I understood the grief she was going through. 
 

Now my friend, (let's call her June), didn't have the means to call the appropriate authorities to pay for the disposal of her beloved pet. — 712 words.

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13 October 2011 HAVANA Cuba — Up next, we bring you a Radio Havana Cuba (RHC) interview with Ed Asner, 7 times Grammy award winner with five Golden Globe Awards and member of the US TV Academy Hall of Fame, presently starring in the solo performance drama, FDR, based on the life of former US President Roosevelt.

 

Asner is one of the signatories to the letter from U.S. celebrities, (an initiative of the International Committee for the Freedom of the Cuban Five), to US President Barack Obama asking for Rene Gonzalez’s freedom to return to his wife and family in Cuba.

RHC Bernie Dwyer of Radio Havana Cuba spoke with Ed Asner by telephone from Havana on Tuesday, October 11. 

“As always, be it with Cuba, El Salvador, be it Nicaragua, my purpose has been to practice humanism and never politics. And that is exactly what I am practicing now in terms of pleading for mercy for these ill-convicted prisoners”. — 840 words.

 

 

20 October 2011 — Obama's decision is described in the press as "highly unusual" and "surprising," even "weird." It is none of these things. It is the logic of American foreign policy since 1945. Take Vietnam. The priority was to halt the influence of China, an imperial rival, and "protect" Indonesia, which President Nixon called "the region's richest hoard of natural resources ... the greatest prize."

 

Vietnam merely got in the way; and the slaughter of more than three million Vietnamese and the devastation and poisoning of their land was the price of America achieving its goal. Like all America's subsequent invasions, a trail of blood from Latin America to Afghanistan and Iraq, the rationale was usually "self defense" or "humanitarian," words long emptied of their dictionary meaning.

In Africa, says Obama, the "humanitarian mission" is to assist the government of Uganda to defeat the Lord's resistance Army (LRA), which "has murdered, raped and kidnapped tens of thousands of men, women and children in central Africa." This is an accurate description of the LRA, evoking multiple atrocities administered by the United States, such as the bloodbath in the 1960s following the CIA-arranged murder of Patrice Lumumba, the Congolese independence leader and first legally elected prime minister, and the CIA coup that installed Mobutu Sese Seko, regarded as Africa's most venal tyrant.  — 908 words.

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16 October 2011 — They increasingly dot the planet. There’s a facility outside Las Vegas where “pilots” work in climate-controlled trailers, another at a dusty camp in Africa formerly used by the French Foreign Legion, a third at a big air base in Afghanistan where Air Force personnel sit in front of multiple computer screens, and a fourth at an air base in the United Arab Emirates that almost no one talks about. 

And that leaves at least 56 more such facilities to mention in an expanding American empire of unmanned drone bases being set up worldwide. Despite frequent news reports on the drone assassination campaign launched in support of America’s ever-widening undeclared wars and a spate of stories on drone bases in Africa and the Middle East, most of these facilities have remained unnoted, uncounted, and remarkably anonymous -- until now.

 

 

 

 

 

 

19 October 2011 — Genetic engineering has failed to increase the yield of any food crop but has vastly increased the use of chemicals and the growth of "superweeds", according to a report by 20 Indian, south-east Asian, African and Latin American food and conservation groups representing millions of people.

The so-called miracle crops, which were first sold in the US about 20 years ago and which are now grown in 29 countries on about 1.5bn hectares (3.7bn acres) of land, have been billed as potential solutions to food crises, climate change and soil erosion, but the assessment finds that they have not lived up to their promises.

The report claims that hunger has reached "epic proportions" since the technology was developed. Besides this, only two GM "traits" have been developed on any significant scale, despite investments of tens of billions of dollars, and benefits such as drought resistance and salt tolerance have yet to materialise on any scale.  — 892 words.

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But according to a study released Wednesday, the most interesting effect may have been on the women's physical condition.

 

LFTRs (Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors) are safer, cheaper, and more efficient than reactors we use now, and we have a huge supply of thorium in Canada.  In fact, every country in the world has lots of easily accessible thorium since it is everywhere in the earth’s crust, but we have some of the richest and largest deposits in the world.  If we choose to power the world with thorium, all countries in the world will have enough energy to meet all their needs for thousands of years. — 314 words.

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Scheglov said that an attempt to define love as an illness was nothing new.

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19 October 20ll SRINANGER Kashmir — A dictator is a government ruler with omnipotent powers, one who has no constitutional or legislative constraints on his powers. Operating through his military, paramilitary, intelligence, and police forces, he can do whatever he chooses to do. He can use his forces, which loyally follow his orders, to attack, arrest, spy, kidnap, torture, rape, abuse, or kill. It’s that principle — omnipotent power on the part of the ruler — that defines the American dictatorship in the world, particular against the Muslim world. — 1,481 words.

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Keeping adventure in the family

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17 October 2011 — In the period thriller Anonymous, which reaches theatres on October 28, director Roland Emmerich dredges up a delicious historical controversy that has 2011’s literary scholars fighting like Montagues and Capulets.

 

The issue even provides a pithy logline: Was William Shakespeare a fraud? Perhaps “fraud” isn’t forceful enough to describe the slings and arrows that the Bard of Avon endures in this $33 million bodice-ripper. — 1,322 words.

 

We have two stories in this issue that illustrate the military madness that has infected Washington, U.S. combat troops descend on Africa and the other is Drones over the world: America's secret empire.

True North Perspective publishes in the best traditions of Canadian journalism If you think it's too radical, please read www.truenorthperspective.com/Friday_15_April_2011/editors_notes

Reflections on True North Perspective

True North Perspective publishes in the best traditions of Canadian journalism If you think it's too radical, please read www.truenorthperspective.com/Friday_15_April_2011/editors_notes

Reflections on True North Perspective