Let The Buffalo Roam

Much of what is now chaparral and desert in the Great American West was grassland when the buffalo roamed. It still could be if they did again. The Buffalo's [bison really] natural range included the plains of central North America from Mexico north into Canada and east as far as New York, Maryland, and Florida. BWG [before white guys]. They were the most abundant herd animal in history. Because the buffalo traveled from basin to basin as they grazed, the grass co-evolved with them, the buffalo ate then spread and manured the grass seed, the buffalo and the grasslands spread each other.

Sadly today, buffalo live only in zoological parks and in a few herds on refuges and preserves. Much of their former range is unsuitable for cattle, the grasses, in many of these marginal areas, have been replaced by sage brush. It ain't called the sagebrush nation for nothing. A shame really that we don't let the buffalo roam, let them slowly re-establish the grasslands in the high open deserts of the west. Range land can become a significant sink or sequestration pool for greenhouse gasses, literally sucking excess greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere and sequestering them safely in the soil, where they belong. We could passively capture and sequester, through organic soil and land management, at least 100 billions tons of excess carbon.

It's been shown that humans would be better off eating buffalo than cattle, anyway. And so much grain output now goes to feeding cattle that the soaring world price of grain is starving the poor. i've got nothing against cattle, cattle are great at grazing too and they've been turning grass and grain it into edible protein for a long time now. But the disgusting feed lot stuff has robbed the cowboy of his magic, for a buncha reasons, cattle eating ain't what it used to be.

Everyone could be involved, we could be hiring unemployed America to build buffalo proof fencing, FDR style. Next, why not build highway and train track over passes to let the buffalo roam freely between the high basins. The over passes could be accomplished by excavating half of the necessary depth [buffalo ain't THAT tall] and building arches over the top half outta the overburden removed from the bottom half. The overburden could be mixed with volcanic ash, as the Romans did-they called it pozzalona-it's the original cement, its free, it's abundant, it's labor intensive. Imagine how many decent jobs could be created building fences and arched overpasses-some body's gotta manufacture all the gear, some body's gotta truck it too.

Hard work creates hard workers, instills pride and skill in those workers. Sweat fosters independence, a well earned pay check is what Americans need. Bank bailouts and stimulus funds give the rich an extra bucks with which they might choose to hire a new maid or a couple gardeners, but letting the buffalo roam could put a few of those billions into the hands of people who'd spend almost every dime of their paychecks locally, hiring other local people in their turn. We could meet or exceed our carbon targets and put people back to work, but also important, we'd see pride and independence of spirit growing, along with the grasslands, if we let the buffalo roam.

The Ice Cream Truck and The American Dream are Outta Gas.

Real unemployment, not just the number folks still collecting benefits, hovers around 20% according to Joesph Stiglitz, a past winner of the Nobel Prize for Economics. The Fed is furiously printing money in a last ditch attempt to save us from deflation [see video below]. Obama has spent the last two weeks attempting to get the rest of the industrialised world to not cut the value of their currencies while at home the US is doing everything it can to cut the value of the greenback. Currency wars, austerity programs and trade wars are, as Pierre Trudeau said, "unfolding exactly as they should".

The American Dream, based on the myth endless growth, is over. In the short run it'll be replaced by upheaval and dislocation. In the long run, though, it could be our only real hope for our children and grand children's future. Endless growth in a limited resource environment is impossible. But it sure sounds good.

As Josh Holland of AlterNet says,- "If you could create a political party that convinced a large number of people that by electing you they could eat all the ice-cream they want, and then sit on their butts watching TV all day and never put on an ounce, you’d have a pretty good chance at gaining power."
 
The ice cream truck is outta gas. "The time to dig a well is not when you’re thirsty. The time to plant a garden is not when you’re hungry. The time for securing your water and food is now, before the industrial economy burns itself out. You and I didn’t start the fire of empire. But we’re about to see it extinguished".- Guy McPherson


The Twilight Zone, Or Our Economy Explained - If you have a sense of humor about the economic apocalypse, check out the video below. It is a most cogent, hilarious, depressing analysis of Ben Bernanke, Goldman Sachs, blowing up the global economy, quantitative easing - a.k.a. printing money - and why we are all screwed...bearing in mind that if you can laugh at yourself, and you can laugh at the apocalypse, then you’ll never run out of material.

The Chinese Professor and The Art of War

The Chinese Professor video [below] was developed by a conservative American economic think tank not as a Republican ad during the recent mid-term elections as i originally assumed. At first i only saw snippets of it on the news, then the other day i went to YouTube and watched it completely a few times. It is an excellent example of how powerful the use of archetypal symbols can be. It's well made, it's very effective and its underlying message reminds me of a few pertinent lessons from Sun Tzu's 'Art of War'-written in the 6th century BC.

Sun Tzu's treatise, and the commentaries on it, are taught in every military academy in the world. It's also studied in every business school, most philosophy departments and many others in almost every language on earth. Why? Because the Art of War isn't just about military issues, Sun Tzu's logic is easily adapted to all of our lives everyday.

Sun Tzu says, "To fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting." Sounds like the message in The Chinese Professor to me. Sun Tzu's first rule of war is to own the ground [as we don't in Afghanistan]. Hence Sun Tzu said, "Whoever is first in the field and awaits the coming of the enemy, will be fresh for the fight; whoever is second in the field and has to hasten to battle and will arrive exhausted."

Sun Tzu's Art of War says, "All warfare is based on deception. Hence, when able to attack, we must seem unable; when using our forces, we must seem inactive; when we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away; when far away, we must make him believe we are near. Military tactics are like unto water; for water in its natural course runs away from high places and hastens downwards. So in war, the way is to avoid what is strong and to strike at what is weak.

Sun Tzu says that the second rule of war is to know your enemy. This is the deeper lesson of The Chinese Professor video. Know your advisory as well as you know yourself. Know your advisary's arguments, his knowledge, his strenghts, his weaknesses in all things. Belittling one's adversary, using invective as a replacement for insight, using simple slogans to avoid complicated counter arguments do nothing to widen any one's path-instead these self-imposed blinders are leading us into the jaws of the dragon.

Obama's National Deficit Commission Says 'The Rich Rule-The Rest Drool'

The National Deficit Commission proposals are totally one-sided and guess which side they favor? Like almost all politically chosen commissions, this one was made up of people who found exactly what the were looking for. The members of the National Deficit Commission contained no one who disagreed with its preordained conclusions. No one like Stiglitz or Krugman, two highly acclaimed economists, were chosen.

An except from the article linked below-an excellent and important article- that i hope every one of us reads: "The Commission’s proposal is the most naked, undisguised declaration of class warfare possible. Its agenda is not to reduce the deficit but rather to reduce what is left of the American middle class and American workers, to a condition of servitude, of feudal peonage. Their poverty will make them docile and subservient. This will make possible the final looting of America by those whose sociopathic greed has brought it so low already." - Robert Freeman.

The US economy is in deep doo-doo, massive debt in both the public and private sectors is the result of decades of voo-doo economics. Most Americans are convinced they are entitled to not live within their means. The debts they individually and collectively have run up amount to nothing more than mortgaging their children and grand children's future. Instead of honest discussion about their situation the politicians of all ilks lie to 'we the people' and print more money. They come up with endless happy-talk schemes designed to mollify any opposition while in reality their schemes always shovel more money from the many into the already bloated pockets of the few.

The rich have moved the good paying jobs out of America to make themselves richer on the backs of the poor. Not just the poor of far off lands, but all of the poor, including everyone who isn't them. Every corporation serves the same master-shareholders. No matter what chocolate covered pap they say, underneath the chocolate are the tools of your oppression. The corporate criminals use every trick they can dream up to divide the worldwide working class. So far, it's worked. But the rise of populist anger here in N. America and in Europe, hopefully, portends the end of the robber baron era. Don't listen to their lies, reject the false divisions for the divide and conquer tactics they are. So far in America this populist anger has come mostly from conservatives, now is the time for rest of the political spectrum to stand up on their hind legs and join in the fight.

It’s Official: Rich Declare War on the Middle Class - by Robert Freeman
The President’s National Deficit Commission has effectively declared that the rich will now go after what is left of working and middle class wealth and will take whatever steps are necessary to seize it. If allowed to succeed, their plan will reduce Americans to a state of serfdom.

Real Healing Power Given Freely By The Dog Unit In My Front Yard

Healing is a big topic. It's most likely to be framed in our culture with a pharmaceutical model. Historically traditional cultures understood that healing happens from the inside out. For sure, the shamans used bones and feathers, ritual and ceremony to gain the confidence of their patients so they, the patients, would accept the shaman's authority in the matter of their healing. The magic was in this granting of authority. Then, as now, most real healing is done by our body's repair systems. Albert Schweitzer, one of western medicine's great founders, said, "a doctor's role in the healing process is 90% bedside manner".

Most bacteria are beneficial, actually essential, to all life including yours and mine. Yet popular opinion has been so swayed by the pharmaceutical industry and their well paid puppets in the mainstream media and advertising industries that most of us now believe that all bacteria are our enemy. This anti-bacteria worldview isn’t just bad science, it’s manipulative and its function is to sell us crap that actually causes harm to the web of life we are but one little node in, it makes a few richer and every other living thing pay for it.

My research for this piece started with the questions: "Does dog saliva have real healing properties, like mom said, or is that just 'folk' medicine?" And, "Is the curative power our mom's advice to have your dog lick your wounds simply a combination of the dog's tongue being a perfect tool for cleaning the wound and the placebo effect being activated by our granting of authority on such matters to our moms [similar to the shaman's art]". i found out that dog saliva contains lysozyme, an enzyme that lyses and destroys harmful bacteria and that another reason mom was right is that direct stimulation of the tissues and small blood vessels surrounding the wound site increases blood flow and promotes the growth of new capillaries which brings white cells, platelets and growth factors to the wound site. Mom was right again.

Psychological heath is as important to real healing as physical health. My psychiatric needs are sub-clinical most days and are perfectly well serviced by the unconditional love given and received between me and my best friends. Being needed by and needing a kindred spirit, by companionship, by having someone to just listen, someone always glad to see me no matter what, are the 'real' powers offered by psychiatric service dogs and my best friends. If you already share your life with a dog type person you're lucky and you already know all of this.

To conclude, if i’m in a car accident, torn to shit, bleeding, busted bones, take me to the emergency room, those guys can fix trauma best. But if it’s anything else i’m steering clear of the croaker, i’m reporting to dog unit in my front yard.
 
The Amazing Healing Power Of Dog Saliva!

Does A Dogs Lick Cure Wounds?  - You betcha!

The Way Of The Wolf

The wolf makes its living by way of the hunt. The wolf doesn't hide and wait for his prey like a snake, he/she actively searches for their dinner. Sometimes solitary but most often in cooperative groups, the wolf seeks its prey, the prey seeks to avoid the wolf. The wolf, like most of its prey, is warm blooded so both are driven to action by their relentless metabolic demands. The prey, be they mice, deer or buffalo, gathers its dinner from the more sparse floral protein in its domain. The predator gathers its dinner from the more concentrated protein of its prey.

Among the many ways of seeing and being, we in the western world often choose to use categories as our way of seeing. Our categories, though, are but arbitrary divisions of a continuous whole, they have evolved in our western culture because they are a useful tool in the triage of incoming information that might otherwise overwhelm us. Categories allow us to make quick judgements and to act on them. Categories, and other mental shortcuts, have been such a successful strategy that we westerners now do it unconsciously, but all shortcuts have shortcomings. One shortcoming of using categories, like predator and prey, is that we overlook the fact that these mental shortcuts are tools not truths.

The real world shows us that predator and prey are one. That their populations and the abundance of the their domain rises and falls in an intertwined dance. That the health of the prey depends on the health of the predator as much as on the abundance of the flora it gathers. The prey grow stronger and more efficient over time by the actions of its predator, the predator and the flora also evolve over time as each becomes a better dancer.

Thoughts and ideas too gain strenght and efficiency over time not by the action of the herd, but by the challenge of the skeptic, the outlier, the predator. The weak and the old, be they ideas or buffalo, fall first to the skeptic or the wolf. Like mice or moose, we men and our ideas only grow stronger from the actions of our predator cousins. We, mice and men, predators and prey, are all in this one life together.

We Might As Well Dance Eh!

Buylogical Devolution

Last night's news here in BC featured a piece on the huge, 3 hour long lineups, at the Peace Arch border crossing between BC and Washington State. i tried to imagine why these thousands of my fellow canucks would be willing to spend one of their few days off work sitting for hours in a such a huge lineup only to undoubtedly spend another buncha hours in another huge lineup at the Canadian border when they return home later in the day.

That's when it came to me: biological devolution was the answer. Buyology is defined as-noun: The urge to consume, purchase, buy, own. "He's so into buyology -- look at all those labels."

So many folks are driven by the constant advertising bombardment that cunningly tries to convince us all that we'll be more popular, more attractive, more wealthy, more-more-more everything if we'd just smarten up and buy whatever it is they're selling. The advertising industry does its homework, they've read up on human psychology, they've learned that almost everyone of us rogue primates is, deep down, insecure and fearful about our looks, the opinions of others, our future security, lottsa stuff. Salesmen and advertisers use this knowledge about our fears in an attempt to manipulate us into irrational behavior like lining up for hours at a border crossing to save a few miserable bucks on a buncha crap we don't need anyway.

These folks in the lineups weren't poor people going to Bellingham to buy cheese, milk and bread, at the lower American prices, so they could feed their family next week. These folks were, almost all, idling their precious time away in an SUV or expensive new-ish car, they were addicted consumers. Consumers are unconsciously destroying the planet. The addiction to consumption is devolution in that every one's genetic endowment to their children and grandchildren, the basic biological urge, is being rendered meaningless by needless-senseless buyology.

Wake Up People, do you really want to be a puppet, a tool in someone else's game.

Media Resistance To Consumer Resistance: On The Stonewalling Of "ADBUSTERS" And Advocates - by Richard W. Pollay, UBC

Rememberance Day - Lest We Forget

i'm a pacifist but that in no way effects my admiration for all the brave men and women who have given their physical health, their mental health and their lives in service of the ideals they believe in. In some ways pacifists understand quite well how hard it can be to stand up for what you believe in.

My parents both served in the Pacific during WWII. My mom was a nurse in a Mobile Army Surgical Hospital, a MASH unit. My dad was with the US Army Corps of Engineers. They met at the hospital where she was stationed and he was recovering from massive multiple wounds. They were there in the same hospital in Busan Korea for the last year of the war. i guess he fell in love with his nurse.

Neither of them were ever the same after the war their families told me years later when i was old enough to understand. My dad was the worst, he suffered every minute of his remaining life from what's now known as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder [PTSD]. Back then they called it being shell shocked if anything. He drank himself into unconsciousness almost everyday for the rest of his life, only missing those few days he was to broke to buy a bottle. My mom and him split up when i was under 2, she carried the ball by herself all her life in large part because my dad was so screwed up he couldn't function, was sometimes violent, abusive to her and, of course, always drunk.

i grew up always missing what i didn't know, always wondering, always hoping he'd show up. He never did, many many years later i forgave him. But it had a huge effect on me, undoubtedly it still does somewhere deep inside where it hides. Do i remember on Remembrance Day? Of course i do, how could i ever forget. With any luck my daughters will have escaped the multi-generational disaster that WWII brought to my family and millions of others. War is hell. The brave young men and women who volunteer to stand at the gates of that hell deserve our solemn praise. Maybe that's why i'm a pacifist, because i can't forget.

Fundamentalism and Dogmatism, Mankind's Greatest Threat

Each of the 3 largest Abrahamic Religions, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, have many millions of followers worldwide, millions of good people doing their best to live their lives in peace and harmony with everyone else. They each have slightly different doctrines that their millions of believers gain comfort from. But each also has a group of fundamentalists within their ranks who believe that they are the only ones who hear the 'real' voice of god and that that voice is telling them 'the' truth.

Christians have their Deconstructionists, Islam has its Wahhabists and Judaism has it's Zionists. Each has very different teachings but they share their intolerance of any opposing opinions, they share their use of dogmatism, instead of debate, as a tool of power and control. Dogmatism is defined as “unfounded positiveness in matters of opinion,” and the “arrogant assertion of opinions as truths”. Religious fundamentalists are by far the worst political danger the world faces. There's no difference which 'book' they believe contains their god's own words, it's the unchallengeable, incontrovertible nature of their mindsets that creates the danger we now all face.

PM Harper gave a speech two days ago where, within two sentences he pledged to defend Israel "at whatever cost" and pledged "a relentless stand against anti-semitism". Israell is a country, Judaism is a religion. Yet our attention is constantly being diverted by the semantic trick whereby we equate Zionism and Judaism when they are two totally different things, the media and political leaders have mis-educated the western world by using the terms interchangeably. Israel's Zionists and settlement movement members are in the minority but they control the government. Harper's understands the difference, but he uses the terms interchangeably to appeal to his born again Christian supporters. The Christian Deconstructionists back the Zionists because their 'book' says that that's the road to heaven, to their Rapture. Anti-Zionism isn't anti-Semitism but the dogma of the Deconstructionists wants us to believe it is in order to serve their selfish delusions.

Wahhabists believe that Israel and its Zionists are the devil and the road to hell, as their 'sacred' book somehow tells them. So here we sit, hatred blossoms, wars rage, torturers torture, bombs kill innocent civilians, drones terrorize and kill innocent villagers. Why? Why does mankind face its greatest threat? Why are nuclear arsenal at the ready? Because fundamentalists of slightly different religious persuasion 'believe' that they, and only they, hear the true word of god whispering in their ear. But its the same voice every religious fanatic hears, it's the voice same Mohamed Atta heard, its their own inner voice telling them another self serving lie to justify another unspeakable act in the name of some imaginary ghost. Come on people Wake Up!

Big Day In Mud-ville

November 9th is one of my two favorite calender days each year, the other being June 19th. Those are the dates when my two daughters were born. The older daughter was born in 1971 the younger in 1989. i wish i could feel safe about using their names, pictures and specifics about why i'm such a proud dad, but unfortunately we live in a weird world and their security far out weighs my want to do so.

So...today my little girl turns 21, she is the best daughter a guy could ever have. She's nearly finished university and will end up with a combined BSc of Science and BSc of Nursing degree when finished. My big girl, and mother of my three grand kids, graduated university some years ago with a Bc of Science as a Bio-psychology major, then went on to earn her MS in Audiology. They both got where they are by hard work, they both have earned everything they've accomplished, they both freely make their own choices about the directions their lives take and it that in itself makes me very proud.

Twenty one was a big deal way back in the stone age when i was a kid, in today's world-not so much. Both of us parents though feel an extra bit of pride today as we see this milestone as we did back when we passed it. It was for us a line in the sands of time between our childhood and our adult status. i remember feeling the same kinda feeling when my older daughter passed it too. Regardless, we both love our little girl and are very proud of her.

i've spent the last 40years, nearly all of my adult life, doing my best to be a good dad to my girls. For sure other folks have done things differently, made different choices along the road, and for sure some of my choices worked out well-some not so much. But, like everything i ever did, i did it my way. i'm proud of my girls for lottsa reasons, but none more than the fact that they are doing/living their lives well and according their own worldview, who could ask for more.

Happy 21st Birthday Honey from one Proud Dad

Obamacare's Potential To Unite Seemingly Divergent Resistance

One of the main themes in the Tea Party's recent campaign was to resist Obamacare. Since election night i've heard various Republicans and Tea Partiers explain that they don't have pass legislation to stop it, all they have to do is to defund it by winning a majority vote in the House to do so. It's highly probable that, no matter how much support that kinda sentiment might have, the Rebublicans of all stripes will be bought off with defense contracts to their districts or some other combination of bribery and coercion. They are politicians and like most all politicians their first priority will be their own re-election. But maybe not, we'll see.

After living these last 41 years up here in Canuckistan i've come to know and love the Canadian Healthcare System, its not perfect but it sure is a lot better than either the existing US model or Obamacare. Up here folks don't lose their homes or their life savings because they can't afford access to health professionals. Up here folks can get basic preventative care which often results in their small issues not evolving into huge ones. Under the present US model many folks get zero access to healthcare until things digress to emergency status and they are wheeled into an emergengy room where they are examined and treated for their now hugely expensive problems. Those huge costs, that earlier-with preventative care-mighta been avoidable, are paid for by the state. The state gets the funds to pay its bills from the taxpayer via taxes that are mostly paid by the more well off. The results are that the rich pay for the poor's healthcare-sounds like socialism to me eh-and they pay far more than they had to.

Obama ran for office promising 'Change' in healthcare, and a lotta other stuff. He promised he'd never sign a bill that didn't contain a public option, he promised huge reform of the prescription drug laws that would allow Americans far easier access to generics, would allow groups to negotiate lower prices with Big Pharma and, if all that failed, would allow individual Americans the freedom to go abroad to have their prescriptions filled in places that did negotiate with the drug company goons. Of course, we now know that Obama was, at the same time he was giving speeches promising the opposite, himself negotiating with Big Pharma and the health insurance industry behind closed doors for huge dontions to his campaign-and who knows what else-in exchange for not doing what he was publicly promising. Just another politician-a liar-or both?

So, in my opinion, defunding Obamacare is a big winner for everybody. It isn't healthcare reform, it isn't healthcare insurance reform, but is a massive transfer of money from 'we the people' to the insurance and pharmaceutical corporations. This issue can be another uniting cause around the circle of the political spectrum. By stopping this insanity called Obamacare in its tracks there'd be an oppurtunity to start again, to open a real debate, to perhaps come up with big solutions to these big problems. 'We The People' deserve better.

Framing Torture - Criminal and Immoral or Expedient and Effective?

This week former president G.W. Bush's memoir will be on book store shelves and glowingly reported in the compliant mainstream media. In it W. recounts his decision to approve torture so it seems like a good time to revisit the issue of torture both back then by the war criminals Bush-Cheney-Rumsfield and since then by the accessories after the fact, Obama and Holder.

The Bushy's started the ball rolling by asking many members of the Justice Dept. to write opinions about the use of torture. They recieved about 30 different opinions from various lawyers who worked there. Of those, 2 supported [Bybee and Yoo] its use, the rest opposed it as criminal and/or immoral because the UN Convention Against Torture [ratified by Ronald Reagan in 1987] and because Title 18, Part I, Chapter 113C of the US Code both clearly make its use under any circumstances illegal. As we now know the Bushistas cherry picked the two by Bybee and Yoo because they fit the Bush regime's preconceived agenda.

Water boarding isn't a new thing, its use has been documented in numerous cases for centuries. After WWII the US held war crimes trails, found Japanese officers guilty of torture for their use of water boarding and executed them. During the Viet Nam era the US put American soldiers on trail as torturers for using water boarding, they were found guilty and received stiff sentences. Those were the good old days when right and wrong, illegal and effective, immoral and expedient were understood as opposites. Now things are different, as times have changed, as the framing of the torture issue has been allowed to change, whatever is useful has become right. Team Bush tortured the 'terrorists' at Gitmo, at Abu Ghraib, in Bagram and who knows how many secret off shore CIA prisons. In my opinion, they undountedly created far more enemies for the US than they stopped.

Along came newly elect team Obama fresh off his election campaign where he vowed to prosecute those responsible for torture on numerous occasions. Obama's framing of the issue during the campaign was one of morality and legality. But once he was elected he allowed the shithead Cheney to re-frame the question throughout the media to one of necessity and effetiveness. Obama, a well trained Harvard lawyer, must have understood immediately the repercussions of letting Cheney's expediency framing go unchallenged. He remained silent, that was his moment, on the torure issue, to draw a line in the sand between right and wrong and he chickened out. Neither Obama nor Holder has ever held the Bush administration or their lawyers accountable.

Bush, Cheney and Rumsfield should be doing the perpwalk for their war crimes. Obama and Holder's decision makes them accessories after the fact to those war crimes. History will not judge any of  them well. Nor will it look kindly on all who've remained silent.

‘All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing’ - Edmund Burke

No Appetite for Prosecution: In Memoir, Bush Admits He Authorized the Use of Torture, But No One Cares

Carnival Capitialism - "Step right up, there's a winner every time."

Why is the fed so obcessed with artifically supporting the stock market? In my opinion, it's because so many folks were hoodwinked into mutual funds as a tool back in the Reagan years. Back then the 'markets' had largely run outta new dough. The bankers came up with another ploy, this time it was to secure a steady flow of funds into the carnival by offering folks the time honored flim-flam of a free lunch. "Step right up, there's a winner everytime" the carnival barker shouts. while the carny's owners know that, as P.T. Barnum, one of the original actual carny owners said, "There's another sucker born every minute."

The hated bank bailouts and assorted 'stimulus' packages were the western governmnts' attempt to forstall a worldwide stock market meltdown which would have resulted in the value mutual funds plummeting. So, to avoid the voter backlash that would have thrown out incumbents in democracies around the globe [thereby forcing the pigs away from the trough], the 'leaders' chose the largest single transfer of money in world history. They chose to bankrupt everyone's children and grandchildren by borrowing trillions from China and elsewhere and sending the dough to their favorite banks and corporations. The Tea Party Slogan "Stimulus, The Audacity of Dopes" captures accurately the spirit of populist sentiments on the topic.

Now there's millions of little guys who were counting on their mutual funds as their retirement security, instead have seen them drop during the '08 warmup to the big drop that will happen when the debt crisis turns into massive austerity programs and 'consumers' will be forced to stop consuming most everything other than food. That'll be the popping of the last big bubble-the commodity bubble. Look out cause from what i've read the 'smart' money, the carny owners, are selling commodity stocks slowly to mutual fund managers and either hoarding the cash or turning to real assets like gold, or in China's case oil and potash. The big boys know the second [much larger] dip is coming soon to a carnival near you.

Quantitative easing is just devaluation - Toronto's Globe and Mail
Get ready for yet another round of quantitative easing (i.e. printing more money), one may well ask: Why?

Saskatchewan First Nations Set To Bid For PotashCorp

Emotions are running high in Saskatchewan following the $US40 billion bid for the Potash Corporation of Saskatchewan by BHP Billiton. Premier Brad Wall has invoked the image of Tommy Douglas as a symbol of prairie populism in his attempt to stop the Billiton deal saying, that if accepted, it could cost the treasury billions of dollars in lost royalties and taxes over a decade. PM Steven Harper's Conservatives, to their credit, have nixed the deal, at least for the next 30 days, saying it wasn't in Canada's longterm interests to allow it to proceed.

Media outlets worldwide are running stories about how Harper's decision compromises Canada's pro- international investment paradigm, that it's based on politics and that he's knucked under to prairie populism. Certainly, to some degree, Wall's opposition to the hostile takeover bid is based on popular sentiment throughout Saskatchewan as well as his honest assessment that it threatens Saskatchewan and Canada's future security. Potash is a mineral salt high in potassium, mined for use in agricultural fertilizers. Saskatchewan has 90% of the world's reserve and if/when food scarcity becomes the huge problem it looks like it will potash will become gold.

But, in my opinion, the big story is that the Saskatchewan-based Indigenous Potash Group now has found the door opened to their multibillion-dollar competing bid for Potash Corp. The First Nations group said it is collaborating with merchant banks, pension funds and Chinese investors to prepare their counter bid. The indigenous group has already raised $25 billion in the last two weeks from potential investors.

"We cannot be left out. We are moving on this," said Rick Gamble, who is chief of the Beardy's and Okemasis First Nation and spokesman for the Indigenous Potash Group. "This is exciting stuff. We're ready to go". Assembly of First Nations Chief Shawn Atleo addressed that assembly yesterday, and spoke to the importance of the potash debate saying, "It will be a benchmark for the whole country".

Here then is a great oppurtunity for our often alienated-overlooked indigenous brothers and sisters to regain some control over the land of their ancestors, to provide direction in the ongoing plunder of their [and Saskatchewan's] natural resources and to re-exhibit pride in their historic cultural heritage. Right On!
 
First Nations Plan Bid for PotashCorp

2012 Democratic Primary Or Bust-The Clock Is Already Ticking

The articles demanding a Democratic presidential primary in 2012 started to roll out yesterday less than 24hrs after the midterm polls closed. It won't be easy, the Democratic establishment has quietly been changing the rules to make it almost impossible for anyone to challenge the liar and thief Obama. Difficult, yes-entirely impossibe, no.

In my opinion, progressives have no other option. Hillary is out of the question, she's been co-opted by Obama [hold your friends close, your enemies closer], she voted for the Irag War, her hubby Bubba would be a huge anchor for her to drag along behind her and, i think she's over her being robbed of the 2008 nomination. In my opinion, any Democrat willing to challenge the Obamanator would have to come from outside the traditional Democratic establishment.

Any Sarah Palin type populist challenge from the grassroots of progressive America would likely have to be a Wendall Berry type-leadership from the bottom-outsider. His or her main spokespeople would have to be also. There's a new way to do organizing now and it's bottom up, not top down like the traditional model. Obama used it to successfully catch a ride on the populist wave. Now that the populist wave has left him flopping around in the undertow, it's time for a 'real' reprogressive to use these tactics to challenge the heartbeak kid.

The new tactics use the new technologies of social networking and the blogosphere to bring together the ideas and energy of many minds to form a broadly based coalition of the young, the old, the poor and the dispossed. Any challenger would have to accept no corporate donations and limit any individual's donations to a small [maybe $100] amount. Any challenger would have to tear a idealist page out of the Tea Party planner, they'd have to state clearly that ideas are open debate and compromise, but that ideals are not.

The clock is already ticking, the Iowa caucuses, with thier fairly open rules of engagement, are the first stepping stone to nominating and electing a 'real' progressive in 2012. Be there or be square.

A Progressive Primary to Push for Jobs and End the Wars


Quietly revising the 2012 Democratic nomination process.

A good number of people - on both sides of the spectrum - are allowing themselves to speculate on the previously-unthinkable scenario that possibly, just possibly, the President might be successfully challenged in the primaries in 2012.

Prop 19 Up in Smoke

Whadda bummer, Prop 19 lost yesterday in Kalifornia 53% to 47%, in my opinion the reason is more people voted against it, than for it. The coalition of kids, cops, liberarians and Cheech and Chong devotees wasn't strong enough to overcome the huge turnout against the measure in Northern Kalifornia, the region most turned on to pot growing, where many growers and the legions of people they employ in production and distribution feared it would negatively affect their livelihood.

On the same token things have now changed pychoactively everywhere in the state. The genie's out of the bottle and reefer madness has gone mainstream. Pot users will be coming out of the closet and onto the beaches and streets. With nearly half the people, including most of the cops, supporting the initiative clearly the state has gone to pot.

Its close loss could actually be better for us stoners than a narrow victory woulda been. Now big business will hafta stay outta the grow show business and government won't get to zig zagging their way into our wallets by adding their cut to our already expensive recreational pastime. The folks in the emerald triangle will still have to compete with the outlaws up in BC but at least its not Sprawl-Mart eh.

Kalifornia wasn't the only state to vote anti-stoner. In South Dakota they shotgunned an initiative and we're still waiting for the smoke to clear on Arizona's decision. Then there's Oklahoma who voted yesterday to ban all types of stonings statewide. The big losers in all those states were the principal bankrollers of each of these initiatives: the makers of Tostitos, Twinkies and Peanut Butter Cups, also know as the TTP. But not to worry, curl up on the couch, roll up a fatty and relax 'cause this bud's for you.

Oklahoma Bans Stonings - Oklahoma voters have approved a measure that would forbid judges from considering international law or Islamic law when deciding cases.

Big Money Buys Big Influence Everywhere

It's mid-term election day in the US and the results will start rolling in a of couple hours. But before they do there's one issue that has dominated much of the discourse from all 'sides', the influence of big money. The Democrats want us all to focus on the big corporate money being donated by shadowy organizations to the Republicans. The Republicans favor focusing on how the Democrats are supported by similiar shadowy money from corporate interests, union interests, trial lawyers etc.

The fact is all 'sides' make backroom deals with big money. Big money, of all types, doesn't give away their financial support they use it as a lever to gain big influence with all sides thereby creating the situation where the real winner in any election is gonna be them not the citizens, not 'we the people', not the many but the few. For sure the Republicans and their rabble rousing Tea Party faction have recieved more big money in this election cycle than the Democrats, especially from the banks, because the banks figure they'll get slightly less regulatory control from a Republican dominated congress which would allow them to continue or accelerate pillaging the assets, both natural and fiscal, of the world with abandon.

Another fact, is the Democrats have, exactly like their predessors, shoveled trillions into the pockets of the already obscenely rich as payback for their backrooms deals. The Tea Party may well be full of populists but their buses [the Tea Party Express], their hotel rooms, meals, venue rentals etc. are paid for by big money. Same for the Democrats-same for the Republicans. Big money doesn't just hold sway in America, it's the same here in Canada, both the Conservatives and Liberals are on the big money dole the slight exception being the NDP who primarily gets its big donations from big labour instead. Same's true, to slightly vaying degrees, in all the EU countries, in Japan, in India, in...you name it, if it's called a democracy big money has bought big influence there.

In China same thing, except in China or any totalitarian regime, big money doesn't have to bribe two or three political leaderships they only have to bribe one, much simplier eh. The rich have learned they don't need to have their puppets in democracies pass laws that might look unpopular with the population, they can have all the cake they want just by having them tweek the rules and regulations that determine how grandiose sounding laws are actually enforced. Big Money buys big influence everywhere.

The only solutions for my fellow Americans are 100% taxpayer funded campaigns and term limits. Unfortunately, as Upton Sinclair said “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” Today's election won't change anything no matter how it turns out, come tomorrow the rich will still rule the rest will still drool.

"The government has ceased to function, the corporations are the government." - Theodore Dreiser

Ask Every Question, Question Every Answer

Skeptic, like creationist or socialist, is not a pejoritive term. Creationists call themselves creationists so it's merely the defination of a person who truely believes in creationism, same for socialists. Skeptics wear the term proudly. The word denier, on the other hand, is a denigrating term, it implies that there is an absolute truth and that the speaker-deliverer of the name denier knows and speaks that 'truth', whereas the person on the recieving end also knows it, but for self-serving reasons, refuses to acknowledge that he/she does.

When a person uses the term denier to describe the mindset of an adversary it's the user of  the term that's being closed minded, illogical and unscientific not the person being called the name. Skeptical? Hopefully we're all skeptical, hopefully we all 'ask every question and question every answer'.

In reality there are no 'absolute truths' about anything, certainly nothing scientific. There are probabilities, some are very high, some not so much, but 'absolute truth' only exists in religion. In science everything is open to new information coming along that can change things. Science, good science, logically valid science is about Thesis + Anithesis = Synthesis. As soon as any logical arguement has been challenged by a new concept, that is itself valid, then a new synthesis is formed. This new and improved arguement is then itself instantly open to the next new challenge, and if it's a valid arguement, another new synthesis becomes the accepted idea ad infinitum. eh.

This mental process is the defination of being a skeptic. We humans have used it to learn new ways to live in the world since we climbed out of the trees. If we hadn't we might still be up there. Skeptic or denier? Semantics matter, call me a skeptic and the doors of communication stay wide open, i'm proud to be a skeptic. Call me a denier and feel the wind of that door closing.

"The pencil is mightier than the pen"- Robert Pirsig

The Skeptics Society is a scientific and educational organization of scholars, scientists, historians, magicians, professors and teachers, and anyone curious about controversial ideas, extraordinary claims, revolutionary ideas, and the promotion of science. Our mission is to serve as an educational tool for those seeking clarification and viewpoints on those controversial ideas and claims.

Judith Curry-How Many Minds Can Solve Big Problems With Big Soultions

To solve the big problems we all face we'll need big answers. Computer scientists have developed super-computers designed to solve large data crunching problems. The super-computers run control programs to solve problems like the enormous number of calculations necessary to predict worldwide weather patterns accurately moment by moment , for instance by dividing up the workload into packets, assigning each packet to a different processor, then each seperate processor does its share of the overall job and outputs its results back to the overall control program who then compiles those many individual results into a coherent whole.

The big problems we humans are facing are far more complex than those any super-computer invented yet can understand let alone solve. The big problems we face can't be modeled by numbers and manipulated by silicone gates connected by circuits because they each are framed by the emotional content of  each independent viewer as well as being more abstract questions we, the beholders, are emotional about our view of it. Humans, unlike computers, each see incoming data set through our own worldview. Each human then sees the world and its problem at hand uniquely, each then is manipulating different information about the problem. Each then might consult outside specialists or authorities to better inform themselves, but as each sees the problem differently each would be choosing a different source or sources in order to become well informed.

At that point, unlike the output of a computer, the many minds of the beholders will be outputting a huge range of solutions. At first glance it appears that these jumbled outputs would be useless in solving any problems, even the least complex. But it ain't so. Because humans have the capacity to learn, because, instead of welded wiring harnesses, we have brains that can re-wire themselves on the fly, because we each have this re-wireable, general usage processor between our ears we are capable of using the emotive filtering that seems so limiting to advantage in solving-combining a massive set of jumbled outlets into big solutions.

The secret? Communication. We, unlike computers, can communicate our individual emotionally driven outputs through our senses at various stages of developing those outputs and use this interactive recombining of our conclusions with those of other individuals whose outputs are like ours and those whose aren't. Then we can re-start our processing, but in this new iteration we have new information to manipulate. Each individual's solution to even the biggest problems can and does change because we can communicate with each other to change both the incoming-updated data-modified by the solutions of others and we can change the emotive sieve we use to sift and weight our view. Once our many minds have communicated, once we've modified our inputs and outputs by learning, we can solve the big problems with big solutions. Our big answers are as close as the person next to us if we communicate

Don't believe me? Here's proof, check out Judith Curry's website Climate Etc. where everyday hundreds of interested bloggers, laypeople and scientists from all prespectives surrounding the climate change issue are interracting, arguing, disagreeing, learning and communicating. As each day, each iteration, passes people and ideas come closer. Big solutions to big problems begin with communication.

Judith Curry's extended peer community in action.

Plausibility and the blogosphere in the post-normal age.

The Eyes Of Texas Are Upon The Rangers Tonight in Arlington

The eyes of the Lone Star State and the baseball world will be on the Texas Rangers tonight. Will the fickle finger of fate change direction and shed its grace on Ron Washington's Rangers? Will the hopes of texas' fans end in cheers or jeers? We'll find out in a few hours.

The boys of Arlington's summer were hammered on consecutive nights in San Francisco but if they can turn it around tonight all that will be history. They have a lot going for them. They're back home in front of their legions of adoring fans. Bad Vlad, who was terrible in right field in Frisco, will be re-assuming his role as designated hitter where he's done so well this season. And the smells emanting from the crowd will return to the familiar beer and barbeque and away from the pungent smell of reefer so widely reported when they played the first two games on the left coast.

Of course, they have a big disavantage too, i'm rooting for them. As everyone following The Mud Report knows my endorsment is akin to a reverse midas touch. They were big favorites going ino the World Series but, though i always go with the dogs, this time i went with The Rangers because a couple buddies of mine are diehard National League fans because they hate the designated hitter rule in the American League.

Should The Rangers win tonight they've still got a decent chance. Tomorrow Cliff Lee will be on the mound for them and if he returns to his previous playoff form, well, anything could happen. The weather looks great there right now, the tailgate parties are in full swing, the barbeques are blazing and the Lone Star beer is flowing. It'll be fun.

GO RANGERS GO

How Marijuana Prohibition Hurts Us All

The Mud Report has a number of entries concerning California's Prop 19, all written from a differnt perspective, all in support of its winning. This one, my last before the big vote on Nov. 2nd, focuses on the law enforcement angle. i've never been big on cops, but cops are people too and they have a tough job sometimes.

For instance, Robert Hamilton of the Humboldt County Sheriff's Office who patrols Shelter Cove a little coastal town at the end of a long winding road. There's about 600 homes in Shelter Cove, half of them are, and have been for many years, occupied by retirees, fishermen and seasonal folks escaping from the city. The other half, now-a-days, are occupied by pot growers. Everyday Robert Hamilton gets phone calls from irate residents of one half of the town demanding that he go arrest the other half.

He does go out everyday and look around. What he finds are hundreds of people and their pot plants, indoors and out, in different stages of growth and with Medical Marijuana Certificates. Sure he knows that many of these, often young, unemployed, folks driving $50,000 pickups probably aren't smoking all this weed to cure their glaucoma but what can he do. He's in a bind, even when he does check all their cards, measure the square footage of their garden and press charges he knows nothing is going too happen. The law as it stands now, pre-Prop 19 vote, is unenforcable unless the operation he finds is huge and 99% of them aren't. He, like everybody there grower or not, knows that private planes fly in and out of the little airport in town in the dark and they aren't there to haul home the smoked salmon. He, and undoubtedly many other rural cops, are so frustrated by the predicament they're in that the majority of them will probably vote yes on Prop 19 next tuesday.

If it passes the police could focus on serious crime instead. And there are serious crimes that everybody in Shelter Cove, and everywhere else, agrees must be focused on. Imagine somebody's child goes missing and the cops need basic bits of information that may seem unimportant but are critical to finding the kid. They start driving up driveways, knocking on doors asking folks if they saw, for example, a red pickup yesterday. Odds are 50-50 there's a grow show of some sort going on and that it's probably to big to really qualify under the law. The residents there are likely gonna answer, "no, i didn't see nothin" or whatever answer they think will get the cops outta the driveway, and keep them out, quickest. That bit of info about the red truck might be the key to finding a lost or kidnapped child. My child or your child. Marijuana prohibition, the turning of basically honest people into criminals because of how they want to get high, hurts us all.

VOTE YES on PROP 19, please

George Soros Makes the Case for Legal Weed

In Humboldt County, deputies' jobs can get hazy

Omar Kadhr's Guilty Plea In Gitmo's Kangaroo Court

Omar Kadhr, after eight years of psychological and physical torture, plead guilty at the Guantanamo military commission. Eight years of hell for allegedly defending himself from US soldiers who were doing their best to slaughter Afghan civilians. Omar Khadr was 15 when he was captured, held illegally in violation of US law, international law and the Geneva Conventions. The liar Obama, while campaigning, stated that confessions obtained by torture would not be acceptable. As an American citizen, i am ashamed.

Omar was also betrayed and denied his rights by the ass-kissing Canadian Government of PM Harper. Harper's insistance that Omar would get 'due process' is worthless, there is no justice in Gitmo's kangaroo court. If you live in Canada, as i do, you too should realize you have the same 'rights' as Omar, your 'rights' can be taken away instantly just like Omar's. Agreeing to trumped-up charges after being told "Do this or we barbeque you testicles" is hardly justice.

Canada and the US signed a treaty, The Optional Protocol to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which clearly says "all children under the age of 18 captured while fighting in wars are to be offered “special protection” and treated as victims, not as combatants. The “special protection” given to Khadr after his capture, was to be tortured and threatened with rape when his interrogators told him a fictional story of a young man sent to an American prison who was gang-raped and died of related injuries-implying that Khadr might face a similar fate if he failed to cooperate.

America's hypocrisy is a huge diappointment. America believes it has the right to invade any country they want, and expect the inhabitants to roll over and do nothing. If anyone actually fights back, they arrest them, torture them, then charge them with terrorism. Even after Omar's forced guilty plea, there's no gaurantee he'll ever be released. The US's expert witness on Khadr's future dangerousness, Dr. Michael Welner, a board certified forensic psychiatrist and creator of the "depravity scale", declared Omar, now 23, a danger to the US if he is ever released. The Americans and Canadians are setting the stage for the next act, when this negotiated eight sentence nears its end Omar will be declared a unredemable terrorist, or some such, and be prison until he dies.

"When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag, carrying a cross."-Sinclair Lewis

Some TEA Party Slogans Melt Arbitrary Left-Right Divisions

The TEA Party slogan Don’t Mortgage the Future is an example of  how meaning, as well as beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. Regardless of where on the continous-undivided circle of the political spectrum a person may think they sit, some ideas are shared by us all. The idea that You Can’t Spend Your Way Out of Debt is just common sense. Everyone agrees that borrowing trillions of dollars from China, or anywhere else, to bailout the bankers and pay interest on your debts is somewhere between idiotic and suicidial. Are the ideas reflected in the slogans:

• Don’t Mortgage my Child’s Future
• Don’t Mortgage my Grandchildren’s Future
• Save the children – Stop spending their money
• Bailouts + Debt = fiscal child abuse
• Debt is the problem; how can it be the solution too?
• Special Interests Get the Pork; We Get the Beans
• Wall Street Got a Bailout; All I Got Was The Bill

left or right, conservative or liberal ideas? Both, of course. They're simple common sense, they cross all the arbitrary divisions in the political spectrum. So do the ones that intuitively grasp the essence of more esoteric concepts like 'quantitative easing', which simply means printing more currency to pay debts thereby lowering the value of every dollar already in circulation including those that people have sweated to earn and save. Are signs that say:

• Print Me a Trillion While You’re At It
• Save Trees; Stop Printing Money

Republican or Democratic signs? Neither, of course. The kids and grandkids of everyone will pay for this folly. We The People are all in this together. Ideas like:

• If You’re Not OUTRAGED, You Aren’t Paying ATTENTION!
• Don’t Bail Out The Boat: FIX THE LEAK
• No Public Money for Private Failure
• Silence IS Consent

simply reflect a growing concensus among everyday people everywhere, including Americans, that there are only 2 classes, the rich and the rest of us. Small 'l' liberals and 'c' conservatives are the same creature. They are the mushy minded who have slightly different ideas on some issues [other than their entitlement to a mortage and a burned out credit card], but lack the ideals that should underlie those ideas. Ideas are open to compromise, ideals will always evolve as new information modifies them, but they aren't open to compromise, that's why there's two different words. Democrats and Republicans are the same party and We The People are not invited.

Biologist Alexandra Morton and the 'wild salmon people'

Today the Cohen Commission opens hearings on the effects, or lack of them, of fish farms on wild salmon stocks here in BC. This is a huge issue and the fish farming industry is spending millions on a propaganda campaign designed to soften up opposition to their dubious industry. Their advertising campaign centers on the 34 million sockeye of the Adams River run that showed up this year and gave us a $500 million fishery. Alexandra's blog gives a great explaination, in layman's terms, of the biology behind her continued concerns about the calculas of wild and farmed salmon.

Quoting her blog: "Eighteen years ago in July 1992 a salmon farm in the narrowest marine corridor used by the Fraser sockeye was stocked with IHN virus-infected salmon. IHN is lethal to sockeye. Government was secretive about this and let the infected salmon stay in the ocean. As a result, the disease spread to 13 salmon feedlots (9 million farm salmon) over three years in a 20 km radius exposing 6 generations of wild salmon to extremely high and unnatural levels of virus. This is exactly when Fraser sockeye productivity began to fail. "

"A second IHN epidemic raged in the feedlots for 3 years from Campbell River to Bella Bella via their smolt transport vessels. Again DFO did nothing to protect our wild salmon and the Fraser sockeye continued their decline. I think fish farmers cleaned up temporarily in 2008 and that is why we got so many sockeye back this year.”

Alexandra's website Salmon Are Sacred is a moving and well written appeal to us all. Her intelligent and throughly researched conclusions have disturbing implications for the future of both wild salmon and the Salish Sea. Her passion has inspired many people here and around the world to look more deeply into this issue and those larger ones that frame it.

Morton calls 'all wild salmon people' to Vanier Park on October 25 - Biologist Alexandra Morton has invited “all wild salmon people” to join her at Vanier Park on Monday, October 25, when she and her companions complete their paddle down the Fraser River.

Marisol Valles Garcia, police chief of Guadalupe, Mexico and the 'War on Drugs'

Marisol Valles Garcia is a 20-year-old college student majoring in criminology and she's just been named the new police chief of Práxedis Guadalupe Guerrero, Mexico, not far from Ciudad Juarez often considered “the most dangerous city in the world.”. How did she land the job? Well, she was the only one who applied for it. The last police chief was gunned down by the warring local drug cartels in July 2009 and the town's mayor was murdered this past June. The town had been unable to find a replacement a chief for more than a year.

Public officials are often sitting ducks and many have been assassinated by drug cartels doing business in Mexico. Guadalupe, a town of 8,500 in the border state of Chihuahua, used to be a quiet farming community before two rival gangs began fighting for control of the drug trafficking route along the Texas border that runs through it.

The drug cartels in Mexico make huge profits servicing the US demand for illegal drugs. The cartels are prmarily made up of the children of poor rural and urban Mexicans who have for generations been kept dirt poor by the unequal distribution of wealth down there. The richos own everything in Mexico. They've bribed every government at every level, and killed any opposition that arose througout Mexico's history. More recently the Mexican's have had to suffer the embarrassment of being servents to the rich gringo tourists who often belittle them. The new generation had had enough, now there's a bloodbath and countless innocent Mexicans are dying along with cartel members.

As the huge sucking sound of America's addiction to drugs grew louder each year many young Mexicans decided to put down their hoes and serving trays in order to make more money by filling the empty hole that was once the American dream. The US fought back with their 'War on Drugs' which was destined from day one to be a total failure. The supply side deluded Americans were, and still are, convinced that they can control the drug trade at home and abroad if they jump a bit higher over the buffalo jump. They refuse to even consider that it's their attitude of intolerance that is the problem so they build 50ft walls and the cartels build 51ft ladders.

All this killing is totally unnecessary. The hypocritical Americans will defend their right to own guns with the logic: 'guns don't hurt people, people hurt people. They understand that gun control is stupid and pointless because it's criminals who must be controlled not objects. At the same time they steadfastly refuse to apply the same logic to drugs. Drugs don't hurt people, they're an object, ballast, it's people who hurt each other. So pretty 20 year old Marisol Valles Garcia is now in the crosshairs of the idiotic War on Drugs. One day my fellow Americans will have to wake up, i hope it's today.

Mexican student takes over police in drug war town. - When she was asked whether or not she was afraid, Marisol Valles replied: “Here, everyone is afraid, we are all afraid. But we are going to exchange this fear for safety.”

Wikileaks' Iraq War Logs

"This disclosure is about the truth. We hope to correct some of that attack on the truth that occurred before the war, during the war, and which has continued on since the war officially concluded." - Wikileaks' Julian Assange

The Mud Report is very happy to be extended heartfelt thanks to Wikileaks and its founder Julian Assange for having the courage to stand and speak out in the face of the public pressure applied to him and his website by the Pentagon and US State Department. He, of course, also knows that behind the scenes every western 'intelligence' agency has been covertly doing everything they can to discredit him or worse.

Today, following the release of these almost 400,000 classified documents, an offical Pentagon spokesman denied the US ever did any of the stuff their own documents tesity to. What else can you expect. The Pentagon, CIA, NSA, FBI, and State Dept. are lying liars telling lies, misinformation is their job, nothing new there. But to be fair, Canadian military and 'intelligence' up here in Canuckistan are no different about their exploits in Afghanistan or anywhere else. Neither are Brits, French, Chinese, Pakistanis, Aussies...any of 'em.

As Julian Assange also said as his opening statement at the press confrence after the Iraq War Logs release, "the truth is the first casualty of war". Thanks again to Wikileaks' Julian Assange for his brave actions on all our behalf. Hopefully he has ninja bodyguards and a phalanx of food testers surrounding him 24/7.

Iraq: The War Logs - How the US gave its troops a chilling order to ignore detainee abuse by Iraqi authorities, however severe.

US turned blind eye to torture - Leaked documents on Iraq war contain thousands of allegations of abuse, but a Pentagon order told troops to ignore them.

Artificial Divisions In The Political Spectrum

Leftwing, rightwing and centerist are symbolic terms used to artificially divide the continuous spectrum of political philosophy into manageable groupings. This averaging not only doesn't reflect the true nature of the political spectrum it also frames the discourse into a linear relationship when a circular one far more accurately symbolizes the body politic of all western countries.

Just as red, blue and yellow are used to simplify the continous spectrum of a color wheel into 3 'primary' colors when in reality no such divisions exist we try to label political philosphies into groupings that in reality exhibit no hard divisions. Instead a continous circle of political thought morphs from one position to the next to the next without any sharpe divisions.

In America the media uses terms like RINOs [Republicans in name only] and Blue Dogs [DINOs?], conservatives and liberals, libertarians and anarcists to divide the continuum into bite size chunks. The emergence of the TEA Party has begun to melt these arbitrary chunks of the spectrum. Are TEA Partiers Rebublicans? Libertarians? Blue Dogs? Conservatives? All of the above, a bit of each or none of the above? If we follow the linear logic of the left-center-right metaphor we'd probably put anrchists are the furthest 'left' next to them, heading toward the 'center', would be socialists then mainstream Democrats, then comes the DINOs and RINOs, the mainstream Republicans, the TEA Partiers and the liberatrians furthest to the 'right'.

The linear metaphor puts anarchists and libertarians as the two most apparently distant groups when, in my opinion, these two artificially labeled groupings are kissing cousins philosophically. Anarchists and libertarians are no more different in political philosophy than say RINOs and DINOs. The circular metaphor, in my opinion, much more accurately reflects the real relationship of America's, and all western country's, morphing political paradigms.

The circular metaphor offers an alternative to the political dead end of our current artificial divisions. With it libertarians who see big government as anethma realize they have cousins at both shoulders not just one. Anarchists, who equally despise big government, do too. Likewise issues like gun control and marijuana legalization can be understood as philosophical cousins. So too for any of the diverse and colorful combinations on the political wheel. Circular logic shows us we are all cousins because, seen through the circular metaphor, all people and their intricately woven individual paradigms are equally distant from the 'center'.

Fetish Break-ins Terrorize Their Mostly Female Victims And Families

"Crimes involving sexual fetishes are far more prevalent than one might think."-CBC News. Fetish break-ins aren't silly petty crimes they are violent predatory acts that terrorize the victims and their families. Yet the courts and police treat them lightly instead of treating them as part of a psychopath's progression from seemingly victimless behavior to rape and murder.

Almost everyone, especially males, have sexual fantasies. Some of them are bizzare, but as long as they remain between the ears of the beholder or acted out in privacy they remain victimless. A fetishist becomes sexually excited by a nonsexual object and many are non-violent, non controlling and not to be confused with predators. But as soon as a fetishist takes the first step outside the private realm between their ears he becomes a terrorizer of those that he stalks or steals from.

"By sneaking into someone's place, they're showing that they can invade their territory. What that person is showing the other person is that he has no problem invading her space. It indicates that the person is working their way toward rape of a real person," said criminal profiler Pat Brown, CEO of the Pat Brown Criminal Profiling Agency."Taking someone's underwear does two things," Brown said. "It shows that you were there and that you're taking a souvenir of your accomplishment. He is getting as near to the person's skin, so to speak, as he can possibly get."

Russell Williams is a psychopath, he has no empathy for anyone much less his victims. He, like all psychopaths, is delusional. He acts only to fulfill his delusion without regard for the victim, the pain of their family, or his own. Like a pedophile, this serial predator can't be rehabilitated he and his ilk are hardwired to do the evil they do. If there ever was an overwhelming arguement for the death penalty the SOB Russell Williams is it.

As a parent of two wonderful daughters Williams behavior terrorizes me too. Like millions of parents, i worry everyday that my kids and grandkids might be victimized by some deviant like Williams. i fantasize that if anything like these abominations were ever to happen to any member of my family i'd want the cops and the courts to turn the psychopath lose and tell me what door he'd come out and when, i'd bet Williams' victim's families feel the same. Instead of Canadians paying to feed, house and entertain assholes like Williams, Clifford Olsen and others i suggest The Louisville Slugger solution.
 
Williams 'pure evil': murder victim's brother
"I miss her every day. First it was Mother's Day, then it was her birthday in May. So many dreams I had of my daughter have been destroyed. I will never walk her down the aisle, hear that she's expecting a baby. He has not only taken away my precious daughter, but dreams of her future children, my future grandchildren."

Tea Party, Bright Light or Outhouse?

Years ago Preston Manning, founder of the Reform Party of Canada, answered "Bright lights always draw flies." when asked by a reporter, Why does the new Reform Pary have so many nutty supporters? "Outhouses do too" woulda been my reaction. There are many parallels historically and philosophically between Canada's Reform Party and the Tea Party that go beyond their ability to draw flies.

Like the Tea Party, the Reform Party started out as a far right populist movement whose first objectives were to cut taxes and the size of governnment, to instill Christian morality into the political mainstream, and to eliminate government regulation in every sphere of life and commerce. Unlike the Tea Party, Reform began its life as an independent political party and got their candidates elected to a small minority of federal ridings. Within a few years Reform's electoral success had reached its zenith.

Canada already had the Progressive Conservatives who, like the Republicans in the US, were the historically 'right' of center party. When Reform entered the scene most of their supporters were disenfranchised PCs plus a very few right leaning Liberals. Basically Reform simply divided the right in two creating two unelectable parties on the conservative side. Their only solution was to merge into one new party, today's Conservatives, which now are in power because the more progressive voters are votes were and are still divided between the Liberals, NDP and Green Party. At first it looked like the older larger PCs would absorb the nascent Reformers easily, but they didn't and in a matter of months Manning's protege Steven Harper emerged as the new party's leader and is now Canada's Prime Minister. Along with the Reformers came the flies circling their outhouse of ultra right wing crap. Many of these flies now make up Harper's cabinet.

The Tea Party appears to have been absorbed by the much larger Republican Party right from the get-go but, as in Canada's case, appearances can be decieving. And along with the Tea Partiers the Repulicans are now having to deal with the flies. In Canada the amalgamated rightwing parties rule with less than 40% of the vote because their opposition is divided. Unless the 'left' in Canada, Liberals, NDP and Greens, unite the theocratic Harperites and their ilk will rule the roost for many years to come.

In the US the already sorta united Rebublican-Tea Party coilition are about to win big in the mid-term elections in large part because their is no 'left' left. The solution, as i see it, is for US progressives to form their own quasiparty of idealists and, using the Tea Partiers example, bootstrap themselves back into the position they were in before the liar Obama stole their thunder.