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City Council: What does "innovative procurement options" mean?
In December, Prince George Mayor Shari Green formed a “Select
Committee on Business” to get the views of certain business people on
the operations of City Hall. This Select Committee has just released its
recommendations, and one of them, point number ten, calls for
“ensuring” that the city is “open to innovative procurement options.”
So what does “innovative procurement options” mean?
Some people
might simply interpret this phrase as the PG municipal government
finding some new ways to acquire goods and services of various
kinds. But others, with good reason, might interpret it as code words
for “contracting out” and “privatization” of city services.
In any case, the call for “innovative procurement options” comes
right at a time when the Harper federal government is putting the final
touches on a free trade agreement with the European Union, otherwise
known as the “Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement” (CETA).
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Cash of the Titans: Against the Noxious Fantasy of Limitless Growth
The concept of endless economic growth, accepted as sacrosanct by
both U.S. mainstream political parties, and internalized as the dominant
mode of mind by the general population of the corporate/consumer state
is mirrored in the exponential mathematics of a malignancy.
Cancer, if given voice, would proclaim itself to be a believer in
"free market values"…devoted to the principle of endless growth…until,
of course, it would silence its own voice by killing its host.
Likewise, all life seeks limits or prematurely dooms itself.
The same holds true with addiction to unlimited economic
expansion…the craving for incessant ascension is, in fact, a doomed
Icarusian flight.
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The Last Days of the Lilliputians
In Gulliver's Travels the tiny Lilliputians attacked the much larger Gulliver while he was sleeping and tied him to the ground with thousands of threads. In a similar way the ruling elite have tied the working class in bondage. Small in number but great in power, the elite have designed myriad mechanisms of control to hold the much larger working class down and force it to work for them.
These include institutions such as mainstream politics, media, schools, labor unions, police, courts, military, and patriarchal gender roles. They also include emotionally laden concepts such as rugged individualism, a false image of socialism, and the very way we conceive of social class.
This last, the encultured view of ourselves, robs us of our class identity.
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The Perfect Fascist City:Take a Train in Jakarta
by Andre Vltchek
If you take a train in Jakarta, be warned: the images that would
unwind behind your windows could be too disturbing to bear for someone
who is not a war correspondent or a medical doctor.
It would often feel
as if hundreds of thousands of the wretched of the earth decided to camp
along the tracks, as if the garbage from the entire East Asia had been
dumped along the rails, as if the hell really materialized here on
earth, instead of threatening us from some imaginary religious realm.
From the unwashed windows of the train you would see people suffering
from all imaginable diseases.
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Stand Up for Working Women!
by Laura Flanders
The grassroots rage and organizing that countered Komen and GOP’s
anti-contraception crusade showed just what feminist fury can do. Facing
a cut-off in funds from the Susan G Komen Breast Cancer Foundation,
PPFA raised more money in a few days than it stood to lose from Komen
all year.
The federation’s supporters stirred up such a storm that a
senior Komen VP was forced out with her Georgia Republican anti-choice
agenda showing. And the burdensome pressure tactics of gratuitous
slap-suits and Congressional investigations finally made news – dirty
tactics that women’s clinics around the states have been subject to for
years.
And then came Daryl Issa’s panel on President Obama’s plan to require
insurance companies to pay for contraception coverage when religious
employers refused.
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Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade
by Canada's House of Parliament (Hansard)
The National, State broadcaster, the Canadian Broadcast Corporation's flagship news program, ran a panel tonight (Feb. 21, 2012) called 'Turning Point: Iran. One of the panelists was Munk Centre director, Janice Gross Stein.
This is the CBC lede: "Our Turning Point panel looks at Iran and its increasingly aggressive behaviour surrounding its nuclear program."
Her appearance reminded me of Iraq, and the media drum beat thrummed by the CBC then, and remembered Ms. Stein sharing her Middle East expertise with the Canadian House in the days leading to the 2003 war against Iraq.
Here's how she typified the "threat" Saddam Hussein posed to world peace at that time.
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News About Syria: Information or Propaganda?
by TRNN
Sharmine Narwani: Many opposition leaders want end to militarization on
both sides as GCC and US neo-cons call for arming opposition
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BC budget alarmingly short-sighted in the age of climate change
VICTORIA – “This budget is alarmingly short-sighted and
irresponsible,” said Ben West, Healthy Communities Campaigner for the
Wilderness Committee.
“There are no new ideas here, just the outdated
policy emphasis of exploiting BC’s resources with little regard to
living up to the province’s commitments to tackle climate change.”
The 2012 budget includes numerous subsidies to the oil and gas sector
while continuing to drastically underfund environmental oversight.
Spending on highway expansion projects yet again far exceeds allocations
for public transit infrastructure and service while transportation
emissions continue to be the leading source of green house gas emissions
in the province.
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Palestinian Prisoners Special on Voice of Palestine
by Hanna Kawas l Voice of Palestine
On Tue. Feb. 21, 2012, Voice of Palestine will feature a special show on
Palestinian political detainees, highlighting Khader Adnan who is
currently on day 65 of his hunger strike to protest administrative
detention.
We will interview Janan Abdu a Palestinian organizer for the campaign A Day of International Action for Palestinian Prisoners, and a feminist activist and researcher with Mada al-Carmel.
We will talk with Janan about Khader Adnan, the International Day of
Action and about the detention of her husband, political prisoner Ameer
Makhoul.
We will also feature three songs for Palestinian American singer
George Kormuz that are dedicated to Palestinian and Arab prisoners and
are not available on the internet.
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MICHAEL ENRIGHT, ARE YOU FOR REAL?
Sunday
morning I tuned into Michael Enright’s Sunday Edition radio show (Feb.
19) and was sorry.
I don’t know what to think about Michael these days.
Or CBC Radio. I understand that Stephen Harper considers CBC Radio
the enemy but I am increasingly perplexed as to why. As far as
international news reporting goes, it seems to me that the Canadian
media, including the CBC, is doing Harper’s job for him by keeping the
Canada public so tense with threats of imminent war that we will be
willing to accept more restrictions on our basic freedoms.
These threats
center on the so-called possibility of a US-Israeli invasion of Iran.
On
the program Michael utters the threatening words in a deeply
authoritarian voice: “How close is Iran to building a nuclear weapon?
What should be done? Should the US and Israel make a preemptive strike?”
Michael’s first two guests demure about a strike, but at least his
third guest, Hirsh Goodman from National Security Studies from Tel Aviv
University in Israel gives Michael the answer he seems to be hoping for.
The answer is yes. Mr. Goodman would think a preemptive strike would
be proper action if Iran continues with nuclear development.
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World's Oceans Get an Acid Bath: Increasing acidity in the world’s oceans could pose a greater threat to marine life than warming waters
 VANCOUVER, British Columbia - Among
the repercussions of global climate change, the effect of ocean
acidification on marine life is one of the least-understood variables.
The oceans have already absorbed about one-third of the 500 billion
tons of carbon dioxide that human activity has added to the atmosphere
since the industrial revolution.
Absorbing carbon dioxide reduces the pH
of seawater, indicating an increase in its acidity.
While more attention has been focused on the ecological fragility of
coral reefs, cold-water life in other regions -- from urchins and
sea-stars to tiny plankton-like copepods -- may be more at risk than
their warmer-water counterparts, according to information presented at
the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting
in Vancouver.
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