Turning over rocks: the things you find..

           When I was a child, there was a patch of undeveloped swampy land behind our house, fed by a spring. There was tall grass, so high I remember it being over my head - fantastic place to hide! There were big grass snakes slithering around, hunting. And there was a shallow bog which held water all year round, except when it froze solid in winter. In the higher, drier spots of the bog there were discarded bits of lumber and some big rocks. When you turned these over you would find an amazing zoo of light shunning creatures: ant colonies, spiders, centipedes, earwigs, worms, woodlice.. I even saw my first slime mold ameba.. Sadistically, I would occasionally lure another kid to see one of my prized "collections" of creepy-crawlers. Sometimes I wouldn't have time to finish turning over a rotten board or a flat rock before I saw their backside cutting a wake through the tall grass to get the hell out there as fast as possible..

           When governments lose contact with their true function: to provide services essential for the maintenance of a civlilized society, they become like that bog of stagnant water. Strange lifeforms which shun the light of day proliferate and take over. When the bog becomes too stagnant and stinks too much people finally decide to drain it and clean it up. Investigators, whistle blowers and muck-raking journalists turn over rocks and expose what has been hidden to the light of day. This is what transparency looks like in action..

           Québec province's Charbonneau Commission into organized crime influence in the construction industry has claimed its first victims.

            Montréal mayor Gérald Temblay decided to step down as the heat went up and accusations of corrupt practices in the metropole's city hall came to light. As Don Macpherson noted in a recent column, the Charbonneau Commission also has a mandate to investigate corrupt political linkages between the construction industry and the financing of political parties, both municipal and provincial. These links may prove the greatest embarrassment of all. Mayor Temblay denied any knowlege of inflated contract prices and an organized system of kickbacks to collaborating city officials in Montréal. But resign he did and not without signficant political fallout. The Mayor's ruling municipal party found itself so weakened and morally compromised that it was forced to cancel tax hikes that been announced a mere two days earlier. The municipal tax hike was pared back from 3.3% to 2.2%, reflecting the annual inflation rate. It was simply too embarrassing to demand super-inflationary tax hikes while city hall is under suspicion of accepting bribes from mafia-ridden construction companies to inflate city contracts. Contracts may have been, in some cases, inflated as much as 30 to 40% over their real value. Corrupted city officials are alleged to have received skim-offs of 2 to 3% of the final contract value to let the inflated estimates pass without question.

              There has already been blow back from the Charbonneau Commission at the provincial level. Ex-premier Jean Charest (Libéral) was, more or less, forced to call an early, summer election rather than face the storm of corruption charges that the Commission would unleash. He lost that election..

http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/Macpherson+Charbonneau+commission+least+some+Quebec/7512778/story.html

             Nor were Mayor Tremblay and Premier Charest the only early victims. The city of Laval's "king", Gilles Vaillancourt, was forced to fall on his sword after a 23 year reign. The heads have only started to roll, one suspects..

              Investigators are looking into allegations that Mayor Vaillancourt funneled millions of dollars of dirty money into overseas tax havens. In addition, two provincial officials have stepped forward claiming that he offered them illegal political contributions.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/story/2012/11/06/laval-mayor-gilles-vaillancourt-steps-down.html

             A smorgasbord of articles on the Charbonneau Commission by Macleans Magazine:

http://www2.macleans.ca/tag/charbonneau-commission/ 

internal blog link: http://transparencycanada.blogspot.ca/2012/11/the-right-hand-knows-not-what-left-hand.html

While the inquiry is usually described as being into corruption into the construction industry, its mandate also includes possible connections to political financing.

Read more: http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/Macpherson+Charbonneau+commission+least+some+Quebec+politicians+nervous/7512778/story.html#ixzz2Co9uQ55x

While the inquiry is usually described as being into corruption into the construction industry, its mandate also includes possible connections to political financing.

Read more: http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/Macpherson+Charbonneau+commission+least+some+Quebec+politicians+nervous/7512778/story.html#ixzz2Co9uQ55x

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charbonneau_Commission

Book Review: Chris Hedges, Empire of Illusion

Chris Hedges: Empire of Illusion, the end of literacy and the triumph of spectacle. Alfred A Knopff Canada, 2009. 193 pages, chapter notes, bibliography (extensive), citation sources and references (extensive), good index. Rating 9 on 10, excellent.

"In an age of images and entertainment, in an age of instant emotional gratification, we neither seek nor want honest or reality.. We ask to be indulged and comforted by clichés, stereotypes, and inspirational messages that tell us we can be whoever we seek to be.. The ability to amplify lies, to repeat them and have surrogates repeat them in endless loops of news cycles, gives lies and mythical narratives the aura of uncontested truth. We become trapped in the linguistic prison of incessant repetition.. all complex thought, ambiguity, and self-criticism vanish." page 49

"A populace deprived of the ability to separate lies from truth, that has become hostage to the fictional semblance of reality put forth by pseudo-events, is no longer capable of sustaining a free society." page 52

        This is a hard hitting book. I know one social activist who read it in dribs and drabs, a few pages every week or so because she felt it was both essential reading and punishing. I didn't have this reaction probably because I gave up on the status quo and attempts to reform or transform it, years ago. I think this is a particularly valuable text for young people who are starting to question the nature of the "reality" that surrounds them. This book could save them years of wandering in the desert, asking useless questions and dreaming up rationalizations to justify or explain the madness they see around them. I concede I found the second chapter on pornography repellent and was happy when I finished reading it.

         From my perspective, Hedges is presenting us with a warts and all portrait of modern industrial culture, particularly American culture. It is picture of a morally bankrupt, spiritually vacuous culture whose sole function appears to be the maintenance of the greedy and ecologically suicidal life styles of a demented elite: even animals are capable of providing for future generations; we will leave only ashes..

         Because we today are lost, wandering in the wilderness like the ancient Hebrews, Hedges can provide no recipes to turn things around. He can analyze the disease - he does this exceedingly well! - but he can offer no cure that fits within the operating parameters of the dying "System" we live in. In the concluding passages, Hedges waxes prophetic, recalling archetypal images of death and rebirth reminiscent of the "Dark Night of the soul" evoked by the great Spanish mystic, Saint John of the Cross:

"Our culture of illusion is, at its core, a culture of death. It will die and leave little of value behind. It was Sparta that celebrated raw militarism, discipline, obedience, and power, but it was Athenian art and philosophy that echoed down the ages to enlighten new worlds, including our own. Hope exists. It will always exist.. The power of love is greater than the power of death. It cannot be controlled. It is about sacrifice for the other - something nearly every parent understands - rather than exploitation. It is about honoring the sacred.. Blind and dumb, indifferent to the siren calls of celebrity, unable to bow before illusions, defying the lust for power, love constantly rises up to remind a wayward society of what is real and what is illusion. Love will endure, even if it appears darkness has swallowed us all, to triumph over the wreckage that remains." page 192-3

             Of course, what Hedges, as prophet, is proclaiming here is a new model or "paradigm" of culture, at the antipodes of the protofascist vision of an Ayn Rand. Whether we or our grandchildren will live to see such a new vision of society arise from the ashes of the dying culture remains a moot question.

The right hand knows not what the left hand does..

           According to conventional neoconservative, Free Market ideology, reducing the size of government and eliminating regulatory mechanisms leads to increased efficiency (government is defined to be inefficient as an axiom of the belief system whether or not, in any given instance, it actually is).

           Like many "common sense" propositions, "cutting fat to improve efficiency" is, at best, only partly true, of limited (though real) applicability. Like all good, but limited, ideas, carrying it to illogical limits leads to destructive, counterproductive blowback (unintended consequences). 

           A good example of the such blowback was revealed in the Charbonneau Commission's investigation into corruption in the construction industry in the Province of Québec.

Wiki: Charbonneau Commission

            Budget cuts can lead to increased expenses in the long run, if they are not judiciously implemented and monitored to optimize the benefit to cost ratio of services provided to the public sector (that is, if cuts are implemented in a hamfisted, ideologically driven fashion). 

            One of the witnesses being grilled before the Charbonneau Commission into construction industry corruption in the city of Montréal observed that staff reductions in the Montréal Public Works Dept meant that oversight of public work contracts was reduced. The reduced oversight had the perverse, counterproductive effect of making it easier to inflate cost estimates and pay off corrupted officials. For example, cost overruns on projects would be inflated or simply invented with a kickback payed to a corrupted civil engineer so he would approve the additional billing. In addition, with oversight delegated to private sector consulting firms, the city lost the inhouse competency to carry out its own monitoring. This lead to increased costs for oversight and / or to reduced capacity. So the net effect of ideologically inspired budget cutting is to save a few bucks with the right hand while the left hand picks the right hand's pocket. Hidden costs - economists call them "externalities"..

internal blog link: http://transparencycanada.blogspot.ca/2012/10/charbonneau-commission-when.html

Globalization and its discontents

             Globalization is based on "Free Market" ideology. Companies should be free, absolutely free, to invest anywhere, do what they want, no strings attached. At best, governments should serve as industry's handmaidens, not their masters. In the words of one neo-conservative luminary, government should be shrunk to the point that "it can be drowned in a bathtub":

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grover_Norquist

              In practice, wo/man appears a more tribal animal than our ideologues would wish! Of course, ultimately it all comes down to a question of power. If you have the power to globalize, you globalize on the backs of those who are too weak to resist.  Western investment - often compelled by IMF / World Bank diktat - in third world economies? No problemo! Free markets foster wealth creation which wealth then "trickles down"  - The Golden Shower - and lifts the masses out of their poverty. That's the theory anyway. The practice may leave a bit to be desired..

              Haitian farmers, for example, have to compete with US subsidized rice which maintains them in poverty if it does not force them off the land into urban squalor. (Subsidized rice?? - Gee, we thought "Free Marketeers" were against subsidies. Guess it's a question of whose subsidy.. Third world farmers versus US agrobusiness, petroleum companies versus renewable energy producers..) But then a little suffering for little Haitian farmers: can't make omelettes without breaking eggs,eh?

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35608836/ns/world_news-americas/t/food-imports-hurt-struggling-haitian-farmers/#.UImtRflgHKc

http://www.oxfam.org/development/haiti-no-longer-grows-much-its-own-rice-and-families-now-go-hungry

             On the other hand, when it comes to third world (or ex-third world) companies investing heavily in important sectors of the North American economy? Not so sure, not so sure..

              A recent poll found, for example, that 64% of Albertans polled "opposed Chinese investment in the form of full ownership" in the Albertan oil sector while only 15% found it acceptable: that's more than 4 to 1 against full Chinese ownership of oil sector assets!! "Free Market".. Maybe, just Not In My Back Yard. 

              When it came to Chinese state-owned companies buying oil patch assets, things weren't much better: 53% against, 24% for - a bit over 2 to 1 against.

http://www.ottawacitizen.com/Albertans+oppose+Chinese+energy+ownership+poll/7442855/story.html

               As the French say, "un poids, deux mesures": one weight, two standards of weight. One standard for the first world, another standard for the third world :-D

North American Autumn

http://www.ecologicalhope.org/featured/long-lake-a-photo-essay/

"How will we say what this day means to us unless we enter it fully, consciously, and aware? How will we save what we love unless we are willing to be with our loved ones, to share their journeys and longings, their gifts and blessings? How will we come to know our world unless we go to it, our hearts open, ready always to receive and then to give back?

There are few things more important than to find a way to stop what we’re doing and look, look deeply, lovingly, fearlessly, unselfishly, without being anxious about what it might mean, how it might change us – and then to enter in."

              This is the primordial sense of "transparency": transparency, authenticity, openess towards oneself and the organic world around one (including the close circle of loved ones). If this primordial level of transparency is not attained, forget the rest: an inauthentic wo/man's judgement runs false at its source, the self..

               The existentialist philosophers of the last century understood this. They realized that one of the essential challenges of our time was to achieve the clarity of "authenticity":

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authenticity_%28philosophy%29

Surrender

       Surrender - not as defeat but as opening toward a Higher Realism. Interesting..

http://carolynbaker.net/2012/09/30/finding-the-gift-by-paul-chefurka/feed/

Pipelines aren't transparent, you've noticed?

Reversal of pipeline 9 between Westover and Montréal - Équiterre reveals Enbridge's real motives.

Montréal, October 4, 2012

Équiterre (environmental group) revealed today that Enbridge has concealed the real motivations behind its project to reverse oil flow in pipeline 9 between Westover, Ontario and Montréal. 

During public hearings before the National Energy Board last May, Enbridge claimed that this project was uniquely destined to supply the energy needs of eastern Canada.

However, according to information released today, the Canadian consulate approached the governers of the New England states, particularly Maine, in order to promote the sale of Albertan oil sands in the region. Information was obtained from the Natural Resources Council of Maine through the American Access to Information law.

"For several months, we suspected that Enbridge was hiding its real intentions for the reversal of oil flow in line 9. Now we have the proof that it was not to supply consumers in eastern Canada with Canadian oil nor to reinforce the energy security of our country! The goal was, and always has been, to export oil sand bitumen to the United States" stated Steven Guilbeault, adjoint director general of Équiterre.

"Given the fact that the federal government is in bed with the petroleum industry, we are appealing to the public, to municipalities as well as to the newly elected Québec provincial government in order to prevent this project from proceeding. Enbridge wants to transport one of the most polluting forms of petroleum through the second largest city of Canada (Montréal) via one of the oldest pipelines in the country! Are we going to let them get away with this?" concluded Mr. Guilbeault.

Our translation of the following press release from Équiterre

http://equiterre.org/communique/renversement-de-la-ligne-9-entre-westover-et-montreal-equiterre-devoile-les-veritables-in?fb_action_ids=10151345070348054&fb_action_types=og.likes&fb_source=aggregation&fb_aggregation_id=288381481237582