How Congress is Signing its own Arrest Warrants in the NDAA Citizen Arrest bill | Naomi Wolf

Force does not ensure peace   -agree  and learn from history

They may have supported this bill because—although it’s hard to believe—they think the military will only arrest active members of Al Qaida; or maybe, less naively, they believe that ‘at most’, low-level dissenting figures, activists, or troublesome protesters might be subjected to military arrest. But they are forgetting something critical: history shows that those who signed this bill will soon be subject to arrest themselves.

Our leaders appear to be supporting this bill thinking that they will always be what they are now, in the fading light of a once-great democracy — those civilian leaders who safely and securely sit in freedom and DIRECT the military. In inhabiting this bubble, which their own actions are about to destroy, they are cocooned by an arrogance of power, placing their own security in jeopardy by their own hands, and ignoring history and its inevitable laws. The moment this bill becomes law, though Congress is accustomed, in a weak democracy, to being the ones who direct and control the military, the power roles will reverse: Congress will no longer be directing and in charge of the military: rather, the military will be directing and in charge of individual Congressional leaders, as well as in charge of everyone else — as any Parliamentarian in any society who handed this power over to the military can attest.

Perhaps Congress assumes that it will always only be ‘they’ who are targeted for arrest and military detention: but sadly, Parliamentary leaders are the first to face pressure, threats, arrest and even violence when the military obtains to power to make civilian arrests and hold civilians in military facilities without due process. There is no exception to this rule. Just as I traveled the country four years ago warning against the introduction of torture and secret prisons – and confidently offering a hundred thousand dollar reward to anyone who could name a nation that allowed torture of the ‘other’ that did not eventually turn this abuse on its own citizens — (confident because I knew there was no such place) — so today I warn that one cannot name a nation that gave the military the power to make civilian arrests and hold citizens in military detention, that did not almost at once turn that power almost against members of that nation’s own political ruling class. This makes sense — the obverse sense of a democracy, in which power protects you; political power endangers you in a militarized police state: the more powerful a political leader is, the more can be gained in a militarized police state by pressuring, threatening or even arresting him or her.

Mussolini, who created the modern template for fascism, was a duly elected official when he started to direct paramilitary forces against Italian citizens: yes, he sent the Blackshirts to beat up journalists, editors, and union leaders; but where did these militarized groups appear most dramatically and terrifyingly, snapping at last the fragile hold of Italian democracy? In the halls of the Italian Parliament. Whom did they physically attack and intimidate? Mussolini’s former colleagues in Parliament — as they sat, just as our Congress is doing, peacefully deliberating and debating the laws. Whom did Hitler’s Brownshirts arrest in the first wave of mass arrests in 1933? Yes, journalists, union leaders and editors; but they also targeted local and regional political leaders and dragged them off to secret prisons and to torture that the rest of society had turned a blind eye to when it had been directed at the ‘other.’ Who was most at risk from assassination or arrest and torture, after show trials, in Stalin’s Russia? Yes, journalists, editors and dissidents: but also physically endangered, and often arrested by militarized police and tortured or worse, were senior members of the Politburo who had fallen out of favor.

Is this intimidation and arrest by the military a vestige of the past? Hardly. We forget in America that all over the world there are militarized societies in which shells of democracy are propped up — in which Parliament meets regularly and elections are held, but the generals are really in charge, just as the Egyptian military is proposing with upcoming elections and the Constitution itself. That is exactly what will take place if Congress gives the power of arrest and detention to the military: and in those societies if a given political leader does not please the generals, he or she is in physical danger or subjected to military arrest. Whom did John Perkins, author of Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, say he was directed to intimidate and threaten when he worked as a ‘jackal’, putting pressure on the leadership in authoritarian countries? Latin American parliamentarians who were in the position to decide the laws that affected the well-being of his corporate clients. Who is under house arrest by the military in Myanmar? The political leader of the opposition to the military junta. Malalai Joya is an Afghani parliamentarian who has run afoul of the military and has to sleep in a different venue every night — for her own safety. An on, and on, in police states — that is, countries with military detention of civilians — that America is about to join.

US Congresspeople and Senators may think that their power protects them from the treacherous wording of Amendments 1031 and 1032: but their arrogance is leading them to a blindness that is suicidal. The moment they sign this NDAA into law, history shows that they themselves and their staff are the most physically endangered by it. They will immediately become, not the masters of the great might of the United States military, but its subjects and even, if history is any guide — and every single outcome of ramping up police state powers, unfortunately, that I have warned for years that history points to, has come to pass — sadly but inevitably, its very first targets.

LINKS:

How Congress is Signing its own Arrest Warrants in the NDAA Citizen Arrest bill | Naomi Wolf

Privatize City Hall

Privatize City Hall It’s time to shed the dead weight of the bureaucracy
Lawrence Solomon, National Post, August 8, 2009

Provocative food for thought PR

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Toronto’s municipal strike is over. Some 30,000 garbage and other workers are back on the job. That’s at least 15,000 too many. If the strike has taught Torontonians anything, it’s that the city does precious little for its residents. Now that the garbage is finally being picked up, Torontonians want to clean up the mess at City Hall. Most hold the Mayor in low regard, most hold the councillors in low regard, most hold the strikers in low regard, and most want to privatize garbage collection.

But why stop with outsourcing garbage services? Private firms can and should take over the many other functions that city workers have grabbed from privatesector firms who would treat city customers with more respect, and at lower cost. Striking 15,000 to 20,000 workers from the city payroll will not only improve the quality of city services, doing so will also lower taxes and create jobs throughout the wider city economy.

In the case of garbage collection, private-sector workers, who tend to be fitter and better managed, collect two and a half to three times as much garbage per person per hour as city workers. With garbage collection in private hands, not only would strikes disappear but streets will be cleared of garbage more quickly and traffic will be less disrupted. Exit 6,000 workers. Bonus: Toronto will also pocket a small fortune by selling its trucks and other garbage infrastructure.

The case for privatizing Toronto’s bloated water and sewage operations is also a slam dunk — other cities that have done so saw savings as high as 50%. CUPE has not only opposed water privatization in the past, it even objected to the city applying its Works Best Practices Program to its water and sewage operations. Little wonder — this program found that the city’s sewage system would run better without 400 of its 907 workers. By placing the city’s water and sewage works under the management of the most efficient operators, Toronto taxpayers not only stand to save $100million, according to an estimate from United Water in 2001, but the unjustifiable hikes that we’ve seen in water rates would be staunched, along with many of the 1,500 water-main breaks the city suffers each year. Exit 1,500 workers.

Next, privatize the hugely inefficient Toronto Parking Authority. Although it is the largest in the continent, with 20 parking garages and 140 surface parking lots, it provides a pittance in revenue to the city, partly because it subsidizes parking for neighbourhoods that are politically well connected at the expense of neighbourhoods that aren’t. And partly because of its featherbedding and its wage levels — more than one-third of the monies that Torontonians pay in parking tickets or feed into parking machines feeds the parking authority’s payroll. Privatizing the parking authority would also help public transit compete against the car, because the parking authority subsidizes lots near subway stations. Exit 400 workers. Another bonus: The city would pocket hundreds of millions of dollar through the sale of the parking authority’s real estate and other assets.

The list of city-run enterprises that have no business being in municipal hands — and whose privatization has been urged by urban advocates such as Toronto’s own Jane Jacobs — goes on and on. They include the inefficient cityowned power company that gouges city customers with unjustifiably high fees, the city-owned transit company that has failed to provide the citizenry with affordable service, the city-owned houses and apartment blocks that so often become centres of despair, and the city-owned district heating operation that for decades has failed to use energy efficiently.

Privatizing these operations would lead to a more humane city, a more prosperous city, and a more environmentally friendly city. But why stop there?

The city’s own Prosperity Agenda and the Blueprint for Fiscal Stability and Economic Prosperity laments its underutilized real estate holdings, which it conservatively values at $18-billion. It knows these holdings must be properly employed, in order to create employment and “regenerate Toronto.” Sell these off, too, and use the proceeds to cut taxes and provide the services that more suit cities, such as providing libraries, parks, policing and fire protection.

During Toronto’s 39-day strike, and garbage services aside, many remarked on how surprisingly well the city seemed to run, given that it lost so much of its vast workforce. The city didn’t much need its Mayor and councillors either — and Torontonians didn’t get many services from these “leaders” — because of these politicians’ reluctance to cross picket lines to attend municipal meetings. The city, in truth, is its citizenry. And the citizenry generally does best when it doesn’t need to carry the dead weight of the bureaucracy.

--------------
Lawrence Solomon is executive director of Energy Probe and author of Toronto Sprawls: A History.

Never Forget the Victims of Intolerance and Oppression

Least we forget-It is now more than 60 years after the Second World War in Europe ended
This blog entry is in memory of the six million Jews, 20 million Russians, 10 million Christians and 1,900 Catholic priests who were murdered, massacred, raped, burned, starved and humiliated with the German and Russian peoples looking the other way!

Now, more than ever, with Iraq , Iran , and others, claiming the Holocaust to be 'a myth,' it's imperative to make sure the world never forgets, because there are others who would like to do it again.

We should never forget,never look the other way and never let it happen again PR

Time to put cap on public salaries

Wow -some common sense at last "Here's what doesn't make sense:

You don't go into deficit to give pay hikes to civil servants. That simply builds in more and enduring deficits. Now is the time to hold the line on obscene civil service salaries. There are very few people who are actually worth more than $250,000 on the public dime.

Cap public sector pay. Put an end to bonuses. You think they'll quit for the private sector? Not a chance. It's cold out here. " PR

Time to put cap on public salaries
Posted By CHRISTINA BLIZZARD

It was a rare glimpse of humanity you don't often get in rough-and-tumble scrums.

Finance Minister Dwight Duncan made a frank admission about just how close to home the fallout from the economic meltdown has hit.

Duncan, whose Windsor riding has been devastated by the havoc in the auto sector, has clearly seen the pain close to home.

Asked if he was daunted about the tough road ahead, he had this to say: "Frankly the challenges I face as finance minister aren't nearly as challenging as families who lose a job," Duncan said.

"I have a little house on a little cul-de-sac of 20 houses and I can tell you that even among my neighbours and friends and families what has gone on is deeply troubling."

It was refreshing to have a minister in a "this too will pass" government admit the unemployed are more than just numbers in a pie chart.

Duncan will deliver his budget on March 26.

It will be pivotal -- a document that could well define his government. Revenues are down and the demands on the public purse have never been higher. As the unemployment rolls soar, welfare costs will skyrocket.

Having wrestled public sector unions to the ceiling in salary negotiations, Duncan's going to have to come up with billions of dollars to pay for those pay hikes.

What worries me is the tacit permission we have given politicians to rack up big deficits.

I suspect Premier Dalton McGuinty is also concerned, and that's what prompted him to give a flurry of interviews where he talked about "stimulus

In tough economic times it makes sense to build public infrastructure. But you should build only what you need.

We need new roads, new sewers and an improved electricity grid.

When the Toronto Stock Exchange can't function because of a power outage, it's time to fix those hydro transformers.

It makes sense to build new rail lines, so people outside the downtown core have access to good mass transit.

Here's what doesn't make sense:

You don't go into deficit to give pay hikes to civil servants. That simply builds in more and enduring deficits. Now is the time to hold the line on obscene civil service salaries. There are very few people who are actually worth more than $250,000 on the public dime.

Cap public sector pay. Put an end to bonuses. You think they'll quit for the private sector? Not a chance. It's cold out here.

Don't give contracts to cronies. We need a nonpartisan arbiter with integrity to police the cash as it goes out the door.

If you're going to bail out the auto sector, union members are going to have to make concessions.

The unemployed, people who are doing twice the work for half the salary, people who are just hanging on by their fingertips, will not buy in to a budget that bails out fat cat car execs and well-paid auto workers. Ditto for public sector and auto worker pensions. Their gold-plated defined benefit plans have tanked? Too bad.

You can't expect taxpayers who have no pensions to bail out people who do.

Meanwhile, in an attempt to kick-start their domestic auto sectors, some European countries are offering big cash bonuses to taxpayers to buy new cars.

That makes sense. It would get workers back on the line and give hard-pressed workers a break.

I'll bet on budget day Duncan will be watching for the drapes to twitch around his street. My guess is his neighbours will be his toughest critics.

feeding on failure industry

Feeding On Their Own Failure

Frances Widdowson and Albert Howard, National Post, February 03, 2009

but is defined by the fact that its members are the initiators of the reactionary policies that maintain native people in the state of dependency that all three groups supply. They are the bureaucrats who instigate useless, money-gobbling policy programs, then quit the government and head the program. This raises critical issues about spending waste or trough feeding - PR

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Caregivers face a conflict of interest: Their advice, when followed, diminishes the demand for their services. Practising doctors and dentists make their living by treating health problems, not in eradicating their source. The dichotomy is reflected in many areas in which services are created to respond to preventable conditions.

The charity and poverty industries are examples. No one suggests that handing out soup and blankets to the homeless will affect the homelessness situation. Charity fundraising depends on whatever disease or disaster is the object of the campaign. Although fundraisers are rarely in a position to actively maintain the conditions that assure the need for their services, whole industries have developed around conditions for which the real remedy is fundamental change.

There is, however, a socially accepted industry that provides a product, the consumption of which actively increases the need for more. It is funded by Canadians through labour exploitation and taxation, and it is highly profitable. The Aboriginal Industry is an amalgamation of lawyers, consultants, anthropologists, linguists, accountants and other occupations that thrive on aboriginal dependency. The industry's strategy is pushing atavism -- reverting to the past for solutions to present problems.

The magnitude of the industry's processes can be seen in the number of government agencies among the participants. In addition to the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs, almost every government department now funds an aboriginal division and numerous programs that target the aboriginal population. Such funding enables the Aboriginal Industry to pursue endless negotiations, the main function of which is to pave the way for more meetings.

It is important to point out, however, that the actions of the Aboriginal Industry are not necessarily a case of vulgar opportunism -- like the hypothetical dentist proffering candy; its motivations are far more subtle and complex. Many members of the Aboriginal Industry are not even aware that they are part of it. There is no conspiracy being perpetrated by the lawyers, consultants and anthropologists working for aboriginal organizations. What exists is a natural impulse to follow material interests, to veer ultimately toward self-interest. It is understandable that industry members advocate policies that lead to jobs, contracts and payments to members of their group. Politics is all about interests, and so it is hardly surprising that political actors turn out to be self-interested.

What is notable about the Aboriginal Industry is its altruistic posture. Its members claim to be trying to "work themselves out of a job," while they pursue initiatives that ensure the continual need for their involvement in aboriginal policy. The atavistic programs and services they advocate as aiding "self-determination" actually maintain native dependency and dysfunction, thereby justifying demands for increases in government funding. And while they may truly believe their intervention is beneficial, their interests tend to prevent them from examining inconvenient facts and theories that would reveal the destructive character of the initiatives they propose and implement. Their arguments supporting current aboriginal policies become a form of mystification, and everyone involved in the industry is inclined to support them because they are all benefiting from keeping the processes going.

It is important to point out that there is a diversity of motivations within the Aboriginal Industry itself. First, there is the idealistic group, emotionally motivated by a sincere desire to help native people. Some uncritically accept that the best future for aboriginals is some level of return to the Rousseauian ideal, whereby they will live in some kind of mythic pre-contact Eden. Others simply support whatever aboriginal organizations demand because of the belief that this must be what aboriginal peoples "want."

A second group can, for lack of a better term, be considered professionals. They are hired to promote the cause within the capacity of their discipline. Their role is to fill the demand for a predetermined purpose; they may teach, consult, supply professional services and so on. Their attitudes range from cynicism to disinterest.

A third group often encompasses the attributes of the first two but is defined by the fact that its members are the initiators of the reactionary policies that maintain native people in the state of dependency that all three groups supply. They are the bureaucrats who instigate useless, money-gobbling policy programs, then quit the government and head the program. They are the linguists who promote unilingual native language teaching in elementary grades, then develop course materials and teach them, sentencing the children to a future of low academic achievement and the resulting social dysfunction. They are the anthropologists who encourage a backward spiritualism and mythology in which they themselves do not believe, but which keeps native people in a convenient state of passivity. And especially, they are the lawyers who collect enormous fees for conflicts they initiated, for agreements that require endless negotiations, for land claims settlements they use as retirement funds. - Excerpted from Disrobing the Aboriginal Industry: The Deception Behind Indigenous Cultural Preservation, by Frances Widdowson and Albert Howard, published by McGill-Queen's University Press, 2008.

Gridlock Myth Busters

Lets start a new group called Gridlock Myth Busters- everyone can add value with suggestions to break or slay the need more to solve gridlock myth. Be a dragon slayer get involved

Gridlock Myth Busters- Comments on the age of golden health Care

There is a grass root movement growing that wants to fix institutional service and product delivery lapses and problems. Gridlock Myth Busters is such a group of enlightened people. They participate in the system, hear and see the challenges and make constructive actionable suggestions to solve common problems and public challenges.

These public system challenges, artificial or real, are often gridlocked by the inability of the in place service providers to make constructive alternatives available to those they serve. A combination of factors, such as a lack of focus, lack of urgency, lack of economic necessity often ensures that customer service gridlocks and their resulting poor service results become the accepted and tolerated public practice.

Gridlocks are expensive

Scarcity ensures high prices and even higher delivery costs
The marginal return of more public funding is low, despite apparent self serving and aggressive denials of those that profit and administer the often self- imposed service /product gridlocks that they provide

The Hospital gridlock myth

Common cited hurdles for poor end user service

• Not enough beds and money
• Not enough qualified health care providers
• Cannot do because of restrictions and red tape
• A buck passing attitude of” Not our responsibility”
• Blind do nothing complacency rewards

The result -a hardening of the public care artery

The hardening , gridelock or constriction of services is the result of limiting care capacity to hospitals and government Long term care beds. All resources are not used to solve the capacity challenge. This ensures limited high cost publlc funded care .

Why do we always need more ? The need more money myth explored and busted

Solutions
Necessity is the mother of innovation.

Reality check suggestion

Manage your resources better
• Use all available beds
• Use all available care resources
• Change restrictions and delayer overlapping administration services
• Use new technology
• Maximize existing plant and equipment use
• More suggestions available….


How would you solve the gridlock problem?

The Gridlock Myth Busters can be confidentially reached at

respondfeedbacknow@yahoo.ca

With your consent -we will pass your suggestions on to those that can make a difference for both comment and action