WIP

He deserves his life ruined! As for the media, who knows the wherefore or why's, but it's always by shear luck or accident and social media frenzy today, that any particular story catches fire and becomes the focus of attention. Other, wealthier hunters of near-extinct animals and the assholes who pay others to kill black rhinos for their tusks,and Siberian tigers for their penises should be on that list too! But one is better than nothing.

No, I think he became "super lame" when he decided he was a musician!

How about we stop creating terrorists in the first place?

I'm going to predict that...if Harper loses his re-election gambit, the same church crowd is going to take over the Federal Tories that runs the Ontario Party and likely most others as well. Then, there will be no restraining influence keeping the social conservatives away from microphones. They'll be trying to ban RU-486 and then move on to an American conservative strategy for defunding and restricting abortion.

Not off-topic. It's another example of how the nutcase "pro life" cause places more value on the life of a zygote or fertilized egg cell, than on the health, safety, and personal freedoms of adult women! I had to go back to that ridiculous stem cell drama, because I used to be more conservative thinking back then, and was active on an American conservative forum...until about 10 years ago, when the only issues of great importance were: stopping the teaching of evolution, teaching global warming as fake science, stopping Mexicans from crossing the border, and the freeing the thousands of frozen fertilized embroyos at fertility clinics, so that they could be born....like the small group of children that Dubya did a photo-op with when he banned (that's what cutting off federal funding meant!) research on new lines of embryos. I did enough of my own research back then to discover that it was a ridiculous sham of a case (just like the over-inflated risks of RU-486). The process for fertility clinics was to culture and store as many embryos as possible, so that the healthiest and most viable ones could be implanted and come to term with as few complications as possible. The frozen and should have been discarded embryoes were filling up cold storage lockers at the clinics because of idiots who declare that almost completely unviable embryos have to be considered "unborn babies." So, the couples trying to conceive their own children were the ones burdened with the costs that the clinics had to pick up by expanding their cold storage to accommodate thousands of frozen embryos! Needless to say, neither Dubya, the Catholic Church&evangelical campaigners, nor the ground-level activists waving the signs could understand the absurdity of the situation! Like the so called abortion drug, the stem cell research quandary was created by crackpots with the crackpot idea that they should accord full human rights when a sperm cell fertilizes an oocyte cell.

I believe that's likely because Conservative parties in Canada are following the US example of trying to cultivate a socially conservative, crackpot religious right base, as the ground troops for their campaigning and other political objectives. It's hard to get libertarians and money voters to get all that excited about increasing tax cuts for business and upper incomes! Rona Ambrose knows the Conservative Party's anti-abortion extremists will blow a gasket with the approval of RU-486, and she has been tasked with that difficult balancing act of keeping the fundagelicals vigorously campaigning for Conservatives and speaking on their behalf at their churches/ while recognizing that she doesn't live in Kansas! And there are very few places in this Country where the right position on abortion cinches an election. In provincial politics, the takeaway lesson for many Ontario PC's from Mike Harris's re-election back in the 90's was that his support was a mile wide, but an inch deep because his Government refused to get footsy with religious conservatives and their social issues. Harris tried to keep to libertarian fiscal matters...though it has to be noted he was never as conservative as portrayed...which mostly came from opposition leaders and Liberal newspaper columnists (Toronto Star). Harris had good economic numbers to run with, since an increase in Ontario's economic output was more than enough to make up for tax revenue losses from the income tax cuts. And even with a good economy, he had to struggle to win the next election. If the numbers were bad, he would have been toast! The problem in Ontario is that the vast majority of voters are not evangelicals, or likely to cast votes against their economic interests, just to support candidates that want to ban abortion, birth control...gay marriage etc.. In Ontario, the PC's have a real dilemma now, because lunatics have taken over the asylum! So, first it's Tim Hudak, who flubs two chances to defeat a not-very-popular Liberal Government because he won't shut up about issues not enough voters care about, and then the grassroots puts another religious conservative (Patrick Brown) in charge. Though Brown seems to be a little smarter than Hudak, and is trying to make his MPP's follow the Stephen Harper approach: don't put too much flesh on the bones of God&Country talk, and provide an opening for the opposition.

Really! But if your a right wing crackpot, you can point loaded AR-15's at Federal law enforcement positions and not be shot...or even worry about being arrested.

I may as well add this story in here that came out today on the TPP: TPP deal would force CBC, Canada Post to work for profit only – leak This is part of the reason why calling them trade deals is misleading. These deals are going way beyond what we consider trading of goods and services to demanding that nations put everything up for sale to the highest bidder! May the richest oligarch win and take over the whole goddamned world! That's the ultimate end game of capitalism.

It should be considered a terrorist attack, especially considering that it follows in a line of so called "price tag" attacks by extreme zionists in recent years. That should be mentioned in the handful of news reports that are finding their way to western media, and also that most of these pricetag attacks aren't even in reprisal against Palestinian actions, but instead in reprisal against the Israeli Government for daring to put restrictions on settlers expropriating Palestinian lands in the West Bank. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Israeli_price_tag_attacks

IF we can believe this is a real negotiating process between national leaders...rather than what I suspect this and all other past trading regimes have been - something scripted like a WWE drama, to cover for the fact that the world's leading oligarchs want to increase the power of the transnational money class, and the deal will get to its intended goals regardless of what they are telling us now! Supposedly, the Fast-track "trade-promotin authority" for Pres Obama was bogged down in Congress a month ago....and somehow they just managed to find enough votes to get it passed!

If this was a US conservative forum, it would be all about abortion all the time! According to most extreme womb-watchers, fertilized egg cells need to be considered fully human and guaranteed full rights....which they are attempting to put into law in a number of southern states. Back during the Bush years, America was the only country in the developed world that wouldn't allow stem cell research on discarded frozen embryos from fertility clinics. Needless to say that they are trying to ban RU486 and then move on to banning all other oral contraceptives because they claim they have "abortifacient" properties.

I did a quick check to refresh my memory, and there were 44 reported rapes and sexual assaults (likely many more going unreported) and only one subject to criminal charges. Most of the bands were garbage...and highly aggressive garbage since 1999 was about the apex of that rap/metal fusion crap....then again, I'm getting old...the original Woodstock was very laid back...according to two of my older brothers, there was so much free joints being passed around, you could be high all the time, but there were very few dropping acid. And cocaine, crack, ecstasy...and many other drugs that became problems later, weren't around back then. Their big complaint was that...even if you were trying to hear the music, the sound was crap from most areas of the field...but they probably didn't care that much anyway...they just went to hang out. So, Woodstock 69 was even more disorganized and chaotic than 99, but youth culture of that time was very different than 30 years later. There was a prevailing sense of optimism, cooperation and sharing. So, there were very few reported incidents of fights, sexual assaults, even medical emergencies....because unlike 99, where high temperatures and water shortages led to hucksters charging 4 or 5 dollars for small bottles of water, the 69 crowd was sharing whatever food and drinks they brought with them with anyone who needed it. Worth noting that...at least from a financial perspective, the 25th anniversary Woodstock was considered a great success...and that was the main reason for the 30th anniversary show. Maybe they should wait till the 50th anniversary if promoters ever attempt to try it again!

The initial report stated that the cop made a u-turn and started following her. The length of time he was following before turning on his siren and overhead lights isn't clear, but it would not take long for him to run the plates and profile the driver. On an episode of the Pacifica Network show - DemocracyNow I listened to last week, a guest who taught at the primarily black college where Sandra Bland was hired, stated that the college staff and students have regularly experienced undue harassment from police and city officials for years. So, it seems like this is a particularly dismal location for race relations....even for Texas. It's worth asking whether any aspects of Sandra Bland's profile and where she was going, played a part in an incident that may have started out of absolutely nothing.....too many police defenders here seem to take police statements as gospel truth! As if cops never lie. They have very good reasons to lie and fabricate police reports...as we can see even more recently from the Samuel Dubose killing in Cincinnati...where camera evidence gave the prosecutor no choice other than to charge the cop for murder, BUT the part that goes unmentioned is that the two backup officers fabricated their stories to support the shooter and will get away with it without charges! So more often than not, a police officer can pull his bacon out of the fire by lying, and the price for lying is zero...no cost! So, in the Sandra Bland Incident, it begins with the arresting officer's testimony that she made an improper lane change without signaling....it's pointed out that this is a very minor offense...but even most taking her case are just assuming that the cop had a reason to pull her over....and that may have been a total lie to begin with, as she denies it while stating that she pulled over because he put his lights and siren on. Then we get to the video evidence that the cop deliberately pulls her out of the line of sight of the camera when audio evidence indicates that he is assaulting her Using policing to contain and restrict the movements of undesirables like the poor...especially those of colour, has become the primary role of police in many other cities where rich and wealthier residents worry about crime and personal security. Many cities that have gone through the gentrification process...which means essentially a long process of facilitating the failure of minority communities and restricting services to drive down real estate values, so that big developers can bulldoze entire city blocks, to entice the rich back in with luxury highrise condos and office towers. In the middle of the gentrification process in the boroughs of New York City, there is a hostile and uneasy mix of extremely wealthy, older crime-fearing whites, close to very poor, dejected blacks and other minorities struggling to keep up with the rent, while knowing that their buildings will eventually be demolished as well, and they may end up on the street. So, in the middle of all of this, is a huge police presence, that includes more undercover officers than those wearing uniform. You may recall from the video of the Eric Garner murder in NYC, that while the focus is on the officer sneaking in behind him and taking him down in a chokehold, at least two thirds of a large contingent of police on the scene are non-uniform. It became well established that more than 90% of mostly men undergoing the totally unconstitutional "Stop and Frisk" police operations were black. When all the dust settled from the lying and obfuscation, the lesson was plain and simple: we're not going to allow any blacks (who don't have employee ID cards) in lower Manhattan and other gentrifying boroughs where important people with money live and work!

First, let's set the record straight about human origins and what is and what is not human nature. Humans are omnivores, and opportunistic omnivores; which means that we have had a wide-ranging and widely varied diet since homo sapiens became a distinct species. And considering that other primates like chimpanzees, baboons and I think bonobos also, frequently eat insects and will hunt small animals, it's likely our hominid ancestors were also omnivores to some extent. When we jump to paleolithic and declining numbers of modern hunter/gatherers that existed up till the end of the 20th century, anthropologists have found a wide range in the reliance and importance of hunting for food. Some tribes along the Amazon Valley did no hunting and their only animal protein diet came from collecting insects...likely because plant-based foods were so prolific and abundant. In the far north, the Inuit who moved across Siberia...North America to Greenland, and maybe the Laplanders of Scandinavia, were the only hunter/gatherer groups who could be described as living primarily by hunting, fishing and whaling. Microscopic examination of teeth from old human burials reveals that even the societies that place great esteem and emphasis on the hunt...were still getting most of their nutritional needs from a plant-based diet. On this point, the attitudes of the first generations of anthropologists becomes an important factor: because the men...who mostly came from England and started fanning out around the world, going into jungles and deserts to study the last people living in the wild, were almost totally focused on what the men were doing and what they viewed as important. So, the fact that the bulk of the nutritional needs of an extended family group were gathered by the women of the tribe, wasn't as important as watching men do some sort of a ritual for good luck and go out on a hunt....they may more often than not, end up with the group returning to camp empty-handed or collecting some meager game that would only serve as an addition to the common meal....not actually be enough to feed the whole group! So, to answer a question like: can a person today live a healthy life as a vegan? the answer is more or less Yes. And, can we have a healthy diet with a small or at most - moderate amount of meat? Yes. The simple facts of human biology are that we are creatures in a long transition from vegetarian to omnivore. So, we can meet nutritional needs from animal protein/ but our long intestinal tracts create problems for meat eaters that will hit them later in life...especially the high meat consumers following the average North American diet! And a vegan diet is doable, but difficult and takes planning and effort, because we have lost the capacity to easily extract proteins and a lot of the trace elements from plant sources. For myself, I am a vegan because every steak, hamburger, eggs, milk, chicken etc. that I might buy from the supermarket or some fast food joint, is more money to support industrial animal agriculture...which is one of the primary environmental threats along with causing animal suffering on an unimaginably massive scale! If I ever get to move back to the country again, I'll raise a few chickens, go fishing (if I'm near clean water) and maybe even go deer-hunting again...which I haven't had the chance to do in over 20 years. So, for me, hunting is not necessarily evil....but hunting endangered species obviously is! And eating meat and dairy products isn't necessarily harmful for us, but I'm not giving any dollars to support factory farming.

FWIW, when I last posted, I had just read a couple of the typical condescending liberal columnists on the subject. The worst- Mary Elizabeth Williams of Salon, is complaining and finger-wagging at Mia Farrow for putting the doctor's business address and phone number on a Twitter post. whatever the issue, there's always a liberal telling us what we should be outraged about, how much we should be outraged, and what we should do about it....which devolves into their pointless and ultimately useless aims of holding candlelight vigils, marches....but only peaceful and respectful marches, and'voting for the right candidates.' So, nothing of substance is ever accomplished on issues like creeping Neoliberalism, militarism, let alone actually making any progress on environmental issues! A conservative provides a clear target for anyone on the left, while a liberal claims to be on your side, but facilitates most of the right wing agenda being accomplished! So, in this lion-hunter story, the issue is not just "killing an animal" or "killing a lion", it's about a segment of the rich and powerful who not only blithely speed up the path of extinction for profit, they do it for fun as well! There have been many stories in the news already over the last 10 years or so, about super-rich American, British and other hunters deliberately targeting lions, leopards, black rhinos, polar bears and other endangered species. It's as if one of their psychotic dreams is to get one of those animals mounted on the wall so they can say they got one before they all vanished! The misfortune of this pieceofcrap dentist is that he is at the bottom rung of this exclusive club, and so he is more accessible than the former CEO of the Bank of England, who killed a rare lion in Zimbabwe last year, or some of the American trophy hunters which Wikileaks revealed are going on with full knowledge and cooperation also of the US Government. Most of these sociopaths don't have real jobs....at least businesses that are accessible to the public. And they have armed security and homes all around the world...if it gets too hot in one locale. But, a dentist with a very thriving practice, may have a lot of burn money (like a former dentist of mine who put a 32' pool in his backyard for his triathalon training) but, he doesn't have enough money to making him completely unassailable, and that's the main reason why he has become the #1 target of environmentalists and animal welfare activists who look on in horror as rich trophy hunters kill the last of endangered species with impunity.

Aside from some form of socialism, the only capitalist economic systems that can work in a finite world are ones described by the DeGrowth movements. Their theories and explanations come across as muddled and confusing, as many critical economists claim, who don't believe they can work. but one of the fues of growth-dependent capitalism is the kind of money expansion system we have had for at least 100 years. Interesting to note that in rightwing circles, many of the so called 'monetarists' advocate "full reserve banking", which boils down to banks having to actually have the money in reserve to cover all of their outstanding loans. It's the way we used to think banking actually worked...until banks failed...and the solution for the governments and regulators was just to accept and live with "fractional reserve banking" and hope the economy could grow fast enough to absorb the new money created and its corresponding new debt obligations. So, in a no growth world, just moving to a firm full reserve banking system would stop endless economic growth......though the fractional reserve advocates are already screaming bloody murder that the result will be permanent depression. But as it looks today, the existing system will remain bogged down and worse- trying to extract and seize wealth from lower income groups through austerity measures, or just declare wars to destroy and seize wealth elsewhere....a dangerous passtime in the nuclear age.

Right. Now try reasoning with teenagers on that point! Everything that is supposed to be "hot" - clothes, cars, music, personal devices etc. are must haves after the combination of ad brainwashing and peer pressure. For myself, I had a cell phone back when few people were buying them...mostly because I was doing a 50 mile commute to work every day. So, after a clear need was removed for the phone, I never bothered buying another one, and my own collection of electronic devices includes: desktop computer, e-reader, and Ipod Shuffle. Those are the devices I see a clear need for, and I won't be expanding on them until I have to.

A techno-critic I've referenced many times since reading his book: "TechNofix" - Michael Huesemann, points out early on in his critical examination of a wide range of introductions and applications of new technologies, that tech is one of the few subject areas where the public has almost no access to reading any critical reviews. Everybody in mainstream media is tech fan or cheerleader because the people who ultimately pay them...employers and advertisers, are constantly promoting the promises of some new device or system that they hope to earn money from. So none of those experts can be trusted as far as they can be tossed! Most people are shocked to discover that in one field - pharmaceutical research, most new drugs are more harmful and less effective than the older drugs they are replacing. The multibillion dollar drug company has a high vested interest in getting new drugs to market, and it doesn't matter if the drug is just a slight chemical tweak of the existing formulas, having a patented new drug provides a new opportunity to charge consumers more money than the existing drug on its way to generic status will bring them. In an age where we are becoming aware of the damaging secondary effects of many of our new inventions and new products, what's wrong with demanding that they undergo a review of potential environmental harms prior to being put on the market? This was a goal of environmentalist/consumer activist- Barry Commoner over 40 years ago, and obviously one that wasn't met and buried from public awareness by mainstream media over recent decades....along with the entire consumer advocacy movement.

Obviously Liberals want a Trudeau/Mulcair coalition, since Justin has revealed himself to be 1% substance/99% image since taking center stage in the Liberal Party. A coalition....led by Liberals for no valid reasons....is the only conceivable way to make him Prime Minister, even at a time when the vast majority (66% in recent poll) of Canadians are sick of Harper and want a change in government! The only thing Justin has impressed me at is as an amateur boxer...if you recall the Conservative PR event that accidentally made Trudeau a contender: beating the crap out of disgraced former Conservative Senator and supposed amateur boxer - Patrick Brazeau. One thing that is a constant source of anxiety for Canadians on the political left is that we can never put much trust in NDP leaders and the governments they form. Over the last 50 years, once an NDP leader starts sniffing a big rise in the polls, they start shifting to the center ground to try to ensure victory and take out the centrist LIberals. I just hope a Prime Minister Thomas Mulcair doesn't turn into some hodgepodge of Liberal lite. Sometimes the worst governments for the left are those NDP governmets supposedly elected in our interests.....like the Rae Government in Ontario...then again he turned out to be a Liberal....nevermind! So, I'll just say the most they should do in this coalition talk, is run some sort of non-aggression deal where they make defeating Conservatives the top priority and refrain from damaging the other party's chances of defeating a Tory in contested ridings.

This story goes far beyond police wanting to 'harass people.' Policing in the US south follows a seamless thread from the slave patrols of two centuries ago, after they were frightened by the likelihood of a successful slave revolt following the overthrow of the French colonial government in Haiti. Militias formed primarily as an act of vigilance against any signs of unrest among the growing slave population. Not that things are a whole lot better in the northern states, but the south has been acting like slavery never ended after 1865. The Jim Crow laws restricting voting rights, anti-race mixing laws, segregation, ridiculously applied vagrancy laws, even restrictions on travel for employees owing debts....used to keep freed blacks working on the plantations as sharecroppers who can never grow enough to pay the rent to the landlord etc.. These laws didn't start to unravel until the Depression and after WWII. The pro-segreationists have found other ways of maintaining a race-based class system after the passing of the Civil Rights Act in 1965. The attack on public institutions...most notably public schools, created a cottage industry of so called "home-schooling" which has re-segregated education in many states to a higher level than it was prior to 65. The attack on government workers is usually code for race...since government agencies (except police and firefighting) remained the only system that followed affirmative action programs to any degree...so cutting back on government equals cutting back on the numbers of blacks who are in good paying unionized jobs with an equal opportunity for advancement. And then we get to so called "voter fraud" laws and actions of recent years, and it's plainly obvious that the police forces are just the tip of the spear....not the source of the problem! Police in most large US cities are tasked with containing and controlling black and latino populations, and that's why their abuses will be ignored and excused wherever and whenever possible. They're just doing the job that they are paid to do! And that includes harassing black motorists. I would like to know if the cop in this incident, ran the plates and found out that Sandra Bland was an activist in the Black Lives Matter movement, as he seems to have actively tried to provoke a confrontation...which we were told on every episode of the fictional docudrama "Cops" is exactly what police are not supposed to do.

yeah, I hope his life is ruined...waah, waah! But let's put this in the context that zoologists believe most of Africa's megafauna of the grasslands (which includes lions) will be extinct in the wild by the end of this century. Now, since the combined forces of global warming, increased agricultural development, and rising populations are putting all of the animals we used to watch on the Wild Kingdom 50 years ago, on the endangered species list, I say Kill the Bastard, and I don't care who does it! Someone needs to make an example of him, so that other well-heeled Great White Hunters get the message that their money is no good or not enough anymore! And they need to fear for their own lives if they decide to actively take part in trophy hunting the last great species to extinction. I don't care if he's extradited and executed in Zimbabwe....dies in their prison system or dies at the hands of one of the animal rights activists that the US Government has already declared to be terrorist organizations for taking pictures inside of animal processing operations, may as well be real terrorists if fighting for animal welfare is declared a bigger threat to state security than forming white supremacist militias!

And he's probably noticed that the nations of the world with the large Catholic populations do not accept the American way of doing things. I'm sure a lot of his re-emphasis on issues like poverty have to do with the huge falloff in numbers the Catholic Church experienced under JPII and Benedict. They were taken for granted as masses of people who would also be there....until they stopped coming to church and joining new evangelical churches and such. What I've noticed from what's been covered on the Pope's Encyclical, is that his core message has largely been overlooked: that being that he sees the environment as an issue where people have to demonstrate concern for those who live far away from them and even for those in the future, who haven't been born yet. Some ethicists like Peter Singer, have challenged readers to show how their ethical concerns relate to those who are far removed from them personally; apparently the Pope is declaring that Catholic ethics has to be truly universal in both space and time....which I see as good news in an otherwise bleak subject area.

I'm starting to think that the US is about to go through a meltdown and things getting a lot worse than they already are. More often than not, the 'terrorist' is someone who sees life getting worse and feels powerless to affect those forces or change them. So, the typical rightwing bubba down south is falling behind economically...affected by the collapse in real estate values, has lost his high-paying job and is either collecting some sort of disability or has had to take low wage work and if he's married, he depends on his wife to bring in most of the family income. So, the one thing he has that still makes him a man is his gun! And he's going to drive around flying either a Confederate battle flag or a Gadsen Flag (if he lives in the Southwest) and threaten to shoot all of the immigrants and blacks who are trying to take away "his country." Just sayin, I expect many more of these...especially since neither local nor federal police are willing to go after right wing militias and gun nuts! They land hard on any signs of uprising among blacks or latinos, but if you're white and fat and have type 2 diabetes, you have free reign to run around with your guns and even threaten to shoot federal law enforcement officers (Cliven Bundy's gang for instance).

Try eating your smart phone! FWIW, I haven't bought a cell phone since I had my last one stolen when my car was broken into 15 years ago. And I won't buy another one until every last payphone is gone!

I'm reminded of a couple of psychologists in recent times, who have openly stated that the modern business environment...especially on Wall Street, favours the psychopath over a normal person. One study set up using the typical trading environment of a low to mid-level stock and bond trader, showed that the most successful subjects (who did not profile beforehand as psychopathic) would begin acting more like psychopaths the longer they stayed at the job. One other psychologist...who's practice was on Wall Street and treated many of the top executives, found a much higher than normal number of clients that he would categorize as psychopathic or sociopathic. In a normal environment, a person with such lack of empathy and understanding of others usually finds himself ostracized and out of the group. But in the new business environment, where success is demanded on short term quarterly reports, no executive plans or expects to be with the same company for more than a couple of years anyway. One of the other maladaptive characteristics of the psychopath, aside from the empathy gap, is a reckless lack of concern for consequences. These are risk-takers, and no risk is too great, if the near term rewards are high. Take Tony Hayward for example...the CEO of BP, who's reckless disregard for the dangers of drilling holes deeper under the seafloor, led to the Gulf Oil Disaster, that has devastated and continues to damage fish and marine mammals in the Gulf of Mexico. BP was apportioned 67% of the blame for the disaster, largely because Hayward blew aside engineers who had some safety concerns prior to the blowout. It was all about the money! Same attitude from the CEO's running oil companies...any environmentalists who think they can reason with the executives at Exxon or Chevron about the dangers for their children are just kidding themselves! The world could blow up tomorrow, and this class of people couldn't care less as long as today's profit numbers were good.