Gunfire breaks out around the presidential palace followed by the tell tale military music broadcast over state radio while a few days later the president of it’s neighbouring nation is whisked back under the cover of darkness after a 93 day absence. Another coup in one west African nation and a game of presidential hide-and-seek is played in another. Just two more stories crossing the news wire out of a continent with over a billion people and 50 countries but a political morass which has produced only a handful of good leaders. Being no exception, Niger and Nigeria share more than a border and west Africa’s largest river which lent both countries the name that shocks the politically correct. Just as outsiders were ignorant of the Niger River’s improbable course for centuries, observers today struggle to make heads or tails of the incorrectness of the two nations’ politics.

Last week’s military coup in Niger shouldn’t have come as surprise to anyone. Now former President Mamadou Tandja followed the failed African leader playbook step-by-step after he first come to power in elections following a coup d’etats in which then President Ibrahim Bare Mainassara was killed on the tarmac of the airport outside the capital of Niamey in 1999. Mainassara, who had himself taken power in a coup from the first democratically elected president of Niger in 1996, was returning from pilgrimage to Mecca when his own Presidential Guard nearly cut him in half with machine gun fire. Before we get lost in the coup loop, let’s just say that Tandja like so many African leaders grew to enjoy the privileges of power. Despite reassurances that he would step down after the constitutionally mandated two five-year terms, when the time came to bow out, he found he couldn’t.

A quick glance at the length of time in power of leaders around Africa is enough to tell you this isn’t an isolated incident. The situation has deteriorated to the point that the Ibrahim Prize, an award intended for democratically elected African leaders who served their term in office within the limits set by the country’s constitution and has left office in the last three years went without being handed out this year. The only deserving candidates have already won; Botswana’s Festus Gontebanye Mogae in 2008 and Mozambique’s Joaquim Alberto Chissano in 2007 while Nelson Mandela was named Honourary Laureate the same year. The prize is intended to offer financial stability as a reward for good governance ($5 million plus $200,000/year for life), after all, these leaders most likely cling to power in order to maintain the life of luxury that goes along with their status.

And his wife's name is Patience

Meanwhile, Nigeria had seen a much quieter transition of power which is now threatening to become louder. As the elected President Umaru Yar’Adua had been incommunicado for nearly three months in a hospital in Saudi Arabia, the Nigerian parliament promoted the vice-president in order to maintain “peace, order and good government“. Neither coup nor election but serendipity brought Goodluck Jonathan to the pinnacle of political power in Nigeria February 9th. Despite questions about the constitutionality of the move, the uncertainty caused by the power vacuum had become unsustainable as problems flared up throughout the country and without. With the threat of violence breaking out in the oil producing south as a tenuous truce fell apart, civil unrest in the north with ethnic clashes leaving hundreds dead and of course a little diplomatic problem involving the US with Nigerian travelers being subjected to increased scrutiny after the underwear bomber tried to blow up a Detroit bound flight on Christmas Day.

Suddenly, just before the senate met to discuss amending the constitution to clarify the transfer of power, two planes landed in the presidential wing of the airport in the capital city of Abuja under the cover of darkness. President Umaru Yar’Adua’s timely return threatens to throw the entire nation into chaos. A power struggle between the two camps was already intensifying as Yar’Adua supporters grew uneasy as Goodluck’s assertiveness grew. Reshuffling ministers and forging ahead with an amnesty for militants in the oil-rich Niger Delta had led to talk of a Goodluck run for the presidency in elections due April of next year. Meanwhile, the senate resolution promoting Mr. Jonathan prescribed that he would cease to be acting president once Yar’Adua stated in writing to the leaders of both houses of parliament that he had returned from “medical vacation”. His return has done nothing to clear up the true state of his medical condition, only adding to the uncertainty. In addition to a chronic kidney condition, it’s believed he was taken to Jeddah last November to be treated for pericarditis, an inflammation of the membrane protecting the heart. Incredibly, this wasn’t the first episode when Nigerians were uncertain about whether their president was dead or alive. During the presidential campaign in 2007, he was rushed to Germany for emergency treatment yet he went on to win the election despite the rumors of his death. Confusion reigns while political maneuvering has bordered on the surreal; a security detail stood guard over the presidential chair to ensure the acting President did not sit on it yesterday at the weekly cabinet meeting. Who will sit in the chair next is shrouded in mystery.

While the mystery behind the origin and course of the river from which both countries take their name was eventually solved, the etymological roots of the name itself remain inscrutable. Today we know the river runs from southeastern Guinea north east into the heart of Mali past Timbuctoo where it cuts hard right, south east for the Gulf of Guinea through Niger and Nigeria. This unlikely boomerang shape even confused history’s greatest traveller, Ibn Battuta, who like the Romans before him, believed the river near Timbuktu was part of the Nile. This was long believed, as even the Roman roadmap or Tabula Peutingeriana, records a Flumen (River) Girin presumed to be today’s Niger, with the remark translated “This river which some are naming Grin is called Nile by others, for it is said to flow under the ground of Ethiopia into the Nile Lake”. It took unlikely named Scottish explorer Mungo Park to simply discover that the great river flowed east and not west into the Senegal at the close of the 18th century (don’t be put off by the title of a great book about his trip - Water Music). We find the name cringeworthy thanks to its false, and to many, offensive association with the Latin adjective niger - black. Further corroboration seems to come from the fact most the plural of aswan in Arabic - black.

Yet evidence to the contrary overwhelms the common perception. The first European explorers in the area were the Portuguese, and they would most likely have named it ‘Negro’ or ‘Preto’ but didn’t. After all, the Niger is known as a ‘clean’ river, in that it carries a tenth of the silt of the Nile because its headlands are located in ancient rocks that provide little silt, therefore the reference cannot be mistaken for the water. Further back, the Greeks in the time of Ptolemy knew of two rivers in the area, the Gir and Ni-Gir. The Buduma, one of more than 250 ethnic groups that make up Africa’s most populous country, had a word for river that may have been nijir. Others have argued the Niger shares a Semitic root with Senegal, naghar, meaning river as both rivers were often considered one and the same in the past. The most convincing argument of all comes via Tuareg, a Berber language transmitted from around Timbuctu to the Mediterranean, who called the river gher n gheren “river of rivers”, shortened to ngher. Regardless, today the Niger basin is densely populated and home to the Oil Rivers, named after the palm oil once produced in the area. It’s the modern petroleum pumped out now that has lead to the explosive situation in the south of the country.

Speaking of explosive, it’s the uranium found in Niger that makes sure their constitutional path has been just as uncertain as so many other African nations. Natural resource in Africa are all too often the bane of it’s politics helping the wicked stay in power. It’s far too common for leaders to simply change the constitution to extend their reigns and depending who controls the armed forces, they get away with it or don’t. Uranium accounts for 70% of Niger’s export earnings while the French and Chinese build more and bigger mines to enrich whoever has power. The wealth often goes directly to the politicians, sometimes they’re caught like the Prime Minister in 2007, usually not. The people’s slice is pared back until they fight back so the rulers hope their army holds the balance. Meanwhile, in Southern Nigeria, MEND (Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta) rebels called off a truce January 30th, perhaps forcing the move to promote a new president, constitutionally or not, as the oil needs protecting. MEND attacks over the last few years are estimated to have retarded the production of 2/3 of the potential production (about $1 billion in revenue) of the fifth largest supplier to the US. The name problem reared it’s ugly head on the oil market last week as news of the coup in Niger broke and geographically challenged traders caught wind of the story and confused it for Nigeria helping push oil over $80 for awhile.

Sometimes it seems a coup can be justified, such as when the constitution is altered by the leader simply to extend his rule. Mamadou Tandja did just that while also overseeing the starvation of his country and judging by the track record of too many African leaders he could’ve held on indefinitely. Gabon’s Omar Bongo died last year after ruling for 42 years which made the little green book Colonel, Muammar al-Gaddafi the longest serving African leader - since September 1st, 1969. The list gets worse from there: Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo has been the President of Equatorial Guinea since 1979. He deposed his uncle on August 3, 1979 in a violent coup d’état, supported by 600 mercenaries licensed from Hassan II of Morocco. Rounding out the medals in third is Robert Mugabe, another who came in on a wave of optimism, only to have systematically destroyed his nation over the past 30 years. We’re just waiting for them to die. Mugabe took another step as he turned 86 the other day and celebrated in the Chinese embassy in Harare, the first embassy he’s visited his entire rule. Guess he likes that the Chinese spend tens of billions on resources as well as birthday cakes without any ’silly’ human rights strings attached.

The coup in Niger is being denounced acrimoniously by the usual acronyms, yet it was the predictable inaction by the AU, EU, UN and ECOWAS that left the army with little choice as Tandja had suspended the constitutional court and rigged a referendum to clear the way for his perpetual installment in power. Coups can bring stable democracy, such as Mali’s coup of 1991 in which leader Amadou Toumani Touré removed the blood thirsty regime of Moussa Traoré, drew up a new constitution and organized elections with return to civilian rule in a year. It’s that whole organizing free and fair election thing where many stumble. Will Niger’s military junta hand back power as they claim they will? While they are promising to return civilian rule, the vagueness of their claims is looking rather ominous. For every coup leader that offers a solution, there is a Bongo in the Gabon, Obiang in Equatorial Guinea, Blaise Compaoré in Burkina Faso or Omar al-Bashir in the Sudan to remind us of the perils. And those are just a few in power today, let’s not even talk about Sierra Leone and of course you can’t forget about Idi Amin in Uganda, Mobutu in Zaire or Abacha in, you guessed it, Nigeria.

Those who don’t believe in coincidence would find much to ponder in these two stories. Since he left the country, Nigeria’s political elite has been consumed by a power struggle between Yar’Adua loyalists, who wished to keep him in power, and those who argued that he was too ill to govern. His return to Nigeria closely follows on the heels of a ministerial delegations failed attempt to see the president the previous week. They were to determine the state of his health, the first step in declaring him permanently incapacitated from holding his office, but were prevented from seeing him by his doctors. If someone were to shout “olly olly oxen free” in this game of hide the president, the losers would be Yar’Adua’s wife and followers. In Niger, former colonial master France has slowly seen it’s grip loosened over uranium production, as agreements have been signed with Canada, Australia and most importantly, China. The coup occurred on the same day a US congressional delegation was visiting the capital of Niamey. Niger has recently moved away from the French monopoly of uranium production towards other countries such as Canada, Australia, the US, South Africa and most importantly China. The stakes are high as not only billions in investment are poured in but the Nigerien town of Arlit alone largely supplies France with the uranium required to power up the it’s nuclear programme and power stations - generating almost 80 per cent of France’s electricity via an estimated 59 nuclear plants. The French are denouncing the coup the loudest while the Chinese and Americans, while stopping short of voicing support, have been much more muted in their response.

It’ll take a while to catch up to Abacha, after all he made it up to #4 on the modern most corrupt list having siphoned £3 billion out of the country’s coffers, but the health care ain’t bad either, three months in a Jeddah hospital doesn’t come cheap. It isn’t Nigeriens or Nigerians that the world is worried about, it’s the uranium and oil. Apparently undreds of thousands in aid will keep trickling in to prevent a few of the starving from dying, but billions in graft will also be gushing out as a few reap from the rape. Niger may be little more than a hazy Dubya false claim recollection for many, but the yellowcake extraction is ramping up just as the never ending battle for resources is tilting towards China. And don’t worry Nigeria, even if you’ve past the coup years, oil will be number one for awhile yet, so Nigeria’s power struggle game of is he dead hide-and-seek will be just as rewarding.

The announcement coming when it did, the same weekend the African Cup of Nations champion was crowned, the Confederation of African Football (Caf) was probably hoping it would slide by unnoticed. Instead, they’ve managed to ensure the tragedy that befell the Togolese national football squad stayed at the top of the news headlines while Egypt fought its way to a 1-0 victory over Ghana to claim the title for the second consecutive time. In case you missed it, Togo has been banned from the next two African Cups, not for cheating or doping as you might expect, but for pulling out of the tournament after three people were killed in a half hour machine gun siege on their bus by rebels moments after as they entered Angola.

Wait, let’s rewind. This year’s tournament was held in Angola, a nation that has enjoyed less than eight years of peace since the end of a 27 year civil war. Among the 16 teams competing, the tiny west African nation of Togo (12 on the map) in fact boasts a relatively powerful squad. Touting a couple of English Premiership players, Manchester City striker Emmanuel Adebayor and Aston Villa midfielder Moustapha Salifou they were unfortunate both geographically and politically in having drawn to play their group stage games in Cabinda, one of four venues for the tournament. You see, Cabinda is an exclave. Not only is it separated from the rest of Angola by a strip of the DR Congo and does it share it’s northern border with the other Congo, but it’s also home to the last pocket of unrest leftover from the civil war. Despite the signing of a peace deal in 2006, the nationalist movement Flec (Front for the Liberation of the Enclave of Cabinda) has continued a low-level insurgency as it tries to claim independence from the Angolan government.

Ahh, seems I need to back up some more. Angola was plunged into 27 years of civil war from the moment it won it’s freedom from Portugal in the Angolan War of Independence, itself a 14 year struggle which was only brought to an end with the Carnation Revolution in Lisbon. While all civil wars are complex, a reading of Rysard Kapuscinski’s Another Day of Life would be an essential starting point in deciphering the complex web of armed faction acronyms, from the MPLA to UNITA, and supporting nations from Cuba to Zaire. It was a conflict which saw Chevron prop up a socialist regime and Cuban soldiers protecting American oil installations against CIA sponsored South African mercenaries. Fortunately for our purposes, focusing on Cabinda, only two factors need to be remembered, Flec and oil. Angola is sub-Saharan Africa’s 2nd leading oil producer, with the Cabinda region producing about 60% of its total output. In fact, while diamonds furnished most of the revenue for the rebel UNITA during the civil war, it was Cabinda oil that kept the government MPLA going. Diamonds versus oil, and in the end, oil emerged victorious.

Yet Cabinda has always been more than physically separate from the rest of Angola. Even though it too had been a Portuguese protectorate since the Treaty of Simulanbuco, of 1 February 1885 (Portuguese only), the area has a distinctive culture, ethnicity and history and thus Angola and Cabinda were kept as officially separate overseas provinces. Locals were never Portuguese citizens, being labeled indigenas and forced to pay a head tax or work for the state six months of each year. (p.103 gives a more thorough account) The rebel group, Flec, was not immune to the fracturing into splinter groups so common during civil war, with the result that when a peace deal was finally signed in 2006, most of the soldiers didn’t feel it applied to them. While the Angolan government marketed a lasting peace, future trouble was inevitable in a corrupt environment that breeds fierce competition for the spoils of natural resources (pp.30-36 for more).

So, that brings us to the fateful day for the Togolese national team. The question is how could the team be sanctioned with suspension from the next two editions of the tournament in 2012 and 2014 and slapped with a $50,000 fine when it clearly was the fault of the organizers for having scheduled the matches in such a volatile region where warnings of possible attacks had been issued? Caf’s executive committee’s case seems to be based on three points. First, the Togolese team shouldn’t have driven but flown; second, the team withdrew shortly before the tournament; thirdly, and most importantly it seems, there was ‘political interference’ in the decision to pull the team out of the tournament. The first claim rests on the organizers assertion that teams were told to fly in the regulations posted on the web site; the second on Article 78 of Caf’s regulations which specifies such a punishment for teams withdrawing shortly before the competition; the third on strict policy intended to separate politics from sport. Absurd, all three.

Prior to the tournament, the team had been practicing in the Congo, in Pointe Noire. A quick look at the accompanying map (zoom in top left, don’t mind the old school country names like Zaire) will show that without strict warnings about the lack of safety, which you wouldn’t expect when a major tournament is being played in the area, flying over the southern tip of the Congo, Cabinda, a bit of Congo DR (labeled Zaire on the old map) and then much of Angola to Luanda to turn around and fly back to Cabinda would seem ludicrous. As for the regulations stipulating the necessity to fly, the nearest I could find is 16.15. Satisfactory transportation means should be put at the disposal of the visiting team, the referees and the commissioner, either by road or by air if the distance is superior to 200 Km. The travel should be made on the day before the match at the latest and at a reasonable hour of the day, except if visiting team arrive late. Additionally, it’s clear that someone on the Angolan side knew they were planning on going by bus as the team was accompanied by an Angolan security force. Thanks to Google maps you can try to follow their route.

Next, while article 78 does specify punishment for “forfeit notified less than twenty days before the start or during the final competition“, a quick look down the page to Articles 80 and 89 reveal that “Reserves are made as to cases of force majeure and shall be decided by the Organising Committee.” - three dead and a backup goalkeeper with a bullet lodged in his spine as a result of a terrorist attack sounds like it would fit the bill. Additionally, just days before the decision to impose the penalties, Caf president Issa Hayatou was quoted as saying, “We wished they would have stayed but respect their decision to leave.” Shortly after the attacks he was quoted further saying, “It is left to you to decide to stay in a competition synonymous of fraternity, brotherhood, friendship and solidarity. And in case you decide to leave the competition, we will definitely understand your decision and it will be accepted.”

Point three is admittedly the stickiest. Amid the aftermath, the team wavered back and forth between going home and playing, finally holding a team vote and surprising everyone with the decision to stay. At this point however, Togo’s Prime Minister Gilbert Houngbo overruled the team’s decision and ordered them home, denouncing the security in Angola and sending the presidential plane to collect the squad. Technically, politics have entered the sporting realm at this point. Yet, wasn’t the choice of Angola as host nation politically motivated, seen as an opportunity to develop its facilities, tourism and infrastructure - over $1 billion was spent, $600 million for the four new Chinese built stadiums. The decision to have Cabinda serve as a venue was even more transparently politically charged in a brazen effort to prove to the outside world that peace and stability had been achieved in the region and therefore ready for foreign investment.

The organizers miscalculation also effects politics beyond Angola’s borders. The leader of the Flec movement that claimed responsibility for the attacks, Rodrigues Mingas, lives in exile in France. Tensions have arisen as the Angolan government has criticized France for not taking appropriate measures to have him extradited. Don’t forget, the tournament is officially known as the Orange Africa Cup of Nations, Orange of course being a French telecommunications company. Back in Cabinda, the government is using the attack to justify a crackdown on political opponents, rounding up priests, professors and lawyers. Needless to say, the authorities don’t have a very good record of treating their detainees very well. Meanwhile in Togo, presidential elections are due to be held later this month and I’ve got a feeling this tragedy will be an issue. It seems that politics have a way of getting involved in situations like this no matter how hard you try to avoid it.

Any other year and the whole tournament would most likely have been canceled, however, it comes in the same year that Africa will host it’s first World Cup, when South Africa takes center stage for the world’s most popular sport (No matter what you hear over the next few days, far more people will watch the World Cup than the Super Bowl). Somewhat ironically, 2010 also marks the African Union’s Year of Peace and Security. This tournament was to serve as further proof that the continent was ready for the challenge, but it has only given ammunition to those who have questioned the decision to hold the world’s biggest sporting event in ‘the dark continent‘; never mind that Cabinda is further from Johannesburg that London is from Moscow.

This latest in a string of bizarre decisions from football’s governing authorities came down from leadership represented by Issa Hayatou, a man who symbolizes many of the reasons Africa has seen so little progress. Hayatou has been dictator president of Caf for over twenty years and it is no coincidence that the leader of his home nation of Cameroon, Paul Biya, has also been president since 1982. These type of men have been great innovators in the world of phony elections, ensuring that the cycle of corruption (you’ll find Angola at 162 of 180 countries on the corruption index) and poverty will continue while they live like kings. Sport, much like oil, is a natural magnet for corruption as displayed in Angola where at least a third of oil revenue is siphoned off into the pockets of the politically connected while the people are left to suffer. At its best, football serves to bring the people of the world together, at it’s worst, it serves to further the political aims of the entrenched elite.

When a legislator no longer represents our beliefs, we can vote them out of office; likewise, when presidents screw up, the people can kick them out the next time they go to the polls (or they can even be impeached by the legislators); but what do we do when the third branch of government messes things up by issuing rulings that will ultimately steer the nation in the wrong direction? Well, if you’re Pat Robertson (yes, he of the Haitian deal with the devil quote), you can have a chat with your god to get things changed; if your the Ecuadorian Congress, you can just replace the whole lot; maybe you’ll get lucky and they’ll be convicted of, “treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors” deemed serious enough by Congress to constitute impeachment; but most likely all we can do is wait until they retire or die. Almost no matter how bad they screw up, they’ve got jobs for life.

While this job security is supposed to insulate them from the temporary passions of the public, it has also had the effect of allowing them to assert their ideological beliefs in making decisions which have had disastrous results. Perhaps the most infamous case was that of Dred Scott in which the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS from here on) ruled that people of African descent imported into the United States and held as slaves, or their descendants, whether or not they were slaves, were not protected by the Constitution and could never be citizens of the United States. The decision was written by Chief Justice Roger B. Taney and is regarded as the single worst decision in the history of the court ruining the reputation of the Chief Justice while many feel it also led to the Civil War. As recently as 2000 SCOTUS decided to put an idiot king in the White House, with the same predictable result, war. Ironically, that 2000 decision may have been motivated by soon to be retiring Sandra Day O’Connor wanting to have her replacement named by a Republican president, thus maintaining the conservative composition of the court we still have today. Now that’s powerful, better than 4 out of 5 dentist recommend testimonial propaganda! Chief Justice Taney died a vilified, penniless and broken man for his role in keeping the Republic under the control of slaveholders and bitterly dividing the nation, only time will tell if today’s Chief Justice, John Roberts Jr. will also go down in infamy as the man who completed the transformation of his nation into a corpocracy.

In a 5-4 decision the court overturned a variety of campaign finance laws enacted over the past century. For example, it nullifies part of a century-old statute known as the Tillman Act (1907), which barred corporations from using treasury funds to engage in the political process. It also vitiated similar prohibitions imposed on unions after World War II.; Moreover, the decision invalidates part of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 (McCain-Feingold) that prohibited certain types of ads within 60 days of a general election and 30 days from a primary. (Supreme Court Opinion); Bottom line: Both corporations and labor unions may now use their general treasury funds to pay for unlimited independent expenditures, including advertisements, for or against candidates at any time. Free speechers cheered while civil liberty advocates jeered. The reason that those happy with the ruling are so rests on three premises, all of which we can intuit or show to be false.

One: Corporations are people and are therefore entitled to free speech protection. An odd  transfer propaganda technique but still easy to argue away, both intuitively (duh, um, people die, love, shit, breathe, have a conscience and compassion; corporations, not so much) and legally. The legal basis rests on a ruling made by the SCOTUS in the case of Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company in 1886. While the courts actual ruling in the case was uncontroversial, (something about fences along train tracks - seriously) the court reporter added his own thoughts to the headnote. Wackiness, begin your work:

Headnotes are a short summary of the opinions, facts and arguments of each case the court rules on that precede the United States Reports (the books that tell the legal community about the courts decisions). These headnotes are “not the work of the Court, but are simply the work of the Reporter, giving his understanding of the decision, prepared for the convenience of the profession“. The court reporter that day, J.C. Bancroft Davis, a former railway president (hellooo? conflict of interest anyone!) wrote in part: “The court does not wish to hear argument on the question whether the provision in the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which forbids a State to deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws, applies to these corporations. We are all of the opinion that it does.” Voila, while the court specifically didn’t want to make a ruling on the 14th amendment and any mention of which is absent from the ruling itself, corporations have enjoyed the same rights as people under the 14th ever since. We’ll call that bizarro eighth technique.

Two: Money is speech. Really? Do I have to tell you why it isn’t? OK, here goes. It should be enough that it sounds like something an amphetamine junkie like Ayn Rand would say but it goes deeper and unfortunately once again turns on a constitutional SCOTUS ruling. It was 1976 and this time it was Buckley v. Valeo in which the SCOTUS upheld a federal law which set limits on campaign contributions, but ruled that spending money to influence elections is a form of constitutionally protected free speech, and struck down portions of the law. The court also stated candidates can give unlimited amounts of money to their own campaigns (thus your Ross Perots, Michael Bloombergs, Mitt Romneys and their ilk). The suit arose after the first serious attempt by Congress to regulate campaign contributions and spending after the Nixon impeachment and despite a Ford veto. The plaintiffs claimed the legislation was in violation of the 1st and 5th Amendment rights to freedom of expression and due process, respectively. The court agreed. Again, easy to show how this is wrong on so many levels.

To those ideologues who would champion this decision as protecting the free speech I can only ask: “What can possibly be the purpose of the First Amendment other than to allow all voices to be heard in the marketplace of ideas?” With their vast resources, corporations will now be able to dominate that marketplace, ensuring that theirs is the loudest voice, effectively silencing opposing voices - precisely what the First Amendment was designed to foil. Even more egregiously, when were not talking about corporations or the rich the court has no problem limiting speech. In the last few decades, the conservative justices dominating the court have limited speech rights for demonstrators, students, and whistle blowers; you still famously can’t scream Rush is a fat, latinboyOxyContinlovingprick in a crowded theater, or fire; while they may be more annoying than political ads, Hare Krishnas had their right to distribute leaflets taken away. Try to exercise your right to speech in America without spending dollars and you’ll often times find yourself behind bars. Repeatedly, the court has told us that some speech is more important than others.

Three: In their ruling, the majority somehow clung to the emperor’s clothes contention that corporate campaign cash has had no pernicious impact on public policy. “Independent (political) expenditures, including those made by corporations, do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption,” Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote for the majority in the recent ruling. Alice in Wonderland had nothing on this corporations are just plain folks propagandist thinking. While the delusional will argue to the contrary, the evidence clearly indicates that money influences the way elected officials vote, so by giving those with more money the ability to ’speak’ in unlimited amounts, they are ipso facto being given a more powerful vote than the poor.

Maybe they didn’t notice the whole Wall Street buyout, it was pretty easy when “they [the banks] frankly own the place [congress]“. House members who voted for the $700 billion bank bailout received 54 percent more campaign contributions from banks and securities firms than House members voting against the bailout. That is an average of $231,877 in bank contributions received by each House member voting “Yes,” $150,982 for each member voting “No.” Is there any wonder that big oil is already one step ahead of any sustainable energy project? Want to keep the National Weather Service from sharing the weather forecasts with the people? It’ll cost about $7,750 to get a senator to introduce a bill to end “socialized weather” so that private firms like Accuweather can repackage government data and sell it to the public. Wanna influence the health care bill? It’s pretty cheap and easy name-calling propaganda jedi-reverse Reagan style with the Cadillac name change, from welfare queen to insurance plan. Well, that or about $400 million over the first 9 months of last year would buy you as much influence as the health care lobby. If only we could visually see the influence of ’speech’ on the outcome of legislation? Or perhaps we tire of health care, cough, telecom immunity, where House Democrats who flipped their positions to favor immunity for telecom firms received an average of 68 percent more money from ATT’s, Verizon’s and Sprint’s political action committees, compared with Democrats who remained opposed to immunity. That’s $4,987 to each Democrat who opposed immunity and $8,359 to each Democrat who flipped positions to favor telecom firms. The brainwashed are sold that this will encourage ‘transparency’ and ‘leveling the playing field’, some wishful card stacking propaganda, as by some luck the market will distribute the money equitably. Or, maybe the Supremes have an ulterior motive, they want to show the world what happens in the extreme case by opening the floodgates to the highest bidder wins in order to how evil it is to justify the coming end of business buying government through a constitutional amendment. Yeah, and I’ve got some real estate in Florida to sell you.

Learn more here and here and here, then raise your voice “NO”

It truly makes one wonder what the effect of 30 years of the Reagan revolution has had on the brain of most conservatives who are lauding this decision as a victory for free speech. It was a Republican president, Teddy Roosevelt, who was so worried about the power of the trusts (yes, corporations were mere trusts of states then) that he called for public financing of elections and told Congress, “All contributions by corporations to any political committee or for any political purpose should be forbidden by law.” He didn’t get all he wanted but he did get the Tillman Act. Founders like Chief Justice John Marshall, once referred to the corporation as an “artificial being, invisible, intangible”; and Thomas Jefferson, warned almost two centuries ago that America must “crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country.”

In order to catch a glimpse of the Pandora’s Box that this ruling has opened, one need look no further than the connections to the case; the people who brought it to the court and what they have done in the past:

And a taste of a couple of the adds these men have made offer a taste of what’s to come this November:

Or, this one. Um, I guess we’ll call that the fear of our propaganda septet.

So, as we enter the age where we’ll no longer have the senator from Iowa or the congressman from North Dakota, but the senator from Wal-Mart and the congressman from Goldman Sachs, a couple more small details. No limits exist to prevent foreign corporations from contributing to the kitty, nothing to prevent one of Osama bin Laden’s relatives running any anti-energy self-sufficiency ad they want, as long as it’s clearly labeled brought to you by Freemont Group. Lastly, and most ominous of all, what I see happening is that more often than not, corporations won’t even have to spend a penny, as the mere threat of launching attack ads will be enough to influence members of Congress to behave like the good patsies they have been paid for to be, legalization of what will in fact become weapons of blackmail and bribery in the hands of the lobbyists of the greedy and powerful. Oh, and before we in the rest of the world begin to feel too smug about the superiority and cleanliness of our democratic systems, a couple of caveats. The Prime Minister of Canada, the one who can’t really be as creepy as he appears, Stephen Harper, tried himself to loosen the financial restrictions for political campaigns in the true north strong and free just a few years ago. The rest of us, well, we shouldn’t forget that for the past few decades, instead of looking inwards at what’s wrong with the country, the US usually looks for scapegoats (usually using the bandwagon propaganda technique to drum up support) and decide that they don’t like us practicing our own kind of government. (Sorry, look at me using the glittering generality and seventh technique)

If you made it all the way here, pssst, here’s where I got the Dred Scott idea, from where else, duh?

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For I have neither wit, nor words, nor worth,
Action, nor utterance, nor the power of speech,
To stir men’s blood: I only speak right on;
I tell you that which you yourselves do know;

-Shakespeare Julius Caesar Act III, Scene 2

I heard, or rather read, the decade that’s now coming to a close referred to as the ought’s the other day. Looking back at the disastrous past ten years makes we think we need a more descriptive moniker. The Brits say noughties but maybe we should have something with zero in it seeing as the world hasn’t put any points on the scoreboard over the decade, I guess the double zeros would do, or double oh’s, the oh-oh’s. (Is it the teens next before the 20’s, the tens?) For a variety of reasons no one seems to even try to understand the problems we face anymore, instead they rely on some talking head’s opinion or blogger’s spin. Ten years ago we had the Kyoto Protocol, hopes for a final Mideast peace agreement and an economic boom with no end in sight. How did it all go so wrong? Fear could be one explanation. Fear that our beliefs are wrong, fear that our lifestyles are destroying our world and fear of the other. Fear, the old fight or flight, paralyzes and poisons as it confuses, robbing us of our self-control. Most frustrating of all, faced with the triple threat of climate, finance and terrorism, instead of focusing on facts and solutions, the rhetoric of fear has driven us onto a self-destructive path through lies and misinformation.

The decade of fear brought many global threats, from SARS and swine flu to Jenny McCarthy and Osama Bin Laden. The shadow of 9/11 pushed terrorism into our everyday lives with threat level updates and two intractable, open-ended conflicts. While acknowledging that we were dealing with a new kind of enemy, our leaders responded in the traditional manner, war and increased defence spending. The jingoistic fear factory pumped up the rhetoric as Dubya and his cronies fed a nation’s desire for revenge with the Bush Doctrine which imperceptibly altered an entire country’s mindset, guiding a bloodthirsty nation to war.

Preventive war is like committing suicide out of fear of death.

-Otto von Bismarck

In Shock Doctrine, Naomi Klein describes the window that opens between a shock and analysis, a disorientation gap where a new set of beliefs find fertile ground . When planes hit the WTC on September 11th, 2001, that window was blown wide open and a new narrative was created. First in Afghanistan, the “With Us or Against Us” doctrine provided the justification for not only pursuing Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda, but also for deposing the Taliban. If you ever wonder why no one knows the reason we’re in Afghanistan, don’t worry you’re not alone, that was the idea. While Condi Rice first came up with the “no distinction” idea, it was Darth Cheney who first started calling it the “Bush Doctrine” in public. Blurring the lines between terrorists and states that harbour them was a propaganda coup. In a November 2001 speech to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Cheney offered this definition: “We will hold those who harbor terrorists, those who provide sanctuary to terrorists, responsible for their acts.”

It wasn’t until the anthrax and smallpox threat hysteria broke out that the justification for war in Iraq achieved critical mass. With a leap of faith, and a huge dose of fabrication (think WMD’s and “The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.“), Iraq was linked with every terror plot ever hatched against the US, giving birth to the war of preemption. Even today, many would link Saddam and Osama in their minds as one and the same threat. Only now, after Obama has picked up his Nobel Peace Prize, do we realize the extent to which the public have become disoriented. Instead of seeing the honour as an incentive to change and repudiate the disastrous actions of the last decade, the US press and public responded like a wounded animal, lashing out, forcing Obama’s hand into escalating a war he cannot win.

We’ve entered the true bizarro world where putting an end date on a war is wrong after having wasted more that 8 years ensuring there can be no resolution to the conflict. The cognitive dissonance involved when claiming to promote liberal democracy one hand while supporting a corrupt leader who stole an election at a cost of a million dollars per soldier must be painful (yes, 30,000 extra troops will cost about $30 billion a year). I guess it’s nothing having fundamentally shifted from the knowledge that torture was wrong with even Reagan signing the UN Convention on Torture to a society that produces Abu Ghraib and believing torture can now be justified and certainly not prosecutable.

Fear is the foe of the faddist, but the friend of the fundamentalist

-Warren Buffett

The efficacy of fear as a manipulator has been further tested in the financial world, selling us the need to put capitalism on permanent life support. Taking a page out of the terrorism playbook, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson played a little game of fear tag team with Geithner, Bernanke, Bush, the IMF and Warren Buffet to pull off the greatest transfer of wealth from the taxpayer to the rich in history. Somewhere between $4.7 and $23.7 trillion in the US alone. Buffet, the world’s sometimes richest man, threw his weight behind the programme in order to avoid “an economic Pearl Harbour”, then going further, saying “…we were at the brink of something that would have made anything that’s happened in financial history pale…I’m not saying the Paulson plan will eliminate the problem but it’s absolutely necessary, in my view, to avoid going off the precipice.” Wasn’t there a line about fear during the real Depression, yeah, some Roosevelt quote, er, what was it again? Oh yeah, “we have nothing to fear, but fear itself”. How adorable, so folksy, but then again, that was another time. A time when instead of handing the economy over to those who ruined it, rules and policies were implemented to try to ensure it didn’t happen again.

This time, normal legislative procedures were bypassed as congressmen were warned of civil unrest, martial law and stock market collapse if they failed to pass the bank bailout. Never mind the true cause of the failure of the economic model, an over-concentration of wealth and power brought about by globalization, tax-policy and focus on short term profits. Instead of fixing the inequity brought about by the failed policies of the past, the world was hoodwinked into transferring trillions over to those who caused the problem. A decade that began with the internet bubble and merger between AOL and Time Warner is ending with their quiet divorce and the entire financial world on life support. The warnings were there all along if we’d of just paid attention and connected the dots from WorldCom to Enron, Martha Stewart to Bernie Madoff, Tyco to Parmalat (a list of corporate scandals in 2000-2002 only!), putting power in the hands of the few as the world rushed to embrace the madness of the markets. Instead, every action seemed to reinforce bad behaviour; as CEO pay and bonuses grew, taxes were sliced for the privileged few. Those left behind saw their power shrink along with their wages until a breaking point was reached, inequality not seen since the Great Depression. The top 1% of earners now earn a higher percentage of income than anytime since 1928 while income mobility, the chances of being born poor and becoming rich, has shrunk to pre-Horacio Alger levels. Somehow though there isn’t enough evidence to convince the true corporate shills, those Ayn Rand dreamers, who wholeheartedly believe in the superiority of the rich, that their financial pyramid is all an illusion. Fear of collapse seems to be enough to keep us all chasing our tails.

“They go on in strange paradox, decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all-powerful to be impotent… Owing to past neglect, in the face of the plainest warnings, we have entered upon a period of danger. The era of procrastination, of half measures, of soothing and baffling expedience of delays, is coming to its close. In its place we are entering a period of consequences…. We cannot avoid this period, we are in it now…”
- Winston Churchill, November 12, 1936

Fear has been the sales tool of the decade. It’s worked great for the military industrial complex, selling us two wars. It’s worked even better convincing us that we need to have rich, large, powerful corporations controlling our lives. Sadly, we can be fooled into killing foreigners and giving money to bankers but we can’t be ‘tricked‘ by those pesky fear-mongering scientists into any kind of real action to prevent a global catastrophe resulting from climate change. It’s become clear that this marketing tool doesn’t always work as witnessed by the dismal failure to sell the world on the need to save it from ourselves. We’ve been inundated with stories of melting glaciers, shrinking ice caps, sinking islands and polar bears eating their cubs for the past decade in an attempt to convince the world that we’re hurtling towards disaster. So why has shock and awe environmentalism failed so miserably? Why does it seem more important to the deniers that Al Gore may profit from green energy than Goldman Sachs profited from the bailout or Blackwater and Haliburton from the wars of preemption? How can we justify subsidizing an oil based economy that enriches kings in Saudi Arabia over investing in new technologies at home to lessen our reliance on others and spark a real economic recovery? Why is Obama labeled as ‘dithering’ for delaying a decision to send young men to die in a futile effort while the reality is he’s playing the part of the prototypical Danish procrastinator Hamlet in his native land, trying to sell us some more smoke and mirrors wrapped in hope and change and carbon trading, driving us all to the inevitable tragic conclusion of the play?

God, time and money. Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein claims to be “doing God’s work while the same deity guided Dubya “‘George go and fight these terrorists in Afghanistan’. And I did. And then God would tell me ‘George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq’. And I did.“. Meanwhile, those pesky scientists are once again questioning the divine by saying that man may actually be influencing his environment. Typical human arrogance, thinking we hold god-like influence over our planet. Fear also fails here due to the time scale, to work it cannot be an implied threat of something too far in the future, or people will lose interest. This is especially true as climate gets mixed up with weather all too easily in people’s minds and there are too many cold winter days between now and the tipping point for people to feel any urgency. Given enough time and resources one can convince the majority of folks just about anything. The most remarkable aspect of the deniers success is that they’ve convinced a large segment of the population that they are really smart because they can recite the rhetoric the global plutocracy has tricked them into believing instead of actually believing in science. Such beauties as: “Remember global cooling“, “Medieval Warm Period“, “No warming since 1998“, “Faulty evidence”, “Solar energy output“, “Plants need CO2“, “Water Vapour is a greenhouse gas“; most have truth to them, but all have been misused and disseminated to the public in order to confuse the masses.

All the while the ultimate fear card is played over and over. “Climate-change policies will destroy jobs and growth”. It’s here that the real irony starts to hit home. Not only can sharp reductions in emissions be attained with limited impact on growth at low costs, but an agreement in Copenhagen could have been the recipe for real economic recovery. But here’s the real kicker. The fear factory may have already cost itself its place at the top of the global pecking order by refusing to see the obvious. Climate change feedback loops are self-reinforcing cycles; problems that echo off each other and quickly spiral out of control. Here’s how it goes: Melting tundra in Siberia releases methane into the atmosphere, which raises the water temperature, which melts sea ice, causing more solar heat to be absorbed by the oceans. As the Arctic has been melting and America has been acting the part of a 2-year old who can close his eyes and make the world go away, Russia and China have put themselves in position to reap the resource rewards, a sort of global power feedback loop. The last lie has been that we’ll run out of cheap oil soon enough forcing the market to solve the problem for us. But the effects of a warmer planet are not only making it easier to dig up northern Alberta, it’s also thawing the cover off of the final poisoned payload. Not only will we be sailing across the pole, a quarter of the world’s mineral wealth will also be accessible, ensuring that we’ll keep burning until we’re truly burning. At the same time, China has positioned herself to lead the world, if not through some kind of carbon treaty, then she has at least bought up enough of Africa and South America to feed herself during the coming droughts and to maintain a steady supply of resources. Droughts? Let’s not even get started on freshwater.

And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought

-Shakespeare Hamlet, Act III, Scene 1

Put it all together with the latest “Climategate” (nice name-calling propaganda technique wouldn’t you say?) scandal involving the hacked emails and public confidence in climatology is probably at its lowest point in at least the past decade. The facts are simple though. The planet is warming; for 150 years we’ve known that CO2, even in low concentrations, acts as a greenhouse gas; man is contributing to the increase in CO2. No, we don’t know for certain that we are driving the warmth, but as then-Vice President Dick Cheney said when faced with concerns that a Pakistani scientist was offering nuclear-weapons expertise to Al Qaeda “If there’s a 1% chance that Pakistani scientists are helping al-Qaeda build or develop a nuclear weapon, we have to treat it as a certainty in terms of our response. It’s not about our analysis … It’s about our response.” Well Dick, I’d say that we’re at least 1% sure about us playing a part in global warming, so, shouldn’t we respond?

Cost of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq? About $1 trillion to date
Cost of the financial bailout? About $5 trillion
Cost to save the planet? You guessed it…priceless

The great mass of people will more easily fall victim to a big lie than to a small one
-Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf Vol. 1, Ch. 10

Why oh why do they keep lying and deceiving? Oh yeah, it’s because a whole bunch of people eat this stuff up. Stumbled across another case in point of the smokescreen that is the Republican party and the wacky right, a little number released by the White House called the ‘Highlights of Accomplishments and Results The Administration of President George W. Bush 2001-2009‘. The legacy book is yet another example of the distorted way in which these people actually see the world. So, in celebration of the final moments of the Bush presidency let’s try to once again for old time sakes to expose the truth by looking at this publication point by painful point.

The report has five main categories, the first of which is the claim that Dubya “Kept America Safe and Promoted Liberty Abroad”. The four supporting arguments are that he waged the global war on terror, transformed the institutions and the tools of war, established the freedom agenda to spread hope through liberty and finally, established a new approach to international development. The first claim is based on the fact that US soil hasn’t seen a terrorist attack against it since 9/11. True, but as I’ve read in many places, the previous 7 years hadn’t seen one either. What’s been swept under the rug and somehow forgotten is that it was on Bush’s watch that 9/11 happened. Have we forgotten that Bush responded to the August 6, 2001 memo entitled “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US” by going on vacation? Or that he hardly paid any attention to the intelligence dating back to January 2001 which insisted that al-Qaeda was an “urgent” threat? The truth here is that the Bush administration has made America and the world a much less safe place, especially vis-a-vis terrorism. The neo-con strategy of spreading democracy through war has proved to be an abysmal failure. Yes, they transformed war by instituting a policy of pre-emptive war in Iraq and the tools were sharpened through the unsigning of the ICC and ignoring the Geneva Convention. The use of torture condoned by his cohorts has created a much more dangerous world for troops abroad. The State Department, traditionally the main tool of foreign policy, has become an afterthought, understaffed, underfunded and suffering from low morale. Reading about this ‘freedom agenda’ is confusing. If it’s the measure introduced to but not passed by congress it represents some of the higher ideals of the Republican party. However, the more nebulous ‘freedom agenda‘ held by Dubya and fellow neo-cons has truly been a disaster. Beyond Iraq, one need look no further than South America or central Asia, where American influence has waned considerably. As for the colour-coded revolutions, well, most have been revealed as nothing more than a smoke screen, whose initial success has faded away much like the smoke. Did I mention Afghanistan? Guess I forgot about it too…

Bush on the economy, another laugher. Section numero dos is headed: Lowered Taxes and Instituted Pro-Growth Policies. Should read: Made the rich richer and sold the rest down river. More than any one single reason for the financial crisis is the culture of lies and deceit that the Bush administration helped to perpetuate. If you aren’t so philosophical and need concrete reasons for the crisis, luckily I’ve got a few. Doubling the national debt after inheriting a budget surplus, pushing for deregulation and the ever widening income gap are good starting points. A doubling of the nation’s debt to over $11 trillion while today the richest 1% of Americans share of national income is 22.1% compared to 16.1% in 2002 with the bottom 50%’s share today being 12.5% compared to 14.2% six years ago. In 2007 real median household income dropped 1% while corporate profits jumped 68%. But really, one need only look at Bush’s advice to the American consumer which basically boiled down to “go shopping!”. Yes, that’s right, declare a ‘war on terror’ and instead of asking the people to make sacrifices, ask them to mortgage their financial future - and of course that’s what Joe and Sally did. In previous wars citizens were encouraged to invest in war bonds and the likes, Dubya told the people “to get down to Disney World“. Imagine how bad things would be today if he’d had his way and Social Security had been privatized.

Next up, George the second apparently “Reformed Government to Better Serve Americans”. The first subsection is about education and the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act, part of the Bush pledge in 2000 to improve education when he lamented, “Rarely is the question asked: Is our children learning?“. The results have been mixed with reading and math scores showing improvement but many questioning the neglect of other subjects; an overhaul awaits the Obama administration. On health care the report mentions the Medicare Prescription Drug Benefit. Whatever it’s merits the cost represent another boldface lie told to the American people as the White House continually low-balled the price tag in order to ensure passage. Sound familiar? Refresher: Back in 2003 the Bush Administration wanted to put the price tag of a war in Iraq at around $50 billion. White House Economic Advisor Larry Lindsey was fired for suggesting it could be $100 to $200 billion, that’s right, fired for stepping out of line. The real cost could come in somewhere around $5 trillion! Only missed that one by a factor of 100. Oh yeah, there are over 46 million Americans without any kind of health insurance today, an increase of more than 8 million since 2000. The next part is the creepy one for us small ‘g’ god people; Dubya’s administration has “Improved lives by partnering with faith-based and community groups”. Whether or not one supports the president’s Faith-Based and Community Initiative (FBCI), what is undeniable is that it will be a part of the Bush legacy as it has changed the rules of the game. The Constitutional line between church and state has been blurred and a new way of handing out money to political allies was created, sound familiar? It should as cronyism is a central theme in the last section here, where Bush II “Provided unprecedented resources for those who defended our freedom”. Yes, sending over 4000 folks to die in a war tends to put pressure on you to spend some money on the armed forces. The silver lining? Well, at least Dick Cheney and Haliburton got richer.

GWB “Set a Bright Course for America’s Future” must be the most baffling section of the document. Apparently he advanced energy production, lessening America’s dependence on oil. One almost has no words to argue against this, and I guess that’s the point. But pointing to the success of ethanol subsidies when they have had a large hand in disrupting world commodity markets, threatening global famine? Maybe the authors missed out on the run up to near $150 a barrel oil last year. Or perhaps the report implicitly counts Iraqi oil production as being American now. Dubya has also protected the environment, damn, I almost can’t write this stuff. An administration that has done all it can to perpetuate global warming deniers’ claims while removing itself from the obligations of the Kyoto Protocol could one day be pointed at as the reason for the end of the world. Lastly in this section the administration “Reduced crime, lowered drug use, and protected vulnerable children”. While having the authority to pardon crimes helped his family sleep at night while in office, it will be interesting to see how many within the inner-circle are brought to justice. Legalizing war crimes through the Military Commissions Act helped keep the streets crime free too, at least those in Washington, D.C.!

The final section is titled: Stood on Principle and Showed the Way Ahead. Thank you Mr. President for creating the environment we’re in today, one where lying, deceit, greed and corruption have come together in a perfect storm that truly threatens to end the American way of life. Through it all though Dubya “promoted a culture of life”, by which I guess it means for those who weren’t killed in Iraq. In fact, the phrase is lifted from a speech given by Pope John Paul II on a tour of the US in 1993, and by the Vatican’s standards, Dubya has sort of succeeded. The main points of this ideal are: opposition to abortion, check, opposition to capital punishment, oops, opposition to cloning, check, opposition to contraception, check, opposition to embryonic and stem cell research, check, opposition to euthanasia, check and opposition to unjust war, d’oh! Well, 5 outta 7 ain’t bad I guess. Opposition to stem cell research “set research back five to six to seven years in this country,” delaying potential treatments for a number of degenerative and life threatening diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. And guess what, those scientists that would have been working in the US are simply in other countries doing that same research. Next, George “Appointed judges committed to ruling by the letter of the law” is the shortest section of the document, quickly mentioning the appointment of Judges Samuel Alito and John Roberts. Funny how it skips over the whole Alberto Gonzales fiasco, assuming the public has already forgotten. Guess that’s the point, most already have and won’t even really know what is missing, much of their civil liberties. From wire tapping to political favouritism and approval of torture, (Gonzales called parts of the Geneva Convention ‘quaint’) Dubya and his gang chipped away at all that Americans supposedly hold sacred, their freedom, while proclaiming to be protecting and spreading it abroad.

None of this could have happened without three main factors, 9/11, Cheney and Rove. Cheney pushed for a radical rewriting of American policies on such critical issues as surveillance and detention of terrorism suspects after the Sept. 11 attacks, with virtually no oversight or input from Congress or the courts. Meanwhile Rove worked his black magic upon a sleep-walking nation, molding public opinion through his version of the truth with impunity. Before getting to the gripping “100 Things Americans Might Not Know” wrap-up, this legacy forming document proclaims that, “President Bush led with a hopeful vision, met complex and rapid-fire challenges with steady resolve, and based his decisions on principle.” This seems to be the central theme of the Bush record defense, he was a victim of circumstances and he dealt with all the issues based on his principles. Herein lies the ultimate irony of the past eight years: If a man (or woman) with more sense than neo-con ideology had occupied the Oval Office to face those same challenges, America and the world would be a much better and safer place today. Instead of seeing 9/11 as an opportunity to reach out to the world, it was treated as a chance to settle scores and start wars, thereby fuelling extremism and creating legions of new terrorists. Evidence of moral corrosion can be found everywhere we look, from the financial scandals of Enron to Bernie Madoff, the humiliation of Saddam Hussein to Guantanamo Bay. Thank you Mr. President, we wish we never knew you.

You can hear the chanting in your ears as you fall asleep. The accolades of the world shower down; is it Olympic glory, no. Couldn’t be the World Cup. Maybe a sweep of the Nobel Prizes, no! In fact, listening a little closer, one realizes that there’s a tone of derision to the chanting. Yep, no doubt about it, there’s something wrong here. Canada set a record by winning four out of a possible three Fossil of the Day Awards last Thursday at the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change here in Poznan, Poland (bringing there total at the time to six). You heard me right, 4 outta 3, click here to find out how. Canada has become a world leader in avoiding (positive) action on climate change. By the by, if you’re too lazy to click on the above link, three awards are given daily to the countries who give the worst input to the negotiations. While the US holds the all-time lead, Japan, Canada and Russia are leading the Poznan session.

It’s easy to point fingers at Stephen Harper and his Conservative party, unfortunately you can’t place the blame entirely on them for the current situation. No, the rot goes much deeper; perhaps Harper’s latest maneuvering to hold onto power by shutting down the democratically elected Parliament could have some positive consequence if the people finally demand that their elected officials become responsible. While inaction on climate change has been perfected by the Tories, the Liberals were a very good role-model to follow. Someone should really be teaching a course in the seven-steps to avoidance, (very good .pdf here, I’m talking to you environment ministers) as other countries look for ever more effective methods of avoiding action.

But wait, what’s that you say? There may be repercussions for these deniers, avoiders and do-nothingers? That’s right my friends, there’s good news as those in power may some day have to pay for their crimes against the planet. Of course it won’t be only Canadian leaders; I’m sure all the industrialized countries will get their due as well along with the newer players on the scene, those wacky emerging markets. The home of the current Climate Change conference, Poland, along with her other Central/Eastern European neighbours should also expect to shoulder some of the legal problems for blocking an EU climate package. I’m talking about the class action lawsuit to be lodged by one Dan Bloom in the International Court of Justice against all world leaders for failing to prevent global warming this week. According to Reuter’s he will sue the leaders for “intent to commit manslaughter against future generations of human beings by allowing murderous amounts of fossil fuels to be harvested, burned and sent into the atmosphere as CO2“.

Alright, admittedly it looks more like a publicity stunt, but those responsible for pumping poison into our eco-system might want to take notice of a story I caught in the Guardian today. In a nutshell, the Oxford scientist quoted claims that science has advanced to the point where they can now judge the role of man in extreme climate events. According the Miles Allen, “We are starting to get to the point that when an adverse weather event occurs we can quantify how much more likely it was made by human activity. And people adversely affected by climate change today are in a position to document and quantify their losses“. Up til now, tort cases involving civil wrongs have failed in several suits in the US however, as establishing causation has been difficult. Power companies and big oil are the most likely targets. Another course of legal action may also follow the example set by cases in the US against tobacco companies who deliberately misinformed the public about the effects of their business.

Disinformation, climate change deniers most effective weapon? Perhaps. As I pointed out in a previous post, even stories such as those in this post usually simply cause skeptics to roll their eyes and turn away. This won’t stop those that are more passionate than I though from trying to shake the zombies out of their slumber. Stay tuned, there’s more to come from Poznan.

“Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently”

-Henry Ford

It must have felt pretty cool being one of the selected few to be among the delegates representing 44 different countries at the Bretton Woods conference in the summer of 1944. Everything about it was planned to ensure that the talks would result in a world economic order that would foster cooperation and prosperity for future generations. The rural location, New Hampshire’s plush Mount Washington Hotel, was chosen so that the delegates would have no distractions, and no pressure from lobbyists or other politicians. While the focus was to establish a stable system of exchange rates, and how to pay for rebuilding the war-damaged economies of Europe, the meetings also led to the creation of the IMF, World Bank and to a lesser extent, the United Nations, the Marshall plan and the International Trade Organization (later GATT and the WTO). A lot has changed since those days when John Maynard Keynes, representing the UK, along with the other delegates hammered out the foundations for the American financial order.

Fast forward to the dying days of 2008 and the world is again in crisis. This time instead of worrying how to rebuild a world in the aftermath of a World War, we’re faced with the aftermath that 65 years of greed has wrought on the world’s economy and the planet. The stock market crash of 1929 and the decade of protectionism that followed was one of the main causes of WWII and the financial aftermath; this time it’s the devastation that has been brought about by the oil based economic model. If only Keynes had got his way back in ‘44 and a world central bank (to be known as bancor) would have been created to reflate the world’s money supply. Instead, it was left to America, who by the mid-70’s gave up the gold standard and switched 100% to the oil standard.

Last week and next, representatives from 190 nations are meeting in my adopted hometown of Poznan, Poland to try to map out a plan to Copenhagen next year, where it is hoped that a new emission protocol to replace Kyoto will be reached. Unfortunately, instead of being a headline event, it’s playing 2nd fiddle to the financial crisis. In the perfect world, the two would be sharing top billing, hand in hand giving policy makers the opportunity to kill two birds with one stone. This won’t be the case though as special interests ensure that no compromise will be reached. As one government after another announces trillions of dollars in shock therapies for national economies, the only market that matters, the planet, will be left out in the cold.

Imagine, if you will, a world where greedy bankers actually pay for their lending mistakes. Or car makers are forced to be competitive. Yeah, I know that’s how it’s supposed to work, but it no longer does. I can hear the cries of “the banks need to survive to provide financing for investment”, but who can make rational investment decisions when governments are handing money out for failure? Imagine what could be done with the money if it was spent with the view of improving the world. Instead of delivering a better world, our desperate battle for growth at all costs has put us on a crash course with ecological disaster. The average person works more hours and has less to show for it than 30 years ago. Add to that the crumbling safety nets, such as pension plans and health care coverage and it makes one wonder why we’d want to fix the system at all. Let it crash, we have to start fresh.

What I can’t wrap my head around is the typical response that people have to the proposal of carbon taxes or the likes to try to reduce CO2 emissions. “Don’t spend MY tax dollars on something that might not even exist!” Yet they don’t seem to have any problems with having their tax dollars go to banks, or worse yet, car companies. Whether or not the theory that human activity is causing climate change is eventually proven or disproven should be irrelevant. Dependence on fossil fuels is ridiculous and all our efforts should be focused on lessening this reliance. It’s not a coincidence that oil prices have fallen drastically over the past few months. The world is hostage to the oil supplying nations, yet even those nations know that there is a line that when crossed, will force us to actually change the way the world works and end the reign of oil. Yes, I do realize that forecasts for demand have fallen due to the failing world economy, thus pushing down the price, but it’s more than that as anyone without fossil fuel blinders can see.

There’s a few reasons why the Poznan conference or the meeting to be held next year in Copenhagen won’t come up with an agreement to save the planet. The price of oil dropping to $20 a barrel is the easiest scapegoat, but it’s the public’s perception of the climate change debate that is the most troubling. One of my student’s referral to “that conference, or whatever you call it” causing traffic difficulties is the perfect illustration of how many people have been misinformed and feel there are more important issues to deal with. The developed world won’t tell Asia and Africa to choose poverty, disease, hunger and illiteracy over electricity. Kyoto was a failure, I don’t know of a single region or country that will reach their targets. Dubya made sure the people knew what he thought of it, and while he is Dubya, there are people whose opinions are formed by their president. These CC deniers will fight tooth and nail to defend their right to pay foreign nations huge amounts of money to import fuel in support of big oil companies.

The biggest problem though lies in the complexity of the issue and the way the media has presented it to the people. While the evidence pointing to human activity as the cause for climate change has been slowly solidifying, the media has been bombarding us with other discordant findings. In effect, the media is to blame for obfuscating the issue, creating a breeding ground for apathy. The arctic ice sheets melting, the Brazilian tree frogs disappearance and the hurricane season all might have something to do with climate change, but by hitting the people with these stories in rapid succession and linking them to CC, it’s easy to see why there are still so many skeptics out there. Another brilliant example comes from a Republican presidential debate in Iowa in which the candidates were asked, “How many of you believe global climate change is a serious threat and caused by human activity?”. Here, the mistake of conflating two distinct questions into one only serves to confuse the issue: whether climate change is a ’serious threat’ and whether humans contribute to it. Furthermore, by wording the question in this way, the candidates were given the chance give general responses, without dealing with the issue, such as “I believe that global climate change is serious” (Rudy Giuliani), and “I think that climate change is real” (John McCain).

Poznan ain’t gonna be Bretton Woods. I wonder if the UN was trying to say something by choosing ths city to host the event. Poland burns so much coal that the air is often thick and yellowish while at the same time the government is doing all it can to stymie the implementation of an EU emission standard. The word homogeneous was invented for Poland, where 95% of the population is white and catholic. Real debate is impossible in an environment such as this, where just having a car is considered to be a status symbol. It seems natural to want to live in a cleaner world, so instead of scaring people, we need to focus on showing the benefits that a new way of thinking can achieve. Until the people can be convinced that we’re faced with an opportunity rather than a threat, events such as the Poznan conference will be nothing more than a blip on the media radar.

I have to admit to being confused, ignorant and surprised about, of and by this theory I just read about for the first time, the abiotic (or abiogenic) origins of oil. In a nutshell, this is a theory propounded by Soviet/Ukrainian scientists that holds that oil is produced within the Earth’s mantle. My first thought was “hold on, there’s an alternate theory to where oil comes from? Wait, what is our theory? Something to do with dinosaurs if I remember right.” Sure enough, I was sorta right, our current theory in the west is that oil reserves are the product of the compression and heating of ancient organic materials over geological time, thus the term fossil fuels. Well, in case you missed it, this is just a theory, like gravity and evolution (yes, both just theories too). Unfortunately, instead of looking at this theory objectively, it seems as thought the west has reacted in knee-jerk fashion, dismissing it out of hand, describing it as crazy. But really, is it?

Here’s the thing. Even if you don’t understand the science, which I don’t, the scientific evidence of it at least being possible has been piling piling up. The science, quickly, states that oil is continuously generated by natural processes in the Earth’s magma. The scientific proof seems to lie in the fact that its proponents claim that it is consistent with the law of thermodynamics, whereas the organic theory is not. So, why have we in the west never heard of this theory? Various abiogenic hypotheses were first proposed after advances in science in the nineteenth century, most notably by Alexander von Humboldt, the Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev and the French chemist Marcellin Berthelot. While the theory did then lose ground to the idea of oil as a fossil fuel, it was once again championed by Russian and Soviet scientists in the 2nd half of the 20th century.

Following WWII, Stalin had of course realized the strategic importance of oil and, lacking in domestic supplies, threw his country into what has been described as a “Manhatten Project” of oil research. Between 1951 and 2001 thousands of articles were published in mainstream Russian scientific journals on the modern Russian-Ukrainian theory of deep, abiotic petroleum origins, almost completely unheard of in the West. Nikolai Alexandrovich Kudryavtsev is generally credited with first enunciated the theory, but to much of the west, it was first introduced by Thomas Gold. There is much debate about whether he plagiarized the Russian findings or changed them or found his own ideas, but he convinced the Swedish Government in the1990’s that oil could be found everywhere in the planet, but more specifically by drilling in an ancient meteorite crater, into fractured granite under the Siljan Ring, in Sweden. For this, two deep wells were drilled and millions of dollars were thrown in the deep earth granite. No hydrocarbon was found and again the abiogenic hypothesis was discredited for the moment.

However today’s high oil prices have reignited the debate it seems. Now, it’s no secret that I’m no fan of oil, big oil and the God Car society that has been created around it, but the theory of peak oil particularly aggravates me. The belief in oil as a fossil based product with a finite supply has created a market that is holding the world hostage to big oil companies. Of late, much anecdotal evidence has emerged to support the abiotic theory, not the least of which is the fact that Russia, which was thought to have few reserves only 50 years ago, today is the world’s leading oil producer. NASA studies have proven that the methane reserves on Saturn’s moon Titan are of a non-biologic origin. A study in Science Magazine published earlier this year claimed that hydrogen-rich fluids venting at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean in the Lost City Hydrothermal Field were produced by the abiotic synthesis of hydrocarbons in the mantle of the earth.

The implications are mind-boggling, both good and bad. The good would be the end of big oil and their lackeys Dick Cheney et al. The bad, well, we’ve got a near inexhaustible supply of the black stuff to ensure the continuation of the God Car era to seal the planets doom. Prices would crash, BP, ExxonMobile and the rest would go bankrupt, the dollar worthless. Of course if it does prove true, Russia has a huge head start and it’s possible they’ve already shared their secret with the Vietnamese, while the Chinese and North Koreans are lining up. In 2003 Putin made any information revealing the exact amount of supply, reserves, production, and the actual use of strategic types of minerals of the Russian Federation a State secret. Could there be a giant secret behind all the Russian oil companies’ intrigue with the government or foreign companies such as BP these past few years? There’s no secret as to why such a theory would be hidden from the world, how I do love a conspiracy theory.

I’ve been trying to avoid putting in my 2 cents on the Sarah Palin VP choice by McBush, just reading and trying to digest who she is, after all the VP choice really doesn’t mean much. Thing is, you look at liberal news, and you get the typical tripe, even going as far as the DailyKos story of her last pregnancy being a ruse to cover for her teenage daughter’s pregnancy. Reading the other press, it’s a constant stream of McCain’s big gamble and I keep hearing that Kenny Rogers’ over and over in my head, you gotta know when to hold ‘em, know when to fold’em…, singing the praises of the return of the Maverick McCain.

Being Vice-President actually makes you President of the United States Senate, and next in line in case the president kicks it and remember that McBush turned 72 the other day. Bearing in mind the random crap shoot that is the presidential election, here’s my top 10 reasons to be physically sick about the Sarah Palin choice and how she’ll help defeat Obama.

1. She’s a hockey mom. This means something in possible swing states like Minnesota, Colorado, Ohio and Pennsylvania
2. She’s pro-life. That whole “carried her child to term despite the knowledge that it would probably have Down Syndrome” thing really stirs up the fanatic Christian vote.
3. She will win over disaffected Clinton supporters. Those that wouldn’t vote for anyone just because their candidate lost, now will be tempted to vote Republican, what’s the difference, at least she’s a woman!?
4. She was a TV sportscaster and a former beauty queen. How much more apple pie can you get?
5. Some people consider her a MILF, making her ideal to deal with terrorist organziations such as MILF (Moro Islamic Liberation Front)
6. Cindy McCain likes her because she has foreign diplomatic experience, honest. She’s the governor of Alaska, the closest state to Russia, so she’ll know how to deal with that threat!
7. She’s a gun loving huntress. This is important because people feel more comfortable knowing that there’s continuity, in this case a VP who’s liable to shoot someone in the face.
8. She doesn’t believe that global warming is caused by human activities unlike her running-mate, this calms some conservative fears about putting an environmentalist like McBush in the White House.
9. She just got a passport last year. Fewer than 1 in 6 Americans have one, she only got hers to visit the troops in Germany, so never fear, she’s still as isolated as the rest of the electorate.
10. Oil, oil, oil. She’ll drill and fight big oil at the same time! McBush actually opposes opening Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil and gas development, which sounds a little whacko-enviro to some conservatives. Enter Palin who supports drilling anywhere, oh yeah, and she hates polar bears.

It wasn’t so long ago that $50 billion was considered a lot of money. Well, the world has changed and along with it, so has the value of money. General Motors’ net losses since 2005, $51.1 billion; the six largest oil companies combined profits this QUARTER, $51.5 billion; Anheuser-Busch cost InBev $52 billion; the US contribution to fighting AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis over the next 5 years, $50 billion; the portion of the latest war funding bill for Iraq and Afghanistan devoted to new weapon systems, $51.8 billion; the amount Microsoft saved by not buying Yahoo, about $50 billion; Obama’s emergency economic stimulus package, $50 billion.

These are just a few of the numbers tossed around in the last month or two. The problem is the loss of perspective, just what is 50 billion? It was the GDP of the United States in 1916 in 1916 dollars. It is the estimated (by some) to be the number of galaxies in the universe (although most say 100 billion). Before the currency devaluation the other day (they lopped 10 zeroes off the Zim dollar in an effort to “fight” inflation), it was the cost of the Sunday Independent newspaper in Zimbabwe dollars. It’s a 5 with 10 zeroes following it. That’s ten to the power of nine (10^9). To make matters more confusing many languages interpret the word billion differently. In a nutshell, there are what are known as short-scales and long-scales. In countries using the short scale, such as the US and Canada, they use a numeric system where every new term greater than a million is 1000 times the previous term, thus a billion is a thousand millions, a trillion a thousand billions…While in long scale countries such as Spain, every term is a million times larger, thus a billion means a million millions (10^12). A Spaniard would say “mil millones” (a thousand millions) to mean my version of a billion!

In order to truly understand such large numbers, one must take a step back and put them in perspective. Exxon Mobil made over $11 billion this quarter, that’s a couple bucks for every man, woman and child on the planet. Mexico’s Carlos Slim’s $60 billion fortune is large enough to place him in the top ten of national GDP’s in Africa (yes, I know, GDP is the measurement for one year while his wealth was amassed over his lifetime), just behind Tunisia and ahead of Kenya. The White House predicts that the budget deficit left to the successor of Dubya for 2009 will be $482 billion, ten times 50 billion! (the figure isn’t final as it may not include all costs of the wars or an additional economic stimulus package of, you guessed it, $50 billion) That’s over $1600 for every person in the USA. Imagine spending that much more than you made in a year, would your bank keep lending you money? (Just a few hundred billion more until $10 trillion total outstanding public debt) You gotta love those fiscally conservative Republicans.

In Arthur C. Clarke’s short story The Nine Billion Names of God, once the task of listing all the names of God is completed, the universe is brought to an end. By pumping up the numbers thrown about to ever greater amounts, our governments, corporations and not least of all, the media, are making the task of counting to the end more and more difficult to complete, thus keeping us occupied. A little over six years ago, the Pentagon estimated the war in Iraq would cost $50 billion in total, a number thrown to the public with little meaning behind it, just a number to hold in our heads. Of course the costs have spiralled out of control, but the numbers seem endless, without any real meaning; is the cost $3 trillion, $1.2 trillion or just $600 billion. Sadly for the public, unlike pi, all these amounts are finite and someone will have to pay the bill.