Science applied, but maybe not so pure

From a piece in the New York Times science section, the Tierney Lab, about mixing politics with science:

What would honest brokers tell the president about global warming? Dr. Pielke, who calls himself an Obamite, says he’s concerned that the presidents’ advisers seem uniformly focused on cutting carbon emissions through a domestic cap-and-trade law and a new international treaty.

It’s fine to try that strategy, he says, but there are too many technological, economic and political uncertainties to count on it making a significant global difference. If people around the world can’t be cajoled — or frightened by apocalyptic scenarios — into cutting carbon emissions, then politicians need backup strategies.

One possibility, Dr. Pielke says, would be to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere in the future. He calculates that it could cost about the same, in the long run, as making drastic cuts in emissions today, and could be cheaper if the technology improves. It could also be a lot easier sell to the public.

Yet research into this strategy has received little financing in past budgets or the new stimulus package because it doesn’t jibe with the agenda of either side in the global-warming debate. Greens don’t want this sort of “technological fix”; their opponents don’t want to admit there’s anything to fix. And neither side’s advocates will compromise as long as they think that science will prove them right.

More AIG: This is long, so I've separated it into chapters

(I've gone off schedule, posting these AIG things. But... some stories need to be posted when still au courant!)

Chapter One: The Newest News!

Oh my gosh, this AIG thing... it's like a great soap opera! The latest (in the NY Times): "The following is a letter sent on Tuesday by Jake DeSantis, an executive vice president of the American International Group’s financial products unit, to Edward M. Liddy, the chief executive of A.I.G."

"I was in no way involved in — or responsible for — the credit default swap transactions that have hamstrung A.I.G. Nor were more than a handful of the 400 current employees of A.I.G.-F.P. Most of those responsible have left the company and have conspicuously escaped the public outrage." (Read here, it's worth it.)

It's whiny sounding, but the dude does give more detail into what's going on. And I get the dude's point that Liddy reassured these peeps they would get these bonuses. And I get his point that not everyone in that department was responsible for the shit that went down. On the other hand... he probably could have defended himself a little, without all the details that will now make us mock him too. For example: "Just for the record, not all of us in the department were ALSO the ones who did The Shit! Yo! Just sayin'!" (Oh wait... it's only middle class liberal pseudo hippies like me who use Self Aware Hip Hop References. This commentor says it better.)

But when you start trying to tell us how hard off you will be now... come on... what sort of lifestyle are you leading that requires this level of income just to get through the week? This is the part where I feel like Wall Street Peeples are massively out of touch. They could lower their standard of living even to, say, West Island Middle Class... and they'd have enough to live on for how long? They could have all hit early retirement before any of this went down, if they cared to live like the Commoners. (Barring the things the you need to spend money on in order to work in certain circles... the suits... the business lunches... but I'm sure that's a small %.)


Chapter Two: Comments by NYT Readers!

When you're done, read some of the 917 comments. You can sort them by Editor's Picks, or Readers' Picks etc. Here are the highest "I agree with!" readers' comments:

"I wonder if he is aware that across the country, workers making less than one-tenth of his bonus in annual salary are agreeing to pay cuts, reductions in hours, and withdrawal of promised perks in order to save their coworkers' jobs."

"I'm sorry to say that your email reveals less about why you deserve your bonus and the moral rightness of your argument than the sense of entitlement that has blinded you to your company's practices and your role in benefiting from them."

[This is my fave:]
"The company where I was a janitor went out of business. It wasn't my fault, I kept the floor clean. The taxpayers should be paying my salary."

[And for a different, but still popular opinion...]
"Dear AIG I quit" is a brilliant letter. If the publicity-seeking Attorney's General, who shot their mouths off for their own political gain, had only taken the time to comprehend the facts, they would not have fed the out-of-control frenzy that emanated from the American public which, taken as a whole, is poorly educted, won't read and learn or understand, and can be played like a banjo by those who would seek to smear the current administration. Bravo Mr. DeSantis."

...And Editor's Choice:

"Hint: If your company accepts tens of billions of dollars from taxpayers, consider your bonus renegotiated."

"If the shipping department screws up and costs the company money, then the warehouse guys are not getting a raise. If the doctor makes a mistake and causes a huge lawsuit for the hospital, then raises for nurses and janitors goes down the drain. In this economic climate, how can you expect otherwise?
Wow - you got over $700K for one year of work? Couldn't you have lived on a half of that? Do you realize how lucky you are to even make half as much?"

"So he was shamed into an epiphany. Well at least he had one."

Chapter Three: The Mature Comments!

Seems someone had to Be the Adult and make reasonable points, reasonably expressed...

Adult 1
"Instead of positioning yourself as a victim of the consequences, you might (collectively) have predicted the government and public reaction to your pay structure, and suggested more equitable and sustainable pay in October.

"Rather than quitting and charitably donating what you believe was fairly earned, you might be continuing to provide invaluable services to AIG, and more importantly, to the national and international economic recovery. Your industry desperately needs people with your ability to work constructively within a compromised system and devise practical solutions.
More importantly, it needs people like you who can factor in the actual social and political variables in our country without capitulating to fear and threat."

Adult 2
"When you say that last fall many of you stayed at A.I.G. precisely because you were told that your contracts would be honored, can you understand that some of us wish that many of you would have stayed on simply because of your sense of pride in your work, and because of your sense of duty and patriotism?

"Please understand: I do not question your patriotism, nor do I condone the wanton attacks on your profession. I have no doubt that the situation was mishandled, in part because we are all panicked a little, and in part because politicians are politicians.
But, Mr. DeSantis you are not like the plumber who should be paid for his work because it was the electrician's fault that the house burned down. It's a lot more like we've got bombs dropping on our heads and many of us are getting killed, or living in bomb shelters. The lines at soup kitchens are growing, we've got ghost towns where people have had to abandon their homes, we've got an entire generation of people who don't know if they will ever get jobs, because they are not quite as brilliant and hard working as you and I are. That in itself is not a crime, and people don't deserve to be homeless just because they are ordinary folks. Last time the world financial situation resembled the present one, the world went so crazy that millions of people were murdered in a war that engulfed the world!

"You should not be vilified because you are working in the financial world, but nor should you behave as if all that's happened was that one house burned down. Our entire world is in danger of burning down. Come and join the rest of us in asking what you can do for your country and for your fellow human beings..."


Chapter Four: The Adults Get Me Thinking...

I appreciate the Adults, because I believe those are the people who can actually reach the intended audience. If this DeSantis is reading the NYT comments (who wouldn't be??) he's only going to feel defensive over the ones that amuse us the most. But the people who give polite, patient, reasoned answers might actually mean something to him.

I think what Adult 2 said is what little Tommy Friedman was trying to say. I don't think he was defending Rich Folk, so much as pointing out a possibly more effective way of facing the bonus scandal. When Obama was running for Prez, a lot of what people liked about him was that he inspired, and made many people *want to be better people.* I heard that over and over. So if anyone could have said something inspiring, yet subtly shaming, and gotten away with it, it would have been him. ...Whereas my initial approach of calling AIG folk Unsexy Vampires... maybe less effective.

It reminds me of that old experiment, where students who were treated as smart and gifted excelled pretty much for the rest of their lives, versus students who were told they were slow. If you call on people to be Heroes! by working for little pay to restore AIG (see the next comment), then maybe you'll evoke their better natures. Rather than putting them in a position of defending themselves from being crooks.

Maybe I'm being unrealistic. Well... optimists are less in touch with reality, but we stay afloat longer because of it. (The rats!) ;-) I know I'm channelling Joseph Campbell here:

"Solo was a very practical guy, at least as he thought of himself, a materialist. But he was a compassionate human being at the same time and didn't know it. The adventure evoked a quality of his character that he hadn't known he possessed. ... Our life evokes our character. You find out more about yourself as you go on. That's why it's good to be able to put yourself in situations that will evoke your higher nature rather than your lower."

So... is it not possible that we can also put other people in situations that will evoke their higher nature? As opposed to the Wall Street atmosphere they're used to, that probably evokes lower natures on a daily basis.

A little more AIG

Here's a little of NYT columnist Thomas Friedman on AIG. Hmm I wonder if this is true. Well, the thing I have some confidence in is--Obama is probably the type who listens to Wise Counsel and learns from mistakes. As opposed to Bush.

Had Mr. Obama given A.I.G.’s American brokers a reputation to live up to, a great national mission to join, I’d bet anything we’d have gotten most of our money back voluntarily. Inspiring conduct has so much more of an impact than coercing it. And it would have elevated the president to where he belongs — above the angry gaggle in Congress.

“There is nothing more powerful than inspirational leadership that unleashes principled behavior for a great cause,” said Dov Seidman, the C.E.O. of LRN, which helps companies build ethical cultures, and the author of the book “How.” What makes a company or a government “sustainable,” he added, is not when it adds more coercive rules and regulations to control behaviors. “It is when its employees or citizens are propelled by values and principles to do the right things, no matter how difficult the situation,” said Seidman. “Laws tell you what you can do. Values inspire in you what you should do. It’s a leader’s job to inspire in us those values.”

Right now we have an absence of inspirational leadership.

AIG lolcat

Since Friend Paul suggested this phrase in comment to my last posting...

This April on PBS: We Shall Remain

HOLY CRAP! Swis style.

"In the hush-hush world of Swiss banking, the unthinkable is happening: secrets are spilling into the open.

UBS, the largest bank in Switzerland, agreed on Wednesday to divulge the names of well-heeled Americans whom the authorities suspect of using offshore accounts at the bank to evade taxes. The bank admitted conspiring to defraud the Internal Revenue Service and agreed to pay $780 million to settle a sweeping federal investigation into its activities."

(from the New York Times)

You know you've lived in a war zone too long...

If you know how to whip up a fire and boil your tea when your house has been bombed. In Survivor that's, like, the hardest skill they have to master.

(From a series of photos of Gaza.)

A little political humour for ya...

Watching author Khaled Hosseini being interviewed on Colbert. Colbert is suggesting Afghanistan just needs a new name, to make it sound better. Like: Laughghanistan!

But I also liked Hosseini's line re the idea that Afghanistan will need a lot of time to turn around, Americans must be patient. "You gave Axl Rose 17 years, so..."

And then when he said: "It's a marathon, not a sprint." Colbert replied: "So we need to send the Jamaicans!"

A Blue Christmas

I've been hiding out from the news of the world all month, doing Nanowrimo (write a novel in one month.) Having gone to political science, I know a lot of news junkies--people who couldn't get away from their newspaper reading if they tried. I've never been like that. I like to know what's going on in the world, but I also accept that if I escape from it all for a little while, they won't notice I'm gone. What's sort of depressing is when I tune back in and find everything's the same!

The stories I couldn't avoid were the Mumbai killings and the shopper rampage at Walmart. Not a very merry start to the Christmas season.

:-(

On the other hand, withdrawing from the negative can sometimes help to refocus on the positive. No matter what anyone around me believes or tells me, I still think humans are just as capable of beauty as they are of ugliness. But we kinda hafta make that choice every day.

On that note, I'll post here The Most Depressing Christmas Song I Know. (It's not overtly Christmas, but it appeared on Judy Collins' Christmas album.) I had to upload it to youtube myself, and for all I know it'll get taken down--depends how Princelike she is. ;-)

What do we know about Tough Times?

Here's an interesting thought from NYT columnist David Brooks re. the Obama win:

"Barack Obama is a child of a child of the 1960s. His mother was born only five years earlier than Hillary Clinton. For people in Obama’s generation, the great disruption had already occurred by the time they hit adulthood. Theirs is a generation of consolidation and neo-traditionalism — a generation of sunscreen and bicycle helmets, more anxious about parenthood than anything else....

This cohort will soon become the ruling class.

And the irony is that they will be confronted by the problem for which they have the least experience and for which they are the least prepared: the problem of scarcity."

I can't wait to see who his cabinet is, because that's where a president has the opportunity to gain from the wisdom of others--such as people who've seen harder times than he.

"The one thing we did right..."

Well, I'm pretty happy about this Obama win. (a) Because--Hallelujah--the Republicans have been given a much deserved smack-down. (Not McCain so much... he's a good guy. But our hegemon neighbour does not need another Republican in office... give us all a chance to breathe first.)

(b) And of course, because of the historic significance. I was very moved, watching Obama's acceptance speech. Who knows what sort of influence this will have on generations of African-Americans to come, in terms of what children aspire to etc. It's hard to be a cynic when you see pics like this (from a church in Harlem):


Think about it... in the span of 40-50 years, from this (see below) to a President. It's not the end of racism, but it's a pretty nice marker along the way. As Martin Luther King and others have said, no one's going to hand you justice or equality on a plate--you're going to have to step up and demand it. So for all the people who stepped up, over hundreds of years, this is a pretty sweet day. "The one thing we did right was the day we started to fight. Keep your eyes on the prize--hold on."


(For a lovely Bruce Springstein "Eyes on the Prize" click here. And make sure to watch the Eyes on the Prize documentary if you've never seen it!)

Buy cheap or buy green?

With the whole up-and-coming recession thing, I'm seeing two retail trends.

1. Recessionista: Making it trendy to pay less for stuff. [Pictured here: Coco Chanel in the 30s. Buying accessories was one way to make dresses last longer during the Depression.]

" Grant Barrett, a lexicographer who specializes in new words and slang, said the word is being used to give Americans an excuse to buy more stuff. “It’s kind of permitting consumers to have justification for their spending habits,” he said. Mr. Barrett included “recessionista” as an up-and-coming catchphrase earlier this month on his Web site, DoubleTongued.org. “The idea is, because they are spending less or getting more value, it is still O.K. to shop,” he said in a recent phone interview. “It’s a very self-serving message.”

2. High End Eco Brands: The other trend is putting out super-duper eco friendly products, which cost more (with the idea that people are more willing these days to pay the *real price* for Christmas cards, wrapping paper, and such. Click here for example.)

[Pictured here: A dissolvable dress!]

Not sure how I feel about both. On one hand, they both continue to promote buying more stuff than you need. Crap in landfills is still crap in landfills. Or even if it's recyclable, it still requires money and energy to recycle-- the first R in the green trio is "reduce" (reduce, reuse, recycle.)

I guess I still lean slightly more towards Option 2--pricier goody-tqo-shoes stuff--since pricier usually means you'll buy less, won't buy impulsively, and the products have a smaller footprint to begin with. And then for things you need to buy more frequently, perhaps the Recessionista option works better. I've switched over to higher priced products in my goal to go greener, organic and vegan--ee-er, but I can't afford to buy everything this way.

Option 2 is also, more often, made locally. Making stuff that's eco-forward and local is where many western politicians are trying to move their countries as a way out of the financial crisis. For example, the US economy was once built on Ford Motors--can the economy be rebuilt on green technology imagined and built in the US? Option 2 would support that kind of innovation and job creation.

Anyway... interesting!

O Federal Government, Where Art Thou?

Despite my general left-ee-ness, I'm not anti-capitalism, or anti-markets. But I believe very strongly that it's the federal government's job to protect us from dishonesty. Markets only work if there are appropriate limits on what people can do, and if there are rules and ways of enforcing those rules.

With the latest mortgage based credit brou ha ha in the US, it's hard to believe that the Federal Reserve Board "recently put into effect rules barring a lender from making a loan without regard to the borrower’s ability to repay it." (New York Times article) Oh, like, maybe lenders have responsibilities too? Shocking.

The article explains that creditors today have raised their fees, and treat those as the assets, rather than the loan itself: "because so much consumer debt is packaged into securities and sold to investors, repayment of the loans takes on less importance to those lenders than the fees and charges generated when loans are made." That's messed up.

So while I think we are responsible for our own decisions and shouldn't be borrowing indiscriminately, I also think it's dishonest to profit by someone's ignorance. The market is based upon confidence, and if a lender doesn't have confidence in the loan applicant, they shouldn't grant the loan. While I'm reassured that "some bankruptcy experts and regulators are beginning to focus on the responsibilities of lenders, like requiring them to make loans only if they are suitable to the borrowers applying for them," I'm sure many a foreclosed-upon American is wishing it happened sooner.

Nicely Put

I'm very interested in how the current financial crisis in the US is spurring on a lot of conversation and thought about debt and consumerism. Here's a nice passage from David Brooks' New York Times column:

We’re living in an age when a vast excess of capital sloshes around the world fueling cycles of bubble and bust. When the capital floods into a sector or economy, it washes away sober business practices, and habits of discipline and self-denial. Then the money managers panic and it sloshes out, punishing the just and unjust alike.

What we need in this situation is authority. Not heavy-handed government regulation, but the steady and powerful hand of some public institutions that can guard against the corrupting influences of sloppy money and then prevent destructive contagions when the credit dries up.

Palin hates bears too

Well... doesn't Ms. Palin sound just wonderful. Why anyone who supported H Clinton would even think of transferring their vote to McCain because of this woman, boggles me. She's SO conservative. Who cares if she's a woman--she wanted to ban books from the local library! Ease.

From: Grizzly Bay

"Palin supports aerial hunting of wolves and bears even though Alaskans voted twice to ban the practice; Palin used $400,000 of state money to fund a media campaign in support of aerial hunting; Palin approved the hunting of black bear mothers and cubs with the goal of killing 60 percent of the black bear population west of Anchorage; Palin herself instituted the $150 bounty on wolves; Palin is a champion for big oil and supports drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge; Palin opposes listing polar bears as an endangered species and is suing the federal government over it; and Palin believes global warming is a farce.

It is not just a vehement disregard for the environment and biological science that makes Palin’s policies so antiquated. Palin believes creationism should be taught in public schools; Palin opposes abortion even in cases of rape and incest; and Palin is presently under investigation in Alaska for abuse of power."

I am BEYOND impatient with the Republican fuuls

How can I have time for the Canadian Conservative fuuls when I'm sidetracked by the US ones and their FUCKY economy, scheduled to hit us any day now? I won't be happy with a Democratic win at the next US elections, I want a LANDslide. As if the Republicans hadn't already trashed their country in so many ways, this economic meltdown is beyond ridiculous. And they don't know fuck all what to say about it.

And on a side note, how can we get undergrads to write simply and elegantly when Palin's throwing around "verbiage" like an aide just handed her a thesaurus? And what a bad choice of words too, considering that we usually mean it in the "profusion of words usually of little or obscure content" sense, rather than Merriam Webster's definition #2: "manner of expressing oneself in words."

*

HANNITY: Let's talk about, Governor, obviously, the economy is on the minds of many Americans. We've got Lehman, we've got Merrill, we've got AIG. Senator Barack Obama yesterday was attacking Senator McCain for saying that the "fundamentals of the economy are strong."

Do you believe that the fundamentals of our economy are strong?

PALIN: Well, it was an unfair attack on the verbiage that Senator McCain chose to use because the fundamentals, as he was having to explain afterwards, he means our workforce, he means the ingenuity of the American. And of course, that is strong and that is the foundation of our economy.

So that was an unfair attack there, again, based on verbiage that John McCain used.

*

And for another lovely Republican...

From wiki: William Philip "Phil" Gramm

He was John McCain’s presidential campaign co-chair^[8] and his most senior economic adviser^[9] from summer 2007^[10] to July 18, 2008.^[8]

His fundamental economic theory is described by his critics as "Reverse Robin Hood and Little John Economics". This theory assumes that to improve the quality of people's lives you must impose the burden of tax on the middle class and poor, while providing tax relief to the rich or wealthy. It is believed that the lives of the middle class and poor will then improve when a portion of their original taxes trickles down to them. While advising the McCain campaign, Gramm was being paid by UBS to lobby Congress about the U.S. mortgage crisis. During this time, "the mortgage industry pressed Congress to roll back strong state rules that sought to stem the rise of predatory tactics used by lenders and brokers to place homeowners in high-cost mortgages."^[11]

In a July 9, 2008 interview explaining McCain's plans in reforming the U.S. economy, Gramm downplayed the idea that the nation was in a recession, stating, "You've heard of mental depression; this is a mental recession," and "We have sort of become a nation of whiners, you just hear this constant whining, complaining about a loss of competitiveness, America in decline."^[12]

Gramm was one of five co-sponsors of the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000^[3]. One provision of the bill was referred to as the "Enron loophole" because the House Agriculture Committee drafted it and it was later applied to Enron. Some critics blame the provision for permitting the Enron scandal to occur.^[4] At the time, Gramm's wife was previously on Enron's board of directors.

Heavens the world is ending!

So things are falling apart in Eastern Europe, and I've been ignoring it.

Unlike the people I went to school with, I'm not a politics junkie. I get sucked up into other interests, and can go for weeks at a time reading no more than the headlines. But the headlines have been piling up (Georgie, Poland, and Musharraf? Really?) and I must admit it's time for me to catch up.

Anyway, I never got the opportunity to take the much-lauded course on post-Soviet politics, so I'm not very knowledgeable about that part of the world. But one can always rely on the trusty BBC Q&A... off I go...

The Residential Schools Apology

cbc.ca asked readers who went to a residential school, or had family members who did, to write in about their experiences. I’ve just been reading some of the 134 comments, and it's interesting how similar many of the comments are.

If you think about the fallout that comes when any one person is abused—the effect not only on their lives, but their parents, siblings, family, spouses, children—it’s staggering to think of the damage that has been done to entire communities. Even if you just think of children being raised, perhaps from the age of 6 until 16 (with maybe one month back at home per year), in a cold and non-family environment, imagine what kind of parenting skills they would have. It's really a case of the state/church raising society's children, like a sci fi story.

As one woman wrote, speaking of her mother: “She was never shown how to care or love others, not even her own children. This is what was robbed from us - a caring and nurturing family, and the knowledge of who we were and pride in that.”

Below I pasted some of the comments along these lines. Obviously it's a bit long to read, but I posts anyway... if only for myself to reread in future.

***

“I never understood why my mother could never show affection, and never said she loved us, her children. Her problems with alcohol, depression and anger I now know were fueled by her lonely, regimented, and cold-hearted, childhood experiences. …I honor my Mother and all of her siblings, who also endured the residential schools- my uncles with the biggest 'hearts' and the kindest smiles but saddest of eyes,who ruined themselves with alcohol. It is a similar story with almost all aboriginal families. And I ask for strength for all; to rise above the vices that have been used to hide or mask the deep pain so that our people can again be proud and have dignity.”

From a social worker in a native community: “I had many clients who attended this residential achool, and I heard many accounts of sexual and physical abuse. The most frequent and most hearbreaking stories came from the long buried stories of acute loneliness, and feelings of abandonment….Much of the media coverage has focused on elderly survivors, and the early days of residential schools. But this young women and many others like her still struggle to raise their families with damaged self esteem issues and long burried anger and despair.”

“My mother has taken these words from the federal goverment very hard.... her wounds have been exposed again and her pain is real... she is far from understanding how to heal...the only way i know to heal, is to forgive and this I know can be trying, but its based on the individuals choice to do so. I am responsible to my children and thier children not to allow the legacy of the residential schools have any more power over our lives. If I was to feed into the pain i would only be giving this tragidy momentum to contiues to destroy more generations within my family, I must break the chain of disfunction and sorrow rise above to be proud of who and what I am... and for this I am responsible...”

“the legacy it has left our family, is that we, the seven children, don't even talk to each other anymore. We all have such deep hurts, we don't talk about it, we don't support each other in any way. We are all educated and do very well in our jobs, but we do not have a complete life. … I have been a victim of sexual abuse. I have three grown children now, all have excellent education, excellent careers, and yet, tho proud, I am not truly happy with my life. I was an alcoholic, and now I gamble my life away, quite literally. I have lost so much, yet I still keep on this path of destruction. I cannot stop myself. I have been suicidal many times. I wish I was dead still.”

“The day I felt in my heart that it finally happened was June 11, 2008. The chains have been broken because for the first time someone other me had taken responsibility for the years of abuse at the hands of my entrusted family members that attended these schools.”

“I am a "survivor" but not in the familiar sense. I didnt attend residential school: My family members did. I have to reconstruct who I am daily as a result. Key to his message should have been meaningful recognition of youth like me who have the burden of putting the pieces back together. Key to this picture is the intergenerational impacts of residential school.”

“The common characteristics most families like mine all share are that there has been a lack of love and affection, there were no 'I love you' words, no hugs and no kisses…. I am the last child in my big family, I am now 40 years old and I never had children of my own because I feared I could not love them properly.”

“I got wipped, beaten, hair pulled, and thrown around many times as a kid for no God damn reason, because this is the kind of Discipline they were taught.”

“I have seen my mother, destroy herself and have never known the parent she was meant to be... for she did not aquire the skills of parenting, because she had never been parented herself. I've watch her try to live up to expectations pushed on her from years before- she would wash the floors and would be sure to get into the cracks "WITH A TOOTHBRUSH" like she had been taught in her childhood. No matter what she did she would never be enough and this was instilled in her, just for the simple fact that she was NATIVE.”

“I myself suffered many horrible beatings (practically daily) and mental abuse as well as sexual abuse from relatives who attended residential school…. I myself had passed on abuse to my children when they were young, until I had sought therapy. …Between the depression and working, my kids knew that they had a mother that just existed and was not really living life. … My family didn't know how to apologize so they didn't apologize to each other. …Accepting someone’s apology doesn't mean that you condone the behaviour or actions that the person or people have done but that you forgive yourself for holding on and release yourself from the ties that bind you to the misery. It means freedom inside of you. This is just my opinion.”

“My aunt told me that the schools wouldn't let them even touch each other and yet they would stare at each other across the room, longing to hold each other and feel some element of family love that was so strongly absent in that place.”

“I'm a product of the 60's scoop, where Native kids were all taken from their families, and put into foster care or adopted by white families, because either their parents were inadequate or they were "deemed" inadequate …I wound up in care. I was raised in care, 21 homes by the time i was done...before 16.”

“One thing I am waiting for is an apology from the Roman Catholic Church. The priests and nuns took away my family. My younger brother committed suicide in 1968, followed by my sister who committed suicide in 1974. My mom died of alcoholism in 1979. She went to residential school. My older brother could not handle being abused by a priest. He drank and was run over while crossing a highway and many say that was suicide.
No Roman Catholic priest or nun has ever come to me to apologize. “

[My understanding, from a brief Google, is that other churches have apologized in the past, and the Catholic church has left it up to each diocese to apologize.]

“These priests and nuns represented God to these children (although a false one) and therefore it was spiritual abuse as well; how many children suffered and died believing that even God hated and disapproved of them.”

High Fructose Corn Syrup: The Devil's Baby?

I'm reading Michael Pollan's previous book, The Omnivore's Dilemma. I borrowed it from work, but I'm going to have to buy it because it is blowing my little pea sized brain.

I have so many thoughts about this... I don't know where to start. Aiiiieeee. I'll try to post short thought-updates on my Practically Moral page, where I like to blab about politics and food. If you don't read them... well... you'll just have to suffer through me speechifying you every time we meet. ...I'll have to carry a script around with me, so I don't forget all my speechify points.

But here's one.

1. The US government (under the influence of food production industries) encourages farmers to grow as MUCH corn as physically possible.

2. Farmers grow corn like mozefozes.

3. There is so much corn on the market, that its value is low.

4. It costs farmers more to produce corn than the price it sells at, which is why the government has to subsidize them; this is also why farmers need to produce tons and tons of corn, to make back enough money to stay afloat.

5. The beneficiaries of cheap corn are the food producers--those who take corn and turn it into corny weirdo products; and then those food companies that buy the corny weirdo products to make new breakfast cereals.

7. SO: If you're an American, your taxes (about a quarter, I think he said) to subsidize farmers aren't really subsidizing farmers (at least re. corn and soy beans, the biggest sector of the industry) -- you are really subsidizing corporations.

8: And added to this, the glut of cheap corn means that every industry possible tries to use corn every which way they can, which is why beef cows are fed corn even though it makes them so sick, they also have to be fed antibiotics with their feed.

And presumably this is the same in Canada. And this type of economy is affecting the countries the US sells corny weirdo products to. They sell corn to MEXICO for God's sake, the home of corn! Because no small farmer can compete with this, growing corn the old way, or the old old way. (Old way=growing less corn, using chemical fertilizer. Old old way=using farm animals and bean crops to enrich the soil, on self-sufficient farms with multiple animals and crops.)

Dr Oz has been on Oprah a lot in the past couple years denouncing high fructose corn syrup, which is found in almost every processed food. I wasn't too freaked out because when you eat vegan you naturally gravitate away from processed food, so what little I consume probably isn't that bad for my health. The only change I made was to increase the amount of food I cook at home.

But now I see high fructose corn syrup as demon spawn! I'm not anti-corporation by default, but what the industrialization of food has done to animals, peoples, economies, and the environment is just immoral. I'm sure there are many, many lovely people who work in the food industry... but ah! ah! ah! Ahhhh!

Cornholio in Canada

From a CBC article
Why exactly are we picking a fight with King Corn?
January 27, 2007

***

Collectively, our farmers produce about nine million tonnes of corn a year, a meagre 3.5 per cent of the 260 million tonnes produced by their U.S. competitors.

Canadian growers do not supply enough to meet demand here from the major users such as livestock producers, who use corn as feed, and food processors, who use it in everything from cookies and candies to pet food and soft drinks.

The result is that Canada is a net importer of corn and the bulk of those imports come from the U.S. Looking down the road, those imports are likely to increase as more and more ethanol plants are built in Canada to try to make cleaner burning fuel from such plants as, well, corn.

...

Just about all the groups with an interest in corn in Canada, producers and users alike, agree that U.S. farm subsidies are a bad thing because they distort prices and trade. But when it comes to deciding what the Canadian government should do about this, the consensus falls apart.

In 2005, at the urging of the corn producers, the Liberal government imposed a temporary duty of $1.65 a bushel on imported U.S. corn. This meant that Canadian producers could raise their prices accordingly and still compete.

But livestock producers and food processors were unhappy because their costs rose. Hog producers predicted an exodus of piglets across the border to cheaper fattening pens. Food processors said they were at a disadvantage because they had to pay a higher price for corn products like syrups than their U.S. competitors.

The duty was removed in 2006 when the Canadian International Trade Tribunal, a quasi-judicial body that investigates such matters, ruled that other factors, such as a rising Canadian dollar, were mostly responsible for the corn producers' woes.