My Political Pet Peeves and the Invisible Truth

My Political Pet Peeves and the Invisible Truth

Geothermal Energy: An Alternative to Oil and Electricity as a Source of Heat?

A building in Kitchener, Ontario has jumped on the vanguard of alternative energy; they heat their business with geothermal energy. They built a series of pipes leading straight down into the ground. The pipes are empty, and because the earth, mostly solid, takes a lot longer than air to cool down, it is quite warm as little as 100 feet into the ground. Because warm air rises, this air travels up the pipes and into the building. Brilliant and simple, isn’t it? Much simpler than transporting oil across the world (even though it might be produced a few hundred miles away) to be sold to a distributing company, which then sells it to other sellers, who then sell it to consumers.

Do you liked smoked salmon, or other types of smoked fish? Apparently, more and more companies, rather than using oil or electricity to create the heat to smoke fish, are starting to use Geothermal energy. George Bush and some of his administration have gone on the record as saying that the environment doesn’t matter because Jesus is going to come any day now. But really, protecting the environment is a win-win situation. If you believe in God, then how can you dare profane the world he created by willingly destroying it? If you believe in the earth as an organism, then you are doing right by it through protecting the source of all life through protecting its various essential organs.

How George Bush can claim that the environment doesn't matter, and his actions speak louder than his words with his refusal to sign the Kyoto Accord. He now wants to develop petroleum resources in a National Wilderness Area in Alaska! His logic baffles my mind...

A Review of Paris, Texas

I saw a movie the other night that blew me away. I forgot that I had already seen it until about 2/3 of the way through it. Although you might be asking yourself “How can it be that good if you forgot all about it until over half the movie was past?” don’t be fooled. This was a potent film, and apparently it won some prestigious prize at the Cannes film festival. It devastated and crushed me to a pulp with its tragic beauty.

The movie I speak of is Paris, Texas, directed by Wim Wenders, a German filmmaker who I love, but I think I tend to underestimate him sometimes. It starts off with a man walking through the desert around Big Bend National Park in Texas. He finishes the water he carries, and much later we see him stumble into a man’s shack, root around in his icebox, and eat some ice cubes. Then he passes out. When he wakes up, a doctor is tending to him, but cannot get any information whatsoever out of him. Rooting around in the stranger’s clothes, he finds a phone number and calls it. It turns out to be his brother.

The brother travels from Los Angeles to Texas to pick him up, but he has disappeared. We learn that he and his wife have been missing for four years and that his brother and his wife have been raising their son as their own. For nearly the whole trip home, the seemingly amnesiac man, Travis, doesn’t speak, much to his brother’s frustration. I won’t go into much more detail, but at his brother’s Travis finds out where his wife is living and he kidnaps his own son to go find her. Near the end, you finally hear their story as told by Travis, who maintains a stoic silence through much of the movie. Their story is heart-rending… Sad and beautiful at the same time, and full of moral complexity.

I highly recommend this movie to anyone: the cinematography is beautiful, the music is inspired and suits the content brilliantly, and the screenplay was written by the playwright Sam Shepard. It is really a tri-national collaboration between Germany, France, and the United States. I suppose it’s possible that I wasn’t ready for this movie the first time I saw it.

Oh, the Iron Knee!

The Struggle for Water

Passports Required at Canadian Border?

It has been a hot topic of debate whether or not the United States and Canada should require passports at the border between the two countries. Among the arguments against it is that it would be bad for business. Some say that a small percentage of Americans have passports, so this might reduce the flow of tourists north. This would restrict the movement of people across the border. While the European Union as an economic bloc has been moving towards the freer (that word looks funny) movement of people as well as goods across national borders, the NAFTA bloc (drafted by bloc-heads?) has been falling apart. As well, the United States has put in place tariffs on softwood lumber coming from Canada that directly contravene the stipulations of NAFTA, and both the Canadian lumber industry and the American consumer are suffering as prices of this commodity in the US rise.

On the other hand, the normalization of international relations between the United States and Canada is necessary at this juncture if Canada wants to maintain independence in the world economy. We have the second largest oil reserves in the world, according to the somewhat ineffective method of calculating reserves by only regarding the statistics of proven reserves. We also have huge water resources. If the United States continues to levy tariffs on lumber imports, the Canadian government will look to sell its oil to China and India. Furthermore, the current practise of selling the huge majority of petroleum produced in Canada to the United States must stop. If Canada, a net petroleum exporting country, sold its oil within its borders, rather than importing oil from unstable areas, we could lower our own fuel pricesinsert sarcastic dig at Canada's trade policies here. The requirement of passports would constitute one such measure of normalization. Several vigilante patrol groups on the American side have confronted visitors, demanding passports long before this measure has even been introduced. Talk about crazy... They show a total disrespect for international citizenry. Next time they need water, they shouldn't expect to their northern neighbour to help them out in a bind... Shooting yourself in the toe anyone?

The Struggle for Water (next century's oil?)

There has been a dispute over the milk river watershed, which meanders both through American and Canadian soil between Alberta and Montana. The irrigation in Alberta has diverted water from the watershed, leaving water supplies depleted downriver in Montana. This dispute is covered by a treaty over a hundred years old. This is not the only dispute, though. There has been talk of diverting water from the Lake of the Woods into the United States. NAFTA is fuzzy(a lack of clear borders) about water issues. The US cannot legally divert water from water that naturally exists in Canada, but as soon as we start treating it as a commodity, it comes under the jurisdiction of NAFTA, which is far from clear on the subject. Canada should use their water resources as leverage to require that the United States strengthen its sustainable development policies. Air and Water, after all, cannot be confined in borders like humans can. Air pollution from Detroit, Cleveland, Buffalo, and Chicago all end up in Canada, which in term affects the integrity of our natural resources.

NAFTA needs renegotiation. While it disgusts me that goods have freer movement than people, I think that in the current political climate the requirement of passports at the border mightn't be the worse thing that happens. What do you think about this issue?
©Trevor Cunnington

A Critique of Knowledge: Modern Day Bodysnatching

I know people romanticize and idealize knowledge. I do it myself. But some cases inevitably arise where knowledge is harmful.

In the late eighteenth century, a phenomenon called "bodysnatching" proliferated. People would dig up corpses from graveyards and sell those corpses to Medicine. The demand for corpses was so high that there was a famous murder case where the murderer killed someone for the expressed purpose of selling their body to the medical establishment. The will to knowledge became complicit in the production of immoral behaviour.

In the United States, when a homeless person dies, their body automatically goes to science. In other words, property ownership has become integral to the definition of the human being. A human being should be entitled to human rights, right? Isn't it a fundamental right to decide what happens to your corpse after death? If so, then doesn't this trample all over the humanity of the homeless? Truly, the homeless do not even own their own bodies in the United States.

Guatanamo Bay: The Political black hole

Canadian citizen Omar Khadr has been detained in Guatanamo Bay since 2002, when he was captured in Afghanistan. He has been held incommunicado by officials there under the dictates of the Patriot Act, and he has recently been charged with murder in the death of an American soldier in Afghanistan. In custody, he has endured torture; they have bound his hands and ankles in various painful positions for hours at a time, and at times they have not allowed him bathroom visits, resulting in him urinating all over himself. At one point, they used his torso, with his hands and ankles bound to each other behind his back, as a mop for his own urine.

When he was captured, he was fifteen years old. As such, the United States contravened international law that states that child soldiers captured in war should be held in protective custody and treated as victims of war rather than its criminals. He does not even necessarily know the charges that the United States has brought against him, and he has been denied due process, including access to legal counsel. In Afghanistan, he was fighting on behalf of the Taliban regime, and some accounts have reported that he threw the grenade that resulted in the death of Sergeant Christopher Speer. As awful as that may be, the United States cannot charge him with murder as he was fighting as a soldier, who are exempt from charges of murder in times of war. They are attempting to revoke his soldierly "privilege" of killing.

Although they originally sought the death penalty in the case, the United States wisely heeded the international pressure mounting against such punitive measures. But beyond this, they must allow him to have access to legal counsel so he can mount an appropriate defense if they intend to revoke his soldier status and charge him with murder. Furthermore, they must be held accountable for their breach of international law in the capture of a child soldier and the subsequent illegal forms of torture as pertaining to the Geneva Convention on Universal Human Rights.

Actions such as this certainly give fodder to Islamic Fundamentalists and their anti-Western fire, in addition to such grievous inequities as Iraq's situation of paying reparations for the first gulf war while enduring an occupation by one of the nations to which it pays reparations. The situation in Iraq merits a multicultural UN peacekeeping force, not an occupation by a hostile superpower.

The Democratic Skin on the Autocratic Body

Why is power so attractive? The cliche that with power comes mighty responsibility does not help us to determine what it is about power that is so alluring. A working class assault charge is liable to be punished more severely than a case of corporate fraud. Where is all the talk of responsibility then? Sure, Reagan admitted that the Iran Contra Scandal "happened under his watch," but this is just a rhetorical trick to include himself in the same group as john doe sitting on a couch, watching Reagan on TV: they're both just "watching." When in reality, Reagan is on top of the pyramid, throwing El Salvadoreans (among others) off the top. Bush admitted that the relief funds to Hurricane Katrina were too slow, but soon enough, Brown was scapegoated for the breakdown. Power is attractive for the very fact you can escape responsibility by accepting it.

The United States, pummeled by the damages of a record-breaking hurricane year, will see its global dominance threatened by China in the next few years. To contain the Chinese "threat," they have instigated numerous "colour revolutions" such as those in Ukraine, Georgia, and Kyrgistan. Bush has lavished heavy helpings of praise on Kazakhstan for their pro-American stance, but it remains a tightly controlled state ruled by a party that in all likelihood rigged the last election (one opposing seat? I doubt that somehow). The media is mostly owned by the President's daughter. If Bush is such a champion of democracy, why does he laud Kazakhstan? It's because containing the Chinese by expanding the American sphere of influence in Central Asia is more important than democracy. It's about a struggle for power. To dress up this ugly struggle in the lace-fringed velvet bodice of a power sharing ideology like democracy is crass.

Brain Machine Interface and other Military Shenanigans

Much of this is based on an article I read in Walrus magazine.

A research project at Duke University has aimed to join thought to action in a very literal sense in recent years. A few months ago, a lab monkey moved a robotic arm in a lab 1000km away just by thinking about doing it. This technology, called Brain Machine Interface, would make it possible for people to control military machinery, such as tanks, from abroad just through thought alone. Another piece of military hardware being developed by the military right now hearkens back to the Reagan Era, when he was pushing "Star Wars." Space will definitely be indispensible to war in the new millenium. This hardware has been given the name "rods from God," and it consists of tungsten bolts that can be dropped from space with unerring precision on even small targets anywhere on the planet with destructive impact.

In the 1960s, the CIA conducted experiments with subjects who watched tv and films. They found that moving images produced a shift between left-brain and right-brain activity, inducing a chemical trance that suppresses judgement and heightens suggestibility. In other words, the audience of moving images were very often inculcated with the message and values of the programming. While this research might be invalidated by the century-long exposure to moving images, the fifty years of exposure to tv, and the related increase in visual literacy, several recent meetings between Hollywood magnates and the Pentagon confirm that many in power maintain a belief in the results of these studies.

In 1995, Hollywood and the Pentagon met to discuss allowing the Pentagon access to technology of digital manipulation that would allow them to fabricate news stories. A hypothetical case might portray an important leader of Iran spouting anti-American rhetoric in the same speech he openly proclaimed Iran's intention to pursue a vigorous nuclear weapons program. With such invented news coverage, they could mobilize support for various military interventions. Such programs advocated by the Pentagon fall under the purview of "Psyops" or psychological operatives, several of whom already work for CNN. One psyop plan included the projection of a huge holographic image of Allah over Baghdad that urged Iraqis to overthrow Hussein. But the problem of how they would visually depict Allah siderailed the project.

In 2003, several top Hollywood directors again met with the Pentagon, and this time the deal was that the government offered the directors access to military technology such as F-18s in exchange for editorial control of the films. According to insiders, they don't suggest changes some of the time, they always demand changes. They have done this in coordination with the release of video games that involve the player in a virtual version of the war in Iraq to recruit new soldiers for the war, and to retain the ones they already have.

Former Police Chief Advocates Legalization of all Drugs

Former Chief of Police in Seattle Norm Stamper wrote an opinion/editorial piece in the Los Angeles Times in support of not simply the decriminalization of marijuana, but the outright legalization of all drugs. He contends that the unrecognized casualties of the War against Drugs are the taxpayers. A huge percentage of prisoners have graced the space behind bars because of drug charges, and the United States has the largest prison population of any nation in the world.

Besides the nearly 69 billion dollars these often non-violent offenders cost taxpayers each year that would be saved, revenue from the regulation, sanitation, and sale of such drugs would be generated. Needless to say, the drugs would also be safer if they were regulated, and the violent organized crime that sprouts out of drug trafficking might undergo drastic reduction. Stamper believes that society would be safer and more secure if these drugs were legalized, regulated, and if we treated drug abuse medically rather than criminally.
Mr. Stamper points out the contradictions of allowing tobacco and alcohol, both undeniably drugs, to be legal and regulated, but prohibiting other drugs. He cites his experience as a police officer as what lead him to his conclusions, after becoming tired of arresting potheads who he did not believe belonged in prison. Non-violent criminals might indeed become violent because of their exposure to a violent prison culture, if simply by reason of self-defense. It's a slippery slope from self-defense in prison to offense out of prison.

Mr. Stamper has been engaged in a speaking tour on this topic, and at one of his talks recently the police chief of one of the largest cities in the United States approached him and told Norm that he agreed with him. When asked if Mr. Stamper could quote him on that, the chief replied "What, do you think I'm crazy?"

Obviously, free speech is relative. It is not uncommon to experience circumstances where we feel uncomfortable speaking our minds. While I am undecided about the efficacy of the outright legalization of all drugs, I applaud Mr. Stamper for having the courage to speak his mind considering the political climate of the United States.