His argument is not motivated by ideology nor is it academic.  He is careful and methodical in making his case using history and the available economic indices, all of which prove, as in the case of Europe for instance, that the austerity measures imposed on the middle classes are exasperating, expanding and indeed causing the current economic crisis.  But the European leaders responsible for implementing these errant policies seem either blissfully unaware or indifferent to their effects.  Krugman once compared it to a medieval doctor who is driven to save a dying patient by bleeding him further.

In the case of the United States, he observes on his blog that:

“It’s hard to overstate just how wrong all this is. We have a situation in which resources are sitting idle looking for uses — massive unemployment of workers, especially construction workers, capital so bereft of good investment opportunities that it’s available to the federal government at negative real interest rates. Never mind multipliers and all that (although they exist too); this is a time when government investment should be pushed very hard. Instead, it’s being slashed.

What an utter disaster.”

And it continues. Here in Canada as Parliament resumes we have the Conservative government resolutely pushing the same notions of austerity in the form of pension reform, no doubt to be followed by an incremental defunding of universal health care and anything else characterized as an entitlement.

While I know many people voted Conservative in the last election, my suspicion is that they wouldn’t have had these proposals been front and centre as campaign promises as in

‘If elected we promise to eliminate your retirement pensions.  You can bank on it!’

Or

‘As Canadians, we want to be more like Americans, so if elected count on us to bleed off the social safety nets including health care to ensure that only the wealthy are entitled to their entitlements.’

Had they said that, their campaign would have run aground faster than an Italian cruise ship.

But unlike Professor Krugman, their arguments are ideological and part of broader attempts to concentrate wealth at taxpayers’ expense.

And economic policy makers from Europe to North America continue to refuse to acknowledge, at least publicly, that their ideas are causing, not solving, recent economic woes.

It’s as if they’re all self-medicating from the same bottle of blue pills, revealing, I suppose, that neoliberalism is one hell of a drug.

NASA providing some perspective on climate change.

Here is a fine interview with Naomi Klein from December 2011 offering a range of thoughts on the status and nature of the Occupy movements, current and possible future strategies, as well as how they shifted the national conversation to allow public pressure to influence the policy direction of the Obama Administration on the Keystone pipeline project.

This is most interesting since Obama decided yesterday to agree with the State Department that the project should not be given the green light until issues concerning its route are addressed.  Presumably his re-election team saw the rubber stamping of this project as a liability for the 2012 presidential race.

While it’s likely the project will eventually be granted permission to continue, the Obama decision does give temporary life to the notion that organized pressure can indeed influence policy.

Neil Young

Sitting alone by my window
Counting the stars of the night…

Regarding the tone Canadian popular culture has assumed over the past several years, it seems to me to have changed from the self-effacing and the respectful to the brash and the humorless.

I’m no expert, but following  the narrative outlined for us from the 2010 Olympics a la ‘owning the podium’ to the militarization of the hockey culture to the craven disinterest in honoring our treaty obligations like Kyoto to the veneration of such concepts as ‘greed is good’, the latter paid for by taxpayers and promoted by the CBC, one can’t avoid being struck by the shifting nature of the Canadian sensibility.

It’s not so much that these attitudes are new, but rather they’ve moved from the margins of the culture to the forefront in an attempt to reflect the current ideological mind-set of those currently occupying Ottawa.  And its worked.

Also reflected in this new cultural paradigm is a palpable disinterest in intellectual curiosity or probity, resulting in policies disconnected from fact or argument, or the opinions of those people on the ground like John Edwards et al whose job it is to implement, for example, the new ‘tough on crime’ legislation.

So if Bertrand Russell were to advise those in government, what might he say?

When asked for advice to future generations worthy of the Dead Sea Scrolls, Russell gives a very good answer (despite the sexist video title), and one I’d hope wouldn’t require Canadians a thousand years to appreciate.

The History Channel used to be a place where scholars and documentary film makers discussed, believe it or not, history.   But since that’s apparently not enough to capture the imagination of viewers and advertisers, they’ve decided to re-invent themselves as the home for so-called reality TV and pseudo science with shows that follow the historically significant exploits of bush pilots and truck drivers to the hysterical ravings of, wait for it, ‘ancient astronaut theorists’.  I love that phrase.

To illustrate, after reading today’s edition of Truthdig, the online magazine worth everyone’s’ time to read, I came across this great video explaining the recent fascination with 2012 end of the world scenarios, a topic of great concern to the people who program content on the History Channel.

Now, if the Mayans had somehow mentioned something about the prospects for the upcoming 2012 U.S.Presidential election, then I think that would be worth a human sacrifice. Or two…

Have you ever noticed that coming in first place is not always a good thing?

In the case of Canada, the Conservative government does not seem to agree.  Thus far it has distinguished itself with a series of firsts which would have, under more rational circumstances, elicited embarrassment and concern not only among the people in government but also the citizens they claim to govern.

In addition to the list which includes our elimination from the U.N. Security Council and the finding of contempt of Parliament, we now have the honor of being the first country to declare our official intent to withdraw from the Kyoto Protocol.

While the government claims to take its responsibilities of mitigating the threats of climate change seriously, sincere intentions are revealing themselves as scarce as the arctic ice itself.

People, in my opinion, can be divided into several distinct categories.

Some people try to know what they are talking about before they talk about it.

Some people when they realize they might not know what they are talking about admit they don’t know what they are talking about and proceed in good faith to learn from someone who does know what they are talking about.

This makes sense to me.

But then there are people who don’t know what they are talking about, know they don’t know what they are talking about, refuse to admit they don’t know what they are talking about since their greatest fear is to be perceived as someone who doesn’t know what they are talking about and thus proceed to talk about it anyway…

This doesn’t make sense to me.

Wouldn’t it be simpler to admit you don’t know so you can go on to learn something new?

In case you missed it, Seymour Hersh deconstructed the propaganda surrounding Iran’s alleged nuclear ambitions on Democracy Now! today.

As he explains the U.N. report and the ongoing media hysteria swirling around Iran, you would think people would remember the buildup to the Iraq war in 2003, the consequences and the aftermath.

Since this is unlikely, at least it’s an opportunity to re-learn what we should already know:  The most disturbing characteristic of propaganda is that it works, and works only too well.