Topic: WE'RE STUFFED!!!

[Jahn]

The US Federal Reserve and central banks around the world of continue money printing and the devaluation of their currencies.

But we don't. Our (very small) currency has strengthened toward the dollar and the Euro the last year. However, regarding the USD I must say that it has been lower than what it is today.

[Builder]

Qur'an burning: From Facebook to the world's media, how the story grew

Chronology of story's development tells cautionary tale about the power of rolling news and social media to push a marginal figure to centre stage

Matthew Weaver
guardian.co.uk, Friday 10 September 2010 17.52 BST

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/sep/10/quran-burning-how-the-story-grew

It started as a provocative suggestion on a Facebook group – but within two months it was being described as a threat to world peace.

Terry Jones, an extremist pastor with a dwindling flock of followers in Florida, became an international hate figure, drawing universal condemnation from world leaders and prompting violent street demonstrations, when his plans to burn 200 copies of the Qur'an were revealed.

The chronology of the story's growth presents a cautionary tale on the power of rolling news and social media to push a marginal figure to the centre of the global stage.

It has led to anxiety in the media about its role but also prompted questions about how politicians and church groups handled the issue.

The germ of the story was a message, posted in July, on a Facebook group linked to a now unavailable website called Islam is of the Devil – the title of a book by Jones.

The Burn the Koran group called for followers to send photos of how they planned to burn the holy book on the ninth anniversary of the September 11 attacks.

The majority of commenters on the Facebook group voiced horror at the suggestion, and there was little sign of any support.

But within days, the story was picked up by the Religion News Service, which quoted Jones's claims that people had sent him copies of the Qur'an to burn.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations was asked for a response. It didn't take the bait – "We don't want to do anything that would be reactive," its director of communication said – but other religious organisations did not show such restraint.

On 25 July, Jones then cranked up publicity for the proposed book burning with an inflammatory video message on YouTube. Holding up a copy of the Qur'an, he said: "This is book is responsible for 9/11."

At this stage, the mainstream media took up the story. The Guardian's US blogger Michael Tomasky picked it up, and by the end of July there were articles on Yahoo News, while Jones had appeared on the CNN.

News of the pastor's plan spread to the rest of the world, with items featuring on the Arab satellite broadcaster al-Arabiya and in the Times of India.

On 3 August, the mayor of Gainesville, where Jones proposed to perform the stunt, urged the world's media to ignore him. Craig Lowe said Jones was part of a "tiny fringe group and an embarrassment to our community".

But Jones wasn't ignored, and religious groups began to condemn the proposed book burning.

The US-based National Association of Evangelicals called for the event to be cancelled. A few days later, the British group Campaign Islam posted a YouTube message claiming that the event would "wake up the [Islamic] lion from the den".

An influential Sunni authority in Egypt, the al-Azhar supreme council, accused Jones of stirring up hate.

Such statements appeared to confirm that the proposed stunt was damaging strained relations between the US and Islam.

By the time the New York Times profiled Jones on 25 August , he had already been interviewed by 150 media organisations.

But there were still few signs that the proposed burning had caused popular offence in the Muslim world until last Sunday, when 500 people in the Afghan capital, Kabul, took part in a protest. Effigies of Jones were burned alongside the American flag.

The following day General David Petraeus, the commander of US and Nato forces in Afghanistan, issued a statement to the Associated Press, warning that images of the Qur'an burning could provoke violent retaliation against US troops.

The general's intervention pushed the story to the top of the international news agenda, where it stayed for the rest of the week.

According to the counter-terrorism expert David Schanzer, of Duke University, North Carolina, Petraeus's comments gave Jones more credibility than he deserved.

In a video discussion on Bloggingheads TV, Shanzer said: "By having the head of our entire operation in Afghanistan ask them to refrain from this action, we've brought much more attention to this fringe element than it deserves."

Ignoring Jones would have "undercut his power", Schanzer added.

Hillary Clinton and the White House spokesman, Robert Gibbs, joined in the condemnation, and yesterday , Obama said the stunt was "a recruitment bonanza for al-Qaida".

Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, the president of Indonesia – which has the world's largest Muslim population – described it as a threat to world peace and warned that it could create violence and retaliation that would leave "many victims".

The dispute may have been defused by Jones's last-minute change of heart last night.

But there was nothing inevitable about its escalation: in 2008 another extremist pastor with a small band of followers was setting fire to a Qur'an, but nobody seemed to care.

Members of the Westboro Baptist Church from Topeka, Kansas – a homophobic group notorious for picketing the funerals of US soldiers – burned the copy of the Qur'an on a Washington street corner. But, weary of the group's gay-bashing provocations, media organisations stayed away.

The power of individual in contemporary world. Well, the power fo one man. The lone crusader in the dangerous world of...different cultures.
He does not need to burn anything any more.
The effect is already there.
So...is it up to any given lunatic nowadays?
Whatever crazy thought, idea, plan, theory you have - publicise it, and voila...
...all of a sudden there are supporters/comrades in arms and enemies
...there is that precious sense of collective of those who 'know', of 'us', and there are those damned 'them'
...there is identity of collective (even for a short time)
Isn't this what we are observing in the world of IT technology dominated world - hamsters running faster and faster in the wheel of IT-assisted identity-making - 'us' and 'them', 'together' and 'alone'...
Yet none of the temporary coalitions of 'us' persist and one must start anew again and again
With crazier, wilder and outrageous stunts - just to catch the attention...

[Nichi]

The power of individual in contemporary world. Well, the power fo one man. The lone crusader in the dangerous world of...different cultures.
He does not need to burn anything any more.
The effect is already there.
So...is it up to any given lunatic nowadays?
Whatever crazy thought, idea, plan, theory you have - publicise it, and voila...
...all of a sudden there are supporters/comrades in arms and enemies
...there is that precious sense of collective of those who 'know', of 'us', and there are those damned 'them'
...there is identity of collective (even for a short time)
Isn't this what we are observing in the world of IT technology dominated world - hamsters running faster and faster in the wheel of IT-assisted identity-making - 'us' and 'them', 'together' and 'alone'...
Yet none of the temporary coalitions of 'us' persist and one must start anew again and again
With crazier, wilder and outrageous stunts - just to catch the attention...

This phenomenon, with the burning and incitement to burn, follows on the heels of another ongoing issue in the news here: the building of a mosque near Ground-Zero in NYC.

The reactions of many people have been less than noble, and I can't help but think it's a right-time-right-place sort of event. Add to the pot the timeliness of the anniversary of nine-eleven.

Nonetheless, the mentality is one of which to be aware - it's the stuff from which civil wars will be made.  It's the same mentality which will be at the US-Mexico border, with firearms, and which will end up harassing the Latin-American population here. The picture isn't pretty.

[Nichi]

“When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross.”

~attributed (controversially) to Sinclair Lewis

[Builder]

'Everyone wants a footballer' at Manchester's top celebrity haunt

Mark Townsend
The Observer, Sunday 12 September 2010

In the club where Wayne Rooney's recent troubles began, young women tell of the allure of Premier League stars

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2010/sep/12/panacea-manchester-club-wayne-rooney


Panacea, Manchester's favourite celebrity haunt. Photograph: Eamonn Clark/James Clarke

In her killer heels and a wraparound dress that left little to the imagination, she was dressed to turn heads. The music sped up and, right on cue, the teenager began gyrating wildly. A group of men nodded approvingly. In the adjoining booth, the scene was more or less replicated. It was almost 2am in Panacea, Manchester's most famous celebrity haunt. Here, in its narrow rectangular bar, Wayne Rooney  drank until 5.30am one night last month before being spotted urinating down a wall. Now, of course, the high-profile footballer is being pilloried for a far more serious indiscretion, after alleged encounters with escort girls Jenny Thompson, 21, and Helen Wood, 23. Thompson lists Panacea as her favourite bar.

The mood had steadily grown more frantic as the night wore on. The booths lining its walls gradually became full, the orders for bottles of Cristal – a snip at £290 – mounted as the huddles of young women grew in number. Panacea is where the footballers of Manchester let their hair down.

Players from the city's two clubs are described by bar staff as "really lovely people, salt-of-the-earth types". Alex, the DJ, recently played soul and rare groove to the order of Manchester United's Ryan Giggs, who was out celebrating his wedding anniversary. Two young women reminisce about their meeting with Manchester City forward Carlos Tevez in the bar a few weeks earlier.

"We save up all week to come down here," said Rachel, 20, from Farnworth, north of Manchester. "It's the only place you can really dress to impress. Everyone wants to bag a footballer. If you get a footballer you've made it."

Panacea bears frequent witness to the mating ritual of the wannabe Wag. They arrive mostly in threes – if one pulls, then the other two can comfort each other. A favourite drink is the Gold Digger, a cocktail named in honour of those who flock to the bar hoping to snare a rich footballer. Midnight signals the onset of dancing, the trigger for much gyrating in front of the booths where the footballers often sit. Wannabe Wags have to compete in a tough environment to secure the players' attention.

"Footballers don't understand subtlety,' says part-time media student Claire, 22. She drums her acrylic-tipped fingers on the bar and then demonstrates by hitching up her skirt, exposing several more inches of deeply tanned thigh. She pouts outrageously, then starts moving suggestively to the beat. Her hair is big and blond, and her make-up – even in the dim orange glow of the bar – is bold.

In the sartorial stakes, she explains, less is very much more for a wannabe Wag. "That's how you get talking to them and looking like you've got more money than you have. I know girls who spend their entire wages every week to come here on the off-chance.

"Yeah, I've met footballers," she adds, "but you're not getting names."

For many of the young women, a night at Panacea is equivalent to a job interview, an opening audition for their career choice. Claire says that becoming a Wag is an ambition taken as seriously as an economics degree.

Emily Nemen, 20, from Bolton, said: "You've got a whole generation of schoolgirls whose ambition is getting off with a footballer. That's it – their only aspiration. They have a job only to save up enough money to come here."

Another group knew escort Thompson from her schooldays. "It was a bit of a surprise to see her in the paper, but no surprise she got into that lifestyle. She wanted to be a Wag when she was 16," said Melanie Best, 20.

Thompson was, by varying accounts, good at her job. In Panacea she met plenty of footballers, earning her the monicker "Premiership Jen" for her talent in hooking top-flight players.

Critics deride what they see as an unsavoury extension of Britain's lascivious, materialistic, celebrity-obsessed culture. Many liken it to a form of anti-feminism, where young women brag about relying on a bloke for their income and identity. "It's the death of female ambition," said one 20-year-old woman, an economics undergraduate at Oxford University, at the club to celebrate a friend's birthday.

Others at the club said Rooney's alleged relationship with Thompson was just the latest footnote in the narrative detailing rich, high-profile footballers and good-time girls.

Many of the young women at Panacea had, like Thompson, come from Manchester's satellite towns: Rochdale, Bury and Bolton. The recession has hit such towns hard – they have some of the highest unemployment rates in the UK. Opportunities are few. Many of their young men aspire to become a Premier League footballer; these days, their sisters dream of bagging one.

Several days before the allegations of Rooney's adultery became public, a small internet business began trading, largely unnoticed. Yet the launch of becomeawag.com in August offers proof that targeting footballers is a career option for a growing number of young women.

The website invites women to send in personal details, including pictures, which are then forwarded to footballers who say yes or no to a date. Just 10 days after it started operations, the site already has 15 footballers, including nine from the Premier League, on its books and has seen scores of women express an interest in signing up (for a fee of £19.99).

Founder Daniel Hall said: "Once women wanted to be princesses, then film stars, now they want to be a Wag. An awful lot of women want the lifestyle – and the money."

Rooney earns £20,000 a day, more than the annual income of many of those drinking in Panacea. "Kiss-off" fees – paid by footballers to keep the lips of their conquests sealed – are reportedly as high as £30,000. None of the women who spoke to the Observer in Panacea would spill the beans about whether they had "landed" a player. Neither did any expect footballers to be faithful.

Sympathy for Coleen Rooney, the ordinary-girl-done-good, was in short supply. "She's done so well out of it. She's on television, has a clothing range, she's set for life. She'll make money out of this. He'll come back," said Rachel, teetering dangerously in her 6in heels.

Claire said many of her peers dismissed the idea of faithful footballers; they expect to get cheated on and so they cheat themselves. "The whole scene is inspired by infidelity, it's part of the deal," she said. You accept it.

"It's a question of supply and demand. There would be no demand for valuable footballers if there wasn't a never-ending supply of girls who'd do anything to cop off."

The women seem largely normal, down-to-earth and aware of their behaviour. A surprising ratio were privately educated like Thompson, who attended Bolton's £1,555-a-term Lord's Independent school. None appeared to be working for one of Manchester's many escort agencies such as Briefly Yours, Angels4You, Dreams Manchester and the Bond Girls, the self-styled "agency with a licence to thrill".

Last night Manchester's footballers will have been out on the town again. The circus continues. United's players were just down the road in Liverpool while rivals City played at home. No names yet – but hours later some of their stars might already have been playing away.

...to have sex with a bastard, fix him in the process, and live with a 'poodle'...
...there is a better suggestion: have sex with a bastard, get his money and enjoy life...
There are new and bright career choices available.

[Michael]

Merchants of Doubt by Naomi Oreskes and Juhani M Conway
reviewed by Robin McKie of The Observer

Rachel Carson is generally viewed as an environmental heroine, a courageous campaigner whose book, Silent Spring, alerted the world to the dangers of the indiscriminate use of pesticides. Hers was a success story, the tale of a woman who highlighted a serious problem – that the anti-mosquito agent DDT was building up in the food chain where it was killing millions of birds and animals – and who helped introduce a global ban on use of the chemical.

At least that is the common appreciation of Carson. However, a brief search of her name on the internet today produces an unexpected response. According to many websites, Carson – by all accounts a pleasant, amiable woman – was a mass murderer who killed more people than the Nazis. This dramatic claim is based on her campaign against DDT, which, it is alleged, has led to the deaths of countless Africans from malaria.

"Millions of people around the world suffer the painful and often deadly effects of malaria because one person sounded a false alarm," states one site set up by the Competitive Enterprise Institute. "That person is Rachel Carson." Another site goes further: "Fifty million dead," while a third claims: "More deaths likely." Others compare Carson to Hitler or Stalin.

As an appraisal of Carson's achievements, this is a fairly shocking piece of revisionism and, as the authors of Merchants of Doubt make clear, it also is a false one. DDT was banned not just because it was accumulating in the food chain but because mosquitoes were developing resistance to it. The pesticide was losing its usefulness long before it was taken out of commercial production.

So why this hysterical vilification? Why these sudden denunciations of Carson? The answer – provided by Oreskes and Conway in this painstakingly assembled but nevertheless riveting piece of investigative reporting – is simple. The far right in America, in its quest to ensure the perpetuation of the free market, is now hell-bent on destroying the cause of environmentalism.

According to this distorted view of life, environmentalists are watermelons – green on the outside, red on the inside – who want to impose regulation, "the slippery slope to socialism", on the use of tobacco, ozone-destroying chemicals and greenhouse gases. "And in the demonising of Rachel Carson, free marketeers realised that if you could convince people that an example of successful government regulation wasn't, in fact, successful – that it was actually a mistake – you could strengthen the argument against regulation in general," state Oreskes and Conway.

Hence the monstering of Carson's reputation, an act of deliberate misinformation, say Oreskes and Conway, that has become the hallmark of a group of far-right institutions that are funded by businesses and conservative foundations and supported by a coterie of rightwing scientists who believe ecological threats are made up by lefty researchers as part of a grand plan to expand government control over our lives. These are the villains of Merchants of Doubt, and the same names pop up throughout its pages: scientists such as Fred Seitz, Robert Jastrow and Bill Nierenberg, along with the institutes through which they, and their kind, have lent their services to a range of rightwing, free-market foundations and institutions including the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the source of that anti-Carson diatribe that I quoted earlier. When not funded by the tobacco industry, many of these outfits often receive backing from fossil-fuel companies such as Exxon.

In these campaigns, a common strategy is evident: discredit the science, spread confusion and promote doubt, tactics that were introduced in the 70s to combat plans to limit smoking – whose links to cancer were by then becoming unambiguous – and which have been refined and used in battles to combat acid rain, ozone-layer depletion and greenhouse gas emissions.

Real science is dismissed as "junk" while misrepresentations are offered in its place. Thus cancer is triggered by many different causes, not just smoke, it was argued – even though the tobacco industry was, by this time, admitting in private that there was indeed a definite link between smoking and serious disease. Similarly acid rain was blamed not on its real cause, the by-products of burning fossil fuels, but on volcanic eruptions, which were also said to be the cause of the depletion of the ozone layer.

In each case, experts offered briefings to journalists and politicians and their claims were accepted, with little qualification, by an acquiescent media happy to establish the idea that there were real divisions among mainstream scientists where none actually existed. In short, we have been led by the nose and have meekly accepted the outpourings of a small, dedicated group of rightwing propagandists who have found themselves pushing, all too easily, at open doors. As Oreskes and Conway point out: "Who among us wouldn't prefer a world where acid rain was no big deal, the ozone hole didn't exist and global warming didn't matter? Such a world would be far more comforting than the one we actually live in. We may even prefer comforting lies to sobering facts. And the facts denied by our protagonists were more than sobering. They were downright dreadful."

Thus the tactics – the spreading of doubt and confusion – of a small group of cold war ideologues have worked their way across America and have now crossed the Atlantic so that the public in both the US and the UK are more confused than ever about the truth on a series of key scientific issues, in particular global warming, even though scientists have become more certain about the accuracy of their efforts.

In many ways, it is a tough message to stomach, though there is no doubt that Oreskes and Conway deserve considerable praise for this outstanding book and for exposing the influence of these dark ideologues. Merchants of Doubt – which includes detailed notes on all sources – is clearly and cleanly outlined, carefully paced and is my runaway contender for best science book of the year.

[Nichi]

The far right in America, in its quest to ensure the perpetuation of the free market, is now hell-bent on destroying the cause of environmentalism.

Yep.

Hence the monstering of Carson's reputation, an act of deliberate misinformation,

Appalling on so many levels.

[Michael]

It occurred to me that much can be put at the feet of the Free Speech tenet of the US Constitution. Obviously there were good reason for including this tenet, but perhaps the authors were not aware of the use to which it would be put.

The idea that people can say anything, right or wrong, is not shared by most other countries, and so most other nation's citizens are not fully prepared for the level of scepticism such a tenet requires. And I doubt most American citizens are prepared either.

In most democratic countries there is a generally shared agreement that there exist limits to publicly expressed views. This is a big issue with the laws in most countries and is constantly under review, but nonetheless there exists this commonly shared sense of appropriateness. What the English call 'cricket'.

It is simply 'not cricket' to stoop to certain levels of public perfidy. Basically it is a social fabric of ethics. So I sense many such people are not prepared for the outright lying that has become common place in US public discourse. We tend to presume if it were completely wrong someone would be sued. And if they haven't been officially shut up, then there must be some truth to defend the views.

I feel that most US citizens are more prepared for outright bullshit to be common public practice - I could be wrong there. But I don't think they are any better buttressed via education, to a healthy level of discernment, that must accompany the tenant of Free Speech for a sane balance.

I have watched in Australia how Right politicians and commentators have taken up the US model, albeit at a lesser degree. I still feel most Australians would be shocked at outright lying by public commentators, but they have learnt to live with extreme twisting of attitudes.

[Jahn]

The country without corruption. Is that true some may ask?
The country with the greatest proportion of immigrants from Iran and Iraq. is that true some may ask?
The country of equity.Is that true some may ask?
The country of Peace and all the best qualities that you can name. Is that necessary some may ask? (to name all of the good qualities that this little country have).

Now we are having the big election.
And of course there are great questionmarks about the outcome.
On Sunday night we know the outcome and I shall keep you updated.

http://www.euractiv.com/en/elections/rival-coalitions-dead-heat-swedish-election-approaches-news-497202

Rival coalitions in dead heat as Swedish election approaches
Published: 27 August 2010

With general elections in Sweden less than a month away, the governing centre-right coalition and opposition centre-left bloc are locked in a dead heat, according to pollsters, who argued that "anything can happen between now and 19 September".
Background

According to statistics compiled by the Fondation Robert Schuman's European Elections Monitor, seven million Swedes will go to the polls in forthcoming general elections to elect 349 MPs.

Of these, 497,000 Swedes - representing 9% of all voters - will be voting for the first time on 19 September – a 15% increase in comparison to the last general elections, held on 17 September 2006.

Furthermore, 132,780 Swedes living abroad will be taking part in the election.

The incumbent centre-right 'Alliance' government is made up of the Moderate Party (97 seats), the Centre Party (29 seats), the Liberal People's Party (28 seats) and the Christian Democrats (24 seats). The coalition's total seats numbered 178.

The main opposition bloc – the 'Red-Green' coalition – consists of the Social Democrats (130 seats), Left party (22 seats) and the Green Party (19 seats). Its total seats numbered 171.

The latest Swedish Television (SVT) 'Voter Index', which produces an average aggregate poll from all the main existing polls – puts the country's two main parties, the centre-left Social Democrats and centre-right Moderates, neck-and-neck as they enter the electoral end-game.

Underpinning this dead heat is a statistical tug-of-war that has been taking place since the last election in September 2006.

Government bounces back

Following its ground-breaking victory that year – only the second time in 70 years that the forces of the centre-right had wrestled power from the dominant Social Democrats - the Alliance government has fallen well behind the red-green opposition in the polls.

Indeed, early 2008 polls showed the three opposition parties leading the government by a huge margin of 20 percentage points. Since then, however, this lead has reversed, boosted in part by the government's solid performance at the helm of the EU from July to December 2009.

In recent weeks, polls have shown that the government is marginally in the lead. So close are the two parties – the Alliance is on 47.8% and the red-greens are on 46.6% - that polling experts told leading newspaper Dagens Nyheter that "this election is far from decided. Anything can happen between now and 19 September".

A first female PM?

Arguably the most interesting political story centres on the leader of the Social Democrats, Mona Sahlin. Sweden, which has one of the most aggressively egalitarian societies in the world and one of the highest proportions of female elected representatives, has never had a female leader.

However, as noted by the Fondation Robert Schuman's European Elections Monitor, Sahlin is still not very popular among Swedes, and in fact "faces strong competition" from Maria Wetterstrand, the extremely popular Green spokesperson, to become the main female 'face' of the centre-left.

Conversely, the Moderates led by Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt, who have chosen the motto 'Framåt tillsammans' (Forwards together), enjoy a high level of popularity, but this was achieved to the detriment of the other three Alliance parties.

[Nichi]

Stumbled into this today...

Ottawa tightens muzzle on climate change, tar sands

Alberta (& Saskatchewan)
Documents reveal scientists need approval from minister's office before speaking with major media - a measure one researcher calls 'Orwellian'

By MARGARET MUNRO, Postmedia News
September 13, 2010

The Harper government has tightened the muzzle on federal scientists, going so far as to control when and what they can say about floods at the end of the last ice age.

Natural Resources Canada scientists were told this spring they need "pre-approval" from Minister Christian Paradis's office to speak with national and international journalists. Their "media lines" also need ministerial approval, say documents obtained through access-to-information legislation.

The documents say the "new" rules went into force in March and reveal how they apply not only to contentious issues including the oilsands, but benign subjects such as floods that occurred 13,000 years ago.

They also give a glimpse of how Canadians are being cut off from scientists whose work is financed by taxpayers, critics say, and is often of significant public interest.

"It's Orwellian," says Andrew Weaver, a climatologist at University of Victoria. The public, he says, has a right to know what federal scientists are discovering and learning.

Scientists at NRCan, many of them world experts, study everything from seabeds to melting glaciers. They have long been able to discuss their research, until the rules changed in the spring.

"We have new media interview procedures that require pre-approval of certain types of interview requests by the minister's office," wrote Judy Samoil, NRCan's western regional communications manager, in a March 24 email to colleagues.

The policy applies to "high-profile" issues such as "climate change, oilsands" and when "the reporter is with an international or national media organization (such as the CBC or a Canwest paper chain)," she wrote. The Canwest papers are now part of Postmedia Network Inc.

The documents show the new rules being so broadly applied that one scientist was not permitted to discuss a study in a major research journal without "pre-approval" from political staff in Paradis's office.

NRCan scientist Scott Dallimore co-authored the study, published in the journal Nature on April 1, about a colossal flood that swept across northern Canada 13,000 years ago, when massive ice dams gave way at the end of the last ice age.

The study was considered so newsworthy that two British universities issued releases to alert the international media. It was, however, deemed so sensitive in Ottawa that Dallimore, who works at NRCan's laboratories outside Victoria, was told he had to wait for clearance from the minister's office.

Dallimore tried to tell the department's communications managers the flood study was anything but politically sensitive. "This is a blue sky science paper," he said, noting: "There are no anticipated links to minerals, energy or anthropogenic climate change."

But the bureaucrats in Ottawa insisted. "We will have to get the minister's office approval before going ahead with this interview," Patti Robson, the department's media relations manager, wrote after a reporter from Postmedia News approached Dallimore.

Robson asked Dallimore to provide the reporter's questions and "the proposed responses," saying: "We will send it up to MO (minister's office) for approval."
© Copyright (c) The Montreal Gazette

http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/Ottawa+tightens+muzzle/3514943/story...

http://oilsandstruth.org/ottawa-tightens-muzzle-climate-change-tar-sands

It occurred to me that much can be put at the feet of the Free Speech tenet of the US Constitution. Obviously there were good reason for including this tenet, but perhaps the authors were not aware of the use to which it would be put.

The idea that people can say anything, right or wrong, is not shared by most other countries, and so most other nation's citizens are not fully prepared for the level of scepticism such a tenet requires. And I doubt most American citizens are prepared either.

In most democratic countries there is a generally shared agreement that there exist limits to publicly expressed views. This is a big issue with the laws in most countries and is constantly under review, but nonetheless there exists this commonly shared sense of appropriateness. What the English call 'cricket'.

It is simply 'not cricket' to stoop to certain levels of public perfidy. Basically it is a social fabric of ethics. So I sense many such people are not prepared for the outright lying that has become common place in US public discourse. We tend to presume if it were completely wrong someone would be sued. And if they haven't been officially shut up, then there must be some truth to defend the views.

I feel that most US citizens are more prepared for outright bullshit to be common public practice - I could be wrong there. But I don't think they are any better buttressed via education, to a healthy level of discernment, that must accompany the tenant of Free Speech for a sane balance.

I have watched in Australia how Right politicians and commentators have taken up the US model, albeit at a lesser degree. I still feel most Australians would be shocked at outright lying by public commentators, but they have learnt to live with extreme twisting of attitudes.

[Nichi]

<span data-s9e-mediaembed="youtube" style="display:inline-block;width:100%;max-width:640px"><span style="display:block;overflow:hidden;position:relative;padding-bottom:56.25%"><iframe allowfullscreen="" loading="lazy" scrolling="no" style="background:url(https://i.ytimg.com/vi/Muh-nJVhVEE/hqdefault.jpg) 50% 50% / cover;border:0;height:100%;left:0;position:absolute;width:100%" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Muh-nJVhVEE"></iframe></span></span><br /><a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/Muh-nJVhVEE?fs=1" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="bbc_link bbc_flash_disabled new_win">http://www.youtube.com/v/Muh-nJVhVEE?fs=1</a>

[Nichi]

Fascinating the layers of intimidation and stone-walling in the above video.  And if outright lies aren't offensive, you then have the insult to the intelligence - like when Senator Trip Pittman said he'd be a lot more worried about "sharks than dispersants." 

[Michael]

I have been reading about this - imagine Sweden bordering on xenophobic political change!

What I find odd is that this is what happened in the Australian elections - the country was split, with the Right playing the 'race card' as we say here, in the shape of the 'boat people' refugees. This was a pure irrational whip up of anti-'other' emotion, which became a major factor in the election. (for god's sake, we are an island - only the most daring can reach us)

But I see this accentuation of polarisation in politics, resulting in hung parliaments and coalition governments - not sure what that means for exigencies of our times.

[Builder]

Sweden elections end in hung parliament, rise of far-Right

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/sweden/8012411/Sweden-elections-end-in-hung-parliament-rise-of-far-Right.html

Swedish elections on Sunday night ended in a hung parliament after the rise of a far-Right group narrowly prevented the conservative-liberal coalition government from winning an outright majority in Sweden’s parliament.

The result, which gave FredJuhani Reinfeldt's Moderate-led alliance the largest share of seats in the Riksdag, was the worst result since 1914 for the Social Democrats, effectively ending the party's 80 year domination of Swedish politics.

Official preliminary results showed Mr Reinfeldt’s centre-Right coalition winning 173 seats in the 349-seat parliament and the Social Democrat led Left-Green coalition with 156 seats.

However, the big news of the night for a country which has long prided itself as being one of the most tolerant in Europe was that the anti-immigrant Sweden Democrats (SD) looked set to win 20 seats, their first entry to the national parliament.

Despite winning the largest share of the vote, Mr Reinfeldt’s coalition could face weeks of horse-trading after both his conservative-liberal alliance and the opposition left-Green bloc ruled out working with the far-Right.

“If this result stands we will have an uncertain situation,” said a government spokesman.

Before polling opened, Mr Reinfeldt had pleaded for a clear majority amid fears that in the event of a hung vote far-Right MPs from the SD party could play a “kingmaker” role in forming a new government.

“Don’t expose Sweden to this experiment. Make sure they don’t get any power,” he said of the far-Right.

Bjorn Soder, the SD’s secretary, said his party was ready to start talking. “Swedish politics has been silent too long as immigration has continued unchecked, we want to change that and are prepared to talk to any of the parties in order to forward our politics,” he said.

Mr Reinfeldt’s campaign, built on popular tax cuts and healthy public finances, has been closely watched by David Cameron, the Prime Minister, who is a personal friend and close political ally of the Swedish leader.

His inconclusive victory has been overshadowed by the rise of the SD, a previously marginal group, which entered the mainstream by demanding cuts to immigration and by describing Islam as Sweden’s biggest national security threat since the Second World War.

Its election broadcasts, showing burka-clad Muslim women jumping the queue to take benefits from white Swedish pensioners, fuelled resentment over waves of immigration which have changed the make-up of Sweden, a once-homogenous Scandinavian country, where one in seven residents is now foreign-born.

“The immigration policy is the most important issue in this election and we want that to be debated and we want the other parties to change their policy,” said Jimmie Akesson, the group’s leader.

Success for the Swedish far-Right has followed a string of electoral gains for the far-Right across Europe in countries including the Netherlands, France, Austria, Hungary, Slovakia and Britain.

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Swedish Neo-Nazi Party Wins Local Seat

Sep 20, 2010 17:27 CEST

http://www.mynewsdesk.com/uk/pressroom/expo/pressrelease/view/swedish-neo-nazi-party-wins-local-seat-477657

In the shadow of the Sweden Democrats' highly publicized electoral success last night, Expo have learned that the neo-Nazi party Svenskarnas parti (The Swedes' Party) have won a seat in the Grästorp municipality in western Sweden. The party, founded in 1994 under the name Nationalsocialistisk front, has thus won its first local mandate.

Party leader Daniel Höglund has accomplished what no one thought possible: making room for a neo-Nazi party in a democratically elected assembly. But when the Swedish Election Authority presented its final tally of Grästorp, it was revealed that Svenskarnas parti had indeed won 2,8 percent of the vote. The 102 votes were enough to secure one mandate for the party. The chairwoman of the local electoral board, Agnetha Wallander, confirms the result.

Two years ago, the party was known under the name Nationalsocialistisk front. It was dismantled and relaunched under a new name, Folkfronten (The People's Front), in November 2008. The purpose of this makeover was to appeal to a broader range of prospective voters. The vulgar anti-Semitism was toned down, the annual celebration of Adolf Hitler's birthday scrapped and the Nazi symbols removed. Instead, the party began to focus on criticizing multiculturalism, portraying themselves as a radical alternative to the Sweden Democrats.

This is the first time since the 1940's that Sweden has seen a Nazi party in a democratically elected assembly.

So the social democrat rule has been ended and new voices are surfacing.
No illusions about welfare paradise and tolerance.
Tolerance has been found wanting and highly conditional.
Sweden has Northern Europe's largest neonazi movement and it is actively spreading to neighbouring states.