GreenerPolitics

By Tom Engelhardt, tomdispatch.com

Can there be any question that, since the invasion of 2003, Iraq has been unraveling? And here’s the curious thing: Despite a lack of decent information and analysis on crucial aspects of the Iraqi catastrophe, despite the way much of the Iraq story fell off newspaper front pages and out of the TV news in the last year, despite so many reports on the “success” of the President’s surge strategy, Americans sense this perfectly well. In the latest Washington Post/ABC News poll, 56% of Americans “say the United States should withdraw its military forces to avoid further casualties” and this has, as the Post notes, been a majority position since January 2007, the month that the surge was first announced. Imagine what might happen if the American public knew more about the actual state of affairs in Iraq — and of thinking in Washington. So, here, in an attempt to unravel the situation in ever-unraveling Iraq are twelve answers to questions which should be asked far more often in this country:

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from badvista.fsf.org

When you turn on your computer, you’re making a political statement. If, like most people, your computer boots Microsoft Windows, the statement you’re making is that transnational corporations should control access to the most powerful public media that ever existed.

–New Internationalist Magazine Nov. 2006

In January and February of this year, the Green Party and Greenpeace issued warnings about the tremendous threat posed to the environment by the disposable computer mentality promoted in Microsoft’s $500-million Windows Vista marketing campaign. Vista’s steep hardware requirements mean that to use it, most people will have to throw their current computer into a landfill and buy a new one.

While these environmental consequences alone are sufficient reason for many to reject Vista, the disposable computer mentality is a symptom of a larger problem—one that should concern all social activists. That problem is the dependency of activists on software owned and exclusively controlled by entities that design their software in ways directly opposed to grassroots social change. No matter what kind of specific change they are working for in society, activists need the freedom to organize and communicate. Yet each time an activist turns on a Vista computer, she is nominating Microsoft and Big Media as exclusive gatekeepers to this freedom.

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By Mike De Souza, Canwest News Service, Calgary Herald
OTTAWA - David McGuinty was baffled when he first heard provocative advertising about global warming in the midst of the 2006 federal election.

The radio spots criticized a consumer energy conservation program along with the climate change policies of the government of the day and appeared to come from nowhere, he said.

“I was having to explain an awful lot about climate change at the door, as a candidate,” said McGuinty, the Liberal MP for Ottawa South, in an interview. “So when I heard this, I thought, ‘Well, why would anybody even run these ads in Ottawa? Why are they going here? And I didn’t know they were going across the province in five zones at the time.”

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from CBC News

The CRTC has brought in new regulations to restrict cross-media ownership as a way of ensuring a diversity of editorial voices in the same market.

The broadcast regulator said on Tuesday that, in future, a person or entity will be permitted to control only two of the three types of media outlets — radio, TV, or newspapers — in a single market.

In other words, a media group that already owned a local radio station and a local television station would likely have to sell one of those broadcast outlets if it wanted to buy a local newspaper in the same market.

To see the state of Canadian media ownership in Canada, click here!

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It is now just over 2 weeks before the BC Leadership elections and it is time to start some guessing as to who will take the laurels.  I have always found that, in elections it feels like one is fighting in the dark; other than scattered and unrelaible polls, there is no indicator one can look to to see how one is doing.

One completely unscientific predictor is the number of friends each of the candidates has on facebook.  Here are the standings as of October 4.

Ben West: 584

Damian Kettlewell: 170

Sylvaine Zimmerman: 132

Jane Sterk: 36

Jack Etkin: none

Now, one may argue that social networking via facebook is not an reliable indicator of political choice; one may become friends with more than one candidate as a means to evaluate their choice.  It is not an indication of political involvement; those who are friends of facebook may not necessarily be members of the Green Party of BC and thus not allowed to vote.

However, friends in facebook is a list of contacts whereby a candidate can solicit volunteers, money and support from a member’s network.  So even if those within one’s facebook network are not members of the party, they can exercise significant influence on the campaign.

It will be interesting to see how facebook friends translate into Green Party votes.  If there is a correlation, then it will be Ben West by a landslide; if there is no correlation, then there will be doubt cast on facebook as a tool of political efficacy.