via Veteran photographer ready to take a hike | Great Falls Tribune | greatfallstribune.com.

The article has spurred a media shouting match of sorts between herself and journalist Joshua Holland over whether the US federal government is involved in coordinating a crackdown on the peaceful protests. To me, that is immaterial because even if the federal government is not currently coordinating a response to the peaceful protests, it will be if they continue to grow.

The meat of Wolf’s argument, to me, is her question: “Why this massive mobilisation against these not-yet-fully-articulated, unarmed, inchoate people?”

I disagree that it is the three demands she references in her original article. I think that what causes sleepless nights for the power elite, and what truly separates the occupy movement from the tea party movement, is the fact occupy has refused to define itself through a specific message or through a leadership hierarchy.

Critics rightly point out that if occupy fails to define itself then its opponents will, but that is mostly true in a disconnected world of the recent past where all public debate is mediated. That is not necessarily true in a world where public debate and discussion can occur between individuals and groups without mediation; a global public square.

What occupy does is it says “let us be the public square”. The occupations are symbolic. They symbolize individuals coming together to discuss the big picture issues that impact their lives and over which they want to assume some degree of democratic control. By offering the virtual square without the baggage of a message that is ideologically or politically weighted, they are offering a space that brings together the left, the right and the increasingly disaffected political middle battered by a shrinking economy, rising prices, and with lost or endangered homes.

Consider that disparate groups of students, environmentalists, labour, the poor, the disenfranchised, the marginalized, all of the people that came together to elect President Obama, are now without a political home.

Consider that the principled right, the Ron Paul Republicans, the libertarians, will only ever be welcome among the Republican Party on election day when their votes are counted.

Consider that the vast middle of America, facing an evermore fearful economic future, are increasingly alienated from a political and economic system that is failing them.

When all of these people, traditionally separated by party and ideology or apathy, come together, they represent a threat to the status quo. When they begin to develop alternative methods of decision making and governance, they represent a threat to the institutions that govern the state.

Government does not only claim a monopoly on violence, it also claims a monopoly on the democratic process. A parallel democratic process, even if small, represents an alternative model of government and that would be revolutionary.

And that is why occupy encampments that establish kitchens, clinics, libraries, and that make decisions by consensus must be violently demolished. They can’t be allowed to succeed and especially not when they breakdown the artificial divisions of party and ideology bringing together people, with common and competing interests, as equal individuals.

Link to Image

via Sub not coming to Port Burwell | London | News | London Free Press.

The London Free Press, on the front page last Saturday, asked “Why London?” The question sought to explore why London is suffering under a higher than average unemployment rate.  Meanwhile, Mayor Fontana, turning the key once more, is calling together industry, labour, and politicians in an effort to get that stubborn economic engine to roar to life.

What Fontana does not yet realize is that the North American economy will not come to life, no matter how many times the key is turned.

Here is why:

The North American economy since the Second World War has been based on three pillars: consumer demand, debt, and cheap energy.

Consumer demand is anchored on housing and automobiles. Around these two commodities an entire economic system was erected bringing together construction, transportation, agriculture, and retail. Every home and car has to be built, sold, re-sold, fueled, outfitted, maintained, and repaired. And for them, an entire infrastructure has been constructed.

Mass home ownership gave rise to the suburbs, and the automobile culture that emerged from them is powered by debt and  cheap fossil fuel energy.

For the enterprise to be successful, however,  the workers on whom it all depends–the middle-class–need good, reliable incomes to support the debt necessary to finance purchases of homes, cars, and all that go with them. For thirty years this was managed by employing workers, at decent wages, in the factories that produced the cars, appliances, electronics, clothing, and everything else taken for granted as essential to the modern home.

This all started to come undone in the late 1970s and through the 90s. Capitalism is dependent on growth. The prime directive of corporations is to maximize share holder returns. How is both the economy and profits grown in a mature, consumer economy? Economies of scale and reduced labour costs.

Economies of scale have been realized through scorched earth industrial extraction methods: clear cutting, slashing and burning, mono-cultures, strip mining, mountain top removal, drift netting, etc … And labour costs are reduced by moving production offshore to less developed and less regulated economies.

In moving production offshore, however, there emerged an inherent contradiction in firing those workers who comprise the consumer market. This contradiction was addressed in three distinct ways: First, the politicians responsible for managing the transition promised cheaper goods–workers could enjoy the same trappings of a middle-class existence for a lower cost; Second, layoffs from high wage, value added manufacturing jobs would be replaced by jobs in the lower wage service economy; Third, the loss of growth, or shrinkage, in disposable incomes would be replaced by cheap and readily accessible debt.

As Canadians transitioned from a manufacturing to a service economy, most accepted the trade-off of security and good wages for cheap goods and easy credit. However, the new arrangement was founded on an impossible ideal: home values would forever increase, offsetting consumer debt, and energy would remain forever plentiful and cheap.

In 2008 the chickens began to come home to roost. Oil prices climbed to nearly $150 a barrel while US banks, looking to squeeze ever more from mortgages, had created a tremendous ponzi scheme that finally collapsed leaving us where we are today.

The continued growth in Canada’s economy, touted by the current government as good management, is largely dependent on industrial resource extraction and, in the Alberta tar sands, highly destructive resource extraction. In some ways Canada has returned to an early 20th century, unsustainable, resource based economy.

When Fontana sits down with his  business, labour, and political partners, he will be doing so against a backdrop of market panic, economic uncertainty, and an evaporated consumer confidence. If those around the table hope to restart London’s economic engine, they will be sorely disappointed when they turn the key. That post-war economic and social contract has long ago been broken and the debt fed boom of the 90s will not be resurrected.

The challenges that face not just London but every city in North America are daunting. From resource depletion, to biodiversity loss, to environmental degradation brought about through industrial extraction and agriculture, to increasing energy costs that will impede any effort at growth, to a consumer economy that is weighed down by debt and hobbled by the loss of a productive capacity.

If London is to have an economic future, its political leadership must begin by refusing to follow. Globalization–and similar schemes that express an economy that benefits, almost exclusively, a financial elite without any stake in the health of our communities–will only lead to a further erosion of the city’s economic well being. Instead, political leadership should ask, where will London be in a decade or in two decades when energy prices double again either as a result of supply or carbon mitigation? The answer to that question must be the centre of a regional economic model focused on agriculture, food processing and manufacturing.

Ironically, opportunity has been knocking hard on London’s door in the form of a climate change study that should lead to a mitigation and adaption strategy and that, if viewed holistically, could offer an avenue to transform and rebuild London’s economy. But Joe Fontana appears unable to recognize that knock as anything other than a bothersome impediment to turning the key of a broken down truck.

Rrrr-Rrrr-Rrrr, thunk.

via Port Burwell readies for sub – St. Thomas Times-Journal – Ontario, CA.

via TheSpec – Naval vessel towed through Hamilton en route to sub….

I hauled the air conditioner from its tomb of dust and linen, pushed its ass through an open window into the great outdoors, plugged it in, turned it on, and then  I sat before it in all its magnificence.

And I feel guilty.

I am contributing to the smog that hounds the health of so many; I’m adding to the burden of CO2 that’s wrapping so much of our planet in heat, drought and hunger; and I’m giving succor to the likes of Tim Hudak who lures our votes with siren songs of cheap and plentiful energy and happiness forever and ever. But in reality, I know it doesn’t matter.

Today, for example, I read a news report that said car sales are down in Canada. There is no good news in that story. Not in the main story that speaks to an economic slowdown, car sales being a major barometer of consumer confidence, but also not in the part of the article that tells us light truck sales still surpass car sales by almost a third. The Ford F Series leads the pack. Despite increased fuel costs, smog, heat waves, and wars over oil and water, Canadians still want gas guzzlers.

Still, no matter how disconnected we Canadians may be between cause and effect, Americans still trump us by a wide margin on the insane-o-meter. Sure, in an act of collective self-flagellation Toronto elected Rob Ford, but in Texas and Oklahoma they elected genuine, dyed-in-the-wool, nut cases.

First, let me set the scene: The southern US, including Texas and Oklahoma, two oil states, are enduring a drought of biblical proportions. See the animation and note the dates:

The drought is so bad, at risk are millions of head of cattle, the livelihoods of many ranchers, a good part of the economy, and cheap meat for many North Americans. Read about it at the Christian Science Monitor.

So here we have two oil states, facing the possibility of a 60 year drought, according to some scientists, led by Governors who are climate change deniers. (It would almost be like a poetic justice except we can be sure the political elite will be the first to board a plane to rapture themselves out of the rising southern lake of fire.) Rick Perry, governor of Florida, claims climate change is “all one contrived phony mess that is falling apart under its own weight.”

Oklahoma governor, Mary Fallin “has called climate legislation ‘entirely unnecessary.’ Fallin signed the Americans for Prosperity No Climate Tax pledge and has been endorsed by global warming deniers Sarah Palin and Sen. Jim Inhofe. She received $5000 from Koch Industries in campaign contributions,” according to Think Progress.

So, what is the answer for these two politicians leading states that have been pummeled by tornadoes and are now being ravaged by drought? Pray! Yes, pray.

Just this week Mary Fallin asked Oklahoma to pray for rain. Back in April, Rick Perry declared three whole days of prayer for rain. God hasn’t delivered. Possibly, because God has nothing at all to do with it.

Over a year ago, Fallin asked, “Does leadership really think that our surveillance satellites should be aimed at polar ice caps and not terror cells, and that spies should be investigating global warming?” Well, Mary, what has Al Qaeda done to Oklahoma that can match the drought that commands your prayers?

Unfortunately, addressing the challenge of climate change requires more than technology, plans, and a few well motivated people. It requires a change in culture and we’re not there yet. Not even close.

via Rocking Port Burwell with the blues – Tillsonburg News – Ontario, CA.

via Dredging Today – Canada: Bayham Council Decides to Contract Out Port Burwell Harbour Dredging.