World Wide Words

A Vancouver lawyer has won a procedural victory in her attempt to prosecute U.S. President George W. Bush under the Criminal Code.

Gail Davidson , cofounder of an international group of jurists called Lawyers Against the War, expressed her delight on October 18 following the lifting of a publication ban on court proceedings against the U.S. president.

"It's great news, but really they had no choice," Davidson told the Georgia Straight .

The Kitsilano lawyer got the ball rolling against Bush as soon as he set foot on Canadian soil for his November 30, 2004, visit. As a private citizen, she charged him with seven counts of counseling, aiding, and abetting torture at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and at Cuba 's Guantanamo Bay naval base. She had her charges accepted by a justice of the peace in Vancouver Provincial Court .

On December 6, 2004 , Davidson was at Provincial Court to fix a date for the process hearing. However, Provincial Court Judge William Kitchen promptly ordered a Straight reporter and other observers from the courtroom and cancelled the charges, declaring them a "nullity". The meeting was deemed to be "in-camera" and Kitchen concluded immediately that Bush had diplomatic immunity during his two-day visit to Canada because he was a head of state.

Davidson subsequently appealed Kitchen's decision and B.C. Supreme Court Justice Deborah Satanove directed the Crown to produce submissions on the publication bans by October 14. The Crown consented to the termination of Judge Kitchen's Provincial Court ban and an interim ban made by B.C. Supreme Court Justice Patrick Dohm .

"We are next in [B.C. Supreme] court at 10 a.m. on November 25 for the Crown to argue that the case is moot and that the court not hear any argument on the substantive issue as to whether George Bush is protected from prosecution under the laws of Canada by what Judge Kitchen called a `concept of diplomatic immunity,'" Davidson wrote in an October 18 e-mail to the Straight.

In an earlier interview with the Straight, Davidson said "nullity" means the charges never legally existed, even though they were approved by a justice of the peace on November 30, 2004. Crown counsel spokesperson Stan Lowe told the Straight that the upcoming November 25 court proceedings—he erroneously referred to the case as " Regina versus Bush"—will focus on two issues.

"First of all, the court has to determine whether it has jurisdiction in the Supreme Court to hear the matter," Lowe said. "It's a review, an application by Gail Davidson arising out of a Provincial Court decision. Secondly, part of the is sue is whether they [LAW] can proceed in their application without the permission of the Attorney General of Canada."

Canadian Attorney General Irwin Cotler must give his consent within eight days of laying charges for the case to continue. The Crown is now raising a preliminary objection that B.C. Supreme Court does not have jurisdiction to adjudicate on Davidson's appeal because the issues raised are no longer moot. "It's great," Davidson said. "Now the Crown's argument is moving from mute to moot."

As a result of the lifting of the publication ban, the Straight has obtained a copy of the Provincial Court transcript from December 6, 2004. It sheds new light on some of the finer details of why Davidson and LAW laid the charges.

"It's not a frivolously filed application," Davidson said last year in court. "The application was filed on the 30th [of November] because Mr. Bush was in Canada, thereby giving Canada the jurisdiction to prosecute under 269(1) [of the Criminal Code of Canada], the torture section."

Deputy regional Crown counsel Marion Paruk stated the Bush couldn't be charged because he is a head of state: "This immunity flows from both the common law, international common law, Canadian common law, as well as by Canadian statute."

In her response—outlining why immunity does not apply to Bush— Davidson was hurried up by Kitchen.

"I can give you a few minutes, not too many. It seems to be a slam dunk to me…I'm not going to get into a long argument about it. It seems to be trite criminal law…"

Davidson pointed out that Canada signed the 1987 Convention Against Torture. As a result, she said, "amendments to the Criminal Code were made to allow Canada to expand its jurisdiction to prosecute crimes of torture."

Addressing directly the Crown's question of immunity, Davidson referred to the Rome Statute, defining torture as a war crime and barring immunity for torture and other war crimes.

During the spring of 2005 Bill C-27 was studied by the House Standing Committee on Agriculture. The Committee recommends extensive amendments, but these amendments do not address the CFIA’s dual and conflicting mandate. The bill still provides the legal framework for adopting so-called “smart regulation” for food and agriculture, which would tie Canada ’s regulatory system to that of the USA .

The CFIA is the agency in charge of preventing BSE in Canadian cattle, which it failed to do in spite of clear warnings and knowledge of other countries’ experience.

The cost?

Thousands of family farm livelihoods, billions of dollars and Canada ’s international reputation.

The CFIA is the agency that bungled the 2004 Avian Flu crisis in BC, unnecessarily killing millions of healthy birds including exotic, rare and irreplaceable genetic stock.

The CFIA is facilitating amendments to the Plant Breeders Rights Act which helps multinational seed companies and hurts family farmers by placing restrictions on farmers’ traditional right to save seed.

According to the Auditor General the CFIA is one of the most secretive agencies in the government of Canada . All of its surveillance and inspection work is hidden from the Canadian public. Yet Bill C-27 would give the CFIA authority to disclose, share and make available ANY information to foreign governments!

The CFIA has a conflicting dual mandate 1. It regulates AND promotes agriculture and food sector. The CFIA is a failed experiment with industry self-regulation. In the risk-benefit balancing act, the CFIA leans towards its agri-business “clients” who reap the trade and revenue benefits while ordinary citizens -- consumers and farmers -- must bear the health, economic and envi ron mental risks.

1 The mandate of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, as outlined in its Corporate Business Plan, is to enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of federal inspection and related services for food and animal and plant health. The objectives of the Agency are to contribute to a safe food supply and accurate product information; to contribute to the continuing health of animals and plants; and to facilitate trade in food, animals, plants and related products. See www.inspection.gc.ca

The government claims that Bill C-27 will protect Canada from bio-terrorism by increasing surveillance. We say Bill C-27 will let the CFIA take away our civil liberties by giving foreign governments and corporations the ability to collect and share ANY information for the purpose of investigating and enforcing ANY law.

Stop Bill C-27! Phone, fax or meet your MP to express your opposition to Bill C-27!

European Court Cases Stall Pharmaceutical Companies' Plans To Control Natural Supplements.

by Helke Ferrie

What do airplanes, pharmaceutical drugs and Codex Alimentarius have in common? Answer: a black box. When an airplane crashes, its black box, retrieved from the wreckage, contains the record of events up to the moment of the crash and enables analysts to determine the cause of the tragedy. The US Federal Drug Agency (FDA) "blackboxes" a drug when post-marketing experience shows it killed a lot of people and frequently produces potentially fatal side effects. Doctors are informed accordingly in the US and Canada . When consulting the annually-updated CPS (Compendium of Pharmaceuticals and Specialties), you will see literally a black box under such drugs with warnings printed inside.

Codex Alimentarius is a black box containing most of what you wish you didn't have to know about the transformation of medical science into a purely iatrogenic enterprise. The late Ivan Illich coined the word "iatrogenic" from the Greek iatros, meaning "physician" and genesis, meaning "creating". Iatrogenesis refers to physician-caused illness. Codex is the political equivalent of the current toxicology manuals because it endorses and promotes for international trade and consumption in the whole wide world everything from pesticides to irradiation, genetically engineered foods and synthetic analogs for drugs and nutrients in preference to bio-compatible natural substances.

Codex does have the power to impose regulations that could restrict the availability of vitamins worldwide.

The Codex black box was opened a crack by the April 5 opinion handed down by Justice Leendert A Geelhoed, the European Union Advocate General, who happened to refer to the arbitrary powers of the Codex-supporting EU legislation as being "about as transparent as a black box". The box was opened wider on July 12th when the European Court of Justice provided a ruling for the EU that zeroed in on the central problem of the entire Codex exercise, namely the preference for synthetic over natural medicinal substances. This is key to understanding Codex, why EU legislation can affect Canada and the US , and what the current health freedom movement wants to achieve.

Their rulings both came in response to legal challenges launched by Dr Robert Verkerk, the executive director of the UK Alliance for Natural Health (www.natural-health.org). His litigation questioned Codex's supporting EU legislation. Dr Verkerk said in a telephone interview on September 16: "It is a serious mistake for you in Canada and the US to believe that whatever happens here in Europe will not happen to you."

By virtue of its mandate from the World Health Organization (WHO) and its Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), Codex does have the power to impose regulations on the world that restrict the dosages of and even the very availability of vitamins, minerals, phytonutrients, amino acids, enzymes, essential fatty acids, probiotics as well as traditional Chinese, Aryuvedic and other old systems of medicine. Codex would have succeeded in doing just that in Europe in August of this year, if the ANH hadn't gone to court.

In 1990-2000 about 7.8 million victims suffered death from properly prescribed and implemented medications.

To understand how all this hangs together we need to go back to the beginning of this process: On November 6, 2001, the European Parliament tabled Directive 2001/83/EC, which states in section 2 and 3 of its preamble the following: "The essential aim of any rules governing the production, distribution and use of medicinal products must be to safeguard public health. However, this objective must be attained by means which will not hinder the development of the pharmaceutical industry or trade in medicinal products within the European Community."

However, since 2001, several factors have shaken the public's faith in pharmaceuticals. For example, the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors updated its guidelines in October 2004 and specifically warned against all the ways that pharmaceutical sponsorship could influence journal articles. www.icmje.org/#conflicts

Dr Carolyn Dean has written, in Death by Modern Medicine that in 1990-2000 about 7.8 million victims suffered death from properly prescribed and implemented medications. In particular, she stated that "There have been 140,000 fatal or near fatal reactions to Vioxx; one third of the millions of women who took fen-phen, the weight loss drug, suffered heart and lung damage; heart disease is caused by Celebrex and all the other non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs; Prozac is causing suicides and homicides as well as heart disease... "

A new book, Selling Sickness, by Ray Moynihan , charges that pharmaceutical companies are quite deliberately trying to sell drugs to people who aren't sick at all — these being a much larger market than actual sick people.

Big Pharma has demonstrated that it fully understands that its products do not work, often kill, and usually harm, as proven by the research they themselves did to establish the toxicity of their products but then hid from the regulators (see Let Them Eat Prozac). Big Pharma staff understands the superior biochemistry of natural substances. Recently, the prestigious British Institute for Science and Society (ISIS) put the whole puzzle together: www.i-sis.org.uk/CFV.php

ISIS reports that pharmaceutical corporations have started to buy up vitamin and mineral companies. Merck has acquired Lamberts, and Wyeth bought Solgar. Virtually all raw materials for supplements are produced by the big pharmaceutical companies, such as Bayer and Hoffman-La Roche. "In fact," Sam Burcher reports on ISIS 's website, "drug companies have gained control of food supplements through pharmaprinting, the result of collaboration between PharmaPrint Inc and the University of Miami . Pharmaprinting is a technology that isolates and measures the bioactivity of an active compound of any plant or natural remedy and replicates it in a laboratory. These compounds are standardized as pharmaceuticals for government approval [necessary for patenting]. Patents are currently pending on pharmaceutical versions of some of the most useful herbal remedies such as St John's Wort (for depression), Echinacea (immune function) Ginko Biloba (brain function), Saw Palmetto (prostate function) and mistletoe (alternative cancer treatment)."

ISIS reports that pharmaceutical corporations have started to buy up vitamin and mineral companies.

Subsequent clinical trials cost about $ 6.5 million per product and gaining patent protection costs another half a million dollars. The whole process takes five years. ISIS observes that, "investors are reluctant to commit unless market exclusivity is assured. One way of creating an exclusive market is to ban or remove natural remedies. The existing US health care market is estimated to be worth US $ 1.5 trillion [which] makes it worth manipulating. [Therefore] the 'foods as drugs' guidelines laid out by Codex were adopted by Australia, Denmark, Germany and Norway and many products have been co-opted by pharmaceutical companies and repacked as drugs. The Health Protection Branch of Canada has registered 'natural therapeutic' food products as drugs. Fish oil (for joints), cranberry capsules (urinary problems) and hawthorn berries (heart) have all been issued DIN numbers (drug identification number)." ISIS concludes, that "this is a thoroughly disproportionate degree of 'protection' imposed on what are in effect harmless food items, especially when conventional drugs kill" so many people every year.

Agricultural and pharmaceutical corporations are trans-national. Sound business practice requires international harmonization in trade. Because most 171 Codex member states are also World Trade Organization members, the stage is set for world-wide trade harmonization. Ratified Codex guidelines are enforced among its members by the WTO court (which operates in secret) as well as by CAFTA, NAFTA and several more trade treaties involving Europe, Australia and North America. Each of these treaties has clauses referring explicitly to Codex for the simple reason that the major players are the pharmaceutical, agricultural and food producing corporations that want to remove every possible trade barrier — or, to put it another way: reduce responsibility for quality.

We live in a world in which corporations hope to create designer customers who are offered one-size-fits-all products to make them into corporate engines of wealth. Today, the customer is the last resource on earth that is not totally controlled and exploited. Customers who ask questions concerning quality, safety and especially sound science are the only formidable barrier remaining to corporate world control.

The July 12th ruling of the International Court of Justice in Luxembourg followed the July 4th Rome meeting of Codex when the 85 countries present ratified these restrictive guidelines for dietary supplements. Canada and the USA were among them. Objections from China and South Africa were ignored. Just as in the original 2001 version, the current guidelines, under Article 6 (2) of the EU Directive, strictly prohibit information about diseases being treatable by nutrients and call for future supplement dosage restrictions. Conspiracy? No way! To borrow a phrase by Moynihan and Cassels about Big Pharma's tactics in general: "This is daylight robbery."

Eight days after the Rome meeting, the International Court of Justice handed down a ruling that surprised everyone. The judges conceded that EU countries were free to have a law that regulated production and trade in dietary supplements, namely the EU Directive, which also forms the basis of the international Codex guidelines. However, the judges agreed with the Advocate General Justice Geelhoed who had in April put his finger on a sore spot and observed that there was a rather odd "preference for the inorganic forms [of vitamins] which results in unjustifiable and disproportionate exclusion of their natural forms, which are, nevertheless, common in the normal diet and generally better tolerated by the body." Justice Geelhoed had also noted that the Directive requires completely unnecessary toxicity studies: "It would be odd to start the evaluation procedure [of all supplements according to risk assessment principles used for toxins and synthetic drugs] from zero again, when it is clear that the products concerned have already undergone [tests] establishing safety and bioavailability [which should be used] as the existing evaluations as a starting point."

2005 was a close call: had the Alliance for Natural Health not appealed to the EU Advocate and then proceeded to the International Court of Justice, Europe would have been the first vast area virtually under complete Big Pharma control. Most vitamins and minerals would have been banned from the European market on August 1 this year, some to return at exorbitant prices after Big Pharma had identified and created patented synthetic analogs.

Now, however, the game has shifted. Big Pharma is no longer solely in control, except in countries that have already adopted these stringent guidelines, such as Denmark , Australia, and especially Germany. I received an email on September 6th from Germany informing me that a bottle of 90 vitamin E capsules now costs 45.50 Euros, which is about $ 70 — manufactured, patented and marketed by a pharmaceutical company and, in limited amounts, available without prescription. This price is about seven times higher than in Canada .

Furthermore, the Court dealt a terrific blow to Big Pharma and the corporate agenda by ruling that this restrictive Directive does not apply to vitamins and minerals in their "natural forms", but only to those from "synthetic sources or those derived from a manufacturing process using chemical substances." Thus, natural substances that have necessarily been part of our diet for the past several million years cannot be regulated in a restrictive manner, nor can they be subjected to toxicity studies in the same manner as is necessary for synthetic chemicals used in drugs. The ANH lawyers who led these two legal challenges state that "food supplements in the EU [will] not be classified as drugs and [will be] readily available across the EU."

However, the battle is far from over. The Court did not forbid the scientific assessment of supplements as part of this international trade harmonization process. That means, they can still be subjected to corporate-driven phony science and be sold at very high prices in very low dosages to make more money from less — which, according to the ANH and Dr Verkerk is exactly what the industry now wants to achieve. Whose science will be used? Big Pharma's "tobacco science", or independent science based on actual research, not financed by any industry? The International Court of Justice clearly orders independent scientific assessments, but enforcing this is another matter. Dr Verkerk said that several leading universities in Europe have joined the health freedom movement in order to establish an assessment process that is truly scientific and not corporate controlled, to ensure that meaningless low dosages will not become the standard. Research institutions and medical organizations in the US are also joining. An international health freedom conference on Codex is taking place in Minneapolis on October 28 – 30th to hammer out strategy.

Most helpfully, a British filmmaker has produced a documentary on Codex entitled "We Become Silent". It will be aired in the US late this year and seen by an estimated 25 million people. On Saturday, November 5th, I will be showing it for the first time in Canada at OISE in Toronto (12 noon – 4 pm) and I will report on the results of the Minneapolis conference. The film shows how Codex may affect Canada , unless we all work to protect natural medicine, which actually works.

Sources:

M Angell, The Truth About The Drug Companies, Random, 2004 (former editor New England Journal of Medicine)

C Dean, MD, Death By Modern Medicine, Matrix Verite, 2005

S Ellison, Health Myths Exposed, Author House, 2005 (former drug designer for Big Pharma)

D Healy, MD, Let Them Eat Prozac, Lorimer, 2003

J Kassirer, MD, On The Take: How Medicines Complicity With Big Business Can Endanger Your Health, Oxford University Press, 2005 (former editor New England Journal of Medicine)

R Moynihan & A Cassels, Selling Sickness: How The Worlds Biggest Pharmaceutical Companies Are Turning Us All Into Patients, Nation Books, 2005 (from the British Medical Journal and Canada's CBC)

German-born, Helke Ferrie is the owner and director of KOS Publishing (incorporated in Ontario, Canada, in July 2002). Ferrie's education includes prehistoric, ancient, Near Eastern and Greek archaeology; Chinese and Buddhist studies; and she holds a master's degree in physical anthropology. Her areas of special interest are the evolution of disease and the application of Complexity Theory to biological evolution.

Religious Evangelism and Sustainability

Every religious evangelist or fundamentalist should be accountable to a vision of a sustainable world

"Belief" is the new political teflon. I saw Mike Wallace , considered a tough questioner, ask a point-blank factual question of a White House administrative official on "60 Minutes". The official started his answer with "I believe..." in reference to this particular fact. Mike Wallace gave him a free pass. No follow up, no accountability, nothing. Karl Rove must know this. Everyone on television wants to steer clear of challenging "belief", because belief is considered more essential than fact. Belief has a sacred quality that in many minds trumps even the most careful scientific evidence, witness the Creationist vs. Evolution "debate".

This is the gift that religious evangelism and fundamentalism has given our culture: the notion that belief (termed "faith" among believers) will sustain and protect us, while facts will not.

Okay, let's say we accept this debatable proposition - does this mean facts could, or should, be ignored?

More and more this seems to be the case. Policies that used to find their value and credibility in facts, be they environmental, economic, or military, are increasingly organizing around a set of beliefs. At least half our citizens appear comfortable with that, as evidenced by our current political and journalistic climate. At least they are not objecting - they are pumping up the ratings of Fox News and right-wing talk radio. But is that because "the American People" are truly on board with these beliefs, or are most of us simply not yet aware of what our collective fog is obscuring?

Ask anyone in the center of the policy transition, someone not a true believer, and you will find great concern about "sustainability". Environmental, economic, and military sustainability is becoming harder and harder to imagine among those who still see value and credibility in facts. "Numbers don't lie", they say, but add an unchallenged belief system and they certainly do. And have, as evidenced by the many documented cases of political interference in the governmental studies that base themselves in science.

So let's step back and consider where the lines are. In some ways it's the old Church vs. Science, Faith vs. Reason debate. But the stakes are higher now and the belief systems subtler, on all sides. Faith-based policies that do not work out because they ignore facts can lead to environmental disasters (global warming), economic seizures (pumping "bubbles" to the bursting point), and military quagmires (an unwinnable "war against terror"). These collapses can ripple out worldwide now, affecting every living being on the planet. The debate is no longer just theological.

Do the belief-based, or "faith-based" policymakers owe anything to those more concerned with facts? It would appear not. The explanations, the justifications, the rationalizations, are broadcast to confuse minds and connect with subconscious and often unexamined emotional reactions. The "how is this supposed to work" question is forever and brilliantly fudged. The Iraq occupation fiasco highlights this political technique. And yet the believers are still given a free pass.

Because the rational mind does not simply disappear upon religious conversion, explanations do exist in religion - they're called theology. It appears to this writer that the theological explanation for dismissing facts is that one who believes in a particular Supreme Being need no longer concern him or herself with uncomfortable facts. When you Believe, everything will be taken care of, and that is the ultimate Fact.

But how can we distinguish this from an ultimate denial of responsibility? Jesus died for our sins, so we just need to keep singing his praises? Does Muhammed, peace be with him, beckon one who experiences a world insulting Muslim dignity at every turn to martyr himself or herself with a suicide bomb? There is no place for fact here, nor sustainability. This world is seen as mere proving ground for our spiritual character.

To those of us who respect fact, this is the very essence of danger: a world controlled by those who, in the name of either God or Mammon, don't care about this Earth, nor any of its inhabitants not identified as allies. So how is life here suppose to work out? Do all problems collapse down to the one problem that we are not all believers? Okay, let's say we accept that... then which belief are we to hold?

Armageddon. Jihad. Holocaust. These are attractive options to more of us than many of us would like to know. Even a non-believer can feel a secret desire for a life-or-death struggle among all peoples, if that would really resolve things once and for all. The policy wonk, with his facts and figures, is like a comical clown next to the epic visions of global catastrophe and spiritual redemption of the believers.

And the rest of us, the doubting, the confused, the unsuccessful, the spiritually seeking who still haven't found what we're looking for - what about us? We are the dross in these visions, dying with the Earth and very possibly sinking into Hell.

I say it's not that easy. There are so many layers of mystery and complexity to this Earth and all its inhabitants, a world created not in six days but over eons that defy the uneducated imagination. Science has more to offer the sense of wonder than any religion, and it hangs together well enough to let airplanes fly, because it concerns itself with facts. What theologian has ever been given such free reign in his own belief system as today's maverick scientist may be, as long as his facts are in order?

We all need a vision of a sustainable world, here as well as hereafter. Without it, we become crazy - a normal, natural, human response that has little to do with faith or lack of it. We can't live in utter chaos and domination by uncaring forces, shivering under an umbrella of wishful thinking. The specter of heartlessness and death hangs over us all, manipulated in a million ways.

We human beings are overwhelmed. One way to respond to overwhelm is to deny responsibility, to suppress our ability to respond, through the cover of a belief and a society based on blind faith. Another way is to embrace fact and imagination both, to find inspiration in working with others using a common language of reason and science that includes metaphysics with its physics, feeling with its analysis. Something inclusive, so we can help each other see things as they are while freeing the unique vision we each may hold.

Doesn't it make sense that even God is more apparent to those whose eyes are open?

Our Public Airwaves

A new vision for Canadian broadcasting

www.PublicAirwaves.ca

Dear Friends and Supporters,

Today marks a tragic milestone -- the start of the second month without OUR CBC. We have to turn up the heat on Paul Martin to bring this terrible lockout to an end.

Thousands of you have already visited our campaign website and sent letters of protest to the Prime Minister. If you have, many thanks. To those who have not, now is the time to act. Please do not let another day go by before doing your part.

Click here to send a message to Paul Martin demanding that he take action to get CBC employees back to work providing us with quality Canadian programming on both radio and TV.

Those of you who have already written to Mr. Martin can still help.Please forward this message to everyone you know or ask them to visit www.OurCBC.ca and send a message to the Prime Minister. To get the government to listen, we have to speak with a louder voice and to do that we have to mobilize every single Canadian who cares about the CBC. If you click HERE we'll send your friends an e-mail for you.

ONE FINAL NOTE: Some people, perhaps confused by the competing claims of management and union, have said this lockout is not about money. Well, earlier this week, the CBC President stopped covering for the government and came clean on that issue. Speaking at McGill University on Tuesday evening, Bob Rabinovitch finally put the blame where much of it really belongs: “The government has said, 'We don’t mind if the CBC atrophies and disappears, because we’re not going to help it.'”

Rabinovitch says “The government cut CBC by $400 million,” and the public broadcaster has not received an extra cent in stabilized funding, aside from cost of living increases for labour, in 35 years.

Click HERE to send a message to the Prime Minister. Thanks for your support!

Yours sincerely,

Arthur Lewis
Executive Director
Our Public Airwaves

arthur@publicairwaves.ca

On Thursday, September 29th at 10 AM inside the Supreme Court Building at 800 Smithe Street , Vancouver , you can watch history in the making and be witness to a defining moment for our country.

The case of Gail Davidson vs. Attorney General, scheduled for that day, could very well determine if the foundation of our country, the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, can be compromised for the benefit of our neighbour, the United States of America. Specifically, it will determine if exceptions can be made to our laws in order to exonerate a US president from his alleged involvement in the torture of a Canadian minor, Omar Khadr, and countless other detainees around the world currently being held by US forces and their allies.

On November 30th of 2004, Lawyers Against the War laid a “criminal information” against Bush in the Provincial Court of British Columbia, Vancouver, alleging seven counts of aiding, abetting and counseling the commission of torture at Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo Bay .

The hearing took place on December 6, 2004. A Provincial Court, Judge William Kitchen, in an extraordinary sequence of events, sealed off the court room, then acceded to the Attorney General’s objections and declared the charges null and void‚ citing Bush’s “diplomatic immunity.” This appears to be in direct contradiction of Canada's laws in regards to the handling of war crimes and torture.

Canada is bound by its ratification of the Statute of the International Criminal Court, signed 18 December 1998 and ratified 7 July 2000). Article 27.1 of that statute says: “This Statute shall apply equally to all persons without any distinction based on official capacity. In particular, official capacity as Head of State or Government, a member of a Government or parliament, an elected representative or a government official shall in no case exempt a person from criminal responsibility under this Statute, nor shall it, in and of itself, constitute a ground for reduction of sentence.”

Furthermore, neither parliament nor the Attorney General of Canada possess the authority to grant any person immunity from prosecution for war crimes, crimes against humanity or genocide, or to suppress investigations and prosecutions by virtue of being the head of a foreign state or otherwise.

Judge Kitchen then finished his handiwork by placing a gag order on the lawyer, Gail Davidson, barring her from speaking about the case and her evidence against George W Bush.

Countless questions arise from the judge’s actions, such as, why the secrecy? The facts of torture of detainees are very much on the public record. Exactly what is Gail Davidson being silenced about? What exceptions are being made to Canada 's laws and why are these being made? Where is Canada's mainstream media on this, and why do they not consider this news?

For those who can, go to the Supreme Court Building on the morning of September 29th. Just past the entrance is an information page outlining where a case will be heard. Find the entry for “ Gail Davidson vs. Attorney General” and make your way to that room and find yourself a seat. Then sit back and watch as Canada 's judicial system does something extraordinary. Our laws will either be upheld or they will be compromised. No matter what the outcome, one thing is certain: You will be a witness to Canadian history.

The Constant Gardener: A movie gets it right about Africa and international conspiracies to hurt and kill the innocent.

The screen adaptation of John Le Carre's thriller, The Constant Gardener, gets two thumbs up from this veteran of covering Africa's victimization by multinational corporations, weapons smugglers, and the "misery industry."

The movie's main plot is a scheme by a consortium of international pharmaceutical companies to use AIDS and tuberculosis-infected Africans as human guinea pigs: plying them with untested drugs with fatal side effects.

The conspiracy is sanctioned by the highest levels of the British government, professional do-gooder" aid organizations, and corrupt African government officials in Kenya and Zimbabwe.

There is even a reference to a Mossad agent who is apparently involved in the conspiracy with a Kenyan government minister.

The Constant Gardener finally tells the true story of what is happening in Africa.

As Americans continue to bury their dead from what has been a series of government sanctioned errors of commission and omission with the Hurricane Katrina disaster, it cannot be overstated that similar wanton indifference to and involvement in Africa's suffering has been the unofficial policy of the United States and Britain for decades. Africa's Holocaust has propelled the names Darfur, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Niger, Somalia, Zaire/Congo, and Angola to front pages around the world.

The Constant Gardener reminds us that these actual human catastrophes were not born in Africa but crafted and engineered from corporate board rooms, private millionaire clubs, and government executive offices from Washington, DC and New York to London and Houston.

John LeCarre's writings are not mere speculation, they are based on years of dealing with the significant movers and shakers in the world's official and unofficial intelligence networks.

The incessant role of some international aid agencies and religious organizations in Africa's woes is The Constant Gardener's greatest expose.

It is something this editor personally witnessed in Rwanda after that nation's U.S. and British-triggered presidential assassinations in 1994 by the U.S.-Anglo client, the Rwandan Patriotic Army, and the resulting (and expected) genocide.

The Constant Gardener reminded me of what I saw in Rwanda and on which I reflected upon in my book, Genocide and Covert Operations in Africa 1993-1999:

"Driving through downtown Kigali one is struck by the numerous aid agencies, all having their own compounds, local and expatriate staffs, and vehicle fleets."

"The 'assistance industry' is lucrative for some people. One expert, R. M. Connaughton, described the situation when new aid organizations arrived on the scene following the tragedy of 1994: 'To those agencies and NGOs that had been in Rwanda from the beginning of the troubles, the new Klondikers in the newly-arrived NGOs were true participants in the gold rush.' Connaughton quotes Geoff Loane, the deputy head of the Red Cross in Nairobi: 'It was convenient and rewarding for some people to be there . . . and they did not necessarily bring the best resources.'

According to Connaughton, one Christian organization from Virginia sought to eradicate cholera through the laying on of hands. He also claimed the number of NGOs in Goma as numbering around one hundred.

Connaughton adds: 'Significantly, the newly-arrived NGOs brought with them attitudes of the military . . . in the heat of the crisis.'"

" Rwanda is almost totally subservient to the indefinite provision of aid from the rest of the world as well as dictates from the Pentagon and Uganda's [President] Museveni. In the history of American assistance to developing nations, Rwanda is far from a success story. The U.S. military forces in Rwanda seem far more interested in providing training for the blood-stained RPF [Rwandan Patriotic Front] than in helping the unfortunate people of that nation." [Source: Genocide and Covert Operations in Africa 1993-1999, Lewiston, NY and Lampeter, Wales: Mellen Press, 1999].

Which brings me to the subject of the neo-cons who have also nested in the Democratic Party. Rwanda and the Washington- and London-supported covert operations that resulted in the deaths of perhaps as many as 5 million people in that country and neighboring Congo and Burundi occurred during Bill Clinton's presidency, although the initial plans began as early as 1989 under George H. W. Bush and his Defense Secretary Dick Cheney. At the time of the Rwandan genocide, U.S. inaction was primarily due to then US ambassador to the UN Madeleine Albright and her assistant Jamie Rubin (married to CNN's Christiane Amanpour). The Albrights and Rubins of the Clinton administration would have everyone believe that the claptrap propaganda in Hotel Rwanda (the same hotel, Hotel des Mille Collines, where I stayed in Rwanda) is what actually happened in 1994 . . . that the genocide was merely triggered by the "crash" of a presidential aircraft carrying two African presidents and their staffs and not by a multiple SAM-16 missile.

It is interesting to note that Jamie Rubin, who was a foreign policy adviser to John Kerry's presidential campaign, has recently signed a deal with neo-con Rupert Murdoch's Sky Television to host an hour-long nightly show called "World News Tonight." Shortly after Peter Jennings' death, the neo-cons have expropriated his ABC News program's name to spew forth more propaganda aimed at confusing the masses. Jennings had it right about many parts of the world, including the Middle East and Africa.

However, the motion picture industry, as we have seen with Fahrenheit 911 and other movies, continues to provide us with facts through cinematic presentations, bypassing the international news network barons who continue to shovel propaganda masquerading as news down our collective throats.

Chertoff - Not FEMA - Delayed The Federal Response
By Jonathan S. Landry, Alison Young and Shannon McCaffrey
Knight Ridder Newspapers
9-14-5

*WASHINGTON* - (KRT) - The federal official with the power to mobilize a massive federal response to Hurricane Katrina was Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, not the former FEMA chief who was relieved of his duties and resigned earlier this week, federal documents reviewed by Knight Ridder show.

Even before the storm struck the Gulf Coast, Chertoff could have ordered federal agencies into action without any request from state or local officials. Federal Emergency Management Agency chief Michael Brown had only limited authority to do so until about 36 hours after the storm hit, when Chertoff designated him as the "principal federal official" in charge of the storm.

As thousands of hurricane victims went without food, water and shelter in the days after Katrina's early morning Aug. 29 landfall, critics assailed Brown for being responsible for delays that might have cost hundreds of lives.

But Chertoff - not Brown - was in charge of managing the national response to a catastrophic disaster, according to the National Response Plan, the federal government's blueprint for how agencies will handle major natural disasters or terrorist incidents. An order issued by President Bush in 2003 also assigned that responsibility to the homeland security director.

But according to a memo obtained by Knight Ridder, Chertoff didn't shift that power to Brown until late afternoon or evening on Aug. 30, about 36 hours after Katrina hit Louisiana and Mississippi. That same memo suggests that Chertoff may have been confused about his lead role in disaster response and that of his department.

"As you know, the President has established the `White House Task Force on Hurricane Katrina Response.' He will meet with us tomorrow to launch this effort. The Department of Homeland Security, along with other Departments, will be part of the task force and will assist the Administration with its response to Hurricane Katrina," Chertoff said in
the memo to the secretaries of defense, health and human services and other key federal agencies.

On the day that Chertoff wrote the memo, Bush was in San Diego presiding over a ceremony marking the 60th anniversary of the end of World War II.

Chertoff's Aug. 30 memo for the first time declared Katrina an "Incident of National Significance," a key designation that triggers swift federal coordination. The following afternoon, Bush met with his Cabinet, then appeared before TV cameras in the White House Rose Garden to announce the government's planned action.

That same day, Aug. 31, the Department of Defense, whose troops and equipment are crucial in such large disasters, activated its Task Force Katrina. But active-duty troops didn't begin to arrive in large numbers along the Gulf Coast until Saturday.

White House and homeland security officials wouldn't explain why Chertoff waited some 36 hours to declare Katrina an incident of national significance and why he didn't immediately begin to direct the federal response from the moment on Aug. 27 when the National Hurricane Center predicted that Katrina would strike the Gulf Coast with catastrophic force in 48 hours. Nor would they explain why Bush felt the need to
appoint a separate task force.

Chertoff's hesitation and Bush's creation of a task force both appear to contradict the National Response Plan and previous presidential directives that specify what the secretary of homeland security is assigned to do without further presidential orders. The goal of the National Response Plan is to provide a streamlined framework for swiftly delivering federal assistance when a disaster - caused by terrorists or Mother Nature - is too big for local officials to handle.

Dana Perino, a White House spokeswoman, referred most inquiries about the memo and Chertoff's actions to the Department of Homeland Security.

"There will be an after-action report" on the government's response to Hurricane Katrina, Perino said. She added that "Chertoff had the authority to invoke the Incident of National Significance, and he did it on Tuesday."

Perino said the creation of the White House task force didn't add another bureaucratic layer or delay the response to the devastating hurricane. "Absolutely not," she said. "I think it helped move things along." When asked whether the delay in issuing the Incident of National Significance was to allow Bush time to return to Washington, Perino replied: "Not that I'm aware of."

Russ Knocke, a spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security, didn't dispute that the National Response Plan put Chertoff in charge in federal response to a catastrophe. But he disputed that the bureaucracy got in the way of launching the federal response.

"There was a tremendous sense of urgency," Knocke said. "We were mobilizing the greatest response to a disaster in the nation's history."
Knocke noted that members of the Coast Guard were already in New Orleans performing rescues and FEMA personnel and supplies had been deployed to the region.

The Department of Homeland Security has refused repeated requests to provide details about Chertoff's schedule and said it couldn't say specifically when the department requested assistance from the military.

Knocke said a military liaison was working with FEMA, but said he didn't know his or her name or rank. FEMA officials said they wouldn't provide information about the liaison.

Knocke said members of almost every federal agency had already been meeting as part of the department's Interagency Incident Management Group, which convened for the first time on the Friday before the hurricane struck. So it would be a mistake, he said, to interpret the memo as meaning that Tuesday, Aug. 30 was the first time that members of
the federal government coordinated.

The Chertoff memo indicates that the response to Katrina wasn't left to disaster professionals, but was run out of the White House, said George Haddow , a former deputy chief of staff at FEMA during the Clinton administration and the co-author of an emergency management textbook.

"It shows that the president is running the disaster, the White House is running it as opposed to Brown or Chertoff," Haddow said. Brown "is a convenient fall guy. He's not the problem really. The problem is a system that was marginalized."

A former FEMA director under President Reagan expressed shock by the inaction that Chertoff's memo suggested. It showed that Chertoff "does not have a full appreciation for what the country is faced with - nor does anyone who waits that long," said Gen. Julius Becton Jr. , who was FEMA director from 1985-1989.

"Anytime you have a delay in taking action, there's a potential for losing lives," Becton told Knight Ridder. "I have no idea how many lives we're talking about. ... I don't understand why, except that they were inefficient."

Chertoff's Aug. 30 memo came on the heels of a memo from Brown, written several hours after Katrina made landfall, showing that the FEMA director was waiting for Chertoff's permission to get help from others within the massive department. In that memo, first obtained by the Associated Press last week, Brown requested Chertoff's "assistance to make available DHS employees willing to deploy as soon as possible." It
asked for another 1,000 homeland security workers within two days and 2,000 within a week.

The four-paragraph memo ended with Brown thanking Chertoff "for your consideration in helping us meet our responsibilities in this near catastrophic event."

According to the National Response Plan, which was unveiled in January by Chertoff's predecessor, Tom Ridge , the secretary of homeland security is supposed to declare an Incident of National Significance when a catastrophic event occurs.

"Standard procedures regarding requests for assistance may be expedited or, under extreme circumstances, suspended in the immediate aftermath of an event of catastrophic magnitude," according to the plan, which evolved from earlier plans and lessons learned after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. "Notification and full coordination with the States will occur, but the coordination process must not delay or impede the rapid deployment and use of critical resources."

Should Chertoff have declared Katrina an Incident of National Significance sooner - even before the storm struck? Did his delay slow the quick delivery of the massive federal response that was needed? Would it have made a difference?

"You raise good questions," said Frank J. Cilluffo , the director of George Washington University 's Homeland Security Planning Institute. It's too early to tell, he said, whether unfamiliarity with or glitches in the new National Response Plan were factors in the poor early response to Katrina .

"Clearly this is the first test. It certainly did not pass with flying colors," Cilluffo said of the National Response Plan.

Mike Byrne , a former senior homeland security official under Ridge who worked on the plan, said he doesn't think the new National Response Plan caused the confusion that plagued the early response to Katrina .

Something else went wrong, he suspects. The new National Response Plan isn't all that different from the previous plan, called the Federal Response Plan.

"Our history of responding to major disasters has been one where we've done it well," Byrne said. "We need to figure out why this one didn't go as well as the others did. It's shocking to me."

Chertoff's Aug. 30 memo is posted at www.krwashington.com
To read the National Response Plan, go to:
http://www.dhs.gov/interweb/assetlibrary/NRP(underscore)FullText.pdf

(Knight Ridder Newspapers correspondents Seth Borenstein and William
Douglas contributed to this report.)

The recent tragic events in New Orleans and surrounding areas remind us that non-linear events can occur in human affairs. These are events that are discontinuous with the time period preceding them, and often involve tremendous suffering. It therefore behooves us to look into them:

There are two basic types of non-linear events—those that cannot be predicted using current technology, and those that can. Examples of the first type are the explosion of Krakatoa in the 1880s and the recent tsunami in southeast Asia. Perhaps this type of event will be predictable some day, but it isn't now.

The second type of non-linear event is more germaine, since its predictable quality allows for the possibility of a meaningful intervention to prevent or ameliorate the oncoming catastrophe.

This type of predictability, however, has a particular quality, because we can say that the event is going to happen but we can't say exactly when. That is, though the exact timing can't be pinpointed, that the event will happen is a virtual certainty.

Sadly, Hurricane Katrina and its associated suffering were of this predictable type. That is, though the exact timing of the horrific flooding of New Orleans could not have been predicted, that the flooding was going to happen sooner or later was more or less certain. For two reasons:

First, one of the standard predictions of global warning is that weather will become more extreme, and in particular that hurricanes will become more violent. Warm surface water is the fuel upon which hurricanes feed, and global warming theory predicts that the surface temperature of the ocean will rise.

New and more sophisticated measurements have recently confirmed this significant rise in the surface temperature of the ocean. And concomitantly, violent hurricanes have been occuring more frequently in recent years.

Second, the New Orleans levees that prevent the waters of Lake Pontchartrain from flooding into the city have been in need of repair. Though numerous engineers and local officials have requested more federal assistance for the levees, the budget for this preventive rebuilding effort has been drastically slashed in recent years.

Thus, though Hurricane Katrina itself could not have been predicted, that New Orleans would sustain a hurricane of this force sooner or later—and flood as a result—was a reasonable certainty.

With this in mind, let's look at three non-linear events that are now highly likely to strike humanity in the near future:

Since 1960, human population has risen geometrically, economies have expanded enormously and humanity's energy needs have exploded. All modern economies run on fossil fuels and cannot, with the current infrastructure, run without them.

Moreover, major world economies are now of necessity importing more and more oil. In 1960 the U.S. was a net exporter; now it imports 60% of its oil needs. China , a net exporter only a few years ago, now imports 40% of its oil. India imports 70%. Japan , 99%.

Yet the peak in oil discovery occurred in 1960. And: Less oil was discovered in the 1970s than in the 1960s. Less oil was discovered in the 1980s than in the 1970s. Less oil was discovered in the 1990s than in the 1980s. And the trend is continuing in the 2000s.

In the U.S. , refineries are operating at 98% of capacity and have been doing so for some years. That has serious implications, because a system at the limits of its capacity is extremely vulnerable to "shocks".

All systems of any kind receive stressors from time to time; that is the nature of reality. If a system has extra capacity it has a much greater chance of withstanding any given stressor.

Further, a system operated at capacity deteriorates over time. As an example, the condition of U.S. oil refineries has been steadily declining because they have to be kept constantly running and thus can't easily be shut down for the deep maintenance that is increasingly needed.

Moreover, no new refineries have been built in the U.S. for 30 years. The bureaucaratic and regulatory hurdles have become almost insurmountable due to the Nimby phenomenon—build it, but "not in my backyard".

Along the same lines, the U.S. desperately needs more natural gas but has not been able to build new liquid natural gas (LNG) terminals to receive increased LNG shipments. The U.S. is a country with a vast appetite for energy but a strong public dislike for the infrastructure necessary to produce and maintain it.

The result is that the U.S. will spend $300 billion more for energy this year than last due to the rising prices of fossil fuel and the need to import larger amounts of it.

And the United States still has no serious energy policy. The recent U.S. energy bill contains no real plan, no real management function to help coordinate efforts in various areas. It's basically just a big giveaway of money, mostly to companies that are already awash in profits due to high and rising fossil fuel prices.

And an energy bill that just about completely ignores the issue of overall vehicle gas mileage cannot be considered serious, because conservation is the most effective method available to reduce dependence on imported fossil fuels. The reason for this is that it's a lot cheaper to save fossil fuel than to buy it.

Worldwide, the same is true. In a world where the margin between production and consumption of oil is only 1%, where the average oil field is 35 years old and where new discoveries have been relentlessly declining, it's only a matter of time before "peak oil" is reached and worldwide production begins to decrease.

A tremendous amount of progress could be made in the area of conservation and efficiency, but a curious belief is impeding many efforts—the belief that conservation necessarily implies a reduction in economic activity.

Actually, just the opposite is the case. For instance, British Petroleum has reduced its carbon emissions 10% below 1990 levels, thereby saving itself $650 million in energy bills over the next 10 years. DuPont has reduced energy use 7% while boosing production 30%. Savvy companies are starting to realize that increased energy efficiency greatly contributes to increased profitability.

Almost everything could be made much more efficient. For instance, studies conducted by PG&E have concluded that houses could be made using greater, more efficient insulation that would need no heating even in sub-zero temperatures and no air conditioning in summer, while costing no more than a regular house. Plus the long-term savings in heating oil and electricity would be dramatic.

Currently, only 13% of the energy burned by the average vehicle actually reaches the wheels. A huge immediate saving, as pointed out by energy expert Amory Lovins, would be to halve the weight of the car by using carbon-fiber composites instead of metal.

This would immediately double the fuel economy of the vehicle. If combined with hybrid technology, vehicles getting over 100 mpg could be manufactured. And recent advances in manufacturing techniques have made carbon composites cost-competitive with steel. It only requires boldness and vision to begin producing such vehicles— the technology already exists.

But wouldn't such a lighter car be less safe in a crash? No, such a vehicle would be safer because carbon-composite materials can absorb 6 to 12 times as much crash energy per ounce as steel.

Factories, homes, buildings, vehicles, appliances and electronic equipment could all be made dramatically more effficient and actually put more money into the economy by drastically saving on sky-high energy bills.

And this is not to mention the advantages conferred by renewable energy sources, particularly wind and solar, which I've discussed extensively elsewhere. Particularly advantageous would be to combine solar and wind energy generators, because days that are poor for wind—sunny, calm days—are especially good for solar.

What's needed is a U.S. and global "Apollo project" for energy. Just as America focused its talents and capital to accomplish the seemingly miraculous feat of putting a man on the moon in a decade, a similarly focused effort is needed. It's estimated that with a focused effort a carbon-free economy could be achieved within a few decades.

Such an effort would be a real beacon for the world. It would not only be the equivalent of a huge tax cut for global economies, but would do so without increasing deficits. If such an effort is not undertaken by humanity, the alternative will be an "energy tsunami" that is more predictable with each passing day.

Another Katrina waiting in the wings, and then some, is the "financial tsunami" that's just offshore of reality but moving in on us fast.

The thing about this financial hurricane, though, is how invisible it is on the surface. On the surface, growth in GDP is 3.5%; unemployment is 4.9%; the CPI is about 3%; and houses are in a bull market. What's not to like?

But beneath the surface, trouble is brewing and has been for quite some time now. And what is the essence of that trouble? There are many factors to this building hurricane, but the essence of it is the enormous debt bubble that the U.S. has built up.

Debt bubbles are trouble. Just ask Argentina. All during the 1990s Argentina seemed to be very prosperous. It had low inflation, low unemployment, and a nicely rising GDP. So what was the problem?

The essence of the problem was that the Argentine government kept relentlessly spending more than it was taking in—and financing the resulting deficits with bonds issued to foreigners. Sound familiar?

But the Argentines weren't concerned. Times were good. True, the government debt kept piling up and up and up, but Argentina wasn't really focused on that. The excessive spending by the government suited the citizens and suited the government, since everybody seemed to be getting something for nothing. So what if Argentina was issuing lots of bonds to foreigners to pay for the good times?

The whole process worked spendidly right up until the moment that Argentina suddenly went broke. As the debt kept piling up the markets started getting more and more nervous, so the interest rate that Argentina had to pay on its bonds started rising too—and then kept on rising.

"How foolish you are, Jimmy, to compare Argentina then to the U.S. now," you might say. After all, aren't United States Treasury bonds selling at the lowest interest rates in two generations?

Yup, indeed they are. And that's where the plot thickens.

You see, Asia wants to sell us lots of stuff—textiles, shoes, electronics, garden hoses, computers, cars, you name it. Their economies are export-oriented. That's where most of their growth has been coming from.

This being so, they've had a strong incentive to keep their currencies down in relation to the U.S. dollar, so that their exports will seem inexpensive to us. To accomplish that goal, the Asian countries have been buying enormous amounts of U.S. Treasury paper—and in the process drastically holding down U.S. long-term interest rates.

Again, it's a game that seems to suit everybody. The U.S. government gets to finance its increasing deficits at low rates. U.S. consumers like it because it holds down U.S. long-term interest rates, thus financing all those new housing mortgages. Here's a quiz for you: Do you think all that ocean of available financing could have anything to do with exponentially-rising house and condo prices?

And of course the Asian countries—China, Japan, South Korea, India, etc.—like it because they get to sell us lots and lots of manufactured goods. Just check the label the next time you buy something. And of course, a little side-effect: the hollowing-out of the U.S. manufacturing base as jobs flow to Asia. Gee, I wonder if that's why incomes have stagnated while profits and asset prices have soared?

Recently, the game has changed a little. Middle East oil countries swimming in high oil revenues and hedge funds based in the Cayman Islands have partly replaced Asia as the marginal source of funds buying U.S. Treasury paper. No matter; the game continues and times are good.

Meanwhile, the riskiness of the debt keeps rising. Junk bonds now represent 62% of corporate bond issuance. And consumers are buying houses with adjustable-rate mortgages, interest-only mortgages, negative-amortization mortgages and other fantasmagorical financing that allows buying much more house on the same income.

I know it's uncouth to ask, but what happens if foreigners tire of our debt and the overvalued dollar starts crashing? What happens if foreigners tire of our debt and so long-term interest rates start rising dramatically? Can we spell "housing, stock and bond crash"?

Meanwhile, also, U.S. banks have decreased loan-loss reserves to only 1.2%, an all-time low. But then, who needs reserves when you're making so much money on your loans, right? Oh I forgot, that's what the banks in Argentina said right up until the systemic banking crisis hit the country and bank deposits were frozen.

By the end of 2002, a country that had once been one of the ten wealthiest in the world had 60% of its population below the poverty line. The Argentine middle class had basically disappeared. But it couldn't happen here, right?

The thing is, U.S. banks cannot now withstand any shocks or stresses. U.S. consumers and municipalities, up to their respective eyeballs in debt, cannot stand any stresses or shocks either. And the U.S. government, its trade deficit at 6% of GDP—hmm, right at the level where currencies tend to fall into crisis—also cannot stand any stresses.

Yet we know that the nature of reality is that every system is presented with a severe stressor from time to time. This time will be no exception; it's just a matter of when not if. A new Hurricane Katrina is waiting just offshore.

I wish I could say that there was something to be done, but once a debt bubble has gotten beyond a certain point its bursting becomes a virtual certainty. The bursting can be delayed—by fresh injections of fiat credit—but not avoided. And the longer the bursting is delayed, the more catastrophic its effects when it finally does occur.

In this case we cannot avoid the hurricane, but we have the opportunity to learn its lessons. An economy grows sustainably by saving and investing in new productive capacity that in turn creates sustainable jobs. There's no shortcut; when growth in credit runs substantially ahead of GDP for an extended period, trouble lies ahead.

In future, governments would be wise to keep the lessons of Argentina in mind when considering their budgets and spending bills. And central banks would be wise to nip asset bubbles in the bud by restricting credit before credit booms reach the point of no return.

When something is allowed to reach an extreme, it will sooner or later produce its opposite extreme. This is an interesting principle we'll talk more about further on.

A third type of hurricane lying in wait is the ecological one. Though at this time the ecological hurricane seems to be farther offshore than the others, it has the potential to be the most powerful storm of all.

Though I've talked about them elsewhere, a brief catalog of signs can be recounted here. Each of these phenomena is a canary in the mineshaft, so to speak, signaling us that something is off. Taken together, they are warning of an impending catastrophe:

–The planet getting warmer.
–Weather becoming more violent.
–Glaciers melting.
–Mountain icecaps receding.
–Forests and jungles disappearing.
–Species becoming endangered/extinct.
–Fisheries becoming depleted.
–Increasing toxins in air and water.
–Rising rates of cancer and mutations.
–Increasing water shortages.

...and so on. Though many laudable efforts have been and are being made to counter the causes of ecological decline, a true sense of global urgency will be needed to achieve a sustainable planet.

It may seem ironic to many, but probably the single most helpful step that can be taken to assist and restore nature is, in George Musser's words, "to hang a price tag on her."

Some people maintain that it is demeaning to nature to attach a price tag to her benefits. But perhaps it actually honors nature, for it may be the very thing that could save her (and thus ourselves as well). How? When nature's benefits have price tags, those benefits can enter into business and economic calculations for the first time.

As things stand now, nature is mostly invisible in market calculations. Economic statistics do not take account of the many benefits provided by nature, and as a result the economic statistics are distorted.

For instance, if we clearcut a forest and sell the lumber, GDP will rise. Yet we've actually lost an invaluable asset that could provide benefits for generations to come. In other words, a loss has been incurred that, in economic statistics, shows up as a gain.

That's distortion. This gross distortion of the price of lumber, as an example, prevents the price mechanism from working its wonders to provide incentives towards an ecologically sustainable lumber industry.

The price mechanism is a very powerful force, since it automatically tends to allocate resources in the most efficient ways. However, like electricity or fire or other powerful forces, it can help us or hurt us depending on how wisely it is used.

For example, activities such as mining, farming and driving all have a heavy impact on the environment, yet their ecological costs remain largely absent from economic calculations. Because the full cost of these activities is not accounted for, there is little economic incentive to conserve nature in performing them.

So the question naturally arises: How to best incorporate the immense power of free markets in order to benefit and preserve nature? How can we make nature part of the "price" of various business and economic activities?

A really good way to do this is to use a process known as cap-and-trade. An example always helps in clarifying:

Let's say you want to cut sulpher emissions from power plants. First the government sets the goal: this many tons of emission will be allowed in total. Then from that total the government (or some authorization agency) creates
standardized permits.

Each permit allows a standardized unit of sulpher to be emitted, let's say one ton of sulpher. If you're a power plant, you must have one of these one-ton permits for each ton of sulpher you emit.

Then the relevant agency simply auctions off the available permits to the highest bidders. Those power plants that are least efficient and emitting the most sulpher will need the most permits and will wind up paying the most money to obtain them.

However, this creates a powerful incentive for inefficient power plants to invest in more efficient processes that will emit less sulpher and need fewer permits.

From there you let the free market operate. Each power plant will face a trade-off between buying permits to allow pollution and investing in equipment to become less polluting. The point is that each power plant will make their own decision, depending upon their own particular situation, yet the overall pollution cap is achieved.

And then, every few years or whenever, the government or the regulatory body lowers the overall cap of emitted sulpher—but again allows the free market to determine how that cap is to be achieved.

The genius of this system is that it combines the best features of government and the free market. Government sets the overall goal, but then creates a market in sulpher permits (or whatever) that allows the price-mechanism of the free market to determine, in the most efficient way, how that goal will be reached.

In fact, this is exactly what was done in 1990 when the United States set up the first cap-and-trade system. But the principle applies everywhere. For instance:

Cap-and-trade is being used to set limits on overfishing in the U.S. and New Zealand. Fishermen bid for permits that allow them to "harvest" a certain amount of fish. This is beneficial to all, including fishermen, because it allows fisheries to operate at a sustainable level.

The European Union has set up the first market in carbon dioxide. Costa Rica and Mexico have set up markets in units of forest preserved. The U.S. has set up a market in acres of wetland preserved or restored. And so on.

Further, those countries that lead the world in sustainable technologies such as renewable energy, efficient cars and buildings and ecological restoration will gain enormous economic advantages as these technologies become huge businesses and are exported to the rest of the world.

Properly conceived, business and the environment are not at odds. On the contrary, when nature is accounted for economically, profitable business and a sustainable environment are seen to be two wings of the same bird.

A fourth kind of hurricane waiting in the wings is the fact that the U.S.—upon which the world still depends at this point—is seriously overstretched in a number of areas and has little or no margin of safety left.

We've touched upon the financial situation above, and discussed the consequences of the vast and historic debt bubbles that have formed. The bottom line of these bubbles is that they make the financial system more and more fragile.

For instance, the U.S. Federal Reserve is now caught in a conundrum. If it keeps on raising interest rates it will drive the U.S. into a recession as it becomes more and more difficult for borrowers to service their debts.

On the other hand, if the Fed doesn't continue raising rates the dollar is likely to crash because foreign lenders are becoming increasingly leary of buying the bonds of such a profligate government as the U.S. But a crash in the dollar would itself set off a recession. That's fragility.

But it's not just in the financial arena that this is occuring. Another example is the American military. The U.S. is maintaining over 700 military bases around the world, spending hundreds of billions on high-tech weaponry and tied down in an unrelenting mess in Iraq. In the process it has stretched its military almost to the breaking point.

This was shown most dramatically during the recent and ongoing crisis in New Orleans and beyond, when the U.S. National Guard was urgently needed in the afflicted areas but had difficulty responding because so many of its men and equipment were in Iraq.

Because of its overstretch military, if the U.S. were to encounter a true military crisis now it would face the greatest military challenge since Washington's desperate situation during the Revolutionary War 200 years ago.

If the Chinese were to invade Taiwan, if the Iraq conflict were to become a wider war, if the struggle for fossile fuel resources were to erupt into open warfare—to take just three examples—the United States would be severely compromised.

Those things and others may or may not happen, but that something of that nature will happen sooner or later is a virtual certainty. In other words, as in the financial area, we are more and more dependent on the persistence of a comforting stability—a stability which is becoming more and more precarious with the passage of time.

This same phenomenon of overstretched resources is evident in the nation's infrastructure. As reported recently in the New York Times, the American Society of Civil Engineers recently surveyed 15 infrastructure categories—including bridges, sewer systems, public schools and drinking water—"and issued an overall grade of D".

Warnings abound. The 2003 electricity blackout in the Northeast. The 2004 vaccine shortage. The California energy shortage of a few years back. American public school students ranked near the bottom among developed nations. And, not least, the flooding in New Orleans.

Infrastructure of all kinds is being starved for funds as the country directs more and more resources into militarism, unaffordable tax cuts, corporate welfare and pork-barrel politics. Meanwhile, we see government appointments based on cronyism rather than competence, producing a dwindling infrastructure of government services, as we've seen most recently in emergency management.

Abroad, a different kind of infrastructure is crumbling—the goodwill accumulated by the U.S. over many decades for everything from helping to defeat Nazism to our assistance in rebuilding Europe to providing a (mostly) salutary example of democracy and the rule of law.

Now, as polls have shown, the U.S. is increasingly seen abroad as arrogant, insensitive and pugnacious. This has resulted from such things as the Abu Graib scandal, the discarding of treaties including the Geneva Conventions and the Kyoto Accords, the rush to war in Iraq and so on. This has alienated much of the world.

It can be argued that all of this doesn't make a whole lot of difference. After all, we possess the world's largest economy and the world's largest military and we can do pretty much what we want. And that argument can seem true—right up until the minute that our fragility is tested by a pressing need for allies, infrastructure or resources. Then we may suddenly find that the well is dry.

In general, we humans—perhaps all sentient beings in the universe—seem to take the view that if something hasn't happened yet, it won't. The danger signs are everywhere, from more violent hurricanes to the unfathomable global debt structure to the skyrocketing price of fossil fuels to the melting of the polar icecaps.

In the face of these oncoming hurricanes, complacency seems to reign. And not just complacency, but extreme complacency. We step outdoors, it's a nice sunny day, everything seems to be normal—what's the problem? No need to listen to Cassandras and worryworts.

A few engineers and officials tried to warm that the levees in New Orleans weren't prepared for a Category 4 storm, but these warnings went unheeded. Life went on. A major hurricane had never struck New Orleans before—why should one do so this season? Besides, if one does strike we'll muddle through it somehow.

There are a number of dedicated people trying to warn about ecological catastrophe now, but the vast majority of us are still ignoring it. We read isolated stories—"Wild tigers will be extinct in 20 years" or "The Amazon is receding" or "Underground aquifers are being depleted" and so on, but it's not yet obvious to connect the dots and realize that nothing less than the viability of life on earth is at stake—and with it the fate of the human race.

This complacency is most easily measured in the financial arena, where statistics are a way of life. For instance, let me tell you about the stock market:

Even though the S&P 500 (the standard measure of the U.S. stock market) has only recovered 62% of its all-time high in 2000, bullish sentiment now is higher than it was then. Everybody has learned by now to buy on the dips. And everybody knows that "over the long haul the stock market gains 9% a year."

In fact, there's an indicator called the VIX which actually measures complacency in the stock market. The lower this index is, the more complacency there is about the market. The lower it is, the less investors are concerned about a stock market decline.

And where is the VIX now? Well, it's close to the lowest levels ever recorded. Hmm, that's interesting.

Then we might look at mutual fund cash levels: The more bullish mutual funds are, the more fully invested they are and thus the lower their cash levels are. It is a contrary indicator: Low cash levels are historically found at major market tops and high levels at major market bottoms.

The mutual fund cash level is kind of a complacency measure itself, since low levels of cash mean less and less money is being held in reserve for a financial panic or a major bear market. And where is the mutual fund cash level now? Well, let's see, at 3.9% it just happens to be the lowest in history.

Complacency reigns. Housing prices rose 13% nationally

	Words From The World Outside
	Making the Connections Between Canada and Africa Stephen Lewis draws a line. First article in a week-long series from thetyee.ca	Nov 7/05
	Tamiflu Gilead Chair Was... Rummy From FreeMarketNews.com, a dark tale of... could it be... coincidence? Not likely...	Oct 28/05
	Bush Publication Ban Lifted A Vancouver lawyer has won a procedural victory in her attempt to prosecute George Bush for war crimes.. story by Matthew Burrows from the Georgia Straight website	Oct 28/05
	Stop Bill C-27 – Protect the Canadian food system! From 'Beyond Factory Farming' website	Oct 22/05
	European Court Cases Stall Pharmaceutical Companies' Plans To Control Natural Supplements. by Helke Ferrie, owner and director of KOS Publishing	Oct 13/05
	Religious Evangelism & Sustainability An article by Alex Yourke, exploring the gap between faith-based and fact-based politics	Sept 26/05
	Save Our CBC Send Paul Martin the message that the CBC is important to you and to Canada. Find out more in this letter from 'Our Public Awarewaves' exec Arthur Lewis	Sept 18/05
	War Crimes Trial Comes To Vancouver Bush's alleged torture charges show up in Vancouver Supreme Court room: article from The Republic of East Van, by Dan Crawford	Sept 17/05
	'The Constant Gardener' - Film Gets It Right About Africa About Africa's victimization by multinational corporations, weapons smugglers, and the "misery industry." by Wayne Madsen	Sept 17/05
	Chertoff - Not FEMA - Delayed The Federal Response Homeland Security Chief responsible, not the FEMA chief who was forced to resign (by Landry, Young & McCaffrey, Knight Ridder Newspapers)	Sept 17/05
	In the Eye of the Storm A lucid analysis of the looming global crisis, by Jim Sloman (from mayyoubehappy.com)	Sept 16/05