Tuesday, April 6, 2010
The public library is a great equaliser.
When you are growing up there are two institutional places that affect you most powerfully: the church, which belongs to God, and the public library, which belongs to you. The public library is a great equaliser.
- Rolling Stones lead guitarist Keith Richards, in his upcoming autobiography
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Dave Kaiser, Senior Investment Advisor
Canaccord Wealth Management
- Rolling Stones lead guitarist Keith Richards, in his upcoming autobiography
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Dave Kaiser, Senior Investment Advisor
Canaccord Wealth Management
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
conservatism is another name for disaster.
"The problem wasn't just that the CPA (Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq) was understaffed, it was also that it was staffed by people who lacked the baseline belief in the public sphere that is required for the complex task of reconstructing a state from the ground up. As the political scientist Michael Wolfe puts it, "Conservatives cannot govern well for the same reason that vegetarians cannot prepare a world-class boeuf bourguignon. If you believe that what you are called upon to do is wrong, you are unlikely to do it very well." He adds, "As a way of governing, conservatism is another name for disaster."
It certainly was in Iraq. Much has been made of the youth and inexperience of the U. S. political appointees in the CPA - the fact that a handful of twentysomething Republicans were given key roles in overseeing Iraq' $13 billion budget. While there is no question that the members of the so-called brat pack were alarmingly young, that was not their greatest liability. These were front-line warriors from America's counter-revolution against all relics of Keynesianism, many of them linked to the Heritage Foundation, ground zero of Friedmanism since it was launched in 1973.
- Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine:The Rise of Disaster Capitalism
ISBN 978-0-676-97891-8
It certainly was in Iraq. Much has been made of the youth and inexperience of the U. S. political appointees in the CPA - the fact that a handful of twentysomething Republicans were given key roles in overseeing Iraq' $13 billion budget. While there is no question that the members of the so-called brat pack were alarmingly young, that was not their greatest liability. These were front-line warriors from America's counter-revolution against all relics of Keynesianism, many of them linked to the Heritage Foundation, ground zero of Friedmanism since it was launched in 1973.
- Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine:The Rise of Disaster Capitalism
ISBN 978-0-676-97891-8
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
AIDS deniers kill hundreds of thousands
Against the evidence
Richard Wilson
Published 18 September 2008 The New Statesman
Richard Wilson on the crucial difference between doubt and dogmatism
Throughout the 1960s, the tobacco industry famously spent millions promoting a small group of vociferous "sceptics" who, in the face of overwhelming evidence, continued to deny the link between smoking and cancer. The strategy paid off. Long after a clear scientific consensus had emerged, much of the public still believed that the case remained unproven.
In a sceptical age, even those disseminating wholly bogus ideas - from corporate pseudo-science to 9/11 conspiracy theories - will often seek to appropriate the language of rational inquiry. But there is a meaningful difference between being a "sceptic" and being in denial. The genuine sceptic forms his beliefs through a balanced evaluation of the evidence. The sceptic of the bogus variety cherry-picks evidence on the basis of a pre-existing belief, seizing on data, however tenuous, that supports his position, and yet declaring himself "sceptical" of any evidence, however compelling, that undermines it.
While it is easy to guess the motivations of an industry-funded scientist denying the dangers posed by his commercial sponsor, or a far-right historian expressing "scepticism" about the Holocaust, other cases are more puzzling. It is difficult to explain why, for example, a respected academic would dismiss the mountain of proof that HIV causes Aids. But several have, notably the Berkeley virologist Peter Duesberg.
HIV is a type of "retrovirus". Duesberg has argued for decades that retroviruses rarely, if ever, harm their hosts. Rather than modify this theory in the light of evidence that one such virus was killing millions, Duesberg in the late 1980s announced his "scepticism" about that evidence, and has stuck to his guns ever since.
Early on, these ideas found a receptive audience among HIV sufferers, desperate for an alternative prognosis. The cause was later taken up by conspiracy theorists convinced that Aids was a money-spinning fabrication of the global pharmaceutical industry.
In South Africa, at the beginning of this decade, Aids scepticism gained currency with a political class dismayed at the prices being charged for life-saving medicines. Under the influence of Duesberg and his fellow "dissidents", Thabo Mbeki's government chose to delay for several years public provision of anti-HIV drugs. The economist Nicoli Nattrass estimates that this decision - made amid one of the world's worst Aids epidemics - may already have cost hundreds of thousands of lives.
Bogus scepticism does not centre on an impartial search for the truth, but on a no-holds-barred defence of a preconceived ideological position. The bogus sceptic is thus, in reality, a disguised dogmatist, made all the more dangerous for his success in appropriating the mantle of the unbiased and open-minded inquirer.
Richard Wilson's "Don't Get Fooled Again" is out now, published by Icon Books (£12.99)
Richard Wilson
Published 18 September 2008 The New Statesman
Richard Wilson on the crucial difference between doubt and dogmatism
Throughout the 1960s, the tobacco industry famously spent millions promoting a small group of vociferous "sceptics" who, in the face of overwhelming evidence, continued to deny the link between smoking and cancer. The strategy paid off. Long after a clear scientific consensus had emerged, much of the public still believed that the case remained unproven.
In a sceptical age, even those disseminating wholly bogus ideas - from corporate pseudo-science to 9/11 conspiracy theories - will often seek to appropriate the language of rational inquiry. But there is a meaningful difference between being a "sceptic" and being in denial. The genuine sceptic forms his beliefs through a balanced evaluation of the evidence. The sceptic of the bogus variety cherry-picks evidence on the basis of a pre-existing belief, seizing on data, however tenuous, that supports his position, and yet declaring himself "sceptical" of any evidence, however compelling, that undermines it.
While it is easy to guess the motivations of an industry-funded scientist denying the dangers posed by his commercial sponsor, or a far-right historian expressing "scepticism" about the Holocaust, other cases are more puzzling. It is difficult to explain why, for example, a respected academic would dismiss the mountain of proof that HIV causes Aids. But several have, notably the Berkeley virologist Peter Duesberg.
HIV is a type of "retrovirus". Duesberg has argued for decades that retroviruses rarely, if ever, harm their hosts. Rather than modify this theory in the light of evidence that one such virus was killing millions, Duesberg in the late 1980s announced his "scepticism" about that evidence, and has stuck to his guns ever since.
Early on, these ideas found a receptive audience among HIV sufferers, desperate for an alternative prognosis. The cause was later taken up by conspiracy theorists convinced that Aids was a money-spinning fabrication of the global pharmaceutical industry.
In South Africa, at the beginning of this decade, Aids scepticism gained currency with a political class dismayed at the prices being charged for life-saving medicines. Under the influence of Duesberg and his fellow "dissidents", Thabo Mbeki's government chose to delay for several years public provision of anti-HIV drugs. The economist Nicoli Nattrass estimates that this decision - made amid one of the world's worst Aids epidemics - may already have cost hundreds of thousands of lives.
Bogus scepticism does not centre on an impartial search for the truth, but on a no-holds-barred defence of a preconceived ideological position. The bogus sceptic is thus, in reality, a disguised dogmatist, made all the more dangerous for his success in appropriating the mantle of the unbiased and open-minded inquirer.
Richard Wilson's "Don't Get Fooled Again" is out now, published by Icon Books (£12.99)
Monday, February 1, 2010
Dominion Day Dance
The night is summer
And the hour is heavy with air that moves
Like a slow mouth in the leaves of the chestnut,
The branches of the elms.
A boy dances in their shadows.
Across the street in the Legion Hall
music falls upon the dancers.
As the boy moves he imagines
a girl whose breasts
are small perfect pains on her chest
and he want to touch them.
He has sworn tonight to dance
with a girl who is beautiful.
He does not know his desire
to never be alone again
is the beginning of loneliness.
It is a new kind of fear.
It has entered him like a cage enters
an animal, this thing his body does
moving in awkward grace
with nothing in its arms.
- Patrick Lane
The night is summer
And the hour is heavy with air that moves
Like a slow mouth in the leaves of the chestnut,
The branches of the elms.
A boy dances in their shadows.
Across the street in the Legion Hall
music falls upon the dancers.
As the boy moves he imagines
a girl whose breasts
are small perfect pains on her chest
and he want to touch them.
He has sworn tonight to dance
with a girl who is beautiful.
He does not know his desire
to never be alone again
is the beginning of loneliness.
It is a new kind of fear.
It has entered him like a cage enters
an animal, this thing his body does
moving in awkward grace
with nothing in its arms.
- Patrick Lane
Sunday, December 13, 2009
Former Canadian UN Ambassador Daily Comment on Aids, Homosexual Genocide and Rape in Africa
Former Canadian Ambassador Stephen Lewis has committed himself to speaking out every day for the rest of his life about the AIDS pandemic in Africa, Rape and the status of women in Africa and the growing genocide against homosexuals in Africa. I donate to his foundation and would encourage others to do the same. To hear his daily commentary click here
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