Is the famine over in East Africa?

Wow, thank the world that we heard the last of the famine in East Africa! I mean, it's over right!? Sure, there were spurts of news reports over the summer, after the Royal Wedding, and the Casey Anthony trial, but now it seems to be fixed. There must no longer be 1000's dying of starvation each week because such a tragedy would be at least mentioned by major networks, right?

Hmm, no one will ever forget what happened on this day a decade ago, and the innocents who were mindlessly cremated alive. In fact the events and aftermaths are still fascinating in the unbelievability factor alone. The documentaries are riveting. But I can't help but feel frustrated by being helpless to help out the currently, dying, skeletal looking children of East Africa, lying on the ground, gasping for water, food, care, love, life and a morsel of hope from anyone.

Canadians have indeed donated millions, as have the government, and others in the world. Unfortunately, a cruel group of militants in Somalia have been preventing food and aid from getting to their country men, women and children, and would rather that they die. It's so senseless, and typical of those extremist nutters, they love hate, and death. Lately there are signs that their power is dwindling, and they have eased up on restricting food relief getting through.

It is quite possible that 790,000 will die of starvation, yet it is rarely mentioned in the news. It is also a wonder where the Arab League are when people of their own faith are perishing. How can many of those countries, saturated with wealth, just let it happen? Where the devil are they? What kind of brotherhood is that? Amidst the anniversary coverage this week, it would be informative if the national media would keep the public informed about the millions facing starvation right this minute.

No, we will never forget the hideous and hateful actions committed to innocent men, women and children, but there appears to be a forgotten and very needy population of our brothers and sisters in Africa.

When will they be remembered?

Thank God the media are not wasting time reporting on Famine in East Africa

I know I am being shallow to mention this during the height of the Casey Anthony murder trial, and the Royal visit in Canada, but there are 9 million people in danger of starving to death in East Africa countries. Perhaps it's just a silly mood on my part, so please excuse me, but since hearing about this potential human tragedy in one Globe article last week, the media in the U.S., Canada, maybe the U.K. too seem very fixated on the stories above. What a surprise that they get obsessed with cases like this. From what I hear, Headline News is essentially now the "Casey Anthony Channel", which used to be known as the "OJ Simpson Channel". CBC and CTV, the leading Canadian tv stations, can barely take their eyes of the Royal visit.

Thank God for that, because reporters really take on those hard hitting issues facing humanity, like, what will Kate wear, or "who" is she wearing. Also, they also provide insight into something that perhaps should never to be mentioned - that is, that Kate maybe is simply a human being like us. Reporters have witnessed her even saying short comments to people, and that "she knows how to smile". Could she really be not a God? Ok, yes they seem like nice people, and expectedly courteous, great! Yes, they are human folks, seem to be very nice ones, like you probably. Media reports are so entralled with their divine presence that they, by their fascination, bubbly enthusiasm, and gaga over the couple, make them out to be the way Kim Jung Il wants to be seen, as Gods.

Meanwhile, in the real world, East Africa is facing death by starvation. There are many countries suffering from a severe drought. This Map of East Africa drought area shows that 9,000,000 people are at risk for this. Where is all the media attention focused instead? On a young woman who might possibly have gotten away with murder, and a grossly rich couple whose nanny is one of the richest women in the world. Hmm, I would sure tune in to a Royal benefit concert for the people of Somalia, and millions in donations from the Royals alone would be truly newsworthy, and set the ball rolling.

I guess the starving are not glamorous enough to make to daily or hourly news coverage. What a pity, and a waste of media time, and opportunity to let the world know that it needs to help. What a stupid pity that 10's of 1000s need to die first before it really gets the media to fixate on brewing tragedies. It needs to communicate with vigor and direct everyone's eyes on our brothers and sisters in an unfortunate part of the world.

Will we see a Royal visit to Somalia anytime soon? Well, if so, you can be sure that international reporters, would finally experience a feeding frenzy.. oh, sorry, not literally like the 9 million living there.

An Assessment of the Mother of all Debates

Last evening's Democratic debate in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, between Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and John Edwards was a sizzler. This U.S. party nomination process is creating a unique, exciting, historical and optimistic time in American politics and in media.

The format of the debate was open and allowed flexibility on the part of quick and adept moderator Wolf Blitzer. The swiftly adaptable Blitzer adroitly responded to opportunities for explosive debate moments, which were sparked by accusations thrown by Obama and Clinton. It caused an anxious and patient John Edwards to wait longer to chime in but allowed the flexible rules to apply to all. This made for a live dramatic debate, which was skillfully facilitated by Blitzer.

The sparks were mainly between Hillary and Obama. Moderator Blitzer sensed the "famous debate moments" and allowed extra responses to jabs between the two during the episodes. Obama made a comment about Clinton serving as a Walmart corporate lawyer, and she fired back with a body shot, citing Obama's work for a slum landlord in Chicago, and also forcing Obama to rationalize his statements in which he called Ronald Reagan a transformer.

That exchange was heated, and John Edwards' temperature had risen as well while awaiting his turn to respond at one particular point. He made it known that "there is a third candidate in this debate," and brought the focus back on track to the original question that was asked.

After the debate some CNN political analysts declared that if there was a winner it might have been John Edwards.

This observer's observations:

This debate was a fantastic event! There were three winners. Each candidate performed impressively and probably reinforced the allegiance of already decided voters. There were no knock-outs, or even standing nine counts, but the first half of the debate sure had no dull moments.

South Carolina is significant for several reasons. One, because of the large African-American population, and the "dilemma" they may find themselves in, i.e., choosing between three very culturally relevant political options. The dilemma may be there because former president Bill Clinton was considered by many African-Americans to be the first "black president", as he had generally improved the fortune of African-Americans in the 1990s, including a significant rise in annual income level.

Hillary, the wife of this person, and presumably sharing the same attitude and hopes for blacks, is seen as being "black-friendly". Obama is already there, and friendly. He could inspire the highest ever level of goal achievement, and more political involvement among blacks. It would be huge, and a feel good and proud period, for African-Americans.

John Edwards was impressive because of his sincerity and conviction as he described his commitment to address equality, and poverty, two issues that are so very important to the African-American community in the U.S. He looked sincere, was convincing, and made the audience feel like he was their champion.

South Carolina is important as well because Edwards' chances of being a still viable contender will shrink further if he does poorly here. An Obama win, will keep him in the running, and an "equal" contender to Hillary. If he loses there, where 50% of the population is black, then that may be a psychological hit for Obama.

Having said that, South Carolina is not the whole U.S. and there are many other state caucuses coming up on Super Tuesday. Hillary still has an overall lead but Obama has closed the gap.

In last nights debate Hillary was strong, polished, quick, well prepared, competent, confident, and bright. She is no pushover. On the contrary, she has the value-added asset of much political experience, and probably a better-than-average coaching team with Bill Clinton in her corner. Her body language spoke strength and confidence.

Obama did well to fend off and explain most of the shots at him, but at times, he seemed a little hesitant as a public speaker.

At this point in the campaign, Hillary Clinton is looking the strongest.

In addition to the hope generated by potentially electing a first black president, there is another sign of black influence and presence in this election process. Maybe it's just my perception but there seems to be more media exposure for African-American political experts.

It is because there is a black top two front runner, Barack Obama, that there appears to be plenty of black political analysts, on CNN at least. This is a great thing to see because it hints of equality, and it shows on the faces of the experts themselves. It also allows viewers to become familiar with opinions from more black academics and pundits.

How far Obama will go remains to be seen, but for now, "what can be", is generating hope.

Media Fails to Expose Animal Rights Activist Deception

(Just in: European Union rejects ban on seal fur imports)Much of the media is missing or avoiding the real story of the seal hunt and annual protest fundraiser. The real story is that the cute seal is the best way to get money from the public, for animal rights activists (ARAs). Deceit artist Paul Watson told CBC journalist Barbara Frum this very thing in the 1970s. Watson even admitted that the natural tear production from baby seals was exploited to make people think that the seals were crying.

"The seal is very easy to exploit as an image" - Paul Watson in a 1978 interview with Barbara Frum (audio clip interview)

Still today, media puts the onus on the sealing industry to be defensive rather than approach the story in a way that makes animal rights activist groups justify their methods of lying to the public to get millions in donations.

In a conversation I had with a DFO scientist who regularly goes to the seal hunt front to see observe it, the importance of the landmark Report of the Royal Commission on the Seal Hunt became evident. The report, still very valid, said that the hunt was done in a humane way. It was an extensive and comprehensive study with assessments from veterinarians and scientists, social analysts, and people involved in both sides of the issue. That was also at the time that the hakapik was used. There are plenty of other sources from veterinarian groups which also conclude that the hunt is humane.

CBC tv still uses images of the hakapik while doing stories on the hunt. For years just a small percentage of the hunt used this very humane method, and now it is not used at all. But media still chooses to use this image which is associated with the often fed image of a barbarian. That is one of the major images promoted by ARAs, in addition to the white seal pup, to lie to the public. The white coat seal has been illegal to hunt for 20 years. Still protestors will don white coat seal costumes to imply that these are the helpless animals being taken. The CBC will of course run that footage.

The Anna Nicole Smith channel (CNN) will do the same if they run out of sensational stories. CTV will probably do the same. Animal rights activists raise money through deception, and this type of story is Fifth Estate material, or W5. But the way in which major media broadcasts the annual seal hunt fundraiser/protest is just the way swindlers like Paul Watson, Ingrid Newkirk and their ilk like.

Political Deflection

Politics is indeed like a game, a hockey game - one way to achieve a goal is through deflection. We read about it all the time in Newfoundland and Labrador blogs, "Danny is doing this, when he should be doing this". But who hasn't used a deflection of issues from time to time? I'm not sure there are many, or any. Deflection is used to postpone a ready answer to important topics. That can be prudent from the government's point of view, especially if saying something about a development or negotiations in the works, could jeopardize any behind the scenes dealings. If a politician has definite positive policies or developments to focus on, then deflecting negative exposure is wise too. On the other hand it is frustrating, and can indicate that there is absolutely no solution or movement on key issues facing the government. In the case of the spending scandal and cynicism about politicians and honesty in government, I think it would be wise to meet this issue head on, offer reassurance in the form of rigid safeguards.

Each election, one of the ways to get votes is to offer up hopeful words, "promises", to achieve things when the candidate is in power. People who need good news like to hear good or promising news. But often times neither the politician nor the electorate is being realistic about what can be achieved in the next four or eight years. So this realization is observed by the elected, and deflecting the issue is resorted to.

Deflection may very well be one of the most common political tactics used in this game. Mike Harris used it effectively in his 1999 election. There is a very interesting article written by James Winter and Jeremy Gillies, Communication Studies, University of Windsor. They wrote an excellent article called " News Media Rallied To Corporate Clarion In Ontario Election". In it, they describe how the Conrad Black owned and influenced media, "cooperated in no small degree" to get Mike Harris elected. They reviewed over 500 newspaper articles in the National Post the Globe and Mail and the Toronto Star and found all papers to be bias and severely lacking. For example, with polls close between the Liberals and the Tories, the Toronto Star said, "Mike Harris and his team have the look of winners."

Harris had embarrassing confrontations with protestors and withdrew into "a bubble of carefully orchestrated events." The Globe and Mail went to unusual means to promote Harris' Tories. They hired a "body language expert" to inform the public that Harris had the look of a winner, "the whites of his eyes" mean "clarity of vision". In a televised debate Dalton McGuinty was described as "too excited", and NDP Howard Hampton was mostly dismissed. After he was said to have won the debate, he was dismissed as just a spoiler and robbing votes from the Liberals.

Writers Winter and Gillies said that "what the press left out was just as important as what was reported on." Some of the scandals and controversies were ignored by the press.

Harris' possible role in giving instructions to the OPP in the shooting of Dudley George at Ipperwash, the use of closure to pass the omnibus Bill 26; passing Bill 22, which denies basic human rights to workfare recipients; UN criticism for the increasing legions of homeless and poor; ... Tory Speaker of the Legislature Al McLean's resignation over a sex scandal; Leslie Noble and two other prominent Tories receipt of about $450,000 in fees from Ontario Hydro for consulting work that produced just 12 pages of records; the "Lands For Life" scandal that saw millions of hectares of public land given away cheap to the forestry industry; Tory spending of about $100 million in taxpayers' money in blatant political ads during the run up to the election; the Dionne Quints scandal; Ontario air pollution.

Harris got a deflection and he scored. In our fall election there ought to be realism, less alluding to things like, bringing Newfoundlanders and Labradorian home. I'm not so sure that politicians actually use the word "promise", but people seem to use that word alot. The public needs to be more realistic about what to expect. Somehow people think that swarms of ex-patriates will be returning, in a short time. But if Hebron and Lower Churchill deals were signed in 2008, it will create economic opportunites, but it will probably allow 100's of ex-pats to return for work, maybe over 1000. But there are tens of 1000's of province expats away. There are also people living in the province who will be working on projects like this too. There should be more realism on the part of the electorate and politicians, and then hopefully less deflection of the issues.

Scandals & Fiascos from Sea to Sea

As the Canadian union was just six years old, news of the first Canadian scandal was about to explode. In the summer of 1873 news broke that Sir John A. Macdonald and his Conservatives received a whopping $350,000 in campaign funds in exchange for a lucrative railway contract, Canadians were outraged.

Canada is a great country in so many ways, yet we are still evolving in areas of social equality, and democracy. However, the evolution of principle, ethics and honesty in politics has been slow, and has not caught on with every elected official. Newfoundland and Labrador has had scandals and fiascos before, but it is like other provinces of Canada who in recent years, and currently, have had politicians surrender to the chance to pocket more coin. Some things don't change much. Here are just some other Canadian examples of wastage and dishonesty in government:

Saskatchewan Tories in Fraud Scandal

Twelve members of Grant Devine's government in Saskatchewan, which was swept from office in 1991, were charged in relation to a scheme that defrauded taxpayers of more than $837,000.

There are some similiarities between this scandal and the still ongoing IEC scandal investigation in NL. The seeds of the controversy were planted in 1987, when Devine's caucus agreed to pool 25 per cent of the communications allowances that MLAs were entitled to receive from the legislature into a central account. The CROWN has alleged that some members of the Devine government signed expense allowance claims that were submitted to the legislature along with invoices from four shell companies set up by John Scraba, then the caucus communications director. Many of the invoices were for services never rendered, or for expenses that were illegitimate. After the invoices were approved by the legislature's finance offices, cheques were issued to the phoney companies. That money was then funnelled back to several caucus members and Scraba in the form of cash and merchandise.

Police were first alerted to the scam in July, 1991, when legislature clerk Gwenn Ronyk reported some suspicious invoices. The investigation received a break in April, 1992, when a Regina bank branch opened a safety deposit box after its registered owner failed to respond to a notification that the bank was moving. Inside the box were 150 $1,000 bills. The owner's name proved to be bogus, but his address was quite revealing: Room 203, Saskatchewan legislature, aka the Tory caucus office. After contacting other banks, police uncovered a second safety deposit box, under the same phoney name, that contained 90 $1,000 bills.

Perhaps the most explosive testimony came on Oct. 24, when another former caucus chairman, Myles Morin, told the court that Devine had approved a plan in 1985 to transfer $455,000 - an amount unrelated to the $837,000 fraud scheme - in surplus caucus funds into an investment account.

Eventually, more than a dozen former Conservative MLAs and party workers were convicted of robbing taxpayers in a bogus-expense scheme. Sadly in a much darker vein, former cabinet minister Jack Wolfe committed suicide in February, 1995, leaving behind a pregnant wife and three young children.

British Columbia's FastCat Fiasco

Also called the Fast Ferry Scandal was the name given to a political scandal in British Columbia during Glen Clark's tenure as Premier (1996-99). Hoping to revive BC's shipbuilding industry to some semblance of its past glory of the 20th century, Glen Clark's NDP government, refusing the advice of the BC Ferries corporation to lease a similiar type of ferry for trials, went ahead and constructed three vessels.

The project was originally set to cost $210 million, but due to various blunders by the government, BC Ferries, design bureaus, and the shipyards, it rose to almost $460 million and final delivery was almost 3 years behind schedule. A large part of the delay was due to the fact that the shipyards commissioned to construct the vessels had very little experience working with aluminum.

There were also significant problems like high fuel consumption, little outside deck space for passengers, and loading the ferries took longer.

In 2003 the ferries went up for sale. They were auctioned of to the Washington Marine Group for $19.4 million. If that wasn't enough salt in the wound, there this was: the same company offered to purchase the fleet for $60 million prior to the auction.

Alberta 2005: Worst land deal deal ever

Inside sweet land deals got some civil servants in trouble and cost the government of Alberta. Ethics commissioner Donald Hamilton cleared Environment Minister Guy Boutilier of influencing an Alberta Social Housing Corporation decision to sell 231 acres of Fort McMurray land for affordable housing to the Timberlea Joint Venture Consortium. The consortium got the land at a price set for 158 acres. Not only was the deal sweet, but beneficiaries include Boutilier’s personal friend Tim Walsh, and other individuals who NDP critic Ray Martin says have contributed $14,000 to Boutilier’s campaigns since he became an MLA. To top things off, the $35,000 per acre price was based on 1990 land values. The government lost at least $2.5 million in potential revenue on the sale.

Ontario's Hydro One Scandal
Here's an excerpt from the above link

Reports say Ontario's publicly owned utility paid out $5.6 million to former advisors to Premiers Mike Harris and Ernie Eves.

The players involved in the Hydro One affair were key insiders during the 8-year Tory reign at Queen's Park: Tom Long (former Harris advisor), Paul Rhodes (Tory campaign communications director), Leslie Noble (co-chair of the Tory election campaign), and Michael Gourley (a reported advisor and confidant of Eves).

What's particularly unseemly about the Hydro One affair is that, many of the individuals involved are the very ones who concocted the "Common Sense Revolution" which hypocritically preached fiscal restraint, cuts to social assistance, and scaling back public services. This resulted in a Tory government that inflicted brutal cuts to the poor, ransacked health care, and created a "crisis" in education.

Ontario December, 2006
Millions wasted on gov't credit cards: Ont. AG
Excerpt from CTV News

A number of Ontario's public sector workers can't account for millions in charges on taxpayer-funded credit cards, the province's auditor general finds.

"I'd have to say that we noticed examples across all broader public sector areas that we looked at," Jim McCarter said in his annual report released Tuesday.

"The number of questionable examples that we noted across the system were certainly of concern this year ... we have a lot of examples in here of what we would call really questionable expenditures."

The report highlights include:

A litany of spending abuses at the Children's Aid societies, including all-inclusive trips to Caribbean resorts and questionable overtime. (One employee was paid $21,000 to catch up on paperwork);
$127 million charged to Hydro One credit cards without receipts. (One secretary charged $50,000 in goods that went to her boss, who signed the expenses);
$6.5 million charged on Ontario Power Generation credit cards without any receipts;
300,000 more OHIP cards than Ontarians;
Teachers and staff at four school boards charged thousands for questionable lunches, trips and gifts; and
Workplace Safety Insurance Board patients receiving quicker access to high-tech diagnostic exams than non-WSIB workers.
Spending abuses at several Children's Aid societies, which prompted an outcry last week after a draft report was leaked to the media, included purchases of SUVs worth $59,000 and expensive trips to all-inclusive Caribbean resorts.

One staff member, who was given a society-provided vehicle, also received a $600 a month tax-free car allowance.

I have not heard much about this since. If anyone has more information please share it here