Erring on the side of a Caution

The Best of British Minds on Global Warming

Imagine these headlines in winter months.“Coldest Winter in Fifty Years!”, “Record Rain Fall!” “Snow in March and April!!” "So what happened to global warming?"

Ladies and Gents, that is Global Warming.

The greatest misconception about global warming is that it means we will all experience warmer temperatures all of the time. This is fundamentally incorrect. Global warming means more energy, (infrared or heat energy) is being trapped in our atmosphere by the insulative element carbon in its various molecular forms, usually CO2 and Methane. This excess energy upsets the current atmospheric systems resulting in extremes of weather and extremes in temperature with colder winters in some places, heavier rain showers in other areas and drought and heat waves for others. It is a man made destabilization of the climate systems we have taken for granted since the birth of humanity on this planet some 200,000 years ago. This destabilization has been a side effect of humankinds technology rush. It is human created global warming which as most people understand today, is the greatest threat to the continuity of our species… and its not like we don’t have plenty of threats to choose from. So why then are some people still saying that global warming is all a myth fabricated ( for some poorly defined agenda ) by the latest big bad “ists” who are in this case, environmentalists?

Much to my dismay I recently read an article which, citing the century plus science of one British janitor cum scientist, James Croll and making a connection to the works of Nicholas Shackleton, refuted man made global warming by stating that;

“The demonstration that the Milankovitch theory of orbital climate change was correct and could be recognized in isotopic (and later many other physical) properties of rocks meant that an age scale based on astronomical calculation could be applied to rocks in which this cyclicity could be recognized.

These changes in orbit are key to climate change and may be far more likely to impact our Earth than carbon dioxide. Curiously they are hardly ever mentioned in the movement to name the guilty warm-mongers and then tax the daylights out of them.”

Oh dear.

It is fair to say that the reason that the hypothesis that, " Variations in earth orbits and variations in solar activity are the actual cause of the global warming..." is not reported on frequently, is because it is confusing two different mechanisms for two different events that have two very different out comes and therefore is scientifically invalid in regards to the current concern about global warming.

Yes, even the minimal changes in the orbital path of the earth and solar activity can lead to shifts in the earths climate as Shackleton correctly noted and also the earths electromagnetic field as we may see in the next two years.

However, if it comes to a meeting of great British minds on the the current climate warming issue, a climate change smack down if you will, then the science I would prefer to be noted are the modern minds of: Jeremy Leggett who is a visionary modern day British industrialist, geologist and scientist, Prince Charles of course in his role of environmental steward and philanthropist, the renowned Professor James Lovelock who revolutionized the world with his Gaia theory of the earth as self regulating organism and the greatest British or otherwise mind of our time, Professor Stephen Hawking.

All of these scientists and philanthropists have weighed in on the matter of the current global warming fear and all agree; its man made and is critically serious to the point that each has raised fears about the survivability of human kind as we know it. As unpleasant as that is to hear, none of their opinions can be easily dismissed.

Just to briefly re frame the debate, the climate warming / ocean acidification concern is that we have mined and drilled many many tonnes of carbon in the form of coals and oil, out of the earths sub surface in the last 300 years and are consuming it at an ever increasing pace. This carbon in various forms is now in our atmosphere and of course this is creating an imbalance. Planetary forces took many thousands of years to trap this carbon in the earths sub surface and remove it from the atmosphere. Releasing so much, so quickly, has not allowed planetary mechanisms to keep pace and as such the build up of carbon in our atmosphere is increasingly trapping the infrared range of solar energy causing incremental increases in the amount of energy returned to the earths surface or active in atmospheric weather.

While this may not result in uniform "warming" it will result in increasingly dramatic weather with an over all increase in average temperature.

Jeremy Leggett who was a geologist for Shell Oil saw this data when it emerged. This prompted him to leave the oil business and form the British renewable energy company "Solar Century." A link to a fantastic documentary in which he participates, called "Crude, The Incredible Journey of Oil" by the Australian Broadcast Company is provided at the end of this article. His data and knowledge are not only modern but he speaks from both sides of the debate having been an oil geologist and now a solar industrialist. He is an example of the kind of intelligence and vision Britain, Canada and the world needs at this critical time.

Why the validation of the global warming theory and the fight against it's causes are so very important for Great Britain in particular is because Great Britain will be hit particularly hard by its effects.

In the immediate future we may well see the collapse of fish stocks already weakened by over fishing. This will be due to a secondary factor of global warming which had not recieved much attention until about five years ago called ocean acidification.

Ocean acidification is a term used to describe the change in PH or acid / base balance of the oceans. Any avid gardener with a Rhododendron has experimented soil acidity or PH to change the colour of his or her Rhodo blooms. Similarly, ocean PH affects the life in the ocean but far more than just its colour. As more carbon from the atmosphere is re-absorbed into the oceans it forms carbonic acid, increasing even slightly the acidity of the oceans. This small change however can prevent proper bone and shell growth in sea life and that in turn will impact the fish stocks and a food chain already weakened by over fishing.

A bit further into this century however, as the polar caps continue to recede, we will lose strength in the gulf stream current. This is a significant problem and again one not understood until only a few years ago when ocean scientists started collaborating with climate prediction model scientists to put two and two together.

The gulf stream is the primary distribution current in the oceans for many things: temperature, nutrients, oxygen, waste. A brief re-cap would explain that warm water near the equator rises and is shunted toward the poles where it cools and sinks again, all of which is pushed along by the water behind it doing the same forming a sort of conveyor belt. This cycle provides Britain with its mild climate despite it being so far north as the relatively warm water from the equator keeps the local atmosphere warmer than it otherwise might have been. If you consider that the Midlands of the UK is roughly at the same latitude as southern Alaska, you can imagine just how cold Britain could become without the gulf stream.

If however the ice at the poles melts, as it currently is, and the oceans warm as they currently are, then the water will not cool and sink anymore. It will no longer bring nutrients and oxygen to deeper water. Life in the deeper ocean will have less food and oxygen to consume and the current will have less strength to move and distribute energy which helps to mediate temperature.

The end result of this will be a slower or non existent gulf current, stagnating water, increasing anoxic ocean “dead zones” and greater variations in temperatures between polar and equatorial regions. British winters will become colder while summers will be hotter and drier. Near term ramifications point towards less food production for a very crowded Britain. Longer term predictions are even more unpleasant.

Humanity has not faced an issue of this scale before but then again, its only been in the last 60 years of life that everyone thought they were entitled to a shiny, four wheel carbon emitting machine to go down the hill to the store to pick up refrigerated meat processed five hundred km away to cook in an electric appliance. Do you think something might have been overlooked in the rush?

Fortunately the best of British minds are not only the ones to identify the problem head on but are also leading the pack to solve the solution. Sir Richard Branson of Virgin Media fame has already announced a competition among research organizations to develop technology to scrub carbon right out of the atmosphere.

Why is this important? Because scrubbing the Carbon out of the atmosphere might well be the only way to solve the problem at this point. Reducing CO2 emissions will no longer stop what has already started. There are too many previously unforeseen feedback mechanisms now kicking in that will continue the global warming process at a pace no one expected.

For example, as arctic ice melts, darker earth and water surfaces reappear and of course, darker surfaces absorb more heat speeding the melting process. There is also my personal favorite, as arctic ice melts, the methane from decomposing plant life underneath is now starting to be released ( see link to fire and ice below ). This methane is eighteen times more potent a green house gas than carbon dioxide and was not being factored into previous models and what more, tonnes of it are held in the form of methane "ice" in the cold depths of the ocean. If the oceans warm, huge amounts of methane may be released and it is likely that this is already happening. ( see link below on methane bubbles ). Then there is the Ocean as carbon absorber scenario. Scientists were counting on the ocean continuing to absorb carbon at a steady rate for the next century but are now finding that as the ocean becomes saturated with carbon, not only is it becoming more acidic, it can no longer absorb the amount of carbon it used to.

As all these feedback mechanisms kick in, even if we shut down every oil well, parked every car and shut down every industry, global warming would still continue for centuries to come due to what has already been and will be released by our actions. It is a giant that has started to stir and what looks to us a slow gentle movement is actually an immense force awakening that will not pay one bit of attention to us once it's underway. As Professor Lovelock, the inventor of the Gaia theory of Earth stated in his latest BBC interview, and I paraphrase. “ It’s too late to change global warming, just enjoy your life. Life will go on in some form but I can't vouch for humanity." Dire but true words.

It is up to the initiatives of those like Branson's that recognize that if technology got us into this mess, maybe it can get us out. If we can find a way to rapidly “scrub” the carbon out of the atmosphere maybe the planet will possibly recalibrate. We can, after all, in the absence of visionary leadership; hope, create and invent. It’s what we Brits do very well, we thinkers, tinkerers and dreamers.

Dream a better future and make it so. Imagine that!

Here is to Leggitt, Hawking, Lovelock and Prince Charles.

Please note on the graph below, the red line is atmospheric temperature variation both + and -. Note how it correlates to the blue line which is atmospheric CO2.

Links Below:

Stephen Hawkings

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/2006-06-22-hawking-warming_x.htm

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=weHr1aTC5-o

Prince Charles

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1248513/Prince-Charles-hits-climate-change-sceptics-scientist-calls-critics-provide-evidence-views.html

Jeremy Leggitt on Solar Century

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eymA1OvddE8

Jeremy Leggitt in the documentary: Crude

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3kiPALQRpQ

James Lovelock on the BBC 2010

http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_8594000/8594561.stm

Richard Bransons Climate Change Challenge

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/02/070216-virgin-earth.html

Dan Miller on Methane from Ice

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1liqk9UQNAQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oa3M4ou3kvw

Methane Bubbles

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6233ZU20100304

Sigorney Weaver in the Documentary "Acid Test" on Ocean Acidification.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5cqCvcX7buo

Keep Calm and Carry On

Words for the ages:
"Keep Calm and Carry On"

A slogan orgionally produced by the Britsh Government to keep up moral during the opening months of World War II, the poster was never used. A lonely copy of this poster remained buried in Barter Books in Alnwick, Northumberland, UK until the year 2000 where it was literally, uncovered.

Since then it has become a pop culture hit with its bold colouration, hope filled message and equally hopeful symbol of the British Crown and has spun off into its own clothing and accessory line.

When in doubt fellow Britions and British Canadians: "Keep Calm and Carry On" (...Does that Crown have a happy face on it...?)

http://www.keepcalmandcarryon.com/

http://www.keepcalmandcarryon.com/pages/history

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keep_Calm_and_Carry_On

Holst

Can you place nobility into musical form, or mystery, fury, danger, whimsy, dreams? Take a journey with the British Composer Holst to his planets and find out. (If it sounds sometimes like the soundtrack to Star Wars, well guess who was the inspiration for that soundtrack.)

Jupiter – Bringer of Joy

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WvvhxIQIpok&feature=related

Saturn – Bringer of Time and Age

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wpBIlI_rNGw&feature=related

Mars – Bringer of War

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aRwqQug1m5Q&feature=related

Venus – Bringer of Peace

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUnnm-u6SKM&feature=related

Neptune – The Mystic

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4AFICzdbZw&feature=related

Mercury – The Messenger

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=niD9Pu3_SNM&feature=related

Uranus – The Magician

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lCSxuclmmQU&feature=related

Holst

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustav_Holst

BRITS AT THEIR BEST

Here is a link to perhaps the finest site online today.

"Brits at their Best" is a exploration into the profoundly world changing influence of British culture and the British people.

It is an important site to boost British pride since so many seek only to focus on the negatives of the British role in culture and history and those same choose to ignore their own cultures actions and omissions. The truth about Britain is a far more wonderful thing. Not since the ancient Greeks has one peoples influence been so profound upon the world.

If Britain survives the sometimes proud, sometimes angry, sometimes spiteful independence of her daughter nations teenage temper tantrums, she may someday receive the "thank you" that she so deserves as so many Mom's do in their raising of a family.

Let me do my part.

On behalf of Canada, thanks Mom.
We really do owe you so much.

I will do my part not to let Canada, turn its back on you.

Here then is the website, BritsattheirBest:

http://www.britsattheirbest.com/

Who is Defining You?

Hu is defining you?

(Picture at right used from source #6)

Astroturfing and re-imagining history.

Empires are always built to last but as we have seen, their presence at least in the material world, is growing shorter and shorter. As the well worn comparison reads, the Egyptians reined over their lands for approximately millennia, the Roman Empire lasted approximately five centuries, the British Empire between three and five centuries and after this, Empires become less Imperial and more geo-political influences with the US dominating the latter half of the twentieth century, but Empire?... Only in the minds of Marxists and gourmets.

Future “Empires” will more likely be measured in years if any are to exist at all as the world becomes more fluid and connected as nations take back seats to corporations and “organizations.”

But Empires do not just exist in the material world. If history is written by the victors, then surely the greatest conquest of any empire is neither a continent nor a people but of the record and understanding of history and of influence over culture, the way people think. In this regard not only are Empires still being forged but we are very much in a state of war and like usual in typical Neville Chamberlain manner, it seems for British and British Canadians it is a threat we are oblivious to until we are about to lose it all. Sometimes you just can’t make a pot of tea and hope it all goes away.

In this connected age of information technology where definitions and vocabulary are defined by whomever has the greatest media acumen, new empires are being built, history is being re-written, “experts “ can be produced, fabricated and purchased; truth depends on the most web page hits.

It is into this age of common knowledge and common understanding written by the “common” grassroots people on Facebook, Wikipedia and Youtubethat new wars are being quietly waged, new quiet revolutions are being engineered, history quietly being re-written and opinions being manipulated and shifted. While Canada and the west have seen the Internet as a tool of information dissemination, other countries with a history of controlling and manipulating information not only on their own citizens but also outwardly as propaganda have utilized the internet as a means of cultural control and manipulation. Culture wars.

(During the latter half of the twentieth century the quiet joke in political circles was that any country with the word “Peoples” or similar phrase in the title was anything but. )

Those countries and cultures that have long experience in telling their “people” what to think are leading the race in defining not only the modern information culture but are also actively re-shaping the current western generations perceptions of historical events by defining history on popular information sites and comment boards. In doing so, shaping “street” perspectives in democratic countries around the world.

They have in fact recruited entire armies to do nothing but shape “opinion” on the Internet around the world while western nations do nothing and hope for the best… more tea?

Enter the Astroturfer. No, not the rotund fellow at the football stadium laying turf down. The Astroturfer is the foot soldier in the new media and info war, whose duty it is to represent a particular agenda and make it sound like their voice is the voice of the common people, the masses or as we say in Canada, grassroots; hence how the term got its name, “Astroturf” – laying down fake grass.

What the Astroturf virtual trench soldier does is find news or information articles such as comment boards on news stories such as the CBC, or entries such as on Wikipedia. Then they write in their opinion or re-write fact to make it sound like their point of view is the common, grassroots public opinion or the accepted historical fact… hoping of course that others with no opinion or education will join in.

This action shapes “public” opinion because if you can come up with oneemotionalist argument that causes people to rally to support you, you have shaped the dominant opinion of an information source that news outlets and governments will monitor for opinion. More importantly, you can shut down intelligent debate and the great enemy of authoritarian states, the very, very British traits of Freedom of Speech and Freedom of Expression.

It is no surprise then that the nations employing and need I add, unchallenged “Astroturf Armies” to expand their influence in the hearts and minds of populations around the world are the least democratic nations in the world and they have been launching cyber hacking and information acts of war against the west for some years now with increasing effect. Acts that in the west we unwisely ignore as inconsequential.

In the last year, stories of China’s 300,000 astroturf army also known as the “50 cent army” have emerged. In 2007, China’s President, Tiger Hu Jintao called on Chinese Communist Party (CCP) members to “assert supremacy over online public opinion, raise the level and study the art of online guidance and actively use new technologies to increase the strength of positive propaganda.”

This is a ?respected? world leader publically asking his citizens to engage in a propaganda war on the west to counter, even silence the legitimate opinions of other bloggers and create a pro China atmosphere.

Is this War somehow more “refined”, acceptable?

War is war and psychological violence is just, if not more, evil than physical violence.

Can you imagine the Canadian publics response if Harper told Canadians to get on line and harass other nations in their feedback columns and media. He would be voted out but in modern China however just as in ancient China, that middle kingdom between finger and thumb of the authoritarian semi communist, gangster government, you do what your told or else.

Mike Elgan of Internet dot Com writes of China’s “Astroturf Army”:

This Astroturf Army has one job and that is “to infiltrate chat rooms, message boards and comment areas on the Internet posing as ordinary users to voice support for the agenda and interest of the CCP. They praise China’s one-party system and condemn anyone who criticizes China’s policy on Tibet. They comment aggressively on news reports about China’s food-safety problems, relations withTaiwan, suppression of bird-flu and AIDS information, Internet censorship, jailing of dissidents, support of Sudan’s military in Darfur and other sensitive topics. Comments applaud the Chinese government and slam its critics, all using scripts and lines approved by the party.” How China's '50 Cent Army' Could Wreck Web 2.0 – Internet.com - January 8, 2009 - By Mike Elgan.”

Another report presented to the US Congress by Rebecca MacKinnon at the hearing “China, the Internet and Google, March 1, 2010, reads:

“Pro-active measures: “astro-turfing” and outreach: The government increasingly combines censorship and surveillance measures with pro-active efforts to steer online conversations in the direction it prefers. In 2008 the Hong Kong-based researcher DavidBandurski determined that at least 280,000 people had been hired at various levels of government to work as “online commentators.” Known derisively as the “fifty cent party,” these people are paid to write postings that show their employers in a favorable light in online chat rooms, social networking services, blogs, and comments sections of news websites.24 Many more people do similar work as volunteers – recruited from among the ranks of retired officials as well as college students in the Communist Youth League who aspire to become Party members.”

In Canada we witness the end product this new Chinese Democracy daily. The CBC comment boards and Vancouver Sun letters to the editor are regularly flooded with pro China, pro east comments any time anything resembling criticism of China is mentioned. A vitriolic vilification of pro west writers as either racist, capitalist, elitist or colonialist can be guaranteed if anyone stands up to them … and when that does not work as some comments about a local British Canadian weather reporter in Vancouver show, they simply get personal. Even before I knew about Astroturfing I had coined the phrase for CBC comment boards “The Peoples Republic Blog Squad.” I am glad to find out I was not imagining it.

It seems we have been asked to do battle in our own homes for the culture of democratic Canada and British Canadians still have their head in the sand trying to pretend this isn’t happening. After all, the propaganda war HAS been declared.

China already has a huge advantage on this playing field. From the days of the old emperors to the days of the re-imagined emperor Mao and now Hu, China has groomed populations more than willing to frantically wave little red books and do as they were told where as in Britain and Canada, with our famous reserve, generally thought such things are obnoxious and distasteful. Such flagrant acts of flag waving were mostly left to football thugs and god forbid…. Americans.

But maybe we should follow China’s lead here. Maybe we should virtualize our violence into the refined information age or just, as Sun Tzu Chinese wisdom aka Machiavellian wisdom dictates, attack your opponent by every means, continuously to weaken them. Maybe we should meet the international Chinese patriotic community on the virtual battlefields in this by no uncertain terms, cyber war simply undeclared.

There is after all, great opportunity in crisis.

(Yes yes, there is also danger – thug me later, I am expressing.)

Great Britain for example could follow China's lead for once and instead of paying its 3 million strong welfare cue to do nothing but ask for the next check, employ them by setting up it’s own Astroturf Army. Not only would they be given access to computers that they could look for employment on, they could also harass Chinese interests the same way Chinese interests have been attacking Western interests for the last decade.

Or is this the downward spiral that those who mock democracy want us to take?

Are we being baited to destroy our democracy ourselves?

In the “Freedom of Speech or Suppression of Speech – article by Elgin” he raises a point that I touched on in “Serving the Meat before the Gravy”, that the Chinese nationalists are deliberately trying to fatally wound freedom of speech and democracy by manipulating it and by extension, the cultures that promote it. In doing so he points out that what the Chinese government and nationals around the globe are doing is actually far beyond “Astroturfing” which is a mere manipulation of one issue – this is a sustained attack against the west and it's values of free speech. It is a sustained attack against Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the USA.

It is a form of war.

Elgin raises the question of devalued democracy where large “swaths” of the population are not voicing a genuine opinion but are having their voices and opinion bought and dictated. It is in fact probably the most effective attack on democracy there is

Of the Chinese effort he says,

"Criticism of the Chinese government abroad is often countered by the argument that China's political system is an "internal matter" - something that none of the business of outsiders. But China's 50 Cent Army is everybody's business.

With 300,000 people, you can see how the CCP could easily determine what makes it onto the front page of Digg and what gets shouted down. They could use Wikipedia, YouTube and Slashdot as their most powerful tools of global propaganda. It would be trivial for China to determine Yahoo's "Most Popular" news item ("Most E-Mailed," "Most Viewed" and "Most Recommended").

Over the long term, the existance of China's 50 Cent Army erodes the value of the Web 2.0 which is based entirely on the actions of users. If half of those users are working for the CCP, then the result of user actions are compromised. Nobody can trust it.

It's also yet another threat to Internet anonymity, which is already under pressure from legislators and some organizations who believe that anonymous posts create opportunities for fraud, deception and the exploitation of children. The more China's 50 Cent Army succeeds, the more support will fall behind the idea of fixing the problem by illegalizing anonymity.

Ultimately, China's 50 Cent Army threatens free speech. And although new threats to free speech are constantly being invented - the 50 Cent Army being one of the most recent innovations - the defense of free speech is always the same: more free speech"It is no wonder that China is going after the internet so viciously. Freedom of expression and information are the things it hates the most. It is no wonder then that British and British Canadian culture comes under attack by the CCP and Canadian CCP Blogsquads here at home in Canada. They are merely following orders to create a perception of "grassroots" opinion but one generated in Hainan; China's cyber warfare center.

Dear Canada and British Canada, dear Britain. Sometimes, as we have seen all to often before it seems everything our fathers and forefathers fought for is again on the line and just as before ignoring the conflict will not make it go away. It just gets closer until it won't be ignored. It just gets closer until it sits in your living room.

Words made all the improbable difference in a war that we should have, by all expectations, lost not long ago. Maybe those that wager on such things in expensive boardrooms were shocked and amused that mere words rallied our people in WW II and changed the course of history because here we are again, fighting for all that we are.... or at least we should be fighting but we are not, not yet. Not yet fighting the danger of being erased from history in countries, cultures and databases and all for 50 cents.

In this battle of words let us remember the greatest words ever spoken.

“I expect that the Battle of Britain is about to begin. Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilization. Upon it depends our own British life, and the long continuity of our institutions and our Empire. The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us. Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be freed and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands.

But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new dark age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves, that if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, This was their finest hour.”

Ladies and Gentlemen particularly my fellow British Canadians which I write this blog for, no matter what country you call home. The nature of conflicts have changed, but the challenge has not and will face it again and again. If we believe in the values of our society we are going to have to fight for them, be it on land, on sea or by air, by wire, hard drive or satellite, thought, innuendo or guilt.

Britian and Canada, the country that Britain founded have a history of fighting for democracy for human rights and this beautiful planet. Hundreds of thousands of Britons, mostly young men, died for this in the last century alone. They deserve to be honored, not erased. We fight for freedom of speech even when it is used to ridicule and slander us by others. If we ignore what is happening today in the world and on the bloglines, we lose the power of what last saved us by a great man, Sir Winston Churchill and his beautiful weilding of words.

Pick up your pens, take to your keyboards and fight back. We are at war again. Its an invisible war but for a far greater prize. Most people don't know, Hu is defining you.

Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/This_was_their_finest_hour

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/03/280000-pro-china-astroturfers-are-running-amok-online.ars
http://rconversation.blogs.com/MacKinnonCECC_Mar1.pdf

http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/columns/article.php/3795091/How+Chinas+50+Cent+Army+Could+Wreck+Web+2.0.htm

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/sep/22/chinathemedia.marketingandpr

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/e716cfc6-71a1-11de-a821-00144feabdc0.html

http://www.geek.com/articles/news/google-identifies-massive-cyberattack-campaign-against-vietnamese-protesters-20100331/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astroturfing

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=astroturfing

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Astroturf

http://blog.taragana.com/index.php/archive/researchers-says-china-based-hackers-stole-india-security-information-dalai-lama-e-mails/

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100406/tc_afp/canadauschinaindiaitinternetspy_20100406175816

You just can't call it culture, without cheese.

Or is that, you can't call it cheese without culture....?
Regardless, I cannot believe it!!!
Canada has it's own Rolling Cheese contest.... AND ITS IN BC... It's in Whistler! BRITISH Columbia after all!

At last a beacon of civilization and culture in this wild western land.

For those of you heathens who know not of what I speak, Cheese Rolling is a 200 yr tradition held in the English town of Brockworth on Coopers Hill (and now Blackcomb Mountain, Canada, I might add.) A round of Double Gloucester cheese is rolled down a steeply inclined hill chased by souls of boundless courage and personal life focus all in a bid to win the aforementioned cheese.

Pointless, some might say but then again, so is throwing plates against a wall, Opa! or chopsticks or hurling tomatos or running with bulls. No cows were harmed during this event, just milked.

Never underestimate the cunning British in their ability to seek out fun, courage and daring from nothing more than a piece of Cheese hurtling by at 70km per hour.

It is easy to spot the Canadian version vs the Authentic British version. In Canada apparently the cheese is a tame three inches off the ground followed by cautiously protected participants, still mostly vertical and in rolling cheese crash helments.

In the picture of the British event however you can try and figure out which limbs belonged to which of the helmetless participants chasing the cheese which is about ten feet in the air jetting out of the upper right of the picture.

Go Brit or Go home.

The History: http://www.cheese-rolling.co.uk/index1.htm
The Heritage: http://www.canadiancheeserolling.ca/
For the love of CHEESE:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciayqUMCViY

Its a Jaguar

I grew up in a time when that meant something.
To many it still does, that is, if you get a pure-bred.

Here is a link to the Old English Car Club of British Columbia
Left to our own devices, we make the coolest, sexiest things.
Freedom of expression, to dream and to do.
Preferably better than anyone else.
Thats British.
Tea?

http://www.oecc.ca/

There's no place like home

Or is that, "There's no home like place."

On April 28th British leadership candidate Gordon Brown called a elderly pensioner a bigot for raising the question of immigration to Britain with him. (I know, your looking at the date of this posting and going wha....?... Just one of those things.) As we see later in the interview, she is is notably afraid to even mention the topic again on camera knowing how she will be and already has been portrayed. Immigration is a huge issue in Britain as it is in Canada where the face of the nation has been forcibly changed in the span of a generation and where so many entry level and blue collar jobs have been taken by the unprecedented flood immigrants into both countries. Ms Duffy raised a legitimate and simple question but perhaps too simple for the modern politician to want to touch. It can be encapsulated in "Isn't your job to look out for the citizens who built the country, so why are you doing this?"

I suppose Ms. Duffy, a British Grandmother and pensioner should count her luck that all she received was a backhanded insult for trying to defend her neighbourhood from non-sensical or dis-empowering change. When a Grandmother in China, Wang Cuyun made a stand, she was buried alive while police looked the other way. (2)

I have to applaud these women though. Men are often caricatured as the territorial ones but have you ever seen a furious Mother or Grand Mother. They are fearless. In our modern societies where men are often neutered as 'chauvinists' or as 'out dated' anytime they speak out, women are now the angry, protective voices of the community. True to form their voices do not sound any louder against a bulldozer or when just as disregarded as bigoted than a man's does.

So where do we belong when home is no longer our own and we are not allowed to raise our voice to say so? What becomes of a nation, when the families that build it are the ones most disenfranchised by the need to build an economy "at any cost?" What if the cost is a factor not yet counted, the same way the value of the environment has not been quantified to current economic models? What about the spirit and the values of the people of a nation, a spirit that took thousands of years to craft. What are they worth?

British artist Billy Bragg is promoting the play "Pressure Drop" in Britain with obvious relevance around the world in the age of globalization.

"Pressure Drop examines three generations of a white, working-class English family and their anxieties about immigration. Actor Michael Gould plays a working man in his forties who voices concerns about people's perceptions of the working class: "People used to be proud of us," his character complains. "The working people, they used to be proud. But now, we're not even acknowledged. It's like we don't exist."

In pressure drop Billy Bragg touches on the heart break of his neighbours and family when they see the culture of the neighbourhoods they lived in and fought for, change in a single generation. The loss, when the elderly who consoled themselves with always at least having a place where they felt they belonged, no longer understand the neighbourhoods they grew up in nor why they of all people, have the least say in them. It does not matter if you are from the traditional British families in the UK or Han Chinese in China or British Canadian in Canada. The move to dismantle nations and globalize the world comes with some unsavoury consequences.

"The car factory's gone. Immigration - the ability of people to move where the work is has changed the face of the borough... incredible change in a short amount of time. For people like my mum who's lived there all of her life that change is highly visible," he says.

Pressure Drop portrays such feelings of confusion. They are voiced by a grandmother in her seventies:

"Do you know what came through the door yesterday? Something from a witch doctor. A witch doctor? I just don't know any more. I'm starting not to recognise the place."

Obviously, the play also has ramifications in Vancouver and Canada too where the population also has radically been altered in the space of a generation. The topic no one yet has studied to my knowledge are which segments of the population were the most displaced by this change in the economic, demographic and cultural landscapes of the city and why or rather how? Why Canada as a whole has adopted such an aggressive immigration policy particularly from Asia but not else where? Why is immigration from the UK so low? What are the long term implications for social cohesion of the country when large and culturally different new populations enter and settle regionally? What happens when these populations not only have different value systems from the cultures and values of Canada but also have a decreasing incentive to adapt to the "Canadian" way of life as founded by the British and French? What happens when aggressive groups start to re-write the nature of 'Canadian' to their liking? What tests come next when these populations grow larger? Unpopular questions to ask but all too necessary.

It seems we have, ironically in Mr. Browns comment, an answer to Professor Yu's dare to Anglophone Canada to speak out. It is to be labeled bigoted. It seems the English of England are also dared to speak out to protect their own culture and the families which built and fought for the country once called home. And when they do...

This is the climate that has been created today in the countries that are the bastions of free speech; that the people most afraid to say anything are those that should have been called, the core of the country. Does this climate have an effect?

In the article on Billy Bragg's play he mentions the instance of a young Afghan immigrant who was knifed to death at a soccer match, no doubt in part because of the frustration of the working class of Britain who are fighting and dying in Afghanistan and at the same time asked to accommodate large numbers of refugees from the same. The frustration that British troops are given poor equipment and ammo while back home, services are given to accommodating large numbers of immigrants from the country they are fighting; while British men and society are called intolerant and racist even while extremists in immigrant populations launch bomb attacks in London such as 7/7. The frustration that when people do have the courage to speak up, they are told to shut up.

It seems that forces that be are again pushing the British and British Canadians to break. To strain under the commitment to care or to become as barbaric as they hope to portray us. To that end knives will never solve this problem, just cause more. Follow Bragg's lead, pick up your pens. The only way to defeat silence is to speak. The only way to harm hate is though compassion. Put away the knives and pick up your pens. The only way to win this war is with with heart and head.

Dare to ask your politican about the "I" word if it concerns you. Its a very important part of defining the nation and neighbourhood you live in.

Oh and Mr Brown and Canadian politicians too, I would like to pretend that the only way to dominate an election is for you to listen. If you can pull off that illusion you might just win. Regardless, there is more to lose here than your seat.

Here is to Billy Bragg!

1
http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_8616000/8616545.stm

2

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/7374701/Chinese-granny-buried-alive-by-property-developers.html

3

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/election_2010/8649012.stm

4
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2005/09/09/sharia-protests-20050909.html
5

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mgwU4zCEJtY

She Who Has No Name

She who has no name.

The first lesson in the Bible is about Adam and Eve.

Eve takes a bite from the apple of the tree of knowledge, persuades Adam to do the same and the race is cursed.

Contrary to the opening passage in the bible, in society, it is the evils of men have been explored ad nauseum by current social media while the evils of women are left largely untouched and unexamined by western cultures. Perhaps this is the echo of more chivalrous days, but when a population is 50/50 male to female and 94% of inmates in the prison system are men, you know something is deeply flawed with the laws, fabric and truth of a society. That is, unless, men really are just disposable brutes as some wish us to believe.

Men are often labeled as thuggish, stupid and crass and no one need do more than point towards the television shows that characterize the stereotype of men, just as the crimes they commit. From shows like Two and a Half Men to Hockey Night, foolishness and and physical violence are the examples. "Quick to turn to aggression to solve any problem", that would be the universal summary of men, "brutes", or as an intellectualized version of this same insult once bleeted in the documentary “Beautiful Minds, A little Matter of Gender”, “construction failures.”

But then again, men are by genetic design forced to be the assertive sex. A man who does not have the instinct to in some way assert himself is hardly going to have the instinct nor skills to insert himself into another persons body. So then, it all makes some sense. What does not make sense is that if men are such disproportionate contributors to offenders, why anything isn't being done to examine how to support them and reshape society so that this does not occur. Why is the tear in the fabric of society left to continue to unravel? Is it because it pleases other alpha males who enjoy the reduced competition?

Why also, are not crimes themselves being looked into and redefined for a more modern, civilized and hopefully balanced age and if we do, we should look into the realm of psychological crimes more equally perpetrated by women and also to their own most corrupting motivations.

To explain what I mean we need only start by looking at the design of the woman’s body and then by extension, to her mind we can see that her own built in need is also her greatest mental, moral and emotional weakness just as a man’s is: reproduction and sex or more generally, power.

A woman’s body is built to receive sperm and produce and nurture a baby. In order to do that she must in some way, attract a man, at least in the past. More often than not, in her body and mind whether she admits it or not, her basic instinct is to produce a child. Not to is to feel as a failure.

It is such a simple dynamic but one rarely examined in modern society, not the darker side of it at least and in modern society, the darker side is dark indeed. A century ago there was one way and one way alone to get pregnant; you had to have heterosexual sex. Women could hardly rape a man after all, but in an age of sperm banks and turkey basters, sperm harvesting and soon stem cells….. where there is a demand, there is a market, black or otherwise.

Women can now, if they can just get access to a sperm sample, take a life - essentially raping a man if she has done so without his "of sound mind" consent.... but then again these days with the accepted misandrist message in the media, women are taught that men don't have sound minds at all. Increasingly, as technology and society bring men and women closer together in ability, the playing field of crimes is changing also and the victims of it. Stepping into the vacuum of male chauvinism is female chauvinism. Women have always been able to take advantage of a man who is depressed or otherwise not in the "right mind" such as from psychological harassment or the use of "chemical bonding", the popular term for drug entrapment but previously these methods would lead to the woman herself being shunned, today, in some crowds, they are celebrated.

In an artifact from a previous era, it is the rape less looked at because men are the "stronger" sex and so if they can be taken advantage of, then it is seen as sort of a victory for the"weaker" sex. It is an act of elimination of the man where a his choice for reproduction is stolen. The mere act of creating a child has been given such a spin of righteousness that fewer and fewer people care how that union is made, so long as it is not the woman who is raped. But even if a woman is raped, she still has the right to choose the life of the child where as a man does not if the same happens via technology or psychology to him.

Even where a woman uses the "accepted" means of garnering sperm through sperm banks or other artificial means, the likelihood of these children developing a healthy attitude toward men is less than probable with an absent father. The women most likely to do this of course would be the same ones that think they are never men's children at all, only their own. Also noticeably virtually no resources are being put into supporting "men" allowing them to be better parents if not social role models and much less still in exploring this shadowy dynamic. Welcome to Vancouver.

Vancouver has a unique culture in Canada. The left coast. It has been made even more so by recent large immigration patterns from Asia and subsequently a surging drug trade which have dramatically changed the demographic, culture and how laws are interpreted. Less well known has been the increased influence of ultra rich and media savvy Hebrew families with a version of Kabbala - esque culture moving from LA to Vancouver’s Hollywood North. Noticeably, many of these Hebrew families are strongly matriarchal and not only found their feathers ruffled by the more patriarchal Anglo Canadian way of doing things, but found new allies among the also matriarchal Native and Irish populations, and the Asian populations; the " Gastown Gang" as I term them as they once constituted the majority of the dock workers in Gastown of early colonial Vancouver. All of these groups found themselves at odds with the status quo.

Maybe its not surprising then that Vancouver is also becoming increasingly well known for its aggressive “I don’t need nor want a man” lesbian like culture. 

(Please do not get me wrong, I have nothing against women who love other women nor themselves. I have nothing against love at all when it is not a twisted version of. I have an extreme dislike though towards women who hate or deliberately discredit men or men who do the same to women. Unfortunately, elements in both feminist and Lesbian communities do indeed promote hatred and disrespect to men. See links below)

I am using the term Lesbian loosely here because the culture here really is not all about Lesbianism. A lot of these women don't want to be with another woman per say, they just do not want to have to deal with a man in their life or as women become aggressive and masculinized can't find one that wants to be with them. It really has not been looked at or studied enough to define it. Sometimes it is referred to as sexually empowered women, sometimes it is termed independent woman and other times it is indeed lesbian. Often times it is very bitter too. In the way that Gay men are well …. Gay… these women are indeed… so not gay. They are often harsh and sarcastic as if each group is the balance that each other is missing. So what shall we call these “she’s that have no name” definitely lesbian promoted, sexually empowered, amazonian women, out here on the Leftcoast?

I know. Lets call them daughters of Lilith.

Haven’t heard about Lilith? She was Adam’s first wife according to "Hebrew based mysticism" otherwise known as "Kabbalah", the pop popular belief system big in Hollywood (and Hollywood North). She was the one written out of the bible. Made of the same earth as Adam she refused to lay under him when it came time to “know” him as they say in the bible and then refused to come to the garden of Eden. Used as a goddess symbol in paganism and as a rally for feminists, her story is relatively unknown outside those circles. Eventually, according to most versions, she becomes a demon like figure and a curse to child birth but we won’t get into that here, there is a link below.... but I have to wonder if this is why the whole Vampire theme is so big in Vancouver and it's film business as Lilith also stands in for a Vampire like image?

This, aggressively feminist Lilith culture of Vancouver found new allies for it’s anti male and read anti British white male message in the culture of the arts and media as the cities demographic changed. “Harnessing the ties to the loosely matriarchal traditions in the resurgent Native culture and the newly arrived cultures imported from LA, the powerful Hebrew /Kabbala- eque families mixed in with the large immigration from Asia, a strange brew of anti- establishments…. at least where the establishment was Anglo men …. has been steadily bubbling away in Vancouver, as if it were the norm.

You can see evidence of this culture in the productions of the city, from the series Battlestar Galactica re-imagined or it’s spin off, Caprica, both lauded and loathed for their strong women characters, anti old white man message (in Caprica drama and plenty of Lesbian affairs. There was “The L word” a series dedicated to the imagined lives of Lesbian women in Vancouver. You can see it in celebrations like Lilith fair, a concert for only women artists or the booming Lesbian or shall we say, sexually empowered women / Burlesque… Lilith scene of the city…. Its an unexamined cultural phenomenon in plain view.

In many ways it is also a reaction to our times and the disappointment of many women in the roles their body, mind or society has delt them when they are taught that they are both equal to and should be independent of men and but also experience and expect many of the roles of chivalry, selflessness and British gentlemanly manners expected from long standing traditions. In the modern age of confused gender roles and unstable income, many men are waiting longer to commit if at all and many more women are finding themselves with the income and the instinct to want to have children without the fuss of partnering with a man if they are not already inclined.

What’s more, even if you were of more a conventional bent and if your understood role was to attract a man to receive what you desired instinctively, wouldn't it be the unthinkable to have to ever admit that you were in some way emotionally, physically or intellectually … unattractive. Ahhh (gasp) the horror of what I just said. How cruel but also, how true. It is doubtful some could admit to this and then if so what lengths would they go to get their child. In the story of Lilith itself, it describes how Lilith forces herself on Adam but because she does so, the children she bears are cursed demons rather than healthy children. Back in the real world however, we see the less dramatic version of this all the time. In Vancouver I have heard anecdotally of young women using drugs to get the guy, the aforementioned chemical bonding talked about in the earlier blog entry, “The Hypocritic Oath”, but this time used also to get the kid. It’s just not as talked about.

This entire dynamic in fact of men studying women at all is often shy'd away from in perhaps the most classic form of social poisoning. Men are often labeled by women as chauvinists or unable to relate and so men give womens studies a wide birth and yet women have no trouble speaking for men and give other women more credence in their own female chauvinism. True to the nature of equality however, women rarely examine the dark side of their own kind. Maybe that's because they don't see it a darker side but maybe it’s about time.

So how far would these women go to get what they instinctively wanted? In the aggressive Vancouver culture being cultivated where it is taught that women should rule their own lives and if need be, take what they want, to be “Razors” as labeled in the Battlestar Galactica spin off series; how far would a woman go if she decided “that is the man I want” but he did not feel the same way about her?

We can see examples of this unexplored dynamic of need and or even female sexual consumerism all around us but is rarely explored. A darkly humorous account recently reported on the BBC was of how a 57 yr old Ohio women repeatedly called 911 to demand they find her a husband until she was jailed. Another ever more darkly humorous example I think is Ashton Kutcher =)

What happens when a women decides to throw every feminine wile in the book she has at a man but he for whatever his reason says “no.” She is hurt, dejected and in the cases of the more selfish and ego driven, she is angry and wants revenge: carnally and instinctively and all to often viciously. “Hell hath no fury….” as they say. And their are groups of women who love to "help" women in this state. To help them hate men further and learn to love their anger. It's a palatable part of this cities culture. So do men require "hell" protection services? Do women need to be examined for the irrational hatred they use against men for being denied? Do men need protection from women acting in female chauvinism, those women being after all, their fathers daughters?

Women don’t often use physical violence for obvious reasons. If “Hockey Night in Canada” is the mans show of violence, “Murder She Wrote” is the woman's. Perhaps a psychologist in the documentary, “The Beautiful Mind – A Matter of Gender” said it best when he said like something like this: “Where women cannot use violence, they turn to poison be it psychological, social or physical.” Where men’s “strength” is physical violence which is an out in the open skill used to produced out in the open results and perhaps the honesty we have become accustomed to in the Western world, women by design prefer to use psychology or deception. Don’t aggravate the alpha male but get the desired results have been the rules for the monkeys passing on their genes for may thousands of years. It makes perfect sense.

How far will that deception go though and how far will those women that, lets face it, hate men not rationally for what men are or have done to them, but irrationally for what they themselves are not; how far will they go to exact their revenge?

It is a question rarely examined in modern times but in modern times never needed to be more so. With technologies like artificial insemination and stem cell research, men are increasingly in danger of being cut out of the equation by technology and ”independent” women. If angry, aggressive women are increasingly being promoted by a society that no longer encourages unity of the sexes but seemingly the opposite, how will that manifest in the treatment of men and the future of our world.

Society has gotten so used to blaming men for all wrongs, it does not look at how some women have, in their rush for “liberation” and increasing female chauvinism, abandoned their own responsibilities to a cohesive society. The echo of chivalry is a blind belief in the virtue of women and yet if we are all equal they we know them equally flawed, but we see them as hardly examined.

So, we have had women’s liberation, but we are still waiting for men’s.

I grew up in this city and have watched its change from a balanced and quiet British Canadian town into its current reputation as a beautiful and culturally diverse but also the some would say bitter, “no fun city” and paradoxically a drug haven. An increasingly lesbifriendly if not anti ( anglo- white) male town. (The one notable exception to Vancouver's "No- Fun'ness" being the Olympics where everyone yelled the nationalistic but sort of vacuous "Oh Canada" and "woo wooo" for two weeks straight in heavily organized happiness that would have made Mao proud)

I went to school in an education culture dominated by women who taught me that women are better nurturers and teachers than men because children respond better to women but saw very quickly that this was not so during my brief time teaching in schools. What I saw was a culture in schools of harassment of males to protect what female teachers saw as their turf. What I saw was a female chauvinism that rivaled any males chauvinism but garnished with smiles not gruff voices and what I saw were class rooms starving for the attention of masculine energy the same way I see it in female single parent families and yet women still insist they are better family makers... a family has a Father too and every child knows it.

What I see in Vancouver is a city of women taught to embrace their anger and disappointment, to be razors and never admit that it is their own needs not men, which often drive them and hurt them from the inside. To turn to power seeking rather than building greater understanding and I think the city reflects it. They say that Men are the unfeeling ones not in touch with their emotions. I think we will find there are many instincts and emotions women talk “around” also, even if they talk more. We all, always, point the finger.

I see in modern Vancouver just as in the U.K, having thrown off its traditional English ways which as old fashioned as they were, were long understood and worked well, a city needing the loving masculine leadership that it banished in the war of the sexes. That was a war in which only one side ever turned up and told men they were in the wrong while women were right.

Hyenas are the perfect symbol for this new dynamic of the darker side of Vancouver and modern culture as discussed in the blog entry "All the World is Ruled by Symbols". They are, after all dog like animals actually closer related to cats and that live in matriarchal packs. Female animals with phallus's who keep the males around only as necessary and who's culture promotes a survival of the most viscous as female cubs kill one another off to become the matriarch. Animals who's chattering laugh holds no joy but only calculation and danger. In Vancouver, I see a city where the Lionesses have been separated from their Lions and the Hyena’s rule the land picking off the isolated Lions, one at a time.

I see, what were groups to supports the rights and perspectives of women in media, education, law and art have become political establishments; industries which now know all the right buttons to push in their fields and with no counter balance, often breeding an increasing disrespect for men. I see these institutions attracting the Lilith types and not the loving types more and more as hurt women turn to them for support but never examining the validity of their own hurt. I see them becoming razors and cutting themselves and others on the way to taking what they want, building more and more hurt people along the way to turn to razors to cut more and more people.

I see a world where it is men, not women, who have no control over the rights to their body or their genetic material and hence, the choice of who is the person to provide continuity of the soul. A sort of murder she wrote.

I see a world where we assume lab workers, doctors and nurses will do what they are supposed to with peoples genetic material, but no one really checks and a world where there is a market for that material.

I see a legal system far behind in defining what is and is not a crime, far behind in checking on what is happening and uncaring towards the most suffering segment of the population, just assuming that is the way it is, that society and laws are functional if 94 percent of inmates are men.

I see a society defined by more and more by women and unquestioning to their own chauvinism while telling men they are not equipped to make choices for themselves.

I read a article in a Vancouver paper written by a woman lecturing women on why men are not aggressive enough in this town at pursuing them. Apparently it is because men "like to chase" and are intimidated by strong women who turn the tables she said. Or maybe the vibe being used by women is too female chauvinistic, to belittling of men's psyche? On the way home I saw graffiti on a wall that said "Honor Women".

 I thought to myself, when women actually "Honor Men" they will have no trouble finding one.

I see Lilith with her ever growing brood of hurt quietly getting ready for their day.

I see hyenas chattering ever so happily that they are picking us off, one by one.

And they say it only takes four hyenas to take down one Lion.

There are plenty here.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lilith

http://www.cbc.ca/cp/Oddities/a31012.html

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30181315/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjDPx3u-UPw&playnext_from=TL&videos=eaBZrbXnSww

http://dearmisandrist.blogspot.com/

http://www.ultimatemisandrist.com/

http://www.mensuck.com/

http://www.angelfire.com/fl/buttBOY/

http://www.ihatemen.org/

http://www.dateology.ca/metro-news-vancouver-article-ex-dancer-talks-hookups-june-3rd-2010/