Jim Poling Sr.'s Blog, page 30

Look to the forest

Spring came in February. Winter followed in March. What April will bring is anyone’s guess.
This winter’s wild weather swings confirm for many that our climate is changing drastically. Probably, but it is not quite that simple.
Climate change can’t be determined by a several weeks of unusually warm temperatures in February and far below freezing temperatures on the first official days of spring.
Climate and weather are distinctly different. Weather is what you see and feel when you step outside today. Climate is the average of weather patterns over a long period of time – years, not days, weeks or even months.
One way to get better informed about climate change is to look at how our environment and its biodiversity are changing. An interesting place to look for that change is in a forest.
The forest I know best has undergone significant change in recent times. Above normal rainfall has softened soils, weakening tree root grips and making them more susceptible to wind damage.
Winds have become more frequent and stronger. Healthy oaks clinging to thin soils on rocky ridges have been upended.
Even in the more protected areas I can find hearty evergreens, birches and poplars toppled or bent over by unusually strong winds.
A bigger worry for the forest is non-native invasive bugs bringing diseases. Beech bark disease is moving through Ontario, attacking and killing mature beech trees whose nuts are an important food source for bears. Some experts believe beech bark disease could wipe out beech trees in Haliburton and Muskoka.
Emerald ash borers from Asia have devastated ash populations in southern Ontario and are moving north. Ash tree species are on the brink of extinction.

Ticks carrying Lyme disease also are spreading into forests they have not occupied before. There were 987 Canadian cases of Lyme disease reported in 2016, a huge increase from the 144 reported in 2009.
Ontario’s climate is becoming wetter and warmer with temperatures expected to increase more,  especially in northern areas. The warming is creating longer growing seasons that are changing the life patterns of some plants, animals and insects.
For instance, a new species of flying squirrel is believed to be the result of warming temperatures in Ontario. Warmer temperatures are expanding the range of the southern flying squirrel, moving it further into the range of the larger northern flying squirrel. The two species have been mating, creating a hybrid.
Meanwhile, Whiskey Jack (Gray Jay) populations have declined as much as 50 per cent in the last 40 years, notably in Algonquin Park, which is the southern limit of their range. These jays cache winter food supplies in tree bark and warmer autumns and warm bursts in winter can spoil their food caches and are believed to be one factor in their decline.
Warmer temperatures are changing bird migration patterns and bird ranges. Some birds are moving north, or to higher elevations, to keep within their preferred temperature ranges.
The forest has much to tell about climate change and bird populations. The first thing you notice in many forests is the scarcity of birds. Sight and sound of birds in the forest have been declining at an alarming rate.
A National Audubon Society study has found that one third of North America’s wintering bird populations have declined since 1966. That follows another study that says one-third of all North American bird species face extinction.
Most of us don’t need studies and statistics to tell us that bird populations are declining. We simply have to walk into the forest, or step out into our own back yards. The birds just are not there in the numbers we used to see.
Concerns about changing climate go beyond birds and dying trees, however. Everything in nature is connected, including the all powerful and domineering human species.  Something changes and there are consequences for other things.
So the debate now should not be about whether climate change is real, how severe or mild it might be, or what causes it. The discussion should centre on the change now seen in the environment and its biodiversity and what, if anything, we can do about that.
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Ontario’s debt crisis

In all the recent dark and depressing news about governments, and the people who run them, comes a pinprick of light. Small and distant like a far away star in the night sky, but enough to give hope that common sense has not been completely extinguished. 
The twinkle of light comes from Quebec where the provincial government has grasped the self-evident truth that borrowed money is an anchor that can sink the ship if not managed cautiously.
Quebec will announce next week that it will pay $10 billion over the next five years against its provincial debt. It will be the most substantial debt repayment the province has made in more than 50 years and will save taxpayers $1 billion in interest payments over five years.
Imagine that, a government paying down debt instead of leaving it for next generations to pay.
Quebec has been squirrelling away money into a Generations Fund to get larger investment returns than it was paying in debt interest. The money going into the fund was obtained from a series of budget surpluses.
In case anyone in Ontario has forgotten, budget surpluses are created when you manage financial affairs wisely and spend less than you had budgeted.
Almost all Canadian governments, federal, provincial and local, have ratcheted up their debt loads in the last 10 years. Quebec is one of the most indebted, but at least it is confronting the problem.
The extent of Canada’s overall debt problem was outlined by a 2016 Fraser Institute report. It found that combined federal-provincial debt of $834 billion in 2007/2008 increased to a projected $1.3 trillion in 2015/2016. That’s 64.8 per cent of the economy or $35,827 per Canadian.
Interest payments on collective government debt in 2014/2015 totalled an astounding $60.8 billion or 8.1 per cent of total government revenue that year.
How big is that? It is almost as much as spending on primary and secondary education ($62.2 billion in 2012/2013) and more than Canada and Quebec Pension Plan benefit payouts ($50.9 billion).
While Quebec attempts to deal with its debt, Ontario continues to hurtle toward a debt catastrophe. Many of us won’t be around to feel the pain but millennials will.
Ontario’s debt has almost tripled in the last 15 years. It was $110 billion when the Progressive Conservative government presented its last budget in 2003. It is projected to be $312 billion this year and $336 billion in 2019-2020.
Ontario’s debt problem lies not just in the number of dollars it owes. Its changing population is a major negative factor.
Within the next 12 years, the province’s working age population is expected to fall to 60 per cent of the general population. That number was 68 per cent in 2016.
Also the number of Ontario seniors is expected to grow to five million by 2050, twice the current number.
Fewer working people means smaller government revenues, and more older people means increased spending demand for health care and other senior services.
On top of that Ontario’s economic growth is projected to average only two per cent over the next 30 years, lower than the 2.5 per cent seen over the past 20 years.
Ontario’s political leaders have three choices: increase revenues (raise taxes and service fees), cut spending (provide less government service) or continue to let the debt grow even larger.
Most of us face the same three options in our personal lives. However, letting debt grow is not really an option for us because creditors will step in and shut us down. Goodbye big screen TV, goodbye car, goodbye the roof over your head.    
Ontario’s debt crisis will not be solved under our current political system in which the goal is to put a party in power and keep it there no matter what the costs or consequences.
Difficult decisions that will affect all citizens are required to deal with the debt crisis. Decisions made in current hyper-partisan atmosphere never can be successful.
We need a sincere, fully bipartisan approach to getting out of our debt mess. That means electing people willing to work outside partisan political thinking to find the best solutions.
With the June Ontario election campaign underway we need to be talking about this.
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Escaping Winter's Madness

There are few refuges during a brutal winter; so few places to hide and stay calm and warm.
It’s not the weather that has made this winter brutal. It has had its violent ups and downs but it is winter weather we have been getting used to over the past few years.
No, it’s not weather that has made this winter so distressing and cruel. It is the swelling madness in the world around us. It is depressing.
Hunkered down in his Maine hideaway horror author Stephen King Tweeted the other day:
“Somewhere in America there must be a bar for depressed people featuring Unhappy Hour.”

The craziness is everywhere.
In Syria they can’t bury the bodies of the women and children fast enough as government and Russian warplanes relentlessly rain down bombs and rockets.
In Ontario, Patrick Brown and the Conservatives continue to rip the party apart like a pack of wild dogs.
In the U.S. they want to arm teachers to stop the school massacres occurring roughly once a week. If that doesn’t work, perhaps they’ll arm the students, offering them bonus grades and National Rifle Association discounts on textbooks.
In Canada we have been treated to the Bollywood performances of the prime minister and his family on a taxpayer funded vacation in India. Wow, that white sherwani with golden threads, the kurta shirts, the embroidered saris and the garlands of flowers strung around their necks!
And, those awesome bhangra dance moves! Our prime minister certainly can preen and dance.
Wonder who is getting the bill for all those costumes?
And, wasn’t it just a few months ago that there was raging controversy in this country over cultural appropriation? Several media editors lost their jobs because of it.
When winter madness becomes too much, there is only one escape: The  movie theatre.
I am a reluctant movie goer because today’s films often are too much bang-bang, boom-boom special effects efforts. Much gunfire and explosions but little in the way of real story.
February actually was a good month for the movies. There were some meaningful movies with stories that carried important messages.
The first I saw was Wonder about a boy with a facial deformity who is ostracized and bullied at school because of his different looks. In the end he wins an award at graduation and receives a standing ovation.
The message: Treat people with understanding and respect despite their looks, or their race, creed or colour.
Then there was Black Panther the mega-hit with lots of sci-fi stuff and special effects but some important messages. The film is elevating, raising up black people, women and African countries that the U.S. president has called s-holes.
Black Panther is a movie created by black people and starring black people but it is a movie that applies to all people. Our colour doesn’t matter. We are all people working to solve problems to create a better world.
I also saw The Butler, an older movie about a White House butler during the 1960s civil rights wars in the U.S. It is a story that shows just how far we have progressed in trying the eliminate racial prejudice.
I’m glad I went to the movies. Because after seeing these three I was no longer looking for a bar that offered Unhappy Hour.
The movies left me with the feeling that despite the world’s current descent into madness, there is hope. They showed how real people have overcome bigotry, bullying, plain stupidity and over time have continued to make the world a better place.
Progress in making the world a better place has slowed for now because too many political leaders are narcissistic, not-too-bright duds. That will change, however, when more of us realise we must stop accepting mediocrity and start electing real leaders.
That will happen. Real people will begin electing wise leaders who will help build understanding and tolerance, and work relentlessly for the common good, not just for themselves, their party or a political pressure group.
As the superhero of Black Panther tells the United Nations in the film’s final scene:
“In times of crises, the wise build bridges, while the foolish build walls.”

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Nobody’s kid sister

The United States just isn’t going to put up with it any more. Tired of forever being screwed over by beady-eyed Canadians and sleazy Mexican drug lords.
Bad, very bad, deals with Canadians and Mexicans have seen factories close and companies relocate out of the U.S. Hundreds of thousands of American jobs lost.
Canadians in particular are slick and brutal, taking advantage of a country 10 times its size. Take, take, take and give nothing in return.
It has to stop, and it will stop with a better North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) which has been a disaster for the poor Americans.
All that is the American bully whine we’ve been hearing since NAFTA renegotiations began last summer.
What really needs to stop is the American grandstanding, manipulating and bullying calculated at getting a NAFTA deal favourable only to them. What also needs to stop is the attitude that Canadians are northern nobodies living in snow holes, fortunate to exist in the shadow of a really smart and generous southern neighbour.
The latest U.S. manipulation of the NAFTA talks are the tariffs on steel (25 per cent) and aluminum (10 per cent). Canada will not be subject to those crushing tariffs - if it signs a NAFTA agreement that the U.S. demands.

That’s not negotiation; that’s gangster-style coercion.
This NAFTA nonsense has been going on too long. It is obvious that the U.S. is not interested in a balanced deal that is fair and that works for all three North American partners. They want a deal totally in their favour.
It’s time to end this waste time. Usher the American negotiators to the door and boot them into the street.
There have been predictions of disaster for Canada if the 25-year-old NAFTA is not renewed. The sky will fall.
Perhaps it will, perhaps it will not.
The Conference Board of Canada predicts a 0.5 per cent economic decline if NAFTA is ended and a loss of about 85,000 jobs. That is a modest impact that would be followed by some recovery.
Whatever, Canadians would survive. We always have and incidentally, while surviving we have contributed enormously to U.S. success in many fields.
We have had a large presence in their news and entertainment industry: Sudbury boy Alex Trebek (Jeopardy), Donald Sutherland, Peter Jennings (ABC News), David Frum, Justin Bieber. This list stretches beyond memory capabilities.
In sport, we gave the Americans hockey, lacrosse, and yes, baseball and basketball. And, not to forget the board game Trivial Pursuit.
In technology and invention it was us who came up with the telephone, walkie-talkies, snowmobiles, alkaline batteries, Canadarm and the Robertson screwdriver. A female Canadian invented the Wonderbra.
Millions of American children have been nourished on Pablum and peanut butter, both invented by Canadians. In the field of medicine, we created insulin, child resistance medicine bottles, the heart pacemaker, open heart surgery, T-cell receptors and other major steps in cancer immunology.
A country with those successes, though never bragged about, should be able to get along nicely without a one-sided NAFTA deal. There are many other countries with which to do fair trade deals. Also, other places to sell our oil, which has been flowing to the U.S. at bargain basement prices.
Our federal government should not cave in to the U.S. coercion on NAFTA.
Chrystia Freeland, our foreign affairs minister, strikes me as someone who is not easily pushed around. I don’t know much about her except what I see, hear and read in the news. I do know she is a former financial journalist once based in Moscow.
She also is the author of the best seller Plutocrats: The Rise of the New Global Super-Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else.
She is banned from Russia because she wrote pieces sharply critical of Russian president Vladimir Putin. (That alone puts her several heads taller than Humpty Trumpty).
Hopefully Freeland and her team will deliver the message that Canadians are not simpleton drawers of water and hewers of wood. We’ve got good products and good brains for doing business in the much bigger world outside the U.S.
We’re all grown up now, and won’t tolerate being treated like someone’s little sister.

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And, the winner is . . .

Interesting things are missed when there is so much news happening around the world.
The Valentine’s Day school massacre in Florida, the prime minister’s Indian debacle, this winter’s weird weather (snow in Rome and San Diego!) have consumed newspage and newscast space recently.
Little noticed was the 20TH annual Teddy Awards, given out each February to our governments’ most wasteful spenders.
The Teddies are pig statues awarded by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF). They are named for a guy who was fired as head of the Canada Labour Relations Board for dubious expense claims, including a $700 lunch for two. (Hey, the lunch was in Paris, which can be pricey!)
This year the federal category Teddy was awarded to the Department of Canadian Heritage, which built a Canada 150 outdoor skating rink on Parliament Hill at a cost of $8.2 million. That works out to $100,000 a day for the time the rink was open.
The rink was  widely criticized because of its strict rules, including no food or drink on the ice, no cell phones, no hockey sticks or pucks, no figure skating, and no children in arms. An exception to the hockey prohibition was Hockey on the Hill, a peewee tournament for kids across Canada but that was cancelled and moved to an indoor arena because the weather was considered too cold.
Skaters were limited to 45 minutes skating time and required to book times online.

Just a hard slapshot away from the  multi-million dollar rink is the Rideau Canal Skateway, Canada’s most renowned outdoor rink.
There were impressive runners up in the federal Teddy category: Health Canada for spending $100,000 a year for the minister’s Twitter account, and Finance Canada for blowing $192,000 to advertise the federal budget, which received hours of news media coverage.
Canada Revenue won the 2017 award for moving an employee from Richmond Hill to Belleville at a cost of $538,000. Of that amount $340,000 was for “price protection” on the employee’s $3.4 million house and $168,000 was for real estate fees.
Ontario’s Wynne government won this year’s provincial category Teddy for its vote-getting strategy to reduce our electricity bills. The province borrowed money to reduce electricity bills for a few years, but the provincial auditor-general has said the sleight of hand will cost taxpayers an additional $39 billion in the end.
Last year the Ontario government was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Teddy for its “long track record of mismanaging the province’s energy policy.” The provincial auditor general has reported that between 2006 and 2014 Ontario consumers have paid $37 billion above market price for energy because of the government’s mismanagement of energy policy.
This year’s provincial category runner up was the head of Engage Nova Scotia who earns $163,000 year despite, according to the CTF, not being able to explain what Engage Nova Scotia does. It is financially supported by the province’s Liberal government and the boss is a former Nova Scotia Liberal leader.
The annual Teddy awards are impressive because there is never a dearth of potential nominees in all levels of government across Canada.
 “Sadly, we are never short on nominees, as governments seem to be very good at finding new ways to waste money,” said Aaron Wudrick, a CTF director.
Canada  of course is not the only country where taxpayers money is washed down the sewers of bureaucratic stupidity. In Washington, D.C., Housing Secretary Ben Carson ordered a $31,000 custom hardwood dining set for his office. The order was placed about the same time Carson was circulating plans to slash his department’s programs for the homeless, elderly and the poor.
And, the U.S. National Parks Service paid $65,473 for a study to figure out what bugs do at night when a light is turned on.
Anyone in cottage country could have supplied the answer: when sitting outside on your deck never turn on a light or you’ll be bombarded by a million insects.
That 65 grand could have been better used to get the answers to more important questions like “How many bureaucrats does it take to screw in a light bulb?
Oh well, it’s only taxpayer money.

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The Crisis that Trudeau Ignores

Few people notice or really care, but there is a daily newspaper crisis in Canada. It is a crisis that has huge ramifications, now and certainly over time, for our country and our culture.
The daily newspaper industry is in fact dying and resuscitation efforts have been meagre and not well thought out.
The Canadian Media Guild, representing workers at CBC and the country’s largest news services, estimates that between 2008 and 2016 more than 16,000 media jobs disappeared across the country.
Accurate numbers are difficult to assemble because news media job losses mount every month. However, it is likely that roughly 10,000 of the 16,000 jobs were lost at newspapers.
In the U.S. between 1990 and 2016 the newspaper publishing industry shrunk by nearly 60 percent, from roughly 458,000 jobs to 183,000 jobs, the U.S. Bureau of Job Statistics reports.
What we do know for sure is that Canadian daily newspaper titles such as the Orillia Times and Packet, the Guelph Mercury and the Moose Jaw Times-Herald, which served significant urban areas for decades, no longer exist.

Last November the Canadian newspaper industry took a huge hit when Torstar Corp. and Postmedia Network Inc. traded 41 papers then closed 36 in places where they compete. The closures, including weeklies and dailies, eliminated 291 jobs.
This death spiral has prompted a daily newspaper industry attempt to get the federal government to include help for journalism in its cultural policy.
The Trudeau government did commission a study of the problem, which last year resulted in the report titled The Shattered Mirror. It produced a number of good thoughts and recommendations, which the government has pretty much ignored.
A Commons committee also investigated the failing industry and made some practical recommendations. Those also have been ignored.
Trudeau and his ministers have done nothing to help newspaper journalism because they feel that they cannot "bail out industry models that are no longer viable."
That is an uninformed, unintelligent position.
First, it shows a lack of knowledge about the importance of daily journalism to a country’s democracy and culture. Secondly, the industry does not need a financial bailout. It needs fresh, smart thinking to help it reinvent itself in an age where online companies (Facebook and Google to name two) are amassing trillions of dollars by killing traditional industry models.
The newspaper industry desperately needs help in re-inventing itself. Its own efforts to date have been pathetically slow and unimaginative.
Just one example is the TorStar launch of Star Touch, a tablet platform that cost the company $40 million and two years of re-invention time. Many people in the industry said it was a silly project destined to fail. It did and was closed down last summer.
Re-invention efforts outside Canada have been better. Companies like the New York Times, Washington Post and The Guardian in England have been somewhat successful in their efforts to provide strong online models that produce journalism that people are willing to buy.
More and more Canadians are getting their non-local daily news from online dailies in New York, Washington, Los Angeles, London and Melbourne. That likely is the future - people around the world subscribing to one or more online dailies located in major world centres.
Community newspapers, like this one, have a brighter future than the dailies. That is because they focus on hometown news that people want and need.
As the daily newspaper industry has shrunk, huge black holes have developed where news coverage no longer is available to the entire country. Newspapers like the Moose Jaw Times-Herald and the Orillia Packet and Times shared their news with newspaper and broadcast services that distributed it nationwide.
The dailies that survive now are mere shadows of themselves with much reduced news coverage areas, skeleton staffs and therefore less news to share.
The result is Canadians have fewer news sources for learning about what is happening in other parts of their country.
Instead of saying “why should we do anything to help?” the Trudeau government should be asking “what are the ways we might help?”
That’s the way leadership is supposed to work.

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The spy who fed me Shrooms

The tiniest things lead to the most important discoveries.
With nothing else to do I was thumbing through news photos on the Internet. Boring stuff. Trudeau dabbing his eyes with a Kleenex. Trump in a tied-too-long red tie. Trump in a tied-too-long blue tie.
Then onto the computer screen jumps Vlad Putin, bare chested, taking the sun in a remote part of Siberia during his vacation last summer. It was one in a portfolio of photos dumped onto the Internet by Russian state photographers.
Vlad fishing in a stream bare-chested. Vlad scuba diving, Vlad, bare-chested again, horseback riding.
They were part of a public relations effort to show Vlad as the world’s muscular, most powerful leader. The superman who has outboxed and outfoxed Humpity Trumpity of the U.S.
Almost unnoticed in that montage of PR offerings is Vlad, wearing a shirt this time, sitting in dense forest examining and discussing mushrooms with Sergei Shoigu, Russia’s  defence minister.
Eh? The Russian president and his defence minister sitting in a Siberian forest discussing mushrooms?
As Sherlock Holmes would say: “Exactly, my dear Watson!”
Yes, the humble mushroom is master spy Putin’s secret weapon for achieving world domination. Not just any mushroom, but those known in the dark side of mushroom gathering as Shrooms –  psychedelic magic mushrooms.
Russians are mushroom crazy, and love those fleshy fruits of the soil almost as much as they love vodka. They consume two million tons of wild mushrooms each year, most of which are collected in the forests by individual consumers. Mushroom picking is a national sport.
Leo Tolstoy, author of War and Peace and Anna Karenina, wrote stories about mushroom picking. Composer Peter Tchaikovsky scribbled melodies during mushroom picking expeditions.
Shrooms contain hallucinogens that cause mental disturbances similar to those created by LSD. The Russians over the years are known to have used Shrooms to trick people into believing and doing crazy things.
Siberian shamans consumed Shrooms to achieve spiritual journeys and sometimes gave dried, powdered Shrooms as gifts at Christmas. That is how the Santa Claus legend was born.
When the Siberian snows were too deep to go door to door, the shamans fed magic mushrooms to reindeer and flew from rooftop to rooftop, delivering presents of Shrooms through the chimneys.
Don’t believe that? Well, consider this: one of the most popular magic mushrooms in Siberia has a bright red cap with white dots, the same colour combination as Santa Claus’ winter suit.
So, although he ain’t Santa, Vlad is secretly delivering magic mushrooms around the world. We don’t know how he is doing it but he is getting Shrooms into the bloodstreams of world leaders.
Britain’s Theresa May is doing peculiar things and some days looks like she is about to snap. Normally aggressive Angela Merkel is a quiet mere shadow of herself. Justin Trudeau is speaking oddly, lecturing people to say personhood instead of manhood.
More evidence that world leaders are going strange came when Barack Obama appeared on a Jerry Seinfeld show and said a "pretty sizable percentage" of world leaders are crazy.
Last summer an Australian study reported that magic mushrooms cause people to lose their sense of self.
"People who go through psychedelic experiences no longer take it for granted that the way they've been viewing things is the only way," said one of the report’s authors.
Psychedelics create ‘ego dissolution’ which could result in re-engineering “the mechanisms of self, which in turn could change people's outlook or worldview.” And, “ego dissolution offers vivid experiential proof not only that can things be different, but that there is an opportunity to seek change."
That’s exactly what Vlad is working on – re-engineering the minds of world leaders until they dance for him like puppets.
Obviously he hasn’t managed to get Shrooms into Trump’s Diet Coke yet because that ego remains as large as the Rocky Mountains. However, he no doubt is working hard on it.
I also suspect that Vlad is trying to get Shrooms not just into world leaders’ food and drink but into the general populations’ as well.
Now that I think about it, my coffee did taste a bit different this morning.
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Political pipe dream?

It’s time that we all started thinking and doing politics differently here in Ontario, and elsewhere.

The way we do politics is old and rusty. Our political systems are snared in a party system in which the parties and their goals are more important than the people and the common good.
Three major parties are contesting the June Ontario election, none of which is fully capable of providing the leadership that people want and need. All three have had their chance to lead in the last 30 years and all three have failed to provide the new ideas and decisiveness critically needed in a wildly changing world.
Democracy has been weakened in Ontario, but it is not the only place. Failing democracies are seen throughout the world.
Democracies flourish when people believe they can improve their lives. They start to fail when people feel their lives are stagnating, and they see  a not-so-bright future for their children.
A recent Pew Research Centre study found that many people in advanced democracies like Germany, Sweden, Spain, The Netherlands and Italy are worried about their children’s economic future. In France, the study found, 70 per cent of people said they doubt their children will be better off financially.
In the U.S. some research says that in 1970, a full 90 per cent of 30 year olds were better off than their parents at the same age. By 2010, only 50 per cent of 30 year olds were better off than their parents at the same age.
There is more evidence closer to home. In Ontario 42 per cent of young adults were living with their parents in 2016, an increase of 20 per cent since 2001.
Concerns about the future are one reason why cracks are showing in democracies, even in countries where democracies have thrived for many decades, or longer.
Freedom House, a freedom and democracy watchdog, reports that in 2017 “political rights and civil liberties around the world deteriorated to their lowest point in more than a decade.”
It adds: “Democracy is under assault and in retreat around the globe, a crisis that has intensified as America's democratic standards erode at an accelerating pace.”
Voters continue to believe in democracy but more and more of them see it not meeting their needs. They are upset by what they see as serious world change – growing inequality, sputtering economies, climate change, an evaporating middle class and unprecedented displacement and immigration that is swamping governments.
Many voters around the world are turning to anti-establishment political movements in hopes they can make things better. Populist nationalistic parties have made impressive showings in a number of European countries, and of course the United States.
So far these movements have brought little that can change the world for the better. They have brought, however, a retreat from common decency, political buffoonery, alternate realities and fake news and a disturbing rise in racism.
The alternatives to what we have now do not lie in these so-called populist movements and their alternate realities. Nor do they lie in the political systems and the political parties from which we have to choose.
The alternatives surely are in the people we choose, not the parties. We need to begin nominating and electing people who understand and believe in true bipartisanship – the working together for the best solutions for all people. 
We need more youth, and more women in politics. More people who spurn tribal thinking and work seriously to develop their own thinking. People who are committed to bipartisan good governance without political party ties.
These will be people who believe that growth should be about meeting and sustaining  needs, not growth simply to ratchet up profits and build bigger stock market numbers. People who see that the goal now must be to meet present basic needs without screwing up the ability of future generations to meet theirs.
Attracting and electing people to work independent of political parties may be a pipe dream. But our dreams are the hope of the future.
We need change in how we govern ourselves because the current political party system is corroded and corrupt.

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The dead and the dazed

They just don’t get it, do they?
Our neighbours to the south, I mean. Only three weeks into the new year and they already had experienced 11 school shootings.
Last week’s Kentucky school shooting, which left two 15-year-olds dead and 18 other students wounded, was the 50th school shooting in this academic year.

There probably will be another this week, and another next week because research has found that since 2013 a school shooting occurs somewhere in America every week. Some are suicides and some do not involved killing or injuries, but one a week is shocking.
Also, an FBI study found that of all shooter episodes in the U.S., 25 per cent were in education environments and the number is rising.
Gun death figures are totally insane south of the border. In 2013, 1.3 per cent of all deaths in the U.S. resulted from guns. Between 1968 and 2011 a total of 1.4 million people died from gunshots. That is more than the population of Dallas, Texas or San Diego, California.
Not only are the figures ridiculous, so are the arguments against any form of gun control, or research into why the U.S. has so many more gun deaths than any other so-called civilized society.
The U.S. Congress has rejected efforts to have the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) research the underlying causes of gun violence.
John Boehner, speaker of the House of Representatives at the time of that rejection, said the CDC’s job is to look only at diseases that harm public health. He added:
“I’m sorry, but a gun is not a disease. Guns don’t kill people — people do. And when people use weapons in a horrible way, we should condemn the actions of the individual and not blame the action on some weapon.”
A gun may not be a disease yet thousands of people in the U.S. die by the gun every year.
The country just keeps burying its gunshot victims and moving on without trying to find out what is causing the epidemic, or trying to cure it. Those who have lost children to gun violence no doubt would welcome some CDC research into why the country is so gun violent.
Americans, however, continue to wander about in a daze, increasingly numbed by the gun violence around them. The outrage over the latest mass shooting is lesser than the outrage from the one before, and more short-lived.
Many no longer can distinguish between reality and the constant violence they see on their screens. Defence mechanisms have kicked in, allowing them to disassociate from what’s happening around them.
We in Canada should not feel superior. Our gun violence is many times less than that of the U.S., however, shootings in our major cities have been increasing every year.
There is gunfire every day in Toronto and shootings no longer are uncommon in cities like Halifax, Edmonton and even Regina.
However, Canadians at least are willing to talk about what is behind gun violence and what we can do to prevent it. For instance, Halifax police have appointed an in-house research co-ordinator to study the problem. Surrey, part of the greater Vancouver area, now has a task force working on gun and gang violence.
And the Canadian Public Health Association has been advocating a public health approach to ending gun violence.
More gun control laws are not the answer for Canada. We have effective gun control laws and we have research that shows more stringent control will simply hurt responsible gun owners while not getting at the real problems.
Illegal guns and streets gangs account for much of Canada’s gun violence. We need to corral the gangs, and keep them from getting guns, most of which are imported and obtained illegally.
The U.S. needs to open its mind and begin talking about gun violence and how to start putting a lid on it.
That’s a good thought, but not likely to happen. Kentucky, where the two young teens were blown away at school last week, has been considering legislation to allow people with concealed weapons permits to bring handguns onto public school campuses.
Fight gun violence with more guns. Another terrific idea from America’s gun sales folks.
Email: shaman@vianet.ca
Profile: http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001K8FY3Y

Get Serious About the Flu

One thing becoming more apparent in this worrisome flu season is the need for a universal flu vaccine.
The world must develop a better flu vaccine that gives broader protection against changing strains, a vaccine that you get only once or twice in your lifetime. Medicines for many other diseases have those capabilities because governments have committed the time and money needed to eradicate, or effectively control them.
The flu is considered more of a seasonal nuisance that kills mainly those near the end of life or those weakened by other health problems. So it doesn’t rate high on government research spending priorities.
It should because the World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that influenza seriously sickens three to five million people worldwide every year. World deaths are estimated at 290,000 to 650,000 annually.

 U.S. spending on research for an effective flu vaccine is far less than spending for a vaccine for HIV, which experts say is a very long way off. In Canada, millions of taxpayer dollars are spent providing flu shots and advertising and promotion aimed at increasing awareness. Not enough is spent on finding a new and effective vaccine.
Current flu vaccines are based on 1940s research and in terms of effectiveness have not advanced much since then. Most years the flu vaccine is 40 to 60 per cent effective; this year the effectiveness is only 10 to 30 per cent.
This winter’s flu epidemic tells us why we need to take flu more seriously and commit more money and effort to find a universal vaccine. Hospitalizations this winter in the U.S. are double those of last year and Canadian confirmed cases have surpassed 20,000 with 82 reported deaths.
The main villain this winter is H3N2, a very nasty virus responsible for the 1968-69 Hong Kong flu pandemic that killed one million people around the globe.

More disturbing is the fact that this year H3N2 is killing children and young adults. By the end of last week 30 children in the U.S. had died and the numbers were mounting daily. There have been several news reports of young, healthy and physically fit adults getting the flu and dying quickly.
That was the trademark of the most devastating flu outbreak in modern times – the 1918 pandemic. It killed an estimated 50 to 100 million people worldwide, many young, healthy individuals.
Some people believe that a pandemic as serious as 1918 cannot happen again. We have flu vaccine now, even if it is not perfect, other spectacular medical advances and much better health care systems. However, the world has four times more people than in 1918, millions of them travelling between continents every day.
Flu can spread with lightning speed through today’s world and vaccine manufacturing and distribution are too slow to outrun an 1918-style pandemic.
As Michael Osterholm, a globally respected infectious disease expert at the University of Minnesota, wrote in the New York Times earlier this month:
“Deploying them (current vaccines) against a severe global pandemic would be equivalent to trying to stop an advancing battle tank with a single rifle.”
Osterholm and other medical professors have said there will be global pandemics. The only unknown is how serious they will be.
A catastrophic flu outbreak could develop from a Chinese poultry flu virus named H7N9. It has been restricted mainly to birds but has been mutating to allow transmission to and between humans.
As of last month the United Nations reported 1,623 cases of H7N9 in humans. Of those infected, 620 died. That latter number is very scary. More than 38 per cent of people infected by that flu virus died.
The U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says H7N9 is the influenza virus most likely to cause a pandemic.
So far most human cases of the H7N9 have involved persons who have touched live or dead poultry, poultry feces or contaminated food.
Flu viruses are mutating constantly and if this one changes enough to allow easy human-to-human transmission the world could be in serious trouble.
That’s why governments need to spend more to accelerate the quest for a universal vaccine.
Email: shaman@vianet.ca
Profile: http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001K8FY3Y