Inception: Victory of the Banal

Look, I don't care what the reviewers say: Inception was just not that great a film. I guess after seeing the low ratings for Repo Men, a film of much greater intelligence and caliber, I shouldn't be surprised that the morons who write film reviews would be drooling all over this. After all, it had everything that they love - lots of cartoonish violence, some solid thrills, beautiful leading actors, and a turgid, pretentious and yet ultimately vacuous plotline.
Now, don't get me wrong but there were was lots of tension and many high speed thrills. With a budget this high - $160 million - you'd have to hire the most incompetent team of filmmakers on the planet not to come up with something at least impressive to look at. There were even a couple of clever ideas in the film.
But mostly it was so haphazardly orchestrated and directed and, yes, shot, that it needed all the bells and whistles (and the way over the top soundtrack) to cover up for all the emotional and plot holes within it.
Let's start with the acting and the dialogue. Until the action really ramps up and the actors stop talking except in urgent commands - "Get him to the safe!" - it is almost unbearable.
Writer/Director Nolan seems to have never heard of a contraction or he believes that actors should speak the Queen's English: "you would not want to do such a thing..." But it's worse than this, it's often unclear why the actors are saying their clunky lines. There is anger when there ought to be simple explication and there is DiCaprio's endlessly heavy droning about some pseudo science that makes no sense.
But at core the problem is that this is a heist film without any heist. In heist movies there's supposed to be some great prize as the main storyline. Could you imagine Ocean's Eleven without the stacks of cash in the basement vault of Bellagio's? Would Inside Man work if it weren't for the hidden information in the vault? What about Italian Job without the gold?
And that's just it: Inception's heist has no gold. It's no wonder that the motivation for the characters' actions is a total mystery.
Ellen Page is totally under-used in the story. In fact, after the introductory sequence where we see her ability to play the role of an architect she contributes nothing whatsoever to the "heist." She could be removed from the script and nobody would notice. All we're left with is her interest in the inner life of DiCaprio's character, for reasons that are obscure to say the least. And what of the rest of the team who aren't there for the thrill of entering the dreams of rich guys? Beats me.
Nor do we understand the motivation of Saito (Ken Watanabe), the Japanese businessman who hired DiCaprio to do the job of planting an idea in the mind of an heir to a business empire (Cillian Murphy). Does he just want to eliminate the competition, which would make him a fairly unsympathetic character, or is there some greater good in his mind, which would justify him being the palsy-walsy of DiCaprio. This is never ever made clear. And what super-powered businessman would put himself on the line to execute a dangerous job? Why does he take this risk instead of leaving it to the professionals?
So, we have a heist movie without a treasure and with no motivations for most of the major characters. What we're left with is a lot of razzle dazzle to make us forget that we don't care about what they're going after. In fact, the whole central storyline is so irrelevant that, in the end, we don't even know whether it worked and what the fall-out was from their "inception".
This leaves us with DiCaprio's subplot about wanting to get back to his kids because he's been accused of killing his wife and needing to get over the guilt surrounding her death. Not a bad B-story except that it doesn't really affect the main story - sorry, the brief intervention of a train was fun but it didn't change anything - and it isn't really much of an obstacle in the heist story when push comes to shove.
Besides acting and motivation, even the shot choices are not particularly interesting or well chosen. Often times the shots are out of focus or too close or just not particularly interesting.
There are a number of slow motion shots within the van that the characters are riding in within a dream. Almost all of these shots have a close-up on Joseph Gordon-Levitt, DiCaprio's sidekick, with Watanabe seated behind him. But these guys are tertiary characters by this point. Where is our lead? We don't see DiCaprio and rarely even see Ellen Page, who are now the central characters.
And, finally, not to rain on anyone's profundity parade but the thematic exploration of "what is more real: our dreams or reality?" is not particularly original in content nor in its presentation. The story never managed to rise to the level of speaking to some kind of general experience in the way that The Matrix did or, earlier, Blade Runner. Or, frankly, the much maligned Repo Men.
That film reviewers have gone ga-ga over Inception is not particularly surprising, I suppose. They also drooled over writer/director Nolan's previous offerings in the Batman franchise. And his film Memento is supposed to be a "big idea" film by a "big idea" filmmaker.
Inception, like Batman, is a product of its own massive marketing campaign: tens of millions have been spent telling us what to think of the film (it's deep, complex and visually stunning) and the reviewers play their dutiful role of parroting Hollywood's self-aggrandizement.
In fact, you don't even need to go see the movie. You already know that it is great; an "entertainment experience" as they say. You will be moved, changed, transformed. This is an IMPORTANT FILM. Except that it's not. It's just weak, bloated and pedestrian.

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Repo Men, Social Satire & How Reviewers Are Dumb As Posts

 

The other night I had the pleasure of being deeply disgusted by Jude Law removing a man's liver. Tonight I was disgusted to see that most of the reviewers on Rotten Tomatoes managed to completely miss the point of the film and give it a negative review.

I'm not surprised that a film that (literally) rips apart the brutality of private healthcare in the USA didn't do well. As a species we are more than a little squeamish about watching entertainment that speaks to us about contemporary concerns in a direct way. Witness the near total failure of recent war films about Iraq. The Hurt Locker may have won the Oscar but it didn't make any money at the box office.

But I guess I expect the film reviewers who watch a lot of films would enjoy the pleasure of the satire embedded throughout the piece, the self-referencing of action movies for the purpose of tearing them apart.

Peter Howell from the Toronto Star, for instance, writes: "The film is set in the near future, where a terrible thing has happened. There's been some kind of apocalypse, stripping Hollywood of new ideas. This leaves rookie helmer Miguel Sapochnik, as well as screenwriters Eric Garcia and Garret Lerner, with no choice but to make do with refried plot devices about heartless capitalism and mechanized humanity."

Is Howell dumb as a post? Hollywood has been making the same damn movie for thirty years. There's so little originality in Hollywood that we should shout for joy whenever something appears that isn't a remake of a TV series or film from the 60s or 70s or another Cinderella story. What's more, Repo Men stands in the tradition of satires of the caliber of Robocop. In other words, the action hero form is clearly intentional and satirical. Did these guys not pay attention to the last ten minutes of the film? It's about cultural fantasies of the hero who rescues us all as much as it is about the perils of American-style healthcare. And, frankly, I'll take "refried" plot devices about "heartless capitalism" any day over the usual horseshit about love conquering all or "try and you shall succeed." At least it attempts to engage with the lived reality of millions of people. Cinderella stories engage with fantasies that are meant to mask that reality in a way that is just insipid and stupefying.

Besides, you'd think reviewers would figure out that there was something deeper than a run-of-the-mill action film going on here by the presence of Forrest Whittaker; hardly a typical action hero. There's a strong echo of Gilliam's Brazil here, of the inside man who finds himself on the outside (and it's a reference in more ways than that but I won't spoil it). And the climactic fight scene, which was so over the top stylized and gory that only an idiot wouldn't figure out that it was meant to be a satire - and a set-up for the end of the film. It was a hilarious and beautiful send-up of The Matrix rescue sequence. Likewise the fairly erotic but absolutely bonkers sequence in which Jude Law and his kick-ass, sidekick girlfriend Anna Braga falsify the return of their overdue organs by cutting each other open and then inserting a barcode scanner.

And you can't help but laugh and shiver at the casual brutality expressed by the men whose job it is to physically retrieve the delinquent organs. The darkly comic brilliance reaches its peak when Forrest Whittaker's character borrows a kitchen knife from Jude Law during a BBQ at his house so that he can nip out front and repossess the kidney of a man in a passing taxi.

Somehow, the reviewers missed all this.

The Globe & Mail reviewer Liam Lacey was so asinine as to ask: "Surely an artificial organ could have a remotely controlled off-switch which would avoid the bloody splatter and the reason for this movie." Are you serious? Surely Alice would have broken her neck when she fell down the rabbit hole to Wonderland. Surely a man in red underwear and blue tights can't fly or see through walls. Surely the Marine operation in Avatar wouldn't depend on the ability and loyalty of one man to guarantee a resource upon which the entire earth is dependent. It's called a story as distinct from reality. And the brutal violence that made even a veteran action movie watcher like me wince and turn away was EXACTLY the point of it. It was meant to shock us into seeing the reality of privatized, corporate healthcare (or the real estate crisis for that matter). Newsflash: people die because of it and it ain't pretty. And while Lacey calls the film smirking and dully disgusting, all he betrays is that he is a sneering uptown snob with his title "Does the Hamlet set really want Saw-like gore..." as though such a film as this is beneath people with real cultural taste.

The script itself veers and bounces a bit - but for a good reason - and mostly it follows clear lines of development. The act changes are in the right place, the story is comprehensible and motivated. In the end it's a bit grim but it was so much fun getting to the grimness - wincing and all - that you're able to leave without needing a drink to dull its effects.

Stem Cell Injunction: More Proof of a Nation in Decline

As if it weren't obvious to anyone but the most ideologically blinded that America, if not yet a lame duck, is an empire in serious decline, the recent injunction by a federal judge against embryonic stem cell research is further evidence. And a further nail in the coffin.

America was once thought to be the land of pragmatic innovation, the pinnacle of what capitalism could achieve - particularly market-driven capitalism. America brought us mass production, in particular of the automobile, the airline industry, Hollywood, TV, computers, radio, etc. Not that Americans invented all of these things but they popularized them in a way that made America the epitome of technological advancement and its associated social progress.These advances were the reason that by the end of World War 2 America had the world's largest economy by a long shot, with around half of global industrial production originating on American shores.

Those days are over.

America's obsessive self-image of itself as the world's cop, a sort of John Wayne figure, meting out justice in the wild west of the rest of the planet, has not been without its costs. For one thing, it's mean that the bucket-loads of money that the US has spent on military hardware didn't get spent in productive investment and research.

Other countries, firstly post-war Germany and Japan, invested their social surplus back into the economy. Without the drag of a vast and unproductive military apparatus, these countries were able to quickly rebuild and surpass their rivals, with Japan ultimately becoming the world's second largest economy and Germany becoming the world's largest exporter.

That advancement eroded America's relative economic dominance. Today American industrial production is down to around 20% of the global total. And even that position is eroding with the Chinese behemoth moving up fast. China just surpassed Japan as the world's second largest economy and has passed Germany as the world's largest exporter. As a still relatively undeveloped country with a vast population, almost five times that of the USA, China has lots more room to grow rapidly and is likely to fly by the USA some time this century; some say sooner rather than later.

America's response to this has been multifold but for the purposes of this discussion, there's two elements that stick out as key. The first is a growing reliance by the USA on its overwhelming military dominance as the means to secure and guarantee what is euphemistically called "American leadership" of the world. America's military budget is greater than the next half-dozen countries' military budgets combined.

The second element of the American ruling class' attempt to sustain America's position is a sort of domestic retrenchment, both ideological and economic. On the economic front it has been a multi-generational war against unions and working people, leading to the slow erosion of living standards, education levels, social infrastructure and just plain happiness amongst American workers. On the ideological front, America has become increasingly brittle, hunkered down in a state of siege to defend "American values", which are defined increasingly narrowly. This stridency and aggressiveness has done its job in terms of keeping the population as a whole sufficiently cowed, if not active supporters of the "American Dream." And Protestant Fundamentalism, the unofficial religion of the American state, has played an important role as the most coherent ideological arm of the repressive state apparatus.

But here's the contradiction. Take one look at China. A length critique can be written about conditions inside of China from labour and human rights to environmental regulation. I don't want to lionize China as a model to pursue - either in terms of socialism or capitalism (China is, in any case, clearly the latter type of social order). However, China's development is unhindered by ideological rigidities of the American type. China's ideological and political repression derives from its attempt to keep a fast-moving train from going off the tracks. America's is the repression necessitated to achieve an orderly retreat. In the case of China, their repression is actually aiding the rapid expansion of the Chinese economy - it has to be said, largely at the expense of the Chinese working class. But in America, the repression that has been necessitated by its slide is itself becoming a factor in America's further descent, which brings us back to the reason for this blog post: the injunction against embryonic stem cell research.

The control of women's bodies has always been a key element in the ideological toolkit of capitalist society, no less in America than in Stalinist Russia. Hammering away at the idea of women's proper role (i.e. as baby-carriers) is another route to the idea that everyone has their proper place in society. It is a powerful tool (along with racism) through which to exercise social control. This is reinforced in America through the use of a particular kind of religious discourse and it is a KEY prop of Americanism. The battleground over that prop has been through abortion rights, which the right wing has steadily eroded over the past thirty or so years. America now has the most retrograde attitudes towards women's right to reproductive choice in the advanced capitalist world (and more retrograde than significant sections of the newly industrializing world). But, like military spending, this has its cost. In this case, religious zealotry has become an obstacle to economic innovation. Countries like Taiwan and, increasingly India and China, are catching up with America in the fields of nanotechnology and biotechnology. China is now the number two producer of solar panels on the planet and sells more solar panels in California than any other country, including the USA. The stem cell decision, of course, isn't itself an obstacle to innovation in renewable energy or in other forms of scientific advancement. But it is symptomatic of a broader trend in American society: it is the age of retreat. And in a period of retreat there is always less room to question. There will continue to be fits and starts - Bushes and Obamas - but the general trend is one of narrowing and descending (and if Sarah Palin wins the presidency, that pace will certainly speed up).

On the one hand, I don't really have a horse in the race. I don't live in America and I am a socialist. On the other hand, I live next door and I don't like the idea of a very large, heavily armed neighbour who has turned into a crazed, heavily armed survivalist. I would much rather see the American people rise up and throw off the parasites, imbeciles and lunatics who lead them.

Amplify’d from www.nytimes.com

Stem Cell Ruling Will Be Appealed

Published: August 24, 2010

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The government will quickly appeal a court ruling that undercut federally funded embryonic stem cell research, the Obama administration declared Tuesday, but dozens of experiments aimed at fighting spinal cord injuries, Parkinson's disease and other ailments probably will stop in the meantime.

The White House and scientists said Monday's court ruling was broader than first thought because it would prohibit even the more restricted stem cell research allowed for the past decade under President George W. Bush's rules.

The Justice Department said an appeal is expected this week of the federal judge's preliminary injunction that disrupted an entire field of science.

That initial ruling won't stop all the work that scientists call critical to finding new therapies for devastating diseases. The National Institutes of Health told anxious researchers late Tuesday that if they've already received money this year -- $131 million in total -- they can keep doing their stem cell experiments.

But 22 projects that were due to get yearly checks in September, $54 million worth, ''will be stopped in their tracks,'' said NIH Director Francis Collins -- meaning a waste of the millions those scientists already have spent unless they can find private dollars to keep the stem cells alive. Dozens more proposals won't get a hearing pending the court case's conclusion. Read more at www.nytimes.com

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Why Rob Ford Could Win

The Toronto mayoral election is a pretty depressing and sordid affair. In fact, affair is the appropriate word to begin a post on the Toronto election since the candidate of the "left" - Adam Giambrone - was forced to resign after it was discovered that he was texting naughty messages to a media inclined, young actress. Apparently she thought it was a little hypocritical for Giambrone to paint himself all senatorial by suddenly appearing with his girlfriend when he was secretly schtupping her on the office couch. Fair enough.

And, sad to say, that's a fair enough symptom of why Rob Ford may well win the mayoral election.

The left on city council - the people I have voted for since I voted in elections - alternate between being as respectable as an urban lawyer who shops at Pottery Barn and drinks fair trade coffee, and dull as dishwater. The only time they do anything political of note is when they trailed behind the frothing-at-the-mouth duo of Ford and Mammolitti after the G20. Every single one of them voted to congratulate the police.

Well, here's some news to the politicians: we've been suffering through a recession, we've been losing jobs and seeing house prices go through the roof simultaneously. People are angry and feel, with good reason, that the politicians are mealy-mouthed, pocket-stuffing, opportunists with no vision, no spine and no principles. And, like it or not, Rob Ford speaks to the anger that people feel.

I mean, look at his political opponents.

George Smitherman - come on, people. The only thing "progressive" that this guy has going for him is that he's gay. He's thoroughly establishment in outlook. Pink Bourgeoisie, you could say. His politics really aren't that much different from Ford's in substance - except that he smells like a snobby, urban lawyer who shops at Pottery Barn, etc.

Joe Pantalone - who? A nice guy with a decent record (though he voted for the police after they put a choke hold on democratic rights). His only achievement in this election will be to change the famous aphorism about nice guys to "nice guys finish third".

The other candidates are "also rans" and not worth much discussion.

That leaves us with the thoroughly odious motherf****er, Rob Ford. I grew up in Downsview, which is part of North York, so have a long memory of a certain Mr Mel Lastman. Then I moved downtown to escape my childhood stomping ground only to have that bloody carpet salesman follow me like a venereal disease. However, looking at Ford as mayor makes me long for Mel. Ford lacks the charm of Mel Lastman, who was like an affable but slightly demented and criminally inclined uncle that was fun at family reunions. Sure, you wouldn't want him as the family spokesperson but he could be counted upon to make you spray food out your nose with his off-colour, slightly offensive jokes.

Ford isn't even a clown - except maybe in the Stephen King sense of the word. Ford is like one of those sociopathic teenagers who shoot cats with pellet guns for the pleasure of causing pain to another living creature. Sadly, sometimes such sociopathy appeals to people for one simple reason: if you can't fight the people above you, kick the people beneath you who are weaker.

Let's face it, the union movement did sweet-f**k-all to resist the recession. Even the once mighty Canadian Auto Workers, who split from their American kin because they were militantly opposed to concessions contracts, offered up their members' veins for a good bleeding. The NDP are a part of Joe Pantalones. 'Nuff said. In other words those organizations and movements that ought to have shown an alternative to the smash-and-grab neo-liberalism of the Harper Tories and McGuinty Liberals and corporate Canada - have done nothing. There have been some noble attempts by trade unionists closer to the ground but the official union movement - the CLC, the OFL, the national unions - have all turtled.

Rob Ford is the ghastly result of that failure.

I can already hear all my lefty friends, particularly of the NDP variety, bemoaning the victory of Rob Ford on election night. I've already heard people saying that they will move out of the city (to go where? Calgary?). It will be a drag but Ford is a buffoon and he's not the candidate of the Toronto bourgeoisie, who want Smitherman. Ford is also despised on city council, whereas Mel knew how to build alliances. I mean, this is a guy who was thrown out of a sports game for picking a fight. He's hardly got the temperament to navigate Toronto city council. I don't think that anyone should be complacent and the movements ought to start fighting him now. But I predict that he will be the best enemy money could buy. Within six months a sizable chunk of every class in this city will want to destroy him.

Amplify’d from www.thestar.com

James: Despite attacks, Rob Ford’s simple message takes hold

By Royson James City Columnist

The leading mayoral candidates have so far shown a stunning lack of understanding of the force that fuels Rob Ford’s unlikely grip on the Toronto mayor’s race.

They call him names. They mock him. They tell anyone with a microphone and a pen that the rambunctious councillor is a buffoon with foot-in-mouth disease, a one-trick pony incapable of competing in the sophisticated world Toronto must navigate.

As if the voters don’t know this already. Ford’s been a councillor for 10 years. His file of verbal indiscretions is thick and well worn.

In fact, with every effort like George Smitherrman’s launch of the FordonFord.com website, intended to showcase the celebrated gaffes of the councillor from Etobicoke North, Ford gains in popularity.

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The End is Nigh, Dumbasses. Stop With The Fossil Fuels Already.

OK, so there’s forest fires sweeping Russia as the country swoons under the worst heat wave and drought in a thousand years. Yeah, that’s not a type: ONE THOUSAND YEARS. Meanwhile Pakistan is drowning in waters caused by the worst monsoon season in decades. And there’s the small matter of an ice island four times the size of Manhattan that has broken from the Petermann Glacier in north Greenland.
You might think that all this is a bad sign of climate change. But then you might also think that the American government is crammed with murderous, corrupt bastards, too stupid to do anything but fiddle while the whole damn planet melts like a creamsicle on a July sidewalk.
And you’d be right. These boneheads and knuckle-draggers are hauling is to hell in a handbasket. Scratch that, most of us don’t get a seat in the handbasket, we just go straight into the fire - as the hundreds of thousands of refugees in Pakistan have discovered. It seems clear that the present round of talks in Bonn Germany aredoomed to failure as the US, the EU and the other rich nations drag their feet. Meanwhile, governments continue to pump massive subsidies into the fossil fuel industry, letting renewables starve by contrast. According to a Bloomberg report:
“The $43-46bn figure [subsidies for renewables] stands in stark contrast to the $557bn spent on subsidizing fossil fuels in 2008, as estimated by the International Energy Agency last month.”
The net result is that all these negotiations are just so much hand-waving to distract us from the fact that it is business as usual. Hell, that $46 billion is less than 10 percent of the US military budget, expected to climb to over $700 billion in 2011 (not including the costs of Iraq and Afghanistan, which are paid for out of a separate fund). One can only draw one conclusion: the world’s rulers - led by the US and our own oil-soaked Prime Ministerial dickhead - really don’t care if they destroy the planet as long as they are the ones to squeeze the last drop of profit out of its dying body.

Amplify’d from www.physorg.com

Long hot summer of fire and floods fit predictions

August 12, 2010 By CHARLES J. HANLEY , AP Special Correspondent

These two satellite images provided by NASA taken on July 28, 2010, left, and Aug. 5, 2010, right, shows the Petermann Glacier in Northern Greenland. A giant ice island, seen in image at right, has broken off the Petermann Glacier. A University of Delaware researcher says the floating ice sheet covers 100 square miles (260 sq. kilometers) _ more than four times the size of New York’s Manhattan Island. The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) says the weather-related cataclysms of July and August fit patterns predicted by climate scientists, although those scientists always shy from tying individual disasters directly to global warming. (AP Photo/NASA)

(AP) — Floods, fires, melting ice and feverish heat: From smoke-choked Moscow to water-soaked Pakistan and the High Arctic, the planet seems to be having a midsummer breakdown. It’s not just a portent of things to come, scientists say, but a sign of troubling climate change already under way.

The weather-related cataclysms of July and August fit patterns predicted by climate scientists, the Geneva-based World Meteorological Organization says - although those scientists always shy from tying individual disasters directly to global warming. Read more at www.physorg.com

 

Steve Jobs Is The New Darth Vader

Time is short and deadlines are near but I still had enough time to watch this hilarious Taiwanese video about Steve Jobs and the new iPhone 4.

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USA: Immigration Issue Could Split The Right

For years immigration has been an issue for the right wing to mobilize around - from the far-right vigilante groups like the Minutemen and the equally odious Tea Party movement to mainstream Republican governors, who bolstered their support during a period of mass unemployment and immiseration using immigrants as scapegoats. But it might yet turn out to be a pandora's box for the right wing in America.
As everyone knows, evangelical leaders have been a key component of the so-called conservative coalition, united around issues like abortion rights and same sex marriage. It seemed sometimes that the conservatives were an unstoppable monolith. Yet, an article in today's New York Times suggests that the big mobilizations against the immigration clampdown are creating schisms within the conservative coalition. With 15% of the large US Latino population self-declared evangelical Christian and with the majority as active Catholics, there is a danger that the politicization and mobilization taking place could push Latinos towards the left. US trade unions, for instance, have been vocal supporters of immigration reform to alleviate and normalize the status of the 12 million illegal immigrants living and working in the US.

“Hispanics are religious, family-oriented, pro-life, entrepreneurial,” said the Rev. Richard D. Land, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, the Southern Baptist Convention’s public policy arm. “They are hard-wired social conservatives, unless they’re driven away.
“I’ve had some older conservative leaders say: ‘Richard, stop this. You’re going to split the conservative coalition,’ ” Dr. Land continued. “I say it might split the old conservative coalition, but it won’t split the new one. And if the new one is going to be a governing coalition, it’s going to have to have a lot of Hispanics in it. And you don’t get a lot of Hispanics in your coalition by engaging in anti-Hispanic anti-immigration rhetoric.”

Land's point - absurdity about hard-wired social conservatism aside - is an interesting one and speaks to the pressure that evangelists feel. On the one hand, the Republicans were substantially discredited by the Bush years, with his neo-liberal tax cuts that failed to stop the economy's implosion and the widely perceived debacles in the foreign policy arena, from Iraq to Israel to Afghanistan. Of course the Democrats have a natural ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory and the Republicans may well pick up substantial numbers of seats in the mid-terms - but it won't be on the basis of enthusiasm. And those most enthusiastic of Republicans - the Tea Party - are likely so crazy that their "insurgent" candidates in a number of states will mostly suffer ignominious defeat. All this speaks to a right wing that is weakened and divided. It's only against this backdrop, and the mobilizations of hundreds of thousands of immigrants and their supporters, that Land's bold talk of splitting the conservative coalition can be understood.
For progressives that offers some key lessons. It has been through mobilizations - not through waiting on the good will of the Obama Administration - that change has begun to take place. It will be through continued mobilizations that the conservative coalition will be fractured. It's also an opportunity to make broader links - something that the evangelicals understand. If Latinos are being driven away, it is also because they are being driven towards something. In California where Latinos likely voted in significant numbers to support the anti-gay marriage proposition two years ago there is the possibility of demonstrating that the LGBT movement understands the links between supporting immigrants rights and winning gay rights. In both cases it is about limiting freedom of choice and the right to a life with dignity. If the LGBT movement can demonstrate its principled solidarity it can not only help win a victory for immigrants' rights, it can also drive a deeper wedge, pulling Latinos towards reciprocating the support. That isn't to say it will be easy but the prize is so big that it is worth it. And a victory for both immigrants and LGBT people would be a massive blow to the confidence of not only the Republicans but the Democrats who have pushed hard to keep the movements in line behind Obama - even when he hasn't delivered so much as supportive rhetoric. Of course, in any crisis there is both opportunity and danger. There is always the possibility that, for instance, the LGBT movement doesn't support the immigrants' rights movement and is, instead, scornful of it. This may sound absurd but think about feminists attacking Muslims in placing like France and Switzerland, lining themselves up with hard-right anti-immigrant forces. If the oppressed don't unite, the right wing evangelicals could maneuver themselves into the leadership and steer it into a direction most advantageous to them - and with the most conservative outcomes possible. That could help cement the divisions between LGBT and Latino immigrants in a way that makes it much more difficult to overcome. Luckily, the recent mobilizations in the LGBT movement, post-Obama, have involved socialists in the leadership who are pro-immigrant and have a perspective of uniting the oppressed. Let's hope that they are able to find avenues to bring at least elements of these two movements together in a working relationship.

Carbon Trading Is A Scam

Carbon trading: another market failure

Lots of people have thought that creating a market to "trade" carbon emissions was always a scam. And there's plenty of evidence that scam is really too weak a word to describe how that market is unfolding. Back in March, The Guardian newspaper in the UK revealed that British industries were given lots of surplus credits - worth something like 66 million tonnes of CO2 - above what they needed. Companies are banking this free money (or free pollution) for future use. That means that they can sell their more expensive credits in the EU marketplace, while purchasing cheaper carbon credits from the developing world thus leveraging a profit in the same way that currency traders move money from more valuable to less valuable currencies.

Back in 2007 the Financial Times also noted that there was a lot of phoney-baloney going on in the world of carbon trading that made the scheme borderline useless and really a magnet for (legal) fraud and funny business.

The growing political salience of environmental politics has sparked a "green gold rush", which has seen a dramatic expansion in the number of businesses offering both companies and individuals the chance to go "carbon neutral", offsetting their own energy use by buying carbon credits that cancel out their contribution to global warming.
The burgeoning regulated market for carbon credits is expected to more than double in size to about $68.2bn by 2010, with the unregulated voluntary sector rising to $4bn in the same period.
The FT investigation found:
* Widespread instances of people and organisations buying worthless credits that do not yield any reductions in carbon emissions.
* Industrial companies profiting from doing very little or from gaining carbon credits on the basis of efficiency gains from which they have already benefited substantially.
* Brokers providing services of questionable or no value.
* A shortage of verification, making it difficult for buyers to assess the true value of carbon credits.
* Companies and individuals being charged over the odds for the private purchase of European Union carbon permits that have plummeted in value because they do not result in emissions cuts.
Francis Sullivan, environment adviser at HSBC, the UK's biggest bank that went carbon-neutral in 2005, said he found "serious credibility concerns" in the offsetting market after evaluating it for several months.
"The police, the fraud squad and trading standards need to be looking into this. Otherwise people will lose faith in it," he said.

Now, comes a kicker - as though you couldn't see this coming from a kilometre away - the EU has suddenly discovered that the carbon trading market is a very attractive outlet for money that the mob needs to launder. Since legitimate businesses have been using it as a scam for years, why wouldn't organized crime get in on the action. Watch in the future as the carbon trading market goes up like the real estate market and then collapses in a heap. Just like with the sub-prime collapse, the powers-that-be will somehow find a way to blame us for the debacle. Meanwhile, nothing will have changed in the level of carbon emissions.

Is Science On The Verge Of A Brave New World - Or A Nightmare?

This article on neuroscience and its relationship to social questions makes for an interesting read. It is extracted from a talk at the Marxism conference in Britain by Stephen Rose, an award-winning neuroscientist. Rose discusses the kinds of things that usually never appear in science magazines and journals, or even in the broader discussions in the media. For instance, he makes important points about the reductionism of neuroscience - this idea that our consciousness is simply a product of the mechanical/chemical functions of the brain. Of course the physical processes of the brain are important. But you cannot reduce us to our "central processor". We are embodied, for instance, which means that besides thinking "2+2=4" or "The blue sky is pretty today", we also are processing thousands of stimuli from every part of our body - maintaining the homeostasis that allows us to exist (for instance, constant temperature, the utilization of caloric energy), our other autonomic functions from our heart-rate to our balance - all of this is in addition to the full range of conscious sensations that we experience, hierarchize and sort at any given instant. And beyond the interactive macrosystems of the body, are the microsystems of the cells. The more scientists look into the functioning of cells, gene expression, protein functions and interactions, the actions of the organelles that make up cellular structures, enzyme function, etc. the more they realize what an unbelievably complex orchestra of interactions goes on to keep us alive. All of these elements - and their interaction with the natural and social worlds that we inhabit - are what make us as conscious beings. That's why I believe that the idea that some futurists have that we will "reverse engineer the brain" in a decade or two are hopelessly optimistic and naive as to the significance of doing so. A robot that has a human-speed parallel processor will still lack everything else that makes us human.
At a more mundane level this reductionism means reducing what are effectively social diseases of the mind to problems of brain function. Depression is seen to be somehow genetically coded or a brain disease, meaning it only needs to be treated with the right drugs to be solved. Same with other psychological disorders, or even the physical manifestations of social inequity, like obesity and diabetes. This is convenient for drug manufacturers but doesn't solve the social conditions that create depression or sets the foundation stones for the prevalence of schizophrenia amongst workers vs the rich.
Rose is also correct to point out that a significant portion of the cutting edge science is actually being funded and driven by the military - at least in the US and, perhaps, in Europe. DARPA - the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency - is a big funder of some of the most cutting edge science, including neuroscience. They are exploring things like mind control using electromagnetism, selective memory erasure through the use of enzymes as a means to allow soldiers to commit heinous crimes and not suffer PTSD, etc. Some of this stuff is quite frightening.
All of this is true and worthy of concern and comment. However, I can't help but feel that - at least in the article form of Rose's talk - he is missing the point a little bit. And I think that this is a tendency on the left, at least the Marxist left - to reduce all capitalist-funded and state-funded research to the potential and real negatives, such as those discussed above. Yet, this has the danger of making us look like Luddites. I remember distinctly, for instance, the dismissal of the significance of the internet in the 1990s. It's true that the internet didn't solve oppression, exploitation or the domination of the capitalist controlled mass media. It's true that the internet was invented and developed with the support of DARPA for more efficient military communications. There is no denying any of this. But if you were to tell someone today that the internet is unimportant and has changed nothing they would rightly think that you were off your rocker. As futurist US Ray Kurzweil is fond of pointing out, when he was at MIT in the early 1970s, the super-computer on campus took up a whole room and cost tens of millions of dollars. Today there is more computing power and greater access to information in a palm-sized iPhone, which can access "all of human knowledge" via the internet. And who could imagine the speed with which the scandals about G20 policing broke without smartphones, youtube and twitter? The internet and computing has, quite simply, transformed our relationship to information. The fact that you're reading this right now and that I'm engaging in a discussion based upon an article that was posted across the ocean is proof of that as well.

We have to take the same approach to the present explosive developments in neuroscience, biotech, genetics and robotics. There is a real sense amongst many people that these areas are on the verge of becoming the next IT. People, including progressive people, are very excited about the research into gene therapy. There have been big leaps, for instance, in the ability to treat macular degeneration and retinitis pigmentosa in rats through the use of viruses that carry the corrected gene. Those viruses then swap in the functional gene for the faulty ones in the retinas of diseased rats. Such rats have had a significant restoration of sight. Similar promise is held for ALS (a neurodegenerative disease, made famous with the film Lorenzo's oil), Parkinson's Disease, Alzheimer's along with new treatments for HIV/AIDS, cancer and even heart disease.

Now, a lot of this stuff has to be taken with a grain of salt and research to cure diet-related diabetes with gene therapy, for instance, is probably hogwash. And researchers are discovering that genetic is very much more complicated than simply reading a very long book and changing some grammar here and there. This has led to the development of new fields and new approaches such as epigenetics, proteomics and others. But to suggest that there aren't big strides being made because of the reductionism of capitalist science - both in its conceptual framework and its need to produce sale-able products - is itself reductionist and rather dogmatic. We need to be able to find the correct balance in our assessment of technological progress. And we need to see that capitalism still remains a very dynamic system, capable of significant advances technologically. It's just the chaotic and distorted way that those advances come about - in the US through the channel of the military (though this is different in Japan and China) - means that advances that should unambiguously alleviate the human condition and liberate us from drudgery and the horrors of disease, all too often only adds to the horror - with advanced weapons systems and surveillance technologies, for instance - or is reserved only for the wealthy. And the subordination of research to military purposes or to satisfy the drive for profit means that scientific advance is slowed or abandoned if it doesn't serve those ends. We are for more science and more funding for research but research to meet human needs.

Solar Rate Cut: Ont. Libs Biggest Idiots Under The Sun

After three months of watching oil from the Deepwater Horizon pour into the Gulf of Mexico, killing animals that are reliant on the Gulf eco-system by the truckload, and destroying traditional fishing cultures of the people who live along the Gulf coast - not to mention wetlands - can we finally make some serious investment in green energy?

Well, the good news is that global investment in wind and solar energy has continued to climb year over year and for the past two years constituted the majority of new power generation in North America, Europe, and China. China, who some tried to blame for all the carbon problems, has invested massively in solar and wind technology.

China had the largest addition of renewable power capacity, and the Asian economic powerhouse surpassed the United States as the country with the largest investment in clean energy.
China now produces about 40 per cent of the world’s solar electricity collectors, 25 per cent of its wind turbines, and three-quarters of its solar water heaters.

China's cities are still a smog and carbon-belching nightmare. But the picture of China as the main culprit just doesn't wash. The number that is often used to judge China is the absolute carbon emissions but this is dishonest since China has a population of $1.4 billion whereas the USA has less than a quarter of that total and Canada even less. It's more accurate to look at carbon production per capita and by this measure the USA - and even more so, Canada - are the bottom of the barrel. According to the Conference Board of Canada, a conservative business organization, Canada is the pits.

Canada is one of the world’s largest GHG emitters. Canada ranks 16th out of 17 OECD countries on GHG emissions per capita and scores a “D” grade.3 In 2005, Canada’s GHG emissions were 22.6 tonnes per capita, almost double the 17-country average of 12.4 tonnes per capita. Canada’s per capita GHG emissions were also almost four times greater than Norway’s, the top performer.

The primary reason why Canada's position is so terrible and getting worse all the time - the Tar Sands debacle. The next worse in line is, of course, the USA at 19.1 tonnes per capita. In the case of the United States the terrible record and worse response to the growing disaster of fossil fuels is especially poignant in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon disaster and Obama's pitiful $2 billion loans to the solar sector in response, even as oil companies get at least double that amount every single year in tax subsidies.

And it isn't the case the up here in the kinder, gentler nation that we're any better. Stephen Harper continues to pour subsidies into the oil sands project, destroying the Alberta watershed, poisoning downstream communities and jacking up Canada's carbon emissions when we should be reducing them. Of course, nobody is surprised that a neanderthal like Harper and his pals will be happy to ride a luxury handbasket into global warming hell.

But Dalton McGuinty leads the progressive Liberals. They don't hate the cities. They had an openly gay man in cabinet. The teachers unions like him. Of course, he is implementing the HST, which is a blatantly regressive tax grab. And in the area of energy policy and development, the Green Belt that was supposed to lead to greater population density - a necessity to make mass transit efficient and to reduce the need for automobiles - in the Greater Toronto Area is a total hoax that does nothing to reign in the developers. And now the Liberals have taken an axe to subsidies for the solar industry, cutting the price paid per kilowatt hour by more than 25% - from 80.2 cents to 58.8 cents per kilowatt hour. Of course, what the government should be doing is directly investing in solar infrastructure, rather than leaving it to the inefficiencies of market mechanisms. Just as they should be investing in infrastructure for electric vehicles. However, it makes no sense to cut solar subsidies at a time when fossil fuel subsidies for the Tar Sands are, if anything, rising under the federal Tories. McGuinty could easily fund the development of renewables and create jobs by taxing carbon producers and investing that money in Green industries. But that would mean taking on corporate priorities and redirecting them to meet social and environmental needs. What this rollback demonstrates is that McGuinty isn't willing to do that. He's more than happy to pass secret, repressive legislation to clampdown on civil liberties - he isn't willing to use his legislative powers to help save the planet.