During the US Presidential Election there was a lot of talk about so-called “clean coal technology” and organizations such as the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity have been blanketing news outlets, CNN in particular, with ads claiming that clean coal is “closer than you think” implying that the coal that produces 60% of America’s energy will soon be clean. The fact however is that this “clean coal technology” is years away, and many years at that. Apart from a pilot project in Germany run by Swedish hydropower company Vattenfall, there are no true clean coal power plants in operation. And the Vattenfall project which uses oxyfuel technology, is both expensive and inefficient because of the technique used to extract CO2 from the process.

The fact remains: According to everyone, even the US Department of Energy, burning coal is the dirtiest way we produce electricity and it is a leading source of global warming pollution.

Fortunately the people behind ThisIsReality.org have stepped up to remind us all that clean coal is nothing but hot air. Go to their site to learn more and remember that if you are in the USA, every time you turn on a light bulb you are burning a lump of coal.

When I was a kid, I got a double cassette deck for one of my birthdays. With it I could copy my friends’ cassettes without having to buy my own. This was the era of the mix tape: When the only way you would get exposed to music that wasn’t played on the radio was when a friend got a copy of a friend’s mix tape. That’s how I, a white kid in Oslo, Norway, was introduced to 2 Live Crew and their less-than-PC antics and how I learned to love Faith No More and Nine Inch Nails at the age of 13. Back then, bands like Metallica who were living on the fringes of the mainstream were reliant on widespread copying to get their music heard. Today things are very different. Just how different is maybe best illustrated by the fact that Metallica is at the very forefront of the battle against online pirating (more commonly known as “downloading mp3s”). And if you copy your own music onto your mp3 player the record labels consider you a common thief.

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Before we begin: From hereon I’m using the name “Burma” for the country that on many maps is named “Myanmar.” The name “Myanmar” was imposed by the current military dictatorship and is not the country’s true name.

Sixteen years ago, my primary school teacher wrote a name on the blackboard: Aung San Suu Kyi. “This woman” she said, “should be your hero.” She brought out a picture of a soft-featured Asian woman and explained that on that day she had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her non-violent resistance against the brutal military dictatorship in Burma. Suu Kyi had been elected Prime Minister the year before but was put under house arrest “for her own protection” by the military junta before taking office. Because of this, she was not allowed to attend the award ceremony in Oslo – in fact, there were concerns she wouldn’t even know she had been awarded the prestigious prize. “Not all people are free,” my teacher told us. “In some countries, speaking your mind and voicing your opinions means getting thrown in jail or worse. But it doesn’t have to be that way. You can do something about it. You can stop the oppression of people like Aung San Suu Kyi and make the world a better place.” That day, we all wrote two letters in our broken English: One to Aung San Suu Kyi to tell her we were with her in her fight, and another one to the military dictatorship asking them to free her so she could come to Oslo to accept her award. And for a brief moment, I actually thought we were making a difference.

Much time passed and the world changed. Every now and again, I’d check in with Amnesty International only to see that Suu Kyi was still under house arrest and the military junta was still in control in the country. Other atrocities were played out on the world stage, countries were invaded, UN sanctions were engaged, embargoes were put in place, yet somehow Burma crept under the radar and the military rulers were left free to do what they wanted with the people they were holding hostage.

Then a couple of weeks ago a YouTube video dropped into my inbox. In it actor Jim Carrey talked about Aung San Suu Kyi and her plight, urging the world to take action. To me this was not news but reading the comments on the video page, I was astounded to note that almost no one knew about this woman and her story, let alone the plight of the Burmese people. And slowly a realization started to materialize: Burma is of no value to the big western powers like the United States. They have no vested interests in the country, there is no oil or other resources there and they pose no threat to western interests. So unlike Iraq, Iran, China or North Korea, Burma is irrelevant.

Well, not entirely irrelevant. It would turn out this week that Burma is an excellent decoy.

The last two weeks have seen a dramatic turn of events in this forgotten conflict. After its government quintupled gas prices, the people of Burma took to the streets in protest. The protesters were largely Buddhist monks and the protests themselves were non-violent. This is not the first time such protests have occurred but the military dictatorship imposes extreme restrictions on both national and world media, so such news in the past have never reached the outside world. But with the explosive growth of blogs and video sharing sites like YouTube, bloggers, citizen journalists and organizations started documenting the events and sharing them over the internet. As a result, the images of tens of thousands of orange robed monks walking the streets of Burma started appearing on computer screens and eventually on broadcast news all over the world. And just like that, the plight of the Burmese people and their jailed Prime Minister Aung San Suu Kyi became a hot political potato.

In a bizarre twist of fate, the escalation of the military dictatorship’s response to the protests coincided with Monday’s meeting in the United Nations, giving US President George W. Bush a valid excuse to ignore the speech from Iranian President Mahmod Ahmadinajad and the disastrous war in Iraq to focus instead on a real problem that needed to be solved immediately. And with that, due almost entirely to circumstance, the Burma situation became front page news all over the western world, in no small part thanks to the efforts of citizen journalists and brave bloggers. And it’s about time.

The question now is what happens next? The military dictatorship in Burma seems set on beating down the opposition with any means necessary. On Wednesday the military opened fire on the demonstrators, killing hundreds. For some unknown reason, the blatant killing of famed Japanese war journalist Kenji Nagais – an act which is heavily covered in Asia and Europe and which was documented by several cameramen – has been largely blacked out in North American media. The news outlets seem more concerned about covering the non-existent nuclear standoff between Iran and the US than the real battle being fought in the streets of Burma between unarmed civilians and an army with shoot-to-kill orders. So even with President Bush’s speech on Monday, it is unclear whether the US is willing to invest any more effort into finding a lasting solution. In the meantime, the people of Burma keep up the good fight against a military that has ruled them with an iron fist since 1962 and Aung San Suu Kyi remains under house arrest unavailable to her people and unable to stop the impending bloodshed.

So, if this story upsets you (and it should), please take the time to share it with people you know, learn more about the situation in Burma through the Human Rights Action Center and the US Campaign for Burma and get involved! You can also join the Facebook group Support the Monks’ protest in Burma where you’ll find up-to-date information on the situation and the organizations that are working for the Burmese people. We can no longer sit idly by and watch this situation deteriorate.

You know that feeling you get when you turn on the TV and think you have been teleported into an alternate reality? That’s exactly what happened to me this week as one bizarre story after another flashed across the screen. More than anything, what I saw was blatant exhibits of human stupidity so damaging that one could start questioning the viability of the human race. Here are some of the highlights:

“Give me back my shit!”

What could be scarier than a rabid OJ Simpson storming into your hotel room waving guns? Well, a lot of things actually but still. Last Friday, the man famous for proving that money can really buy you freedom, decided it was time to get back into court. Rather than hiring a lawyer though, he rounded up a group of guys and went on a raid of a sports collector’s hotel room to “get back his stuff” as he so eloquently put it. Not surprisingly, he was arrested the very next day and charged with a whole slew of felonies, from assault with a deadly weapon to breaking and entering. And what was he so adamant about getting back? Amongst other things, some footballs signed by himself. Because going out, buying footballs and signing them is just too much work. Smart move OJ. Really makes you look like the good guy.

Kanye West vs. 50 Cent (or David vs. RainMan)

Last month, all around good guy 50 Cent made a series of modest statements regarding the sales battle between Kanye West and himself (by “modest” I mean things like his statement to the Associated Press that the parallel release of his own new album Curtis and West’s album Graduation was “great marketing on Def Jam’s part, by putting us out there at the same time and make like we can actually be compared on some level”). This was followed up with a proclamation that if West’s album outsold his own in the first week he would retire. With Graduation outselling Curtis by 957,000 to 691,000 copies in the first week, we are all looking forward to 50 moving out of the Billboard Charts and in with the Golden Girls.

Shock Factor Part I: “Don’t tase me, bro!”

Those were the last words out of 21-year-old Gainesville, Florida university student Andrew Meyer’s mouth before police tasered him on the floor during a forum with Senator John Kerry on Monday. Apparently, Meyer is known for filming his practical jokes and gave his camera to a fellow student before asking the Senator a series of strange questions. The video of the student writhing on the floor and pleading to the police before being shocked into submission quickly spread on the web, causing a major uproar. Meyer’s crime? When he started asking questions about a possible impeachment of George W. Bush and whether the President and Kerry were ever members of the secret Skull and Bones society at Yale University, his microphone was turned off. Rather than sitting down, he started shouting and as we all know, the proper response to an angry student is a massive electric shock. Watch the video here.

By the way, you can buy “Don’t tase me, bro” t-shirts here.

Shock Factor Part II: Lucky number 7

In the wake of the Student vs. Taser incident on Monday, another electrifying tale hit the airwaves: On September 2nd, Ohio police officer Rich Kovach tasered 38-year-old Heidi Gill, drunk as a skunk and having too much of a good time, a total of 7 times – two while she was wearing handcuffs. The officer’s dash cam shows Gill smashing the side window of the police cruiser while in the back seat and acting like…well…a drunk. The video also shows her handcuffed and on her knees outside the car being tasered repeatedly until she smashes her head against the cruiser and then the pavement. At the end of the night, she found herself in a hospital bed and officer Kovach was suspended pending an investigation into the incident. The moral of the story? Too much juice might get you juiced. Repeatedly. You can watch the whole mess here.

America’s Next Social Pornographer

Wednesday saw the premiere of the 9th menstrual cycle of America’s Next Top Model. There’s not too much to say about this show. All the classic elements were in play: Tyra acting like a loon trying desperately to get attention even though it’s her own show, a girl gets sick, several others have severe emotional problems and horrible backgrounds, there’s an exotic dancer and a devout Christian there and so on. But this year there is a twist: One of the girls has Asberger syndrome (or Autism). That’s great. Put a young woman, socially inept due to a serious affliction, in a house with power hungry emotionally unstable self-righteous chicks who will do absolutely anything to claw their way to the top of Mount Model (found right next to Mount Anorexia, Mount Bulimia and Mount Broken Dreams).

“It’s too much like worship to me”

Survivor: China kicked off this Thursday with what has become a tradition in the show: The semi-religious “blessing” of the contestants by the local inhabitants. This time, the 26 castaways were led to a Buddhist temple where they were to receive a blessing from the monks. To quell any misgivings about religious conflicts, host Jeff Proust even went as far as stating this was not a religious ceremony but a welcoming to the country. This clearly didn’t register with the Christian radio host Leslie who after a few minutes left the temple in tears saying the ceremony was too much like “worship” and that she would never bow down to any other God. This was followed by her explaining that she is “not very religious” but has a firm belief in Jesus as her Saviour, proving not only that her knowledge of other beliefs is abysmal (Buddhism after all is not a religion) and that she doesn’t know the meaning of the word “religious.” I applaud CBS for so openly showcasing such blatant ignorance.

IT student aims for Darwin Award

When MIT student Star Simpson walked into Boston airport wearing a fake bomb on her chest as part of an art project, she nearly became this year’s strongest contestant for the Darwin Award. UnFortunately the security guards decided that shooting a woman wearing a bomb inside an airport might not be the best idea so they arrested her instead, foiling her chances at the award. Simpson will likely have years to perfect her next Darwin entry as she serves time for causing CNN to interrupt their regular programming. Check out the bomb art piece here.

I overheard a conversation between a man and a woman on the SkyTrain yesterday. The topic: The war in Iraq and how it related to the war on terrorism. With an arrogance befitting a couple of college jocks rather than the middle-aged couple they were, they agreed that “those Arabs should be beaten down before they kill us all.” I felt my eyebrow raise reflexively as that is a sentiment not often heard here in Canada. Coincidentally, I was reading a book on the subject and I found myself wondering if I should stand up and ask them to check their facts before proclaiming their ignorance to the world. When the woman stepped to the side though, I caught a glimpse of the words “Support Our Troops” proudly spread across the man’s shirt and everything fell into place: They were Americans.

Those are fightin’ words for sure. Questioning American superiority and foreign policy is tantamount to spitting someone in the face, at least as far as they are concerned. But serious questions have to be raised about what the average US citizen really knows about the war in Iraq, the war on terror, or even the Middle East in general. The mortifying YouTube video of Miss Teen South Carolina bumbling about a question on maps proves my point. The American public understanding of the current war situation can be summed up in one word: Misinformed.

I could go on and on about the how’s and why’s of the war and explain in intricate detail how the war in Iraq has nothing to do with terrorism and everything to do with oil, how the never-ending conflict in the Middle East is perpetuated by the US’s involvement, and how neither Iran nor China or Afghanistan is as much a threat to the country as India, Pakistan or even the US itself. But coming from me, it would be pointless. So rather than reiterate what has already been said better by others, I’m going to make a humble suggestion not solely to our friends across the border, but to everyone out there:

If you feel you know what is going on in the Middle East, if you think Iraq has anything to do with 9/11, if you think the war on terror is important, if you support George W. Bush and his doctrine, if you have children, if you are concerned about the future, or if you just want to beef up on your conversational knowledge, go pick up “The Mess They Made: The Middle East After Iraq” by Gwynne Dyer. Having read countless books and articles on the topic, I found this to be the most comprehensive and easily digestible breakdown of the Iraq war in particular and the Middle East conflict in general. I dare say it should be mandatory reading in schools and is surprisingly engaging for a book of this subject. It is important to note that you don’t need to know anything about the conflict before reading this book. It explains in crystal detail how the war in Iraq was planned years before 9/11 and how the current White House exploited the nationalism and rage created by that attack to further goals that had nothing to do with political stability and everything to do with greed.

The debate over the war in Iraq and the war on terror is starting to look a lot like the debate over global warming: Lots of people are still regurgitating fabricated facts as they desperately cling to their skewed view of reality while the rest of the world shake their heads in disbelief. To think that a nation that claims to be the leader of the world is so uninformed about its own foreign policy and its people so inept that they don’t overturn their President even after realizing he has been lying to them from the start is downright depressing. And as with most other political issues, the only solution is a powerful infusion of the truth.

So go out, pick up The Mess They Made: The Middle East After Iraq and start on your path to understanding. You might not like what you learn, but that doesn’t make it any less true.

People seem awfully scared these days. And who can blame them? When you turn on the TV, read a newspaper, or surf the internet, it’s hard to avoid all the sinister warnings of impending doom that awaits you and your family from the second you wake up in the morning. Judging from all the talk, it’s a wonder we’re still alive as a species! If it’s not viruses and bacteria that are going to kill you, it’s poisonous paint on toys, tainted spinach, mad cow disease, the bird flu, tuberculosis, you name it. And that’s just the microbial threats. There are also the violent nannies, the neighborhood molester, the high-school shooter, the religious fanatic, the list goes on and on. We live in a perilous world. Or at least that’s what the news wants us to think.

My parents always taught me to take a step back and try to look at things objectively. It’s far from easy. Your brain wants to react a certain way and it’s difficult to apply cold hard logic to something that seems to be a threat to your own life, or that of your family and friends. But when you do, it’s surprising how different the world looks.

Here’s one example. A couple of years ago there was a huge controversy over young girls using birth control pills. A 16-year-old girl died of a blood clot after taking the pills and the mother sued both the doctor that prescribed them and the drug manufacturer. With tears streaming down her cheeks, she told news cameras how her daughter had insisted on taking the pills even though she was young and overweight and she couldn’t stop her. A reporter took the doctors and pharmaceutical companies to task, asking them if it wasn’t questionable prescribing birth control pills to teenagers when they were “known to kill people.” I had a chat with my doctor while all of this was going on and asked him what he thought. He shook his head and said: “You know, more people die from using cold medication than birth control pills, yet no one ever tries to take those medicines off the shelves. And it is far more dangerous for a 16-year-old to get pregnant than it is to take the pill anyway.”

And how about the SARS scare in 2003. Remember when large portions of the Asian population in the Lower Mainland all of a sudden started wearing face masks for fear of contracting SARS? Yet there was only one outbreak in Canada that claimed a total of 13 lives. More people die of the common cold every year.

It seems we are all a little too eager to be afraid. It’s as if we need to have dangers around us. I don’t know why this is but I do know why it’s getting worse. Just turn on the TV. In any given commercial break, you are likely to see an ad for disinfectant wipes or anti-bacterial soap. My favourite is the one where a mother uses a breast of raw chicken to clean the surfaces of her kitchen. The claim is that unless you disinfect your house constantly, you are exposing yourself and your family to viruses, bacteria and mortal danger. As a result, I’ve noticed more and more people carrying disinfectant products like Purel and use them constantly. Yet in reality it is the lack of exposure to these viruses and bacteria that is dangerous. If we are not exposed to such minor hazards in our everyday lives, our immune systems grow weak and become unable to fight off a truly dangerous infection. So by disinfecting our houses, we are actually creating more problems than we are solving.

At the video store, there is a DVD that’s always out. It’s called “Bird Flu” and the cover features a bio-hazard symbol, some birds and a man and a woman running. I always found the term bird flu kind of amusing because almost all flus (or influenzas as they are properly named) come from birds. There really is no such thing as the bird flu. They are all bird flus. And most of them are harmless. The fear of the big plague-like bird flu stems from the fact that there has been no pandemic flue outbreak since the Spanish Flu of 1918-19 that is estimated to have killed between 50 and 100 million people. But the world today is vastly different from that of post World War I Europe where that flu broke out. And in spite of all the dire predictions, chances are we won’t actually see a pandemic of that magnitude brought on by a flu any time soon. Yet people fear it like the plague (no pun intended).

In the late 90s, there was an outbreak of mad cow disease in Britain. Millions of cattle were slaughtered and burned and the agricultural community suffered for years as a consequence. I travelled through London during the worst of it and one image has stuck with me ’till this day: Outside a Burger King restaurant, the management had put up a crude poster that read “1 in 35,000,000 get Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. Only 34,999,952 to go!” By 2007, a total of 165 Britons had died from eating beef infected by BSE. That’s out of a total population of 58.7 million people. I’m not trying to make light of the suffering of the victims or their families; I’m just pointing out that the fear of infection from mad cows was quite exaggerated. There is no widespread danger here, yet people act as if they are just inches away from death at all times.

Maybe the most extreme example I’ve seen of this kind of mass paranoia is the North American fear of Halloween candy. Every Halloween, you hear the same stories of poisoned candy and parents going through their kid’s pumpkin pales with a fine-toothed comb to see if there is anything suspicious. I never believed these stories myself. I figured if they were true, the news would make reference to specific events and some research has proven my skepticism to be well placed: There are no documented cases of random poisonings using Halloween candy or any candy for that matter. There are a couple of cases where family members have poisoned each other with candy but that’s it. The Urban Legend busting web site Snopes.com has a complete breakdown of this myth, both where it came from and how it has spread. It’s sobering reading for parents who have deprived their children of their hard-earned candy for years.

True, there are very real dangers in our everyday lives. Most of them involve either our own homes or the vehicles we drive. But in spite of the fact that you are far more likely to be killed in an accident at home or in your car than you are flying a plane, we tend to ignore the obvious dangers and focus on those we have no control over, even if they turn out to be nothing but hot air. So next time you go to the store to buy cleaner, just get the regular kind. Anti-bacterial disinfectant won’t do you any good unless you are cleaning a hospital. And stop hovering over public toilet seats. You are more likely to catch something nasty from the escalator handrail. Your kids are far more likely to get sick from undercooked meat than mad cows and the only worrying thing about Halloween candy is the dental bill it generates.

The world is only a scary place if you want it to be.

Please note that because this article deals with contentious issues, it is important to read through the whole piece before making any assessments on its content.

I think Asian cultures have some very unhealthy traits, both socially and psychologically. Having spent a lot of time with people of Asian descent, I’ve come to resent the way certain Asian cultures treat women and the way parents use guilt and duty to control their children’s lives. Seeing as I am as white as you can get, such a statement would undoubtedly label me as a racist or at least a bigot. If I say I also oppose the way Israelis treat the Palestinians and that I think many Jewish people suffer from a superiority complex, I will promptly be labeled an anti-Semite as well. The truth is I am neither. In fact, I don’t think race, colour, creed, sexual orientation or any other distinction has any relevance. Period.

The labelling of someone as a racist, bigot or anti-Semite has become an easy way of silencing cultural or political criticism and the terms are now being used as weapons rather than true labels, thus draining them of their value. There are true racists, anti-Semites and bigots out there and that is a serious problem that needs to be properly addressed and dealt with. But today these terms are used so haphazardly and often to gain advantage or turn the attention away from serious underlying issues that they are losing their true meaning. This prevents us from dealing with problems embedded in our multicultural society and sometimes even aggravates them. The label “racist” no longer means racist but encompasses a whole series of different attitudes. To put it in academic terms: We need a demarcation between the word “racism” and cultural stereotyping, prejudice or bias.

According to the 1966 United Nations International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination:

“the term ‘racial discrimination’ shall mean any distinction, exclusion, restriction or preference based on race, colour, descent, or national or ethnic origin which has the purpose or effect of nullifying or impairing the recognition, enjoyment or exercise, on an equal footing, of human rights and fundamental freedoms in the political, economic, social, cultural or any other field of public life.”

Reading this definition, it should be clear that my earlier statements are in no way racist. They are simply criticisms of cultural and political traits. If I had said that all Asians are abusive towards their children or that all Jewish people are war criminals instead, such a label would have been appropriate. Do you see the difference? The problem we are facing is like so many others: A confusion of terms. Much of what is today labelled racism is in fact social, cultural or political stereotyping or even specific descriptions of one or a limited number of individuals and their actions.

Take Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick as an example. He stands accused of a multitude of crimes including cruelty to animals and gambling. The case is clear-cut yet many people are trying to turn it into an issue of race. The claim is simple: Michael Vick is being unfairly treated because he is black. This type of criticism has a long history in the US and has more often than not been proven correct. But in this instance, there is no racial prejudice. Mr. Vick’s racial heritage, or colour, is irrelevant. But his cultural heritage is not. If you wanted to question the prosecution of Michael Vick, what you need to look at is whether or not the prosecutors understand Vick’s cultural background. In some African American communities throughout the US, dog fighting is a common occurrence. That could explain why Mr. Vick does not see this as a serious problem. At the same time, you could never argue that all black people are dog fighters. That would be racist. Dog fighting is a predominantly American subculture that is not found in other black communities in the rest of the world. You also can’t ignore the fact that dog fighting is also found in other cultures.

On the flip side, we have Democratic Presidential hopeful Barack Obama. In a recent debate, a question was raised over whether or not Senator Obama was “black enough.” The question did not come from a white person but a black community leader. Its meaning: that the colour of Mr. Obama’s skin is more or less irrelevant. Being “black” in this case is a cultural identity. By asking this question, the community leader made a clear distinction between the real black people and the others. And by doing so, he stated that only someone from black culture can understand black culture. Simply grouping all African Americans based on their skin colour doesn’t work. They, like all other cultural or ethnic groups, come in all shapes and sizes, from all political and social strata and from all walks of life. Referring to their skin colour only really works as a tool to pick them out from a crowd. This is precisely why racial profiling does not work. Simply piling all people who look the same in one group doesn’t actually give you a homogeneous group with predictable behavioural patterns. Not all Arabs are terrorists. Not all black people are gangsters or dog fighters. Not all Indo-Canadians are gang members. Not all Asians are bad drivers. In fact, these stereotypes apply only to very small groups of people and these groups are not defined by race.

My point here is this: We need to call the monster by its true name. Racism is still a menace to society but cultural stereotyping is a much more serious one. When a news reporter classifies a perpetrator as Indo-Canadian, Chinese, Muslim or Arab, he/she is implying that the act committed is somehow related to this person’s cultural heritage and thus that all people who fall under these categories share the same characteristics. The cultural stereotyping becomes clearer if you turn the example on its head: If a white person is shot by a white person, no one is going to say the crime happened in a “white neighbourhood.” Such a statement has no value because no one is going to attribute the act to all white people. This is cultural stereotyping at its worst and it has nothing to do with racism. The reporter isn’t discriminating against a whole race but making a sweeping statement about all members of one culture based on the actions of an individual.

We see the same problem when looking at the issue of Francophones vs. Anglophones. The grouping of all Francophones transcends both racial and ethnic lines and is solely based on the culture surrounding their common language. So when people speak in negative terms about Quebecers, they are not being racists (because there is no one race to target) but they are being culturally prejudiced. This also applies to Hispanic culture in the US, or Kurds in Iraq. These groups are cultural rather than racial and as such their discrimination is one of culture.

The conclusion is simple: If we clean up the way we use the term ‘racist’ and introduce the term culturally biased and cultural stereotyping in our vocabulary, we will achieve a clearer definition of the problems we face and open up to a more constructive debate over the problems that form within multicultural societies and how to solve them.

Unless you’ve been enjoying the finer qualities of being a hermit over the last few weeks, you must have heard about the massive Mattel recall due to high levels of lead in certain types of paint used on their toys. This controversy comes on the heels of a slew of recalls; from food to poisonous toothpaste to dangerous vehicles. The blame game, expertly played out in US media, has zeroed in on a country already under fire for everything from human rights violations to price dumping to product cloning: The People’s Republic of China. But lost in the debate over how dangerous Chinese goods are is the fundamental question of how this situation came to be in the first place: Why is everything “Made in China”?

If you tune your TV to CNN on a weekday at 3 PM PST (6 PM EST), you’ll be met by an angry white-haired guy by the name of Lou Dobbs. A renowned journalist, he is on the very forefront of every debate that has to do with the “Protection of America” as he puts it. With tag lines such as “War on the Middle-Class,” “China Rising,” “Outsourcing America” and “Broken Borders,” he leaves little to the imagination in terms of what he is trying to accomplish with his show, which is a good thing seeing as most journalists these days go out of their way to conceal their true beliefs and agendas. A big part of the program over the last few months has been a frontal assault on China, and especially on the outsourcing of jobs to the country and how it effects the workers of the USA.

The recent lead paint scandal has only fueled the fire Dobbs is tending and given him more reason than ever to direct hard questions at lawmakers and CEOs alike. What he fails to do however, is address the underlying cause of all this: The reason why China is becoming the number one manufacturer of goods for American companies. Why is he avoiding this question you ask? Because the problem was brought about by the US government and people whose political views are the same as Mr. Dobbs’.

The problem of toxic food, lead paint and poison toothpaste is but a symptom of a policy put in place by governments and corporations during the 80s and 90s: The Free Market. The theory of a free market is that the price and quality of a product is decided between the seller and the buyer without any government interference. This policy fits perfectly in the political agenda of no government interference cherished by North Americans and is one of the building blocks of the American Dream. In theory it works pretty well, at least on a micro basis: The baker who bakes the best bread most effectively gets more business. But as the communists learned when their “ideal” societies collapsed in the late 80s, there is a big difference between theory and reality.

The problem with a free market is that we live in a global marketplace. The baker isn’t just competing with the guy down the street; he’s competing with the factory on the other side of the planet. The problem is worsened when the laws of the country that houses the factory on the other side of the planet are more relaxed, allowing them to pay smaller wages and push the prices down further. So while the local baker is bound by restrictions on production in his own shop, the owner of the other factory is stealing his customers by exploiting his workers and cutting corners. The end consumer operating in a free market will invariably pick the less expensive option, which leaves the local baker with the short end of the stick. To solve this problem, the local baker makes a deal with the factory: If he sells the goods the factory makes for the same price he sold his own products before, he can turn a profit while the factory earns the same as before. So the baker fires his staff, buys a truck and just like that he has outsourced several jobs to China.

Years later, one of his customers gets violently ill and tests turn up rat poison in the bread. An investigation shows that the flour used in the Chinese factory is tainted with rat poison due to poor quality control. But since the baker has become the middle man, he takes no responsibility for how the product is made and the blame is placed squarely in the hands of the factory owner.

This might seem a silly example, but it is exactly what happened to Mattel and is happening to thousands of jobs and millions of products worldwide. In a free market, the factory that demands the least amount of money and outputs the most amount of product the fastest wins the contract, regardless of their routines, practices and business standards because if something goes wrong, it is easy enough to hire a new factory to do the same job.

The problems of outsourcing, poor quality products, tainted food, child labour and human rights violations all stem from the same source: A free market full of oversights in their rules and regulations. This is cold hard logic – a free global market will invariably lead to massive outsourcing and loss of control. If a free market is to work in today’s society, strict guidelines have to be put in place in terms of product testing, worker rights and accountability. But this flies in the face of the principle; A free market is one without restrictions. And thus the theory falls on its own impracticality.

The moral of the story is simple: If you want cheap products and believe in a free market, you have to pay the price. Without government interference, there are no checks and balances in place to ensure that the stuff you buy is safe for you. And we all know that putting our trust in the hands of greedy corporations is about as wise as handing out blank cheques to perfect strangers.

You’ve probably seen the posters all over town: A shiny blue Toyota Yaris Hatchback with the title “Good Carma.” The ad refers to the Conservatives’ bold promise in March of this year that they would give eco-rebates to the buyers of cars with ultra low emissions. The $1,000 and $2,000 rebates would be dependent on the level of emission reduction and the price of the car, so a new Toyota Yaris would qualify for a $1,000 rebate, while a new Toyota Prius would qualify for $2,000. This rebate offer is part of a the ecoACTION program that is designed to encourage Canadians to make greener choices through financial incentives. An excellent idea…if it was actually in practice. As of today, not a single cent has been paid out to new car owners and there is no set launch date.

When my brother-in-law traded in his poor excuse for a car for a shiny new Toyota Yaris Hatchback in May, the salesman told him to contact ecoACTION “in a few weeks” to get his rebate. He did as he was told and called to inquire about how to get his $1,000 rebate three weeks later. The answer was puzzling: “The program has not begun yet, but call back in two weeks time and we will have more info.” This, in spite of the much publicized launch back in March. Three weeks later I called them, more out of curiosity than anything else, to find out what the holdup was. The answer was even more evading this time: “Please check the website for updates. The program should start within the next month or so.” That was mid-June. When I checked the ecoACTION website today, it still displayed the exact same message it did back then:

The rebate program will be put in place in the coming months.

Five months after the announcement of the program, no one has seen any money and there isn’t even a process in place to submit your application. Not surprisingly, neither the general public nor the car dealerships are very impressed by this. The owners feel they have been cheated by the government and tricked into going green, while the dealerships are fending off accusations that they have been lying to their customers. The whole program is turning into a major headache for the government: Not only have they not been able to get the program up and running, but the eligibility lists for 2008 models, which are currently hitting the showroom floors, has not been published, making it impossible for consumers to know if the cars they are buying will receive the rebates or not. The guideline for 2007 is set at 6.5 liters per 100 kilometers, but no one knows if this will be carried into 2008.

This whole mess reeks of policy pandering and lofty promises. Stephen Harper was a known climate change denier up until this spring when his views were challenged not just by the scientists but also opposition parties and the general public. The ecoACTION program appears to be a knee-jerk reaction to silence the critics, but it is quite obvious it was not well planned nor thought through. Not only is the program non-functional; it is also unfair. The eco rebate for cars only applies to cars bought after March of 2007 with the highest rebates for hybrid cars like the Toyota Prius. But the current Prius has remained unchanged since 2003. The engine and drive train – what gives the Prius the label “Ultra Low Emission Vehicle” – are the same in the 2004 model as in one fresh off the lot today. Yet those of us who pioneered this brave new world of transportation are given a cold shoulder. I would have been fine with it had the car evolved since 2004, but considering there is no change whatsoever, it seems hugely unfair that the government should subsidize my neighbour’s car but not mine when I was the one that helped make it popular. Not that it surprises me in the least little bit. It seems they are already trying to sneak away from their responsibilities of paying new car owners for their commitment, so I guess it would be naïve to expect them to reward those who lowered their emissions years ago.

Appendix:

As Angela mentioned in her Thursday posting, we bought a Toyota Prius in 2004, trading in an old gas guzzler for an ultra efficient high-tech vehicle. Back then, we got a dismal $150 in Provincial tax rebates but the comfort of knowing that we cut our gas consumption and pollution by two thirds was enough. When we bought the car, we were met with a wall of questions and the misconceptions were mind boggling: Do you need a special license to drive it? Isn’t it dangerous? What happens when the battery dies? Do you have to plug it in? Can it go up steep hills? It quickly dawned on us that people knew nothing about the technology. Surprisingly, several people also openly criticized us for the purchase. Their claim was that the car was actually more polluting than a normal gas powered one because the battery was toxic. A simple search on Google shows that this issue is severely exaggerated. The battery – which is designed to last for 8 years or 160,000 km – is far less polluting than the thousands of tons of CO2 and other pollutants a similar gas-only car would spew out in the same time span. The auto and battery industries are also constantly working on ways to recycle old batteries and designing newer, cleaner technologies. The batteries in the original 2001 Prius hybrids are set to start dying in 2009 so we’ll have to wait ’till then to see if the estimates of battery life are accurate or not, but this argument, like so many others in the climate debate, is a diversion from a simple fact: Hybrids are the first step towards our independence from oil.

The Prius has paved the way for a whole new line of cars. Almost all auto manufacturers are now rolling out hybrid vehicles of different sorts. Citroen in France is even working on a diesel hybrid which will make the Prius look like a gas guzzler. And several countries are looking at banning gas-only cars outright in the next ten years.

When Michael Moore makes a movie, you know he’s going to piss people off. In 2002, it was Bowling for Columbine, where he enraged everyone from the National Rifle Association to Lockheed Martin. In 2004, it was Fahrenheit 9/11,which etched him into the bad books of the entire US government. So it comes as no surprise that his new movie Sicko - which deals with the (lack of) health care in the USA - brings out the very worst in lobbyists and politicians.

But instead of putting the spotlight on a serious political issue, the curfuffle surrounding the movie serves as a perfect example of how the political debate in the Divided United States of America is polluted by systematic diversion tactics.

Only days after Sicko’s release, CNN aired a report where renowned Chief Medical Correspondent Sanjay Gupta highlighted flaws in Moores’ film. The report also featured a political strategist who claimed that the so-called “free” health care Moore asserted was available in other countries was in fact not free but paid for by taxes.

Moore and even Gupta’s fans were infuriated. This led to the filmmaker’s first appearance on CNN since 2004, an appearance which consisted mostly of Moore accusing the news network, Sanjay Gupta and host Wolf Blitzer of being paid by health insurance and pharmaceutical companies to cover up the truth. Moore pointed out that the purported “facts” Gupta had used to poke holes in the movie’s premise were in fact not actual facts, and that it was CNN that was in the wrong. Over two nights, Moore managed to bring CNN to its knees and the network released an unheard of apology admitting its erroneous reporting.

But all this was a diversion: The debate which the film was meant to stir up was drowned out by Moore and Gupta’s squabbling over details and irrelevant numbers. Instead of discussing the core problem - that the USA is the only industrial country in the world without universal health care - they were arguing over exactly how much money Cuba spent per patient and what the average life span of an American is. Although interesting debates in and of themselves, they were completely irrelevant to the main issue and I must say I’m surprised Moore let himself be distracted from his cause by such a blatant diversion tactic.

This isn’t the first time diversion has been used to trivialize or bury a complicated political topic, and it is not going to be the last. The Sicko debate is a text book example of how and why debates over important political issues become loud-mouthed rants over technicalities, forcing the focus away from the policies and toward the people that question them. It has taken over 30 years to lift the debate over Global Warming from squabbling over numbers and models to the core of the problem, and it looks like the lessons learned by lobbyists, politicians and newscasters are now being applied to other political hot potatoes to keep the public from asking the important questions. It’s easier to discredit those that pose a challenge than admit a failed political platform.

This is hardly a revelation but merely serves as a reminder: In the US, free and impartial media is an illusion. The bottom line is that media outlets, even CNN, are corporations that put profit above everything else. Yes, even the truth.