Ever won­der about that “three mil­lion dol­lar ear­mark for an over­head pro­jec­tor” that is such an impor­tant talk­ing point in John McCain’s elec­tion cam­paign? Accord­ing to an arti­cle in this week’s Sci­ence News, it turns out that the “over­head pro­jec­tor” is the Zeis star pro­jec­tor in the ven­er­a­ble Adler Plan­e­tar­i­um in Chica­go. Like the oth­er two major Amer­i­can plan­e­tar­i­ums in New York and Los Ange­les, the Adler must replace its fifty-year old instru­ment, which the orig­i­nal Ger­man man­u­fac­tur­er will no longer ser­vice. As with the oth­er two, the request for fed­er­al fund­ing is rou­tine, and no politi­cian would dream of vot­ing against it. The three plan­e­tar­i­ums teach the fun­da­men­tals of astron­o­my to mil­lions of urban school chil­dren who have nev­er seen a clear night star-filled sky, and are basic ameni­ties of major cities. The cost of a few mil­lion dol­lars amor­tized over half a cen­tu­ry is triv­ial. No politi­cian in any of the three states involved would have vot­ed oth­er­wise. Could any­thing bet­ter demon­strate the dis­hon­esty and the mind-bog­gling igno­rance of the McCain campaign?

“Lais­sez-faire” is one of many terms that are con­sis­tent­ly mis­un­der­stood, mis­used, and distorted.

The term orig­i­nat­ed in 17th cen­tu­ry France. Under the rule of Louis XIV, France had a cen­tral­ized, state-man­aged econ­o­my. Vir­tu­al­ly all key eco­nom­ic deci­sions were in the hands of Louis’ inten­dant (“man­ag­er” is a bet­ter trans­la­tion than “min­is­ter”), Jean-Bap­tiste Col­bert. Col­bert direct­ed the country’s indus­tries with absolute author­i­ty, pun­ish­ing the dis­obe­di­ent with bru­tal sanc­tions. He sup­pressed what lit­tle labour orga­ni­za­tion there was. He encour­aged the cre­ation of giant cor­po­ra­tions, and he gave out mil­i­tary con­tracts, monop­o­lies, sub­si­dies and priv­i­leges to those he liked. The cor­po­ra­tions grew fat on the pro­ceeds of Louis’ inces­sant wars. France was a sort of Hal­ibur­ton’s Heav­en. As a con­se­quence, after a brief boom cre­at­ed by the ini­tial con­cen­tra­tion of cap­i­tal, France’s tech­nol­o­gy and econ­o­my stag­nat­ed, the gap between rich and poor widened, and those at the bot­tom starved, just as it has tran­spired in all such dirigiste regimes. Read more »

If one exam­ines close­ly the speech that Stephen Harp­er gave to an Amer­i­can con­ser­v­a­tive think-tank, before he became our Prime Min­is­ter [1], one is struck imme­di­ate­ly by this: our Prime Min­is­ter hates Cana­da and despis­es Cana­di­ans. We are, in his own words “a sec­ond-rate country”[2]. In state­ment after state­ment, Mr. Harp­er made it clear that his only loy­al­ty is to the rich and pow­er­ful in oth­er coun­tries, and not to Cana­da or Cana­di­ans. For most of his life, the Rich and Pow­er­ful lived in the Unit­ed States, and that is where his spir­it has hov­ered. The Unit­ed States that he wor­ships, with the most abject and slav­ish ser­vil­i­ty, is not, of course, the real Unit­ed States, the one embod­ied in the Dec­la­ra­tion of Inde­pen­dence, or in its two cen­turies of strug­gle for free­dom and jus­tice. No, what Mr. Harp­er wor­ships is the cur­rent, King George’s ver­sion of the Unit­ed States, the one that has been betrayed, degrad­ed, debauched and bank­rupt­ed by a gen­er­a­tion of Con­ser­v­a­tive trea­son. Read more »

I admire ath­let­ic tal­ent and con­sid­er many Olympic events to be impor­tant expres­sions of human achieve­ment. For that rea­son, I oppose the Olympic orga­ni­za­tion and the peo­ple who run it, espe­cial­ly when they con­spire to hold their spec­ta­cles in lands with­out free­dom or democ­ra­cy, an act which under­lines their con­tempt for the human race. The Olympics debase and cor­rupt ath­let­ics. The Olympics are in their essence about mon­ey, pow­er, and exploita­tion. The cur­rent Olympics in Bei­jing are the worst to date. Their only pur­pose is to put the world’s stamp of approval on the Com­mu­nist Par­ty’s impe­r­i­al con­quests and assaults on human rights. They are being held to glo­ri­fy and legit­imize slav­ery, impe­ri­al­ism, and genocide.
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