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	February 18, 2003

CANADIAN BUDGET OFFERS SURPLUS, HELP FOR NEEDY, DEBT PAYDOWN, NO TAX CUTS Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien introduced his final budget today (he's retiring after a seeming eternity as P.M., and if an election were held today polls show he would win by a landslide). Contrast the following highlights with Bush's recent red-ink-and-stick-it-to-the-poor effort: Sixth consecutive annual budget surplus, with an extra $3 billion going to reduce the national debt $7 billion per year more for targeted health care programs, all money going to public institutions (no HMOs here) A modest (by all accounts) $0.8 billion more per year going to defence (that's how we spell it) spending $0.6 billion more per year going to urban infrastructure (roads, public transport, low-income housing, help for the homeless) $2 billion per year to help implement the Kyoto Accord New funding to allow spouses, parents and children of seriously ill or dying family members to take time off to care for them Significant increase in child care spending No significant tax cuts Chrétien and Bush despise each other (Bush refers to the Canadian P.M. as "Dino"). Canada is a high-tax country with strong (and in a recent poll, strongly publicly supported) government regulation, whose economy is significantly outperforming the American ever-more-laissez-faire economy. I'd guess the two leaders are not likely to become closer buddies after this. 9:52:06 PM  trackback []  comment []

REVISIONIST HISTORY OF THE FALL OF COMMUNISM, BUSH STYLE From the CBC, reporting that "weekend protests won't sway Bush": "Evidently some in the world don't view Saddam as a risk to peace. I respectfully disagree," Bush said. "War is my last choice, but the risk of doing nothing is even a worse option. As far as I'm concerned I owe it to the American people to secure this country. I will do so." The White House added that there were large protests in the 1980s against the U.S. placing cruise missiles in Europe. But in the end, it said, U.S. policy was proved right and the Berlin Wall came down. Uh, the Berlin War came down because the U.S. put cruise missiles in Europe? Did I miss something back then? 9:16:02 PM  trackback []  comment []

THE DEMON IN THE FREEZER I highly recommend Richard Preston's investigative report into the Anthrax scare and the dangers of Smallpox as a WMD, The Demon in the Freezer , his first book since The Hot Zone, which explained Ebola and related viruses and how close they came to infecting the U.S. Preston's work is terrifying, all the more because his details of incompetence and carelessness in the handling of these lethal substances have not been refuted by any of the officials and scientists explicitly named in his books. It is also fascinating, because he delves into the history of these diseases and unearths some astonishing facts that I've never seen in the media. For example: When the Anthrax scare occurred, top scientists, epidemiologists and security forces immediately wanted to know one thing above all else: was the weaponized (separated into extremely fine, airborne particles, a highly sophisticated process) Anthrax used as a carrier for Smallpox ? Whereas as we now know weaponized Anthrax spreads very rapidly, it can be a very effective carrier for Smallpox, which is much, much more contageous and lethal than Anthrax. The two in combination would, according to Preston, be almost impossible to stop. The U.S. destroyed almost all its Smallpox vaccine in the 1970s after the disease was officially eradicated worldwide, and after the USSR (which was largely responsible for eradication of the disease in the Third World) and U.S. jointly agreed to minimize and contain all remaining samples in a few locations, subject to mutual inspection and verification. They then discovered that after the collapse of the USSR large amounts of weaponized Smallpox went, and remain, missing. Reliable intelligence suggests many countries remain in possession of Smallpox, much of it collected before the 1970s by local medical authorities for research into its eradication. Smallpox is easy to amplify (replicate), so not much is needed to create a lot. Immunization for Smallpox is a dangerous process, since a significant proportion of the population cannot take the vaccine (e.g. those with immune deficiency or some common skin ailments), and some people immunized actually get the disease anyway. Smallpox is just one of thousands of related Pox diseases that affect almost every form of life on Earth. Were it not for the existence of insect Poxes, for example, some insects would multiply so quickly that they would extinguish many other forms of life and unbalance the web of life in a matter of weeks before starvation could bring their numbers under control. Many forms of life on Earth are affected by more than one kind of Pox, but each Pox efficiently and effectively targets only one species. Since they only spread rapidly in large, like populations in close proximity, Poxes are, in a real sense, God's natural 'population control' mechanism. There is a raging debate in the scientific community on whether Poxes from one species can evolve over time, or be 'repurposed', to target another species. So even if all the Smallpox remaining in the world (all of it, except the U.S. and Russian supplies, officially illegal) were somehow tracked down and eradicated, the risk could well remain. Why the U.S. and Russia have insisted on keeping samples of the disease when it is not needed to create the vaccine (the vaccine actually comes from Cowpox, which is harmless, at least for now in its current state, to humans) has not been satisfactorily answered. Some people seem to be naturally immune to viruses like Smallpox and the Plague. The theory is that, by Darwinian selection in the middle ages when bubonic and pneumonic Plague swept the Earth, most of the survivors had this naturally immunity, and their heirs now make up a significant portion of the Western population. Some even say that this Plague immunity also conveys immunity to AIDS, and had it not been for the Black Plague epidemic, the death toll from AIDS in Europe and the Americas would have been vastly higher. Something to think about to take your mind off North Korea and Iraq (oops, no, they both reportedly bought Smallpox from the Russians and/or the CIA when they were allies of those countries). 2:18:51 PM  trackback []  comment []

WHO'S NEXT AFTER IRAQ The map shown above is World Audit and Freedom House's assessment of political freedom and democracy in the 149 countries with populations over 1 million people. The assessments are based on corruption, human rights, political rights, and the rule of law. If you think they are biased or unscientific, or want to see a larger version of the map or details of the scoring, see their site here . Of the 149 countries, 34 are listed as 'free', another 34 as 'partly free' and the remaining 81 as 'not free'. These scores do not assess economic freedom, though the Wall Street Journal (in conjunction with the right-wing Heritage Society) rate these separately, and the correlation is, with some notable exceptions, high. It doesn't take much to qualify as 'partly free', and a brief look at the list of 81 countries that don't even make that threshold is sobering. All of these 81 countries, and quite a few of the 34 'partly free' countries could be (and in many cases are already known to be) hotbeds and havens for terrorism, and most could develop or acquire nuclear, chemical or biological weapons (WMD). Many of these countries have experienced brief periods of at least partial democracy, but in every case there was not enough education, infrastructure, or economic resources to prevent back-sliding into autocracy, corruption, lawlessness and oppression. And let's not forget that the achievement of freedom that the 34 countries have attained took, in many cases, centuries to achieve, often after bloody revolutions and setbacks, and in no case was lasting democracy successfully imposed on any country by another. Note that Venezuela and Bolivia are listed as 'free' but recent events suggest they may not qualify as such in the next annual survey. So the question, on the verge of Bush's attack on Iraq, is who's next and where do they stop? There is a reason humanitarian organizations say that only by helping 'not free' countries to develop the infrastructure, resources and self-sufficiency needed to enable and sustain democratic institutions, economic viability and the rule of law, can freedoms be established and sustained: Because no other method, including war, occupation and colonialism, has ever worked. 10:43:42 AM  trackback []  comment []

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