The Exercise September 30, 2009
1. The history of colonialism Canada: we explain some things to Stephen Harper on our relationship with First Nations
2. War and corruption rather than sustainable development: the curse of oil in Chad
3. The welfare state in the United States: how Dow Jones is at 10 000 points despite the economic crisis
4. Geoengineering: how scientists fanciful dream of overthrowing the climate change
CANADA COLONIALISM
Prime Minister Stephen Harper said Friday at the G20 Summit in Pittsburgh that Canada has no tradition of colonialism.
This statement was made when it was announced that Canada will host the next meeting of the G20 in 2010
The problem is that if we defined colonialism as a practice, a process of domination, control, forced submission of a people by another ... then we can see that Canada has practiced colonialism against its indigenous people
Fair in the 1920s, the head of Indian affairs at the time, Duncan Campbell Scott said his goal is to continue until he no longer a single Indian in Canada that has not been accepted ... so that the Indian issue disappears
The federal government has even published its report of Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, which explicitly shows that the ratio of colonization that Canada has taken towards them
The measures used included the Indian Act, residential schools, including forced relocation to reservations, the system imposed band council, bacterial warfare, the criminalization of traditional activities and other processes of assimilation, including the act of gradual assimilation of indigenous peoples
Considering also The Harper government voted against the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in 2007, it is difficult to understand the statement of our Prime Minister last Friday
If we have no history of colonialism, then why not sign this declaration?
Especially under the pretext that by signing it, Canada would ungovernable ...
And this is not the Harper government, which in the end, finally offered the apology for residential schools that separated children from their families, their communities, their culture, all for the kill Indian side of the child?
trauma of this colonial legacy continues today with the natives who suffer, in a totally disproportionate poverty, poor health, incarceration, suicide, domestic violence, a serious lack of basic infrastructure
Across Canada today, First Nations are forced to block roads to slow the process devastating the environment are mining and clearcutting in forests
and mining raw resources that continue to invade their territory
CHAD PETROLEUM
Chad, Central African country of 10 million inhabitants, is the latest country to discover how poor the state wealth can turn a basement crammed with oil curse
oil prices reached record levels in recent years ...
Yet the living standards of the majority of people in Chad has not risen in proportion to the huge profits earned by the government
Instead, Chadians remain mired in poverty
The central problem is you can guess the blatant misuse of oil revenues by government
Since oil began to gush in 2003, President Idriss Déby and his administration have squandered hundreds of millions of dollars in precious resources to strengthen its army, rewarding his friends and cajole members of the political class
The oil wealth of Chad, instead of lifting people out of poverty, instead contribute Deby to power and instability endemic countries
But the fact that oil does no good for poor countries is nothing new
Except that the story of Chad was supposed to be different. .. Yet it had a great start
in 2000, representatives of the Chadian government have met people at the World Bank to develop a plan very progressive
So the bank would finance the development of petroleum in Chad
Specifically, construction of a pipeline of 1600 km at a cost of $ 4.2 billion
While Chadians invest the majority of oil revenues in projects to fight poverty
10% of funds should be invested for future generations, another 80% should be set aside for the development of the country
To ensure that the his government would end the agreement, the oil companies were putting money into an account overseen by an independent oversight committee
It did not take long, for cons, for the government to get out of these commitments
In 2005, the President said his government was bankrupt and had to get their hands on income from oil for its budget
In January 2006 he decided to buy weapons to confront an armed rebellion backed by Sudan
He eventually changed the law to give themselves more freedom on the use of revenues oil, which in 2007 amounted to $ 1.2 billion
The World Bank has subsequently suspended loans to Chad for six months
This action, not surprisingly, did not change the way the system Deby
So it's no surprise that Chadians remain terribly poor in 2008, the development program of the United Nations has placed Chad at the 170th rank among 179 countries in its Human Development Index
This position is in close relationship with the deep corruption in Chad, Transparency International placed the country 173 out of 180 in its annual list of most corrupt countries in the world
Oil finished fed by a civil war in the east and became a source of tension with Sudan neighboring
military spending of Chad from 2000 to 2009 increased from $ 14 million to $ 315 million
What gives them the 'best equipped army in the south of the Sahara, but it still can not feed its own people
DOW JONES 10 000
So how is it that the Dow Jones index in New York to be held in 10 000 points, while consumers American, who constitute 70% of the economy are in a condition not seen since the Great Depression
jobs continue to disappear at high speed ...
Even more curious, how Dow Jones can be as high as the federal government is accused of socialism is supposed to ruining the economy with such massive deficits, control of health, industry automotive, real estate, energy and finance
Although the explanation is simple: The vast
Retirement consumer market is countered by the government's presence in the market
Household debt has been declining since 2006, but government debt is increasing.
consumer spending falls, the government increases.
The Dow is up, in short, because the government intervenes in the economy
And no matter how one describes it: Keynesianism, socialism, pragmatism, that government intervention does wonders for large companies and Wall Street
consumption declined to 60% of the economy, government spending and fill the void
The problem is that state intervention in the American economy does not do much for the average worker continues to see the job market melt
The American worker gets nothing from the Dow Jones index up because he or she has virtually no public offering of shares
despite the Dow's rise and profits of large companies found
most of them continue to put people at the door
And the big banks still do not want to lend money to ordinary citizens
So despite all the complaints can be heard south of our border into the actions of the pseudo-socialist Obama administration, the fact remains that big business and high finance than ever derive more benefits from their political strength. REVERSING CLIMATE CHANGE
There is an idea that floats among scientists and engineers discuss techniques to reverse climate change
techniques that have more to do with science fiction than anything else
But
can not be surprised that politics turns to the geo-engineering, a therapy for our planet so fevered
geoengineering would be a way to intervene directly on the climate system
That is to say, voluntarily change the air, oceans, land on the planet to lower the thermostat overall
We are now certain that the Earth has warmed to one degree centigrade, a consequence of our actions
We increased 6% CO2 in air
So because we caused global warming, is what can cause a reversal?
In the 1970s a Russian geophysicist proposed to slow global warming by sending particles into the stratosphere to reflect the light of the sun in space
He based his idea on the observation of major volcanic eruptions that cooled the planet slightly for a few years later
this theory has been confirmed with the eruption of Mount Pinatubo in 1991 which injected 20 million tons of sulfuric dioxide
, the white particles in the stratosphere act like small mirrors
And yes, if we wanted we would have a way to release a quantity of sulfur dioxide in the atmosphere
but there 's Other techniques also reflect sunlight: large mirrors or light diffusers that is in orbit around the sun
could also release for droplets from the surface of the ocean to create marine cloud
cooling of the Earth can also be achieved by removing carbon dioxide and methane in the Air
engineer has proposed to produce artificial trees to achieve real trees or it will destroy and bury
Except that, as stated so well-known environmentalist James Lovelock, this engineering involves the thought that The planet is sick and needs to be healed
But our ignorance of the systems of the biosphere is so great ... He compares it to the 19th century doctors who dived patients in ice water to reduce fever ...
symptoms are treated but not the causes
cool the Earth will do nothing to prevent the oceans to acidify when carbon dioxide dissolves in water
is certain that geoengineering could buy us a bit of time so that it adapts to climate change
but most would simply be cut to zero greenhouse gas emissions by bit and leave the planet heal itself
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