By James Adams from the Globe and Mail

There's a new talking head – or should that be mouthpiece? – on the TV talk-show circuit and he made his debut Tuesday on RT, an English-language network, available online, started seven years ago by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The program, to run in 12 parts, is titled The World Tomorrow and its host is none other than Julian Assange, the 40-year-old founder of WikiLeaks. His first half-hour show, conducted from the estate in southern England where Assange is currently under house arrest, featured a thumping theme song by M.I.A. to introduce the program's only guest, Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah, in what was billed as Nasrallah's “first interview in the West since 2006.” More at the link

From the Globe & Mail, by Adriana Barton

Will all of the screens in our lives force everyone into glasses?

For desk jockeys who stare at pixels all day, blurred vision, headaches and burning eyes are an occupational hazard with a name of its own: computer-vision syndrome.

It’s a fancy term for computer-related eye strain. Although the symptoms are temporary, vision problems are a growing complaint among people who are glued to computers, smartphones and tablets, says the Canadian Association of Optometrists.

Solutions at the link

Why Does The Department Of Homeland Security Need 450 MILLION Hollow Point Bullets?

What in the world is the DHS going to do with 450 million rounds? What possible event would ever require that much ammunition? If the United States was ever invaded, it would be the job of the U.S. military to defend the country, so that can't be it. So what are all of those bullets for? Who does the Department of Homeland Security plan to be shooting at?

..... Business Insider is also reporting that the Department of Homeland Security is seeking to buy 175 million rifle ammunition rounds.

..... Since Barack Obama first took office, gun sales in America have risen to extraordinary levels.

Overall, more than 10 million guns were sold in the United States during 2011.

According to Gallup, 41 percent of all Americans said that they owned a gun in 2010. But when that question was asked again in 2011, that number had risen to 47 percent. More at the link

It is time for fathers to speak out and combat sexism. Here's how

Daughters and fathers have been in the news recently. In his response to Rush Limbaugh calling Sandra Fluke a “slut,” President Obama said that he wanted his own daughters to grow up “to be able to speak their mind in a civil and thoughtful way…And I don’t want them attacked or called horrible names because they’re being good citizens.” A week later, John Ramsey expressed regret that he had entered his daughter, JonBenet, in beauty pageants and related events, including a parade just days before she was murdered. The need for fathers to help empower daughters is clear, since we still live in a world where some powerful men throw sexual slurs at adult women and girls are being sexualized and objectified at a younger and younger age. As dads of a combined 4 daughters (ranging in age from 1 to 21,) these recent events have made us pause and reflect on how to best encourage our daughters to combat these tendencies in our society.

Answer after the jump

Arizona legislators know that whether or not her insurance covers it, a woman may still get the prescription she needs to prevent an unintended pregnancy. They want to give her boss the right to control that, too. The bill they are pushing would not only allow employers to take the insurance coverage away, but it would also make it easier for an employer to fire an employee who has obtained birth control from another source. You heard me right–to fire her. And I thought Rush Limbaugh’s comments were as low as you could go on this one. More at Ms.blog

From the Globe and Mail by Neil Reynolds

Call it the final taming – the final domestication – of capitalism.

In February, a French commercial court ruled that Google Inc. broke the law when it allowed people in France to use Google Maps for free. Declaring the practice “unfair,” the court ordered the company to pay Bottin Cartographes, a French competitor, €500,000 in damages and a €15,000 fine. The court ignored the fact that Google Maps are a strategic service that enables the company to make money by giving things away. It also ignored the fact that OpenStreetMap, a wiki-based free service, has already mapped the world. (Google says it will appeal.)

..... It has taken a century to turn capitalism from an awesome force of nature, rude, raw and rambunctious, to the subservient thing it is today. Writing more recently, Mr. Epstein described contemporary capitalism as a spent force – trending, at least, to stagnation (from Latin: swamp). In the advanced economies, growth turned sluggish (in real-dollar terms) a generation ago. Now these exhausted economies, deep in debt, struggle to crank out a single percentage point of real-dollar growth a year. More at the link

Even in a ‘woman’s world,’ gender doesn’t matter.

Would the world be more peaceful if women were in charge? A challenging new book by Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker says the answer is “yes.”

In The Better Angels of Our Nature, Dr. Pinker presents data showing that violence, while still with us, has been gradually declining. Moreover, “over the long sweep of history, women have been and will be a pacifying force. Traditional war is a man’s game: Tribal women never band together to raid neighbouring villages.” As mothers, women have evolutionary incentives to maintain peaceful conditions in which to nurture their offspring and ensure their genes survive into the next generation.

Not true, argues Joseph Nye who believes that ... "Key choices made by any sex must combine hard- and soft-power skills to produce smart strategies". More at the link

I agree with him. Our task is to put hard power back into women and soft power back into men - as it is meant to be.

"If You Take Climate Change Seriously, You Have to Throw Out the Free-Market Playbook"

Naomi Klein on ideological impediments to addressing climate change and how to move forward.

OTTAWA — Canada's former chief electoral officer says recent allegations of systematic voter-suppression phone calls are unprecedented in the country's electoral history.

Last week's Ottawa Citizen-Postmedia News investigation revealed evidence of fraudulent pre-recorded phone calls made during the May federal election in Guelph through services provided by the Edmonton-based voice-broadcast company RackNine Inc. Further developments in the story suggest that harassing live phone calls were made by callers posing as Liberal candidates in swing ridings. The National Post and the Toronto Star also report that more live phone calls had been made in the Thunder Bay area, with callers phoning on behalf of the Conservative Party to alert voters of purported polling location changes. Ottawa Citizen

*Harper ignores opposition calls for by-elections in ridings hit by robo-calls
*Conservatives bank on robo-call storm blowing itself out

From the Ottawa Citizen

According to a major new national study, Canadian girls are experiencing substantially higher levels of emotional problems and less emotional well-being than boys.

..... Boys externalize their discontent, girls internalize it, said Juniper Glass, director of development at Girls Action Foundation, a national organization that helps develop community initiatives and programs for girls.

"Boys behave 'badly' whereas girls tend to hold it inside and direct the negativity towards themselves," Glass said. "They have low self-esteem, they self-harm, they put themselves in risky situations or they put up with not healthy relationships with their boyfriends."

Glass said girls are socialized to please others, "to be successful — in everything — to be pretty, to look like magazine images."

More programs for girls, whether they focus on sports, science or mentoring, are needed, she said — "anything that helps girls to feel like it's safe to be themselves." More at the link

I doubt it's any different in the US

OTTAWA — Hours after Public Safety Minister Vic Toews introduced a controversial bill that would give police more powers to combat cybercrime by accessing users' personal information, Toews was at the centre of an online attack that released purported details of his own personal history.

The string of tweets posted online portions of alleged details relating to his divorce proceedings. More at the Ottawa Citizen.

Quiet admiration for a gentle boy.

1. The things you own have a cost of ownership
2. You are carrying around the emotional weight of the things you don’t use.
3. You don’t learn your lessons on overspending, because you never face reality.
4. You let yourself buy status symbols.
5. You use objects as comfort.
6. You are weighed down.
7. The more stuff you have the more blind you become to it.
8. If you are overspending, you will never see that money again.
9. Each object has a path before you bought it.
10. You like the idea of owning something more than the reality.

What are you some ways the things you own, own you? More details on this blog.

Reuters December 19

New Report Looks at the Messages and Themes on Cable TV’s
Most-Watched Reality Programs

For the full report go here

In short, the study exposes the way that reality TV routinely uses "harsh, demeaning, degrading, and sexualized dialogue" in addressing women.

Watch in full screen mode.

It’s the ultimate belt-tightening handbook: No meat? Push an eggplant through the grinder instead. Chew your food long enough for your stomach to feel full. And don’t forget to sweep crumbs off your table and into a jar.

These are some of the tips Greeks used to survive the Second World War occupation that have been collected in Starvation Recipes – a cookbook that has become a surprise hit as millions of Greeks struggle to make ends meet in a new era of hardship brought on by economic crisis.

In the grim years of the occupation, starving Athenians invented new ways to stay alive, helped by daily advice columns in the capital’s newspapers known as “survival guides.”

The 56 best/worst similes written for a Washington Post contest.

1. Her eyes were like two brown circles with big black dots in the center.
2. He was as tall as a 6′3″ tree.
3. Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two sides gently compressed by a Thigh Master.
4. From the attic came an unearthly howl. The whole scene had an eerie, surreal quality, like when you’re on vacation in another city and Jeopardy comes on at 7:00 p.m. instead of 7:30.
5. John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met.
6. She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes just before it throws up.
7. The ballerina rose gracefully en pointe and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant. Many more

FANTASY

What are little girls made of?
Sugar and spice,
And everything nice,
That's what little girls are made of.

REALITY

Barbarism begins with Barbie, the doll children love to hate.

Researchers were surprised that BARBIE, that plastic icon of girlhood fantasy play, is routinely tortured by children.

The methods of mutilation are varied and creative, ranging from scalping to decapitation, burning, breaking and even microwaving.

The contrast between the deaths, within two days of each other, of Libya’s Col. Moammar Gadhafi and Saudi Crown Prince Crown Prince Sultan bin Abdul-Aziz Al Saud is one of terminal buffoonery versus decadent gerontocracy. And their demise is likely to lead to very different outcomes: liberation for the Libyans and stagnation for the Saudis.

But the death of the Crown Prince, at 86, marks the beginning of a critical period of domestic and foreign uncertainty for the kingdom. After all, Prince Sultan’s half-brother, King Abdullah, 87, has been hospitalized in Riyadh following a major operation last month. The regime is aging and ailing, and is perceived by the population as being on life support.

BRANTFORD, ON, CANADA - Mass graves of Mohawk children have been uncovered by ground-penetrating radar at the Mohawk Institute, a residential school for Mohawk operated by the Church of England and the Vatican before its closure in 1970.

According to Rev. Kevin Annett, Secretary of the International Tribunal for Crimes of Church and States (www.itccs.org), the Mohawk Institute was “set up by the Anglican Church of England in 1832 to imprison and destroy generations of Mohawk children. This very first Indian residential school in Canada lasted until 1970, and, like in most residential schools, more than half of the children imprisoned there never returned. Many of them are buried all around the school.”

.....In his interview, Rev. Annett stated that the mainstream Canadian media, as well as the government of Canada, are maintaining a coverup and media blackout of the discoveries of Mohawk child genocide at the Mohawk Institute. More

Excerpt

Boys, too, are growing up in a different world than even a decade ago.

Nick Uczekaj, 15, from Scottsdale, Ariz., said guys his age worry about having a girlfriend — some of his friends even have six.

"You hear all these things from the media about what girls like, that they like the bad boy," he says. "It's confusing to know how to act."

Newberg — and experts, too — fear boys will grow into men with unmeetable expectations. Psychologist Liz Hale, a marriage counselor, talks about men who are disappointed with women and marriage and sex. None of it lives up to the hype they've been force-fed for years. She knows women who give up on themselves because they can't attain the ideal.

"The effect on boys is almost worse," says Christensen. "They grow up expecting that's what girls are and, frankly, none of us are that. It's hard to find a perfect woman when she doesn't exist."

A well researched article that provides a thorough analysis. The consequences of the early sexualization of girls are serious. It will lead to the collapse of society as we know it.

100 years of East London style in 100 seconds. Sept 13th 1911 - Sept 13th 2011.