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LOUNGING LIZARDS
Several common lizards were lounging in the sunshine on the edge of West Mersea on a sunny Saturday 29th. This one pictured above was one of two seen basking on some posts near the Feldy cemetery, while a further seven were seen on the bare tops of old ant-hills on the St Peters Meadow. Five were seen together on one ant-hill top.
Also seen at St Peters were 2 chiffchaffs, 2 blackcaps and a family of goldfinches feeding with a tit flock. Two wasp spiders were seen on the edge of the meadow near the boardwalk. One large female wasp spider was reported a couple of days ago in one of the nearby Coast Road gardens.
Butterflies were keeping out of the fresh north-westerly breeze with this red admiral one of several seen near the Feldy cemetery, along with a couple of commas. A small tortoiseshell and small white were noted by the Strood seawall.
The stubble field alongside the Strood seawall proved attractive for the small birds to feed in, so worth a closer look during Saturday morning. The biggest flock was 150 linnets along with 25 goldfinches while 10 corn buntings, 20 meadow pipits, 3 reed buntings and 5 skylarks were seen flying around at various times.
Also seen here was a kestrel hovering over the fields, 50 golden plover, 20 lapwing flying around,and 50+ swallows passing through.
The tide had covered most of the mud a couple of hours before the mid-day high tide. In the distance a common buzzard flew low past the Ray Channel as it headed south-west, followed shortly after by a marsh harrier and then a bit higher up a sparrowhawk taking the same flightpath over the Strood causeway.
There was a report of curlew sandpiper seen from the Strood causeway during Saturday.
In Firs Chase a sparrowhawk glided over the road, a Mediterranan gull circled over calling, while at least 3 goldcrests were feeding with a tit flock.
A late Saturday afternoon lap of the country park producd views of a wheatear on the beach, 10 little egrets, 250 golden plover and 2 avocets out on the mud, while 100 wigeon, 200 teal, 10 snipe were on the pools. At the park pond 7 gadwall, 5 shoveler, 2 tufted duck were amongst the 40+ mallard.
Liz Huxley reported 3 immature eiders in the Colne off the East Mersea Point.
There ws a nice sunset across the Strood Channel on Friday evening although most of the waders appeared in silhouette on the mud looking into the sun. No great variety of waders but a good scattering across the mud. Black-tailed godwits-75+, redshank-200, oystercatchers-20, golden plover-50, grey plover-50 and curlews-50 were the rough numbers seen.
Seventy wigeon flew out of the dyke and back onto the mudflats in the channel. Six little egrets gathered along the bottom of the Strood channel before flying off to the nearby Ray Island evening roost, where they were joined by at least another 4 little egrets.
Earlier in the day a siskin was seen feeding with some goldfinches ner the park entrance.
A painted lady butterfly was seen in the country park on Thursday morning.
Two grey wagtails flew over the park entrance as they headed east.
GOLDIE GROUP
This group of golden plover were photographed on the mud at Cudmore Grove by Alan Reynolds. The sunshine shows up the golden colour on the wings and body of the birds. Flock sizes have varied in recent days on the mudflats with one group of 300 birds at the weekend being the biggest seen here so far this autumn. Alan also took the golden plover photo below.
The wind picked up during Tuesday 25th with just a couple of showers in the afternoon. Out of the wind, there was still a bit of warmth in the sunshine.
A tree pipit flew east over the car park in the morning, which was noteworthy, calling out as it passed quickly overhead. There was a bit of small bird activity amongst the tit flock near the entrance with 5 chiffchaffs, 4 blackcaps and a whitethroat seen. Up to 30 swallows passed over the park during the day.
At the park pond a male sparrowhawk glided into the tall hedge, while 6 mistle thrushes were seen heading northwards over the fields. On the water 50 mallard and a gadwall were the ducks present along with little grebes, coots and moorhens. Two tufted ducks were still on the borrowdyke.
On the pools, 8 little egrets was the biggest group here for sometime, while 50 wigeon, 100 teal, 20 snipe, 2 shoveler, 10 black-tailed godwits and 120 curlew were the main birds here. Early evening a pair of foxes were seen chasing each other around the back of the fields. The day before there had been another reasonable redshank roost at the pools with 110 birds present.
In the late Tuesday afternoon a wheatear flitted along the seawall and 30 linnets were at the Point. In the river 4 common terns flew out of the estuary, while two marsh harriers flew high up-river from Colne Point.
The day before on Monday 24th, a pair of kingfishers were seen flying fast over the pools in the fields with one bird seemingly in hot pursuit of the other as they made their way to the pond during the mid-morning. A short while later one was back on the dyke. As dusk approached at the end of the day, one kingfisher was back at the pond where it appeared to stay for the night. Through the telescope the bird was seen as it preened, to be a male with the all black bill.
The other unexpected sight from the hide by the pond at dusk, was watching a pair of muntjacs stroll along the bottom hedge for 25 metres before they tucked back into the hedge again. The male-buck with its short antlers was following closely behind the female-doe.
In the morning the first brent geese of the autumn were seen at the park with one bird seen flying west along the shore during the high tide. A little later 4 brent geese were feeding on the edge of the mud as the tide began to recede. There was a report that about a dozen brent geese have also been noted at West Mersea at their regular spot by St Peters.
Also on the first bit of uncovered mud was a flock of 18 little egrets, waiting for more of the mudflats to get exposed. Not much bird movement at sea during the morning high tide other than a few wigeon and one group of 12 shoveler.
Martin Cock saw a wheatear on Monday morning by Coopers Beach.
The first autumnal rustic of the autumn pictured above, came to the moth trap at the park during Monday night. On a windy and clear night, 40 individuals of about 12 species were noted by Tuesday morning. These included angle shades, lunar underwing, L-album wainscot, flounced rustic large yellow underwing, lesser yellow underwing, square spot rustic, setaceous hebrew character and frosted orange.
During the sunnier parts of Tuesday butterflies noted on the wing were comma and red admiral while the dragonflies noted were common darters and migrant hawkers.
SQUIRREL SIGHTING
It was a surprise to see a red squirrel waiting at the bus stop on the East Mersea road near Meeting Lane at 7.30am on Sunday 23rd. If its hoping to catch a lift to get away from East Mersea, it has a bit of a wait as the next bus won't be along until the morning! The picture above is a bit blurred as the squirrel darted about inside the bus shelter trying to find a way out. It soon hopped out and into the nearby hedge, clambering up a small tree.
It transpires that a red squirrel was seen five days earlier less than 100m away from this bus stop, in the front garden of the Thorleys on some refuse bags before being disturbed by the refuse collectors. The squirrel quickly disappeared into a neighbours garden. Two days prior to this sighting, one was seen in a field at Home Farm in East Mersea on Sunday 16th - a day after the four reds had been released into the wild from their pen.
Sunday's weather deteriorated to an afternoon of wind and rain. Water levels on the pools in the park's grazing fields quickly rose following continuous rain. Before the rain arrived, 150 teal, 12+ snipe, 20 wigeon and 15 black-tailed godwits were present, while 94 curlew and 2 little egrets were in the fields late in the day. Two tufted ducks were in the dyke also at the end of the day.
At the park pond 25 mallard, 2 shoveler 2 gadwall were noted with 20+ swallows passing over the park as did 10 meadow pipits.At least two chiffchaffs were calling from nearby bushes but few other small birds noted in the windy conditions.
On the mudflats 300 golden plover were gathered, while 2 common terns flew along the river Colne.A sparrowhawk crossed west over the river from Brightlingsea to Ivy Farm.
On Saturday morning a spotted flycatcher was seen near the "flycatcher-gate", situated near the park entrance. In the bushes nearby were a willow warbler, 4 chiffchaffs and at least a couple of blackcaps.
In the car park 5 mistle thrushes were seen in the rowan trees, feeding on the berries.
On the park pond a female pintail was of note amongst the mallard, while on the nearby pools were 150 teal, 10 snipe, 18 wigeon and a few black-tailed godwits.A roving flock of 200+ starlings fed on berries in hedgerows, fed in the fields as well as drinking from the pools.A kestrel hunted over the fields and seawall.
At the Point a male sparrowhawk unsettled a feeding flock of 40 linnets when it hurtled into them without any warning. It was unsuccessful in catching anything. Later in the morning a second sparrowhawk flew west over the park. Also at the Point were 3 reed buntings, whitethroat, siskin in flight, 20 lapwings, 2 common terns and a common seal in the river.
A marsh harrier was reported flying past the park pond on Friday while Martin Cock saw two common buzzards at Maydays farm and a flock of 25+ meadow pipits.
This fresh looking small tortoiseshell was nectaring on the yellow flowers of bristly ox-tongues, whilst enjoying the warmth of the sun along the seawall on Saturday morning. Also noted at the park were small white, large white and a few red admirals.
This sickly looking wood pigeon, just passing the squab stage, didn't look well at the park as several flies pestered it. The bird has just left the nest and seemed to have enough flight feathers to flutter back into the nearby bushes, but didn't make any effort to do so.
REDSHANK ROOST
Rain arrived on the Island at the end of Friday 21st, seemingly the first proper rain for nearly four weeks. The cattle grazing by the park pond in the picture above, appeared to lose the appetite to graze while the rain came down. The light faded fast with the dark cloud overhead.
The kingfisher made another appearance at the pond and looked like it was going to roost here for the night, perching in a willow bush over the water. It made at least one circuit of the pond, whistling out loudly as it flew low over the water, its colours looking unusually drab. Fifty mallard swam from the edges into the open water, while it rained.. Two gadwall and little grebe were present as were coots and moorhens.
There was a record count of 260+ redshank roosting during the late afternoon high tide on the pools in the fields. As the roosting period was drawing to an end, the chattering noise from the redshanks got louder, a great sight and sound. Also present were the usual 20 or so black-tailed godwits while 50+ curlew roosted on the field.
Earlier in the day 100 teal, 20 wigeon, 3 greylag geese, 20 snipe, little egret were on the pools while a green sandpiper flew high to the west. A greenshank was heard calling for the second consecutive day flying along the park shoreline.
The main bird feature during the morning was a big flock of house martins with 300+ flying over the park and nearby fields along with 100+ swallows and one or two sand martins. The martins semed content to stay in the area to feed, often providing the typical autumnal sight of a hundred birds sitting on some overhead wires.
In the bushes by the pond, 8 blackcaps were feeding on the various berries and 3 song thushes were noted together in one bush. Just one mistle thrush was seen in the car park. Butterflies noted during the day were red admiral, comma and small white.
At the beginning of the day a marsh harrier was seen crossing the East Mersea road near the pub, as it flew low over the fields towards Coopers Beach.
On Thursday 20th, there was a big mixed tit flock feeding in the bushes and trees in the car park with one willow warbler singing briefly amongst 8 or so chiffchaffs. A handful of finches flew over the park with at least two siskins flying with presumed greenfinches. Andy Field saw a weasel along the top of the seawall.
There was a report from Nick Green that a peregrine was tussling with an osprey near the mouth of the Pyefleet Channel, with the osprey continuing to drift west.
Moth numbers in the trap on Wednesday morning were down to about forty individuals of 12 species following a clear sky and chilly night. The first black rustic of the autumn is pictured above, looking fresh and smart with several more expected to visit the trap over the next 2 or 3 weeks.
Other moths noted included garden carpet, common marbled carpet, engrailed, lunar underwing, flounced rustic, large yellow underwing, lesser yellow underwing, square spot rustic, setaceous hebrew character, frosted orange and snout
RETURN OF TUFTY
William Baker was very lucky to see one of the recently re-introduced red squirrels attempt to cross the East Mersea road in front of his car near the parish boundary at Weir Farm, early on Tuesday18th. Luckily for the squirrel, it had the sense to turn back into the verge, rather than cross the road.This photograph is one of Mersea Island Society's, showing one of the reds sitting in its release pen at a private site in East Mersea.
There have been various discussions over the years about getting a population of red squirrels established on the Island, as its one of the last corners of East Anglia that doesn't currently have grey squirrels. The Society have received advice from the late David Stapleford of the Red Squirrel Survival Trust about getting the programme going on Mersea. Two breeding pairs of reds arrived at the end of August from the captive breeding centre at Pensthorpe in Norfolk with plans already in place to bring more to the Island if all goes well.
Although the Island doesn't have extensive woodland, it has many copses, small woods interlinked with lots of hedgerows. It is anticipated that the squirrels will need lots of supplementary feeding especially through this winter period.
Let's hope the squirrels can become established on the Island and let's hope they're not playing Russian roulette with the local traffic!
This herald moth was found resting inside the toilet building at the country park on Tuesday morning. When resting on a tree as in the picture above, they seem to prefer to turn upside down and face down the trunk, maybe the wings resemble a dead leaf better this way round.
On Monday 17th, Glyn Evans on his monthly walk along the north side of the Island noted 2 Arctic terns, 40 common terns, 2 common buzzard, 3 hobbies, 6 marsh harriers, wheatear, 3 whinchat, 80 meadow pipits, tree pipit and a corn bunting.
Neil Harvey watched an osprey on Sunday morning fly along Salcott Creek towards West Mersea
Posted by Dougal Urquhart at 11:51 pm 2 comments:
BUZZING IVY BUSHES
The footpath at the top of the Firs Chase caravan site was buzzing with many insects around the ivy bushes in flower on a sunny Saturday 15th. This comma butterfly pictured above was one of three seen along the path, as were 20 red admirals and a small tortoiseshell. Adding to the buzzing sound were honey bees, bumble bees, wasps, flies and a few hoverflies too. Nearby small whites, large whites were also on the wing as were several migrant hawkers, southern hawkers and common darters.
A Mediterranean gull flew over Firs Chase early in the morning calling and thirty linnets were in the field near the caravan site.
Along the Maydays seawall in the early Saturday evening a short-eared owl was flushed by Steve Entwistle. A short-eared owl was also seen in mid afternon just to the north of the Island at Langenhoehall marshes by Hugh Owen who also saw a buzzard over his garden while a marsh harrier was seen over the marshes here and one by the Strood too.
An early evening walk along the Strood seawall on Friday 14th provided views of a number of waders on the mudflats. Amongst the usual redshank, curlew, grey plover, golden plover, black-tailed godwits was a greenshank and also a green sandpiper and 20 mallard on the borrowdyke. A common tern and little egret were seen too and the first handful of teal of the autumn were present.
Beside the seawall a corn bunting flew off, a reed bunting was heard while 6 linnets and a kestrel were noted.
Earlier on Friday at the country park, there was a good high-tide roost of 140+ redshanks at the pools in the fields - the first big one of the autumn. Four snipe, 25 black-tailed godwits, 50 curlew, 200+ teal and 10 wigeon were some of the other birds seen here.
INCREASING TEAL
Good numbers of teal were back on the pools in the park's grazing fields with around 300 present on Thursday 13th. Numbers have been fluctuating in recent days with many teal feeding elsewhere on or near the Island. Wigeon have not been increasing as rapidly with only ten birds seen today, while on the nearby park pond 2 gadwall were seen again for the second time this week.
Also on the pools were 4 snipe although 10 had been seen on Tuesday. Twenty lapwing, 3 redshank, 50 curlew and 10 black-tailed godwits were also noted here.
The house martin passage continued for a second day with about 100 birds flying over the park including 30+ swallows and one or two sand martins on both days too. A few meadow pipits were also flying over the park calling as did yellow wagtail.
In the hedgerows 4 chiffchaffs, blackcap, reed warbler, 3 whitethroats and a song thrush were noted and a sparrowhawk passed overhead too.
Near the East Mersea Point there was the nice sight of 15 little egrets roosting during the morning high tide on the saltmarsh pools, along with an avocet, 100+ redshank and 5 grey plover. Later in the day 60 avocet and 20 golden plover were seen on the mudflats from the park.
Andy Field reported 3 willow warblers and a goldcrest amongst several small birds in the Shop Lane wood although he reported the Pyefleet seemed very quiet initially during Thursday morning.
One of the colour ringed black-tailed godwits Andy saw at the park on the 10th had been recognised 18 times since it was ringed in the Orwell river nearly five years ago. It has been a regular along the Colne estuary and has been seen at the park here in Jan 2009, Jan 2011, Jan 2012 and then now Sept 2012, as well as being seen in the Deben, Stour and near Stodmarsh in Kent during the last five years.
Steve Grimwade and his fellow Swallow Birding friends enjoyed several hours walking from the park round the seawall to Shop Lane yesterday. Amongst the birds they saw were common buzzard over Brightlingsea, hobby over the park fields, sparrowhawk across the river, 6 marsh harriers over Langenhoe, 170 avocet, 9 golden plover, 5 snipe, Mediterranean gull in the Pyefleet, 20 common tern, 5 whinchat near the Point, wheatear, 30 linnet, 3 lesser whitethroat, 7 whitethroat, 2 yellow wagtail and reed warbler.
The incoming tide pushed a greenshank and 25 redshank close to the park beach on Wednesday evening. On Tuesday 2 goldcrests and 5 mistle thrushes were noted at the park.
A weasel scuttled along the top of the seawall on Thursday and there was a common seal seen swimming offshore from the park on Tuesday. Two small tortoiseshells, 3 red admirals, 4 large whites, 6 small whites and 4 small heaths were some of the butterflies noted today.
Amongst some of the moths noted over recent nights was this large thorn, a species now seen for the third year running here.
The first frosted orange pictured above was in the trap on Wednesday morning, a fairly regular visitor to the trap during September.
The first L-album wainscot of the autumn pictured above, was in the trap on Monday morning. Small numbers should be noted over the next two or three weeks.
Andy Field was quite captivated by the sight of this shore crab sitting on the path near the Point.
HOT WEEKEND
It was a hot weekend on the Island and there was plenty of sunshine for the annual Colne Barge race on Saturday 8th. There was just enough of a breeze early in the morning for the smacks and barges to sail past the East Mersea Point.
A spotted flycatcher was the highlight of Saturday at the park, when it was seen by the pond feeding on the masses of flies in the balmy evening. There was no sign of it the next day. Over the nearby pools in the fields, two green sandpipers flew away calling. On the mudflats near the Point 40 golden plover were gathered as were a group of 30 avocets. A couple of yellow wagtails flew off the grazing fields calling.
Along the dyke a water vole was seen briefly swimming along the edge and then disappearing into a burrow. Just after night-fall, a barn owl in the car headlights crossed the East Mersea road near Meeting Lane.
Sunday 9th was another hot day and one of the busiest weekends in the year at the park with everyone out enjoying the great weather. A sparrowhawk circled high over the grazing fields with a group of 100 starlings rising up towards it. The first sanderling of the autumn flew along the park beach in the morning.
After the folk had headed home, a badger was seen trundling down to the edge of the pond and disappearing into the thick stand of reedmace. A short while later a little owl was seen at dusk standing on the grass on the main part of the park. Having spotted me it then flew fifty metres further away and landed back on the ground.
It was a surprise to watch this brimstone butterfly flutter over to the buddleia bush by the information room on Friday 7th. It stayed long enough for me to run to fetch the camera, although the bright sunshine makes this brimstone appear more white than yellow in this photo above. Brimstones are normally seen just in the spring here at the park.
Other butterflies noted over the weekend were 10 red admirals on the hide's buddleia bush along with comma, while speckled wood, holly blue, small white and large white were also seen. At dusk the bush was alive with up to 20 silver-Y moths all feeding with quivering wings.
This female southern hawker was photographed by Andy Field at the park. Along with lots of migrant hawkers, common darters and ruddy darters, there was the unexpected sight of a male banded demoiselle resting amongst the foliage of an oak tree. Sheltered from the breeze but catching the warmth of the sun, it darted out occasionally to catch passing flies. Ten small red-eyed damselflies were resting on the dyke on Friday morning.
David Nicholls took this photo at his West Mersea garden of a caterpillar that appears to be one of the buff-tip moth caterpillars. There have also been some seen at the park which have crawled up the sides of the house where they've started to pupate.
David also reported seeing a hummingbird hawkmoth in his garden recently as did Steve Entwistle who saw one at Maydays Farm. They have been scarce this summer.
SUNSET WALK
There was a colourful end to Thursday 6th as the sun set over the Reeveshall pool in East Mersea. A couple of hours walk along the nearby seawall was perfect for watching the waders arriving to feed in the Pyefleet Channel as the tide went out with sixteen species of wader noted.
On the Reeveshall pool a greenshank, green sandpiper, 20 black-tailed godwit, snipe, pair of swans and 3 little egrets were present while a water rail was heard calling from the back. Three snipe were seen flying over Broad Fleet.
A roosting flock of 270 avocets, some pictured above, were waiting in the small Reeveshall bay in the Pyefleet for the tide to go out. Elsewhere along the Pyefleet were 3 curlew sandpipers, 25 knot, 50+ dunlin, 50 ringed plover, 10 bar-tailed godwit, 200+ black-tailed godwit, 150 grey plover, 5 turnstone, 2 greenshank and three spotted redshank heard calling but not seen.
A hobby hunting dragonflies close to the Langenhoe seawall, kept disturbing some of the waders in the nearby Pyefleet. Four marsh harriers were seen hunting over Langenhoe prior to going to roost. Also noted in the Pyefleet was a great crested grebe, 2 little terns, common tern and a common seal on the mud. A sparrowhawk was seen at the start of the walk, sitting on the ground in Shop Lane.
Earlier in the day there was the bright blue flash of a kingfisher at the country park pond in the morning. The loud distinctive whistling coming from the pond announced the arrival of the first kingfisher to be seen here this year. The bird was seen flying low across the water, the sunshine emphasising the blue back and wings as it flew to land on a branch over the water.
An adder was hiding in its usual spot near the track in the morning. The buddlleia bushes near the hide are still in flower with 10 red admirals, 4 small tortoiseshells and a comma seen. Other butterflies seen included small white, large white, small heath, speckled wood and meadow brown.
Steve Entwistle noted a willow warbler along the path from Meeting Lane along with lesser whitethroat and whitethroat and chiffchaff.
MEETING LANE MIGRANTS
Enjoyed an evening walk across the East Mersea fields between Shop Lane and Meeting Lane on Wednesday 5th. However there was no sign of the two spotted flycatchers or the two redstarts that Martin Cock had found in the morning. This hedgeline in the photo above, was where the redstarts had been seen, darting onto the edge of the field before returning back into the hedge with a flash of their orange tail. The spotted flycatchers were reported to have been feeding together along one of the taller hedgerows. Two common buzzards were also seen in the morning near here.
In the evening a hobby was briefly seen near Meeting Lane stooping down behind a hedge while 20 swallows cried out anxiously nearby. A turtle dove perched up in a tree also near here. Other birds noted included yellowhammer, kestrel, 2 green woodpeckers, pair of stock doves, 5 linnets, willow warbler, 3 chiffchaffs, 3 lesser whitethroats and whitethroat.
The country park was quiet for migrants during a quick morning walk. It was a struggle trying to find a whitethroat although at least 3 chiffchaffs were calling. Four yellow wagtails flew over calling, while 2 common terns flew over the car park. On the pools in the fields 150 teal, 4 wigeon, 3 snipe, 15 black-tailed godwits and 20 lapwing were the main birds here. There was no sign of the female pintail that Martin had seen on the pools here on Monday.
After night-fall on Wednesday, a common sandpiper could be heard calling over the nearby mudflats and a handful of golden plovers were heard on the main part of the park.
On Tuesday 4th, there was a large feeding frenzy by 250+ black-headed gulls over the park in the afternoon as they plucked masses of the flying ants out of the air. Three Mediterranean gulls and a common tern were also seen joining in the flying feast. The muggy conditions seemed to bring masses of insects out and there were dark swarms of flies / gnats gathered over the tree-tops.
Earlier in the day 2 sedge warblers were seen alongside the park dyke where an adder was also seen seemingly drinking the water. One tufted duckling was seen with a few mallard in the dyke. A flock of 100+ swallows hawked high above the bus-turning circle along with a handful of house martins too. Nine shelduck flew into the Colne estuary, possibly newly arrived back from the continent.
At West Mersea on Monday 3rd, two swifts were seen passing over Firs Chase with a small flock of swallows.
The large but harmless hornet hoverfly was seen in the park on Wednesday. This is a female pictured above showing the yellow stripe between the eyes, which the males don't have.
One of the buddleia bushes still flowering near the bird hide, had 10 red admirals, 3 small tortoiseshells, and two commas. The previous day a painted lady was seen on the seawall resting on some of the bristly ox-tongue flowers. This is only the third individual at the park this summer.
The last couple of days has seen lots of darter dragonflies, both ruddies and commons at the park, many resting next to bushes or down in the long grass.
The moth trap operated through Tuesday night, catching about 60 moths of 20 species. This white-lined dart in the photo above, was one of the interesting ones, with at least one being recorded here each year.
Several light emeralds were noted in the trap by the morning. These are the second generation of ones that were flying around in May.
It has been a better season for the garden carpet at the park this year. Although a common moth, numbers have been very low in recent years and not recorded as often as the common carpet.
Many of the other moths were fairly typical ones of recent catches such as Chinese character, lime-speck pug, latticed heath, large yellow underwing, setaceous hebrew character, flounced rustic, uncertain, snout, silver Y, rosy rustic and square-spot rustic.
On Monday there was the second red underwing of the season, resting on the outside of the information room at the park.


A sum of $1.2 million has been set aside in the 2008/09 Estimates of Expenditure for a project which is aimed at building disaster resilient communities.
This will be done by strengthening the national and parish response capacity and developing a culture of disaster preparedness.
Under the project, disaster management committees are to be established, the Office of Disaster Preparedness and Emergency Management (ODPEM) institutional capacity is to be increased, and a high degree of stakeholder ownership established. The project will also assess actual and likely damage by various disasters to specific vulnerable locations.
Funded by the Government ($750,000) and the Canadian International Development Agency ($450,000), the project began in February of this year and is scheduled for completion in March 2011.
For this fiscal period, it is anticipated that under the project management component, a detailed project design will be done, and a financing agreement established with CIDA. Also, a project steering committee will be set up, and a project implementation unit created to manage the project.
Meanwhile, as it relates to damage assessment, disaster modeling, other experiments will be carried out at various sites, as well as public awareness activities. An assessment of past and potential damage to specific locations, will also be conducted.
Under the formation of zonal committees component, a zonal disaster response committee will be established, and training in disaster management provided. This is in addition to a public awareness and education programme. There will be response and capacity building for 10 parishes, and a participatory process of hazard identification and mitigation planning established.
In addition, the ODPEM website will be redesigned, and a virtual library established for easy retrieval of disaster management information.


Can storytelling help scientists convey even complex and contentious topics like marine spatial planning?
In my experience, storytelling not only helps, it is essential if we want broader audiences to understand and support our work. Revealing something personal about why we do what we do can connect audiences with our messages and disarm adversaries.
Consider the field of marine spatial planning. Here, disconnects between scientists and audiences can be glaring.


WINNIPEG - There was no winning ticket for the $16 million jackpot in last night's Lotto Max draw.
The jackpot for the next draw on April 19 will grow to approximately $25 million.
Here are the winning numbers for Friday April 12, 2019.


text:
package br.edu.facear.servlet;

import java.io.IOException;
import java.sql.SQLException;

import javax.servlet.RequestDispatcher;
import javax.servlet.ServletException;
import javax.servlet.annotation.WebServlet;
import javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet;
import javax.servlet.http.HttpServletRequest;
import javax.servlet.http.HttpServletResponse;

import br.edu.facear.model.Cliente;
import br.edu.facear.service.ClienteService;

/**
 * Servlet implementation class ObterClienteServlet
 */
@WebServlet("/ObterClienteServlet")
public class ObterClienteServlet extends HttpServlet {
	private static final long serialVersionUID = 1L;

    /**
     * @see HttpServlet#HttpServlet()
     */
    public ObterClienteServlet() {
        super();
        // TODO Auto-generated constructor stub
    }

	/**
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	 */
	protected void doGet(HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse response) throws ServletException, IOException {

		Cliente cliente=null;

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		Integer idCliente=Integer.parseInt(request.getParameter("id"));

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		ClienteService service=new ClienteService();
		try {
			cliente=service.obterClientePorId(idCliente);
		} catch (SQLException | ClassNotFoundException e) {
			e.printStackTrace();
		}

		request.setAttribute("cliente", cliente);

		//Redirecionar para detalhesCliente.jsp
		String nextPage="/detalhesCliente.jsp";
		RequestDispatcher rd= getServletContext().getRequestDispatcher(nextPage);
		rd.forward(request, response);

	}

	/**
	 * @see HttpServlet#doPost(HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse response)
	 */
	protected void doPost(HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse response) throws ServletException, IOException {
		// TODO Auto-generated method stub
		doGet(request, response);
	}

}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


Find all Stone Lake active listings with this dynamic custom search updated every 2 minutes. Accurate data from the Plano MLS. Let your home find you!
Are you looking for a home with a backyard oasis? You don't want to miss this fabulous West Plano home located in a cul de sac with one of the best lots in the the neighborhood.This backyard paradise includes a pool surrounded by a child friendly wrought iron fence, pergola and gazebo with gas lanterns.This home features an outstanding floor plan with the master bedroom and office down. Master bath has dual sinks and two walk in closets. Wood floors, granite counters and plantation shutters. A large game room upstairs with three bedrooms and two baths. Think you need to paint before moving in? We have that covered as the home has been freshly painted in a great neutral color. Neighborhood has a lake and park.
Brought to you by JW & Terry , Smith & Smith Realty. Call me today at 214-415-9829, or visit my website at planohomesandland.com!
Totally remodeled home with a highly sought after floor plan includes high ceilings, open kitchen & den, custom interior trim & crown moldings both upstairs & down. Gorgeous marble in all first floor including kitchen & breakfast with new SS appliances and new cabinets and new granite counter top. Huge family room with decorative fire place and open to kitchen, over looking the large back yard. All bathrooms with granite vanities and decorative sinks. Interior wood shutters along front and side with large upstairs bedrooms. Fabulous corner lot on cul-d-sac & 4 beautiful live oak trees along front and side yard. Small dogs are welcome. Light furniture is optional.
A Stucco home in highly sought after Stone Lake Estates. Double wrought iron front doors ushers you into a bright spacious formal dining and living area. The gourmet island kitchen boasts granite, double ovens, an abundance of custom cabinets & breakfast bar. Spacious Master and handsome study on 1st floor. Upstairs is a child's retreat with 3 bedrooms, 2 baths & game room with wet bar. Loads of windows throughout makes this home full of natural light with beautiful outdoor views. Super convenient location – walking distance to neighborhood pond & park, and minutes drive to restaurant, retails, schools & Toll. Sellers are offering up to $20K update allowance at closing.
RESIDENCE OF DIGNITY AND VERY WELL-MAINTAINED! This gorgeous home features porcelain tiled floors, glistening granite kitchen counters with island and exquisite painted custom cabinetry, stainless steel appliances, plantation shutters, upper level game room fit for any style of gaming, formal living and dining room great for entertaining! Spacious first floor master with tiled flooring, raised vaulted ceiling with fan, double door to master bath, separate shower, Jacuzzi tub, dual sinks, separate toilet room, linen closet! Beautiful decor throughout! HOA park with a lake and picnic tables.City park with playground equipment and pavilion with picnic tables. Both are less than 2 blocks from house.Covered porch!
West Plano gem in pristine condition! Wood floors throughout first floor, high ceilings, & beautiful moldings throughout. With spacious rooms & a flexible floor plan, this home is extremely versatile. Large dining room has French doors that overlook a charming courtyard. Gourmet kitchen with updated appliances overlooks backyard oasis with lush landscaping, large trees, & large covered patio. Wet bar between the kitchen & den boasts a built-in wine rack & SS professional series wine fridge! Upstairs has 3 large secondary bedrooms & a flexible game room that could be easily used as a media room. 3 car garage! Home has been meticulously maintained by original owners! Roof, gutters & AC recently replaced in 2018.
Homes for Sale Near Plano West H.S.
What's My Home Worth Now?


text:
Mike Stonebraker 70 Year Celebration
A Celebration of Mike Stonebraker
Saturday April 12th, 2014
@ MIT Stata Center
We are celebrating Mike Stonebraker's 70th birthday with a day of exciting talks on his impact on all things databases. The all-day event will feature speakers and discussion panels on the major projects from his +40-year career, including former colleagues, investors, collaborators, rivals, and students.
Come join us at MIT's Stata Center on Saturday April 12th, 2014 to revisit Mike's remarkable history and to share the excitement of the beginning days and coming future of databases.
8:30—9:00 Pastries / Coffee
9:00—9:25 Welcome / Intro Andy Pavlo
9:25—9:45 44 Years of Mike David DeWitt
Berkeley Era (1971—2001)
9:45—10:45 Ingres / Berkeley Panel Eric Allman, Jerry Held, Pat Selinger, Michael Carey (Moderator)
10:45—11:00 Break
11:00—12:00 Postgres and Beyond Panel Anant Jhingran, Mike Olson, Joe Hellerstein, Wei Hong
12:00—1:20 Lunch
MIT & East Coast Contributions (2001—Present)
1:20—1:40 Streaming Stan Zdonik
1:40—2:00 MIT Impact Sam Madden
2:20—2:40 Vertica and Column Stores Andy Palmer
2:40—3:00 Break
3:00—3:30 Students Magda Balazinska, Andy Pavlo
3:30—4:30 Open Mic & Thank You Messages Anyone
4:30—4:40 Mike's Response Mike Stonebraker
4:40—5:00 Reception Anyone
Koa Labs
Jo Tango
Video Messages:
Birthday Tribute by Gary Morgenthaler:
Download PDF (78MB)
The Stonebraker Quiz
Sponsored by VoltDB
Download PDF (31KB)
View Answer Key
Stata Center
Room 32-123
32 Vassar Street

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
Q: How to Iterate the array of json objects(gson) I'm making a ship defense game.
I have a problem with getting the array of waypoints.
The map contains the JSON format(Using GSON)
{
 "waypoints" : {
    "ship": {
       "first_type": [[0,0],[5,7],[2,8],[4,4],[10,10],[12,0],[0,12],[12,8],[8,8]]
    },
    "boat": {
       "first_type": [[0,0],[5,7],[2,8],[4,4],[10,10],[12,0],[0,12],[12,8],[8,8]]
    }
  }
}

My code:
    jse = new JsonParser().parse(in);
    in.close();

    map_json = jse.getAsJsonObject();
    JsonObject wayPoints = map_json.getAsJsonObject("waypoints").getAsJsonObject("ship");

I wrote this one,but it doesn't work.
JsonArray asJsonArray = wayPoints.getAsJsonObject().getAsJsonArray();

How can I foreach the array of objects?

A: wayPoints is a JSON object. It contains another JSON object called ship. And ship contains a JSON array called first_type. So you should get the first_type array from the ship object, and iterate on this array.

A: You can simplify your code and retrieve the first_type array using the following code. Same code should pretty much work for the second_type array as well:
JsonArray types = map_json
    .getAsJsonObject("waypoints")
    .getAsJsonObject("ship")
    .getAsJsonArray("first_type";

for(final JsonElement type : types) {
    final JsonArray coords = type.getAsJsonArray():
}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


sk:n works with the UK's leading dermatologists, to offer you an in-depth assessment, the best advice and the safest treatment plan available.
You'll find some of the world's leading consultant dermatologists experts in our state-of-the-art clinics.
Dermatology is a medical speciality concerned with the diagnosis and treatment of skin conditions and diseases. Dealing with everything from anti-ageing procedures to erase fine lines and wrinkles, to treating acne and other skin conditions.
Dermatology also covers a wide range of procedures such as scar removal, acne treatments and microdermabrasion. We also offer Rosacea treatment and Birthmark Removal.
WHY CHOOSE SK:N FOR YOUR DERMATOLOGY TREATMENT?
sk:n work with the most experienced and skilled dermatologists in the country, many of whom also work for the NHS, so you are in safe hands when you visit us for your dermatological treatment.
Each of our clinics has a Medical Director and all of our treatments are performed in adherance to strict medical protocols. We have a dedicated team of doctors who form our Medical Standards Team who oversee audits of our clinics and are proud of our very low incident rate.
*Consultation will be required before treatment. Consultations with a Doctor start from £100. Nurse consultations are free, Acne consultations are £25.
We also offer facial thread vein treatments, skin tag removal and milia removal.
To view the pricing of the full range of dermatology offered by sk:n click here.
Skn Clinics are rated 4.8 out of 5 for Dermatology based on 90 reviews across all our clinics.


Form: Spreading cycad which can grow a trunk up to 1.2m with age and can hold up to 100 fronds to 2m in length.
Features: Greyish green foliage. Male and Female of species produce interesting seed pods.
Comments: Can grow on coastal slopes in well draining soil. Generally found as understorey plant that creates massive colonies.


The Alabama Institute for Social Justice (AISJ), formerly known as the Federation of Child Care Centers of Alabama, Inc. (FOCAL), has developed a project plan to increase investment in early learning and preschool through aligning and building a base of childcare workers, center owners, parents, and teachers to educate the public on the need to improve support for childcare. The initiative, entitled Increasing Public Investment in Early Learning (IPIEL), is designed to galvanize community support to address barriers to high-quality, early learning.
The initiative was funded on November 6, 2017, by a $300,000 grant from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation of Battle Creek, Michigan.
The IPIEL initiative will focus on rural, community-based childcare providers, parents, and families. Using a continuous engagement model of leadership development and training, IPIEL seeks to empower women and people of color whose communities are marginalized due to unfunded mandates; a lack of livable-wage opportunities; and noncompetitive subsidies, which are heavily relied upon by childcare providers in rural Alabama. The goal of IPIEL is to strategically remove barriers that limit and undermine the economic well-being of women and people of color.
About the Alabama Institute for Social Justice : The Alabama Institute for Social Justice (AISJ) focuses on addressing systemic change that is necessary because of institutional and structural inequities. Among its strategies, AISJ works to remove barriers that particularly limit and/or undermine the economic well-being of women and people of color through leadership development and training, advocacy and public policy, and racial healing and reconciliation. To learn more about the organization, please visit www.ALISJ.org .
About the W.K. Kellogg Foundation : The W.K. Kellogg Foundation (WKKF), founded in 1930 as an independent, private foundation by breakfast cereal pioneer, Will Keith Kellogg, is among the largest philanthropic foundations in the United States. Guided by the belief that all children should have an equal opportunity to thrive, WKKF works with communities to create conditions for vulnerable children so they can realize their full potential in school, work, and life.
The W.K. Kellogg Foundation is based in Battle Creek, Michigan, and works throughout the United States and internationally, as well as with sovereign tribes. Special emphasis is paid to priority places where there are high concentrations of poverty and where children face significant barriers to success. WKKF priority locations in the U.S. are in Michigan, Mississippi, New Mexico, and New Orleans; and internationally, are in Mexico and Haiti. For more information, visit www.wkkf.org .


Math on the Farm, developed by WebTeam Corporation as part of ColorsKit, is a creative math learning tool based on stories. This app has 3 modules: Settings, Play and Score.Settings:Timer You can specify the duration of each question before the next one appears.Play Order Lets you choose from 2 options: Sequential and RandomTrial Type Select Words if you want the questions narrated in the form of a story. Else, select Numbers.Category Choose the mathematical function(s) you want to teach. The options are: Addition, Subtraction, Multiplication, Division and Fraction.Play:Answer multiple choice questions correctly to score points and get a glimpse of our creativity! The stories are themed on a farm, featuring fruits, flowers, vegetables, cattle and domesticated animals. Interactive animation and bright colors are hallmarks of Math on the Farm.Score:Total score is displayed upon completion of each playing session.About WebTeam CorporationIncorporated in 2005, WebTeam Corporation is a Somerset-based mobile app development firm that offers multiple educational and gaming apps for mainstream as well as special needs population globally. WebTeam has pioneered the development of a package of educational apps that offer an interactive way of teaching and communicating with children, toddlers and adults with learning difficulties.WebTeams innovative idea backed by proprietary technology was awarded by Verizon in the 2013 Powerful Answers Award competition.


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Wizards of Amazon – Amazon Sellers Group: meet up for strategies. Specializing in all things Amazon and increasing your sales on Amazon. They accomplish this through applying many years of experience selling on Amazon.
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With the incredible rise of social media, it is now easier than ever to make defamatory statements online. In addition to posting negative feedback on Amazon, Twitter and Facebook allow someone to instantly publish defamatory statements to thousands of people.
Negative feedback statements that attempt to divert transactions or buyers can be published in a disparaging blog post, Facebook status update, or YouTube video.
You can take legal action if statements are published this way.


text:
The Coalition Avenir Québec, leading in the polls ahead of October's provincial election, recently released its "Traffic Reduction Plan" for Greater Montreal. Or so went the marketing pitch. Yet with the bulk of the plan's $10 billion in proposed investments aimed at suburban ridings where the party is hoping for breakthroughs this fall, the CAQ's announcement rode in on a toxic air of old-school clientelism that was most notable for the lack of an attempt at even masking the odour.
Here was a plan to win an election rather than a serious transportation plan, and it was delivered with an ethical insouciance that should set alarm bells ringing.
Indeed, the CAQ's plan, announced by party leader François Legault, is most noteworthy for what it studiously omits: the dense central districts that are the beating heart of metropolitan Montreal, and where both road and public transit networks are most strained — and CAQ supporters most scarce — are almost completely forgotten.
Out with new metro lines. In with expanded road infrastructure, extended light-rail lines reaching ever deeper into the suburbs, and two new tramway lines conveniently located in CAQ-friendly territory. A transit expert examining the plan would pull their hair out trying to grasp at the rationale. A political strategist, on the other hand, would seize it in a heartbeat.
Back to the good ol' days of pork-barrel politics
One year ago, the new Autorité régionale de transport métropolitain (ARTM) was born, the fruit of a hard-won battle to remove transit decisions from the hands of politicians, and replace the short-term logic of electioneering with those of neutrality, expertise and long-term planning in the public interest.
A transit expert examining the plan would pull their hair out trying to grasp at the rationale. A political strategist, on the other hand, would seize it in a heartbeat.
So Legault's comments at the press conference raised a bright red flag that gave up the game: not content to merely propose plans to pass through the ARTM's filter (as other parties do), the CAQ leader will grant himself the right to "veto" the ARTM's decisions. Legault's breezy dismissal of Mayor Valérie Plante's Pink metro line project flows in the same direction — namely, top-down — and only adds to the troubling signs of things to come.
If Legault views an independent transit body and our local representatives as obstacles in his quest for power, we should all be asking the vital question: why?
The concern is real, as the CAQ's posturing harkens back to the time of father-knows-best provincial governments that routinely bulldozed, often literally, the will of local communities. Remember: the Pink line proposal was the signature policy behind Mayor Plante's landslide victory in November with over 50 per cent of the vote. A Léger poll released during the municipal campaign found no fewer than 83 per cent of Montrealers in favour of new metro lines.
That glaring absence in the CAQ's plan thus signals a high-handed contempt for local democracy, and exposes a rust-worn vision of governance that is bathed in pork-barrel politics, and swims against the tides of growing municipal autonomy.
Legault's dangerous game
The corrosive cynicism at the heart of the CAQ's electoral calculus is plainly apparent, reflected as much in the party's transportation plan as in Legault's increasingly divisive rhetoric of recent months that has sought to pit off-island suburbanites against Montrealers in a shameless play for votes.
The CAQ's pathway to power, as viewed in Actualité's latest seat projections, winds invariably through Montreal's North and South Shore suburbs. This is where Legault is pledging to extend the Quebec pension fund's highly contentious Réseau express métropolitain (REM), at the risk of further aggravating suburban sprawl and privatizing our public transit network, and potentially wiping out ever more of the region's dwindling agricultural lands.
The CAQ's posturing harkens back to the time of father-knows-best provincial governments that routinely bulldozed, often literally, the will of local communities.
The CAQ's greatest chance for breakthroughs on the island, meanwhile, are in the two east-end ridings of Bourget and Pointe-aux-Trembles, where the CAQ just so happens to be promising one of its new tramway lines — a necessary project, but its only major proposal for the island. The other tram line is in Longueuil.
In fact, you can practically superimpose the map from the CAQ's transportation plan onto QC125's breakdown of the party's most winnable ridings. It is this same cynical electoral arithmetic that explains why the CAQ is vowing to restructure metropolitan-level governance and financing arrangements, always with the aim of weakening Montreal's clout within the Communauté métropolitaine de Montréal and shifting the balance in favour of the outlying suburbs.
Power before principles
Voters, including those being so crudely courted by the CAQ, should be wary of a party that flaunts so naked a thirst for power. A party so willing to place its own self-interest ahead of the public's, after all, is often one that deals in snake oil.
It is little surprise, then, that experts who have looked at the CAQ's plan say its billions of investments will do little to reduce traffic congestion. How could it? Study after study have demonstrated that expanding highways and building new roads, as the plan promises to do, invariably does the opposite by encouraging more people to drive. It's been called the "fundamental rule" of traffic congestion.
In the wake of yet another shattering of heat records across the globe, and when rising car emissions are already the chief obstacle to reducing our greenhouse gases in Quebec, a policy that spurs further demand for fossil fuels can only be characterized as egregiously irresponsible, destructive, and immoral.
No, the CAQ's transportation plan will decrease neither car congestion nor greenhouse gas emissions, and it doesn't even contain targets to achieve either. Normal, really, as this plan was designed for other purposes.
November 12, 2018 /by shawn
Projet Montréal era an opportunity to democratize the city
Projet Montréal's rise to power represents only the second time in Montreal's history that a citizens' party, one controlled from the bottom up, has gained control of City Hall. But now comes the hard part. How do we channel this victory into lasting reforms, so that this window of opportunity opens onto a new democratic era for Montreal, and not another layer of cynicism heaped onto the wreckage?
We've seen it happen before: a party of outsiders and idealists rises to office on bold promises of change, and once in power, slowly but surely find themselves overwhelmed by the system they vowed to transform, centralizing power and becoming disconnected from their base and the wider citizenry.
The fundamental challenge for the new administration now is: How can we build structures that will keep the channels open and flowing from the grassroots to the corridors of power? How can we propel a culture shift that empowers citizens in a lasting way and inspires them to take an active part in building their city?
The challenge is one of scale. For behind the "pink" wave of November 5th, we can easily forget that only 42 per cent of the electorate turned out to vote in the closest and most transformative election in our city's recent history.
The rise of Projet Montréal presents us with a vital opportunity to revive and reinvent local democracy for the 21st century, and to join the rank of cities around the world who are carving out space for a new citizen-powered politics built on the principles of participation, solidarity and inclusion.
Montreal's engine of democratization
Fortunately, the seed of such a transformation already exists. Unique in the municipal world, the Office of Public Consultation (officially the Office de consultation publique de Montréal or OCPM) is the model of an independent, impartial, and effective arbiter of public opinion and expertise whose innovative pursuit of participatory practices is recognized around the world.
When decisions pass through the OCPM's filter, all stakeholders, including citizens, experts, civil society organizations, and developers, are heard on an equal footing. The thorough and thoughtful recommendations that result provide the strongest assurance of a development that serves the common and long-term interests.
When the OCPM is circumvented or ignored, we get frenetic urban development in Griffintown, the razing of 1,000 trees on Île Sainte-Hélène, an ongoing housing crisis, inadequate public transit, and a city built according to the narrow views and interests of politicians and private developers.
Unfortunately, consulting the public through the OCPM isn't required for the vast majority of projects that reshape our neighbourhoods and daily lives. Under the City Charter, consultations are only triggered by modifications to the urban master plan that are initiated by City Council, but not by the boroughs.
The roots of a participatory city are laid, but they need nurturing to grow. By pursuing bold reforms aimed at strengthening the OCPM's mandate and expanding its role in our public life, the Plante administration could make good on its vow to deepen the culture of public consultation in Montreal, and evolve it into a culture of active participation.
Harnessing the collective intelligence
In Montreal, public consultations have historically been treated as a parallel process to our representative structures, rather than their foundation. They have too often served as an after-the-fact embellishment of well-advanced plans, when not a public relations move meant to lend a false sense of legitimacy for predetermined decisions.
This approach not only makes citizen-initiated modifications to plans more expensive, more superficial, and less likely to occur. By not beginning with the citizens, we send the message that their ideas are not welcome, thereby repelling engagement and placing citizens in an oppositional stance while depriving ourselves of the intelligence and expertise of people and organizations working at the grassroots level.
In a participatory city, all city and neighbourhood plans are co-designed from the bottom up, and the collective intelligence of communities are drawn upon both to devise new initiatives and to filter projects proposed by promoters or politicians in the interim.
If the Plante administration is committed to building such a city, they will lobby the provincial government to have these principles entrenched in the City Charter. This is the only way to guarantee that public consultations are held systematically at all stages of the urban planning process and for all major projects, both at the city level and in the boroughs.
The new democracy is in cities
While the OCPM has been hobbled by its limited budget and mandate, the experiences of other cities demonstrate what could be achieved by providing it with the tools it needs to pilot the next phase of Montreal's democratization.
In Barcelona, the city launched an open-source deliberative platform, Decidim Barcelona, that invited citizens to co-create municipal and district action plans. The platform attracted 25,000 registered users and 10,000 proposals that helped to form the basis of an ambitious agenda.
Mexico City partnered with Change.org and social media platforms to partially crowdsource the city's first constitution.
Seoul's municipal government pioneered a mobile voting app that allows citizens to submit and vote on local policy proposals. At least 181 of these citizen proposals had made it into law as of September 2017.
Joining the urban avant-garde
In the OCPM, Montreal already has an institution with the legitimacy and capacity to pilot such projects, and a 15-year track record of developing new tools and processes for expanding participation.
Montreal is ready to join the rank of democratic reformers. All we're missing is the political will.
As part of its citizen-initiated consultation on reducing Montreal's dependence on fossil fuels, the OCPM hosted its first ever online deliberative platform, which allowed citizens to submit and vote on proposals while providing supporting arguments and references. The experiment in e-democracy attracted 5,600 participants and was wildly popular among its users, offering a hint of Montrealers' desire for meaningful ways to impact city policy.
Montreal is ready to join the rank of democratic reformers. All we're missing is the political will. With a massive expansion of its budget, mandate and presence, the OCPM can become the backbone of a new citizen-powered politics: their platform that's independent from party establishments and that brings our democracy to life through daily deliberations between citizens.
Moving from consultation to collaboration
To combat cynicism and promote involvement, citizens need to know that their ideas will have a real impact. We must transition towards a truly participatory paradigm where citizen involvement is channelled upward into policy rather than resounding through a parallel echo chamber.
Beyond the mayor's welcome promises of respecting the OCPM's recommendations, what will her administration do to pursue a more enduring culture shift?
One option would be to propose legislative reforms to ensure that OCPM recommendations get automatically sent to council committees for analysis, with these reports leading to formal responses by the administration that are debated and voted on by City Council. This could be paired with the creation of a new bureau of the OCPM tasked with tracking progress on its recommendations, to help citizens and media hold politicians to account.
Building a participatory city
In her inauguration speech, Plante called on Montrealers to take an active role in building their city. Yet for them to do so, they need to know that it will count.
By adopting the measures outlined above, the new administration would demonstrate a genuine commitment to strengthening citizens' power, while limiting their own power. And few things revive hope in democracy quite like a politician acting against their own interests, and in favour of yours.
A modified version of the above article was originally published on Ricochet.
January 3, 2018 /by shawn
Denis Coderre, last century's man
Denis Coderre moves with a heavy gait these days. His brow furrowed, his eyes sunken, it seems like the life has fled from the mayor's tired frame.
This campaign was supposed to be his cakewalk to re-election, and instead it feels as though he's sleepwalked into a street fight and has yet to fully wake up. It's not without a faint echo of Stephen Harper in his final campaign: Coderre wears the sagging expression of an old general left behind in battle, emitting the lonely aura of a man out of phase, and trudging against time.
Echoes of a bygone era
Denis Coderre has a frequent one-liner when asked about mayoral challenger Valérie Plante's proposed Pink metro line between Montréal-Nord and Lachine. The mayor, himself from Montréal-Nord, trains his guns derisively on Plante's lack of ties to the establishment parties in Ottawa and Quebec City — who will you speak to to get it built, the mayor quips, your friends in Québec solidaire and the NDP?
It's a telling line of attack, from a man who can barely remember a time when his life and fortunes weren't intimately entwined with those of Canada's "natural governing party." You need look no further for a glimpse inside the political mind of Denis Coderre: Votez du bon bord,Denis warns, choose a Liberal if you want a seat at the table.
In Coderre's old-school, old-boy idea of politics, authority and influence don't come from below — from the mandate afforded by voters, or the mayor's capacity to rally Montrealers to his or her side — but from backroom deals and back scratching among tightknit political cliques. In Coderre's world, democracy is an insiders' game, and you need to know which doors to knock on if you want to play.
Swimming against the current
There is something vaguely discomforting about the sight of our mayor so artlessly mocking his adversary's outsider status, and swimming so clumsily, so obliviously, against the zeitgeist of the times. The attack is emblematic of a wider pattern.
At a time when voters are demanding more and more transparency from their governments, Montreal's mayor still refuses to make even his daily agenda public. Since 2014, security guards at City Hall have been under orders to no longer register the comings and goings of visitors to his office. And in an age where the real "smart" cities around the world are placing their faith in the free flow of information, the flow of information out of the mayor's office has all but dried up.
Civil servants have been silenced, the mayor's own councillors on the executive committee are barred from speaking freely to the press, and journalists — 30 at last count, from 13 different publications — are battling obstruction, intimidation, outright threats, and in the case of La Presse's Patrick Lagacé, police surveillance in the course of their important work to keep the public informed of the administration's actions.
When strongmen reigned
In the era of smartphones, social media and urban tech, forward-looking cities around the world are opening up once-opaque administrations, and trusting in the collective intelligence of communities to find innovative solutions to the problems they live daily.
Yet in Montreal, we have a mayor whose brute authoritarianism harkens back to the strongman era of the 1960s and 70s, when Jean Drapeau reigned imperial over his urban kingdom. It seems so long ago that Coderre the candidate vowed to empower city councillors by putting an end to party discipline. Instead, Mayor Coderre has ruled his caucus with an iron fist, forbidding any divergence of views, wielding posts — and the salaries that come with them — as payment for loyalty, and reducing city councillors to the role of potted plants.
Even behind closed doors, the members of Coderre's executive committee who dare voice a dissenting opinion are browbeaten into silence by the mayor.
And citizens who voice their opposition at council meetings simply have their mic cut.
The disconnect
Denis Coderre is far from the first politician to have an immoderate affection for power. What's most bewildering about the mayor's hamfisted methods is not so much his crude attempts at control, but his peculiar apparent belief that, in 2017, Montrealers wouldn't mind.
It's this historical incongruence that I find the most fitting theme to define Coderre's reign. In the wake of Radio-Canada's explosive investigation into the mayor's strongarm tactics, we saw an incredulous Patrice Roy of the Téléjournal practically pleading with the mayor to understand what all the commotion was about. Visibly, it was to little avail. Coderre pointed the finger back at journalists and answered that, while he may have "stepped on people's toes," it was important in order to get things done.
It was the quaintly authoritarian response of an old-school political boss. And it was only the latest in a salvo of tone-deaf defences by Coderre that shone a floodlight on exactly what voters are finding increasingly hard to swallow about the man.
Time and again, when the anachronism of Coderre's imperious manners is questioned, the mayor trivializes his comportment — a personal phone call to the police chief about one journalist here, a not-so-veiled threat to another there — as part of the "normal" rough-and-tumble of politics.
As if to say that his critics are all just thin-skinned sissies who can't take the heat of the sport.
It's almost like he doesn't know that the rest of us stopped playing a long time ago.
This article was originally published on Ricochet.
November 3, 2017 /by shawn
An interview with author and activist Micah White
The following is a feature interview I did with Micah White, the co-initiator of Occupy Wall Street, former editor of Adbusters, and author of a fascinating new book entitled The End of Protest: A New Playbook for Revolution. This article was published in Hazlitt magazine.
'The Thing About a Revolution Is It Always Comes As a Surprise': An interview with Micah White
BY SHAWN KATZ
The author of The End of Protest on the pollution of the mental environment, giving up on nationalism, and finding reasons for optimism.
They thought that things would never be the same again. And who could blame them, gazing up from their encampments in the heart of over a thousand cities across five continents.
The world had never seen anything like this. They had never felt anything like this.
It was like a tear had opened up in the canvas of the daily humdrum, and all manner of light poured through. Along with it flooded the dreamers from the forgotten corners of the cities, who had gathered among the sympathy of strangers to remember some essence of their humanity that had been lost beneath the debris of contemporary life.
Huddled among ladles of soup and the yellowed pages of the library yurts, their restless chatter threaded their imaginations through to a future where consumption makes way for connection, and in which the belief in universal human worth and potential could be the seed of a new social contract. The parks and squares were their laboratories; their visions transposed from the haloed tomorrow into the dirt and flesh of the here and now.
Five years later, the legacy of Occupy Wall Street is a fertile, if disputed, terrain: of disenchantment, of determination—and in the view of activist and author Micah White, of difficult lessons still being learned. As the former editor of Canadian anticonsumerist magazine Adbusters, White, along with magazine cofounder Kalle Lasn, was one of the co-originators of the #OCCUPYWALLSTREET meme that launched the movement on September 17 in New York, unleashing a chain reaction that would spread to 82 countries around the world.
In The End of Protest: A New Playbook for Revolution, White delivers a forceful call for the world's activists and idealists to reimagine protest for the 21st century. Infused throughout with a sense of hope and possibility, the book offers an important and insightful account of Occupy's successes and failures, a compelling projection into alternative futures, and above all, an impassioned plea to revive the revolutionary imaginary.
I spoke with Micah in Montreal.
Shawn Katz: So, "The End of Protest." It's a pretty evocative title. What were you hoping to convey?
Micah White: The "end of protest" doesn't mean the absence of protest, but the proliferation of ineffective protest. What I'm trying to get across is that we live in this time with the most frequent protests in human history, the largest protests in human history, and yet they're not working. So it's kind of a provocation to activists to take a step back, and question this phenomenon.
Yet despite that, you also write that "the ingredients for global revolution are now here." What makes you say that?
I think we're still living under the revolutionary shadow that inspired the Arab Spring, that inspired Occupy Wall Street. People are still just as desperate for social change, and at the same time, I think that we have this beautiful capacity now to see movements emerge around the world, and if any new tactic were to come up in any of them, we can import them into our countries immediately.
The economic situation that created Occupy Wall Street and the Arab Spring is still there, but what triggered Occupy Wall Street and the Arab Spring was activists doing new behaviours. Those movements didn't look like anything that we'd seen before.
You mention the Arab Spring, and a lot of the book is about Occupy Wall Street. In 2012, there was a similar movement in Montreal which was bigger than anything we'd ever seen in our history, and for a few months there was that "revolutionary moment" where suddenly everything seemed possible.
Yeah, it wasn't just America, not just Montreal, but Brazil had the same thing.
Turkey too.
Yeah, all these different countries experienced the same thing, which is the sudden emergence of a social movement that people actuallybelieved was going to create revolutionary change. And that's the crucial thing, that people really believed it. So we need to understand why that happened.
Getting back to the premise of your book, that protest is essentially broken, you invoke Occupy as a textbook example of a movement that should have succeeded, and yet didn't. Tell us what you learned from what you call the "constructive failure" of Occupy Wall Street.
Occupy Wall Street wasn't a total failure. It did create positive things, changed the discourse. But our movement failed to achieve the objective, which was to get money out of politics. So that's why I call it a constructive failure. In failing, it taught us a very important point: basically, that activists have been chasing an illusion. We've been acting as if the only thing you need to do to create social change is to get millions of people into the streets, largely non-violent, rallying around the same kind of message, which we saw in Montreal and Brazil. Activists have been trying to create these mass spectacles.
They're extremely difficult to achieve, and you can even waste a decade trying to do it. But then when you finally do it, you have to realize, "Oh, it didn't work." So there's no reason to continue to follow that storyline.
This is the book's main argument really, that protest should not stick to the script of what worked in the past, but should always try to innovate and break the mould. And of course part of this is that tactics only ever work the first time they're tried. But there's also a deeper way in which shattering routines, shattering conventions, can open up this breach in the status quo that can spark a revolutionary moment. I was wondering if you could explain this relation a little more.
One way of looking at it is that revolution is one of the ways humans break their patterns and inaugurate new eras of human history, and we've seen this [going] back to the dawn of human civilization. We actually have papyrus from ancient Egypt five thousand years ago that talks about people overthrowing the king. So periodically throughout history, revolutions occur, and they serve a necessary purpose and function in human society.
The core thing to realize—and this is something that activists need to understand, I think—is that people join social movements that they believe are going to win. They don't join social movements that are just the biggest. A lot of activists have been trying to create the biggest social movement or the strongest movement. But instead, what people are craving is a kind of loss of fear, a collective awakening, a kind ofmood of what it feels like to be among this group of people, and to fully believe that you're in the midst of this revolutionary moment.
I feel that what scares a lot of people away from protests is the confrontational element, especially with police. What was perhaps so successful about Occupy—and to some extent with the Maple Spring movement here—was that there was a hopeful, communal aspect that tapped into something people were thirsting for. It made protest a joyous thing as opposed to an angry thing. Do you think that's an important part of protest?
I do. I think the core thing is that social movements spread through a contagious mood and a new tactic, and that contagious mood is a mood of losing one's fear. That's why the Arab Spring was inspired by a Tunisian fruit seller who set himself on fire. He unleashed this kind of collective fearlessness—like "Wow, that guy just killed himself to protest, surely I can risk arrest." So on the one hand, that carnivalesque mood is important, the feeling of joy is important.
But on the other hand, I think that's not really enough. We can't just lose our fear. We also have to start to think concretely about, what is our strategy for actually gaining power? You can see that in 2011, the global movement wasn't ready to think about that. The secular youth of Egypt who overthrew Mubarak weren't ready to run for elections. In Spain they weren't ready to engage in elections. I think we're seeing now that people are starting to understand, it needs to be a one-two blow: We use protest to topple a regime, but then you have to be willing to step in. Otherwise we're just giving power to people who sometimes are worse.
Yes, you arrive at some very interesting conclusions in the book about where the Occupy activists went wrong, notably in terms of the failure to develop a viable alternative to representative power structures, and more especially, the failure to develop structures that would allow them to make a claim to legitimate sovereignty and a transfer of power eventually. We're seeing this in Spain now, with the new mayors of Barcelona and Madrid, who came out of the Indignados movement, and with Syriza in Greece as well. What lessons can we take from Europe's movements?
If you look at what we were doing at Occupy Wall Street, we went into these squares and started to hold these consensus-based general assemblies. And it was a kind magical thinking that we could manifest sovereignty in this way. We were basically like, "If we do these behaviours, if we're consensus-based, then the police can't really smash us, because we're a purer form of democracy." And what we learned is that, actually, you can't get sovereignty in this world by doing that. It doesn't matter. And I think that maybe came as a little bit of a shock.
Are these the First-World myths we've been raised on about democracy?
Exactly, not only that our elected representatives respect mass movements, but that they would respect something that was so genuinely democratic. I mean it was a non-violent, consensus-based space. And so I think we're faced with a question, which is: "How do you actually gain sovereignty in the world that we live in?" There are only two ways: you can win wars [or armed insurrections], or you can win elections. And war, I don't think it's a viable strategy. So we're left with elections. Is that possible? Yes it is, because we're seeing it in Europe. So the challenge is, how do you use social movements to hack elections?
The economic contexts are quite different though. In the US it's quite a bit worse than in Canada, but if you look at the unemployment rate, it doesn't compare to Mediterranean Europe. I wonder whether you think people's parties can break through here?
We don't know what the future holds. Maybe there would be some sort of massive stock market crash, or a major economic crisis around the time of an election. I mean, you really don't know. To me, if you look at the American context, what's really funny is that everyone says that a third party isn't possible, but now that Trump is about to get the Republican nomination, all these establishment Republicans are saying, "Well, we need to start a third party." It's a joke. So, I think there is a way we close off our minds by saying that something is not possible, when instead we should try to visualize it, and figure it out. Because anything can happen.
I wanted to get to another major focus of the book, which is how commercialist culture has effectively colonized our minds, to the point of stifling our ability to imagine alternatives. You write that activists must be "mental environmentalists, as concerned by the health of our inner worlds as with the natural world," and say that "kicking consumerism out of our heads and finding solutions to global problems are one and the same fight." I would love if you could explain this relation in more tangible terms.
One of the things that I think is stifling activism is that our imagination of what is possible has been constrained. A lot of people have forgotten that there have been these dramatic transformations of society in the past, and I think that is [because of] this illusionary world we inhabit that is created by advertising and the media. It's as if we have a mental environment that mirrors our physical environment, and the pollution of our mental environment by advertising and commercialism not only stunts our imagination but also impacts how we live our lives each day.
There's one particular passage in the book that struck me, when you write, "When we cannot name the species of trees, animals and insects around us but recognize instantly the commercial logos […] we don't see the world that is disappearing around us."
Yeah, there's this spiritual writer who said something like, "When you're hungry, all you see are restaurants. When you're horny, all you see are attractive people. And then when you're looking for God, you see him everywhere." Or as I would say, when you're seeking revolution, then you see possibilities for it everywhere. So what you look for is what you find.
One of the scenarios you paint for promising avenues towards revolution is this idea of [activists moving to rural areas to organize] a rural populist revolt. This rests in part on the fact that rural areas are less saturated by commercial culture than urban areas. I couldn't help but think, of course, that the majority of people in the West live in cities, and that by 2050 they're predicting 80% of humanity will. So considering that, what advice would you give for urban mental environmentalists?
There's this nice Sufi way of looking at it, which is that what we need to do is develop our capacity to live amongst the pollutants and keep ourselves protected. So I think there are those two different approaches. I live in a rural area myself, a city of 280 people. In the rural areas it's easier to just not be exposed because there are no billboards and no big corporations. But in the urban areas it's beholden on activists to learn to develop those tactics of defending their inner…
Mental tactics.
Yeah, mental tactics. And it makes us stronger. So I do think there's something to be said for not just fleeing, but also staying.
Is it fair to say you've sort of given up, at least in the short term, on actually reversing consumerist culture?
No. I mean, who knows what's going to happen tomorrow. For example, in Sao Paolo, Brazil, they banned all outdoor advertising.
We [sort of] did that in a borough of Montreal too, actually.
Oh, nice. So see, it seems conceivable to me. I can imagine a social movement that arises and one of the things they achieve is banning advertising. Why not? Or taxing advertising. But I do think in the meantime, you have to first recognize the situation, basically that advertising and commercialism is a kind of weapon that's used to diminish our spiritual capacity for revolution.
And is this where these tactics of meme warfare and the sort of culture jamming that Adbusters does come in? To try to facilitate that critical distance between people and commercial culture?
Yeah, for sure. And even the term "mental environmentalism" is fromAdbusters. Adbusters' subtitle used to be "The Journal of the Mental Environment."
Oh, that's right.
Yeah, so this is one of the ideas that I picked up when I worked atAdbusters and kind of developed the philosophical basis for.
Another interesting argument you made in the book is about the place of women in social movements. You mention that women were central to Occupy, in particular regarding the consensus-based assemblies. You argue that women will make the next social movement too, even predicting a "global female awakening." I couldn't help but remark that the new mayors of Barcelona and Madrid are both women. So I was wondering if you could maybe try to explain this connection a bit more, between a women's awakening and these new movements for more participatory and egalitarian politics.
For me, the thing about revolution is that it always comes as a surprise, it always looks different. So what we need to do as activists is develop a revolutionary intuition that helps us get a sense of where that next surprise comes from. No one can know for sure.
When I check in with my own revolutionary intuition, I just get the sense that women are the ones who have, first of all, that inner fire. And I think also that the pollution of the mental environment affects men extremely, because of videogames and pornography, even just walking around cities and the sexualization that we see.
So on the one hand I think that we have a kind of male cultural crisis—I'm not the first person to point this out. But on the other hand I think that women have a kind of potential for global solidarity, because they're oppressed in every country, even in Western countries, but in different ways in each. So I can imagine a kind of awakening, where one day we wake up and look outside, and there are women of all ages protesting in new and different ways, and people are rushing to join the movement.
Maybe their way of communicating is a part of the solution to the global challenges we face. There have been interesting studies about how just having one woman in a discussion makes the creativity level of the group go up. And I think that once women actually realize that they can be in power, and that maybe that would be better for all of us if most governments were run by women… [laughs].
It certainly couldn't be worse…
Yeah, there you go.
This idea of transnational solidarity amongst different peoples, that's also a core aspect of your vision of a postrevolutionary future. You view a world where current elite-governed nation-states have made way for people's democracies—essentially, a horizontal confederation of free, bottom-up, autonomous cities. You're certainly not the first person to say that this is the direction the world is going in, but I'm sure many readers would also look at the world around us now, at the resurgence of nationalism in Europe and in the US, for example, and say you're dreaming. So I wonder where you find reasons for optimism to think that. Even if people's movements could manage to win elections in cities, which we've seen can happen, would people be ready to give up on nationalism?
I think it really is the only solution. Strategically speaking, the only solution to the global challenges that we face is a global social movement that can win power in multiple countries in order to carry out a unified agenda. So it's like this ultimate goal. […]
What we're dealing with here is imagining how there could be [such] a global movement that's still able to manifest differently in each country without there being this centralized party leadership. That sounds hard to imagine, but we did kind of achieve that during Occupy Wall Street. It spread to 82 countries. The people in New York weren't telling the people in Canada, "Do it this way." We left it up to each city.
And if you look at the discourse of the Indignados, versus the discourse of Occupy Wall Street, versus the discourse of the carrés rouges here in Quebec, they echo each other remarkably. You do mention this in your book, how you feel the "global 99%" are more unified now than ever. What makes you feel that?
Partly, I think it really is the Internet, and our ability to tune into the struggles that are going on everywhere. During the protests of 2011 and 2012, there were these interesting sociological studies where they went into Russia and looked at who was protesting there at the time—that movement was obviously crushed—but they found out, "Oh, it's hypereducated youth." It was demographically the same kind of people that were inspiring Occupy Wall Street. So there is a kind of global culture that seems to be arising that underpins these movements.
And so, to get to a place where people start seeing these links of solidarity more, start really feeling solidarity with people around the world, what do you think the main blockage is right now? Because it seems the emotional attachment and allegiance is still mostly to one's national identity, which is structured in a vertical way.
I would say it has to do with the failure of revolutionary imagination. I think people have given up on the possibility and desirability of revolution, and a lot of people don't see [how] it would be better. But once people start to understand that only a global revolution can solve the global challenges that we face, then we'll see more people getting into this idea. […]
It's the only solution. But you can't really show people that rationally. I think it's something that we have to experience: the feeling of being part of a global movement.
This interview has been edited.
April 10, 2016 /0 Comments/by shawn
Justin Trudeau and the politics of image
We live in a media age where images increasingly pass for reality, where the gloss of marketing manipulation is so thick as to mask entirely what lies beneath. When the standards that reign in the pharmacy aisle are allowed to infiltrate our democratic decision-making, we embrace a dramatic decline in our level of scrutiny that endangers us all.
All parties employ specialists in the art of image-making, and all engage in the politics of spectacle to differing degrees. But in this campaign, it is without a doubt the Liberals who have been the most hyper-savvy — and most cynical — in exploiting many voters' lack of discernment between a made-for-TV campaign and the lack of substance it can hide.
Behind the sugary facade
In the media echo chamber, Liberal leader Justin Trudeau's most substantive claim to the mantle of "change" in this election is his rejection of the balanced budget orthodoxy that has been used by neoliberal politicians as the premise for slashing social programs. It's a shrewd target for Liberal strategists.
Dig deeper, however, and we find it has been the victory of austerity politicians to successfully confuse the two: the real source of austerity policies is less the smokescreen of balanced budgets than the emptying of the public purse by decades of massive tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations.
The corporate media have, of course, been complicit in this confusion. Now, all too happy to confirm their own facile assumptions about "spendthrift" being a synonym for "left," they have grabbed hold of the Liberals' highly symbolic gambit to suggest that the red team has stolen the NDP's thunder.
The problem with this shallow narrative, as well as Trudeau's absurd attack line about the NDP adopting "Harper's budget" by promising to balance the books, is that it focuses only on the bottom line — and media headline — while ignoring the actual programs and policies that compose the government agenda.
A truly progressive program is one that aims for the reduction of social and economic inequalities in society and the strengthening of solidarity. In this election, that mantle goes indisputably to the NDP, who are alone in proposing the first major expansion of Canada's social safety net in decades.
True to the traditions of social democracy, the NDP's signature proposals for new universal child care and pharmacare systems are transformative social policies that would help those at the bottom of the economic ladder the most, as would their massive reinvestments in health care, which earned the party first place in the electoral report card issued by the College of Family Physicians of Canada. They would pay for these investments through a range of measures targeting those at the top, including a two-point increase to the tax rate on large corporations and the closing of tax loopholes used by CEOs.
Taken together, these policies would amount to the most significant push in a generation to rebuild the tattered public domain. They would signal the end of the austerity era in Canada, and a modest first step in reversing the tide of corporate power and privilege that is undermining our democracy.
Next to these robust efforts to reduce the inequalities that soared under the Liberals' watch in the 1990s, Trudeau's vow to tax "the 1%" is akin to striking a coup in the bumper sticker wars: the measure is laudable, but the Liberal plan will do precious little with the acquired funds aside from shifting it slightly down the ladder towards the upper middle class.
Trudeau's primary claim to challenging inequalities is thus a mirage, with the greatest tax cuts under his plan going to those earning incomes between $89,401 and $200,000, and the more than two-thirds of Canadians who earn under $50,000 a year receiving little to no help at all. The Liberals have given up on creating the social programs that act as the primary equalizers of opportunity, preferring instead Harper's method of bribing those who vote the most with cheques in the mail.
The same pattern emerges when we compare the two parties' climate change plans. Both Trudeau and Mulcair have made climate change central to their discourses, yet a deeper look reveals a serious lack of substance lurking behind the Liberals' sugary facade.
While the NDP's ambitious emissions reduction targets have been lauded byEnvironmental Defence, Équiterre, and Pembina as credible and science-based, Trudeau has dismissed emissions targets as unnecessary "political numbers." The Liberals have refused to provide any national targets or carbon pricing standards at all, despite the fact the next government will be called upon to arrive at the Paris climate summit in less than two months' time to present Canada's commitments to the world.
Appearance vs. reality
This deep chasm between appearances and reality, style and substance, runs through the entire Liberal campaign. Upon the release of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission report in June, Trudeau demanded the immediate implementation of all of the report's 94 recommendations. The Assembly of First Nations, however, finds the Liberal commitments far inferior to the NDP's and points to a $500-million gap in their fiscal plan.
The Liberals, despite loudly claiming to be a party defending civil liberties and Charter rights, voted for and will maintain most of Harper's draconian C-51. Trudeau has also breezily dismissed Harper's sale of $15 billion in cannon-equipped armoured vehicles to Saudi Arabia by making the ludicrously false claim, "They're not arms, they're Jeeps."
Despite all of the noble principles to which the Liberals pay lip service, Trudeau has hidden behind excuses to avoid taking a stance on the Trans-Pacific Partnership, of which enough is already known to have drawn the opposition of both front-runners to the U.S. Democratic Party presidential nomination, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, as well as countless civil society organizations and top-flight economists ranging from Jeffrey Sachs to Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz.
Stiglitz and others warn that the sweeping and secretive pact is more about boosting corporate privilege than free trade, and yet Trudeau has invoked airy platitudes about being "pro-trade" to avoid expressing any concerns over the TPP's vast provisions, which will further empower corporations at the direct expense of democracy, human rights, freedom of expression, Internet freedom, and action to combat climate change and protect the environment.
When the wind blows….
And what of the massive program of new infrastructure and social spending at the core of the Liberal platform?
Admittedly, their platform includes a vast array of often welcome and necessary investments in crucial areas such public transit, the CBC, affordable housing, and clean energy. The problem is less with the party's spending priorities — most of which mimic the longstanding priorities and current pledges of the New Democrats — and more to do with their dubious sincerity, given the inconsistent records of both the party and its leader. As late as July, for example, the Liberal leader was even vowing to balance the budget, despite now making not balancing the budget his primary claim to the mantle of change.
The jack-in-the-box nature of the Liberal platform, with its sudden conversions and laundry list of promises sprung at the drop of the election writ, only adds to the narrative that emerges from the glaring gap between the party's actions and words. Taken together, it's enough to make the whole exercise smack of cynical electoral opportunism, lacking any foundation of genuine conviction.
This is nothing the Liberals have not accustomed us to in the past, of course, though it certainly does not bode well for the honouring of their commitments in the future. And so it's little surprise that despite throwing money in all directions, the Liberal platform somehow avoids ever arriving at a coherent vision of social progress.
Party of change, party of power
In this election, both the New Democrats and Liberals have leaders who were selected with the express aim of putting a new face onto longstanding organizations with deeply rooted political cultures, hundreds of candidates and MPs, and tens of thousands of members. Yet in both cases, the election masks shouldn't distract us from the underlying characters and compositions of the parties that have evolved over long histories.
Despite the boyish charm and buoyant energy of their new leader, the Liberals are still the party of the establishment and corporate elite, which they will surely take no time reminding us of the moment they return to power.
Likewise, if Tom Mulcair fails to exude the same youthful dynamism or sunny optimism as Trudeau, behind the leader the NDP's slate of candidates is by far the youngest, and counts the most women (43 per cent) and most Indigenous candidates (6.5 per cent) of any major federal party — ever.
In sum, the NDP is still the party of transformative change, with a robustly social democratic agenda geared towards reducing inequalities, combatting climate change, initiating a new era in our relationship with First Nations, reforming our democracy through proportional representation, and reorienting Canada's foreign policy towards peacekeeping, aid, and development.
So come Oct. 19, let's not be made fools of by falling prey to the manipulations of the image-makers. No party can reinvent itself during an election campaign — even if it's the longest in our history.
This article was orignally published on Ricochet.
October 21, 2015 /0 Comments/by shawn