kirbycairo

Something is wrong. . . .

2012-01-27T17:57:00.002-05:00

I don’t think one needs to be particularly intelligent or insightful to know that something is desperately wrong with capitalist democracy. The system is ailing, there is no doubt about it. Not only is the international capitalist system suffering from problems but the democratic system (the one that capitalists have tried for so long to convince us in inseparable from capitalism) is genuinely in crisis – fewer people vote each year, the faith that the system is meaningful is dying all around us. There are surely many reasons that capitalist-democracy is suffering but I believe that the primary reason is fairly simple. One needn’t be a Marxist to understand that socio-economic systems all eventually become self-destructive. The very drive toward greater profit is the cancer that infests the system of capitalism. The fundamental goal of any capitalist enterprise is the achievement of greater and greater profits, and one of the primary ways to gain these profits is to get a greater and greater share of the market. In other words capitalism drives toward a monopoly – the opposite of itself. The pressure toward greater concentration of corporate power was recognized as a problem at the end of the 19^th century and movements in many countries began to attempt to address the dangers involved in such a movement. In the US this effort was referred to as the “Progressive Movement.” The result of these efforts were laws in most countries against the operations of monopolies, or so-called anti-trust laws.

Throughout much of the 20^th century capitalism functioned under increasing pressure from electors to maintain more workers’ rights, but there were also pressures to increase the general distribution of wealth, greater protections for the poor and vulnerable, etc. However, toward the close of the 20^th century, capitalism began to fight back against this pressure. Through globalization, currency movements, and most of all corporate media control, the agenda of corporatism began to undermine the gains that people had made for the past decades. Corporations began to get larger and more powerful and they used this power to operate as de facto monopolies. They not only compelled governments to serve their interests they used their ideological power to convince populations that despite ever increasing wealth overall, the system just couldn’t afford to let people have decent pensions, environmental controls, workers rights, unions, etc. In other words, despite the existence of more social wealth than ever before existed, the corporate ideology effectively convinced people that they had to be satisfied with less and less and that they had to begin to work harder and harder for a smaller piece of the pie. The result, of course, has been a growing gap between the rich and poor, as well as ever greater social, political, and economic control in the hands of fewer and fewer people. Education subsequently declines and people become ever easier to convince to act against their own interest, or to simply not take part in the political system at all.

The result of all of this political and economic upheaval is that people are beginning to realize that they are getting poorer at the very same time that the rich are getting unbelievably richer. But they are also loosing faith in their political institutions because they know something is wrong but they aren’t hearing many answers. And when they do hear real answers, real economic limits to corporate power, they are told by those very corporations that such answers are nothing short of communist plots. And those with enough knowledge to reject the corporate propaganda know that any one country attempting to make changes to the corporate agenda on its own is going to face some pretty stiff attacks from all over the globe. And so the dilemma deepens. We have government leaders that are little more than corporate servants who are willing to sell out the safety of the very planet just to increase corporate profits. As a matter of routine such governments are willing to ignore or break the very laws that they were elected to uphold just to ensure that their corporate sponsors can make a few more percentage points.

We in Canada saw a prime example of this ideology in action yesterday as our so-called Prime Minister gave a major speech to an international audience once again touting the lie that the problem with international capital is essentially that working people expect too much – they expect real pensions and some form of protection from real poverty. It is, of course, an absolute and utter lie, but he pushes the agenda nonetheless. If a society has more wealth than ever before and yet states are going bankrupt, then the problem is not the worker’s relatively modest demands.

Of course, power, particularly economic power, has a terrible tendency to be shortsighted. Corporations, like the aristocracy in the lead up to the Revolution in France, are desperately trying to maintain their money and power even as they creates the conditions for their own demise. The greater the inequality of wealth, the more you impoverish the people while the corporations are increasing their wealth, the harder it will become to hide the contradictions in the system and the more likely it will become that people will eventually seek to not only change the system but to seek revenge on those who have benefited from the deception and the inequality. Avoiding the 1917 revolution in Russia would have been pretty easy – a concerted effort at democratization and industrialization would have easily undermined the revolutionary cause. But the Russian aristocracy had become convinced that their power was part of a natural order, the only way things could be. I dare say that the corporate class of today as adopted a similar belief structure. How many times have you heard a rich man in a suit or a rightwing politician tell you that there is no alternative to our present system? They tell us that we cannot mess with the capitalist order or that it is a ‘natural’ system. Well I imagine that as the Russian aristocrats faced the barrel of a gun and the French aristocrats were led up the steps of the guillotine, they were deeply confused – “How can this be?” they must have thought to themselves.

Well it happened then, and it can happen again. If there is anything like a “natural” order in the world – it is continual change.

Harper's Message to Gay People - We Dont' Want You Here!

2012-01-13T08:40:00.001-05:00

Anyone who thinks that Harper and his bullies were unaware of the efforts by the Department of Justice lawyers to try to delegitimize same sex marriage is a fool. Obviously the Prime Minster knew. It is extremely unusual for the Federal Government to get involved in a divorce case and this case had to have been prepared a while ago at the highest level of policy makers. There is absolutely NO WAY that the PM wouldn't have known about this. On the contrary, the order to pursue this surely came directly from his office.

And this is the Harpercon's basic political strategy, poke around the edges of a major issue before jumping in. This is how it has been with the death penalty. The Conservative caucus overwhelmingly favours the return to the death penalty because all they really understand is the politics of hate, and revenge is an intimate associate of hate. However, knowing that they can't simply attempt to reinstate the death penalty without huge political consequences, they have instead begun the gradual chip-away. They stopped trying to save people who might be extradited to other countries and face capital punishment, and they are not attempting to save Canadians abroad who might be facing this most tyrannical act. Obviously in the long term their hope is to bring the death penalty to canada for any crime except those regularly committed by rich white men (that is to say corruption and money crimes). They don't care that the death penalty has no effect on crime, as their recent crime bill demonstrates, prevention of crime or rehabilitation are not on their radar - only punishment - swift, hard, preferably violent, punishment. Again, this is the CPC agenda of hate.

Here we once again have another attempt by the Harpercons to chip away at something they hate - equality for gay people. They know that they cannot attack gay marriage directly so they instructed their lawyers to pick away at the basic legitimacy of gay marriage in an area where they didn't think people would take much notice. Test the waters for potential dangers, attempt to gradually shift people's minds toward a world in which gay marriage is not legitimate. So in an unprecedented effort they chose to attack marriages which the state would not normally question - marriages of people who reside elsewhere. It is a test for blow-back. The Canadian government has never brought into question the issue of how foreign governments have viewed a marriage. If your marriage is recognized here that has all that has historically mattered. As one commentator pointed out, marriages between Jews and Muslims are illegal in Saudi Arabia (one of Canada's great allies). But imagine the uproar if Justice Department lawyers had argued that a Jewish-Muslim couple that had been married in Canada could not be divorced because they were never actually married!! We don't, of course, have to imagine because the government would never allow this to happen. This point demonstrates very clearly that this has been a very clear and conscious effort by the government to delegitimize gay marriage.

Make no mistake, the Harpercons are engaged in a concerted effort to rightwing, born-again Christian, intolerance of the US deep-south right here to Canada. And keep in mind they are doing it with the support of about one quarter of the adult population. Now that's democracy!

I am a Billionaire Socialist . . . . Oh no, I mean just a Socialist.

2012-01-10T11:24:00.000-05:00

So it is official then. The Conservatives have now seamlessly entered into the crazy realm of politics which we have usually, up until now, reserved for the more nutty elements of the Republicans in the US and among which Michelle Bachmann and Sarah Palin are two of the primary stars. Those of us who have paid attention and watched closely have known for some time that many members of the Conservative Caucus suffer from delusions and narcissistic complexes. Many of them are religious extremism and hold racist views. Though the media has largely ignored their worst excesses (for reasons that I will surely never understand), we in the real world know that our Prime Minister is a dispensationalist with suspicious ties to Western separatists and racists. We know that there is at least one Cabinet Minster who has hidden his or her homosexuality in a remarkable act of hypocrisy. We know that with the cooperation of a very sympathetic media the Harpercons have done a fairly good job of keeping their extremist and wacky views out of the public consciousness. They have done this because these people know that the Canada that they want to create is overwhelmingly opposed by the vast majority of Canadians and the Harpercons therefore have to make every effort possible to act through stealth and avoid accountability. When a friendly media (even the CBC has been remarkably easy on Harper and his thugs) is not enough, the Harpercons obfuscate, divert, attack and smear others, shut down government, and destroy every possible democratic avenue that they can while the LPC has either supported them or simply looked on in confused bemusement.

Every once in a while the nuttiness comes shining through despite the unprecedented controls on MP's public appearances and speeches. Yesterday we saw one such example of Conservative Party wackiness in the words of Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver who is boiling mad over the fact that Canada has a system of public accountability when it comes to major, environmentally risky projects. If there is one thing that the Harpercons can't stand, it is public accountability. This bias is part of their overt hatred of democracy in any form and their aversion to facts and the opinions of experts. The Conservatives even suggest that they will use their parliamentary majority to undermine the whole business of having experts and the public be able to voice official concern over the Conservative's neanderthal environmental approach. I would expect no less from mindless, backward brutes.

The best part of Mr. Oliver's rant against democracy, and the reason I bothered to post against this tyrannical cabal, was his claim that "without exaggeration" those concerned over the introduction of a potentially dangerous pipeline in BC were being financed by "billionaire socialists" in the US. This talk is right out of the Tea Party playbook - avoid the facts of environmental dangers by fabricating the existence of socialist opponents, drawing on the red-baiting of the cold-war era. Once again, it is facts that the Conservative caucus is afraid of. There are, of course, no billionaire socialists in the US, or anywhere else for that matter. One simply could not be a billionaire and a socialist at the same time. Next we will hear the Harpercons talk of Christian-Atheists! When pressed, the illustrious and powerfully ignorant Mr. Oliver named names, as rightwing extremists are wont to do, and mentioned the existence of George Soros as evidence of these shadowy billionaire socialists who are financing Canadian environmentalists. Rightwingers in Canada have a long history of attacking Mr. Soros because he is a man with money who has the gall to be an advocate of actual democracy. And as any good Conservative knows, a democrat and a socialist are essentially the same thing. Now, if I were Mr. Oliver I would be very careful what I said about George Soros because few men have the resources to legally ensure that you are accountable for the things you say about him. But I am sure than in this case, the words of a rightwing Canadian just gave Mr. Soros a moment of amusement. I mean, imagine accusing one of the world's richest men who made much of his wealth in currency speculation (one of the most overtly capitalist enterprises there is) of being a socialist! If the accusation wasn't coming from a minister in a sitting government it would be hilarious rather than terribly frightening.

However, even in the US, Tea Party opinions are more and more often being recognized for what they are - diversions from any sense of reality. As I have said before, the longer the Harpercons are in office the more their real instinct of ignorance and hate will emerge and eventually even their friends in the media will no longer be able to hide their real MO from the public eye. Just as Kevin O'leary is the best possible spokesperson for the left because his extremist form of capitalist hate, the Harpercons, with their hatred for democracy and facts, will become their own worst enemies. I await that day patiently.

Stange Bedfellows . . .

2011-12-28T19:17:00.000-05:00

Politics does indeed make strange bedfellows. One of the difficulties with holding views that are not considered "mainstream" is that, at a superficial level, people will find various ways in which the views that you hold correspond or overlap with people who are widely vilified. If you are critical the State of Israel, for example, people will quickly attempt to align you with racists or anti-Semites in order to smear or marginalize you. If you hold any sorts of socialist beliefs you will quickly be painted with the brush of Stalinistic communism.

And of course, radicals of all stripes will take advantage of people's ignorance. It is easy to attack taxes or some abstract government waste to get a few people onside while also holding all sorts of distasteful views. The fact is that I think that the majority of people simply don't understand the important connection between modern government programs and the modern quality of life. Without massive public health programs, education programs, food regulations, labor laws, etc., we would simply not have the standard of living that we presently enjoy.

This is why I find politicians like Ron Paul particularly frustrating. Ron Paul is critical of Israel, and has been willing to criticize large aspects of US foreign policy, but for none of the same reasons that people on the left would do. Meanwhile he holds what he claims are Libertarian views which many ignorant schmucks mistake for so-called 'free-market' ideas. In reality, Paul's ideas, like many so-called Tea-Party types, will lead to greater concentrations of corporate power and eventually to social catastrophe in which people are once again at the mercy of employers as they have been, and still are, in the worst kinds of capitalist conditions. Modern rightwingers from Friedman and Hayek onward have claimed to be concerned with the concentration of power which is why, they claim, they are critical of any kind of socialist effort. However, what they are always silent about is the fact that the modern corporations are the greatest single concentrations of power in history. And whether the rightwingers come with a flag of 'libertarianism' like Ron Paul, or a more centralizing ideology like many European rightwingers, or a strange combination of both like Stephen Harper, we must expose them for what they really are - peddlers of an age-old ideology of the rich getting richer, the poor getting screwed, and corporations doing pretty much anything they want.

Only the Courts can Stop the Harpercons' attempted Crime Spree. . . .

2011-12-22T11:44:00.001-05:00

As I, and others have recently pointed out, with the existence of a de facto criminal cadre in Ottawa those who hope to protect human rights and limit the arbitrary power of government will have to depend upon the Supreme Court of Canada. The Harpercons routinely flout the law, disregard lower court decisions, bend or break the rules of the House, condemn the facts wherever those facts contradict their ideology, smear and marginalize opponents (particularly whistle-blowers), attack principles of democracy, and break elections laws.

Today the Harpercon fascists lost a major court battle over the creation of a national securities regulator. The Court's decision was clear and unanimous - the Harpercon's efforts were once again unlawful, and this time more than simply unlawful, but unconstitutional. I don't know where I stand on the issue of a national securities regulator in principle. I have never spent the time to attempt to understand the issue properly. But the SCoC was very clear in their decision that such an effort would violate the constitution. And, given this government's corporatist history, I find it difficult to imagine that anything that they advocated could possibly be good for anyone but their corporate friends. Remember, it is the Harpercons that opposed most of Martin's banking controls and spoke vociferously in favour of the banking mergers that were prevented by the previous government.

This is one in a line of court decisions that will come down in the next few years that will place the Harpercon's fascist government squarely in the light of what they are - a criminal organization that is attempting to subvert the laws and principles of the country in order to remake it into an American style corporatopoly. Years from now, if we managed to save this country from the downfall which the Harpercons are precipitating, people will look back and wonder how it happened that a Criminal sat in the PMO, much like many Americans still wonder how a man like Nixon gained the White House.

A Post-Script to this story emerged a couple hours after I posted this blog-entry. Helena Guergis filed a suit against the Prime Minster, the Conservative Party and several other individuals claiming that the engaged in a conspiracy to discredit her. I know how Woodward and Bernstein must have felt - after a while this story just seems to write itself!

The Monty Hall Problem. . . . .

2011-12-21T10:56:00.000-05:00

Ok, this blog requires two clarifications by way of introduction. One is that I grew up watching too much tv and one of the shows that I recall seeing many times was "Let's Make a Deal," with beloved Canadian MC Monty Hall, (who is still alive, by the way, and is 90 years old). That game show has recently be revived hosted my the charming and funny Wayne Brady. The other point of clarification is that, as my readers know, I have very little faith in any organized institutions in general, and of the so-called sciences in particular.

These two introductory points bring us to the so-called Monty Hall Problem (or Monty Hall Paradox as some people call it.) The Monty Hall Problem was first explained in popular terms by Marilyn von Savant in Parade magazine in 1990. She explains it thus

Suppose you're on a game show, and you're given the choice of three doors: Behind one door is a car; behind the others, goats. You pick a door, say No. 1 [but the door is not opened], and the host, who knows what's behind the doors, opens another door, say No. 3, which has a goat. He then says to you, "Do you want to pick door No. 2?" Is it to your advantage to switch your choice?

It turns out, despite the apparently counter-intuitive nature such a problem, it is indeed to your advantage to which door if you are given the choice. There are a number of ways to explain this claim which at first glance seems so patently false. But I am no mathematician and so I choose an easier way to explain it that makes sense to those of us who cannot do it with numbers and equations. The explanation is simple - in the initial choice you have a one in three change of winning the car. After one door has been opened, if you choose not to switch doors, you still have a one in three chance of winning the car. However, if you switch doors you have a fifty-fifty chance of winning the car. The initial problem is so counter-intuitive that I did the experiment myself. I tried the experiment two hundred times, one hundred of which I didn't change my door and one hundred of which I did. When I switched doors I won 14 more times than when I didn't change doors.

Besides the fascinating issue of the problem itself, what I find interesting about the Monty Hall Problem is that, as pointed out by von Savant in her book The Power of Logical Thinking, "even Nobel physicists systematically give the wrong answer, and they insist on it, and they are ready to berate in print those who propose the right answer."

I will let people draw their own conclusions concerning the implications of these interesting issues. One thing that I think von Savant's problem has demonstrated is that there is more to the work of Thomas Kuhn than many people might think.

Fascism, a Liberal Party Legacy. . .

2011-12-19T08:38:00.000-05:00

There is no question that the Harper government is a de facto fascist organization. I refer you to this excellent outline of what constitutes fascism in case you are so hopelessly naive or blindly partisan that you don't know what is going on. However, as bad as this government is, and it is worse than even most of its vociferous detractors suspect, the seeds for this fascism were planted by successive Liberal Governments who benefited from the undue power of the PMO and the various short-comings of our British Parliamentary system. The Liberals could, at any point, have embraced electoral and parliamentary reforms that would have ensured that our present fascist government could not systematically take control of every element of our nation and run roughshod over rights, ignore the law, and gerrymander the system to their advantage. For years the LPC didn't care about our lack of democracy, lack of transparency, or our lack of accountability, because they were the ones benefiting from it. There is no doubt that the present government is much worse in this regard than previous ones and that it is led by a group of men that is clearly mentally ill and models of dictatorship. But we are just seeing the result of decades of neglect on the part of the Liberal Party which, as long as it was in power, had no regard for our democratic short-comings. When you neglect your democracy, that neglect comes back to haunt you. The Liberals were like abusive parents who have nurtured an abusive child and is now seeing the results. And it looks as though things will now get considerably worse as the present government is abusive of democracy to a whole new degree and its leaders are mentally disturbed, paranoid, insulated, whack-jobs who seem to be entirely out of control in their thirst for power.

And despite all of this, amid the LPC big hype for "renewal," they have entirely failed to own up to their terrible legacy of mistakes and power-hungry abuses. They still don't get it. They are out of power and because of their abuses of democracy there is a good chance we have lost our democracy permanently. But are they calling for real electoral and parliamentary reform? Not in the slightest. They still live under the delusion that they will return to power and be able to enjoy their traditional abuses of that power, and with the more corrupted system that the present fascist government leaves them they are hoping to rain down an unprecedented revenge on their opponents. And like the Liberals before them, the present government is wholly ignoring the prospect that they will eventually become victims of the very abuse and hatred that they are now peddling. This points to something worse than a cycle of abuse, rather it points to a downward spiral that will end in the destruction of everything we hold dear.

So my message to the Liberals is - next time you go out of your way to criticize our present fascist government, remember, your laid the groundwork for this failure and you are showing no signs of changing the system of failure to which you gave birth. Our present government is twisted, immoral, fascist, and dangerous. But it is the child of the LPC and that parent company is still its old self with no signs of regret or reform.

The Niqab and our Discourse. . . . .

2011-12-16T16:50:00.000-05:00

Like many of us, I have thought a great deal about the issue of the niqab in public life. The recent banning of this garment in public in France set many people thinking and talking about the question and Minister Kenney's recent banning of the niqab in citizenship ceremonies has generated a certain amount of debate. After thinking about it a lot I have come to certain conclusions about the arguments that people have made.

I believe that the arguments that people like Jason Kenney have made are essentially shallow and empty. Appealing to questions of 'security' and the public nature of the citizenship ceremony is simply absurd. First of all, I became a citizen some twenty-five years ago and there were only a couple of people there. I am sure that there was no restricted access to the event, but that didn't mean it was a "public" event in the sense that that term is commonly used. Furthermore, an event can be "public" and restricted at the same time. We have all seem marches protesting violence against women in which men, understandably, do not take part. I have no problem with such events. One might argue that such exclusions are divisive, but in such matters I bow to those for whom it is most important and the organizers. A swearing-in ceremony that didn't include men would not be ideal, but I believe that it could still qualify as public for all intents and purposes. Furthermore, suggesting that someone's face being covered-up somehow robs the event of its "publicness" is patently absurd and purely conventional. We generally attend most public events with almost every part of our body covered, I don't see how there exists a huge conceptual distinction concerning the covering of the face. As for the question of "security," this is, I believe, a non-issue and part of the traditional scare-politics of the rightwing. No, Minister Kenney's arguments are hollow and specious and meant only to maintain a politics of fear. I don't think the issue is that Mr. Kenney hates Islamic women and wants us to fear and hate them also. Rather, like rightwingers have always done, they turn Islamic women who wear a niqab into simply a means to an end, an easy target that allows the right to a divided society in which we all fear compromise, difference, and perceived deviancy. The right has always depended on images of "normality" as well as division and fear to maintain power. This is what their crime bills are about. They know crime is at an all time low and that their efforts will do nothing to decrease crime or reform criminals. Rather, their efforts are about creating a brooding sense of doom among citizens in which we all imagine that there are criminals behind every corner and if we practice an open and forgiving lifestyle we will all go to hell in a hand-basket.

Now we have to address the question of religious symbolism. Many people have argued in public that the niqab is not, in fact, a religious symbol but only a cultural one. People like Kenney, of course, need to make this argument because if it is a religious symbol not only will the optics of prohibiting it be bad but eventually the SCoC will strike down any restrictions that Mr. Kenney seeks to make. The problem is, of course, that the SCoC has already rulled that what is important in such matters are not the technicalities of whether a particular symbol or action is or is not actually part of a religion, but whether there is a reasonable conviction among certain people that it is so. This was a necessary decision by the Supreme Court because it didn't want to put itself in the position becoming the ultimate arbiter of theological questions. Such a situation would have been deeply problematic and inevitably created all sorts of bad blood between people and groups. Based on these facts it is folly to make an argument about the non-religious status of the niqab and any such argument will eventually fail.

Now, having said all of that, I believe the only meaningful argument that one could present concerning restrictions of the niqab would be a kind of feminist one. Like many people, I admit to being troubled by the niqab. I can't imagine any religion or culture that really believed in gender equality in a meaningful way, advocating such garments which hide women from public eyes. Furthermore, I believe that the niqab and even the hijab do the exact opposite of what the advocates suggest that they do, and instead they sexualizes women by suggesting that simply seeing the head of a woman precipitates sexual feeling. The creation of a taboo often creates sexuality where none might otherwise exists. The problem is, however, that even if I have a certain amount of trouble with people's actions, it doesn't mean that I can justify restriction of those actions. One always has to weigh questions of freedom with questions of prohibition. And here we have a real problem - it can be very paternalistic for us to tell women who wear the niqab that they are victims of a rampant misogyny. These are adult women, most of whom would say that they are making their own decisions. And of course, there are not very women in Western nations who actually wear the niqab. I remember when France took steps to outlaw the public use of this garment it was estimated that their were only two thousand women in all of France that used the niqab. This small number of people makes restrictions on them seem like a serious over-reaction. When only a very small number of people choose to engage in what many perceive to be a strange or deviant behaviour, it is difficult to justify restrictions on that behaviour unless it is clearly and demonstrably harmful to others. I think one could make an argument that the niqab is harmful to women, but even in a strong argument that harm would be socially small and I think outlawing the niqab would simply create more problems than it would aim to solve. I mean, I would like to see the end of skinny, anorexic-like models, in magazines and on television, but legislating the weight of models would be an near-impossible issue.

Thus, even though I could see that one could make an argument against the public use of the niqab, I ultimately believe that such arguments are simply not strong enough to justify the outlawing of this garment, and as long as we have not outlawed it, restricting its use in public (whether at a citizenship ceremony or elsewhere) is deeply problematic.

I have no doubt that Mr. Kenney, or any rightwinger, will be swayed by my arguments here. They are generally not interested in the actual arguments (pro and con) for an issue, they have goals that transcends the actual issue, and these goals are usually about fear, division, control, and power. Jason Kenney has as little interest in the rights of women as he does about democracy, or justice; these things only mean something to him in as much as they can lead to his power and control. But I have a real hope that the Harpercons will eventually be hounded from power by a public that realizes just how evil and anti-democratic they are, and when that time comes I hope that reasonable discourse actually means something.

Our Little Children in Government. . . .

2011-12-15T12:20:00.000-05:00

I think most people would agree that a person's inability to think long-term is a sign of a kind of immaturity. Kids, for example, suffere from this notion of immediacy, they have trouble thinking about what might happen tomorrow, or even later the same day. I know if my daughter is too hot to wear her big, winter coat, she is almost incapable of conceiving that she might need it later when she will be cold. And I have read research that suggests that before a certain age, kids are not nearly as able to learn from experience as we would like them to be. So when they are really young we see them making the same mistakes over and over when those mistakes involve complex predictions about future states.

Now, has anyone noticed the degree to which our present government suffers from this syndrome of immaturity? They seem congenitally incapable of conceiving of how their decisions today may effect them tomorrow. Many governments have been plagued by various scandals; events in which some rogue MP or Minister makes some bad decisions which reflect poorly on the reigning government and on the office of government more generally. Our current government is certainly no exception to this tendency. We have had MP make racist comments, Ministers lie to the House or leave sensitive documents where they shouldn't be. This is par for the course. But since we can be certain that every government will be subject to these difficulties, it is not the difficulties themselves that are the problem (unless they get completely out of hand), rather, it is the way that a government reacts to these scandals which is one of the true tests of a government's maturity. Can they own their shortcomings, face them head on, deal with them and move on? In our current case, I think we all know the answer - no matter how deep or remarkable the scandal, this government simply ignores them. It makes one wonder how profound a scandal would have to be for Harper and his cronies before they would face it and not simply ride out the news cycle. Given their recent history I can't imagine how bad things would have to be before Harper would be willing to own up to a mistake.

However, all this being said, it doesn't speak directly to my first point which is the ability to guide one's behaviour according to certain future implications. They are so bent on controlling everything they just can't use their imaginations to look into the future. Take something which seems relatively small such as their tendency to exclude opposition members from being included in various foreign events or conferences. Traditionally, even bad governments have allowed opposition members to attend such conferences because, after all, we are supposed to see the other party as the "loyal opposition" - in other words, people who have a central role in the process of democracy and how government works. The Harpercons exclude someone like Megan Leslie from the recent Durban Conference because they don't care about the idea of a "loyal opposition;" they care about the message and the news cycle. They simply imagine that if they can control the message effectively enough, they can maintain their power. Here is where their immaturity is so evident. Someday, the Conservative Party will no longer be in power. No matter how hard they attempt to control the message, alienate voters, discredit or smear those who oppose them, eventually the CPC will be ousted from power one way or another. This is an absolute, irrefutable fact. The only constant is change and eventually the CPC will succumb to this basic law of motion. And when that time comes and the CPC find themselves in the political wilderness their actions and the precedents that they have set will become the standards by which their successors will act. And the more ruthlessly that this government acts, the more angry and vindictive the next government will be toward them. The next government will prorogue parliament, shut down committees, cut short debate, fire and discredit whistle-blowers, exclude opposition members from every process of government, use constant advertising and dishonest methods to maintain power, etc, etc. And like little children who were unable to predict the implications of their acts, they will cry and carry-on about the injustice of it all. Anyone who has supported this government up until this point really needs to be mature and think about our collective future and what kind of country their children will inherit. Will it be one in which the government supports certain principles of accountability, honesty, and democratic rights, or will it act like this one?

Kill the Messenger, Then Cut Him UP, Drag Him Through the Mud, and Feed him to the Dogs.

2011-12-08T10:50:00.000-05:00

Most people are familiar with this scenario - there is someone you know who, whenever they do something wrong, instead of simply apologizing and being contrite about it, they get really pissed off at whoever points out the error. I have known several people (who will remain nameless) who have adopted this rather aggravating and offensive personality trait. These people make a mistake or act in an entirely inappropriate manner (as we all do sometimes) and then get angry when people call them on it. It seems like kids are particularly prone to this kind of difficult response. They knock over some valued or treasured item and break it and when you get upset that the item is broken you hear that classic "un-apology" which goes up at the end - "SORR-REE."

I don't know if this tendency is a sign of immaturity or a lack of empathy but it is certainly aggravating. It seems that people like this are simply incapable of offering a heart-felt apology even for the most mild of offences.

It seems that we now have a government which is entirely populated by people with this offensive character trait. During their time in office they have broken many laws, been guilty of many acts of corruption, and many of their MPs have lied as well as made offensive gestures or said offensive things in and out of the House of Commons. But instead of apologizing for these offenses, in almost every case they have blamed others. The PMO as well as the Government's ministers simply fire some underling and then ignores the problem. In the case of whistle-blowers the Government goes on a concerted endeavour to smear and discredit the person. It is classic 'blame the messenger' strategy of people who cannot own their own failings.

The lastest example is to be found in Tory MP Jim Hillyer's deeply offensive, glib, smug, gesture of shooting imaginary guns at the opposition during a vote to eliminate the long-gun registry. Instead of apologizing for the gesture, Mr. Hillyer blames the people who posted the event on Youtube. Mr. Hillyer, instead of being sorry that he would make such a gesture, is angry that someone posted in such a way and on such a date that would lead people to think that he maid the gesture on Dec. 6th, the anniversary of the Montreal massacre. But this gesture was offensive no matter when it was made and this is what Mr. Hillyer refuses to acknowledge. Instead he blames the messenger. "Those damn, pesky Youtubers shouldn't be demonstrating that my behaviour is offensive." One is almost surprised that Mr. Hillyer didn't say "SORR-REE" and then stomp off in anger.

It reminds me a great deal of the Harris government in Ontario which was so populated by mean-spirited, angry white men in suits who couldn't, under any circumstances, imagine that they could be wrong about anything. During the process of energy privatization in Ontario, the government was compelled by the courts to hold public hearings into the process. This really angered the government and this anger really showed in the actions of the short-lived Environment and Energy Minister, Chris Stockwell who held sham hearings and stormed out of the hearings on several occasions, yelling at people who had the gall to come and speak against the process of privatization. It was amazing to see a Minister of the Provincial government yell at members of the public and then storm out of the meetings like a little child.

All governments make mistakes and all governments endure instances of corruption or inappropriate actions by some of their members. But to smear whistle-blowers, to blame the messengers, or by failing to simply own their errors, a government demonstrates its lack of suitability for office. We have a government that has never demonstrate the moral authority to govern. Yesterday, when a federal court judge in Winnipeg determined that Bill C-18 is illegal, the always offensive Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz said point-blank that they will continue with the legislation. Thus we have a government which blithely admits that it is disobeying the law. (Incidentally, Gerry Ritz also said he was going to file an appeal in the case. However, exactly why they have to appeal a decision that they admit they will ignore, I can't understand) The Government creates laws, but the courts are our society's messenger that confirms the legality, consistency, appropriateness, and constitutionality of laws. Without an independent judiciary, a country is a de facto dictatorship. But again, this government closes its ears to all messages except those that confirm their ideological blindness.

SORR-REE!

Attawapiskat. . . racism and tragedy. . . .

2011-12-06T17:38:00.000-05:00

I have felt angry and helpless since I was very young and discovered just how much evil has been directed at First Nations People by the white men in suits who run our governments. These feelings of frustration have been elevated in recent days by the disgusting actions of the Federal Government regarding the people at Attawapiskat. It is not that I have been surprised by the conditions on James Bay. Anyone who pays attention knows that conditions in many Northern Communities has been terrible for as long as anyone can remember. It is surprising that these conditions have made headlines, of course. But what is really upsetting is that when the Federal Government is finally forced to face this issue with the public because of media attention, the Harpercons simply attempt to divert attention away from the real crisis and once again attempt to blame the victim by unilaterally imposing "third-party administration" of the community's financing. People are suffering, as they have been for generations, and the response is always the same - blame the victim and impose some paternalistic administrative response. We need to be absolutely clear - the roots of this problem is racism. If there were some community of white folks on the coast of, say, Newfoundland, that was suffering the same kind of conditions, army would be called in immediately to save the people. Just as the Bush administration ignored the real dangers of Hurricane Katrina because the vast majority of victims were black, the government of Canada couldn't care less about the people of Attawapiskat because they are First Nations People.

I stand with Chief Theresa Spence and Grand Chief Stan Louttit and against Minister John Duncan. I condemn the degraded human filth that is the Harper Government.

Conservative MPs are Pedophiles (It is just a Rumour) . . .

2011-12-06T08:31:00.000-05:00

I am sort of tired of commenting on daily political stuff nowadays. I feel like Marx must have felt after the failure of the 1848 revolutions when he began to think that it would be quite a while before the forces of opposition would once again muster the ability to create an organized effort so he locked himself in the British Museum and spent years writing. But research has demonstrated that blogging can be an effective therapeutic technique, and since I have been having a hard time with the Christmas season this year and really missing my father, it seems that I am often drawn to write something about some daily political frustration as a method of venting my feelings of anger.

And this story is just too rich to pass up. The Conservative have long believed that lying is a 'normal' part of political discourse. The Harpercons have demonstrated time and again that they are pathological liars and criminals for whom "normal" politics is nothing short of a criminal effort to stay in power. With their recent admission that they were behind calls in which they intentionally misrepresented the facts to voters, they have finally admitted point-blank that they think lying is not only 'ok' but is just par for the course.

Well this is my advice to the NDP and Liberal caucuses - find some government minister around whom some rumours have swirled for a while and start calling conservative constituents and ask them this question - "If the rumours are true and your Conservative Party MP is soon going to be convicted of Child-abuse, can we count on your support?"

Will John Baird stand up in the House and claim that such practices are a normal part of political discourse? Because, after all, there is no lying involved in such a call. You are just saying that there are rumours. In the case of the Conservative calls, they blatantly lied about a by-election that wasn't happening.

No, of couse, it just wouldn't do, would it. Well, I say shame on every CPC MP and everyone that supports them. If lying is a normal part of political discourse, you should be in prison not in the House of Commons.

Some Thoughts on Romanticism. . . .

2011-12-02T10:43:00.000-05:00

I am always on the lookout for early uses of the term Romanticism in English. The term Romantic as applied to literature was commonplace even in the 18th century but it usually referred things such as gothic novels or overtly pastoral material, and was often used in the pejorative sense. Romanticism identified as a literary movement associated with the work of such poets as Coleridge, Wordsworth, Shelley, Byron, and others did not come into general until later in the 19th century. This is not to say that it then had, or even has today, a clear and straightforward connotation. Today, Romanticism as a literary term has basically lost credibility from an academic point of view. There are far too many conflicting interests and ideas within the work of those authors normally deemed to be leading Romanticists for it to be a rigorously useful notion. But then most terms in Art and Literary history are really just terms of convenience which we should only use loosely for the sake of historical and biographical ease. Thus, if I were teaching a group of highschool or young university students I would use the term Romanticism for the sake of creating a useful picture of historical movement, all the while making sure to stress that such terms are historically convenient rather than philosophically rigorous. I think what is important for young students to understand is that there were major social and economic changes taking place toward the end of the 18th century and that these changes had a significant correlate in the arts.

Anyway, getting back to my point about the use of the word Romanticism, I found an early use of the term yesterday in a 1829 edition of the London Magazine. It is found in an article entitled "Modern French Poetry" which is particularly concerned with the work of Victor Hugo who was still a young man and had not produced his important work. The passage also contains an interesting use of the word "ultraism" now usually associated with a Spanish literary movement of the early 20th century. The sentence in which the word is used is as follows - "For, in France, romanticism and ultraism (strange as the supposed union may appear) are considered, in a writer, consequent on, and inseparable from, each other; - whilst an undeviating, scrupulous attachment to the authors of the age of Louis XIV, (for, after all, the French idea of classic is nearly confined to them,) - a supercilious contempt for literature of other countries - a dread of change or innovation, in language, rhythm, or general costume - classicism, in short, as it is understood, is considered as equivalent to liberalism, though it is, in fact ultrasim in literature."

Now, I have a fair degree of knowledge of this subject and over twenty years of experience and I cannot honestly say that this sentence makes complete sense to me. The author (who, by the way remains anonymous) seems to be contradicting himself, saying that both romanticism and classicism are forms of ultraism. It also seems to strangely suggest that classicism is associated with liberalism - an idea that seems in direct contradiction to the conventional wisdom. I welcome comments by any of my five or six readers on how they read this sentence.

Despite the turgid obscurity of this sentence, it is an early use of the term Romanticism, and is therefore interesting. However, what is arguably more interesting is the paragraph that follows this passage and, by certain interpretations, it could be seen as shedding light on the previous sentence.

"These unions between parties in politics, and parties in poetry, really exist in France, as we have described them. The fact presents an evident anomaly, and not one of the least curious of our days. For, according to our general notion of things, the parties certainly should be differently assorted. The romantic, or the bold, the innovating, the irregular, in poetry, would ally itself with the speculative, the reforming, the experimental, in politics. On the other side, a scrupulous observance of ancient ordonnances in belles lettres, an exclusive reverence for the works of the great monarchy, for set forms, for the unities, for the dictionary of the Academy, (who determined, in their wisdom, some century and a half ago, that they had fixed the language of their country, which was thenceforth to know neither change nor augmentation) - in short, a devotion to every thing settled, regular, and legitimate, and an abhorrence of novelties and exotics - classicism, in a word, would take refuge in the faubourg St. Germain, the head-quarters of ultraism."

(The Faubourg Saint-Germain, for those who don't know, was the richest, most aristocratic district in Paris)

This sentence does two things. First, it eliminates once an for all the notion that obfuscating prose is a product only of the "post-modern" philosophical mind. Second, it clears up somewhat the previous sentence. The writer is suggesting that while one would expect the Romantics to be associated with radical politics and Classicists to be associated with more conservative political efforts, this is not what in fact prevails in France in the early part of the 19th century. Now, 19th century French literature is certainly not my area of expertise and I am not sure that I am qualified to make a properly informed decision on this issue. (By the way, the editor of the magazine (which at this particular point may have been either John Taylor or Thomas Hood) puts a footnote at this point in the text to suggest that he, in fact, disagrees with the writer). I suspect that this may be a misinterpretation of the events by the writer, but I will leave it to my own readers to decide for themselves.

What I do know is that in England, the ideas of Romanticism are clearly more associated (at least in peoples' minds) with radical politics. The first generation of Romantic authors began as serious radicals and reformers. And as they grew more conservative in outlook, it is almost universally acknowledged that their work declined significantly in quality and interest. The younger generation of Romantics, such as Shelley and Byron, were outspoken political radicals. Other, lesser known writers who bridged the generations and some of whom lived well into the Victorian age such as Leigh Hunt, Thomas Hood, Charles Lamb, Mary Mitford, John Hamilton Reynolds, Allan Cunningham, were all committed reformers.

Again, since Romanticism is not a very rigorous concept, it would be very difficult, if not impossible, to make a consistent argument that the values of Romanticism are necessarily radical in any political sense. However, I do know one thing for certain. Almost all of the writers that I really love are political radicals, and that is how I think it should be. Art, by its nature, should look toward the ideal, toward utopia, and it should believe, at some basic level, that the ideal is worth striving for. If an artist cannot strive toward utopia in the 'real' world, then she will not know how to strive for it in the aesthetic one.

History and the Swing Riots.

2011-11-25T13:36:00.000-05:00

Like many bloggers, I have, of late, been commenting on the so-called "Occupy" movement, its significance and importance, and the need to take such movements seriously regardless of the degree to which they seem focused or significant in the moment. I think it is difficult for many people to understand the importance of such protest movements because many people have trouble seeing the wide scope of history and the way that dissenting voices (which are sometimes incoherent) have long-term affects on the process of history.

Regarding this process, let me point people to a now largely forgotten set of events known as the "Swing Riots," an uprising of the Southern English peasantry which began in 1830 in Kent. The Swing Riots were a set of violent actions undertaken by poor peasants who were reacting to the gradual decline in their living standards. The peasants took to destroying various agricultural machines, attacking workhouses, and even committing violence against some rich tenant farmers. These peasants, who lived in horrendous conditions for the most part and had little hope for a decent future, had little in the way of coherent organization, and not a very good idea of what kind of solutions to their conditions might be enacted. But in difficult and troubled times, people are often not presenting alternatives, but simply pointing to problems.

When the Swing Riots began the Tories had been in power in England, with a couple of short exceptions, for forty years. Reforms had been very slow in coming and the so-called "Poor Laws" often made things even worse for the working poor. Earl Grey showed some sympathy to the Swing Rioters and used the events to argue for various reforms which liberal thinkers had been advocating for two generations. The dreaded Duke of Wellington responded to Earl Grey by suggesting that no reforms were necessary because the English constitution was the most perfect that could be imagined. Wellington's callousness resulted in his home being attacked by some who sympathized with the rioters.

The Swing Riots had only a small direct effect on the fight for reform in English political and economic culture. However, in the grand scheme of history, they were an important part of the multi-fold movement for better economic and political practices. The rioters were, of course, condemned as thugs and lawbreakers and nineteen of them were eventually hanged for their participation in the movement. But the simple fact is that it was only the loud and violent effort on the part of the Swing Rioters that made many people pay attention to the real difficulties being faced by many agricultural workers. And though some paid with their lives, it is these kinds of political efforts, though they are sometimes vague and unfocused, that bring about reforms and make people's lives better. This is the way history has always worked. It is those people out in the lead who are fighting against wretched poverty and political and economic inequality, who drag the human race forward. They seldom receive thanks or even recognition, but they are the ones who have made my life and your life better. They often have to break laws to do what they do, but one generation's lawbreaker is the next generation's hero; just look at Gandhi and Martin Luther King. But these two famous men are fighters we remember because they were attached to large and clear social questions. But just as important as such "great" men are the thousands of little, seemingly unimportant, men and woman who are fighting anonymously against impossible odds for sometimes vague demands. These are the heroes of history.

I salute the Swing Rioters, and the members of the Occupy movement, without whom we would a civilization going nowhere.

A Brief Lesson in Western Semantics. . . .

2011-11-20T09:57:00.001-05:00

A brief lesson in semantics according to Western discourse. . . .

Here we have an Egyptian protestor in Tahrir Square, or a "noble, freedom-fighter committed to the cause of democracy, freedom and the people."

Here we have a Wall Street Protestor or "a lazy, misguided, troublemaker, who has no 'right' to occupy public space and who should go get a job.

Here we have two Syrian Police Officers, or "brutal tools of a police state that thwarts freedom of speech and contravenes people's human rights."

Here we have some members of the Toronto Police Department, or "committed civil servants who keep the streets safe from trouble-making thugs."

Here we have Honsi Mubarak or "a viscous dictator who thwarts democracy."

Here we have Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper or "a committed leader of a Western democracy who believes in the rule of law."

Any Questions?

(P.S. Both leaders in question have or had about the same percentage of public support)

The Subtlety of Modern Protest. . . . .

2011-11-17T09:24:00.000-05:00

A lot of criticism has been directed at the 'Occupy Movement' because of a supposed lack of focus. And indeed the goals of these protesters seem to be vague and unclear. But the lack of focus is not, I believe, a result of an absence of difficulties facing society, but rather I think it is a sign of the real depth and broad nature of the crisis. The people of Egypt put up with forty years of harsh and clear dictatorship and the real crisis in the Middle East only came when the price of bread (and a host of essential goods) suddenly became prohibitively expensive. The 1789 revolution in France saw a similar evolution; the lead up to the storming of the Bastille saw a serious draught and a dangerous shortage of bread in the country. Western democracies are not, at least for the moment, facing this kind of acute crisis. Arguably, we are suffering under the yoke of a kind of dictatorship that is the result of a corporate monopoly on the political system, but out democracies still have a kind of flexibility that states like Tunisia and Egypt did not possess. Protest against a rigid political state is relatively simply; people just call for a loosening up of basic democratic operations and an end to harsh repression. Protest against a flexible state in which power has spred its tentacles fairly evenly throughout society is a much tougher target.

You see, I think there are many people within the "Occupy Movement," as well as many of its sympathizers, who are not radical socialists. Rather, many of these folks simply know that something has gone terribly wrong with capitalism as they know it. Too much corporate control of our political agenda, huge profits for corporations while many can't make ends meet, a growing disparity between rich and poor, stagnating wages for a disappearing middle-class, ever decreasing citizen participation in the democratic process, and a globalizing economy that sets all countries into a race for the bottom: these are all genuine problems facing Western Democracies, and one can be cognizant of them without being rabidly anti-capitalist. However, the bigger problem is formulating a clear political response to these problems, and not just a political response, but one that will get people up off their couches after a hard day at work and ready to do something. You see, if millions of people can't afford to purchase bread for their children, it is not difficult to motivate them. But if your society is eroding slowly from the inside, people lack focus and tend to drift toward cynicism. It is a little like the slowly boiling frog analogy - if you boil the citizens of Western Capitalism slowly enough, they will lack the focus to protest their own gradual decline. And when people are slowly lossing their democratic rights, working more or less constantly just to make ends meet, and most importantly, all are declining more or less at an equal rate, it is very difficult to get them out on the street on-mass to demand that, for example, we have a fairer rate of taxation or that we remove the money from the political process.

The protests of the 'Occupy Movement' seem vague because the problems that we are facing are subtle in nature. Corporations have slowly infiltrated our system and taken control of it, all the while using the media to convince people that corporate control and a lack of corporate taxation are the primary roads to prosperity. As a result people begin to live in a state of cognitive dissonance, essentially believing two contradicting things at once. And this cognitive dissonance leads to a subtle kind of collective mental illness in which people become profoundly confused about the society in which they live - its power structures and its basic operations. People know that everyone should have access to healthcare, and that presidents of corporations shouldn't be earning tens of millions a years while they are putting people out of work and average people's salaries are stagnating. Meanwhile they have been continually plied, since infancy, with an ideology that tells them that the endless pursuit of money and profit are beneficial to all. In other words, the rich and the powerful have done everything in their power to make any solutions, short of radical socialism, seem pointless and/or impossible. And it is easy to bash "socialist" solutions amid a population that has been so effectively taught to equate anything vaguely socialist with Soviet repression.

Thus people are vague and confused. How do we stop CEOs from making fifty millon a year while simultaneously bankrupting the country and putting people out of work? How do we stop certain political parties being the exclusive representatives of a corporate ideology without fundamental change to our political system; changes that some believe will threaten the 'freedoms' we take for granted? How do we reform a legal system that profoundly favours those with money and power? How do we change the lives of hundreds of millions of people who have been raised on certain kinds of technologies and modern conveniences? It is easy to demand the ouster of a dictator who routinely has thousands of dissidents arrested and tortured. It is not so easy to demand the reform of a system which most people believe has many effective and admirable aspects but in which power has gradually infested all areas of social life and corrupted it like a widespread cancer.

This is why the "Occupy Movement" is so important - it is an attempt by a weary and troubled population to start a dialogue about some profound problems facing our society, problems which, if gone unchecked, will most assuredly destroy everything we hold dear. We ignore such protests at our peril - vague though they might be. There is no doubt that it will be a difficult dialogue because the ideology with which we are struggling is subtle and powerful and we, as a society, are becoming badly divided as the crisis looms. Such divisions are a customary part of a social crisis, but in a milieu of cognitive dissonance it is a difficult problem to navigate for many. But make no mistake, it must be navigated or the corporate power and ideology our present leaders represent, will rob us of everything we are.

What is our Future?

2011-11-16T13:45:00.000-05:00

It seems that there are daily more reasons to dispair. We are so fragile and even the luckiest among us are compelled, at one time or another, to watch someone we love die and we must see them put securely and irreparably into the cold earth. The great institutions into which we put our faith, such as churches or governments, seem to tend toward the actions which directly contradict their very purpose. Even those regions of life such a art and poetry which we hope will express the purest, most noble aspects of who we are, are subject to the vagaries of the human ego. One cannot read or watch news of current event without some story that potentially undermines our hope in what is good about the world. We watch the innocence of our children eroded before our eyes by bullies as well as teachers that lack the compassion which their job should necessitate. And how do we tell them that violence and bullying is bad when those who "lead" our nations make violence and bullying the cornerstone of their political strategies?

If someone were to come here from another world I would be hard-pressed to muster a defence of our race which is gradually destroying itself in the name of profit and money. I having nothing but one simple principle on which to hang the hat of my hope; love. There is no rational reason to get up in the morning. I must go on simple faith that love is worth saving and that it will, in turn, save us. I know it is not much on which to rest one's hope in the future, but it is all we have.

Some more thoughts on Democracy. . . .

2011-11-12T11:17:00.001-05:00

Democracy is almost always a tricky matter. The most difficult aspect of democracy is that it is not, as one often imagines it is supposed to be, a process wherein we have a meaningful debate about policy and legislation and the outcome reflects the most effective and most "rational" argument. Life is never really like this, and it couldn't be even if we wanted it to be. All sorts of things come into our decisions both individually and collectively. We have certain social and individual beliefs that are not subject to any sort of rational discourse. Furthermore, we are swayed by all sorts of emotional and ideological elements in our surroundings. Thus not only are our goals based upon various religious, philosophical, and ethical beliefs, but we live in a world of complex events and interactions and we rely on information and arguments presented to us from other people who are better informed than we. The complexity of many issues makes it difficult to know when so-called experts or authorities are motivated, consciously or subconsciously, by ideological factors.

In relation to these complex ideological factors, the most glaring problem for democracy is fairly simple: money. If one is in any setting of discoure, particularly if that discourse involves a large number of people, certain people have a greater ability to control the agenda of that discourse. They may have this power through a 'natural' authority that derives from respect of the collective or they may control that agenda through power or manipulation. At a large social level, this discourse is manipulated through money. People in a position of economic power can manipulate knowledge, information, and opinion simply by projecting a presumption of knowledge. If a lot of rich and powerful people say "IT IS SO" then a lot of people are going to believe it is so just because of the presumed authority of money and wealth. Then, of course, there is the simple fact that rich and powerful people own the media and they can say almost anything they want and many people will simply believe them based upon the presumed authority found in the power of volume. All of these issues are made more problematical by the inherent complexity of modern society. Science can be easily manipulated through selective funding and grants as well as through the fact that large corporations are obviously going to pursue those areas of research that promote their interests.

Then there are global complications to take into consideration. Countries have decreasing room for manoeuvre in a context in which a relatively small set of capital interests can cripple an economy with ease. Banks and financial institutions have so thoroughly manipulated the economies and government policies on taxation and regulation that people have become convinced that it is essential for banks to make billions in order for the economy to succeed even while the majority of people are barely getting by.

So while we are pursing some abstract ideal of democracy, the principle of meaningful and equal discourse has largely lost all meaning. And people can rise to power with all sorts or outrageous beliefs as long as they represent the larger goals which lay behind the monied interests. Even here in Canada, which suffers less than some countries from the undue influence of money in the political process, we have a government that is full of individuals who possess distinctly "anti-democratic" beliefs, who harbor deeply unpopular religious beliefs, who have antiquated religious and social ideas, and who are distinctly racist, sexist, and homophobic. But these people can come to power because discourse in democracy has come to mean a lot less than the ideological power of money.

But, of course, a lot of people have written about the power of democracy in recent years, both from the academic and journalistic point of view. It seems that people are increasingly aware that our democracies are suffering from some serious problems and the so-called financial crisis as well as the increasing gap between rich and poor are some of the outward signs of a crisis of democracy. Of course, those who continue to have an interest in the status quo desperately spin these factors in a way that takes people's focus away from the real causes. They will tell people that the financial crisis is a result of public sector pensions and union power. And for a while this spin will surely work, as it has already. The banking bailout in countries like the US saw billions of dollars going from average tax-payers into the private accounts of already wealthy bankers and brokers. And in many countries governments are talking about new austerity plans. The problem is, of course, that these plans will just make things worse and when more an more people realize that they have no financial future and that their children have little chance of a decent education, decent housing, and any kind of pension, people will start to wake up. People will be particularly angered when they see that through all their hardships, the rich are just getting richer, becoming more comfortable, and are using the working masses as a cheap servant class.

There is a reason that greed has always been considered one of the so-called seven deadly sins. The problem with greed is that it is self-replicating. Greed breeds more greed just as the thirst of capital becomes unquenchable. Those individuals who seek tremendous wealth or run corporations have no stoping point. Unlike the old-time family-based capitalist enterprise, the nature of the modern corporation and market makes it technically impossible for corporations that rely on private investors to be satisfied with a certain amount of profit. Corporations must drive to ever greater profit rates and this creates a psychological syndrome among people that similarly drives them toward greater and greater wealth. The impact of this ideological shift is devastating for society - it not only creates a war of all against all but it undermines institutions of social unity at all levels.

Western capitalist democracies must find a way to deal with this fundamental problem if it is to avoid absolute crisis and total breakdown. The problem is, or course, that many among the rightwing do not even acknowledge the nature of the crisis. But history will eventually make the options clear - a more equal and socially oriented society or total barbarism.

What I Remember on Remembrance Day, The Unpopular Recall. . . . .

2011-11-08T21:53:00.000-05:00

I honestly believe that Remembrance Day (or Veteran's Day as it was in the States when I grew up) does a significant and and lasting disservice to veterans of all wars and to our nations in general, at least in its modern incarnation. One would have to be blind not to see that Remembrance day has become not an effort to remember the horrors of war and need to avoid armed conflict in the future, but rather has become an exercise in blind patriotism. I think that an argument can be made that certain armed conflicts in, say, the past hundred years have been necessary, or even justified. But one would have to be deeply ignorant of 20th century history to imagine that the lion's share of armed conflicts that the Western nations have been involved in during the last century had anything to do with freedom or democracy. Such a claim is, quite frankly, counterfactual. But the 'patriotic' element in the Remembrance Day process has come to spin the events this way for a couple of reasons. The first is that no one wants to believe that any of the soldiers who were killed (on our side that is) died fighting for some ignoble goal; as though if we suggest that soldiers of the line were somehow duped into fighting for the wrong reasons, this belittles them as men. Another reason that this spin on on war must continue is that we continue to fight in wars that are part of a Western Capitalist agenda of money and geo-politics. And so the History Channel airs movie after movie that portrays our "good soldiers" on the one side and the the "bad guys" on the other. And on Remembrance Day everyone seems to forget that war is, almost literally, 'hell,' and a real and meaningful Remembrance Day would do a proper service to veterans and nations if we recalled all the terrible things of which our own country and our allies have been guilty as well as the good things. This would help us remember that war should be avoided at all costs and that the silent victims of war such as the millions of women that have been raped and children that have been killed and abused over the past hundred years in armed conflict are all too easily forgotten on these days when we are supposed to remember. My great-grandfather was in the First World War, a pointless horrible conflict that was really about colonialism, and he suffered from mustard gas poisoning. He blamed the leaders and the rich for the war and he hated war ever after. And it is his stories of the war that come down through our family. He believed that the war was committed in the service of big capital and that the workers were the cannon fodder for a battle over business turf. People can suggest all day long that I am disrespectful of the veterans, but as far as I am concerned each Remembrance Day is deeply disrespectful of my great grandfather because people have tried to romanticize and justify the slaughter of innocents and average workers.

For all these reasons, on Remembrance Day, I chose to remember all the horrible things that all sides in all armed conflicts have engaged in, as well as all the silent victims of our bombs and our guns that had nothing to do with the choices of the leaders and the elites. And if I want to really remember who gave us our freedoms, I recall all the Unions activists like my Grandfather Thomas Evans who spent his life fighting for workers rights, human rights, and democracy - not against foreign invaders but against the capitalists and the elite of his own country who did everything they could to keep such rights away from the people. If you are looking for someone to thank for your freedoms, go to your nearest union and you will find people that are fighting everyday to save our country from tyranny, and remember it is not vague, faceless enemies from across the sea somewhere that are the threat to your rights, it is people right here at home like Stephen Harper. Remember that!

Don't Let them Tell you. . . . . .

2011-11-04T12:33:00.000-04:00

You have to give credit to the rightwing to one thing at least - the way that they have convinced so many people that our society is broke and we can't afford pensions for the elderly or living wages for the mass of working people. And they have managed to convince people of this at a time when our society has never been wealthier. "But," I hear you say, "aren't we in a financial crisis?" And the answer is, of course, yes. But it is not a crisis of wealth, rather it is a crisis of distribution. There is plenty of wealth in the world but the bulk of it is in so few hands that governments cannot afford to function the way that they should. And at a time when corporations are making record profits and the rich have never been richer, somehow the rightwing has convinced people that the financial crisis is the fault of a guy fixing your roads in Sarnia who just wants enough to send his kids to college, or a nurse in Athens who can't afford her own house, or auto-workers in Michigan who want decent healthcare and want to retire without living in poverty. It is not the fault to these people that capitalism is in crisis, it is a corrupt banking system, lack of a proper tax on the rich and on corporations, and the greed of people who are comfortable with keeping millions and millions while many working people can't afford the basics.

Imagine that society is a family of four with an income of one hundred thousand a year. Not bad, but not a fortune with today's housing prices etc. That family can get along reasonably well. But now let's say that the father buys a seventy thousand dollar new car every year and the mother takes two vacations in Cancun. Now when his kids come to the parents and say they want to go to college the parents say, we just can't afford it. Well, of course they can't afford it if unless the parents are willing distribute the income properly in the family and invest in the family's future in the form of educating the children.

The rightwing wants you to think that it is complicated. They want you to believe that unions have bankrupted the economy by asking for decent wages. They want you to think that all the people are spending all their money on wine, women, and songs - and the rest they are just wasting. But don't believe it. Instead demand common sense - a healthy society is one in which the wealth of that society is distributed well throughout all groups, where everyone has a voice, where the media is not at the behest only of the wealthy, and where we are investing in the future.

Freight Train, Freight Train, Going so fast. . . . .

2011-11-02T17:37:00.000-04:00

I am certainly not a constitutional expert, but you don't have to be an engineer to see a freight train coming your way. And I suspect that a freight train in the form of whole slew of legal problems and possibly a constitutional crisis is headed in this direction. All of us who have been paying attention have a growing sense of danger as various issues are clearly moving toward real legal conflict between various groups and provincial governments and this atrociously self-absorbed, ideologically driven federal government. Legal battles over breaches of previous SCOC rulings concerning collective bargaining, gun-registry data, and of course provinces potentially refusing to implement the new federal crime bill are all pending. This is not even to mention the possibility that Harper will attempt unilateral senate reform. Of course loses on all or any of these issues will make the conservative base livid with talk of obstructionist courts or "activist" judges and this will further solidify that part of the CPC support. Furthermore, these issues could help to once again ignite separatist sympathies in Quebec, something that I suspect Harper wants because a Canada without Quebec is one that would be easier for the Conservatives to control.

I would contend that most of the various conflicts on the horizon stem from the simple fact that the Harper government is not satisfied with just creating conservative legislation but is a result of their broader goals of destroying the country in general. They not only hope to see the separation of Quebec in order to strengthen their political power, but they want to undermine the courts by effectively doing away with hundreds of years of precedent law and put the courts completely in the hand of the PMO, eliminate the Charter of Rights (or marginalize it to the degree that it becomes meaningless) eventually eliminate all unions, eliminate all sign of socialized medicine, completely eliminate all rehabilitation efforts in the legal system and increase the prison population by tens of thousands, eliminate the principle of innocence before the law, and essentially take away the structure of human rights which underpins this society.

Will they succeed? I don't know, I really don't. Countries have spiraled into fascism before and to think that it couldn't happen here is just naive. My hope is that people will smarten up and either oust this government through mass action as happened in Egypt or Tunisia, or at the very least get rid of it at the ballot box by concerted effort at electoral cooperation if necessary. Keep in mind that it won't be easy. Events at the G20 demonstrate to anyone who has any idea of history and politics that our government would be just as ready as any other to use any degree of violence if their existence was threatened. Furthermore, do not discount political assassination being used on any opposition leader that shows real signs of gaining popularity which threatens this government. (Maybe this has already happened).

And if you are tempted to call me crazy - JUST READ HISTORY!!!!!!!!! These things have been happening since the beginning of time and to imagine that somehow it is all in the past or that we are somehow above all that is naivety and pure egoism.

Whither Greece?

2011-11-01T17:33:00.001-04:00

Anyone who has been a close observer of democracy knows that Western countries have only ever been committed to democratic principles to the degree to which they support and strengthen Western (generally capitalist) interests. Western countries love to talk about democracy but when they don't like the results that a democratic process promotes they quietly (or sometimes loudly) ignore or condemn the process. From the early days of the Trilateral Commission worrying about "too much democracy" to the election of Hamas, the West shows itself again and again to be interested in democracy only to the degree that it promotes their interests. Recently our own government in the past several years has done everything in its power to avoid established democratic processes and principle.

This anti-democratic tendency among the world's nations and the capitalist elite was on full display today when Prime Minister Papandreou suggested that his nation should hold a referendum on the policy that will have perhaps the greatest effect of any legislation on Greece for a generation, and governments and capitalist around the world reacted with disgust and panic. Imagine letting the people decide on something so important. Now, I am not naive and I know that there are cases in which so-called direct democracy can be a problem. But the cases in which democracy can be overridden are those in which the rights of the few are going to be overridden by the bigotry of the many. Federal and supreme courts in many countries can override democratically elected governments in cases such as human rights in which the majority is attempting to prevent certain people in society from enjoying equal rights. Such cases have been seen in things like so-called "interracial" marriage or gay marriage. Furthermore, I am sure that there are cases in which the "people" do not act in the real, longterm interests of the nation. However, in the case of Greece we have a nation that has been pushed to the brink by the irresponsibility of the banks and by a deeply corrupted taxation system in which the rich and corporations have paid almost no tax for decades despite so-called 'socialist' governments. Now, even though they have been paying for generations, the people are once again being asked to bear the brunt of the rich exploiting the system in their own interests. Bankers, large market investors, and the rich in general dread the idea that Greece or any nation could ask the people what is right and wrong when it comes to economic interests. This is what capitalists have always feared. But socialists (and in the old days even Liberals) have been saying for a long time, the economy is hear to serve us not the other way around, and if we decide that banks or capitalist shouldn't be allowed to act in certain ways then frankly that is just too bad for the banks. Despite what rightwingers might tell you, corporations are NOT people and the people can control, and always have controlled markets in various ways. If the people of Greece reject a solution to an economic crisis entirely brought about by banks and the rich syphoning off billions of dollars that should be distributed more fairly throughout the economy - that is a victory for democracy, and those who fear it are those that fear democracy in its most basic and principled form.

UPDATE - Shortly after I wrote this our dear Finance Minister Flaherty responded to the issue of a referendum in Greece. Trying not to sound too outrageously anti-democratic Flaherty said "It is not for us to dictate terms to the Europeans." But he we went on to say that "delay endangers the global economy." The real message from the Harper Tories has consistently been that democracy is dangerous to THEIR goals unless they can get something out of it for themselves. Remember that this is the man who, as finance minister of Ontario left a six billion dollar deficit during a time of global prosperity and then tried to hide his incompetence during the election. Naturally, for this remarkable feat, Harper put him in charge of the nation's finances.

Whither the Arts?

2011-10-29T00:13:00.000-04:00

Though I am closing in on fifty, by today's standards I know that I am not old. But of course, like many people in this age, the degree to which many aspects of society have changed, can make me feel rather older than my years. And it is not just the computer revolution and the end of so-called "communism" that make me feel a lot older than, say, a twenty-five year old who doesn't really remember the Soviet Union or a time before personal computers. But over and above the huge technological and political changes that have occurred over the past forty years, I believe I have seen a fundamental cultural shift relating to our aesthetic experience. Specifically the close of the 20th century witnessed the death (or dying process) of our traditional art forms, including painting, the novel, theatre, and to a certain degree much of what we know as music.

The explanation for this rather significant claim would, of course, take a great deal more space than what we have on a blog. But given enough space and time, I believe the claim is perfectly demonstrable and therefore justifiable. In the fifties Jean-Paul Sartre wrote a book that is seldom read today entitled Search for a Method. This book was intended as a conceptual introduction to his Critique of Dialectical Reason, a book that for most philosophers was never able to live up to the promise of its title. Anyway, Sartre's most interesting claim Search for a Method was the claim that there is basically only one living philosophy at any given time. Of course for Sartre the "living" philosophy (and keep in mind that this was written in the 1950s) was Marxism and that any anti-Marxist argument was, at best, a pre-Marxist argument. Though today Sartre's argument has a distinct subtext of Ethno-centrism, at the time (before the real linguistic turn in philosophy had taken effect) Sartre had a very good point. What interests me about Sartre's argument though is the degree to which it points to the "living" aspect of a philosophy. At the risk of paraphrasing a philosopher considerably more brilliant than I, Sartre was suggesting that a philosophy was only "living" during the period that other philosophies had not surpassed it and it still was central to the way that we define and understand our experience at the meta-social level. Now, obviously this is an extremely truncated argument that could fill an entire book. There are many potential points of argument but I think this sums it up enough that my handful of readers out there will get the point. For me Sartre's argument became important because I applied it to the life and death of art forms. Art forms are "living" while other art forms have not significantly surpassed them, while they still have new things to say, and while they continue to express and influence the ways we define ourselves as a society. It is by these standards that I believe the significant art forms of the past have. . . . well .. . . passed away. In the early twentieth century the Surrealists attempted to shift the way we look at visual and written art work. They tried to kill the novel because they essentially thought it was a dead art form. The story of the relationship between the Surrealists and the novel is a long and complex one, but I believe that men like Andre Breton and his various followers in the literary movement of Surrealism had a lot to say to us about literature. But people were not really listening because there continued to be a significant profit in the bourgeois novel and the "literary industry" was bound to keep it alive. I have said before, and received much abuse and derision for the claim, that the novel as an art form reaches its apex around the time of Proust. Proust took the psychological aspect of the bourgeois art form of the novel to it complete and somewhat ridiculous conclusion. After the era of the Surrealists and Proust, I think the novel is just in the period of denouement, if you will pardon the expression. (Though I think one can mount an argument that so-called Magic Realism and some science fiction such as the work of Samuel Delany, are genuine steps in the development of the novel) But in general I think all the art forms that were still so important at the beginning of the 20th century were more or less deceased by the beginning of the 21st century. Not only have the models and markets changed, but technology has rendered the old art forms largely mute.

When I was silly enough to talk about these things in public, people usually reacted to these claims with a pretentious smirk as though to say that either I had no idea what I was talking about or that if I were an artist or a writer I would know better. Of course, I am now both a professional writer and painter and I am more convinced than ever that my opinion on this matter is correct. I have my own personal reasons for being an artist and a writer and it doesn't really trouble me that traditional arts form have largely died. I can live with the status of being an anachronism. But the university educated, cultural consumers of any age are loath to give up their traditional art forms because it is these that they believe separate them from the hoi polloi. These people would never, of course, admit that a major aspect of their attachment to certain art forms is actually a way to express their elitism. Many of them consider themselves enlightened and even leftwing and they sit in their well-decorated, intercity, red-brick houses reading novels that 90 percent of people couldn't care less about and they secretly love the status that they believe themselves to possess. But really they are just feeding on the corpse of a bygone era.

The Looming Crisis. . . . .

2011-10-28T15:44:00.000-04:00

Every instinct I have suggests to me that we are entering a time of a crisis of capital similar in form, if not content, to the crisis that gripped it in the nineteen thirties. Just as the depression in the thirties was brought on in part by the over-confidence and irresponsibility of the capitalist elite, this crisis is rooted in the same kind of problem. Globalization of capital and industry, the radical expansion of corporate profits, the growth of extreme and lopsided wealth of the top 10 or twenty percent, the stagnation of real wages for the vast majority, the manner in which large corporations act outside the law in many nations, put together these factors suggest a coming crisis. Of course, the necessary incendiary ingredient is dissatisfaction of the people at large. While the wealth of the corporation and the economic elite is skyrocketing, governments are pleading poverty and everywhere people are being asked to give up their pensions, decent wages, and any sense of security. People may be easy to con when they are feeling ok about things, but they will not be such obedient sheep when they are pushed into more poverty and insecurity.

Marx pointed out that a socio-economic system nurtures the system that will eventually come after it. At the present moment in history even a genuine capitalist must understand that international corporate capitalism is headed for a major problem if its leaders don't begin to ensure a greater distribution of wealth and system that makes people feel as though they are not simply the play-things of corporate power.

Unfortunately, a society's elite seldom sees a crisis coming and seldom gives up any of their power and wealth voluntarily. We shall see.

Letter to Rob F***king Ford. . . . .

2011-10-28T10:07:00.000-04:00

Hello Mayor Rob F***King Ford,

Yesterday you released a statement concerning the incident in which a great Canadian comedian attempted to have you take part in a time honoured tradition in Canadian Television. In your statement you said you called the police because you were "attacked" in your driveway.

Well Mr. Ford, since you don't seem to know what the word "attacked" actually means I thought I would assist you with a couple of visual aids.

Mr. Ford, this is what it looks like when you are being attacked.

This, on the other hand, is not what it looks like when you are being attacked -

Of course, Mr. Ford, since there is clearly a smile on your face in this picture, I suspect you really know the difference between being attacked and not being attacked.

And since you have so much experience in verbally attacking and abusing others, the whole matter is actually very clear to you. Suddenly the overbaring, glib, bully of a man desperately wants us to see him as a victim because when you are out of your comfort zone you are actually a petty, cowardly little man who fears, perhaps more than anything, being questioned about your public persona.

And that, Mr. Ford is, as they say, that.

Abusive Behaviour and the Mayor of Toronto. . . . .

2011-10-27T10:27:00.000-04:00

Can anyone out there seriously say that they are surprised by Robert Ford's abuse of the hardworking 911 operators? After all, we knew what kind of man Mr. Ford was before he was elected to be Mayor of Toronto. Ford is a self-absorbed, bully of a man who seeks for recognition by attempting to make people afraid of him, by belittling others in order to compensate for his own shortcomings as a man and a human-being. People who lack compassion and genuine human feeling find it difficult to comprehend why people do not conform to their wants and desires, somewhere deep inside them they are frustrated by their own lack of human connection and the only way that their truncated souls can react to their frustration is to lash out in an, often futile, attempt to force others to conform to their will. Lacking a basic level of humanity, these sad individuals are vaguely aware of their shortcomings and the only way that they can deal with it is by attempting to lower others through violence (verbal and physical), thus attempting to trick their psyche into believing that they are superior to those around them. This is central to Mr. Ford's behaviour at all times, as it is with so many rightwing politicians. This is why the natural consequence of a certain brand of rightwing politics is fascism. Stephen Harper is a similar man to Robert Ford, though with a considerably greater degree of self-control. Such men (and occasionally women) are not connected to other human beings at a basic emotional level and therefore the only thing that they can understand is control. And, of course, lacking empathy, such people are very seldom able to form meaningful alliances or create significant loyalty from others. If your modus operandi is power and abusive control, people only care about you to the degree that you can wield power or use your power to assist them in some way. In other words, to borrow from Kant, if you treat people as a means to an end, they will treat you the same way. This is why such autocratic leaders so often fall suddenly and inauspiciously - because once power is gone they have nothing, and no one to depend upon.

In Ottawa we had a mayor with a similar style to Mr. Ford, though not quite as bad or obtuse. Mayor O'Brian went down to ignominious defeat because he didn't how to deal with people at a basic human level. He was able to use his self-centred, abusive style to gain success in the business world so he assumed that it would translate directly into the job of mayor. Mr. Ford had a certain degree of success as a councilman because in this position he didn't depend on the goodwill of his coworkers - he could be the squeaky door of the council, gaining attention and bemusement as he went. But when you put such a man in a position of significant power, it is a disaster waiting to happen. I wouldn't be surprised if Ford fails to complete his time in office because at some point his abusive ego will carry him too far. Mr. Harper will go the same way at some point and history will judge him very badly. When I was young I said it about Nixon, in the 80s I said it about Thatcher and Mulroney, and I say the same about Ford and Harper. Unfortunately this abusive, philistine, angry personality sometimes carries people to power and maintains them there for a while. But it almost always ends badly. And it is not just an issue of right and left wing. Take John Tory in Ontario for example. I disagree with most, if not all, of Mr. Tory's ideological beliefs. But he treats people with a significant degree of respect, listens to the arguments of others, and doesn't depend upon abusive power-mongering to stake out his beliefs in the public realm. Of course, just as abuse can lead people to power, respectable behaviour can prevent you from gaining power. However, while John Tory still has the respect of his allies and his opponents, Mr. Ford is quickly losing the respect of everyone.

NDP Blogging site goes Offline. . . .

2011-10-26T20:28:00.000-04:00

I was very sorry to see the NDP Bloggers site go off line. It seems odd that at a time when the NDP has never been stronger, their primary online voice has been silenced. If I were a conspiracy minded person I would say that insiders at the NDP, such as those that might favor the victory of one of the two most high-profile candidates, have intentionally put a stop to it. The good thing about the NDP Bloggers site was that it was an independent voice of fellow travellers and in a leadership race many of the bloggers were looking at alternatives to Mulcair and Topp. Not that I think the bloggers were necessarily going to make a big difference in which leader got elected, but it is one more area of debate that has been closed down in the lead up to the vote.

It seems strange that the Liberals who have a fraction of the seats in the House of Commons can maintain a very strong internet blogging site but the NDP, as soon as it gets close to power, suddenly cannot. Coincidence? I find it difficult to believe. It will definitely be harder to get a sense of what people who are sympathetic to the NDP are thinking.

Karzai's Rejection and Geo-Politics. . . . .

2011-10-23T17:33:00.001-04:00

Well the chances of a war between the US and Pakistan are probably considerably less than zero percent. However, those ridiculously long odd do nothing to dampen the supreme irony and humor in the recent revelation of Afghanistan's President Karzai that if such a war were to erupt, Afghanistan would be squarely on the side of it's neighbouring Islamic nation against the world's only so-called 'super-power.' One cannot help but wonder how this revelation must play in mainstream America among those poor ignorant souls who bought into the neo-colonial spin, so prevalent in the US and elsewhere, that the invasion of Afghanistan was an act of benevolence, or at the very least 'self-defence.' History will, of course, read it differently. All colonial efforts, whether traditional or economic, are accompanied by some grand narrative of benevolence and defence. The real motivations of such efforts are, of course, geo-political power and economic interest. But to the average American (or Canadian for that matter) who doesn't understand the complex economic and political issues behind the spin, Mr. Karzai's words must send their heads reeling. For most Americans, steeped as they are in the professional ignorance peddled by Fox News and friends, this must sound like Charles De Gualle telling the New York Times that he would support Hitler after D Day. Of course the comparison would be specious but this is the kind of thing that goes on inside the head of people that fail to take a realistic view of geo-politics.

The reason that Karzai would say that he would, in a conflict situation, come to the aid (however minimal it would be) of Pakistan against the US is that the United States never built up any so-called 'good-will' in Afghanistan, whether among the people in general or the brutal tribal lords who still govern the nation. For all its fancy, completely fictional, spin, the US's invasion of Afghanistan was part of a multi-pronged effort at consolidating its waning power in West Asia and the Middle East and to entrench the dominance of weapons and security corporations within the United States, a symbiotic relationship that was coming under threat with the end of the Cold War. Year in and year out, the lion's share of US federal spending finds its way, through one door or another, into the pockets of Weapons producers or private security companies. The American establishment knew that this relationship had become tentative an increasingly difficult to justify during the 1990s but the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq made this huge transfer of cash from average tax-payers to large corporations once again unquestionable. However, like most colonial or neo-colonial powers, the US forgot basic lessons of the past and failed to maintain good-will with those on whom their basic geo-political plan depended. In other words, as is their history, they didn't take care of 'the people,' but they also failed, as they once did so effectively, to establish an adequate strong-arm regime on who they could depend for blind obedience. In the long run this means real trouble for the US as their global power slowly dissipates and their ability to compel nations to do their bidding with their economic power disappears.

For example, for several generations the US has had a vested interest in conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. This is because while the Palestinians pose no real threat to the US or Israel, the conflict gives the US government a ready-made excuse for the billions and billions that it gives to Israel, thus further justifying their militarist economy. But Mr. Karzai's rather blatant rejection of the US in the recent interview, suggests that time is running out for the US and its Allies; they are gradually losing their grip on their once unquestioned global dominance, but they are also running out of the economic clout to enforce their control. Unless they fundamentally change their basic strategy the US will gradually lose its ability to maintain any serious control over any country and they will be forced either into an extreme fascist reaction or a new conciliatory policy that looks for peace and economic cooperation. If Mr. Karzai is any indication of their job so far, the US, and the West in general, is in serious trouble.

Rowland Hill and the Modern Struggle. . . . .

2011-10-22T18:46:00.000-04:00

I bet you have never heard of Rowland Hill. Like so many important reformers, Mr. Hill has faded into partial obscurity and only those interested in 19th century English history will have run into his name. But it is a prestigious name and one worth knowing. Hill was a teacher, inventor, and social reformer who was born in 1795 and died in 1879. Hill's father, Thomas Wright Hill, was an educator from Worcestershire and was a personal friend of Joseph Priestly, Thomas Paine, and Richard Price. As an educator Rowland Hill set up his own school in Birmingham which gained international fame. Hill was one of the first major educators to insist that encouragement and gentleness in education was not only more humane but also would, in the long run, be more efficacious.

Hill was obsessed by the shortcomings in the English postal system and he spent years attempting to create a model for reform of the system. Hill understood two central shortcomings of the post. Most importantly, he thought that it was far too expensive and inefficient both for the personal interests of British People and for the interests of the British economy. Before Hill's reforms many of the letters that were sent in England went by so-called 'franks' which was essentially a system of free postage used by MPs, Lords, and other government officials. Letters were so expensive to send that fraud was widespread and people would even resort to sending c.o.d. letters to loved ones with nothing in them, after which the loved one would refuse delivery, in a kind of system of secret message letting people know all was well. Hill understood that the difficulty that people experienced in contacting family members was not only a major emotional hardship but it made them reluctant to travel, lest they lose contact with loved ones. Hill also understood that not only were the franks costing the government money and resources, but exorbitant postal costs were standing in the way of business.

As they always are, the Tories were reactionary and shortsighted and under Prime Ministers Peel and Wellington, Hill's plans were resisted and attacked. But with the help of Melbourne (and eventually Lord John Russell) Hill's plans for an inexpensive, nationally organized postal system with one penny stamps was adopted. Russell made Hill the Secretary of the Post Office and he was knighted in turn. Perhaps most significantly, Hill is usually credited with the invention of the postage stamp. Though it took many years after Hill's plans were enacted for the Post Office to begin to make as much revenue as they had before, Hill's plans modernized the Postal System and not only helped individuals but actually helped modernize the British economy.

Like most reformers, Hill was attacked at every turn by myopic conservatives who cared nothing for people or for more generalized prosperity, but only cared for their own power and privilege. But Hill would not be turned aside and his determination should be celebrated and admired. Twenty years from now when our education system is defunct, our economy is entirely owned by foreign corporations, there are few or no family farms left, there is no public pensions system, remember the determination of Rowland Hill. We are going to need a dose of it ourselves.

Chinese Toddlers and Keeping Hope Alive. . .

2011-10-21T17:09:00.001-04:00

All my life people close to me have tried to buoy my spirits and convince me that human society isn't really that bad. And I have always tried, to borrow a phrase from Mr. Jackson, to keep hope alive. After all, I recognize that I have been very lucky in life; I have been able to devote my life to art and writing, I have had people in my life that I loved and that have loved me back. And I have always maintained a firm belief in socialist politics because I think that society should exist for the benefit of all and that the only hope for our race is that we take care of each other.

All that said, it is sometimes difficult to "keep hope alive," don't you think? Everyone knows the story now of the little girl in China who was run over by a car in a market and had to just lay there on the street while no one came to her aid. Another truck event ran over her again as she lay there, it slowed down as though it was going over a speed bump. I have seen the event on video and it is unbelievable, startling, and ultimately profoundly saddening. How does one come to grips with such an event? It happened thousands of miles away to a little girl that I don't know and will never know. However, somehow watching those people who casually walked around and stepped over a small, dying, little toddler has made it just a little more difficult for me to maintain the faith that we all require to go on.

(An important post-script to the story of the little dying toddler; after 19 people went by without even bothering to stop and help the dying girl, the person who did finally stop was a very poor old woman who ekes out a meager living collect junk form the city's trash. Why does it not surprise me that it was the poorest of the poor who stooped to help a child?)

How you gonna keep 'em down on the farm?

2011-10-18T09:43:00.000-04:00

We know for certain that the Conservative crime bill will not reduce crime. We know for certain that it will cost billions of dollars. In every culturally similar context, efforts to reduce crime by putting more people in prison, even where that system of incarceration attempts to include rehabilitation programs, does nothing to reduce crime (in many cases it increases crime) and raises costs by so much that eventually it threatens the jurisdiction with bankruptcy. Prisons are a way for the state to spend billions in the creation of a criminal training programe.

And the evidence against Harper and his fascist cohorts is mounting everyday, and now even Texas has lined up against our Government's program. So we have to ask ourselves, 'why does this government want to spend billions of dollars on something that they know won't reduce crime, may actually increase criminal activity, and will eventually threaten the country with bankruptcy?' I believe that the answer is fairly clear; the Conservatives want to bankrupt the state, pure and simple. And the reason that they seek to bankrupt the nation is that it will eventually destroy social programs, the thing that Conservatives despise the most. For many years crime rates were going down, literacy rates were falling, social programs were keeping people from starvation and total desperation. But Conservatives hate government sponsored social programs so much that they would do anything to destroy them, even send the country into bankruptcy. The only kind of government program the conservatives want to maintain are those that take money from the people and put it in the hands of corporations and the rich.

Of course, all of this begs another question; why do conservative leaders want people to be poor and uneducated? Well, for the same reason that the rich and powerful have always wanted the people to be poor and uneducated - because they are easier to control. When great English reformers, such as Samuel Whitbread and Lord Erskine, actively advocated for nationally sponsored, primary education, Tories argued against them in the House of Commons by essentially maintaining that if you gave the working-class education they would only become dissatisfied with their place in society and would demand more from life. Most conservatives essentially believe that they will be part of the wealthy elite and the last thing they want is a society in which everyone has an education and a basic level of income because they want to be able to use their wealth to wield power over others, it is their way of feeling better about themselves and convincing themselves that their power is a result of their merit. This problem goes back centuries. The Catholic Church and the leaders of European feudalism actively kept people ignorant and hungry because they knew that such people were easier to control. In many countries during the age of the slave-trade, it was illegal to teach slaves to read because even slave-owners knew that knowledge is power.

The equation is simple; spend bilions on useless aspects of the police state, gradually bankrupt the state and have a ready made excuse to take money out of health, education, and other social programs, end up with an ignorant, hungry, desperate population that will do what they are told.

So next time you scratch your head in exasperation at the apparent stupidity of the Conservative effort to spend billions building more prisons, just remember it is not that they don't understand the facts, it is because they want an ignorant, desperate, hungry, population that understands that they should obey their economic masters. That is what it is all about.

Our Casino Economy. . .

2011-10-17T18:43:00.000-04:00

Today, in response to a question, the interim leader of the NDP vaguely floated the idea of capping the salaries of CEOs in private corporations. Needless to say, rightwingers jumped on the idea and branded it some kind of crazy communist notion. It is, of course, not a particularly radical idea. In theory, we cap the minimum salary in our society to ensure that no one is too poor; it is not a wild idea that we could cap the upper end of salaries to ensure that no one is too rich. Now even though I don't agree with the rightwingers that this idea is radically leftwing, I agree that it is not a particularly substantive idea. Such a move would do little or nothing to actually address the real problems of poverty and inequality in society and would largely be a purely optical policy.

But the rightwing has bigger problems when we, as a society, begin to talk about issues of poverty, inequality, and a democratic deficit. The problems are that a) the rightwing, generally speaking, doesn't actually want to address these issues. Rightwingers are generally ignorant enough to believe that the inequalities in society are a result of a meritocracy and that these inequalities reflect what is basically a real inequality between people's value and abilities. Thus attempting to address these inequalities is perceive, by many on the right, to be morally objectionable. People's wealth, they figure, reflects their ability and therefore, that is the way it should be. b)the continuation of policies that ensure corporate wealth and maintain a system whereby the wealthy are the only ones that can get decent educations continues a system of inequality that the right basically believe should exist. c) The rightwing is entirely aware that any real moves toward genuine democracy would undermine the social and economic relations that they hope to maintain. and, perhaps most importantly, d) any solution that we offer in public discourse, no matter how modest, that attempts to deal with a society of radical inequality will be condemned by the right as a wacko, leftwing, nutbar idea.

The fact is that capping CEO salaries will do little to address our social problems. We live in a society where large corporations earn billions in profit while paying little or no tax. This is true of the US, Canada, and most of the Western world. And while they earn billions and billions in profit, more and more people are falling into poverty, unemployment, underemployment, and complete desperation. The only way to address this issue is to force corporations wherever they operate to pay proper taxes and reinvest in communities. Furthermore, we need to begin to put an end to currency speculation and market futures. We need to tax all financial transactions (the so-called Tobin Tax) and bring the casino economy to an end. Then we need to invest properly in education so that everyone has a good chance to enrich their life and create a guaranteed income program. Though this list is not exhaustive, it is only through such efforts that the inequality that has inspired the Occupy Wall Street movement will begin to be solved. But for all the rightwing condemnation of the NDP and its radical solutions, none of these things are even on the table. But just as the ignorance and arrogance of the French Aristocracy led to the Revolution in 1789, so the ignorance and arrogance of today's capitalist elite will lead to conflagration.

The reality is that our society has become like a person addicted to gambling with all the same negative effects on a grand scale. Its time to put a stop to the massive system of legalized gambling and create a society which serves all of our needs. Pure and Simple.

Feeling that Absence. . . . .

2011-10-17T14:07:00.001-04:00

Though it seems as though my father died only yesterday, it has been over a year now. I guess it has taken me a while to really understand why his death has been so devastating for me. I understand the grieving process as explained by so-called experts, though I must admit that I am not particularly impressed with the idea of reducing human emotions to an external forumla. But regardless of the expectations of the 'normal' grieving process, the death of my father goes far beyond a simple process of grief. It has taken a bite out of me and I know I will never 'recover' from it.

My father and I were closer than any father and son I have ever met. Part of this was simply because my parents were divorced when I was seven and I lived with my father in a separate country from my mother and my sister. We became even closer when I started very young to pursue a career in art and I eventually attended the Alberta College of Art where my dad taught for twenty years. After I graduated from Art College, my father and I regularly worked together in a professional capacity as well as constantly supporting each other in the personal development of our art work. For most of my years as an adult I lived with my father, even when I was married and had a child.

All of these elements of our relationship suggest an unusual closeness. However, it was a different aspect of our relationship that made my father and I exceptionally close, and that is that we were misfits in the world together. I have been a misfit since I was a child. I have never fit in anywhere that I have been. I began to have what might be considered "mental problems" from a young age and I was never able to 'fit in' anywhere. I have had friends but very few close ones. Art and Literature were fitting pursuits for me because one can disappear into a separate reality and society's expectations of you are very different from people in the 'normal' working world. My political, ideological, and aesthetic beliefs are so alien from the vast majority of people that I feel out of place with my own species. But all my life, my father and I could relate to each other. He was, in his own way, a real misfit. He grew up in a very working-class environment, but was determined to live a very different life from his father. He dropped out of school when he was 14 and did dozens of different jobs, eventually ending up in art college. Even as an artist, my dad did many different jobs and the only place he came close to 'fitting in' was as a teacher. But together, my father and I understood each other's alienation from society and our friendship was one of the only places that I felt as though, even though I am a misfit, I was somewhat at ease. Even when he was very sick, my dad and I could laugh together and sometimes it felt as though it was worth living just for those moments in which I didn't feel so separated from the world.

I am sure that it sounds like self-pity, and perhaps there is a significant element of that in my recent experiences. But without my dad I feel a whole lot more separated from the world in which I live. He is sorely missed.

Just a Thought. . . .

2011-10-16T10:08:00.000-04:00

A Sunday morning thought from my favorite writer.

"It is indeed time that a stand was made against the pedantic and prosaic tyranny of orthography."
-E.V. Lucas

For the Benefit of All . . . . .

2011-10-15T21:32:00.000-04:00

I have spent years studying the complex, so-called neo-modern, continental philosophies which, in recent years, have blown away a great deal of traditional rational, teleological, analytical, meta-theoretical ideas. And I have a great deal of respect for many remarkable neo-modern thinkers like Roland Barthes, Jacques Derrida, and Gayatri Spivak.

And yet, at another level, I think the questions of practical political philosophy is much simpler than many make it out to be. I think that there is one basic reason for society and that is mutual benefit. If society is not a structure that is intended to create mutual benefit, then I really see little justification for it. This, in simplest terms, is why I am, and have always been, a socialist. My grandfather was a founding member of the English Communist Party and spent 20 years as a shop stewart for the local of his engineer's union in London. He and his associates fought hard to ensure the rights that we all take for granted today. He worked as an activist because he believed that society should exist to ensure that everyone has a fair share in its benefits, not only a select few. Rightwingers and capitalist have told me since I was a child that the only reasonable motive for human ambition is personal financial gain. But the example that my grandfather set taught me that this simply wasn't true and all my life I have observed that the lion's share of people work continuously and tirelessly for the benefit of others.

Some people talk about the "occupy Wall Street" crowd as being a bunch of nut-bars with no direction and no purpose. But they possess the simplest of all purposes, to wit: a society that exists for the benefit of everyone, in which we are all stakeholders in a common future, in which the weak and vulnerable are given a voice, in which poetry matters as much as interest rates, in which we all belong and none are excluded, and in which people are judged by the content of their character rather than their gender, their color, or their sexual preference.

"Let us live for the beauty of our own reality."
-Charles Lamb

The LPC discussion. . . . .

2011-10-14T22:10:00.000-04:00

In recent days a lot of people in the media have been discussing the supposed immanent demise of the LPC. Some people are predicting the end of the Party while many Liberals, predictably, are telling the pundits that a great new Liberal future is ahead. Such political predictions are, of course, notoriously difficult even for the most experienced political observers. Political fortunes can, after all, change radically in no time at all, and what seemed imposible yesterday seems like conventional wisdom today.

I don't really want to weigh in on these predictions because I think the political landscape, despite what was actually a slim majority for the Tory government, is in a state of flux. Not only could economic conditions force change on many governments, but it really seems like people are waking to the fact that Western electorates have been sold a whole series of lies about how modern capitalism is working or is supposed to work.

However, I will say this about the recent discussion over the future of the Liberal Party. Everywhere I look, with few exceptions, Liberal themselves don't seem to recognize that their party has to change a great deal. Many Liberals continue to act as though they just have a 'natural' right to govern and they just have to wait and people will come flocking back to the Party eventually. But it seems to me that the Liberal Party of Canada has really lost its core support because its core support consisted largely of people who wanted to see a genuine social democracy in which all citizens were stakeholders and there was a real social safety net for all citizens. But though the Liberals continued to attempt to endorse traditionally Liberal ideas like universal childcare, for example, on the economic front they became a party that bought the neo-conservative ideas about corporate tax cuts and corporate power. Traditionally the LPC attracted great portions of each new generation because young people saw that social democracy and capitalism with a human face was what the party stood for. But we now live in an "occupy Wall Street" generation; a generation in which an increasing number of people not only feel that the power in society is lopsided but that it is time for a real change. The Liberal Party establishment just doesn't seem to understand this at all, they continue to be a party of corporate tax cuts and corporate power, and as such I just don't see how they come back. Luckily in Canada we have a party that stands, at least to some degree, against the out of control corporate ideology of the Liberal and Conservative Parties. In the US voters have no such advantage and so they are just giving up in droves, and that is a recipe for revolution.

Waiting for the Great Leap Forward. . . . .

2011-10-13T10:54:00.000-04:00

I don't think that there can be any doubt that there is a mood change taking place in Western Democracies. It has taken a long time but I have no doubt now that it is happening. Just as the 'progressive movement,' which took place around a hundred year ago, reacted to the growing power of corporations, people are once again reacting to a system which is essentially broken. For a generation now, the rightwing has been spinning the tale that society cannot afford to give everyone a decent pension or keep the elderly out of poverty, they have been telling us that we have to tighten our belts and do the bidding of the multi-national corporations, all the while the corporations have been making ever greater profits and the richest group in society are just getting richer. But people are beginning to wake up. People who have to work two jobs just to get by, people with good educations who have little or no hope of ever reaching the level of prosperity that their parents enjoyed, the millions of unemployed and underemployed are waking up to the criminal activities of the banks, the financiers, and the industrialists. People are waking up to a very simple fact; we are not here to serve the economy, but the economy is here to serve us! And if it is not serving our needs, then we, the people, are going to change it. Marx used a very good word to describe the idea that somehow the economic system functions beyond the purview of human activities and social relations; the word is reification. But people are realizing that far from functioning like a ghost in the machine, the economy is being purposively run by a small group of people in their own interests and beyond the rule of law. Smart, traditional capitalists, of course, have always understood the dangers inherent in the ideology of neo-conservatism which ignores the basic principle of social responsibility. A smart capitalist like, say, Warren Buffett, knows that if you let money rule the system with no sense of cultural or human responsibility, you are headed for disaster. Just has Joseph Schumpeter reminded us that we must create an economic system 'as if people matter,' people everywhere have realized that the Kevin O'Leary's of the world are touting an inhuman ideology which will end in social, economic, environmental, and human disaster.

Many of us have been patiently waiting for the great leap forward, and though it might not happen tomorrow or even next year, I can feel the change pulsing through the viens of people everywhere.

Lyrics to Billy Bragg's Waiting for the Great Leap Forward. (These are the original lyrics from the album Worker's Playtime, but Bragg changes them each time he sings them.)

It may have been Camelot for Jack and Jacqueline
But on the Che Guevara highway filling up with gasoline
Fidel Castro's brother spies a rich lady who's crying
Over luxury's disappointment
So he walks over and he's trying
To sympathize with her, but he thinks that he should warn her
That the third world is just around the corner.
In the Soviet Union a scientist is blinded
By the resumption of nuclear testing and he is reminded
That Dr. Robert Oppenheimer's optimism fell
At the first hurdle.
In the Cheese pavilions and the only noise I hear
Is the sound of people stacking chairs and mopping up spilt beer
And someone asking questions and basking in the light
Of the fifteen fame-filled minutes of the fanzine writer.
Mixing pop and politics, he asks me what the use is,
I offer him embarrassment and my usual excuses,
While looking down the corridor to where the van is waiting
I'm looking for the great leap forward!
Jumble sales are organized and pamphlets have been posted,
Even after closing time there's still parties to be hosted,
You can be active with the activists or sleeping with the sleepers
While you're waiting for the Great Leap Forward.
One leap forward, two leaps back
Will politics give me the sack?
Here comes the future and you can't run from it
If you've got a black list I want to be on it.
It's a mighty long way down rock and roll
From the top of the pops to drawing the dole
If no one out there understands,
Start your own revolution and cut out the middleman.
In a perfect world we'd all sing in tune
But this is reality so give me some room!
So join the struggle while you may
The revolution is just a T-shirt way!
Waiting for the Great Leap Forward.

(Thanks Billy)

Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid. . . . .

2011-10-12T10:57:00.000-04:00

Anyone who is concerned with their basic democratic and human rights should be deeply concerned about how the Canadian government is acting toward unions and labor disputes. Collective bargaining has long been recognized as a fundamental human right and is essential to the working of any free and democratic society. The power relations between workers and employers dramatically favors, in capitalist societies, employers, particularly in a context of globalization. This inequality of power becomes deeply problematic when, as presently prevails, large corporations (particularly financial institutions) are able to operate more and more outside of the law and governments (also often operating outside of the law) begin to favor employers. The Harper government has demonstrated that it is willing to abuse the law in order to undermine the basic rights of collective bargaining. It did so earlier this year when it imposed a settlement on the Postal Workers that was a clear violation of the Supreme Court ruling in the case of HEU vs The Province of British Columbia. Now they are abusing the law by using the Canada Industrial Relations Board to actually prevent a strike at Air Canada. If an employer wants a service to be deemed essential and therefore out of the purview of possible strike action, they need to give 15 days notice and then an essential services contract is supposed to be negotiated between the parties. In basic violation of the spirit, if not the letter, of the law, the Harper Government is attempting to use the CIRB to postpone a strike just long enough so that they can introduce back to work legislation before a strike even takes place.

Other than basic legal fairness, the reason that such tactics should concern everyone, and not just those who are presently facing contract negotiations, is that the power relations are slowly being tipped such that people's rights can slowly be eroded until you live in a third world economy of sweatshops and maquiladoras. Keep in mind that the flight attendants at Air Canada are NOT employees of the government, they are employees of a private corporation. The fact that the Government can take away their rights and legislate them back to work means de facto that none of us has any real rights to speak of. If we let the government take away the basic rights of collective bargaining, legislate private workers back to work and impose settlements on employees of private corporations, this means it can happen to ANYONE. It means that the government, in the abstract "national interest," can come to your workplace and tell you how much you can be paid and what hours you have to work, etc, etc. These were some of the first basic steps taken by fascist governments in the 1930s.

Until we stand up for basic rights like collective bargaining, all of our rights are at risk. All of your basic human rights owe something to the Labor movement and our neglect of labor rights will see all of those rights eventually taken away. I would say "bank on it" if the banks weren't part of the problem!

My Book finally Published. . . . .

2011-10-06T13:05:00.000-04:00

Well, it was a long wait, but my book is finally out. I wrote two complete books and and about halfway through a third since the publishing process began for this book. The editor of the publisher, Cape Breton University Press, quoted Stuart Mclean and said to me "while we may not be fast, we're slow." But it is finally done and it feels good to have it done. It was a bitter-sweet moment to see it in print because, though the whole project began with a bet with my father, he didn't live to see the published book. I suppose that evoke a fitting feeling of melancholy for someone who is writing about Charles Lamb - one of the great melancholics of English Literature.

For those who don't know, the book is entitled Humble Men in Company: The Unlikely Friendship between Charles Lamb and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. It is published by Cape Breton University Press but it can also be ordered at Nimbus Publishing and at Amazon.ca.

It was a great experience writing a book about Charles Lamb, a man who Thackeray referred to as St. Charles for his charm, wit, humor, and sense of wonder.

Cairo with my book.

"Lawyers were, I suppose, children once."

- Charles Lamb

Right-wing Economic Ignorance. . . . .

2011-10-05T12:04:00.000-04:00

The issues surrounding the Vancouver 'safe injection site' are actually an excellent illustration of what is wrong with right-wing ideology here and abroad. I have heard right-winger continually criticize Insite because it is a "waste of taxpayer's money." This is, of course, a deeply disingenuous argument. For every dollar that a provincial government spends on a safe injection site they stand to save up to ten times that amount in other costs including basic health-care monies, long-term care costs, as well as costs relating to various criminal activities. And since safe injection site have demonstrated increases in people looking for help overcoming addiction, the longterm savings overall could be massive. There are, of course, many other reasons to support safe injection programs based on moral or compassionate grounds. But one would think that right-wingers would, for all their lack of morality and compassion, at least be able to understand the economic arguments.

But the truth is that, herein lies the rub. The right-wing seldom, in fact understands economic arguments despite the fact that they claim fiscal awareness as central to their political ideology. I have seen a number of studies, for example, that demonstrate that for every dollar governments take out of programs such as community centres or criminal rehabilitation programs, the government spends three or four dollars on that part of the justice system that deals with enforcement and incarceration. It is not complicated and yet right-wingers such as those in the Harper government pull money out of community programs and rehabilitation programs and pour billions into enforcement and prisons which overall actually increase crime and cost so much more.

At a larger scale many right-wingers don't seem to comprehend the issue of economies of scale. If you fund a school system properly, for example, from a central location it is much less costly than if you download those costs to smaller and smaller bodies, eventually into the hands of parents. When the Harris Government in Ontario, for example, took huge amounts of money out of education in Ontario, we spent twice as much just on school fees and supplies than any of the Conservative tax cuts ever gave us. The reason is pretty simple; it costs me a lot more to go buy a few supplies than it does a school board to buy them in bulk.

Now raise this problem with right-wing thinking to a much wider scale. The right-wing everywhere fails to understand that if you continue to encourage a society in which bankers make billions and billions and average people feel more and more squeezed you will eventually have a social deficit which will lead to one of two things; total social breakdown or genuine political revolution. Look at the present Wall Street protests. This is precisely the kind of social movement that will eventually lead to revolution in a country like the US. While corporations and the financial sector has never made more money, average people are suffering more and more. Seventy years ago, FDR understood this at a basic level. He knew that unless the average people had a meaningful stake in their society revolution would be the result. One needn't be a radical socialist to understand that stakeholders are what a society needs.

The Politics of Hate and Anger. . . . .

2011-10-03T09:36:00.000-04:00

I don't know if I am just getting old and being nostalgic about the past but it seems to me that politics is certainly gotten nasty over the years. Perhaps it is thanks to men like Karl Rove whose political style has gotten so popular with political parties everywhere. But I think part of it is that in the past thirty years or so we, as a culture, have made issues such as domestic violence and bullying very important, so the fact that our politicians are still making a culture of hate, anger, and bullying part of their political MO makes such behaviour in our political discourse seem particularly noticeable and nasty. What are we to tell our children about the proper modes of behaviour when the behaviour of our own political leaders is so rife with name-calling, dishonesty, lack of accountability, and bullying? And what is the point of running programs in our schools that suggest that violence is not the way to solve conflicts when our political leaders, (particularly right-wing ones) seem to still exist in a milieu of the 19th century old West?

Watching the Ontario elections which are just wrapping up now, I have been disappointed by the Tea Party style of the Progressive Conservative Party in particular which has run a nasty campaign which has revolved around almost pure negativity (with the exception of one rather corny ad about Hudak's "family values"). But I saw ad after ad, day in and day out in which the PCs relentlessly attacked the Liberal Party and its leader in a distinctly mean and misleading fashion. I don't think there is anything dishonest about highlighting a government's tax policies by drawing attention to so major taxation legislation that the government enacted. But there is something distinctly dishonest about making those pieces of legislation the cornerstone of your campaign when you have vowed to maintain those very policies. This dishonesty is compounded when the last time your party was in power it left a huge (unrevealed) deficit during times of prosperity with which the incoming government was forced to contend. Now, I am not a big fan of Mr. Mcguinty, in large part because he failed to change the terrible education funding formula that the last PC government had instituted and which has been terrible for the students of Ontario, and because he has not addressed the near crisis in Ontario universities and colleges. But the dishonest attacks on Mr. Mcguinty brings the entire political system into disrepute, lowers the discourse of politics, and serves to alienate more people from democracy.

This is not to say that the Ontario Liberals have been immune from negative politics during this campaign. Though the LPO ran a largely positive campaign, their attacks on the NDP have been distinctly dishonest. Their attempts to show some kind of kinship between the Ontario NDP leader and Tim Hudak, when they know that no such kinship exists, is just Karl Rove politics all over. They have made a big issue of telling people that the Ontario NDP have voted the same way as the Conservatives many times. But of course they know, as does anyone who understands parliamentary politics, that such voting does not reflect some implicit agreement between the two opposition parties on substantive matters of policy. Andrea Horwath has indeed voted against a number of progressive policies that one would assume that the NDP would support. But this happens in all parliaments with all parties because governments nowadays love to write large pieces of so-called omnibus legislation which contain many pieces of legislation that should, if one pursues politics honestly, be separated. In many cases governments do this precisely because they know that an opposition party will vote against the legislation and that this issue can be used against that party in a future election. If an opposition party likes some piece of, say, childcare funding that is in a bill that also includes huge pieces of legislation that that opposition party also opposes, then they are obviously bound to oppose it, and it is wrong to then use that vote to suggest that the opposition party opposes childcare funding. The Liberal Party of Ontario has done this throughout the campaign and it is a tactic that is straight out of the Conservative handbook.

There is a serious disconnect between our modern, and important, focus on civility and the terrible consequences of bully and violence on the one hand, and the tenor of political debate in this country on the other hand. I learned a long time ago when I was living in El Salvador that abstract political goals about making the world a better and more just place mean absolutely nothing unless they become an integral part of our personal behaviour. Until politicians are willing to act in an honest and upright manner then all their talk amounts to little more than hot air and empty promises. And the parents who refuse to tolerate, cheating in the classroom, bullying in the schools and violence on the playground should refuse to accept such behaviour from their politicians. The biggest problem is, of course, that many people have rejected modern politics by staying at home during elections and this speaks to a crisis in democracy itself. Until we begin to resolve these issues, then our "democracy" will not deserve that title of honour.

On Lawlessness. . . .

2011-09-26T16:23:00.000-04:00

So the NDP wants the RCMP to investigate Tony Clement for his obvious influence peddling on the G20 file.

And while they are wishing for that why don't they wish for us all to live in a land where everyone is fairies and elves and it rains candy all the time?

Here is the reality, and anyone who dosen't see it is blindly partisan - we live in a country in which the government is lawless - in the sense that it only obeys those laws it sees fit to obey and it has taken complete control of our national police force the same way that third-world dictatorships control their national police. We would NEVER see a RCMP indictment of a Conservative Government official unless the government, for some reason, wanted it to happen. We could have irrefutable proof of John Baird murdering someone with thousands of witnesses and if Harper didn't want him prosecuted he would walk.
The only entertainment is the rich narrative irony of an entirely lawless government instituting a "tough on crime agenda." Wow, that's rich.

Future or no?

2011-09-19T10:38:00.000-04:00

The fact that Harper, Obama, and Netanyahu have made it clear that they will not recognize a Palestinian State finally makes it clear that the real barrier to peace in the Middle East is Israel and its allies. Despite telling the world for so many years how important it is for everyone in the world to recognize the people and state of Israel, they have now made it clear to the world that they do not recognize the Palestinians as a people with an inherent right to exist. What they dread most is the idea of putting the people of Palestine on a rightful legal footing that would make them equal with other people around the world, and equal with Israelis in particular. As long as the Palestinians are stateless people, the Israeli governments can continue to chip away at them, stealing their land until there is not enough left of Palestine to make it a viable state. It is transparent now that this is, and has always been, the goal. The Government of Israel does not want peace, they want the land, pure and simple.

Peace can only ever be achieved when the people of Palestine have a viable state of their own that is large enough to give them a possibility of a prosperous future. Without this, there will never be peace; it is not complicated. There are other things that would need to happen but without this, nothing else matters. It is always easy to see if a state wants peace - just ask yourself if that state is willing to recognize that others should enjoy the same basic rights as they do, and whether they are willing to make those with whom they are struggling real stake-holders in a better, brighter, and most of all equitable future. The fact that Canada, the US, and Israel are not willing to recognize a free and independent Palestine answers these questions loud and clear!

The Brewing Revolution. . . . .

2011-09-16T10:03:00.001-04:00

If history is any indication of future events I suspect that Europe is headed toward revolution.

In the years leading up to the French Revolution, as France inched toward bankruptcy, one of the few growth industries was found in the luxury carriage market. It seems that while much of the country was slowly starving to death and the government of Louis IX was nearing financial ruin, the rich in France were buying ever larger and more luxurious carriages and each aristocrat tried to out do their peers with more elaborate and expensive models. The rich of France were largely oblivious to the growing storm and would universally claim that the peasantry and the working-class were enjoying the most that the system could afford and that they were lucky to have what they did. Meanwhile the rich were richer than ever and being transported in the most elaborate carriages you could imagine. Sound familiar?

Today the international car show in Frankfort opened. In spite of the looming crisis in Europe, and the ever more difficult position in which the working people of Europe (and elsewhere) find themselves, the luxury car market has never been better. Porsche, Ferrari, Maserati, Lamborghini, Jaguar, and other luxury makers are all introducing more expensive and elaborate models and all are enjoying growth in sales and expecting sales to increase by up to 20% this year.

How'about this 1.7 Million Dollar Bugatti

Remember chapter seven of Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities in which the carriage of the aristocrat Monseigneur runs over a peasant boy and then he throws a couple of coins in the street at the lad's father as compensation for having taken the boy's life?

The rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer, and the rightwing is telling us that the workers are lucky to have what they have and the system can't afford decent wages and pensions for most people. Meanwhile the new horseless carriages are getting more and more expensive.

Trouble is coming, and when workers start chopping off the heads of the rich, they shouldn't say they haven't been warned. History has been warning them all along.

Whither the NDP?

2011-09-14T16:51:00.000-04:00

Is it just me or do Liberals keep giving recommendations to the NDP that amount to little more than telling the NDP to become Liberals?

Having seen what happened to the Labour Party after Tony Blair and what they did to the UK, my recommendation is to continue to be the NDP and not abandon its principles. After all, there are already two national parties that have no principles we don't really need another.

Do You Want Freedom-Fries with that???

2011-09-14T12:03:00.000-04:00

So new statistics demonstrate what we on the left have been saying for years now - while countries like the United States have more wealth than they have ever had before, poverty is getting worse every year. Nearly fifty million Americans are now living below the poverty line and nearly half of Americans are struggling just to survive.

These statistic blow the prevailing rightwing ideology out of the water. They keep telling us that we can't afford decent pensions, we can't afford to keep the elderly out of poverty, we can't afford for working people to have a decent life. But it is all a lie. The Western countries have never had so much wealth and corporations have never made so many billions, but fifty million people in the world's largest economy live in poverty. This makes it very clear that it is not the shiftless, lazy, indulgent working-class who are the problem - the problem is a system in which there is unprecedented wealth in the hands of a small percentage of the people.

For more than twenty years we on the left have been saying that the so-called neo-liberal policies would lead to more poverty and a greater inequality of wealth, many people have bought the rightwing line that we just can't afford to have working people have a good life. Let's make it clear, and shout it from the rooftops, Western governments are going bankrupt at a time of unprecedented wealth not because the working people are shiftless and lazy and have an unrealistic sense of entitlement - but because the greed of the rich has reached unprecedented levels. The rightwing claims are now clearly false.

When countries with hundreds of billionaires and thousands upon thousands of millionaires watches while half their population can barely get by - something is wrong with the system! Four Hundred families in the US own nearly half the wealth.

More hard times are coming for Canada and the rightwing policies of our government will make it much worse. If you want to live like so-called third-world nations have done for so long, keep supporting rightwing policies and the career of you children will consist of little more than delivering pizzas and serving french-fries.

A Couple of Thoughts on the Ontario Election. . . . .

2011-09-09T11:40:00.000-04:00

I am always closer to the NDP in every election in this country. In fact, my criticism of the NDP more often than not, and when I do have them, stem from the Party not being leftwing enough. Given that fact, I must say that there seems to be a fair amount to be critical about concerning the leadership of Horwath's leadership of the Ontario NDP. The Provincial Party's record on the Environment and their failure to address pressing education issues in their platform should be a serious concern for any traditional NDP supporter. And I am certainly not the only one to bring this up; a number of long-time NDP supporters and activists are beginning to has voice their concern.

When she became the Provincial NDP leaders we were all aware that Horwath was not on the most progressive side of the Party. However, given the rather sad record of the Ontario Liberals on many issues there are still good reasons to vote NDP, particularly in riding where they have a real chance. However, I would love to see some genuine discussion among NDP supporters concerning the issues at hand here. The rather disastrous record of Bob Rae's government is perhaps too fresh in people's minds to give todays NDP a real chance at government. But Rae is now in the Liberal Party where he belongs and we have to ask ourselves, at a time when the Provincial Liberals have done so poorly and the Conservative Party is coming off the rails due to genuine crazies in its leadership, why are the NDP not a more credible alternative?

Why Are There Union-Bashing Bloggers on the NDP Blogging Site????

2011-09-08T10:54:00.000-04:00

So the question that comes to mind this morning is why do we still see, even in the ranks of the New Democrats on line, claims such as the problems in our economy are "the stinking unions" ???!!!!

Now beside the fact that the person who posted this, and you all surely know who that is, constantly bombards the New Democrats Online site with racist tinged attacks on Islam, we now have blinkered, ignorant union-bashing on a site that is supposed express NDP sympathies.

Of course if you think, like our dear blogger seems to believe (along with Tory ideology) that a 'good' economy is a low-wage system of underemployment where workers have no rights or pensions for that matter, then yes, unions are a bad thing. But let's put paid to one blatant piece of misinformation once and for all. It is totally counterfactual that unions had anything to do with the decline in the North American auto manufacturing. First of all, this decline is in large part a result of a complex, multi-faceted process of globalization, the motivation for which has been to increase corporate wealth regardless of the impact on workers and the environment. But it should be obvious to any vaguely conscious observer that the decline of the so-called 'big-three' has had nothing to do with unionization. Simply look at this simple fact - while many non-unionized car makers (such as Honda and Toyota) were systematically gaining market share, their cars were demonstrably more expensive than the North American cars of the same class. This means that North American car dealers were producing a less expensive product even with a unionized workforce. We must, therefore rationally conclude that their decline has been a result not of unionization but of other factors. This is a fact that rightwingers and the media have simply ignored in their all out effort to undermine unions in North America.

The fact is, if you are familiar with the long waves of capitalist development (and one needn't be an expert in the work of Nikolai Kontratiev to understand these things), one understands that not only are unions good for people, they are actually good for capitalism in the long run. This is because without unions capitalism will revert to its maximum level of exploitation, eventually resulting in revolution and collapse. Men like FDR understood this very well and knew that labor and welfare reforms were actually a life-line to declining capitalism. Of course since FDR's time, things have changed because globalization has allowed capitalists to pit one country against another and workers against workers. But in the long run (as the global economic crisis suggests) globalization will suffer the same kinds of pressures and difficulties that national capitalism once did. Workers will realize that only by protecting themselves against the worst exploits of capital will they enhance their lives and when real threat of revolution comes along, capitalists will realize that the economic system that they advocate is a dangerous cancer which eats itself alive and they will attempt to control it to avoid disaster.

Meanwhile, fools like the blogger about whom we began our discourse, will blithely blame unions for every ill of society all the while enjoying all the rights, privileges, and luxuries that unions and union activists actually brought to him.

One Person One Vote, Unions, the NDP, Democracy, And Capitalism. . . .

2011-09-06T12:05:00.000-04:00

Unions suffer from the same drawbacks from which all institutions suffer. The two most notable of these in my mind are a) they too often stray from their ideals and b) the people who should not have power are more often than not the very same people who seek it. But these problems are, as I said, not unique to unions but are common to all institutions. What I find amazing is that despite the fact most of the rights and privileges which we enjoy from universal suffrage to universal health-care to public pensions are a direct results of unions or union activists, people still spend an inordinate amount of energy attacking unions. Huge, multi-national corporations rape and pillage the environment, undermine democracy and destroy many of our basic rights but people reserve more vitriol and anger for unions than for almost any institution. This just demonstrates that the rightwing has been remarkably successful at doing their job of making it a better world for corporations and a worse one for average people.

In recent days people have begun to discuss the issue of the union role in the NDP. It is inevitably that this subject would rise to the top in a country so dominated by rightwing media. Any method available to discredit the left will be at the top of the media agenda. What is particularly interesting about this issue as presented in the media and by many bloggers is the way they attempt to indignantly chastise anyone who is not actively pursuing the so-called principle of "one person, one vote." What makes this so ironic is that so many rightwingers, as well as Liberals who have so actively pursued a corporate agenda, don't believe in democracy at all. Oh, they will of course pay active lip service to the principles of democracy, but their support will always fall short when it comes to democracy in the economy or democracy in the workplace. Their basic model of society is the corporation - a fundamentally undemocratic institution which has, for generations made every attempt to undermine rights, privileges and protections for the majority of workers. The rightwing in fact prides itself in many instances on its relations with corporate history, and it does everything it can to discredit democracy and alienate people from the process, but when it comes to a left-wing political party suddenly the rightwing is all for the principles of democracy. Another funny thing is that people often condemn leftwing parties by admitting that the rich and corporations have a great deal of de facto power in rightwing parties but suggest that this is equivalent to union power on the left. The irony of this that no one talks about is the fact that unions are non-profit, democratic organizations the primary purpose of which is to protect people's rights.

There is a direct relationship between the gradual decline in union membership in Western countries and the stagnation of wages and the incredible increases in wealth of society's richest members. In other words, it is empirically demonstrable that as unions die out so does equality, people's wealth, social justice, and . . . yes, democracy. Attacking union influence in a party like the NDP is an easy target. This is because Liberals and the rightwing have convinced people that somehow if we all abide by the principle of 'one person, one vote,' we will actually have democracy. But this is, of course, complete hogwash. We live in a society in which the institutions of the rich have de facto controlled what people think, what they believe is possible, and what they believe is right. The rightwing and the corporations have remarkable institutional power in this society in the legal institutions, the media, and the political system. One person one vote is entirely meaningless in a system in which is already weighted in favor of the rich. The proof of this is that one would have to be hopelessly blind to not see that our democracy is slowly being robbed of meaning and shriveling on the vine of principle. The fact is that you can take away the influence of unions in the NDP or not, as you please; it makes little difference really. You have already been robbed of your democracy and you are slowly being robbed of your wealth and your rights anyway. Every year fewer people vote for the simple reason that the agenda is preset anyway. While the World Bank, for example, promoted so-called "good governance" in the 'third-world" they simultaneously told those countries what policies that "had" to follow. Meanwhile, in the West real wages have stagnated for a generation while the wealth of the richest has exponentially increased. As good, fulltime jobs disappear, and this country begins to look more and more like a banana republic, any rational, principled person must surely conclude that democracy is a failure. Those with the money are calling the tune regardless of what people think they can do with their civic activism.

One person one vote? Sure, why not. It makes no difference in a society in which democracy means so little anyway.

A Few Thoughts on Women Writers. . . .

2011-08-31T16:38:00.000-04:00

Yesterday I got a few books in the mail. I got the five volumes of Our Village by Mary Mitford about whom I am writing a book. It is a really nice set, though the age (over a hundred and fifty years old) make reading it difficult because the bindings are leather rather than cloth. In older books cloth binding is actually much better because the hinges are much less likely to crack. Anyway it is a great set to have and incredibly rare; there is only one other complete set on the Internet and it is going for over five-hundred dollars.

Writing this book on Mary Mitford has been really interesting and I have been enjoying it. One of the things that it has really made me think about is the degree to which women writers have been ignored. Mary Mitford herself has been overlooked historically but she still has some degree of reputation in literary history. But her work and life story has led me to numerous other women writers who are incredibly interesting but who have been almost completely forgotten. Among these are Mary Howitt, Barabara Hofland, and Adelaide Proctor. But perhaps the most interesting discovery for me is a woman named Harriet Martineau. Martineau lived between 1802 and 1876 and fought through poverty and difficult health problems to become a remarkably educated and erudite author of over 50 books of philosophy, sociology, political economy, and fiction. Interestingly she often used fiction to make a very clear political point, and she did so without coming off as overly didactic. She was genuinely a good writer and a brilliant thinker. The more I learn about her the more I think that if she had been a man she would now be very well remembered and would have affected a great deal of influence.

Anyway, the other book that I got in the mail was one by Martineau that I won on Ebay for only a few dollars. It is from 1845 and is so rare that you cannot find another for sale anywhere on the Internet except as a print-on-demand version. It is a very small book of some 175 pages and is called The Charmed Sea. The remarkable thing is that not only is it very rare and interesting, it is in almost perfect condition. It looks as though someone bought it when it was first published and put it on a shelf and never took it out again for a hundred and sixty-five years.

How Long Until Change These Initials (RCMP) - Into These (SS)??

2011-08-30T20:43:00.000-04:00

This is a deeply troubling development. I think if one looks carefully at the actions (or inactions) of the RCMP since the now famous, unlawful statement on their part that they were actively investigating Ralph Goodale, it is becoming increasingly clear that the national police force is profoundly corrupted. There should be little question in people's minds that the RCMP is directing itself or is being directed to ignore the CPC's legal transgressions while pursuing everyone else's. Each step in this direction, like the one today, takes it further from the realm of conspiracy theory and into the realm of stunning and dangerous, banana-republic style police corruption. If you aren't troubled, you're not paying attention.

Technology and Your Monthly Expenses. . . .

2011-08-30T09:32:00.000-04:00

As I understand it, Apple is now talking about producing a TV which is also an internet device. Even before it became one of the primary topics of tech-talk, I thought that since so many people don't actually use a personal computer for anything but web-based functions, the future for computing was through the television. However, as time has ticked by I have grown more doubtful of this possibility. The reason for my doubt is . . . . well, money. Just as leasing vehicles has allowed the car industry to inflate the price of automobiles to ridiculous levels, the modern tech industry is nickeling and diming us to death. Every new tech device you purchase seems to come with some built-in monthly cost. As I understand it Google's new personal computer in which everything you do is done through the so-called "cloud," is really just a computer that comes with another monthly bill to access Google's cloud.

Last year we tried Netflix in our house. The content, though not overwhelming, was good and there was lots of entertainment to be had. The problem was that by the end of the month we had an extra bill of fifty dollars for extra net usage. For that price I could have purchased a movie channel package and watched three times as much new content for less money without having to worry that the kids are further pushing up my internet bill every time they go online.

It seems that companies like Apple and Google are consciously driving technology not for the sake of convenience and innovation but to find new ways to drive up the amount that people will pay every month for access to a service or network. Young people are getting jobs just to finance their cell-phone bills and it seems ridiculous to me. I don't want to access the internet through my television just so Rogers can send me an extra bill every month. I don't actually gain anything except a bigger screen for my web access, and anyway I can purchase a cable for a few bucks that will put my computer monitor screen on my LCD TV without any new technology.

I think that there is something fundamentally wrong with the technology model that is being developed today. Remember (if you are over 40) when they told us that in the future we would have a lot more leisure time and we would be a paperless society? That didn't workout for the simple reason that capitalism has a mindless growth incentive that makes leisure fundamentally problematic. Regardless of how much resources and technologies we develop and have, capitalism as an economic system cannot function unless people are continuously, mindlessly, exhaustively working and consuming. The problems with this are many and obvious. Beside the environmental issues that such a system brings up, economists like Schumpeter (to say nothing of Marx) long ago pointed out that as capitalism drives people out of work through innovation in production and international competition, capitalism will put more wealth in fewer hands and the modus operandi of the system itself will begin to corrode its function.

Returning to the issue of Apple TV, where are we going with this? Why should people purchase a device that will do almost nothing for them which will essentially include another monthly expense in an already stretched budget? The way forward is open source networks, and reductions in patents and copyrights (something Adam Smith ironically would ague for) in order to make technology actually work for people rather than people working for technology. The problem is, of course, how to make the economy do the same thing?

It is Always Too Soon. . . .

2011-08-27T22:26:00.000-04:00

Many Canadians are deeply saddened by the death of Jack Layton. And I too have been affected by the untimely death of a committed social democrat who galvanized the feelings of a nation in the midst of an era of increasing despair, cynicism, greed, and corporatism. Short of being an empty-hearted, soulless, monster, how could one not be affected by the life and death of a man who was so optimistic, so guileless, so energizing, so compassionate, and so heartfelt?

But most of us are not directly affected by Mr. Layton's death. Though my spouse met him on a few occasions, I never even saw the man in person. And the truth is, personal mourning is the privilege of Mr. Layton's friends and loved-ones. They will all mourn in a profound and personal way, and spend their lives trying to put this life and death into perspective the same way I have struggling so hard to cope with my father's death. It is a struggle that will not end.

But outside of the personal mourning that those close to Mr. Layton will endure in the coming months and years, is our collective sadness. And a fundamental part of that sadness is a profound and genuine frustration. It is a frustration that we don't like to express in words, but it is one that always seems to be with us. It is the frustration that we can't help but thinking that so many of those who fight so tirelessly for justice are cut down in their prime while those who actively thwart the cause of justice go merrily on. We know, at some level, that it is not really true; that the good and the bad all live by equal odds or, as the bible tells us, the rain falls on the just and the unjust. But at these times we cannot help but think that the odds are stacked in evil's favor. That since it is easier to destroy than it is to build, and since real compassion is steeped in sensitivity, the good really do die young.

Jack Layton was taken from us too soon. I know other good people who have been taken too soon. But then with good people, any time is too soon. If Jack Layton died at 90 years old, it would have been too soon because such people are what Bertold Brecht called the 'indispensables,' those who work their whole lives to make the lives of all of us better.

State Broadcaster my A**. . . .

2011-08-24T10:35:00.000-04:00

I have never watched SunTV except for a few moments as I was channel flipping. I was recently in Toronto and SunTV was in the lower channels at the hotel so every timed I channel surfed I went by it for a few moments and at one point actually saw one of the SunTV wackos refer to the CBC as the "state broadcaster." Apparently it has become the norm for rightwing nut jobs to constantly refer to the CBC in this way. Mr. Kinsella suggests that his cohorts at SunTV only do this as a way of poking fun at the CBC, but this is obviously a falsehood.

Referring to the CBC as a "state broadcaster" is an intentional, ideological attempt to discredit the corporation at every level. It is the rightwinger's way of suggesting that the CBC is the modern equivalent to the TASS news agency or Pravda from the days of Soviet Communism. The problem with this characterization is that it is patently counterfactual. Indeed the CBC receives money from the state but it operates at arms length. If the standard that we are to employ for an institution being an arm of the State were that it received money from the government then we could say that half the large corporations in the country are little more than state institutions. And since oil companies are particularly blatant recipients of grants and credits from the government, then SunTV should start referring to Esso as a "State Energy Company."

All of this further points to the blatant hypocrisy in the rightwing in this country who ironically support 'socialism' and government controls in countless ways but only attack those areas where those state processes don't help large corporations have more control and make billions. The rightwing in this country are de facto fascists because they continue to want the state to operate as a voice and arm or corporations and grease the wheels of big capital to make more money and have greater control of people's lives. Every time rightwingers use the phrase "State Broadcaster" they are demonstrating their hypocrisy to everyone who has even a little analysis of the political economy of the nation. If the CPC really hate socialism let them renounce all state-funded education, state-funded healthcare, all regulations on health and safety, all trade regulations, the existence of the CRTC, etc. They will not because a) then they would never get elected again, b) they know that the so-called market would never work as the unfettered system that they claim to advocate and c) because it is a hallmark of fascism to support a large state apparatus but one that slowly shifts power to corporations and silences the masses.

Reap the Whirlwind. . . .

2011-08-23T10:53:00.000-04:00

In there States many Walmart stores tutor their employees on how to apply for various kinds of government assistance because they don't make enough money at Walmart to get above the poverty line. Meanwhile Walmart's corporate profits are soaring. This is how capitalism works - at a systemic level it seeks to shift money away from average people and amass it into a small portion of the population. Historically, the only thing that has really pushed in the other direction is the union movement which, at a very simple level, seeks to ensure that some of the wealth stays with the workers and that those workers are protected from the worst kinds of exploitation. There is a direct inverse ratio between the reduction of union membership in countries like the US and the relative impoverishment of the majority of working people. Globalization, touted as the great panacea of working-class troubles by those who hope to increase their fortunes, only makes the issue worse for the majority of workers here and abroad. It makes things worse for workers in the north because it depresses wages and robs them of full-time, stable jobs. But in the long run it makes things worse for workers in the so-called 'third-world as well, because while workers in many countries receive some employment that they didn't have before, they do on terrible terms. Globalized capital increases the power of corporations to exploit workers, teaches 'third-world' workers that they have no choice but to obey the corporate order, sets country against country in a race to the bottom, and eventually impoverishes all of us. Thus in Western Capitalist nations, real wages for most people have not increased for a generation, while in 'less-developed' countries the majority of workers become like indentured slaves in a pattern of poverty and work from which they cannot emerge.

So-called conservative politicians everywhere are desperate to impoverish you and enslave you in a world devoid of meaning and beauty wherein the majority are working endlessly to increase the wealth of the few and where many workers are foolishly duped into believing that maybe someday they will be rich and so they labor like slaves toward a future that never arrives.

Reap the whirlwind of poverty and powerlessness folks, or start the revolution toward a better humanity. Your choice.

The End of Summer, the End of an Era. . . .

2011-08-22T18:17:00.000-04:00

Today felt like the end of summer in more ways than one. The profound sadness that I feel at the passing of Jack Layton are only rivalled by the disgust I feel at the fawning, hypocritical posthumous praise that right-wingers have been heaping on his memory. They talk of respecting Mr. Layton despite the fact that they disagreed with his politics. What, if you will pardon the expression, a load of bollocks! The rightwing in this country did everything they could to silence Jack Layton, just as they hope to silence everyone who opposes their dictatorial corporate agenda. Their favorite way of shutting down Mr. Layton was to refer to him as "Taliban Jack." But this is the way of the rightwing, shut down and silence all opposing views in a rabid effort to undermine democracy and the cause of equality and justice.

But for those of us on the left, even when we didn't agree with all of Layton's position, were reminded by him that, despite the rightwing's best efforts, the fight is worth waging and the war will be won. And to all the rightwingers who hypocritically praise Mr. Layton now that he is dead, my message for you is that "you will lose your war on justice!" The right may win some battles, they may hold back progress, but they will lose the war. For thousands of years we have been winning the war to build democracy, to increase equality, to recognize the rights of workers and minorities, and to undermine the power of the rich. Despite the efforts of the right to hold the world back, we will move forward.

Our promise to Jack Layton - we will keep fighting and when we are gone our children will keep fighting. Our promise to the right - enjoy your small moments of victory - we have seen the enemy and he is ours.

Remember by working harder. . . . .

2011-08-22T13:07:00.000-04:00

"DON'T MOURN, ORGANIZE!!!!!"

-Joe Hill.

No Need to Reflect. . . . The Establishment Tells us What We Need to Think.

2011-08-16T10:00:00.000-04:00

Just one more interesting note of the British insurrection - yesterday Prime Minister Cameron told us that they were going to investigate and reflect on the recent events. But before any reflection or investigation he told us that we have to understand that the riots weren't about race because not every rioter was black, and the riots were not about cutbacks or economic dépravation or democracy.

In other words, the Prime Minster wants to make sure that before the investigate or reflect on the events, we all already know what the conclusions should be.

Tories have never been interested in truth so it shouldn't surprise us. But what continues to be surprising to me (though at this point it really shouldn't) is that people buy this stuff. It is not surprising that riots and insurrections happen - it is surprising that they don't happen all the time.

Why Are Explanations Suddenly the Same as Support????

2011-08-12T15:14:00.000-04:00

I find the recent discourse on the riots in England sad and tragic but I guess it is typical of any state apparatus from Syria to the UK to marginalize insurrectionists, calling them common criminals or terrorists.

What really aggravates me is that if one attempts to explain the root causes of the insurrection, it is viewed as being tantamount to condoning every kind of violence. Again, this is a technique used by leaders in almost every country. They are always desperate to demonize anyone who stands against the status quo. However, if one is even vaguely aware of history they know that if you leave people living in misery and desperation, without eductions and without hope for their futures, they will eventually rebel. It is as simple as that. However, to suggest that this understanding is a uniform advocation of violence of all kinds, is absurd.

Here is an imaginary news transcript to make the point.

Reporter; We are talking with Joe Aeroguy, an expert in airplane safety about the recent rash of airline accidents. Mr. Aeroguy, what do you think has led to these terrible accidents?

Mr. Aeroguy: Well, in the past few years the government has loosened the safety regulations concerning regular maintenance and the Airline companies have found many ways to cut corners on their regular maintenance program. We in the safety industry have been saying for years that these cutbacks would eventually lead to accidents and loss of life.

Reporter: Are you saying that you condone these accidents??

Mr. Aeroguy: WTF??

Exactly! Pointing out that insurrections are a perfectly predictable result of years of oppression, systemic racism, failure to provide services, and a basic lack of hope, is not the same as advocating violence. Rather, it is a call to fix what is wrong instead of demonizing and marginalizing the people who are reacting to something that many of us have never had to endure.

Violence, A Way of Life for the Wealthy of Britain. . . . .

2011-08-09T22:34:00.000-04:00

Ok, I have to say it. It must be said and no one else seems ready to say it so the responsibility falls upon me.

I have an important message to all those stuffy, self-righteous, hypocritical English MPs and commentators concerning their continual condemnation of the rioters in Britain - You have to shut up now! How weary I grow of representatives of the British Government telling us that "nothing justifies the violence." It would sound great if it was not so monumentally steeped in utter hypocrisy! The British authorities, governments, and aristocrats have been perpetrating excessive violence at home and abroad for centuries. Millions have died in the British pursuit of wealth and power. Most recently the British government was involved in the illegal invasion of Iraq where tens of thousands (some sources say hundreds of thousands) died in the pursuit of British wealth and power.

Let us be honest, it is not violence that the British government objects to, it is violence that is not committed by them in the interest of the corporations and the capitalist class that bothers them. The simple proof is in their long history of unadulterated and mass violence.

The French Aristocracy insisted that those who stormed the Bastille were simple criminals and terrorists. But for centuries the working-class of Britain (and particularly those who are not 'white') have been left in desperation, without decent educations, without real opportunities, without hope, that is violence! And every once in a while the simmering anger and desperation will burst into flames - much to the chagrin of the rich and powerful. The sad thing is that these poor saps are simply looting stores and setting fire to a few buildings and many of them will end up in prison. It is amateur hour really. While these rioters are looting stores, the upper-class of Britain has been looting entire continents!! And while the racialized minority rioters will either end up in jail or going back to a life of unfulfilled desperation, those who have been looting whole countries live long lives of prosperity.

Of course, some people who absolutely don't deserve it, will be victims of these riots. But centuries of violent treatment, inequality, and oppression, never results in anything good. Meanwhile the real perpetrators of massive and universal violence go happily on.

Signs of the Apocalypse. . . .

2011-08-09T08:49:00.000-04:00

"We're just showing the rich people that we can do what we want. . ."

-Rioter in Croydon

Real Liberty, not Illusion. . . . .

2011-08-08T21:05:00.000-04:00

I think anyone who is even vaguely aware of the real history of Western democracy is fairly hesitant to legitimize modern conservatism by actually debating with its adherents in a serious way. People like Robert Ford or the so-called "tea-partiers" are so vastly ignorant of almost anything in the realm of serious politics that to discuss with them in a serious way seems absurd and slightly perverse. In fact modern conservatives are so vastly ignorant of the roots of democracy that I am certain that history will judge so-called neo-conservatism as one of those sad and embarrassing chapters of history like the McCarthy hearings. It has recently been particularly embarrassing in the US as the 'tea-partiers' continually invoke the so-called founding fathers while knowing nothing about the real issues that surrounded the revolution and the struggles that came after it. The differences between, say John Adams and Thomas Jefferson were incredibly wide and very important. And what is perhaps even more important than the arguments between the early revolutionaries is the fact that, given the changes that gradually took place in the two centuries after the American (and French) revolution, it is absurd to attempt a simplistic application of, say, Jeffersonian or Federalist policies to todays political situation. Hamilton and the Federalists were attempting to create what they thought would be a modern democratic system by aligning with Britain, creating a central bank, and supporting commercialism and increased trade. Though their elitism and commercialism have more in common with modern Republicans than Democrats, their notion of a more centralized and powerful federal state has more to do with modern democrats. Similarly, Jefferson's fear of a powerful central government sounds sort of like modern Republicans while his fear of a commercial elite rings more of the modern Democratic party.

The fact is that you can not draw too straight a line between 18th century revolutionaries from Thomas Paine to Thomas Jefferson to Jean-Paul Marat to todays political agendas because too much changed in the meantime. Men like Jefferson and Paine feared elitism and centralized power because their only experience of the state was one of the raw power of the aristocracy. At the time it was a fitting fear. But I think they also understood that commercial power could be just as dangerous as traditional state and aristocratic power (something that modern conservatives completely miss). So you get modern conservatives invoking the name of men like Jefferson as a warning of tyranny and loss of liberty, but this is largely meaningless because if Jefferson were alive today he would understand that while the state must always be watched, it can also be an institution that can improve the conditions of everyone.

Above all, what modern conservatives miss (intentionally or simply out of ignorance) is that liberty in the modern world is not about low taxes or a smaller state or anything like that. Liberty has to do with an equality of opportunity. The way to increase liberty for everyone, is to ensure that as many people as possible have as much opportunity as they can. However, the conservative agenda will decrease opportunity and therefore decrease liberty. Privatizing education and healthcare (both things that conservative want to do), for example, will mean that education will be for the rich and people, like in the US, will live in constant fear of going bankrupt because they or someone in their family gets sick. Furthermore, putting more and more power in the hands of the corporations will continue to concentrate wealth and power in the hands of the few and reduce the liberty of the many.

Modern social democracy does not have its roots in any one thinker or movement. However, it grew out of those radicals who knew that the ancien regime was an abuse of power, but also began to quickly realize that the power of the corporate elite was just as dangerous as the abusive aristocracy of the past. The men and women of the Trade Union movement and left of center parties in Western nations were the ones who really understood liberty because they knew that only when wealth and power were well distributed in society and only when we significantly increased the equality of opportunity would we begin to achieve real liberty.

Rightwing notions of liberty are simply illusory and lead to nowhere but to the past when the majority had nothing and a few rich people had more or less everything. And the remarkable ignorance of men like Robert Ford, the Federal Conservative Party leaders and the "tea-partiers" (ignorance they often seem to boast about) only illustrates that modern conservatism belongs in the dust-bin of history.

Rightwing haters. . . .

2011-07-31T12:11:00.000-04:00

Frankly it is nice that the Right-wing is slowly being exposed for what they really are, mean-spirited and incompetent. The events in Norway are unspeakable and tragic beyond imagination, but they are a very direct result of the rightwing ideology of hate that has been fostered for the past generation. Though many rightwingers attempt to gild their anti-muslim, anti-immigration, and anti-multi-cultural viewpoints with reasonable discourse, at the heart of these feelings, which rightwingers everywhere have cultivated, is a fundamentally hateful and intolerant viewpoint.

At a less tragic, and more prosaic, level, recent events on the political scene have finally begun to expose the ridiculous myth that the rightwing is 'fiscally responsible.' It is taken a long time for people to actually begin to come to grips with this at a public level, but it is finally happening. We had to watch governments like those of Reagan, Thatcher, Mulroney, Bush, and Harper for people to begin to wake-up but it has definitely started.

I think the myth of fiscal responsibility in the rightwing comes from a very basic dilemma which has gradually become more clear as the global economy has changed and more pressure is put on the public purse in Western nations. It is not that rightwingers don't want to be fiscally responsible per se that has been a problem. Rather the difficulty exists for them at a different level. The rightwing has an agenda by which they want to expand the wealth of the rich and the corporations and one of the primary modes to achieve this end is to lower the corporate tax rates and taxes on the rich. In order to make this a saleable policy they have had to continually make a public claim that they know to be entirely false, that lower taxes on corporations and the rich will actually increase government revenue and improve the economic situation for everyone. This is simply false, and always has been. Not a single credible study suggests that this claim is true, in fact quite the opposite. By pursuing these policies the right only succeeds in lowering government revenue. As a result of shrinking revenue the right is then forced to cut social services to make up the differences, an idea they essentially don't mind since it undermines the position of the poor and vulnerable and further strengthens the power of the rich. But here is where the dilemma really kicks in - the right, like everyone, relies on elections to maintain power and if they cut too much, particularly from the elderly, they will not get reelected. And it is just too difficult in the final analysis to cut enough to make up for the shrinking revenue situation that they have created. Thus rightwing government continually destroy public finances in the process. It is not that they don't have the stomach to completely cut social services, it is just that they know they cannot get reelected if they do. When you actually get almost all rightwingers to be honest in private they uniformly admit that they don't believe in universal public education or health care, for example, but they would never admit that publicly because their portion of the vote would be reduced to less than ten percent.

In other words, the right is financially irresponsible because the combination of their ideology and electoral politics forces them to be. But the continual repetition of this scenario is finally making the reality of rightwing irresponsibility more clear to people. The only thing that has maintained the rightwing at all is more or less total domination of the media which sells the falsehoods of fiscal responsibility nonstop.

Hate and irresponsibility are the hallmarks of the right. Listen any day to your local rightwing radio call in show and you will hear rightwingers peddling their hate, ignorance, and lies relentlessly. They will condemn the Charter and Rights, condemn immigration, condemn non-christians, condemn the laws which attempt to protect the vulnerable, and condemn multi-culturalism. Meanwhile they will promote a huge and blatant lie that reducing corporate taxes will increase government revenue while their parties bankrupt nations full of millionnaires. But the lies will not stand for much longer as tragedies of their hate become more clear in poverty, wretchedness, and the barrel of a gun.

Standing for something. . . .

2011-07-12T11:24:00.000-04:00

It seems that nowadays Political Parties stand for as little as possible, at least at the public level. Just look at the recent victory of the Harper Conservatives, they have consistently attempted to run on nothing, as though they are the Seinfeld of the political arena. The Liberal Party of Canada has also tried to stand for little, though I must give them credit, when Martin ran for Prime Minister he actually had some important platform issues not least of which were the Kelowna Accord, Universal Childcare, and the defence of gay marriage. Unfortunately when Dion attempted to stand for something in an election (the Green Shift) he lost badly. Similarly, John Tory here in Ontario lost an election on one issue alone - the funding of religious schools. In the States the Democratic Party has been running on nothing Since McGovern lost while trying to end the war in Indo-China. Barack Obama ran on some vague cheerleader's platform that said "Yes We Can," but what exactly "we can" do was never clear. And since he won it has become pretty clear that anything that we thought Obama might have stood for, he didn't.

The right-wing in Canada has become much like the right-wing in the US - it exists on vague notions of economic competence (entirely belied by the facts), strong military (totally belied, again, by their complete lack of support for veterans.), and calling all their opponents terrorist sympathizers and communists. Meanwhile what they really stand for is the total destruction of democracy, the gutting of all social programs, and the effort to make sure that the majority of Canadians become poorer and will eventually not be able to afford a privatized education and health system. Only, like real cowards, they will never say what they actually stand for in the public arena.

The only national party that now stands for anything is the NDP, though I sat that with only qualified support because that party too has become increasingly vague about their ideals. But at the very least the NDP stands for protecting universal health, education, and protection of those who are most vulnerable. Of course, many Canadians still buy the mainstream spin that the NDP is a radical socialist party that would instantly nationalize all industry, but those who pay attention know better. But then people are remarkably foolish as they constantly display in their attacks on Unions. So much of what we enjoy in our society from universal education and health, to the forty hour work week and legislation that protects workers and consumers, we owe in large part to Union activists. Furthermore, as wages in Western nations have stagnated in the past generation they have done so in direct correlation with the decline of union membership. Unions are certainly not perfect, but they actually stand for something, and that is the improvement of people's lives and living conditions.

My prediction is that people and political groups will continue to avoid standing for anything meaningful until the Conservative agenda is successful enough to make it clear that all they care about is the rich and when the majority have lost their rights, their incomes, their decent homes, and everything else, then the struggle will have to begin all over. One day people will suddenly wake up and think 'Wow, how did we let them turn back the clock to the 19th century??"

Ignorance and the Political System. . . .

2011-06-30T19:00:00.000-04:00

I don't think one has to be profoundly knowledgable about history and political theory to be a political representative. I think, as a general rule, the more you know the better, but a compassionate instinct and an empathetic spirit can go a long way. What I don't quite understand, and what frightens me a great deal is the modern tendency for politicians, particularly right-wing ones, to be embarrassingly ignorant of almost everything and willing, even eager, to shot your mouth off at every opportunity. My dad used to like to say, it is better to stay silent and be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt. In Canada we have such startlingly ignorant politicians as Rona Ambrose and Peter Van Loan. Stephen Harper himself is remarkably ignorant about many issues but he does not, generally, spout off at the mouth.

But in the US this phenomenon has reached new heights with such politicians as Sarah Palin and now Michele Bachmann. (It is deeply unfortunate that so many of the recent example have been women.) Recently Bachmann told a Republican audience that the "founding fathers" of the US "worked tirelessly to end slavery." You can see interesting stories on the subject here and here. This ignorance is frightening, startling, and depressing. It is even more depressing that there are many people who are equally ignorant and are willing to support people like Bachmann because they think somehow that their folksy public image is some form of anti-establishmentarianism.

There are, of course, ignoramuses in all parties. However, it seems that the right-wing examples are often more eager to shoot their mouths off in order to display their ignorance and, frankly I can tolerate a great deal more from compassionate individuals who are naively ignorant of the facts than I can from an intolerant, bigoted, mean-spirited right-wing jerk. Politicians like Bachmann and Palin are scary omens that as corporate media gains ever greater control of political discourse ignorance becomes more and more the norm in politics and the gradual dumbing down of the population means that fewer and fewer people are going to be able to detect these basic levels of ignorance. In Canada the controversy surrounding the last prorogation of Parliament demonstrated just how ignorant the population in Canada is concerning the basic facts of our political system. How long until we have our own Michele Bachmann or Sarah Palin?

A Few Lugubrious Thoughts for Friday Afternoon. . . .

2011-06-24T15:05:00.001-04:00

- I would like to thank and congratulate the NDP caucus for their opposition to the back to work legislation concerning the Postal Workers. It is an important, if symbolic, gesture of solidarity which reminds us that there is someone opposing the corporate agenda of the Harper government.

-I hope that CUPW is inclined to challenge this legislation in court because in my reading of events this is a clear violation of the SCC decision concerning HEU vs the Government of British Columbia. It is, therefore, legislation that violates the constitution. Of course this government has made it clear that they possess nothing but contempt for the constitution and human rights in general. The fools and rogues that have supported this government will only realize that their rights have been taken from them when it is too late, just as many Germans only realized too late what a real threat the NAZI party really represented.

-I heard today that the Government of Italy said that they didn't have the monetary wherewithal to foot the $35 million bill to make the necessary renovations to the Coliseum in Rome. It seems that the 2000 year old building is showing its age and needs some TLC in order to avoid longterm damage so they managed to get an up-market shoe company to pay for the repairs in exchange for, what? Supposedly just for positive public notoriety. Really?! I am sure, given the level of corruption in Italy there is something else going on. And even if it is all on the up and up, what does that say about the government in Italy. As I understand it the Coliseum is the number one tourist attraction in Italy. And the government of one of the wealthiest nations in the world is not willing to spend the money to restore one of the most important architectural symbols in the world. Scary if you ask me.

-Today I sat by the Rideau River at a quiet spot where I used to take my dad when he was still around. It made me sad and happy at the same time. I read from one of my favorite books, Our Village by Mary Russell Mitford. It is a series of sketches of the English countryside that appeared in five volumes between 1824 and 1832. The pieces are so charming and written with such skill and affection that it made Mary Mitford nearly a household name for some years in the Victorian Era. I hope some day to write a book about dear Mary Mitford because there is just something so interesting and appealing about her and she, along with a number of other women writers of the early 19th century like Elizabeth Inchbald, deserves more notoriety. If you have never read any of Our Village, I highly recommend it and you can read some of it here. If you have only a moment read the chapter entitled The Cowslip-ball, it will give you a warm feeling.

-In the 1920s André Breton, the so-called Pope of the Surrealists, asked his contemporaries whether suicide as a legitimate course of action. Breton lost more than one friend to suicide and was always interested in this difficult question. Antonin Artaud, one of the most interesting of the Surrealist artists and one of the most interesting men of the entire century famously replied that he had already "been suicided by society." This phrase was from his now renowned essay "Van Gogh, the Man Suicided by Society." In it Artaud had written that "Van Gogh did not commit suicide in a fit of madness, in dread of not succeeding, on the contrary, he had just succeeded, and discovered what he was an who he was, when the collective consciousness of society, to punish him for escaping from its clutches, suicided him." I must admit that few days have passed since I was 18 years of age that I have not thought about suicide. Thus far I have never taken the plunge, so to speak. But I have certainly been suicided by society!

Senate Reform, A Non-Starter. . . . .

2011-06-23T14:48:00.000-04:00

Is it just me or is all this talk of Senate reform so much fart-gas? As far as I my understanding goes you cannot do anything to or with the Senate without agreement at three levels, to wit: the House of Commons, the Senate itself, and the agreement of the Provinces. Now the smaller provinces will surely never agree to the total élimination of the Senate, and neither will, I suspect, a majority of Senators. Meanwhile, Quebec and Ontario will fight tooth and nail to prevent an equal Senate and I suppose with good reason. Unlike the US where Senate power is well distributed because there are 50 states, an equal Senate in Canada would be rather absurd because there just are not enough provinces to effectively distribute the potential Senate power. A Senate in which PEI has as much power as Quebec, and there are only eight other provinces, makes little sense to me. If there were thirty or forty provinces then maybe I could see an equal Senate working.

Meanwhile there is lots of talk of a national referendum concerning Senate reform. Because there is no binding referendum system in place, Harper, I suppose, hopes to use a popular vote to pressure or shame the provinces into compliance with his wishes. One would have to be a fool to imagine this would work because since when has a province ever been shamed into giving up any real power? Politics seldom works that way.

No, for the time being Senate reform is, I believe, a non-starter. And any serious attempt to force it through will just plug up the court system for years to come. I don't know for sure why Harper is bothering with this can of worms but I am fairly sure his motives, as in all cases, are self-serving. Stop bothering with Senate reform because it just isn't going anywhere.

What say you?

Whither Corporate power?

2011-06-22T13:09:00.000-04:00

I have to say that I truly don't understand why it is that modern conservatives are so willing, even eager, to see corporations have so much power. For a long time it has supposedly been a central tenet of conservatism to oppose big government because of the problem of centralization of power. Now, putting aside for the moment that right-wingers usually actually increase the power and scope of government despite what they claim, right-wing pundits such as the famous Milton Friedman consistently claimed that the fundamental evil to be struggled against in society in general is the concentration of power and he suggested that the market was a adequate bulwark against power. The problem is, of course, that modern corporations are one of the most significant concentrations of power that has ever been and this power is increasing exponentially. And despite what many people think this power is remarkably unaccountable. Large corporations can increasingly operate in obscurity; abusing workers rights, polluting the environment, making unsafe products, etc. And they use cooperative governments and the courts to maintain and reinforce this power. As corporatism expands so does the disparity between rich and poor as a smaller and smaller percentage of the population possess more and more of the wealth. As a result of this disparity and the extreme increases in corporate profits, the courts as well as elected representatives become the playthings of corporate power. Corporations can spend millions to avoid accountability. And since the media is increasingly in corporate hands, the idea of a media that will hold corporations up to public scrutiny is a fantasy.

To make matters significantly worse the present government has demonstrated that it is willing to use the power of government to enforce the interests of the Corporation in relation to workers, even showing that it will legislate workers of non-government corporations back to work. Keep in mind as they push the envelope of this power the Harper government is heading to a time wherein the government can set and or cap your wages, tell you where you have to work, what your hours are, and when you can have time off. If Harper can tell workers at a private corporation like Air Canada what they must settle on and when they can strike or not, it is a relatively seamless step to them telling all workers in the nation what they must accept and when they have to work.

It is very clear that the right-wing is increasingly working on behalf of large corporations to ensure that individuals have few rights and corporations can do almost anything they want. They even have the majority of people convinced that decent pensions are beyond the scope of our power in the modern economy, while corporations make unprecedented billions and the management of those companies retire with huge pensions in extreme prosperity.

But all of this begs the question, why do right-wingers want to eliminate individual rights, workers' safety, pensions, healthcare, general prosperity, all the while creating a monolithic structure of corporate power in which private companies do almost anything they want and we are turned more or less into modern slaves of the most concentrated, unaccountable power structure in modern history???

I don't know the answer to this question. I just know this creeping evil is well underway.

Syria. . . . we are all in the same oppressive boat. . . . .

2011-06-17T11:39:00.000-04:00

I must admit that I am tired of the feigned nobility and ridiculous superiority voiced by many Canadians, particularly men like John Baird, concerning the various protests in countries like Libya and Syria. People are so quick to condemn the governments of those nations for acts of violence committed against their own people. But it is mostly disingenuous noise by people who a) don't care a whit for the people in those nations (recall Harper in opposition speaking happily about how Mahier Arar was sent to Syria because the Syrians know how to deal with terrorists) and b) they would do exactly the same thing in the same situation.

The G20 prostests in Toronto were almost all non-violent efforts to bring important issues to the public eye and the government responded by rounding up everyone in sight and holding them without cause or charge, as well as assaulting many innocent by-standers. It was a total suspension of human rights with absolutely no consequences for the government or the police and there was not even any threat to the system whatsoever.

We live in a system in which about 25% of the adult population voted for a government that has more or less the power to do ANYTHING it wants. (Keep in mind they were just about to legislate the employees of a private corporation back to work - not government workers - and no one was going to bat an eyelid.) Yet if Canadians rightly took to the streets in the tens of thousands to call for an actual democratic government the police and the army would be called out immediately and they would not even flinch at gunning people down at random. They would kill anyone who got in their way and if the international community said anything they would tell them all to mind their own business They would kill and abuse with an efficiency that would make the Syrian police look like amateurs. Again I reiterate that the G20 protests did not even present a threat of any kind yet they were willing to completely suspend the constitution and human rights. Imagine what they would do in the face of a real threat to their power..

And if you don't believe then you are just hopelessly naive. Until John Baird (and the rest of disingenuous Canadians) are prepared to condemn the violence, anti-democratic spirit, and criminality of their own Government then they should stop shamefully making political hay out of the deaths of Syrians who are really struggling.

So the next time you hear someone condemning the Syrian Government for their oppression, ask them if they condemn their own government for the G20 and if they would stand behind protests in this country to overthrow a government that has less than 40% percent support of the population and can govern with more or less the power of a dictatorship.

Whiter Utopia?

2011-06-11T09:47:00.000-04:00

One of my readers was kind enough to leave me a comment that he has missed reading my posts. Thank you for that, because the internet is quite abstract and one sometimes forgets that there are real people out there with which one is interacting.

Indeed, I have written almost nothing since election day. The truth is that I have become emotionally exhausted and, quite frankly, rather fed up. I had originally wanted to stay out of the whole election process and try to distance myself from it or insulate myself from it because elections have become sort of ridiculous in the current global context. The people with the most money overwhelmingly control the social and political agendas, the majority of people are steeped in ignorance about the real nature of global capitalism, and governments have almost no room to manœuvre even if the wanted to institute more egalitarian and humane policies.

Oscar Widle, a great hero of mine, once wrote "A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at, because it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing. And when Humanity lands there, it looks out, and, seeing a better country and sets sail. Progress is the realization of Utopias." This has always been a sort of guiding principle for me. I really believe that the dreamers make the world and almost everything we value in our lives derives from dreaming and the striving for utopia. But we seem to live in an age of cynicism (read the great book entitled The Critique of Cynical Reason by Peter Sloterdijk) and a kind of hopelessness and complacency has infected many people. This cynicism is undermining the importance of utopian dreaming and, like a debilitated immune system, leaving us open to the horrible infection of newly invigorated, hateful style of Conservatism which, given the impending environmental disaster, could be the last such move toward cynicism in human history. Politics is being increasingly dominated by genuinely evil individuals who are breeding new forms of cynicism and hate and leaving many progressive people feeling exhausted and hopeless.

In light of these problems, increasingly characterized by a sense for many people that something is desperately wrong but it is not worth bothering trying to fix things, also leaves me hopeless and feeling as though the struggle to liberate people who increasingly partake of their own oppression is hardly worth the effort. Like Antonio Gramsci, I have always depended upon an 'optimism of the will,' and know that one can never really give up on the struggle for utopia. But since my father's death I find it increasingly difficult to muster the will necessary to keep the memory of utopia alive in my heart. I suppose such feelings are an inevitable result of aging and growing tired.

A little while after the election I had a dream in which my father and I spoke of the strange, shadowy nature of the past and shaky nature of human identities. As a result of this dream I have begun to write a book about the subject with a particular focus on Samuel Coleridge who is not only one of my favorite writers but is, I believe, one of history's most interesting human beings. I have been reading Sartre on the problem of biography and identity, particularly his remarkable book on Flaubert entitled l'idiot de la famille. I have also been rereading much of Coleridge, particularly his Biographia Literaria and his strange and turgid periodical called The Friend. As people who regularly read my blog will know, I believe our grasp of a 'fixed reality' is tenuous at best and our sense of the world is largely based upon a complex web of narratives that we tell ourselves from the Bible to the Big Bang. In light of the rather depressing story of the election and growing human apathy around me, I am trying to tell a new story. It might not reinvigorate my political consciousness but it might just save me from abject dispair.

The Human Alternative. . . .

2011-05-16T12:48:00.000-04:00

I find it fairly interesting the way Liberals and Conservatives in this country are desperately trying to portray the NDP as a wacky socialist throw-back to the 1960s. Acceptance of this characterization is based itself on an old idea - the idea that the NDP has not changed its policies in forty years or so. However, despite the fact that there are some on the far left in the NDP, overall it is now a party more or less of the centre. Their primary political goals nowadays are a strengthening of the CPP, a more solid commitment to universal health-care, a tax system that doesn't let corporations get away with murder, and some effort to control what is gradually shaping up to be an environmental disaster. It is all pretty tame really and anyone who attempts to characterize them differently is just intentionally feeding on stereotypes for the sake of partisan gain.

But even if the NDP was a throw-back to a more genuine socialist effort, I say bring it on. Far from being wacky or dangerous, socialism is the only thing that will save us from environmental destruction, oppressive economic inequalities, corporations that have gone completely out of control, and a slowly degrading state of democracy. There is no doubt that the process of globalization has made any socialist effort significantly more difficult. Corporations have fairly effectively created a atmosphere in which states have a limited independence to control their own economies. But there is also a growing international awareness of the power of corporations to control people's lives and the need for real reforms before it is too late. The economy belongs to the people, not to multinationals, and if the people want to take control of the system, then they can and will. One needn't be a radical who believes in no market process whatsoever to believe that economies can be run in the interests of average people and that corporations should not be controlling all of the social, political, and economic aspects of our lives.

The only reason that people perceive the NDP agenda to be radical or whacky is that they have bought into the spin of neo-conservatives who have created an ideology which convinces people that they are entirely at the behest of corporations and that there is no alternative. Well there is an alternative, and it means limiting the power of corporations to set the agenda and to create an economy in which people matter. It is not a radical alternative, it is a human alternative.

The Right-WIng Media. . . . .

2011-05-10T22:12:00.000-04:00

Anyone who doubts the right-wing bias of the media (and is actually intellectually honest) surely must have had a wake-up call when every newspaper in the country but one endorsed a Harper Majority.

More evidence is found here. The media is making more out of this story than out of Harper ministers lying to the House or the Harper Government being the very first one in the history of the Commonwealth to be found in contempt of parliament. The right-wingers who still think that the media has a left-wing bias or that the CBC is run by a secret Marxist cell can now be officially certified as a whacko.

Some Timely Thoughts From Hazlitt . . . .

2011-05-10T19:06:00.000-04:00

"All things move, not in progress, but in a ceaseless round; our strength lies in our weakness; our virtues are built on our vices; our faculties are as limited as our being; nor can we lift man above his nature more than above the earth he tends. But though we cannot weave over again the airy, unsubstantial dream, which reason and experience have dispelled . . . yet we will never cease, nor be prevented from returning on the wings of imagination to that bright dream of our youth; that glad dawn of the day-star of liberty; that spring-time of the world, in which the hopes and expectations of the human race seemed opening in the same gay career with our own; when France called her children to partake her equal blessings beneath her laughing skies; when the stranger was met in all her villages with dance and festive songs; in celebration of a new and golden era . . . the dawn of that day was suddenly overcast; that season of hope is past; it is fled with the other dreams of our youth, which we cannot recall, but has left behind it traces, which are not to be effaced by Birthday and Thanks-giving Odes, or the chanting of Te Deums in all the churchs of Christendom. To those hopes eternal regrets are dur; to those who maliciously and wilfully blasted them, in the fear that they might be accomplished, we feel no less what we owe - hatred and scorn as lasting!"

-William Hazlitt

Though written nearly two hundred years ago, this is a remarkably poignent observation by that enduring man who, in a time of dangerous and tumultuous politics, never abandoned his principles in the face of apostasy on the part of most of his contemporaries. And his lesson is clear for us today as it was in his own time; to resist those who would rob the world of its genuine abundance and reduce us to no more than servants of an economist's ideology. The human imagination will reach beyond these bullies of the badlands and into the world they will tell us cannot exist.

Liberals limp into their future. . . ...

2011-05-09T20:21:00.000-04:00

I love this stuff. It really is priceless. The first major action of the Liberal Party of Canada in its process of rejuvenation is to bypass their own constitution. Classic! The Liberal Party of Canada wants to recreate itself and its first message is that 'we don't even obey our own rules."

Good stuff. Really good stuff.

The Future is Coming and Conservatives are losing the Struggle. . . .

2011-05-05T17:45:00.000-04:00

Here are a few of the reasons that the Conservative Party is a sad and hopeless relic. Though it managed to secure a small majority, a few years of the Government in this position will be enough to demonstrate why this party will be short lived.

- The Environment. Though the right-wing pundits keep insisting that there is no environmental crisis, time will prove them desperately and hopelessly wrong. The CPC has absolutely no environmental policy except to rape and pillage it as much as possible for fun and profit. A generation from now the people of Canada, if there any left, will look back in shame and amazement that people elected a party with no concern for the future.

- Corporate Tax-Cuts. Since the onset of Globalization, corporations have gained more and more power to control every aspect of our society. This will prove absolutely disastrous in the future. The income gap gets wider every year and Conservative policies are designed to increase this gap even further. The greater the income gap in a country, the worse its democratic (and usually economic) health is. In the next 25 years people will begin to see the real horrors that such policies bring about and they will know exactly who to blame.

- The death penalty. It is no secret that Harper and most of his supporters are avid advocates of the Death Penalty. They have been unwilling in recent years to make an issue of it publicly, but pressure from Harper's evangelical supporters will make it an issue soon. The world is slowly turning its back on the death penalty. It is barbaric and primitive and future generations will look upon it with the kind of shame with which we now look at slavery.

- Democratic reform. The Conservatives oppose any kind of democratic reforms and even seem to oppose an active citizenship involved in the democratic process. Almost every country in the world has abandoned the First-past-the-post system because it is unrepresentative and unfair. Within a generation a vast majority in Canada will be looking to ensure a fairer and more representative system and the Conservatives will continue to oppose it, demonstrating that they are a party of the past.

- Partisanship. Everyone, even his supporters, know that Harper is the most partisan leader this country has ever had. More and more people are looking for a more cooperative kind of politics. Young people everywhere are disengaged from democracy because they are turned off by the partisanship of politics today. The time has come for a new kind of politics and more socially minded political parties such as the NDP and the Greens are learning from this. The Conservatives are obsessively partisan to the point of attempting to destroy anyone in their way. They are not interested in discourse and compromise. This will be central to their downfall, just as it has been for the Liberals.

- Antiquated Social Agenda. The CPC has been trying to take us back to a past in which women and workers had no rights and gay people were criminals. Everywhere people are struggling to push forward a more enlightened social agenda. And we are slowly winning. Whenever the back--benchers in Harper's government finally get fed up and introduce private members bills that reflect their fundamentalist religious agenda, support for the CPC will dry up faster than a disappearing lake.

In every way that matters, the Harper government is a relic that deserves to be relegated to the dustbin of history. Historical progress often consists of one step forward two steps back. But the those who oppose a fairer, more democratic, economically more just, more cooperative world, will slowly be relegated to the past, where they belong. People are slowly waking up and this election is in fact a sign that change is coming. It often at the brink of real change that a certain percentage of people panic with a fear of what will come. In such a period of transition, those who are gripped with fear temporarily join the forces of darkness. But history eventually runs right over such resistance. Conservatives will enjoy their days in the sun just as reactionaries often have in history. But their end is near. Conservatives will always form a part of our political consciousness, but I believe that this is the last hurrah of this particular brand of 20th century neo-right christian fundamentalist conservatism. History has already made its verdict, it is only waiting for the rest of the people to catch up.

What do you think of Young MPs?

2011-05-05T10:48:00.000-04:00

I must say that the second most significant disappointment, after the election of a fascist majority, is the attacks on young MPs that are going on everywhere.

Next time you wonder why people between the ages of 18 and 25 don't vote just think of all the attacks that have been perpetrated against young MPs in the aftermath of this election. Young people are marginalized, belittled, and berated by the political establishment when they actually get involved. So why would they bother to vote? Do people really want the young involved or do they just want them to stay quiet and obedient? And for all of those who hate the NDP, just keep in mind this will just bring more young people to the party with the most women and the greatest number of youthful MPs ever elected. And eventually the next generation will crush the conservative agenda and eliminate the power of corporations to run our political system.

A few Quick thoughts on the Liberal Predicament. . . . .

2011-05-04T22:19:00.000-04:00

I have read a lot of bloggers, journalists, and radio call-in Liberals for a few days now. They have all sorts of reasons for the Liberal defeat and ideas about building it back to an important political party.

Let me pare it down to the simplest formula that I think really applies. NEW IDEAS! That is all that matters. For the past seven years or so the Liberals have simply not created a new set of policies that embraces real political reform, real transparency, real social democratic ideas, etc. They have been satisfied with little ideas like a few buck for students here, and a few dollars for homecare there. While many of them have been ok ideas, the Liberal Party simply needs BIG new ideas that will capture the imaginations of people.

If the Liberal Party really wants to rebuild, it needs to do rebuild not the party the ideas of the party. I really think that is what it is about. But if they try to simply get a new leader and run on the same old tired ideas, it really won't get them anywhere. The truth is that the Harper Conservatives have never "won" power. The other parties have 'lost.' The reason that this is clear is that the Conservative Party of Canada has NO new ideas, not-a-one. All their ideas are old ones from the Reagan era. A Party with new ideas that really look to the future will beat the Cons easily.

My message to Liberals, don't rest on your past. Be bold. Be radical. Invent a new politics and new ways for people to think about politics - that is what will win.

We'll change henceforth the old tradition. . . . .

2011-05-04T10:46:00.000-04:00

From Shelley's Mask of Anarchy -

Stand ye calm and resolute,
Like a forest close and mute,
With folded arms and looks which are
Weapons of unvanquished war.

And if then the tyrants dare,
Let them ride among you there,
Slash, and stab, and maim, and yew,
What they like, that let them do.

With folded arms and steady eyes,
And little fear, and less surprise
Look upon them as they slay
Til their rage has died away.

Then they will return with shame
To the place from which they came,
And the blood thus shed will speak
In hot blushes on their cheek.

Rise like lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number,
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you -
Ye are many, they are few!

A few thoughts on the so-called Election. . . . .

2011-05-03T18:46:00.000-04:00

Well I personally think the prospect of a Harper majority is deeply frightening. Harper has had ties to racist groups, he has been head of the largest organization in the country that opposes universal medical care (and social programs in general), he has clearly made statements in the past that indicate he would favor Western Separatism, he has said that he doesn't care about the unemployed, and he just generally embraces an ideology that favours that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. These are just very simple facts.

I also think it is hilarious that people continue to condemn members of the NDP for their inexperience and their supposed fiscal incompetence. First of all, provincial NDP governments have demonstrated that they can govern more or less like other parties regarding their fiscal 'responsibility.' But more than this, it doesn't matter that much to me anyway. Frankly, I would take an idealist who believes in social equality and helping the poor over a selfish, pro-corporate capitalist any day, regardless of their perceived competence.

The recriminations by a surprising number of Liberals against the NDP which continue apace, are also sort of amusing. I mean the gall of the NDP to actually take part in the democratic process and try to win seats! The victory of the Tories is a direct result of one thing; people voting for them. And many who voted for them were Ontarians who once voted Liberals but were afraid of the NDP.

At the opposite end of the spectrum I think it is a little ridiculous for people to talk about the death knell of the LPC. They basically won the same number of seats that the NDP won in the last election so why would they be out of the running for the next? Frankly, given how politics goes nowadays, I wouldn't be at all surprised if the LPC won the next election with a majority. Stranger things have certainly happened. I mean two months ago if I had suggested that the NDP would form the official opposition with more than 100 seats you would have said I was crazy. Imagine an invigorated party under the leadership of Justin Trudeau. He is young, attractive, charismatic, and obviously intelligent - there is no telling what he might achieve.

On the so-called 'merger' front, I don't think it is a great idea. The creation of a two party system in Canada is deeply troubling. The US system is profoundly broken and the US is on its way to bankruptcy and historical oblivion. And the divisive two-party struggles have helped to lead them there. I think a number of parties with different opinions helps society by increasing discourse and continually opening up possibilities. What we really need is not party mergers but meaningful political reform. This country is almost unique in its continued commitment to a first-past-the-post system, and it is time to change this. No party, not even ones I support, should ever have near dictatorial power, particularly after receiving only 35-40 percent of the vote. It is just wrong. And Harper has demonstrated that a man like him should NEVER have unchecked power.

As society becomes more complex and difficult, coalitions of all kinds will become more and more necessary. We need governments that leave their extreme partisanship at the door of the legislature and embrace discourse, cooperation, and compromise. This is the only way forward, without it we are doomed. With this in mind, I commend Elizabeth May and hope that her presence opens up the possibility of more discourse with an eye to more cooperation.

And lastly, keep in mind that Harper has demonstrated that his favoured political style is to govern by stealth. I predict he will attempt to destroy this country in the same way that he has in the past; through carefully placed non-legislative actions that undermine education, knowledge, equity, information, democracy etc. Just because Harper doesn't attempt to bring back the death penalty in the first year or outlaw abortion, or other directly legislative horrors, doesn't mean that he is not trying his best to destroy Canada as a viable social democracy. Make no mistake, Stephen Harper is a profoundly evil, twisted, religious extremist, and he will do anything to destroy civilization as we know it.

Dreamers of Dreams!!!!!!!

2011-05-01T11:10:00.000-04:00

"We are the Music-Makers and we are the Dreamers of Dreams!"

Vote for Change folks. Vote for a better world in which people, not corporations, really matter!

In the words of Percy Shelley, the greatest poet in the English language, 'the poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world."

Go out an legislate with the dreams of poetry and the policies that matter!

Gilles Duceppe has class if you ask me. . . .

2011-04-30T18:07:00.000-04:00

Once again, I am impressed by the straightforward attitude of Gilles Duceppe. Even though he has the most to lose from the new popularity of the NDP, when Duceppe was asked what he thought of the Jack Layton story that emerged yesterday, Duceppe simply brushed it aside and said Layton was not charged or even accused of a crime, therefore it has nothing to do with the campaign.

In this political atmosphere, that is class.

Does our Prime Minister believe in the Law???

2011-04-30T17:51:00.000-04:00

I have now watched the exchange between Harper and CBC reporter Terry Milewski a few times. Despite what Harper suggests, Milewski is not asking the Prime Minister to answer a hypothetical question. Rather, he is asking him to answer a simple legal question. To wit.; would he abide by the decision of the Governor General?

Harper's reply that he won't "reply to speculation," can be translated as Harper saying "I won't speculate on whether I will obey the law."

That is our Prime Minister. He is not willing to speculate on whether he will obey the law.

Answer the Question Mr. Harper. . . .

2011-04-30T16:41:00.000-04:00

As I, and other progressive bloggers, have been saying for years now, Harper has no respect for the Law or the constitution. Not that long ago, when the idea of an opposition threatened, John Baird made cryptic remarks to Don Newman about what the party might do to prevent another party taking power. Now we have Harper's abject refusal to say whether he would abide by a decision of the Governor General to give another party the opportunity to form a minority government.

The failure to say, in a matter of fact way, that as Prime Minister he would be bound by the most fundamental law of the land to abide by a ruling of the Governor General, is tantamount to an admission of treason.

To all those conservatives who have suggested for the past few years that our fears of Harper are purely ideological and exaggerated, how can you possibly not see now that Harper considers himself above the law? If any other party leader did not answer this kind of question Conservatives across the country would go bat-crap crazy. It is time to call this man out. He clearly has no intention of abiding by hundreds of years of parliamentary tradition or our constitution. Now we must ask him the question, if he actually lost an election would he willingly give up power??

Answer the question Prime Minister! Will you abide by the law or won't you??? It is a simple, straightforward question and the people deserve an answer.

Ignatieff has done well, and so has Jack Layton. . . .

2011-04-29T18:15:00.000-04:00

I have been reading the Liberal Bloggers very closely over the past couple of weeks and have watched their reaction to the supposed surge in the NDP and the failure of their own party. And I must say for the most part I am deeply disappointed. There are a few Liberals Bloggers who have acted with grace and dignity. They are willing to accept the failure of the Liberal Party in this election, if indeed it occurs (which I am not convinced will happen). The better Liberal Bloggers are even still willing to shift the onus of strategic voting onto their own party.

For the most part however, the Liberal Bloggers have been acting like genuine rogues. Dr. Johnson said that patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel, but we can adapt this to present conditions and say partisanship is the last refuge of a scoundrel. They are angry at the very idea that the NDP would call them on their five year record of supporting Harper's government and they act as though it is untoward for a political opponent to campaign. They have attacked the NDP with as much vehemence as they have attacked Harper and acted as though the NDP has run a corrupt and awful campaign. They have begun to call the NDP names like 'socialist' etc, with the same kind of marginalizing tactics that the Conservatives have traditionally used.

But for the most part the NDP has run a clean, positive, and respectful campaign. Yes, they have pointed out that the LPC has supported the Harper government on many occasions. This is not a negative campaign, just a fact, and one that arguably demonstrates a closeness that many voters are uncomfortable with. The only thing that upset me about the NDP campaign was the attack on Ignatieff for his voting absences in the House. This struck me as too personal and not reasonable given that Ignatieff has been trying to rebuild a party brand, an effort that surely took a great deal of time and effort. But I am not overly partisan. I am willing to say this was a wrong-headed strategy and I wrote to Jack Layton personally criticizing him for this.

The saddest thing about the Liberal attitude is that it belittles a very good campaign on Ignatieff's part. Ignatieff has been treated harshly by fate and doesn't deserve this given the decent campaign he has run. He is eloquent, solid, well-spoken, good on his feet, generally respectful, remarkably energetic etc. Given the campaign he has run, Ignatieff deserves to be much higher in the polls and I have nothing but respect for him. He has said a few things that have been untoward, and a few of his candidates have been a little problematic. But that is true of every party. Unless you are going to act like Harper, then you are bound to have some problems on the ground. (And even with all his micro-management some of Harper's people have screwed up badly and corruption has emerged during the campaign.)

But the NDP has captured people imagination and if that pans out on election day, they will have quite a few more seats than they did. But Liberals should recognize the difficulties faced by the NDP in this process. They have nowhere near the resources of the other two parties, and when the campaign started they figured they had little chance to go over, say, fifty seats. As a result it is not surprising that some of their candidates would not be as politically sharp as those in parties that have had long records of success. But no decent Liberals should suggest that the NDP doesn't deserve any success because of this. The voters will decide that point. Anytime a party finds sudden success, it is bound to hit some potholes along the way. Over time they will deal with that or, if they don't, they will pay for it with voters.

I don't know. Indignation can be good if it is directed at genuine malice or corruption. But anger from Liberals at the NDP is sadly misplaced. If Ignatieff bounces back and has lots of seats and prevents a Conservative majority, I will be glad to cheer him on. If the NDP has a hundred seats I will cheer them on and expect a lot of shaky times as they adjust to that new found success. It is sad that more Liberals can't take the same attitude.

Not to lose, is the Strategy of a Loser. . .

2011-04-29T12:33:00.000-04:00

This article in the Globe (shame on them for endorsing Harper!), asks "Will Harper Regret the Strategy of Running Not to Lose?" It is an interesting article that makes some very cogent points.

As I was reading the article it struck me how similar this strategy has been to recent events in high profile Chess tournaments. Realizing that the game had reached an almost inhumane level of complexity, chess masters began to play a very defensive game. Playing such a game makes it very difficult for your opponent to win because you concentrate on building a highly defensive position that is difficult to assail. It is a little bit like old time war in which a Lord (read Harper) and his forces could hunker down in a Medieval Battlement and it would become extremely difficult for an attacking army to score a victory.

To add to the attractiveness of this strategy, contemporary chess tournaments have a scoring system which guarantees a point (or a half a point) for a draw, and thus a player can conceivably win a tournament without ever having won a game. This actually led Bobby Fisher, one of the greatest, most innovative chess players ever, to suggest new rules for the game of chess to save it from the defensive corner into which it painted itself.

The problem with this set of circumstances should be obvious. It lowers the level of play overall and inhibits innovation, as well as rendering the overall effect boring for players as well as observers. In politics the result is essentially the same. Now, many of us may not mind politics being a little bit boring. After all, the most effective government is bound to be a little boring because success seldom generates controversy to the degree that failure (or even perceived failure) does. However, the reduction of innovation and the lowering of government's effectiveness is surely a major concern. And this is precisely what Harper and his 'playing not to lose' strategy has sought to do. By minimizing their public political plan to a couple of policies around which they believe their base can rally, such as prisons and fighter jets, Harper seeks to do the very minimum possible in order to appeal to just enough people and not be publicly so offensive that it will be counter productive. A corollary of this strategy has been to legislate in stealth as much as possible while in power and alienate as many people from the process of democracy as possible. The problem is, of course, that this is a strategy for running a campaign, not for running a country.

Real leader stand out front of the crowd with new ideas, innovative spirits, but also with human compassion and a love of engagement. A real leader does not live by scripted events, nor does he or she avoid of the press and the people. The strategy of a real leader is not to avoid losing but to go out on a limb to win! And the goal of winning for a real leader is not to win for him or herself, but for those very people that they lead.

Campaigning not to lose is already the greatest loss you can suffer. It means you have lost the very reason that you sought to run in the first place.

Ha, Ha . . . . . . .

2011-04-28T18:07:00.002-04:00

Bite me Tory hypocrites!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (Thanks to Buckdog)

A brief glimpse of Tory Hypocrisy and Hyperbole. . . .

2011-04-28T14:00:00.000-04:00

One need not be a particularly astute political observer to know that the Conservatives, as a general rule, only like democracy when it gives them the results they desire. It is no surprise then that as the NDP surges in the polls, Westerners suddenly begin to talk about separatism again. One Tory blogger, who gives away his own level of intelligence by displaying Glen Beck on his site (a man too mad even for FOX TV), predictably talks of "catastrophe," and "chaos" and "disaster." Ho-Hum. Pretty standard stuff I guess. He also mourns the prospect of federal employees having to be bilingual (OH, the Horror of it all!), and the "rape" of Western Canada with the procedes given to Quebec. (Really, is that all?) But then this Tory Blogger brings out the big guns of separatism!

But "unlike Quebec that uses it just as a threat for blackmail, western Canada namely Alberta would actually act." Now, putting aside the atrocious grammar and punctuation, it is some pretty heavy stuff wouldn't you say?

But "Chasing Apple Pie" (That really is the blogger's name), is apparently not the only one who harbours such opinions. One of his commentators, the aptly named "Clown Party," is even more ominous in his commentary. "I have said many times," the Clown tells us, "if the coalition gained power we would have an Eastern and Western Canada, just like North and South Korea." Wow, the rise in the NDP will not only result in chaos but in a die-hard communist state. It is a good thing the Clown warned us about this one or we might have become part of the axis of evil.

Meanwhile, another Tory blogger echos Sun TV and suggests that Jack Layton has the same politics as Russian Revolutionary leader Lenin.

Honestly, this is fun stuff. I love it. I find it amusing that Tories believe that anyone who favours a economic system which is more concerned with average people than with rich bankers is the same thing as a Russian Bolshevik. But let's face it these people seem to have never read a history book, nor do they seem to have any understanding of political theory or its practical application.

But the grandest irony of all is that while they suggest that the NDP will be soft on separatism, and therefor dangerous to national unity, they also talk of the need for Alberta to rise up in a separatist fervor. Which is it Tories? Is Separatism good or bad? I guess just like democracy, for Tories separatism is only good for them but not for the other guy.

Why I don't vote for the Green Party. . . .

2011-04-28T09:28:00.000-04:00

I have a lot of sympathy for the Green Party on many issues. I essentially believe that Canada should have little or no standing military, we should have a much stronger education system, I think you might as well legalize marijuana at this point, etc, etc. I also believe that the Green Party is right that there is an environmental crisis in this country and the world in genreal.

However, I would not vote for the Green Party for the very simple reason that they believe that a 'market' approach can solve the environmental crisis. In other words, the Green Party is essentially a socially liberal, financially right-wing party.

This is the problem in a nut shell. The Green Party believes that they can shift the tax burden away from income (both personal and corporate) and put the majority of taxes onto the consumption of Carbon. There are two basic problems with this. One is that it would badly hurt rural and low-income people. It doesn't matter how much you attempt to compensate this portion of the population in the short term, they will ultimately suffer a great deal more than wealthy people. That is just the way it is, whether the Greens like it or admit it. The second problem with this tax shift approach is that it is by definition self-defeating. The objective of such a policy is to lower the amount of carbon products that people consume. (This is where they think the "market" forces will kick in). However, in this plan if carbon usage is reduced radically so is the government's taxation revenue and you are going to be forced to shift the taxes back to income anyway.

I don't believe in letting the so-called market solve the problem for which it is responsible in the first place. The answer to the environmental problems is to regulate producers of carbon and carbon producing products, to make huge investments in alternative energy, and to heavily regulate the production and use of chemicals in general. Corporations have demonstrated again and again that they will not be environmentally responsible unless they are forced to be. And alternative producers in advanced technological markets simply need help because the entrance requirements (in financial terms) are simply too high to depend on so called innovation and entrepreneurship.

And let us not forget that environmental organizations and activists have consistently given the NDP higher marks for their environmental policies than the Green Party.

Stop the Fear-Mongering folks. . . .

2011-04-27T17:21:00.000-04:00

To all those hacks out there who love to spread fear concerning the financial "chaos" that they say would be caused by having the NDP anywhere close to power. Take a look at the records. Provincial NDP governments have a good record of balancing budgets, and in terms of numbers actually a better percentage record than Conservative governments.

And just for the record the present Finance Minister left his job as the Finance Minister of Ontario with a 5 Billion dollar deficit, and that was during good financial times. And he has gone on to oversee the largest federal deficit in history. So haters just need to get a grip on themselves and stop the lying and fear-mongering.

A pre-mortem, post-mortem. . . . .

2011-04-26T11:08:00.000-04:00

I have said a number of times that the Liberals are going to lose this election because they failed to present themselves as a meaningful alternative to the Conservatives.

But there are, I think, other significant reasons that they have failed to make any traction with the electorate. One is that, just like they did with Dion, the Liberals let the Conservatives define Ignatieff's image from the beginning. I think it is pretty clear that it was blindly foolish for the Liberals not to immediately fight back on the question of Ignatieff's image. I suspect that the Liberals were doomed from the start just as they were when the Dion didn't call the Conservatives out at the beginning of his tenure as leader. Ignatieff then spent a couple of years telling us how bad the Conservatives were and how he was going to put a stop to them but he kept acquiescing. No one likes someone who claims that they are going to stand up to a bully and then walks away at the last minute.

Another big issue was, I believe, that the Liberals party seems to be totally oblivious to the issues of personal image. Ignatieff lacks charisma, for sure, but he also presents people with a rather harsh and difficult appearance. I guess the LPC didn't have money put aside in their budget for a personal image consultant. Because if they had they could have trimmed his eyebrows, put glasses on him and made him gain a little bit of weight. Etc. This kind of thing may be meaningless in some senses but it is simply a reality in a world of TV and Sound-bytes.

Finally, I think the Liberals would have faired much better if they had been more open to cooperation with the NDP. They should really have presented this election as a sort of national emergency similar to WWII, in which cooperation is temporarily necessary to save the nation. They could have created an entire narrative about the dangers of Harper and Baird actively undermining the constitution etc. In this way the Liberals could actually have stolen the narrative of fear from the Conservatives and Harper would have had a hard time getting it back. It is not the most classy way to win an election but I bet it would have worked.

Having said all of this, I think talk of the demise of the Liberals Party has been greatly exaggerated. They won't win this election, but there are a number of scenarios that could easily bring them back. The biggest problem they have is that Harper has managed to steal the centre (if only in people's perception) and has worked to bring the country to the right slowly and by stealth. This is what he said he wanted to do in a number of speeches in the 1990s. The Liberals simply have not found a way to react to this. But if Harper were to win a majority and shift farther right on important issues, the Liberals could easily rebound by default of regaining the centre.

Give me a Break already with William And Kate. . . . !

2011-04-26T08:39:00.000-04:00

Can someone tell me why the Flat Earth Society has withered and died but the British Royal family lives on? I mean they are both equally antiquated and ridiculous institutions! Watching all the hubbub about the royal wedding, any vaguely rational person must scratche their head in wonder at how silly it all seems.

I have heard the rather tired and hackneyed arguments defending the monarchy, but they are all as ridiculous as the monarchy itself. Some people claim that the monarchy is supposed to act as some sort of model or inspiration for the people. And of course, societies do seem to need people to whom they look for inspiration and stability. However, people should occupy these social positions should do so by merit not because of some antiquated, historically oppressive institution. Frankly, I gain inspiration from people who work hard to achieve things at a personal and social level. Great philanthropists, great writers, charity workers, inventors, feminist activists, these are the kinds of people who deserve our respect and should serve as our role models.

One other argument that people make to defend the monarchy is the idea of tradition; that is to say that they tie us to history and help us maintain some sense of continuity. Well, that would be a fine argument if the Royal Family was in anyway a positive model of tradition. Some traditions we dispence with because they are a negative rather than a positive image of our past. We don't still have public hangings, don't keep slaves. But these were once 'traditions.'

No, the whole thing is hopelessly ridiculous and must be dispensed with.

Who would really be handing Harper a Majority????

2011-04-25T19:39:00.000-04:00

I must say that I am baffled by the arguments that many Liberals are putting forward in which they condemn Layton and the NDP as somehow 'handing Harper a majority.' For one thing it seems a distinctly anti-democratic argument, very simpilar to the one put forward by the very same Liberals against the Conservatives for telling the country that the "election is unnecessary." But at a more basic, rational level the argument seems odd because the NDP and the Liberals are, by many accounts equal in the polls. And if the Liberals and the NDP are even in the polls then the argument can in fact run either way. NDP supporters could just as equally complain that Ignatieff should stop campaigning so hard and let the NDP win, or else he could be "handing Harper a majority." In other words, not only is the argument being put forward by many Liberals distinctly anti-democratic, it is very clearly logically flawed.

The real fact is, and the one that Liberals should be upset by is this - if Harper were to win a majority while the Liberals and NDP (and other parities) have significantly more popular support, it is a flawed political system that hands Harper the majority, not any particular party that is only rightly taking part in the democratic system. It is the system that is flawed and unjust, not any specific political party. But unfortunately, few Liberals are willing to make this argument because they have, historically, benefited from the injustices of our first-past-the-post system. The Liberal Party of Canada has often held absolute power without actually enjoying a majority of popular support, and they don't want to change it because they are hoping to enjoy that power again at some point.

I call on Liberals to finally put the blame where the blame belongs - squarely at the feet of an antiquated political system rather than with people who are trying to exercise their basic political rights.

Marxism and the Continued Cold-War Rhetoric of the Right. . . . .

2011-04-25T15:43:00.000-04:00

Am I the only one who is amazed by the Conservatives who condemn fairly mainstream centrists and mild leftists with epithets such as "Marxist" and "Communist" because they are vaguely critical of the extremes of neo-liberalsim and afraid of the implications of a Prime Minister who refuses to adhere to the rules of our constitution? Has the level of knowledge and discourse fallen this far, or are these just the ignorant wackos on the conservative end of the spectrum? I would like to opt for the explanation of ignorance because anyone who is twisted enough to know anything about Marxism and freely use the label to characterize Liberal Party bloggers is absolutely beyond the pale of regular political discussion.

This is not to imply that defining Marxism, for example, is an easy or uncontroversial matter. I spent years studying Marxism and still find the question to be a fairly thorny one. Some people emphasize the Sociological aspect of Marx's work, and I am somewhat sympathetic to this idea. Though he did not originate the idea, Marx was a very important promoter of the notion that people's personal a social behaviour is a result of their socio-economic context of their lives. This idea has permeated so deeply into our collective minds that it seems almost obvious today. The idea can be found to varying degrees in German and English philosophers before Marx, but his work on economics and class gave new power to the idea and it is now an inescapable part of our social and political consciousness. Even deeply conservative thinkers use such notions today.

Others emphasize the Economic aspect of Marx's work. I have never been fond of this approach for many reasons. I am fairly distrustful of the methodology of Economics for one thing. For another, it doesn't seem to me that Marx did much strictly 'economic' work. His economic ideas always seem inexorably intertwined to his politics and so, like many leftists, I don't think economics as a separate study really means much except in the way that capitalists use it to disguise the political implications of economic issues. (One could say a lot about this subject particularly in regard to the 'labour theory of value' and the notion of so-called 'surplus value,' as well as Marx's complex notion of 'Alienation.')

Some are more interested in the idea of Marx as a philosopher of history. This is indeed an interesting topic. Marx's notion of history as a motion pushed forward by conflict between social and economic classes is fascinating. I am putting this in very simple terms here because I obviously cannot discuss the complex issues of Hegelian dialects etc., but I think most people get the point. I think, whether they realize it or not, most people who are attracted to Marxian ideas are attracted to this aspect of his thinking. And as compelling as it can be, as time has gone by I lost my attachment to such a historicist notion for many reasons. Traditional rationalism has lost most of its appeal to me and this historical model seems to be a mental construct that we thrust onto historical events. History and the social order seem much more random and chaotic than this to me now.

And then there are, of course, more complex aspects of Marxist theory such as the philosophical outlooks of thinkers like Lois Althusser. We obviously cannot discuss these in this context because there is just too much to say and investigate.

Anyway, in the complex web of all of these notions of Marxism, not one of them would make any Liberal bloggers I have read, a Marxist. Because simply being influenced by the impact of Marx's thought on simple sociological analysis does not make one a Marxist. Surely to be considered a Marxist one must adhere to some degree to idea that history moves forward through class conflict, that the capitalist order is a historical phenomenon which is by no means "natural," that capitalist development leads to the possibility of a different, more cooperative social and economic order, that as a system of production capitalism begins to become a fetter on itself, that is to say at some point many aspects of Capitalist production will lose their promotion of efficiency and innovation. These are the kinds of things that make one, in any sense, a Marxist. However, the idea that one is a Marxist because one is critical of the arbitrary use of state power, the dangers of an anti-democratic tendency in our executive branch of government, etc is patently absurd. Even a commitment to a semi-socialist, mixed economy, does not make one a Marxist, or even a 'socialist' in any serious sense.

Ironically, many of those who carelessly throw labels like Marxist and Communist around as a political strategy, claim to be concerned with the power of the government and the so-called nanny-state. Of course, this is largely a fantasy. Modern right-wing governments actively overspend, consistently create larger state structures, and are fully in favour of legislating moral behaviour when it offends their particular sensibilities.

It is very unfortunate that many in this country continue to use to the inflammatory (and meaningless) discourse of the cold-war in attempting to marginalize anyone who believes in social democracy or is cautious of political groups that seem to have little regard for constitutionalism. The fact is that capitalism as it now exists is nothing like the innovative, free-market system that it was, say, a hundred and fifty years ago. Already, we have a profoundly regulated, partially socialized economy. And if a party in Canada actually ran on a strong 'capitalist' and socially right-wing agenda they would have significantly less of a chance to win than the NDP does today. The vast majority of people have accepted some 'socialism,' extensive regulation, and a progressive tax system. Thus to try to marginalize people as 'socialists' or 'Marxists' is not only usually factually wrong but deeply disingenuous.

This Just Demonstrates that the Liberals deserve to Lose.

2011-04-23T13:30:00.001-04:00

I must admit that I shouldn't be surprised by the atrocious Liberal ad against Jack Layton. Common sense should suggest that after years of such ads used against them by the Conservative Party, the Liberals would know better.

This ad could have been crafted by the worst elements in Harper's cadre. Proof positive of what so many of us have been saying for ages now - the Liberals really are just the flip side of the Conservative Party. Ignatieff will lose and he deserves to lose. He has supported the Conservative government over and over on issues vital to workers and families. During the election campaign he has tried to portray himself as far left of where he is, and now the Liberals are using typical Conservative tactics as soon as they see a threat from a party that actually has alternative policies to the Tories.

And for all those Liberals hacks who have the gall to incriminate the NDP in the process, it just won't do. Yes, Layton and the NDP have been critical of the Liberals but that critique has been soundly based in real policy issues. Fact: the Liberals are the party that really started the entire corporate friendly tax approach in the 1990s. Fact: the Liberals have consistently supported the Harper government on issue after issue including a number of anti-union and anti-labour issues. These have been the thrust of NDP criticisms of Ignatieff and the Liberals. The Liberals can run from the their record of supporting the Conservatives but it is the job of the NDP and others to keep this record in people's minds. But this latest Liberal ad is just a typical Conservative-style fear-mongering ad that has nothing to do with reality. The Liberals can no longer accuse the Conservatives of being the party of fear-mongering because they have fallen into line as I expected they would.

If you wake up after the election and find a Harper government or a Liberal one, will it really make any difference? Not nearly as much as the LPC would have you believe.

Liberals vs NDP. . . .

2011-04-21T12:31:00.001-04:00

The tone of some Liberal bloggers against the NDP as it begins to rise in the polls is remarkable. They call NDP supporters names and suggest that they are inherently 'hypocritical,' 'disingenuous,' and even 'cozy with the Conservatives.' This is amazing to me. I believe that I am never a blind partisan. I have been very critical at times of Layton especially in the days when he failed to condemn the invasion of Afghanistan. And it was rather opportunist of Layton to only turn against the Afghan invasion when it became apparent that the vast majority of NDP supporters were getting upset about the policy. But while I am more than glad to criticize any party when it is appropriate, I also understand that a basic level of pragmatism is expected in politics. But for Liberals to suggest that the NDP is somehow more hypocritical or cozier with the Conservatives than the Liberal party has been is so patently absurd that I just find it amazing that they would have the nerve to level such charges.

But as expected these accusations are bound to be on the rise now that the NDP has shown some life in the polls. But the Liberals really need to look at themselves for their failures, and not at the NDP. The fact is that the Liberals have moved so far right under Ignatieff that it is not surprising that people are looking for alternatives. Even Liberal heavyweights like Warren Kinsella (who is willing to work for Sun Media) have complained about this.

It is time that the Conservatives stopped characterizing the NDP as a socialist party, and that the Liberals stopped attacking the NDP for simple political expediency. Even if one rejects their policies, the NDP is a moderate, centre-left party with policies that are by no means socialist. They are a long way from the NDP of the 1970s and they don't call for the mass nationalization of industry. Rather, like most modern social democrats, the NDP supports a mixed economy in which universalism in healthcare and education are basic principles, and in which the people and the government are not simply at the behest of Bay Street and large corporations. There is nothing particularly radical about these beliefs. In fact modern Neo-Liberal conservatives are considerably more extreme than the NDP because they really represent the colonization of our social and political institutions by corporatism. And the Liberals are not far behind the Conservatives in regard to this outlook. Furthermore, regardless of what Liberal bloggers say, the NDP caucus has generally acted with more decorum and dignity in the House than either the Liberals or the Conservatives. And this is, I believe, reflected in Layton's overall positive image.

Most of all I am disturbed by the tendency of so many Liberals to attack the NDP for even being in the political process because, they suggest, NDP supporters are just playing into Harper's hands by splitting the vote, as though they are actually doing it intentionally to help the Conservatives. It is ironic that the Liberals would slay the NDP for taking part in the democratic process given the criticisms they have levelled at Harper for saying that we "don't need this election." Granted, vote splitting can be a real concern under circumstances in which you have an extreme right party that threatens to take power. And I, for one, support strategic voting where it is appropriate. But it is fundamentally wrong to criticize the NDP for simply taking part in the process of democracy. The same is true of people who vehemently criticize the Bloc for it very existence. Regional parties are a reality in many parts of the world, and they have a perfectly legitimate right to exist. We may object to their divisive nature an disagree with their policies, but to act as though they have no right to represent their constituents is fundamentally undemocratic.

Democracy is a messy business and something for which we must continually struggle. In an era of globalization and corporate power, parties like the NDP are essential to maintaining healthcare, education, democracy, social justice, and equal opportunity. I truly believe that the Liberals have failed to defend these principles in recent years and some people, at least in Quebec, are finally looking toward a party that might stand up for what is right. If Liberals are really upset by their failure to gain traction with many voters maybe they should look to their own leaders for failing to create policies that are really alternative to the incumbents.

Will our Constitution Survive?

2011-04-20T14:31:00.000-04:00

I think it is sad that the majority of Canadians don't understand the basic workings of their own government. This ignorance speaks to a major failure of the education systems across the country as well as to the apathy brought on by relative prosperity.

But while this ignorance is sad, and somewhat dangerous, it is no less than morally repugnant that the Conservative Government would exploit this ignorance for party political gain. This combination of ignorance and partisanship demonstrates that the democratic freedoms which we take for granted are extremely tenuous and can give way at any time. If the citizens of a nation are unaware of their rights and responsibilities, and equally unaware of the processes and limitations of their government, they cannot be called upon to defend themselves or their institutions.

We must demand, above everything else, constitutional accountability from our elected officials. Because regardless of a party's particular beliefs or policies, if we cannot depend upon them to stand up for the constitution, then all the rest can be swept aside like gossamer.

We are Winning the War. . . .

2011-04-19T13:25:00.001-04:00

Whenever I would get down about the world and the difficult struggles to make human society better in the face of those who would keep us down, my father would always remind of something.

"Remember," he would tell me, "the forces of conservatism may win many of the battles, but we progressives have always been winning the war."

And he was right of course. Despite the best efforts of conservatives we progressives outlawed slavery. Despite conservatives' efforts, women won their democratic rights. Regardless of conservatives, we progressives won the right to organize, have safer workplaces, and the right to a minimum wage. Thanks to progressives gay people have the right to marriage in many places and these rights will continue to increase. Despite conservatives' efforts we have the right to vote and the Great Writ. Despite what conservatives want, we are slowly winning the war of civilization. Sometimes it feels like one step forward and two steps back, but we are winning the war for rights, equality, fairness, justice, and democracy. The conservatives win their share of battles but the very fact that your children don't work in coal mines for 16 hours a day the way conservatives wanted to keep them, means we are winning the war. And we will continue the fight.

I miss you Dad, but I am still fighting, and your grand-daughter will keep fighting after I am gone.

Liberals vs Tories, some ideological and historical observations. . . . .

2011-04-19T11:27:00.001-04:00

I have written a fair degree lately about the differences (or lack thereof) between the Liberals and the Conservatives. I haven't elaborated a great deal on specific policy issues in part because I really think that policies are often over-emphasized in that kind of debate because the Liberal party so often campaigns from left of Centre and governs from right of centre, and the Cons thus far have done their most damage in non-legislative ways. I think the most important areas of overlap between the Cons and the Liberals are environmental policies, foreign policies, Israel (at least with Ignatieff as leader), tax policy, and though the Liberals have made a big deal about healthcare, neither party has a very solid record of defending universalism on this file. The Liberals have also supported the Conservative government on a number of important labour issues over the past few years. These are all important issues in which I feel that the Liberals are so far right that I don't particularly trust them over the Conservatives. On the other hand, the Liberals have made some efforts on a number of issues that have been important. Their efforts for universal childcare was something the Cons would never have done, as well as their efforts in the Kelowna accord, and let's face it if the Liberals had not been in office from the early 90s to mid 00s we would still be fighting for gay marriage in the courts (and I think the Cons may have attempted to use the so-called notwithstanding clause to stop gay marriage).

But regardless of all of these differences and similarities, there is an important conceptual difference between most Liberals and most Conservatives that I think should not be overlooked. And that difference is that in my personal experience Liberals usually engage in actual political discourse while Conservatives just have no interest in discourse. Conservatives ruthlessly pursue a corporatist, and reactionary agenda regardless of any notion of facts, and their agenda often completely contradicts their stated moral positions. Most Conservatives have no interest in a society of equality, justice, freedom, or prosperity. Instead they want society to reflect some twisted notion of social Darwinism. Most of them naively believe that if they pursue a Conservative agenda they will have a society that is more or less a 'meritocracy' and that those who are not worthy will get more or less what they deserve. Now, besides the fact that Conservative policies are not at all about social Darwinsim, merit based achievement, or their greatest fantasy, the "free-Market," rank and file Conservative supporters are deluded into believing this spin, while the wealthy and conservative leaders are just laughing at the naivety of their supporters who have been more or less duped into supporting an agenda that talks about 'freedoms,' 'markets,' and a 'natural order,' while pursuing policies that ensure that the rich get richer and the entire social order and legal system favours those who already have money and power.

But you cannot talk to Conservatives about these issues because most don't even have the vaguest idea what is actually going on; they don't begin to understand the social and economic relations of society, they have little notion of the modern history of conservatism, and, despite their fervent support of it, they haven't the slightest notion of how their treasured 'market' is actually working. On the other hand, I think many small "l" as well as large "L" liberals understand many of the basics of the social relations under which they live and function. Most liberals understand that there is no such thing as a "free-market," that the economic system as it exists heavily favours those who already have wealth and power, that a modern government has to go to fairly great lengths to ensure anything like equality of opportunity, and society only works because of a fundamental human cooperation. And even Liberals who don't entirely endorse these positions, can discuss them with a degree of enlightenment and interest. I have even heard a powerful and wealthy man like Paul Martin discuss such issues with what seems like a genuine interest in justice and equality. On the other hand, even a vague suggestion of these issues elicits ridiculous charges of Bolshevism from hopelessly misinformed Conservatives. This discursive and ideological difference between Conservatives and Liberals should not be overlooked even by the most radical among us because it addresses the important differences in outlook from way back in the days of English Whigs and Tories.

When one looks back to the late 18th century when the modern political identities were created and defined, the pitch battles between the great Charles James Fox and William Pitt demonstrated something essential about the difference between liberals and conservatives. Something that was central to Fox and the Whigs was that they knew that the revolution in France had come about because when people are treated horribly and live in wretched conditions they will eventually revolt. Fox knew that you simply could not keep supporting the system of exploitation and suppression without some serious political and social results. Pitt and the ensuing generations of Toryies really seemed to believe that the inequalities in society were a result of some kind of natural order or natural selection and they thought that they could maintain that order more or less forever. This didn't begin to change until the Red Tories led by George Canning (known as the Canningites) realized that reforms were at the very least necessary to the survival of Britain. Historically "red" Tories have been those Conservatives who have understood the ideological issues that I outlined above. And so-called red Toryism has occasionally become the dominent form of Conservatism in Britain, Canada, and other Commonwealth nations. Anyone who is familiar with men like Rab Butler and Harold Macmillan understands this basic issue.

In other words, there are, I believe, important historical and ideological differences between Liberals and Conservatives. Unfortunately we are now in a period of extreme Torysim and the Liberals have more or less gone along with the swing of this pendulum so the similarities between the two parties seem particularly distasteful to many on the left. But this pendulum swings on a regular historical basis and things will change again and the differences between Liberals and Conservatives will seem more significant and important, and the 'people' will benefit.

For my part, I continue to be far left of the Liberals and even left of the NDP. However, I think these historical and discursive issues need to be understood and talked about so that people can maintain, in Gramsci's words, an optimism of the will.

Harper Promises 5 Billion to fight Jackalopes. . . . . .

2011-04-18T15:52:00.003-04:00

At a hustings stop in Alberta this morning, Prime Minister warned that if the Canadian people failed to give his government a majority, the ensuing instability in the nation would result in an dangerous influx of Jackalopes in Canada.

"The Socialists and Separatists, have no regard for the dangers of a Jackalope invasion," Haper told the cheering crowd. "During our time in government, there has been only a handful of Jackalope sightings in Canada. However, the instability that would come with another minority government would surely embolden the Jackalopes who have remained in hiding until now, ready to pounce upon Canadian farms and towns, thus ending our way of life." The speech was delivered with an unusual amount of passion for Steven Harper, who is not known for his expressive style. "A vote for the Liberals," Harper continued, "is a vote for a serious Jackalope invasion."

When asked by one reporter what plans his government had for dealing with the imminent influx of Jackalopes, he made a major policy announcement that included five billion dollars for new drone planes to monitor areas of high Jackalope activity. When another reporter asked Harper to respond to claims by the opposition parties that Jackalopes don't in fact exist, the Prime Minister replied that "most Jackalope encounters go unreported and it is another example of the opposition ignoring a major problem faced by Canadians." Haper then went on to point out that the leader of the New Democratic Party was known to be Jackalope sympathizer.

NDP Surge?

2011-04-18T10:21:00.000-04:00

It is interesting to see the NDP running so high in the polls. There is little doubt in my mind that some of this support will leak away as we near the election, primarily because many people are rightly afraid of the very idea of a Harper majority.

There are many possible reasons that pundits could give for any growing popularity in NDP support. Some may say it is purely an electoral phenomenon. And maybe this is true. We certainly need to see some increases in the size of the NPDs popular vote during a couple of elections before we can say that the NDP is a new force in Canadian politics. However, growing support in Quebec is a good sign for anyone who would like to see the NDP play a more significant role in the Canadian political landscape.

If the NDP results (in votes if not in seats) do begin to show a marked improvement, I believe this will be the result of three major factors. One is that many people are just fed up with the two primary parties and believe, rightly so, that any real change in politics is going to have to come from a new force on the scene. Despite all the abuses the Conservative Party have perpetrated in recent years, their primary political opponent has said almost nothing about political reform. From any normal observer's point of view it really looks like, despite all of their complaints about political abuses of the Conservatives, all the Liberals really want to do is get power so that they can once again enjoy the kind of unchecked power that the PMO affords. The second issue is that people are finally waking up to the fact that, despite what the Conservatives would have us believe, the NDP is hardly the radical socialist party that many people thought it was. And the third issue is that the LPC and the CPoC are, as a group, occupying all of the space from the centre to the right. Though the Liberals continue to pursue some policies that are soft-left-of-centre, they also hold certain policies that are so close to the Conservatives that there is little or nothing to distinguish them. In other words the NDP are the only real alternative at the moment to the two primary parties which operate more or less like an oligopoly.

In other words, despite all the talk of unifying the "left," the truth is that the LPC is over all closer to the Conservatives than they are to the NDP, at least on many of the issue that count for many people. This might change after the election and the Liberals feel compelled to look long and hard at their identity. But the fact is that for the past 15 years or so the Liberal Party has become a Party of Corporatism no less than the Conservative party. And if Harper were to gain a majority and not suddenly shift right with an effort to outlaw abortion, bring back the death penalty, and scrap the Canada Health Act, then the Liberals would have even more trouble distinguishing themselves fromt he Conservatives.

Of course, if Harper were to gain a majority and then actually make these ultra-right legislative changes, then you can disregard everything I have said here because the Conservatives would be utterly wiped out in the next election and the Liberals would once again own the political landscape. In these circumstances, the NDP would once again shrink away to the 12-15% area.