New Books this week. . . .

This week's books in the mail - 

The Journals of Dorothy Wordsworth. This is one of the most interesting documents in English Literature. Ms Wordsworth had a renown intellect and her journalistic records, particularly during the years when Samuel Coleridge was the close friend of her and her brother, have been invaluable not only to academics but to anyone with an interest in Romantic literature. The saddest part of reading Dorothy Wordsworth's journals are the realization that if not for the misogyny of the society in which she lived or the sexism of the men closest to her, she may have matured into great writer. 

Charles Lamb and His Contemporaries - by Edmund Blunden. This is a book that came from Blunden's Clark Lectures in 1932 and is an excellent little text on Lamb. Blunden wrote a great deal about the Romantic writers with a great deal of insight and understanding. And of course Blunden as a renown poet and writer in his own right, and he passes his skill with words on to his criticism as well, making it exceptionally readable and always enjoyable. 

Prufrock. . . . .

From The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. . . 

Let us go then, you and I,

When the evening is spread out against the sky

Like a patient etherised upon a table;

Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,

The muttering retreats

Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels

And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells;

Streets that follow like a tedious argument

Of insidious intent

To lead you to an overwhelming question . . . 

Oh, do not ask, "What is it?"

Let us go and make our visit.

In the room the women come and go

Talking of Michelangelo.

This has always been one of my favorite poems because it is a stroll through the human condition; it is a free association, a Flâner through the world without the demands of purposive-rational action that motivates most of our actions today. The poem also reminds me of the degree to which people walk around as though dead in a dying culture. 

I encourage you to read it and enjoy it. http://www.bartleby.com/198/1.html

Mossad hit squads. . .

It is something we all know already; something that has never been in doubt; the Mossad is using professional assassination squads to kill leaders of any group or party that opposes the continual, and illegal moves of the State of Israel to take all of the Palestinian land for themselves. Surprise, surprise! Let's not forget that these are the people that invented modern terrorism in guise of the Stern-Gang and other groups. It is remarkable to me that those who blindly support Israel and condemn their opponents as terrorists forget the history that led to the formation of the State of Israel. 

These are the same people that condemn almost every Palestinian group as terrorist, forgetting or ignoring the fact that Israel continually builds illegal settlements on occupied land, pushing Palestinians families off their land and keeping them penned like cattle in terrible refugee camps with no hope for the future. If that is not a form of terrorism, I don't know what is. This is not, and never has been, a religious issue. It is a simple issue of a paramilitary state hungry for power and land which will stop at nothing to get it, including using a warped biblical argument that God promised all the region to the Jewish people. Sadly there will be no peace in the Middle East until the people of Israel admit that Palestinian people are entitled to a state of their own or equal participation in the State of Israel. I think a one state solution is best - a state that treats all the citizens of the region equally, a state in which everyone is a stakeholder together in prosperity, peace and democracy. But if the wounds run too deep and a two state solution is the only one possible, then it is not difficult. Go back to the original UN boarders, give a right of return to the refugees, and put just a fraction of the money that the West has put into Israel to make a Palestinian state viable and prosperous. But the State of Israel has always been just as terroristic and intransigent as the worst of the Palestinian groups and they won't even entertain the possibility of the elimination of the illegal settlements. 

Settlements require compromise and if you are unwilling to compromise then you can hardly condemn others for their intransigence. And if you are willing to rob people of their land and hire assassination squads and build one of the largest militaries in the world then how can you reasonably condemn others for using any means at their disposal to defend their interests. Only when the West is willing to admit that the expansionist moves of the State of Israel are as much moves of terror as missiles and bombs that anyone will be able to move forward to any kind of real peace negotiations. 

The next political error?

As has consistently been the case, in good times or bad Harper and his conservative bullies have never been able to resist any chance they have to be hyper-partisan and to stick it to their opponents in the House. They obsessively hate the fact that other parties exist and they are particularly angry that, because they are forced to work with a minority, the opposition has the ability to set certain terms in the legislative process. After all, nothing bothers a tyrant more than checks on his tyranny. 

So given their history of 'bill in mouth' disease, what will they come up with in the throne speech, which we will hear soon, to further poison the already toxic atmosphere that they have worked so hard to create in Ottawa. We know there will be something. One of the greatest moments of political irony I have ever witnessed was the one where Stephen Harper told the country that the opposition was intransigent and was unwilling to make Parliament work and therefore he was 'forced' to call an election. Harper is desperate to destroy democratic processes in any way that he can in pursuit of his elusive majority and the highest weapon in his arsenal is the creation of a toxic atmosphere that alienates a large segment of the population from the political process completely, thus leaving himself with a core of right-wing voters, making his political demise much less likely. 

Just over a year ago Harper's proposed poison pill was the elimination of the dollar seventy-five per vote funding that political parties receive for each vote they get. This was a blatant attempt to undermine political diversity in the country. This would have happened because the more MPs a party has, the more financial incentives they get to do their work in and out of parliament as well as receiving the greatest incentive, and the one that is in a sense priceless, which is the built in advertising that they get from having a high profile in the House. Even its strongest advocates agree that the First Past the Post system has some problems and the largest of these is that it can leave huge portions of the population completely unrepresented in the Legislative process. The per vote grant is a very small way of trying to correct this problem because a party that receives, say, ten percent of the vote but no representatives can still do some of the work necessary for a political party to continue to contribute to the political agenda of the country. There is talk that Harper may attempt to revisit this poison pill one more time in the next Throne Speech. 

But Harper definitely has something of a dilemma. And that dilemma is that he has done so many small things to undermine democracy and stick it to the opposition that he has very little left to do that would not be so obviously provocative and anti-democratic that it would not bring down serious voter anger upon his head. The last stupid move that Harper made was the prorogation of parliament which created something of a political storm. 

But I am sure that Harper will come up with something to further poison the political atmosphere in Ottawa. The irony is that most of Harper's anti-democratic moves have been small, quiet, behind the scenes moves that few people notice and even fewer understand. Because of this, it has always been Harper's big, public, stupid mistakes that have continued to mire him in a minority position. And any real conservative would understand that not only is he not really a Conservative (only an opportunist), but that if Harper cannot deliver a majority when his had the sponsorship scandal and Dion as opposition leader, he probably will never be able to deliver one. However as a tyrant, Harper was smart enough to completely gut the Conservative Party of any decent potential replacements which makes it nearly impossible for the Conservatives to get rid of him without placing themselves back into the proverbial political wilderness. 

But they will come up with something, either an intentional poison pill or an ill-considered stupid, bull in a china shop sort of move that will send us once again into a political fire-storm. What will it be? 

What's wrong with decent pensions???

I can only conclude that people are even more ignorant and reactionary than I usually think they are. In the past few days the media has been talking a lot about public service pensions on the heels of a meeting between Stockwell Day and the two largest unions which represent federal employees. Over and over I have heard media commentators as well as many in the public (via talk radio, blogs, and letters to the editor) who are harping on about how 'rich' the public sector pensions are and how the public servants live 'high off the hog' and how they need to be cut because workers in the 'private sector' don't have such indulgent pensions. 

Now, putting aside the fact that the public servant pensions are not all that rich and in some cases barely livable, and the fact that MPs like Pierre Poillievre qualify for much 'richer' pensions, (and in his case at the age of 32), so what if they were very good pensions??!! Why do people react to a decent pension for some people by saying 'let's cut those suckers!' If were accused of a minor crime  in a Banana republic and the judge decided on a whim to have you hanged and your accomplice set free, would your reaction be to call for your accomplice to also be hanged or for you to also be set free???? The injustice is that fact that a majority of working people in this country don't have a decent pension, not that a few public sector employees do! Instead of buying into the Conservative propaganda that public servants are a bunch of lazy know-nothings living like kings off taxpayer's dollars, people should be actively working to join and strengthen unions that encourage and commit to pensions, or to work to make some form of universal pension that will ensure everyone a good life in their elderly years. If Conservatives had their way no one would have a pension except those rich enough to create their own private pensions and as soon as you are too old to work you might as well just die. 

Against the grain. . . .

I understand that I run against the grain. Most of the political sympathies and values that our society seem to hold dear mean very little to me. I don't like sports. I think competition is generally a bad thing. I think fashion is silly and childish and people shouldn't worry about how they look. I believe in being as straightforward as possible with people in social situations short of being thoughtless to the point of hurting their feelings or touching on issues that might be very sensitive to them. I think capitalism is failing badly, as is democracy. I don't believe that the "people" are always right, nor the customer.  I don't support the troops because I believe that standing militaries are just a tool for a ruling-class to pursue more wealth and power. I have little respect for most so-called "professionals" because they are generally self-interested, power-hungry people who know a lot less than they pretend to yet portray themselves as more or less infallible. I don't think politics should be treated like a school-yard game but should be pursued based on fundamental ethical beliefs. I think any true Christian would, by ethical necessity,  be a socialist. I think your real political views are more evident in the way you treat people than in the party you support. I hate school uniforms because they are just another way to try to make people conform. I think kids should wear anything they want to school short of shirts with racist or sexist slogans which is  really just a form of bullying. I believe that Raphael is a greater painter than Michaelangelo, and that Shelley is a greater poet than Wordsworth.  I believe that most of the traditional art forms (painting, the novel, most music)  are essentially dead because technologies have inexorably shifted human creative endeavors. I think that specialization is destroying the human imagination and that technocrats are undermining the full flowering of human society. I think scientists are never objective and that science doesn't depict 'truth' but is just a mechanism of control and prediction that is as much under ideological sway as anything else in society. I don't think science will 'save' us from anything and that imagination is more important than knowledge. I believe that fairies and sprites are as real as my toyota. I think that schools should emphasize music, art, and literature with as much zeal as they do mathematics. I believe that empathy is more important than intelligence and that the economy should serve human needs and desires not the other way around. I think if the human race is to survive and more forward then we must learn to cooperate on a grand scale and learn the importance of compassion and love.

Ok, so I know I run against the grain and most people find my beliefs bizarre and incomprehensible. But even though most people don't share my values and sympathies, there are some things I will never understand, like how anyone voted for Richard Nixon or how any one, anytime, under any circumstances would vote for Stephen Harper. Not because these men's beliefs differ from mine but because they don't believe in anything but their own ambition. 

Olympic protests and the Black Block. . .

Many people have been very upset by the so-called Black Block protesters at the Olympics. These self identified young 'anarchists' show up many of these international events, often wreaking havoc with their militant and sometimes violent tactics. They are a very loose affiliation of activists who have some very basic, gut-reaction objections to the inequities of modern capitalism and the power of what they consider to be an international ruling capitalist class that effectively controls much of thee agenda through a rather strong strangle-hold on the media. Thus they often target international meetings which they see as a reflection of this elitist control of democracy, media, and resources. Their basic strategy is fairly simple: create a certain degree of chaos on the street through mildly violent action, thus attracting media attention which, despite a large degree of corporate control still reports on these actions. 

Of course one can largely agree with the analysis of these people concerning the injustices of the international relations of  production and distribution without agreeing with their tactics. But the argument is not at all as clear as one would like it to be. Those who opposes such actions contend that they fail to progress the cause of greater international justice and democracy because they alienate many of the people who could be converted to the cause. ON the other hand, many of these anarchists would argue that without such actions there would be little or no coverage of the opposition to these international events, leading people to believe that these is no real problems with the international bodies such as the G20, the IMF, the World Bank etc. 

To a certain degree both these arguments are correct. In the face of a media controlled almost everywhere by a small group of corporations which, naturally, pursue a certain narrow corporatist agenda, it is near impossible to proliferate the debate concerning the corporate roots of global inequities and injustices. However, there are many who, if they really knew what was going on, would be profoundly opposed to much of what is really happening in the pursuit of international profit. But many of these people are just turned off by the sight of youths dressed in black breaking storefront windows and fighting with police. 

However one feels about these people and their actions, it would be folly not to take what they have to say seriously. There is an ever growing opposition to the inequities of the international economic system. These people are informed, often well educated, energetic, and committed. This is exactly the constituency of many of the worlds great revolutions. They are struggling for the same things that inspired those who fought the French revolution in thee 1789 and in many ways the goals of their cause are becoming ever more popular. In the years preceding the Revolution in France there was a tendency among the ruling class to ride in ever larger and more extravagant coaches as the desrepenciee in wealth become more pronounced in French culture. Today the differences between rich and poor are steadily growing, and the ultra-wealthy drive ever more extravagant vehicles and Wall St. and Bay St. Bankers and investors are making money that normal people can hardly imagine. 

And perhaps even more importantly many average people are feeling alienated by a system that is supposed to be democratic but is increasingly rarified and controlled by a political and economic elite. The very institutions that were supposed to guarantee the voice of the people are becoming more or less the 'playthings' of the rich and powerful who are able to manipulate them in their interests. This tendency causes a vague feeling of unease among people which, though they cannot necessarily express it in clear and rational discourse, slowly undermines the system's legitimacy. I believe the fairly strong reaction to the recent prorogation of parliament is a small example of this unease. The people in the so-called Black Block are just one of the most obvious expressions of this sentiment. But just as Parkinson's disease may begin with a very small tremor in the hand, social movements which lead to major social upheavals begin with a ragtag group of malcontents. Disregard them or condemn them if you will but you do so at your folly.