Why I don't like the Olympics. . . .

First of all, I really don’t care for organized sports in general, particularly large scale modern professionalized sport.  The modern idea of organized sports comes from the Romans who used it very specifically to placate the people.  “Bread and Circus” were all they thought one needed to maintain control and order. Well the modern sports have become more than the ‘opiate’ of the people, they have become the oxicontin! And the so-called Olympic ‘Movement’ is like oxicontin on crack. People become entranced by the Olympics, they have become some kind of ritual that borders on religion.

But the Olympics is profoundly objectionable from a number of viewpoints. The History of the modern Olympic movement is laced with fascism and anti-Semitism. More  than one IOC president has been an actual fascist, like Juan Samaranch who was a great supporter of Franco. But in recent years the Olympics has graduated from fascism to a form of mega-corporatism. Regardless of the naivety of most people, the Olympics is now primarily about money. Many Olympic athletes are well paid for winning medals and corporate sponsorship is the primary mover of the games. Large corporations and host countries make huge amounts of money from the games and if they didn’t we would barely notice them. In fact if there was not so much potential money involved you would find few countries that would make any effort to host the games.

And of course, all the money involved in the games means very simply that the richer countries have a monumental advantage over less developed ones. This runs contrary to what people constantly tell us that the games is supposed to be about. And this doesn’t even touch upon the question raised in recent years of whether the largest countries have been  getting around the drug tests, thus giving them even more advantage.

Then there is the question of patriotism. People become zombies who wave flags during the Olympics and chant national anthems. Now, besides the fact that I agree with Dr. Johnson that Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel, the Olympics and patriotism are a particularly bizarre combination. Though I despise most forms of nationalism, I can understand a certain degree of patriotism when we talk about the best human rights victories of our nation or the best cultural endeavors. But I just don’t follow how I am enhanced if some guy from High Prairie Alberta can skate faster than other people. Particularly when I consider that in most countries in the world there are no skating rinks.

The modern Olympics is little more than an exercise in corporatism. Nations and companies are hungry to make millions and the athletes have become their willing pawns who, in many cases, are hoping to make big money themselves with corporate sponsorships. There are, of course, still some athletes who have good intentions and try to live by the best aspects of sportsmanship (and sportswomanship – or should that be sportspersonship). But just like there are people who become soldiers with good intentions, these folks get unavoidably caught up in the corporate and nationalist interests  and their involvement turns them into something that they never intended to be.

It is time to put an end to the whole charade. 

Khadr, another nail in the Coffin of Canada' democracy. . .

Make no mistake, we have all lost today with the Khadr Supreme Court decision. What the Supreme Court decided today was de facto that the Canadian government can export prisoners to other countries and have them tortured with no accountability. Once they are not on Canadian soil the courts have no jurisdiction over our citizens. The Court agreed that Khadr's charter rights had been violated but said that it had no jurisdiction over a citizen that was not in the country. Therefore all the government has to do to hold people without charge and have them quickly export out of the country into the hands of a foreign government and then the courts can do nothing about it. If you think this is alarmist or an exaggeration, that is the kind of things German citizens said in the early thirties. 

This is the darkest day in Canadian democracy. The Conservative attack on democracy is ruthless and unrelenting and we all lose. Fascism is winning guys, watch it happen. 

Why I won't buy an ipad. . . .

Yesterday Steve Jobs stood in front of the world and sounded a little like a snake-oil salesman. "What this device does is simply extraordinary" he told us. Did that sound hollow to anyone else? Because it certainly did to me. The ipad is essentially just a large ipod touch, it is not even a fully functioning computer in tablet form. It doesn't have the power to, say, word process large documents. Now don't get me wrong, the ipod touch is remarkable technology and the ipad is the first step to a fully functional tablet computer. I am sure it will only be a couple of years until we see a good tablet computer that will do everything that our laptop can do. But we are not there yet. Furthermore, I don't see how this device will save the newspaper or the publishing business. I could already down load many books to my laptop as well as newspapers. The reason I didn't do this was not the device it was the problem of reading back-lit text. It is just uncomfortable to read a great deal of text that is back-lit. The ipad will do nothing to change this basic problem. E-readers, on the other had have significantly different technology with what they call e-paper. But of course e-readers can only read PDF or like-minded kinds of files. What we have here is a classic moment of being stuck between two technologies. The real challenge now becomes inventing a screen that is not back-lit but can still read and reproduce moving files like video. But I suspect we are a long way from this. 

Now don't get me wrong. The ipad (and the other tablets which will be out soon) would be great for a student or someone who travels a lot. A student could take notes in university classes on the ipad's virtual keyboard as well as use it to go online, listen to music, download movies etc. But unless you are using it while traveling or using it as a student I just don't see the any advantages to the ipad over a laptop except portability. I can go out a buy a decent laptop for 600 dollars or so and it will do quite a bit more than an ipad. As far as I can see, the only thing that is actually keeping Apple going is itunes. People, including me, are buying ipods largely because of itunes. If it were not for itunes I would have purchased a less expensive sony mp3 player. But this advantage cannot be maintained forever. And since I can purchase a laptop for about half of what an ibook costs, I don't see how Apple will emerge from a small niche market. In the absence of some tech breakthrough I don't see any long term success for apple because these smaller devices will surely be outmoded by other companies and when someone creates a truly universal itunes type of store ipods will loose their present advantage. 

Meanwhile e-readers are coming up fast and at the moment Apple has no stake in the non-back-lit market. I say leave the ipad to the students and the business travelers and wait for the next real breakthrough. 

Coalition? What Coalition. . . .

A number of Conservative MPs, including my own infantile lap-dog of tyranny, Poillevre, are desperately grasping at straws as their popularity slips due to their own tyrannical behavior. Imagining that more obnoxious behavior will somehow reverse the trend that obnoxious behavior gave rise to in the first place, the Conservatives will attack anybody in an attempt to turn people's attentions elsewhere. One of the attacks takes the form of rehashing their old attacks on the idea of a coalition between the opposition parities. They don't actually say anything substantive, rather these attacks take the rather crude avenue of simply trying to slip reminders into any media moment that there was once such an agreement for a coalition. The assumption here is that by reminding people of an agreement in the past it will somehow indict all the opposition parties in the present as being somehow deviously attempting, presumably behind the scenes, to suddenly and nefariously take power illegally. Obviously media consultant has told the caucus that this is one good strategy to attempt to divert viewers attentions away from their own abuses of power. 

Beside the obviously crudeness and desperation of this strategy, it is absurd in so many ways. For one, it is like trying to make someone look bad for doing something which not only you have done yourself, but which is in now way illegal or even unfair or wrong. The fact is, or course, that the majority of established democracies in the world have some form of coalition government and it is a standard part of most parliamentary systems. Another reason such accusations are absurd is that such a coalition would actually represent the majority of voters in the country. But the biggest reason that such a strategy is absurd; there is no such coalition! It does not exist now, nor is it in the offing. 

DUH!

Another Open letter to my MP, Poillievre. . . .

Merriam-Webster defines Hypocrisy as: a feigning to what one is not or to believe what one does not; especially: the false assumption of an appearance of virtue or religion.

 

Tell me, Mr. Poillievre, have you ever actually looked at a dictionary? Excuse my disparaging tone, but I am beginning to find it difficult to understand how you can function in such a wildly hypocritical manner and, going on the assumption that one should never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by ignorance, I compelled to assume that you must simply be ignorant of the most basic facts and tenets of socially acceptable behavior. Thus I provide you with the above definition incase it has somehow missed your notice.

I mean, after all, your party was elected, albeit by a minority of Canadians, on a platform of more accountability and less power in the hands of the Prime Minister. And we must keep in mind that this issue of accountability was not simply a small side line of the Conservative stated agenda but was the cornerstone of the platform; something on which your leader and the entire Party constantly harped on as though the future of our political institutions depended upon increases in accountability.

Now, since I can’t assume that you are so blind or stupid that you cannot see that accountability under your government has decreased and the power of the Prime Minister has increased, I can only assume that you have entirely abandoned these principles or were never actually in favor of them in the first place.

And even if you and your Party were hypocritical in the assertion of these beliefs in the first place, this hypocrisy has reached epic proportions in your public statements regarding the prorogation of the House and the Afghan issue in general. You know, YOU KNOW, that if you were in opposition and the same things happened you would be condemning the prorogation and insisting that it is your responsibility to investigate the issue of Afghan detainees. YOU KNOW THIS TO BE TRUE! Thus you are in a constant state of hypocritical action by your statements. If you were in opposition you and your Party would be vitriolic in your condemnation of any action which undermines the power of the House and the issue of Ministerial accountability. But in government you do nothing but deny, divert, obfuscate, and sometimes downright lie about these issues. But not only do you do these things, you actually have the gall to use your energy to attack the opposition parties as being irresponsible and even soft on terrorists for upholding the very same principles that your party was supposedly elected to maintain.  This is the very definition of hypocrisy.

 Furthermore, you use every means at your disposal to manipulate the media and public opinion simply to retain and enhance the centralizing power of your government. You are at the very forefront of a movement to make politics not about actual issues but an exercise in public image and opinion. I have no doubt that past governments and parties have made movements in this direction but your government has pushed this further than ever before while at the same time claiming to stand for the opposite. Future generation of all political stripes will deeply regret these lamentable movements away from substance.

I am still an optimist Mr. Poillievre and imagine that people will see through the hypocrisy and crude political manipulation which you and your Party are constantly displaying. Because you simply cannot fool enough of the people all of the time. Many of those who supported you have already seen through the hypocrisy and more will in the future. Eventually you will lose the battle to centralize all power in the PMO and this country will deeply regret this period of profound hypocrisy the same way that Americans regretted their support of Nixon or Italians regretted their support of Mussolini. This is because efforts to centralize and maintain absolute power in contemporary society are inevitably undermined by the ubiquity of information and the tendency of tyrants to push too far.

I see that you can live with your hypocrisy but the Canadian public will not do so forever. Unfortunately, part of the Reform/Conservative hypocrisy was their abandonment of their stance on MPs pensions and since you have recently qualified for yours none of this really matters to you because you will be able to comfortably retire on the public system that you so hypocritically condemn. But life will eventually catch up with you and judgment will come to you as it does to all of us. Hypocrisy develops its own punishments.

 

Kirby

 

Canada's weak democracy. . . .

I am very tired of right-wing nut jobs who are so insanely desperate to see Stephen Harper stay in power that they would say or do just about anything. For the past year or more one of the things these drooling dunderheads have been constantly telling anyone who will listen that any suggestion of replacing the minority government with any kind or coalition (formal or informal) would amount to some kind of coup. Never mind that their own mindless, power-hungry little dictator,  attempt the same thing himself. And never mind that I heard talk from the right-wing all through the 90s when the right-wing was split about doing almost anything to bring the right to power including formal agreements. None of that matters to the power hungry right wingers. Now that they are in government there is some kind of sacred status to a minority governments and the idea of coalition governments are tantamount to the total destruction of democracy. Any kind of coalition would be "overriding the duly elected government and thwarting the will of the people" I have heard people on the right say it over and over like a mantra of fear and dishonesty. BUT IT IS A LIE!

Here is a news flash everyone. . . MINORITY GOVERNMENTS DON'T REPRESENT THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE - THEY REPRESENT THE WILL OF THE MINORITY! It is not complicated. The Majority of people in the country didn't vote for the government, ergo they don't represent the general will. And this situation is almost unique to Canada and Britain. In almost every other country in the world you cannot form a government without the majority of duly elected representatives. Which makes our system one of the weakest and least representative of all the world's democracies. This was the real point of the now famous article in the Economist. Could you imagine how crazy the right-wing would be if by some quirk of geography and constituency organization Jack Layton was elected Prime Minister in the next election with 30 percent of the vote? Andrew Coyne would have an epileptic fit right on the next broadcast of The National. Suddenly the right-wing would never tire of telling us that the government doesn't represent the will of the majority. 

It is about time for Canada's democracy to catch up with the rest of the world and institute reforms that would guarantee that future governments in Canada do actually represent the will of the majority, that the executive cannot rule more or less by decree, and that smaller groups of elected representatives have some sway in the legislative process. It is about time that we started taking some steps to ensure that our own political system is actually moving toward the ideal of democracy rather than away from it. 

Novel, the follow-up. . . .

Now for those of you who feel it necessary to defend the Novel, as one comment already received has done let me say a few things. 

First of all the interesting thing about the comment that I received is that it unintentionally strengthens my case by pointing out that the changes made to the novels in recent years follow a kind of media pressure. In other words, they have begun to emulate television and film. Well, thank you this further strengthens my point. Novels will now always been in the position of 'chasing' the innovations that are coming from other media. In light of the argument I have made re. Jean-Paul Sartre I think the commenter undermined his/her own argument and makes my very point. 

Second, greater familiarity with the novel suggest that the innovations the commenter is talking about grew out of pre-war French literature with Surrealism and writers like Celine.(Celine's novel Journey to the End of the Night could have been written today and would still seem original) These innovations in 60s were expressed by very interesting writers like Richard Brautigan.  I think that the greatest innovation of the novel in the past 50 years or so has been magic realism.  But the real strength of these innovations were missed as the novel began to settle into the 20th century reading public which has demanded a certain group of  fairly standard formula novels of different genres such as sci-fi, fantasy, dramatic, romance, etc. The demands of the market has, in other words, limited innovations in many ways and held them in check the same way it has done to film and television. 

In the end the real issue is what status and role does the novel has play in the culture of our society.  But not just the novel - all of the arts. I believe that there is a much bigger issue at play here. I think that the arts have been falling into crisis for a very long time and this crisis is a symptom of a wider crisis concerning human meaning and identity. Nietzsche talked over a hundred years ago about the death of God and what he really was talking about was the question of how we are to live in a world where we have to create our own meaning. We have all been struggling with this in various ways in the arts, philosophy, and even science. The problem is that no one has really been able to answer the question adequately and instead the market has filled in the gap as though the only meaning we can find is commodity consumption. Thus it is not unexpected that the most vital and growing art forms will continue to be ones that can best be driven by big capital. The biggest dangers to art forms such as painting or the novel are the mechanisms of capitalism and the technologies that drive it forward.