An effective peacekeeping force for Lebanon

But not, unfortunately, a feasible one. The footage is taken from the 1951 science fiction classic The Day the Earth Stood Still. For those who can hear it, the music accompanying the footage (definitely not in the original soundtrack) is not meant to imply any affection on my part for that particular form.

Bring on the Philanthropists?

It's standard practice among daily newspapers to have at least one or two regular columnists who are at odds with that daily's general editorial stance. So it's no surprise that the illustrious progressive daily the UK Guardian has at least one, Simon Jenkins. Not just any right-wing scribbler, he was likely taken on by the Guardian in 2005 (who made the offer first I cannot say) because of his distinguished background in journalism (receiving a knighthood in 2004 for services to the trade in 2004 among other things), and because he is not predictably on the right on all issues. But in one of his latest gems, "The welfare state is waning. Bring on the philanthropists" (June 28), he certainly is, even radically or better reactionarily so. Unless you ignore the news media entirely you have no doubt heard of the donation by Warren Buffet of $ 31 billion to Bill Gates to further enrich his and his wife's charitable foundation. As Jenkins puts it, it was a case of the world's second-richest man giving most of his money to the world's richest man, and for what it's going for, all well and good. What are not so good are the conclusions Jenkins draws from the event.

Jenkins pronounces in his commentary, "The 19th century was the age of capitalism, the 20th the age of socialism. The 21st is to be the age of charity, or so we are given to hope." Why would we hope for such a thing? Because, Jenkins informs his readers, "the British public sector has lost the moral supremacy it enjoyed under socialism in the 20th century...Power has drifted away from contact with people, and public service has been contracted out to to the private sector." International government bodies are "pampered" with "barely accountable power...As their moral standing dwindles in the wreckage of Africa and the Middle East, they will be supplanted by the ad hoc charity of the private sector".

What will no doubt be obvious to progressive readers if not apparently to Jenkins himself is that any decline of the public sector domestically and internationally has been largely brought about by government itself. As he says "To [UK PM Tony] Blair government is invariably defective and in need of change, which can only come from the private sector." But why should government leaders think this way, unless their minds have been influenced by the sophistries of the New Right, as Blair's obviously has been? To jump from Buffet's and the Gates' international philanthropy to the conclusion that the welfare state and public enterprise will eventually and inevitably be replaced by the charity of millionaires and billionaires as well as less wealthy private individuals is a sophistry in itself. In his "analysis" Jenkins lacks a sense and, in this case apparently, knowledge of history. What Buffett and the Blairs are and have been doing is more or less in accordance with that old robber baron and avowed Social Darwinist Andrew Carnegie's essay "The Gospel of Wealth". That was written in 1889 when the United States was a plutocracy. Since today and for the last decade or so the United States has devolved into a plutocracy not seen since the 1920s the philanthropy Jenkins acclaims is highly appropriate to that country, but not to others where such a degeneration has not taken place i.e. most of the industrialized world. In the U.S. and elsewhere I doubt very much that the mega- or giga-rich will follow Buffett's and the Gates' example any more than did their 19th century counterparts follow Carnegie's.

Mine is no doubt only the latest of attacks on Sir Simon's silliness. Fortunately for Guardian readers a reply was made a week later by one of the paper's deputy editors, Alison Benjamin. The second last paragraph of her detailed rebuttal (applying mainly to Britain's wealthy) is particularly telling.

My Kind of Socialism I

Rather than describing and explaining my political position myself, I prefer to rely on greater minds than my own. So in the first of an occasional series, for no particular reason I begin with a quote from the greatest economist of the 20th century, John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946) :

The question is about whether we are prepared to move out of the nineteenth-century laissez-faire state into an era of liberal socialism, by which I mean a system where we can act as an organized community for common purposes and to promote social and economic justice, whilst respecting and protecting the individual - his freedom of choice, his faith, his mind and its expression, his enterprise and his prosperity.

(From The New Statesman, 1939)

Lebanon and Israel - Noam Chomsky on Facts the Media Isn't Telling You

Despite its appearance the above is an audio rather than video clip, as Prof. Chomsky as so often in the past gives information that for some reason the mainstream media is not disclosing. And also as so often in the past I wish I could say his conclusions on the issue considered were wrong, but I can't easily say that they are. Chomsky has said that his sources for the facts going unreported were Gideon Levy in the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz July 2 and Jonathan Cook on the website MediaLens June 30. Mr. Levy's article is no longer freely available but Mr. Cook's is. There is another article in Ha'aretz revealing further interesting facts, but it may not be freely available for long.

Metaphorically Speaking

Dan Gillerman, the Israeli ambassador to the UN, has described his country as a "surgeon" in dealing with the problem of Hezbollah in Lebanon. Considering what his country's military forces, especially air force, have been doing in that country, I wondered what kind of surgery he had in mind. Then an example occurred to me as particularly appropriate considering Israel's actions. Taken from Richard Zacks's An Underground Education (pp. 179-80), it is an eyewitness account by a 12th-century Arab physician "called in to consult with a European colleague":

They took me to see a knight who had an abscess on his leg, and a woman with consumption. I applied a poultice to the leg and the abscess opened and began to heal. I prescribed a cleansing and refreshing diet for the woman. Then there appeared a Frankish (European) doctor, who said: "This man has no idea how to cure these people!" He turned to the knight and said: "Which would you prefer, to live with one leg or to die with two?" When the knight replied that he would prefer to live with one leg, he sent for a strong man and a sharp axe. They arrived and I stood by to watch. The doctor supported the leg on a block of wood, and said to the man: "Strike a mighty blow and cut it cleanly!" And there, before my eyes the fellow struck the knight one blow, and then another for the first had not done the job. The marrow spurted out of the leg, and the patient died instantaneously. Then the doctor examined the woman and said: "She has a devil in her head who is in love with her. Cut her hair off!" This was done, and she went back to eating her usual Frankish food, garlic and mustard which made her illness worse. "The devil has got into her brain," pronounced the doctor. He took a razor and cut a cross on her head, and removed the brain so that the inside of her skull was laid bare. This he rubbed with salt; the woman died instantly. At this juncture, I asked whether they had any further need of me, and as they had none I came away, having learnt things about medical methods that I never knew before.

The medical methods described above were part of a system that came to be called "Heroic medicine". Its techniques were rooted in the assumption that the way to rid one set of afflictions from a patient's body was to subject it to a considerably more violent set of afflictions, the "heroic" aspect being up to the patient, as it was hoped he or she would rally after the treatment.

Aside from the surgery described, it seems to me that we can find other metaphors in the report, bearing in mind that allegorical interpretation can be applied to anything and can be used to yield virtually any result (which is why it was finally abandoned as a tool of biblical exegesis). The patients of course stand for the government and innocent civilians of Lebanon. While the eyewitness is an Arab, he can be said to represent those, Arab or otherwise, who have advocated a non-violent approach in dealing with Hezbollah in Lebanon, though unable like the Arab doctor to prevent or stop the mayhem that, not inevitably, resulted. The Frankish doctor and his assistant can be read as a double metaphor, standing not only for the Israeli government and military but also for those such as the Bush administration, our own federal government, and all others who support Israeli actions in Lebanon as a "measured" response to Hezbollah's provocations. One more metaphor is worth conceiving. If the patients are a metaphor for Lebanon, then the "devil" declared to be in the tubercular woman's head can be said to be, appropriately, a symbol for the supposed global terrorist network, of which Hezbollah is a member (or is it?). As representing supporters of Israel's actions the Frankish doctor actually believes that there is a devil, while as standing for the Israeli government and military he only says that there is one, so as to persuade others that the extreme actions taken are justified. If anyone thinks my analysis is excessive consider what this ex-Israeli soldier has to say on the issue.

Sex in the City Driving



This Nissan ad with Canada's own Kim Cattrall was produced in Australia and removed from distribution in her more progressive neighbour New Zealand. Judge for yourselves.

Happy Independence Day

Today is Belgium's national holiday, marking the day in 1831 that Leopold I, the first king of Belgium, swore allegiance to the constitution of the newly formed country after having been crowned "King of the Belgians" on June 26. This day has significance to me for two reasons. First, I now know the national holiday of one of my ancestral countries, my Flemish-German great grandparents immigrating to Canada in the 1890s. Second, I note that it is not referred to as Belgium Day. In fact the only other country besides Canada I can find that names its national holiday after the name of the country is Portugal, and perhaps a more appropriate name would be Camoes Day, since it is the date (June 10) of that country's greatest poet, Luis de Camoes.

In this country there are one hopes millions of Canadians who remember the old name for our national holiday, Dominion Day, or as it was called in French, Le Jour de la Confederation, "the day of the Confederation" i.e. of Canada, both officially established by statute in 1879. The day was renamed Canada Day on 27 October 1982. Why? Doubtless because it was perceived by the Liberals who made the change as too British. Never mind that the word "dominion" was coined, not by some pooh-bah in London's foreign office but by a Canadian politician, Samuel Leonard Tilley, who took it from Psalm 72:8, "He shall have dominion from sea to sea", as suggestive of the ambition of the Fathers of Confederation, of which he was a member, to extend the new nation to the Pacific Ocean. It was unanimously accepted, and was soon adopted across the British Empire as the term for a self-governing member of the Empire (with autonomy in external as well as internal affairs) that distinction being extended to Australia and New Zealand. But no, some Liberals decided it was too British, too old fashioned, and worst of all might offend French Canadians. Or it was because "dominion" doesn't translate very well into French, never mind that in French it had never been Dominion Day. So on 9 July 1982, a Friday afternoon and the last day of Parliament before summer recess, a private member's bill to replace "Dominion Day" with "Canada Day" was quickly passed. Problem is, only thirteen members were present to pass it, seven short of an official quorum. In short, the change was illegal. We can only imagine what would have happened had the thirteenth Prime Minister of Canada been alive at the time. Likely John Diefenbaker would have thundered against this unconstitutional exercise in rebranding, and might have succeeded in rallying Canadians in protest, in the end preserving the name and the history. But the Chief had died in 1979, and so there was apparently no one willing to defend a vital link to the past. The Liberals could at least have simply anglicized the French term for Dominion Day, but instead chose a name devoid of history, of roots. Luckily we are not legally bound to use that name, and I for one no longer will.

Do you think French Canadians would welcome the statutory introduction of "Quebec Day", even if the name it would replace belongs to a figure in the New Testament?

Introductory

I've named this weblog after a column written by the great British author and journalist George Orwell (1903-1950) on a weekly basis from 3 December 1943 to 16 February 1945, and then sporadically until 28 March 1947, for the weekly UK newspaper the Tribune. The title expressed the new freedom he experienced as a writer in becoming the paper's literary editor. The title also expresses the freedom that I and all bloggers have in writing almost anything (i.e. anything not violating the terms of service) that we please. It is not used to mean that this will be some kind of appreciation blog for the author of Nineteen Eighty-Four (1948) and Animal Farm (1944), though my appreciation of him will doubtless come through from time to time. Nor do I aspire to replicate his level of writing, though I would hope to have his clarity. If I manage to sound like him at all it will likely only be like George Orwell after a few drinks, as I join the cyberspace Republic of Letters, often it seems with many posts, four letters.