As I Please

2010-04-22T18:59:00.000-07:00

Earth Day 2010

Today is not only Earth Day but the fortieth anniversary of the first Earth Day declared in the US at a time when progressive forces were considerably stronger in that country than they are now. The first Earth Day was in effect the prototype for all subsequent Earth Day celebrations, an occasion for consciousness raising and education of the public regarding environmental concerns and how human beings should cope with them. Back in 1970 the concerns were with pollution and the loss of habitat for wildlife and extinction of select species. Back then the greenhouse effect in Earth's atmosphere and consequent global warming were just theoretical projections instead of the reality they are today. Not even so-called climate change sceptics deny that global climate change is happening after having for so long denied that it was. But as the weight of evidence has gone against them they have moved the goalposts and now assert that while climate change is happening, it is entirely natural, not caused by human action, not allowing for the possibility that even if this is true human action could increase it. But in writing of Earth Day I am not concerned so much with these people even though I think they are wrong. Rather I am concerned with those many well-meaning people who think that in undertaking "acts of green" e.g. recycling, adopting less polluting lifestyles etc. they are helping to "save the planet". But are they?
On the whole the lifestyle changes that Earth Day commemorates are little different from those advocated on the first Earth Day and have been summed up in the three Rs of waste management: reduce, reuse, recycle. What difference there is consists in adding to the first R not only reducing waste but also reducing activities that produce the greenhouse gases that have resulted in global warming or as it is also called climate change. But the evidence we see around the world indicates a phenomenon so vast and far-reaching that doing things like recycling paper, glass, and plastic products and buying fluorescent light bulbs while laudable in themselves as actions to reduce waste and therefore pollution of the land, water, and air, will do little to deal with the altering of the world's climate with all the attendant changes such as rising sea levels, increasing drought and desertification.
The threat of terrible harm to human beings and other sentient life from climate change appears to be momentous and yet what we are doing to cope with it seems to me comparable to coping with the threat of fascism in the 1940s by only rationing and collecting scrap. It may well be that the only way to stave off the worst effects of climate change will be a wholesale mobilization of our material and intellectual resources comparable to those which defeated Germany and Japan, only in this case we would not have war but what my favourite philosopher William James called in his essay of the same name "the moral equivalent of war", only it would not be so much to engender the martial virtues of "fidelity, cohesiveness, tenacity, heroism, conscience, education, inventiveness, economy, wealth, physical health and vigor" which he advocated as it would be to save humankind from catastrophe or rather a series of catastrophes resulting from climate change, and it would not only be the moral equivalent of war but the moral equivalent of total war.

2008-10-13T10:15:00.000-07:00

Thanksgiving in Canada 2008

I posted the following Thanksgiving Day 2006. The excerpt I included from a Toronto Star editorial on that day is if anything more pertinent now.

In Canada, Thanksgiving is celebrated on the second Monday in October. Canadians give thanks for a successful harvest. The history of Thanksgiving in Canada goes back to an English explorer, Martin Frobisher, who had been trying to find a northern passage to the Orient. He did not succeed but he did establish a settlement in Canada. In the year 1578, he held a formal ceremony, in what is now the province of Newfoundland and Labrador, to give thanks for surviving the long journey. This is considered the first Canadian Thanksgiving, and the first Thanksgiving to have taken place in North America. As with Labour Day, Canada was first, but as with that day a set day was not established until relatively recently, in the case of Thanksgiving not until 1957. At least we had the good sense to finally make it a Monday, and so give ourselves a long weekend, unlike with the Americans' fourth Thursday in November (I have yet to find out why it's not a Friday or Monday). While traditionally regarded as a day of giving thanks to God, with its origins as a harvest festival God is incidental.
Thanksgiving is a time of celebrating our good fortune, but in that celebration do we remember the hundreds of thousands in this country who if they are having a turkey dinner at all, are having it in a church basement or soup kitchen? An editorial in today's Toronto Star says what should be taken to heart by all. I wonder how many other newspapers have an editorial like the following? I have dropped the first paragraph, the substance of which can be found in any newspaper editorial:
"For far too many families, dinner will be rice or pasta instead of turkey. To get that meal, thousands of families will have to go to their local food bank simply because they did not have enough money left after paying the rent to buy food. Some 74,500 people, including 28,000 children, in Greater Toronto rely on local food banks each month.Many of the homeless will go without a meal at all today. And breadwinners in working poor families in Canada will struggle on to try to make ends meet just like every other day. A quarter of families using food banks have at least one person working and more than half of them earn at least $10 an hour, still not enough to pay the bills.Many of those struggling are new immigrants in a strange land who have come here with good educations, but cannot put their skills to work.It is important to remember all of them today and do what we can to help because many are merely eking out an existence in this land of plenty.There are multiple reasons for this continuing poverty. Welfare rates in most provinces are lower than they were two decades ago and provide an income that in most cases is less than half the poverty line. Employment Insurance, the first level of the social safety net, is now so full of holes that only 27 per cent of the unemployed in Ontario receive any benefits at all from it, leaving workers who lose their job no recourse except to go on welfare. And despite moves by the Liberal government over the last three years to raise the minimum wage in Ontario, this basic pay rate was frozen under the former Conservative government for nearly eight years and remains below a level that would provide a decent standard of living.On Thanksgiving, one of the best ways to give thanks and show gratitude for what we have is by helping others.Citizens can lobby politicians to finally do something about the working poor. Demand answers to why 5 million people in the country — about one in every six — live below the national poverty line, including 1.2 million children. And push politicians for an answer to why food banks, charities and churches have become so critical in the lives of those who cannot obtain decent jobs and wages.Then take a bag of food to the local fire hall for those who so desperately need it. And take your children to volunteer at the local food bank for a few hours so they too will grow up knowing that not everyone is as lucky as they are and something needs to be done about it.For the United Way's 50th anniversary campaign, write a bigger cheque than in the past to reflect the fact the agency is dealing with larger needs and more diverse problems than ever before.At the end of the day, Thanksgiving should be as much about what we have given back as it is about being thankful for what we have."
It is noteworthy that the editorial advocates political action before the standard exhortation to acts of charity. Hardline conservatives will no doubt agree with the latter and condemn the former, for the fact of growing, seemingly intractable poverty in our midst, is a standing condemnation of their own individualist ideology. They may at least say that we should help the poor, but the most we can justifiably be made to do is provide through our taxes a level of bare subsistence, and some will not condone even that. Thus they reject the most powerful and effective instruments for fighting poverty. While the Star editorial is not calling for socialism it seems to me it is calling for capitalism with a human face.

2008-09-01T12:55:00.000-07:00

Happy Labour Day

I posted this two years ago. I thought that with the decline in the auto-industry and accompanying recession here in Ontario it should be run again.

Labour Day was officially established in the U.S. by Pres. Grover Cleveland in 1887 as an alternative to the proposal to celebrate the worker on May 1, which Cleveland feared would be used, as many on the Left openly wanted, to commemorate the May 4 Haymarket riot in Chicago the year before. It was not however an invention of the establishment. According to Encyclopaedia Britannica:
The idea for such a holiday in the United States is attributed to Peter J. McGuire, a carpenter and labor union leader who later cofounded the precursor of the AFL-CIO. In 1882 he suggested to the Central Labor Union of New York that a celebration be held to honour the American worker. Acting on this idea, about 10,000 workers paraded in New York City on Sept. 5, 1882, under the sponsorship of the Knights of Labor. The date of the celebration was chosen simply because it filled up the long gap between Independence Day and Thanksgiving.
What the article leaves out is that Mr. McGuire got the idea from Canada. The origins of Labour Day lie in a parade demonstration by workers on 15 April 1872 in Toronto to call for the abolition of then existing laws which decreed that trade unions were criminal conspiracies in restraint of trade. Those laws were finally repealed in that same year after a union parade in Ottawa on September 3 paid a visit to the home of PM John A. MacDonald. The April 15 march became an annual event though of no set date, though the Ottawa event would certainly have been an excellent one to commemorate. Mr. McGuire happened to see it on 22 July 1882 as an invited speaker, being the founder and general secretary of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters which had organized the previous year. The full story can be found here, with the non-Canadian dimension here. The message to be taken from the origins of Labour Day is clear: it is a day not only to celebrate workers and their achievements and contributions to society but also their rights as workers, above all their right to unionize. This message is clear in the Labour Day most of the world celebrates, but in ours, among those who are not union members, that message has been lost. It is high time we who are not union members, i.e. the vast majority, recovered it.

2007-12-13T08:01:00.000-08:00

My Kind of Socialism IV

G. D. H. (George Douglas Howard) Cole (1889-1959) was perhaps the foremost British representative of what has been called libertarian or decentralist socialism, as opposed to state or centralist socialism. A remarkably prolific writer, he was the author among other distinguished works, of the monumental five-volume History of Socialist Thought (1953-60). At the end of it he states in conclusion what has been called his personal credo with which I would agree to a large extent:

I am neither a Communist nor a Social Democrat, because I regard both as creeds of centralisation and bureaucracy, whereas I feel sure that a Socialist society that is to be true to its equalitarian principles of human brotherhood must rest on the widest possible diffusion of power and responsibility, so as to enlist the active participation of as many as possible of its citizens in the tasks of democratic self-government.

From A History of Socialist Thought, Vol. V: Socialism and Fascism, 1960.

I have only two disagreements. First, with his characterization of social democrats. While Communism as Cole means it here (i.e. Marxist-Leninist) is certainly a creed of "centralisation and bureaucracy" I do not see that that should necessarily be the case with Social Democracy (i.e. moderate socialism), which is centralized and bureaucratic because modern democratic government is centralized and bureaucratic. My second disagreement is not with what he says but with what he means. Cole sees socialist society in near anarchist if not anarchist terms, what is called libertarian socialism, while I believe we should work to achieve democratic self-government through the government institutions we have. He was a utopian (although without utopian expectations), I am not.

2007-07-01T18:25:00.000-07:00

Happy Canada Day?

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. Portugal is the only other country I know of that has its national holiday named after the country, and therefore like Canada ignores history (in the Portuguese case the date their national poet Luis Camoes died). 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?

PM Tony Blair sings The Clash's "Should I Stay or Should I Go" !

2007-06-27T21:51:00.001-07:00

Well, not really. It's an ingenious edit of Blair's speechifying at his last Labour Party conference. Now he has gone, and good riddance.

2007-04-18T10:28:00.000-07:00

One Piece of Evidence That There Is No God

Or more precisely that there is no God in the traditional Western sense of being benevolent and all-powerful. This morning I went for a plateletpheresis donation, more than ten years after my first donation in which it turned out that my platelets collected were less than perfect and so rejected, though after several visits to a haemotologist I was assured that this meant no health problems for myself. A few months I was called by Canadian Blood Services and asked to try again, since my platelets may well have come up to the level required for donation. This time within five minutes of the procedure (the last time it was within a week) I was informed that my platelet count was insufficient and that it was pointless to try again at a future date. Even though I had lost a small amount of red cells in the process I would not be able to make another whole blood donation for 56 days.

My point, and I do have one (as Ellen DeGeneres would say) is this: If we assume the existence of a benevolent, all-powerful deity, at any time in the intervening years between my last apheresis attempt and today's, He could have improved my platelets so that I could donate and thereby help the cancer and other patients who have developed an intolerance for whole blood donations. It would not have been considered a miracle and therefore not an event that would have overcome the lack of knowledge of God's existence that, so it is argued, God Himself desires so as to ensure we have the freedom to choose whether or not to believe in His existence. Putting aside the question of why a benevolent, all-powerful God would permit cancer in the first place, what possible purpose could be served by denying me the capacity to help my fellow beings when so enabling me could be done without endangering human free-will? Perhaps one could justify God permitting the actions of the mentally ill murderer at Virginia Tech on the basis of the free-will defence, assuming that that mental illness had no organic causes (is that possible?), but I see no justification for this.

While I have been for the past several years an agnostic, I have also been in relative terms an atheist, relative that is to the existence of a God who is both loving of humankind and omnipotent. Today I have yet another example to confirm my position. To my mind traditional Western theists have never satisfactorily answered the question put over two thousand years ago by the Greek philosopher Epicurus: Either God is willing to take away evil but is unable, then He is not omnipotent; or He is able but unwilling, then He is not benevolent; or He is both able and willing; why then is there evil?

2007-04-16T23:38:00.000-07:00

An American Tragedy

Today there occurred on the campus of Virginia Tech University the worst civilian shooting in U.S. history. Thirty-three people including the gunman (it is believed that he shot himself) were killed, fifteen were wounded (as usual we are not told how badly). What was his motivation? This puts me in mind of a finding by the naturalist and co-theorist of natural selection Alfred Russel Wallace, who among his other accomplishments was a noted explorer of the Malay Archipelago. He informed his readers about the customary way of committing suicide among the natives of the Celebes in Macassar: "The fashionable way of escaping from their difficulties" was to take their 'kris', a wavy bladed dagger, and kill person after person until they were finally killed themselves.

Imagine if they had guns, and you have a custom that appears to be well in evidence in American society.

2007-04-15T21:24:00.000-07:00

A Matter of Rights

I haven't made any entries for quite some time, as I have resolved not to do so until my previous postings have all been completed, but on this day I decided to make an exception, it being the 25th anniversary of the formal passage into law of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, or as we Canadians simply refer to it, the Charter of Rights. It is our constitutionally entrenched bill of rights, and in my humble opinion it is moving our country in the right direction. Before it could be enacted our constitution had to be patriated, and I recall my embarassment at the behaviour of some Progressive Conservative MPs in the House of Commons as the majority of MPs voted to bring our constitution home. Running up to the Speaker they shouted that Prime Minister Trudeau was going to establish a dictatorship among other things. As right-wing as I was then, I knew that their charges were idiotic and was disgusted at the behaviour of that section of the party I then supported. I was satisfied to know that at least they were a small section.

No longer unfortunately, as the right-wing of the party in power, the Conservatives (I do not consider them the Progressive Conservatives without the adjective), are now the leaders. And they are clearly hostile to the Charter. In that they are clearly representative of a sizeable number of Canadians who confuse democracy with majority rule, something admittedly I have found that even some political scholars have been guilty of. Decision by majority is a device of democracy but it is not democracy itself. The original, direct democracy of ancient Athens recognized this, according certain rights, admittedly few (right to trial, right to speak before the Assembly etc.), that could not in principle be overridden by the majority. What we call liberal or constitutional democracy extends this greatly by greatly increasing the number of rights protected against the majority, but in so doing better lives up to the literal meaning of democracy, the people rule, meaning all the people not just the majority, than a rights regime based on whatever majority sentiment permitted would.

2007-01-23T23:26:00.000-08:00

One Anniversary I'm Not Celebrating

One year ago today Canada elected its first (and hopefully its last) neoconservative government.

2007-01-15T23:45:00.000-08:00

Happy Martin Luther King Day

2006-12-16T23:21:00.000-08:00

You Get What You Pay For?

One of the nice things about having a web log is that you can 'publish' online a letter to the editor that didn't get published the normal way. I wrote this letter in response to a Dec. 11 column by the Toronto Star's Queen's Park pundit Ian Urquhart (notoriously terse in his replies to readers who address their letters to him directly), who agreed with the Ontario government's integrity commissioner that MPPs should be given a "significant increase" in their pay. My readers will likely be able to judge what he said in his column from what I said in my e-mail:

Mr Urquhart's latest column makes a good though not for me persuasive case for increasing Ontario MPPs' pay. Like my party I'm opposed to the idea and I'd like to raise some points:
1) Re. the higher pay for municipal politicians, the Ont. govt. could simply place a ceiling on it which it is empowered to do. Somehow I doubt their constituents would be outraged.
2) That constituents are not aware of the scrapping of the "gold-plated" pension plan is an example of the dangerous (to democracy) mix of cynicism and abysmally low civic literacy in this province and by extension the country, surpassed in the industrial world perhaps only by the U.S.
3) The "farm team" notion applied to the Tory MPPs who jumped to federal politics is simply false; they jumped because they saw that the neoconservative agenda was defeated (both electorally and by the change in leadership) at Queen's Park and saw a better outlook for it at the federal level. Not one Tory MPP that made the jump is what would be considered a moderate.
4) Re. comparing Ont and federal parliamentarians, does Urquhart really think or can he show that the quality of the latter is any better. While he says few would describe Ontario MPPs as "a gathering of the best and brightest" does he think anyone would give such praise to the House of Commons?
5) The idea of low pay relative to the private sector is the classic argument for raising representatives' pay i.e. higher pay will lead to higher quality. While I certainly do not advocate the kind of ridiculously low pay levels certain Southern state governors for example get (Bill Clinton's salary in Arkansas comes to mind) a thought occurs to me: if MPPs have pay conditions similar to the way the vast majority of Ontarians live perhaps they will begin to identify more with them and less with those who have benefitted from the economic changes that our government has done little to ameliorate, in some cases to actually promote, and nothing to reverse.

While I am not opposed to a pay increase in itself, I think that the increase should be reasonable. So what would be the criterion? A letter regarding the pay increase issue that did get published, by a Byron Montgomery, president of an organization called the Mad River Institute for Political Studies (the adjective is unfortunate) in Creemore, Ontario proposes an interesting and I think useful one:

Integrity Commissioner Coulter Osborne has reported that MPPs risk becoming a "farm team" for the federal and provincial ranks because they are significantly underpaid, writes Ian Urquhart. We disagree.
Two months ago, the Mad River Institute for Political Studies released its examination of politicians' pay at the national, provincial and municipal levels. Our work reckons Ontario MPPs are marginally underpaid, deserving about a $10,000 increase. But the difference between our analysis and that of the Integrity Commissioner and too many others is that we applied a formula designed specifically to calculate such pay based on the median income of average people, not politicians at other levels nor corporate executives.
In fact, our formula suggests MPs and many urban politicians are significantly overpaid. Members of Parliament receive $147,000. We think that should be just under $90,000. (Yes, less than MPPs, as the median income for Canadians is lower than Ontarians and average riding size is smaller across Canada than across Ontario.)
We have also calculated that Toronto city councillors would more fairly receive about $47,000 a year, rather than $95,000.
Osborne says low pay is becoming a "deterrent" for those thinking of running for the provincial Legislature. First, politics is not a vocation. It's an avocation. Politicians are not professionals guaranteed movement from level to level. Second, if money is a consideration in running, then those people should stay out of politics. The reason to run is to better your community, to help people, to literally serve the public.

What happened in the end? On Dec. 12 the McGuinty government raised MPPs' pay 25 percent, meaning a $22,000 jump for backbenchers to $110,000, and a $39,000 raise for the premier to $198,620 a year. So now Ontario has the most highly paid MPPs in the country, whereas before, and we heard nothing from the government about this, Ontario MPPs were the second most highly paid MPPS in the country, behind only Quebec. But even with the raise they are still behind federal MPs. Isn't the real problem not that Ontario MPPs were paid too little but, as Mr. Montgomery's letter indicates, that others were paid too much?

2006-12-02T21:57:00.000-08:00

And The Winner Is...

Two major events have taken place in Canada this weekend, both leadership conventions for two different political parties which ended in similar results: the candidate that was most voters' second choice won.

2006-11-18T15:58:00.000-08:00

Milton Friedman 1912-2006

Good riddance.

2006-11-11T07:29:00.000-08:00

Reflections on the Democratic Victory

This past 8 November was a great day, and 10 November was even better, for that latter day meant that after twelve years of Republican control of both houses of Congress the Democrats had regained both, gaining thirty seats to achieve a total of 232 seats in the 435 seat House of Representatives and gaining six to attain an unfortunately razor-thin majority of 51 seats in the 100 seat Senate. Not only this, the Democrats also now control, again for the first time since 1994, a majority of governorships in the country, gaining six so that now 28 U.S. states have Democratic governors.

So what now with the Democrats back in power? While we may see the end of the Military Commissions Act before Bush leaves office should we expect a renaissance of U.S. liberalism in the U.S? Hardly. Even though the Senate has its first openly socialist member ever (independent Bernie Sanders of Vermont, before the election the first openly socialist member ever of the U.S. House of Representatives), that is really an anomaly in what will likely be only a slightly progressive Democratic Congress for two main reasons. First, the Democrats are not a liberal party but in fact one that straddles the left and the right of centre; it is in other words a centre rather than a centre-left party in competition with one that embraces the centre-right and radical/reactionary right, the latter making up the party leadership since 1994. This means not only that the Democrats are not necessarily united around progressive goals but that with the makeup of the two parties the bias of U.S. national politics has been to the right. With Democratic victory therefore policy overall will move leftwards but only to the centre-right. Second, the Democrats are well aware that the vote that secured its victory was more based on opposition to Republican policies than on support for Democratic ones. Still, a mandate is a mandate, and one of the few virtues of a two-party system is that the winning party, in this case the Democrats, can truly claim to have one. And what of the Republicans?

What is interesting about the GOP (not so grand nowadays) is not so much their defeat as the reasons they and their many media apologists have come up with for that defeat. They amount to four:

1) they lost because of the debacles in the Bush administration's occupation of Iraq;

2) they lost because of the many scandals, culminating with Florida congressman Mark Foley; 3) they lost not because they were too hardline but rather weren't hardline enough; and

4) they lost because they didn't emphasize the success of Republican economic policy enough.

All four show how truly clueless the radical right in the U.S. (now unfortunately the mainstream right) has become after twelve years of power that beginning in 2001 included all three branches of the federal government. The first two are correct but are only part of the answer, while the other two demonstrate how truly blinded they are as ideologues of the most arrogant kind to the electoral consequences of what they have done to their society. Likely many were aware and hoped that they could tip the balance with another combination of dirty campaigning and voter fraud, as in 2004. What they have done, in a process ongoing since Reagan first entered the White House in 1981, is transform the United States into a plutocracy of a kind not seen since the 1920s, another time of Republican dominance, and the majority of voters have finally expressed their outrage through the ballot box, or voter machine as the case may be.

A plutocracy is generally not kind to the poorer members of society, and the U.S. has certainly demonstrated this whether under the neoconservative presidency of Bush or the neoliberal one of Clinton (what Clinton would have done had the Democrats retained control of Congress will likely become one of the great what-ifs of late 20th century U.S. history). But it has not been any kinder to the majority of U.S. citizens, what we can refer to collectively as the wage-earning class, who have seen their wages stagnate for more than ten years while in 2005 the average CEO earned 262 times the pay of the average worker . Consider that in 1965 the ratio was 24 times, in 1978 35 times, and in 1989 the ratio had grown to 71. But the ratio really expanded in the 1990s, reaching 300 after the recovery from the dotcom crash in 2000. What explains this? Surely in part tax-cuts that overwhelmingly favoured high-income earners, so that for greedy CEOs the sky was the limit since any massive increases in pay would now not simply be taken away by taxation. And what of average Americans?

What I think distinguishes average Americans, in terms of income (though not necessarily occupation) the middle class, from their counterparts in other industrialized countries such as my own is that for the last quarter-century or so they have identified their pecuniary interests with those of millionaires and billionaires, as earners of employment income they have identified with those whose income is primarily if not entirely from investments. Perhaps if they considered the following graphic metaphor by the Dutch economist Jan Pen in his 1980 book Wealth, Income and Equality they may have thought twice. I quote Prof. Richard Gilbert's recounting of it at a 2004 conference at Cornell University:

He asks the reader to imagine a parade of people where everyone's height is proportional to his or her individual wealth. A person of average wealth is represented by a person of average height. The parade begins with the smallest (the poorest) at the front with the rich bringing up the rear in a one-hour parade. The first marchers are actually buried several feet beneath the ground since they have negative net worth - they owe more wealth than they own. For approximately 20 minutes there are invisible marchers, for they own no wealth. After half an hour there are dwarfs - people about six inches tall, whose wealth is household furniture, a car and perhaps a small savings account. "But a surprise awaits us," writes Pen. "We keep on seeing dwarfs. Of course they gradually become a little taller, but it's a slow process." Only at about twelve minutes before the hour do we begin seeing people of average height, for more than three quarters of the world's population have fewer assets than average. In the last few minutes ?giants loom up . . . a lawyer, not exceptionally successful, eighteen feet tall." In the last few seconds, there are people so tall we cannot even see their heads, the corporate managing directors a hundred yards tall. "The rear of the parade is brought up by a few participants who are measured in miles . . . their heads disappear into the clouds. . . . The last man, whose back we can see long after the parade has passed by, is John Paul Getty (this was before Bill Gates) . . . . His height is inconceivable: at least ten miles; perhaps twice as much.?"

So drawing from this metaphor average Americans were identifying themselves with people as tall as skyscrapers. Why? One reason surely is that they believe that they might, just might, become as lofty themselves, despite the clear evidence that only a small minority of them ever will. This self-deception is perhaps most strikingly shown in the recent support by about a third of Americans polled for a repeal of the estate tax, support for the repeal of a tax that would not affect the vast majority of them, though the effects of such a repeal likely would. To identify one's interests with the wealthy is therefore a strange kind of selfishness, strange because it is based on the notion that one might become one of them, so that something going against the interests of the wealthy, like a tax increase, could one day affect them as well. There is of course the usual kind of selfishness, and the level exhibited by average Americans is to be expected perhaps in a society in which power and status depend so much on the size of one's bank account, and in which a population is hammered relentlessly by the message to buy, buy, buy, that consumption is self-validation, a sentiment which of course appeals to self-love. So it is hardly surprising that much of the middle class in most but not all U.S. states opposes along with the rich tax increases that would diminish their power to accumulate, even if (or in some cases because) the resulting funds would increase the power of the poor to make something better of their lives, let alone receive a decent minimal standard of living i.e. in which their basic needs are met for a physically and mentally healthy life. The philosopher Ted Honderich in his book Conservatism concludes that not only are conservatives (in the socio-economic or political sense) selfish, but that "they are nothing else". Selfishness is the main bedrock of support for conservative economic policy among the middle class. There is no doubt that the Republicans have been dishonest in the expression of their policy aims; they have conned the middle class (which has been made easier by the abysmal level of civic literacy among even educated Americans), but as we know a successful con is based on exploiting the greed of the mark. When the Republicans proposed to privatize Social Security however they went too far as they attacked an entitlement that clearly benefitted all Americans. The middle class were not bothered enough by the plight of the poor to be willing to support with their taxes the most effective ways of relieving their plight. They did not wake up, begin to support more progressive policies, until they began to be victims of the corporations. And what of the poor?

Rather more surprising than the support of the middle class for the Republicans has been the support of much of the poor. In this case the reasons are rather different. While the middle class support the GOP for pecuniary reasons the poor who do do so so for moral and religious reasons (this is not to say that the poor are not selfish, but to quote the U.S. historian Clinton Rossiter their interests are pursued rather than as with the middle and upper class vested). There is however a vicious trade-off. There are no Christian Democrats in the U.S., that is no party that is socially conservative but economically progressive (here in Canada we call them 'red tories', admittedly a diminishing breed) that the devout poor could support, though there are plenty of the reverse in the Democratic Party, the kind they would be least likely to support. So as Thomas Frank in his superb book What's the Matter with Kansas has shown they vote for politicians who claim to (and in some cases no doubt actually do) share their beliefs, and therefore their opposition to abortion, gay rights etc. but who also represent the corporate interests that have put them and their fellow believers out of work. I admit to having little sympathy for someone who thinks that stopping an abortion or a gay marriage from taking place is more important than being able to support their families. The irony is that such people are living on welfare benefits largely provided by the tax dollars of the inhabitants of the so-called 'blue states' that they loath, a fact that first came to my notice in a bitter but understandable diatribe against these 'value voters' by Janeane Garofalo and Sam Seder on their radio show the day after Bush's re-election. The most effective way for the Democrats to gain their support is to admit a strain of Christian Democracy into the party but only for their candidates in the 'red states' and this past election they did it in a few constituencies with some success, but in most socially conservative districts the Democrats showed their (and the U.S. political system's) lack of imagination and simply ran candidates that more or less shared the social and economic views of their Republican opponents, the so-called 'Blue Dog' Democrats. But how long can this strategy be successful if the leadership in Washington moves ahead with socially progressive policies as they, with most of their support elsewhere, eventually will? The most effective force for mobilizing the poor politically has been religion. Until their economic concerns supersede their religious concerns the poor will not the important voting bloc for economically progressive policies they once were in the U.S. political system. And what of that system?

That the United States is at the national level and in many (but not all) states a plutocracy is due primarily to the dependence of its politicians on great amounts of money, made all the more necessary by the relatively huge size of congressional districts let alone the states, and the ever increasing use of media. While a two-party system clearly gives a mandate to the winning party, it also makes politics a zero-sum, winner take all activity, and therefore winning can mean at any cost, and not only financial as the Republicans have repeatedly shown. A multi-party system would be healthier but the two parties have conspired to arrange campaigning rules to keep out others, so nothing short of a massive public groundswell (such as would be required for a change to proportional representation) would change the situation. Changes in campaign finance laws to reduce the presence of big money in U.S. politics is certainly desirable, but with a Supreme Court that has declared money is a form of free speech reform is unlikely in the near future. Two areas where changes can be made are the administration of elections and the way the boundaries of congressional districts are drawn. The only United States is the only country in the industrialized world in which election and electoral district boundary readjustment commissions are controlled by political party members and not by independent officials. What is worse is that only one party, the party with the majority of seats in a state, controls these commissions and so gerrymandering is rife in the U.S. (so to quote one critic, politicians choose their voters rather than the reverse) along with incidences of voter fraud and other abuses. I say changes can be made but the questions are whether the Democrats have the integrity to make them and whether the Supreme Court will prevent them. That once august body appears to have become the guardian of the condition of the U.S. body politic, sclerosis.

What these reflections all lead to is the question whether or not the Democratic victory marks the beginning of the return to a more progressive, more liberal America that Arthur Schlesinger Jr. predicted so terribly prematurely near the end of the Reagan administration in his The Cycles of American History (1986). It did not happen in large part because the material resources of liberalism had been used up by both Democratic and Republican regimes, Reagan's being the worst. There were not enough of the resources needed to restore much less further welfare state policies, and even what had survived under Reagan and Bush Sr. was reduced even more in Pres. Clinton's neoliberal collusion (the first example of what it was first called then, 'triangulation'), forced or done willingly (probably a combination) with the neoconservative Republican-dominated Congress. We saw an example of what these policies have achieved when Hurricane Katrina ripped away the genteel mask of New Orleans to reveal a Third World city (like many American cities), along with the malign neglect and incompetence of the Bush administration in dealing with disaster that befalls the poor. The surplus those painful (mainly to the poor) cuts achieved has been frittered away by Bush Jr.'s unprecedented combination of war spending with substantial tax cuts, the latter primarily for the rich. So there is, barring tax increases, no supply of funds the Democrats cannot draw upon without increasing the deficit and debt further. The Republicans have said that the deficit they created is not a serious problem, but of course they will say otherwise if the Democrats expand it further to begin to reduce the level of social injustice in the U.S. So will the Democrats bite the bullet and reverse the tax cuts or not? That more than anything else will tell us whether the Democrats are truly serious about their stated goals, which can be summed up as making America more a democracy again and less a plutocracy. As a social democrat I remain doubtful.

2006-11-04T21:08:00.000-08:00

The Military Commissions Act - The Editorial Cartoonists Begin Weighing In...Will Americans Begin Paying Attention?

2006-10-28T00:23:00.000-07:00

Reflections on the Military Commissions Act

For those who have not yet viewed the three videos posted last Saturday, that is the name of the Act, passed by Congress and signed into law (Oct. 17) by Pres. George W. Bush, that ends the right to habeas corpus for non-citizens in the U.S. but allows for that nullification to be extended to U.S. citizens if they are judged as "enemy combatants" by the President. So what exactly does this mean? According to the Wikipedia article on this subject:

"Under the MCA, the law restricts habeas appeals for only those detained as enemy combatants, or awaiting such determination. Left unchanged is the provision that, after such determination is made, it is subject to appeal in U.S. Court, including a review of whether the evidence warrants the determination. If the status is upheld, then their imprisonment is deemed lawful; if not, then the government can change the prisoner's status to something else, at which point the habeas restrictions no longer apply.
There is, however, no legal time limit which would force the government to provide a Combatant Status Review Tribunal hearing. Prisoners are legally prohibited from petitioning any court for any reason before a CSRT hearing takes place. It has been pointed out that the government can thus detain any noncitizen for any length of time, without habeas or any other appeal, by delaying the CSRT hearing indefinitely."

With this Act, Bush's power and neoconservative dominance in the U.S. has probably reached its apogee if, as appears to be the case, the Democrats regain a majority in the House of Representatives if not the Senate as well on Nov. 7. This Act marks the first time in U.S. history that habeas corpus has been suspended by Washington nationally, rather than only applied in some states or parts of states, as happened under Lincoln (Maryland and parts of midwestern states) and Grant (nine counties in South Carolina). Those two previous actions were arguably more justified (not to say justified) in that Lincoln was dealing during a time of civil war with riots, local militia actions, and the threat that the border slave state of Maryland would secede from the Union, leaving the nation's capital surrounded by hostile territory, and Grant's move was part of federal civil rights action against the Ku Klux Klan (a domestic terrorist organization if there ever was one) under the 1870 Force Act and 1871 Ku Klux Klan Act. Both involved cases of insurrection and therefore the threat of domestic rebellion, one of only two grounds for the suspension of habeas corpus under the U.S. constitution, the other being invasion. While the threat of terrorism is real, it is neither rebellion nor invasion. The Ku Klux Klan was once referred to as the "Invisible Empire" because of its secret power structure, and so it seems that label can be attached to Al Qaeda, not in the sense of its actual nature but in the sense of the way it is depicted by Bush, Blair and their allies, giving a rather loosely joined, decentralized organization the dimensions of SPECTRE (the 'T' stands for terrorism) in the James Bond films. As an invisible empire, it can be portrayed as operating anywhere and everywhere and capable of striking at anytime, and so it follows from that premise that the geographic scope of the suspension of habeas corpus in the U.S. is justifiable, but that does not answer the question as to whether the suspension of habeas corpus in itself is justifiable.

The Act as well as marking the greatest extension yet of Bush's power also marks the extent to which democracy has declined in the U.S. While I wouldn't call the logical destination of the current drift of U.S. federal policy a fascist America, I don't think it would be an exaggeration to say it would be something resembling Pinochet's Chile. That regime after all is the logical destination of neoconservative policy, a combination of laissez faire capitalism, courtesy of advice from Milton Friedman's Chicago School of monetarist economics i.e. the "Chicago boys", and political authoritarianism, with a degree of social hedonism permitted, but only affordable for the wealthy who either withheld criticism of the regime or actively supported it (as they still do today, acclaiming Pinochet as a hero), a class of plutocrats not too dissimilar from those in George W. Bush's America, a country that once led the industrialized world as a liberal democracy but now lags behind the rest.

2006-10-21T21:38:00.000-07:00

Thinking of Visiting the United States? Part 3

Keith Olbermann of MSNBC follows in the footsteps of the great Edward R. Murrow (who attacked the U.S. senator Joseph McCarthy when that infamous demagogue and inquisitor was at his most powerful) and superbly blasts the Bush administration's vicious despotism. After viewing his special comment ask yourself how many other journalists in the corporate media have taken a similar stand. Then ask yourself how much coverage you have even seen of the terrible change that has happened in the "land of liberty" this past week.

2006-10-21T21:29:00.000-07:00

Thinking of Visiting the United States? Part 2

An analysis by a noted U.S. law professor of America's move toward dictatorship. His conclusions are unsettling to say the least.

2006-10-21T21:04:00.000-07:00

Thinking of Visiting the United States?

The U.S., thanks to its President, its Vice-President, its Congress, and ultimately it seems its people, has now officially become an authoritarian country. View this video to understand why.

2006-10-09T17:32:00.000-07:00

Thanksgiving in Canada 2006

Thanksgiving is a time of celebrating our good fortune, but in that celebration do we remember the hundreds of thousands in this country who if they are having a turkey dinner at all, are having it in a church basement or soup kitchen? An editorial in today's Toronto Star says what should be taken to heart by all. I wonder how many other newspapers have an editorial like the following? I have dropped the first paragraph, the substance of which can be found in any newspaper editorial:

"For far too many families, dinner will be rice or pasta instead of turkey. To get that meal, thousands of families will have to go to their local food bank simply because they did not have enough money left after paying the rent to buy food. Some 74,500 people, including 28,000 children, in Greater Toronto rely on local food banks each month.
Many of the homeless will go without a meal at all today. And breadwinners in working poor families in Canada will struggle on to try to make ends meet just like every other day. A quarter of families using food banks have at least one person working and more than half of them earn at least $10 an hour, still not enough to pay the bills.
Many of those struggling are new immigrants in a strange land who have come here with good educations, but cannot put their skills to work.
It is important to remember all of them today and do what we can to help because many are merely eking out an existence in this land of plenty.
There are multiple reasons for this continuing poverty. Welfare rates in most provinces are lower than they were two decades ago and provide an income that in most cases is less than half the poverty line. Employment Insurance, the first level of the social safety net, is now so full of holes that only 27 per cent of the unemployed in Ontario receive any benefits at all from it, leaving workers who lose their job no recourse except to go on welfare. And despite moves by the Liberal government over the last three years to raise the minimum wage in Ontario, this basic pay rate was frozen under the former Conservative government for nearly eight years and remains below a level that would provide a decent standard of living.
On Thanksgiving, one of the best ways to give thanks and show gratitude for what we have is by helping others.
Citizens can lobby politicians to finally do something about the working poor. Demand answers to why 5 million people in the country — about one in every six — live below the national poverty line, including 1.2 million children. And push politicians for an answer to why food banks, charities and churches have become so critical in the lives of those who cannot obtain decent jobs and wages.
Then take a bag of food to the local fire hall for those who so desperately need it. And take your children to volunteer at the local food bank for a few hours so they too will grow up knowing that not everyone is as lucky as they are and something needs to be done about it.
For the United Way's 50th anniversary campaign, write a bigger cheque than in the past to reflect the fact the agency is dealing with larger needs and more diverse problems than ever before.
At the end of the day, Thanksgiving should be as much about what we have given back as it is about being thankful for what we have."

It is noteworthy that the editorial advocates political action before the standard exhortation to acts of charity. Hardline conservatives will no doubt agree with the latter and condemn the former, for the fact of growing, seemingly intractable poverty in our midst, is a standing condemnation of their own individualist ideology. They may at least say that we should help the poor, but the most we can justifiably be made to do is provide through our taxes a level of bare subsistence, and some will not condone even that. Thus they reject the most powerful and effective instruments for fighting poverty. While the Star editorial is not calling for socialism it seems to me it is calling for capitalism with a human face. Once we had it in this country, though not so much as the Western Europeans. Can we at least return to what we once had so that I am no longer, as in several other instances, ashamed of my country?

2006-10-07T20:51:00.000-07:00

Mouseland

As well as being one of the greatest socialist politicians and statesmen of the 20th century and rightly voted "Greatest Canadian", Tommy Douglas was something of a political Aesop, as this, his most famous speech (embellished by animation) shows. One wonders what Orwell, the author of a much longer and more famous modern fable, would have thought of it.

2006-09-30T07:50:00.000-07:00

A Review of Bob Rae’s The Three Questions

[Former Ontario premier Bob Rae is generally regarded as one of the top three contenders for becoming the new leader of the Liberal Party of Canada. I wrote this book review for university back in 2000 when Mr. Rae was still professing to be a social democrat though no longer a member of the New Democratic Party, with intelligent if derivative notions about public policy. As columnist Richard Gwyn has commented recently, "he now sounds almost hostile to ideas"].

While Bob Rae’s book The Three Questions is certainly about politics, it is hard to agree with the publisher’s classification of it as a book of philosophy, unless it is philosophy in the broad sense of a statement of principles. It is not a book of political theory, if anything its tone is decidedly anti-theoretical, but concerned as it is with the practical responsibilities of government rather than an examination of first principles this is not a drawback. The chief significance of the book is not that it has anything new to say about politics, because it does not, but that it comes from a former Ontario premier and leader of the province’s New Democratic party. For that reason alone its message to Canada’s left is important.
Rae begins his book with a definition of social democracy:
The essence of social democracy is its belief in the equal right of every person to enjoy the good things of life, its commitment to freedom, and its recognition of the enduring value of human solidarity (8).

This definition is vague enough to be endorsed by social democrats, left-liberals, and red tories alike, and Rae gives no indication that he would have it otherwise, quite the reverse. Its very vagueness is an indication of his bias toward pragmatism and moderation throughout his book, not for their own sake, but rather driven by what he believes to be true about human nature. He bases this understanding on words of the great ancient rabbi Hillel, which form the broad framework for his argument:
“If I am not for myself, who is for me? But if I am only for myself, what am I? And if not now, when?” The first question points to the enduring value of self-interest, which we ignore at our peril; the second to the need for generosity and justice in a world that values greed too much; the third speaks to a need for action and the danger of doing nothing, a vice to which we are all, in our private and public moments, too prone (9).

The “enduring value of self-interest” is something that Rae refers to constantly through his book, presumably to drive the point home to those on the left who believe politics can be based primarily on altruism. It is self-interest that is the basis of the market economy that is “the surest way to economic growth” (20). If what Rae is proposing can be described as socialism, it is socialism as the amelioration of capitalism rather than its replacement, which can be said to be what separates social democrats from radical socialists.
The most powerful recent manifestation of capitalism is the phenomenon known as globalization, “the economic reality of our time” (ibid.). Rae does not try to explain the main causes of globalization, beyond vague statements about technological change, but one thing is clear, and that is that he believes it is unstoppable and irreversible. The inevitability of globalization is of course the conventional wisdom of those who either stand to benefit from it or are free market ideologues, but it is unfortunate that Rae unlike other thinkers on the moderate left does not challenge it. He does at least make some recommendations as to how the worst aspects of globalization can be dealt with, touching on the “need for more effective international groupings of labour to match both the reach of transnational companies and the emergence of stronger intergovernmental agreements” in policing labour practices in different countries (a job that can also be done to some extent through television and the Internet), as well as arranging consumer boycotts and with other organizations doing research and education (43).
According to Rae the advocates of government spending face two problems. The first is “globalization itself, the end of capital controls, and the fact that virtually all industrial economies are more or less open. The second is the end of inflation” (64). In one of the more informative sections of the book, he points out how tax increases were “concealed, or at least buffered, by inflation”. However he does not satisfactorily show how “sustained tax fatigue in a number of countries has coincided with a dramatic reduction in inflation” (66). The more likely cause was a sustained attack through interest rate increases by countries’ national banks, an attack that in Canada’s case was particularly harsh in its consequences for the economy. In any case Rae (alluding to personal experience as Ontario premier) is correct to state that raising taxes is, with inflation over, political poison. However he does appear to be cautious about cutting taxes, as he rightly rejects the notion of a law against government ever running a deficit (66-71).
After outlining the problems facing social democrats in Canada, Rae makes an effective attack on the right. While for him the ideas of the radical left are unworkable and impractical (as well as electoral suicide), the ideas of the radical right are entirely selfish and inhumane. He correctly points out that private philanthropy, George Bush Sr.’s “thousand points of light”, are no substitute for the welfare state (91-2), and quotes some of the figures showing the increase of poverty and decrease in real income for most Canadians (ibid: 95). He dismisses workfare as “a return to the Poor Law philosophy of 1834”, unless it includes meaningful job retraining and education (103). He claims that the founding father of modern conservatism, Edmund Burke, “has more in common with modern social democracy than he does with the libertarian excesses of the Progressive Conservative government in Ontario” (181). Putting aside Burke’s reverence for the free market (which C. B. Macpherson among others has documented), there is in Burke something in common with social democracy, namely opposition to political radicalism and extremism, “the importance of a strong civil society, efficient government, and a respect for mutual obligation” (181-3).
There are, Rae believes, better approaches:
Devolve as much power to local governments as possible, but insist on co-ordination. And governments, in turn, should devolve as much power to the community as possible. Governments steer better than they row. Focus whatever tax relief can be afforded on the lowest paid, and give people every incentive to work, earn, and learn. Reduce the work week and working time. Reward patient capital. Discourage speculation if it re-emerges. Don’t punish success, but give every incentive for private generosity. Don’t reduce taxes to the point where the public sector can no longer provide decent health care, vital infrastructure investment, and education. Canada can ensure its competitive advantage through its strengths in health care, infrastructure investment, and education. (98)

There are additional policy prescriptions. He supports the European idea of employee and union representation on corporate boards (58). The localization of health care at regional and municipal levels (114), and that Liberal promise, federal pharmacare (115). Above all he stresses what apparently for centre-left political leaders is the main policy mantra, education, education, education. He advocates government programs in early childhood education (119), and more teacher involvement in school curriculum reform. As for the environment, he recommends a largely stick approach for consumers (user fees for garbage bags, toll roads, fuel price increases; 126-7). For all his talk about moderation and pragmatism, Rae seems to be quite the progressive after all. The question is how these laudable policies are to be pursued in the face of opposition from a business class whose values are largely if not entirely American, and therefore unlike in Western Europe (excluding the British Isles) antagonistic toward unions. Reducing the work week and working time and discouraging financial speculation seem particularly difficult goals to attain in a country that is next to one where democracy has been and is being undermined by moneyed interests. The best course appears to be “more co-operation and co-ordination with other countries, more international rules that are based on more than just the convenience of capital” (200). In short, an attempt at least to globalize social democracy as Rae has defined it.
While “prosperity and the public good” (to quote the subtitle of the book) are Rae’s main interest, he is also concerned with Canadian federalism, particularly as it relates to Quebec. He states that Canada has no absolute rights of self-determination for any province (148) and that there is no one type of federalism (154). Not sharing Pierre Trudeau’s antagonism toward Quebecois he appears to lean toward an asymmetrical federalism without saying so (154-8). Rae is as much a pragmatist in constitutional matters as he is in economic ones, saying, “constitutions…are always messy processes that are easier to knock down or tear apart than they are to construct” (158).
In the concluding part of his book, Rae undertakes a defence of politics. The remark he makes about government bureaucrats who feel that they are “the permanent government” is nicely put: “Administration on its own is a dangerous thing. It has to be led and informed by politics” (173). He rightly attacks “the greatest witch doctors of them all, the pollsters”, and the advocates of a laissez-faire philosophy of government (175). He even addresses however briefly television’s role in the trivialization of politics and the “dumbing down” of society (176-80). The choice for Canadians is stark:
We are now faced with difficult questions. Do we want to live in cities where there are streets and neighbourhoods where not everyone can go? Do we want to live in communities with rising levels of crime in which the answer to social problems is to incarcerate more and more (and more) people, and build bigger jails? Do we want to live in communities where those who have anything at all have to hire security dogs and create walled cities and communities around them? Or do we want to live in a community which is strong economically, with healthy markets and a strong sense of innovation and growth but an equally strong commitment to a sense of community health, to equality, and to a sense of inclusion? (185)

Or to put it another way, do we want to live in the United States or do we want to live in a social democracy? Rae does not say so, but the state of politics in the U.S. would appear to indicate that the only viable form of democracy is social democracy, at least in Rae’s sense. His arguments while not profound are largely correct, and set the course that a Left serious about political power must follow.

2006-09-23T20:59:00.000-07:00

2DTV - Tony Blair - Tony Says

Hard to believe now that he once called himself a socialist. A clip from Britain's 2DTV show, unfortunately not on TV, as far as I know, on this side of the pond.

2006-09-11T10:23:00.000-07:00

9/11 and Nineteen Eighty-Four

As we remember the terrible events of five years ago today, we should pause to reflect that different people will invoke memories for different reasons. Up to now I have made no references to George Orwell other than in my first post, but I think today it is appropriate to do so, particularly in regards to his most famous novel, the dystopian satire (that it is a satire should not be forgotten) Nineteen Eighty-Four. Why do I refer to that novel? Because I believe that because among its many important insights, it gives us insight into the way war can be used by government to manipulate a country's population, particularly a war whose outcome or time of ending remains undetermined. In the novel the three great totalitarian world powers Oceania, Eurasia, and Eastasia are at apparently perpetual war with one another over the rest of the world not under their rule i.e. the northern half of Africa, the Middle East, southern India, Indonesia, and northern Australia. The fact that the war is apparently without end means that the civilian populations of each of the three superstates are under a condition of perpetual mobilization i.e. rationing, surveillance, suspension of civil liberties etc. so the state maintains its hold on absolute power on the basis of being at war.

Since the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon we apparently have a new kind of war apparently without end, the "War on Terror". Fighting terrorism is far more suitable to being made into a perpetual war because terrorists are not a conventional threat, they do not operate in the open as a military force but in the shadows until they strike, and so even when and where they are not apparently a clear and present threat they can be said to be, because after all they are a hidden enemy that may stay hidden for a long time, so it is argued a country's population, particularly one a section of which has been attacked, must be on constant guard, if not official alert, be prepared to give up some of their civil liberties or condone them being taken away from others suspected of being terrorists. And in the process by keeping a population in constant fear of being attacked, a government is able to maintain its hold on power. Just as the totalitarians of Orwell's novel were able to maintain their power by means of an apparently perpetual condition of war, so the neoconservatives of the United States, most of all those who make up the Bush administration, have so far been able to do so by means of what they have said will be a war that will last for a very long time. The threat of terrorism is real, but it will not be defeated by military means but by the means the Western Europeans used to defeat their own domestic terrorist threat in the 1970s, e.g. the Baader-Meinhof Gang and Red Brigades, through concerted intelligence, police, and special forces work. How many Americans realize this?

In his farewell message to the nation on 17 January 1961 Pres. Dwight Eisenhower warned of the danger of the "military-industrial complex", the first time that term was ever publicly used. Its participation in the "war on terror" is undeniable. Eisenhower midway through his great address said, "Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals so that security and liberty may prosper together." So far I am afraid the great majority of Americans have been neither alert nor knowledgable in the ways that matter regarding the threat of terrorism or of the one Eisenhower revealed. We should remember the victims and true heroes (the firemen and police and other rescuers who went into the collapsing WTC, the passengers of United Airlines Flight 93) of 9/11 but we should also remember the ways that event was and continues to be exploited by those in power.

2006-09-09T19:31:00.000-07:00

My Kind of Socialism III

Anthony Crosland (1918-77) is perhaps best remembered now as the author of The Future of Socialism (1956), which called for the reformulation of the UK Labour Party's policies and principles in modern social democratic terms, though he was also a leading member of the party and held several cabinet positions in Labour administrations until his sudden death. Whatever one might think of his revisionist views, it seems to me he had the essentials of democratic socialism right, as I believe the following quotation shows. Any individual, group, or government that claims to be democratic socialist, or social democratic in the sense of moderate democratic socialism (as opposed to simply welfare capitalism or liberalism) should have their words and actions measured and judged by the standards Crosland set out four years after his most famous book was published. This is not only my kind of socialism; I agree with Mr. Crosland's conclusion:

I start with three assumptions. First, while British socialists may differ about particular policy issues (for example, the exact form and extent of future public ownership), they would all subscribe to the following basic socialist values:

(1) An overriding concern with social welfare, and a determination to accord a first priority to the relief not merely of material poverty, but of social distress or misfortune from whatever cause.

(2) A much more equal distribution of wealth, and in particular a compression of that part of the total which derives from property income and inheritance.

(3) A socially 'classless' society, and in particular a non-elite system of education which offers equal opportunities to all children.

(4) The primacy of social over private interests, and an allocation of resources (notably in the fields of social investment and town and country planning) determined by the public need and not solely by profit considerations.

(5) The diffusion of economic power, and in particular a transfer of power from the large corporation (whether public or private) both to workers (either directly or through their unions) and consumers (through the co-operative movement).

(6) Generally, the substitution of co-operative for competitive, and other-regarding for self-regarding, social and economic relations.

(7) In foreign affairs, the substitution of disarmament, international action and the rule of law for nationalism and power politics.

(8) Racial equality (both at home and abroad), the right of colonial peoples to freedom and self-government, and the duty of richer nations to give aid and support to poorer ones.

(9) An increase in the rate of economic growth, both for the sake of a higher standard of living and as a pre-condition of achieving other objectives.

(10) A belief, not merely in parliamentary democracy, but in the rights and liberty of the individual as against the State, the police, private or public bureaucracy, and organised intolerance of any kind.

These ten values, or aspirations, constitute the basic principles of democratic socialism. There may be legitimate disagreement about their precise interpretation, and about the exact means - the particular institutional changes or forms of economic organisation - through which they can best be realised in our society. But no one can call himself [or herself] a socialist who does not assent to the basic values.

From Can Labour Win (Fabian Tract no. 324, 1960)

2006-09-04T15:59:00.000-07:00

Happy Labour Day

Labour Day was officially established in the U.S. by Pres. Grover Cleveland in 1887 as an alternative to the proposal to celebrate the worker on May 1, which Cleveland feared would be used, as many on the Left openly wanted, to commemorate the May 4 Haymarket riot in Chicago the year before. It was not however an invention of the establishment. According to Encyclopaedia Britannica:

The idea for such a holiday in the United States is attributed to Peter J. McGuire, a carpenter and labor union leader who later cofounded the precursor of the AFL-CIO. In 1882 he suggested to the Central Labor Union of New York that a celebration be held to honour the American worker. Acting on this idea, about 10,000 workers paraded in New York City on Sept. 5, 1882, under the sponsorship of the Knights of Labor. The date of the celebration was chosen simply because it filled up the long gap between Independence Day and Thanksgiving.

What the article leaves out is that Mr. McGuire got the idea from Canada. The origins of Labour Day lie in a parade demonstration by workers on 15 April 1872 in Toronto to call for the abolition of then existing laws which decreed that trade unions were criminal conspiracies in restraint of trade. Those laws were finally repealed in that same year after a union parade in Ottawa on September 3 paid a visit to the home of PM John A. MacDonald. The April 15 march became an annual event though of no set date, though the Ottawa event would certainly have been an excellent one to commemorate. Mr. McGuire happened to see it on 22 July 1882 as an invited speaker, being the founder and general secretary of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters which had organized the previous year. The full story can be found here, with the non-Canadian dimension here. The message to be taken from the origins of Labour Day is clear: it is a day not only to celebrate workers and their achievements and contributions to society but also their rights as workers, above all their right to unionize. This message is clear in the Labour Day most of the world celebrates, but in ours, among those who are not union members, that message has been lost. It is high time we who are not union members, i.e. the vast majority, recovered it.

2006-09-01T11:44:00.000-07:00

Banned in Boston...And Everywhere Else

This animated short was not shown for more than twenty years after the date of its production. Considering that it was at a time when movies were showing the after-effects of people being shot in the face (who could forget Scarlett O'Hara's disposal of the Union soldier in Gone with the Wind?), that this was banned shows how under the rule of the Hays Code the American film industry was so timid in portraying sexuality, particularly the feminine kind, in contrast with violence. To this day there is a notably similar discrepancy between the treatment of the two subjects as far as the industry-controlled MPAA film rating system is concerned.

2006-08-23T11:09:00.000-07:00

My Kind of Socialism II

Hugh Gaitskell, leader of the British Labour Party from 1955 until his untimely death in 1963 is perhaps best known now for being the first leader of the party to push for the amendment of the strictly socialist Clause IV, first incorporated into the party constitution in 1918, which briefly sets out the general objectives of Labour in the governing of the United Kingdom. It was left to Tony Blair thirty-six years later to revive the push, sucessfully this time, for amending the clause in 1995. As the following selection makes clear, while both leaders were opposed to the clause in its original form, Gaitskell was far more committed to equality than the present UK prime minister. Imagine Blair saying the following:

The central socialist ideal is equality. By this I do not mean identical outcomes or uniform habits and tastes. But I do mean a classless society - one in which the relations between all people are similar to those hitherto existing within one social class; one in which though there are differences between individuals, there are no feelings or attitudes of superiority and inferiority between groups; one in which although some jobs are paid more than others, the differentials are based on generally acceptable criteria - skill, responsibility, effort, danger, dirt, etc.; one in which though people develop differently, there is equal opportunity for all to develop.

(From "Public Ownership and Equality", Socialist Commentary, June 1955)

2006-08-15T15:41:00.000-07:00

From A Red State Dissident

Dennis Perrin, who has been a valuable although biased (a bias I happen to agree with) source of information for me on the war in Lebanon, is an eloquent and informed voice of the left in the United States while being, as the title of his weblog says, a "red state son". The red state in his case is Michigan, and in his latest posting he gives readers a disturbing look at his part of what has been called "Middle America". His piece can be found here. His previous posting includes from YouTube a David Bowie/Trent Reznor music video, whose song title he says, "sums up my current state of mind". Watch and see if you agree.

2006-08-11T12:20:00.000-07:00

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's Message to the People of Cuba

As Cuban President Fidel Castro was reportedly recovering from surgery for a stomach tumour, on Aug. 4 the American secretary of state issued an English language message to the Cuban people through Radio Marti. In the transcript of her address I have inserted certain words that I believe would have made it more honest:

Today, I would like to speak directly to the Cuban people. [I would like to, but probably your government has managed to jam Radio Marti's broadcast signals once again]:
We in the United States are closely watching the events in Cuba [we still have some spies there]. Much is changing there [we hope in our interest], yet one thing remains constant: America’s commitment to supporting a future of [economic] freedom for Cuba, a future that will be defined by you -- the Cuban people [and by us].
The United States respects your aspirations as sovereign citizens [so long as you accept our trade and investment policies]. And we will stand with you to secure your rights -- to speak as you choose, to think as you please, [to run your businesses as you please,] to worship as you wish [our evangelicals are preparing to go over to spread the gospel], and to choose your leaders, freely and fairly, [just as President Bush was chosen by the American people,] in democratic elections.
All Cubans who desire peaceful democratic [capitalist] change can count on the support of the United States [to bring about the end of socialism]. We encourage the Cuban people to work at home for positive change [in a free market direction], and we stand ready to provide you with humanitarian assistance [which you will need after your social welfare system is done away with], as you begin to chart a new course for your country [really determined by us].
The United States is also encouraging all democratic nations to join together and call for the release of political prisoners [except for ours], for the restoration of your fundamental freedoms [like you had under Batista], and for a transition that quickly leads to multiparty elections in Cuba [,"multiparty" hopefully only meaning two parties].
It has long been the hope of the United States that a free [market], [nominally] independent, and democratic [capitalist] Cuba would be more than just a close neighbor – it would be a close friend [and subject]. This is our goal, now more than ever, and throughout this time of change, all of you must know that you have no greater friend than the United States of America [except for Venezuela, Bolivia, Brazil, Sweden, Norway...].

2006-08-10T17:16:00.000-07:00

An E-Mail Exchange with Jim Travers of the Toronto Star

[Normally I wouldn't publish e-mail correspondence with one of the Toronto Star's best columnists, but after some thought I decided the subject would be of interest to readers. What appears is unedited, other than my insertion of Mr. Travers's name into what were Blackberry messages, and my addition of relevant links.]

Dear Mr Travers,
You've written a fine assessment of the Lib leadership race as it presently stands, but what do you mean by "the outdated left-right political spectrum"? I don't get the impression that you're one of those believers in the so-called end of ideology, which I've noted tends to come from those satisfied with the status quo (no doubt you've read Mr Broadbent's remarks re Mr Rae in the Globe). It is no truer today than it was in the 1960s when it was first announced.
Gregg Hill (4/30/06)

Thanks for your note. Most parties and far more voters no longer see poltics as left or right. The parties include left and right anf only about ten per cent of votersare party specific. The result is isuue by issue positioning cheers

Jim Travers (4/30/06)

The voters and the party members may no longer use the terms 'left' and 'right' but I think that if they were asked which policies "issue by issue" they supported or opposed preserved or advanced equality or inequality socially or economically (according to the late Italian political philosopher Norberto Bobbio the criterion to distinguish between left and right "is the attitude of real people in society to the ideal of equality") they would see matters quite clearly, though the supporters of inequality social and/or economic differ from the supporters of equality in being rather less explicit in their support.
Gregg Hill (5/01/06)

But the question is so loaded in the abstract that the answer would be meaningless. Daycare poses the same question in a different context but for complex reasons, voters chose the the "right" rather than the more usual "left".....I just don't think it works well anymore...cheers
Jim Travers (5/01/06)

I don't think that particular example supports your position. That minority of voters who supported the return of family allowance over the state daycare programme did so for reasons of economic individualism (under the standard euphemism of 'choice'), or on the basis of so-called traditional values (which state daycare supposedly threatens as an interventionist egalitarian institution and a product of feminism), either stance of which is generally regarded as on the right.I will concede your point to the extent that support for state daycare doesn't necessarily translate into left-right terms (though the policy was originated by the left) but opposition to it certainly does, excepting those parents whose stated opposition is based on the ground that they would not have benefitted from the programme.
Best, GH (5/01/06)

thanks for the comments. cheers
Jim Travers (5/01/06)

[Travers may not like to use the left-right divide by name even while in various columns he recognizes its conditions, but at times despite his stated position he is unable to abandon the language. In his May 27 column for example, he wrote this: "Sometime during the depths of the winter campaign, it became clear that for much of the last decade, Liberals had been winning elections while living a lie. Instead of shrewd politics, their strategy of holding the centre by campaigning from the left and governing from the right became a transparent embarrassment."]

2006-08-09T13:54:00.000-07:00

An Open Letter to the Toronto Star

[This is an open letter because the newspaper would not print it. Too long perhaps? In any case, I think the information I disclose is worth knowing.]
In his defence of PM Harper's defence of Israel's actions in Lebanon ("Measured response or war crime?", Aug. 7) Neil Finkelstein neglects to mention a number of facts:
1) The day before Hamas soldiers "kidnapped" an Israeli soldier on Israeli soil, Israeli commandos had entered the Gaza Strip to "detain" (really the same action) two Palestinians Israel has claimed are Hamas members.
2) The area in Israel Hamas attacked was a military post close to Gaza that had been used among other fortified positions to fire the hundreds of shells into Gaza that had led to some 30 deaths in the preceding weeks.
3) Hamas "stepped up their firing of rockets at Israeli civilians" after Israel had stepped up its firing of more advanced weapons at Gaza civilians after the "kidnapping" of its soldier.
4) Hezbollah began firing its rockets only after Israel, rejecting negotiation, began bombing raids over certain areas in Lebanon after the two soldiers were "kidnapped"
5) Hezbollah "kidnapped" the soldiers to use them as bargaining chips in a prisoner exchange. This has long been standard practice on both sides, terminology favouring Israel notwithstanding.
6) Israel has also destroyed various utilities with its declared "precision" weapons in addition to "the bridges and communications infrastructure" allowing Hezbollah movement to Syria.
7) Israel's military is no less blended in with the civilian population than is Hezbollah's. The 12 Israeli soldiers killed on Aug 6 were in the entrance of a kibbutz. How much closer were the Hezbollah soldiers to civilians at Qana? Too bad Lebanese civilians don't have the network of air raid shelters Israelis do, and too bad they have to face much more powerful weapons than Katayusha rockets.
And too bad most of these facts aren't coming to light in most of our mainstream media.

[In case anyone is wondering about the sources of my information, they can be found here, here, here, here, and here. Gainsay who dare.]

2006-08-07T12:28:00.000-07:00

One Electoral Reform PM Harper Won't Be Adopting

[One of the advantages of having a blog is that you can include articles you submitted that were rejected for publication. Was the Toronto Star right to reject this? Read on and judge for yourselves.]

Perhaps the most well-known statement by Gerard Kennedy as a federal Liberal leadership candidate has been, “Those of us who have the insight, who know better, cannot let Stephen Harper do to Canada, what Mike Harris did to Ontario.” This does not appear to be hyperbole in light of the Prime Minister’s past writings, speeches, behaviour as PM, and indications in the recent budget, which taken together establish the conclusion that with a majority government Harper would establish a regime similar to Ontario’s under Harris. But there would be another similarity as well. Harper would like Harris be able to forward a neoconservative agenda with less than a majority of voters supporting it.
Harper could win a majority government with as little as 38% of the vote (as the Liberals did in 1997) because of our first-past-the-post (FPTP) electoral system, in which candidates can win seats in their constituencies with less than half of the votes cast, a plurality rather than a majority of the vote. A party could therefore theoretically win every seat even if it was opposed by a majority of voters in every constituency. If such a system can result in a politically radical majority government being elected despite a majority of voters opposing it, the most logical way to prevent such an outcome is obvious, replace the system.
It may be assumed that the system to replace first-past-the-post would be one based on proportional representation (PR), but we need not go as far as this. The system we can adopt would still produce manufactured majorities like FPTP but unlike it candidates could only be elected with the support of a majority of voters. This system, long in use in Australian federal elections for its lower house, has been called among other things preferential voting, in Britain and Canada the alternative vote (AV), and in the United States, most descriptively, instant runoff voting (IRV). Canadians have been long familiar with leadership conventions in which in a series of voting rounds or runoffs candidates with the least support are eliminated with their supporters going to other candidates until one candidate wins with more than half the votes. In AV electors number candidates on the ballot in order of preference and if no candidate has 50% plus 1 of first preferences the candidate with the least support is eliminated and his or her supporters’ votes are transferred to their second preferences for a second count, and so on until a candidate wins a majority of votes. Voters would no longer as in many cases under FPTP have to choose between sincere and strategic voting, but under AV could in effect do both through first and succeeding preferences respectively, so that even smaller parties like the Greens could benefit.
In Canada the benefits of adopting AV to the Liberals and New Democrats are clear, as the two parties could stop battling over votes and confine themselves to bidding for the second preferences of the other party’s supporters while allying against the Conservatives. As a center party the Liberals would gain most, but without the risk of letting the Tories come up the middle more voters would likely support the NDP as their first preference. As for the Bloc Quebecois, it could in most cases lose to the Liberals only if Liberal voters cast second preferences for the Conservatives, but it could defeat the Tories in select ridings (it would probably have been four in the last election) with second preference support from NDP or Green voters alone, who would likely rather have a sovereigntist social democrat elected than a federalist conservative. As for the Conservatives, failing second preference support from Liberal voters the alternatives would be winning a majority of first preference votes or not winning at all.
With a Tory minority government the Liberals, NDP and Bloc could end first-past-the-post federal elections in Canada now, not changing constituencies (unlike with PR) but only the way votes are cast and counted. Such a move would be attacked as being done for electoral advantage, which it would be but no more so than when the Conservatives’ Australian counterparts, the Liberal and National parties, first introduced AV in 1918 to unite the conservative vote against the Labour Party, or when AV was used rurally in provincial elections in Alberta (1924-56) and Manitoba (1924-55) to weaken the socialist threat from the NDP’s predecessor the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (AV’s proportional counterpart, the single transferable vote, was used in urban areas) or when various conservative scholars and journalists advocated AV in the 1990s to end vote-splitting between the Reform Party and Progressive Conservatives. Replacing first-past-the-post with the alternative vote would not necessarily prevent the Harper government from being re-elected but it would ensure that government would lack a majority in the House if it also did in the country. If as many have claimed the majority of Canadian voters are left of centre shouldn’t we have an electoral system that better represents that majority than the one we have now?

2006-08-01T10:27:00.000-07:00

One Cartoonist's View of the Lebanon Conflict

Ted Rall is one of the most controversial editorial cartoonists in the U.S. as this example shows. His views are often harsh and, as in this case, usually correct but not to be taken at face value. Fortunately he also writes a weekly column, also often harsh, so we can know exactly where he stands on the issues he draws about.

2006-07-28T11:27:00.000-07:00

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.

2006-07-27T13:54:00.000-07:00

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.

2006-07-26T18:45:00.000-07:00

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)

2006-07-25T19:14:00.000-07:00

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.

2006-07-25T12:20:00.000-07:00

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.

2006-07-22T17:57:00.000-07:00

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.

2006-07-21T17:48:00.000-07:00

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?

2006-07-21T16:49:00.000-07:00

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.