apologist's manifesto...

Once more I've absented myself from this little blog o' mine for a number of months, and here I am again trying to figure out why this keeps happening. I have a theory. Politics as played out in the majority of jurisdictions is seemingly less relevant than ever before. In other words, I find it hard to care about current events if the main forum for debating them is politics.

The system is broken, maybe irrevocably so, and any personal commentary an individual like myself might offer up has started to feel less important, less interesting and altogether less worth sharing. On so many levels we live with the illusion of government; politicians and their operatives exist to project an image of strong leadership and good stewardship, but often are completely incapable of either. I'm tired of our political culture. This way voter apathy lies...

So what to do? For now take a break, shelve this blog once again, and consider the alternatives that exist outside of political government. Search out thinkers who don't subscribe to blind partisan politics, but focus on the entire community of human society and the actual challenges we face, not merely the most politically expedient and advantageous ones. Politics has never been a place for idealists, and only rarely has it made room for thinkers. Unfortunately we're in dire need of both right now.

why, oh why, do we pay taxes?

A great article.

not quite the end of history...

Another fine read, not unrelated to the previous post.

buddy, can you spare $30 billion...

This is a great column.

will this winter never end...

I would rather be back here right now...

for those who are tired of presidential predictions...

This is a great little piece from the NY Times.

my pick for story of the day...

I'm not totally sure, but I think this is what democracy looks like. It's a short article and worth reading all the way through. I really do love Vermont...

talk about empty rhetoric...

The following is an entry I found on the Department of Canadian Heritage's website, a small article all about that most Canadian of ideals, "Peace, Order and Good Government," excerpted from the educational resource guide "Canadians and Their Government."

In light of today's top story, and the on-going dysfunction that has rendered our current Parliament utterly irrelevant to the business of governing Canada, I thought it was a good time to test the official rhetoric. I offer one particularly excellent excerpt from "Canadians and Their Government" :

Indeed, the phrase “peace, order and good government” has become meaningful to Canadians and defines Canadian values in a way that is comparable to “liberté, égalité, fraternité” in France or “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” in the United States. It is a phrase that truly articulates the journey toward peaceful accommodation throughout Canada's evolution as a nation. This process, in itself, is reason enough to feel proud of Canada's accomplishments since before Confederation.

Today, Canada is a world leader in peacekeeping and conflict resolution and is a model for democracy.

The high sentiment in the above quotation is even more laughable in light of our Federal Finance Minister's current vendetta against the Province of Ontario, and specifically its Liberal Premier. "Conflict resolution" does not appear to be a Conservative strong point.

I'd hazard that "Pot Shots, Tax Cuts and Libel Suits," is a more appropriate official slogan for the present Conservative government.

And when politicians resort to lawyers you just know things will not end well...

he can dish it, but apparently he just can't take it...

This is unbelievable.

this does not bode well...

BAD: That the Federal Conservative government is proposing a form of arbitrary censorship of the film and television industry.

WORSE: That evangelical crusader Charles McVety is claiming he's behind the whole thing.

A choice quote from the Globe and Mail article published in today's paper:

"Mr. McVety said films promoting homosexuality, graphic sex or violence should not receive tax dollars, and backbench Conservative MPs and cabinet ministers support his campaign."

The italics are mine. And seriously, what's with the chronic conservative fixation on things that "promote homosexuality"? I'm pretty sure homosexuals aren't actively recruiting, so the idea that gay stories somehow endanger society, or risk eroding the fragile morality of the average young Canadian is pretty far-fetched.

Below is a further excerpt from the Globe article, this time a direct quote from Conservative MP for Palliser (Saskatchewan) David Batters, who is an associate member of the Canadian Heritage Committee :

"In my mind, sir, and in the minds of many of my colleagues and many, many Canadians," said Mr. Batters during a Jan. 31 meeting of the Canadian Heritage committee, "the purpose of Telefilm is to help facilitate the making of films for mainstream Canadian society - films that Canadians can sit down and watch with their families in living rooms across this great country."

Oh really? Is Telefilm Canada now the funding arm of Blockbuster Video?

Is it a bad time to remind the conservative pundits the reason why we typically label Canada a democracy and not an oligarchy? Oh right, it's because all people, even artists, are entitled to express their beliefs and share their stories without fear of censorship or state persecution, as opposed to living under the constant surveillance of a small committee of moral and cultural arbiters, which appears to be the preferred option of Mr. McVety and the Conservative Party policy makers.

Just imagine what a majority would be like...

with a whimper, not a bang...

Federal budget day...yawn. Apparently we're supposed to expect some surprises. How about properly funding our ailing social services and urban infrastructure this time around? What's that you say? Tax cuts? Right....

looking for clarity, imagination and some truth...

Canada has been involved in Afghanistan since October 2001. Almost seven years and two governments later and what exactly we're doing there, let alone what we've done, is not really clear. And further to this, why we're there, which is certainly related to what we're doing and have done, is not terribly obvious to the average citizen either. So you'll forgive me if I find the question of how much longer we plan to stay both a little premature and without purpose until we can get a handle on the present tense state of affairs. The future becomes a convenient distraction in this context.

But let's backtrack to the past for a moment. Last Remembrance Day I was in Ottawa and made it out to the War Memorial for the large national commemorative ceremony, accompanied by two friends, one who'd recently moved to Ottawa for graduate school, the other a visitor from Northern India. The out-of-town guest was in thrall to the whole spectacle, having never experienced such a ceremony in her part of India, she enthusiastically criss-crossed the periphery of the War Memorial to snap as many pictures as possible. My other friend is a committed advocate for peace, doing her PhD in an area directly related to peace-making. She and I were in what I can best describe as existential shock when the voice at the podium began to intone: "We love our troops, repeat after me, 'we love our troops'." And of course the large crowd did repeat after him. And everybody broke into loud applause. And that was the shocking part - it didn't take much to make a case for war.

As a nation we have essentially lost our right as citizens to criticize Canada's role in Afghanistan because to do so would be to launch a personal attack on the men and women in uniform. This is ridiculous logic, of course, because a person is capable of supporting our troops without supporting THIS mission. And no matter how many intelligent people point this out, the "repeat after me" mentality gets louder and more single-minded, making a clear understanding of our present role in Afghanistan extremely difficult, if not impossible.

There are some very good reasons for Canada to be in Afghanistan right now. Our traditional role as post-conflict peacekeeper, and our unique identity as a rich and non-European neutral power without any history of international conquest, makes us a strong agent for diplomatic compromise in a country that been the plaything of Empires for most of modern history. But we need clarity on our activities, the public should be informed of the actual objectives of the mission, our current capacity to realize them, and an honest representation of both our victories AND our losses.

We also need imagination. A vision of the future that is limited to legalistic bickering over an exact withdrawal date is a disservice to all the work we are currently undertaking, as well as a failure to support the independent nation we hope to leave behind. Our vision should be one broad enough to encompass hope for Afghanistan, and yet realistic enough to admit that a timeline for withdrawal may not yet be possible. Commitment to a vision, and not to an election cycle, is what Afghanistan needs from all NATO countries, and Canada especially since we maintain close relations with both the United States and Britain, the other key agents in this complex reality.

And we need truth. Without honest reporting, and up front political accounting, we will never be in a position to make a positive difference because we will be working from imperfect information which will inevitably lead to poor decisions.

And so I offer up a series of what I consider to be insightful pieces, all published in The Walrus magazine over the past year, which have greatly increased my understanding of the current state of the mission in Afghanistan, and some of the particular challenges we still face:

3D Vision by Taylor Owen and Patrick Travers (published July/August 2007 issue)
Road of Fire by Hugh Graham (published December 2007 issue)
Review of "Outside the Wire: The War in Afghanistan" by Ken Alexander (December 2007 issue)

"silly season", here we come...

Oh, it's on...

okay, so we're back...

Yikes, it's been over two seasons since my last post! Well, I'm back...I think.

I mean it's the start of a year-long election season in the US, and in Canada we're always on stand-by for one of those voting things. Also it's the middle of winter and I'm suffering from cabin fever, so going back to this bloggerly space seems like a good way to pass some time and save some sanity.

A special thank you to my three loyal readers who never lost the faith and haven't yet deleted me from their favorites. This relaunch is dedicated to you. And so we begin again...

cause for guarded hope?

A clearly articulated and comprehensive call to withdraw from Iraq was published today in the editorial section of the New York Times.

Although they have made similar, if more vague, statements to this effect before, it feels, for the first time in a long time, that a real movement is building to finally realize the project of extricated the US from Iraq. Let us hope this small and clear statement is a bellweather...

it's oh so quiet...

These things happen in cycles, and so once more I have let too much time past between postings to this little blog and feel obligated to formalize my absence. My lovely pleasant valley is in full bloom once more, and with absolutely nothing of consequence happening on the hill I'm turning my energies to quiet contemplation of the meaning of it all. Or maybe I'll just go for a walk. Either way, I will not be posting here for the next little while.

There is something to be said for silence after all...

just call her "beverley j. boondoggle"...

Another bad day for Heritage Minister Bev Oda and the stunningly unaccountable Conservatives.

Didn't you get the memo? "Opaque is the new transparent..."

the ever curious case of quebec...

I really don't know what to make of it all. A friend forwarded to me an excerpt from the Globe and Mail coverage, where a defeated PQ candidate mused that although the Quebecois are an "open minded" people (nation?), there are limits. Electing a homosexual premier being chief among them. What's that sound? Oh yes, the daggers sliding out of their sheaths...

Of course that these same people nearly elected a party into government with virtually no experience, zero concrete policies and a rather embarrassing streak of public intolerance among their ranks was arguably a stunning display of "open mindedness" on the part of Quebecois voters. Talk about leaping before you look...

And now the pundit class is frantically casting after federal election dates, drawing upon any number of pseudo-logical arguments for/against a spring/summer/fall/winter election. But nobody can quite say how Quebec will factor into this strange mix, which is perhaps why Canadian politics has suddenly become so interesting once again.

speaking of civil liberties...

This is a long article (but worth a read) about covert NYPD infiltration of a wide range of mostly left-leaning peace-seeking groups leading up to the 2004 GOP convention in NY, with some rather nasty consequences (unjustified arrests, among other things).

I doubt the same efforts would have been made in the service of a Democratic convention, but who knows, maybe the whole notion of civil liberties is so eclipsed by the present culture of pre-emptive fear in the name of national security that any major event can now be used to justify suspending citizen rights.

It now seems that peaceful dissent risks being conflated with terrorism, as lawmakers flirt dangerously with the idea of "guilty until proven innocent," a short cut that provides them with an easy fix to potentially embarrassing opposition from the people they govern. Why answer your critics when you can simply lock them up?

"Land of the free..." Is it still possible to sing that anthem in our time and keep a straight face?

human rights aren't just for the "good guys"...

This is upsetting. I wish I understood how, nearly a decade into the 21st century, the leader of our nation doesn't grasp that human rights are not something we can choose to discriminately bestow on certain groups at the expense of others, but are in fact UNIVERSAL. This is one case where "you're either with us or against us" can never apply.

Harper's "below-the-belt" tactics in the Commons I'm used to. His staggering indifference towards universal human rights, a pillar of global political stability and the last best hope of resolving many of the festering post-invasion messes left by the Americans, I'm not willing to concede as allowable in any way shape or form.

The press will likely contain this to a 'spat' between the PM and Dion, and largely under-report on the implications this episode will have on Canada's standing as international peace keeper and above-the-board diplomatic agent. We are fast losing all credibility on the world stage: Kyoto is a joke; bilateral trade agreements with the US are a mess; our positive/neutral approach to the middle-east is over; and now we are rolling back one of our greatest achievements - the concept of universal human rights. I'm not sure it can get much worse than this.

Sadly there is almost nothing to be done: we are living through a very dark political moment, not just in Canada but across the globe.

Economists still happily predict, after well over a century of doing so, that one of these days market forces will re-balance the systemic and rampant inequality that plagues the planet. Meanwhile politicians seem to have embraced pure demagoguery. The new politics is comprised of transparently false 'spin' and fanned by the cynical manipulation of a reactionary citizenry that seems satisfied with action of ANY kind (no matter how inappropriate) at the expense of well-conceived and considered approaches to major societal and global problems.

And so it goes...