Video evidence has been released following the conviction of five of the so-called Toronto 18.  Seven of the group were previously released and six are yet to face trial.  As the evidence involved does not show any of the men still awaiting trial the judge released the images.  One video shows an explosion in a field of a bomb the size the perpetrators had allegedly intended to detonate.  The others show the take-down by police of two of the suspects and  a detonator being demonstrated.  All very interesting and perfect for television.  Especially the RCMP blowing up a dumpster in a field.  Great images.  Who doesn’t like a good explosion?  What none of the videos or any of the other evidence that has trickled out justify is the creation and maintenance of our anti-terrorism laws.

What the public needs to see is the evidence that could only be attained through the use of the enhanced police powers contained in the anti-terrorism laws and how that evidence directly prevented catastrophic loss of life.  Anything else is diversion.  Everything thus far released could have been achieved using standard police procedures.  Why then do we need the added tools of the anti-terrorism law.  That is what must be justified if those laws are to be extended. 

The weakness of the government’s arguments for maintaining the anti-terrorism laws is demonstrated by the mock explosion.  The only reason to include that footage is to terrorize the public.  Terrorism in service of preventing terrorism, there is a metaphor for the new millennium.  Scared and confused the electorate is prepared to accept whatever the government claims will safeguard them, whether it really will or not.  I am surprised that this footage was allowed in court as it is clearly irrelevant.  Whether you are planting a bomb capable only of cracking a ceramic pot or a nuclear device capable of taking out an entire city, you are still committing a crime.  What possible value could a demonstration of the blast from a particular size of explosive be in a trial to determine if these men were guilty of plotting a terrorist attack?  Would they have been less guilty if the explosion planned had been for instance half the size demonstrated.  Or is this the purpose of out anti-terrorism laws?  Are they needed so that the crown may enter irrelevant and inflammatory evidence in order to convict by hatred and anger rather than law.  If so, then it is a frivolous and dangerous justification. 

Eight years after the September 11, 2001 attacks in New York and Washington it is time to return to sanity and allow these over-reactions to pass into history.  In the wake of those events a terrified population lost track of what this country and western democracies are supposed to stand for.  Yes it is a dangerous world out there and yes we should be vigilant against those who would threaten our lives.  But in being vigilant let us not become vigilantes.  Let us remember that while law and individual rights and freedoms can leave us vulnerable to dangers, the dangers of a police state without rights are far greater.  In retrospect the chaos of Weimar was preferable to the order of the Third Reich.

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“and one part to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.” — The Last Will and Testament of Alfred Nobel.

And the winner is Barack Obama.  He has done the most and best work for fraternity between nations by …… uh  ….. what exactly has he done?  Well he must be downsizing the American military.  No U. S. forces are on a recruitment drive.  He is promoting peace by maintaining troops in Iraq, increasing troops in Afghanistan, signing off on extraordinary rendition, talking about closing Guantanamo Bay.  That doesn’t sound like it fits the spirit of the Will either.

The consensus seems to be that he has won the prize because he is a symbol of hope.  At least that is the line being taken by those who support Obama.  Of course Fox News thinks the Nobel committee are a bunch of hippie / commies chosen by a parliament of hippie / commies in Norway who give this prize to other hippie / commies to celebrate hippie / commies.  If the Daily Show isn’t on you can allows tune into Fox News to get your daily laugh.  The upshot though is that no one is defending the prize as actually legitimate.  And that says a lot.

Whatever reason possessed the committee to award the prize to Obama was misguided to be charitable.  There have always been those on the Right who have diminished the importance of the Peace Prize and pointed to winners such as Yasser Arafat as evidence of it mistaken sentiments.  But Arafat had accomplished something.  Now the Right can actually say that someone won it for doing nothing except being liked by the members of the committee.  Worse there will always be the rumour, suspicion that politics played a role.  Obama’s people responded in open-mouthed astonishment that their man had received the prize.  But White House staffers are trained and proficient liars.  Even when they tell the truth it always sounds like a lie.  We will never know for sure and conspiracy theories are likely to abound across the Internet.

What I suppose gnaws at me most is the rush of progressive left wing organizations to jump on the bandwagon and celebrate the prize.  I just read a missive from Avaaz.org, a group that does a lot of good work promoting human rights and keeping governments honest, argue the prize is an opportunity to help Obama justify his winning in the future.  We all condemn the Right when they justify the unjustifiable.  But given the opportunity the Left sounds suspiciously similar.  Blind slavery to any doctrine or person is not only misguided it is down right dangerous.  Have we so quickly forgot the excesses of the Soviet Union.  We can argue that Soviet socialism was not true socialism but then we just sound as dogmatic as the current Right or the old Soviets.

Instead we should be as critical of our own as we are of our opponents.  Mr. Obama you should have refused that prize as you know you do not deserve it.  The prize committee needs to be censured for so callously violating the spirit of Alfred Nobel’s final request.  Shame on you and shame on Obama for sullying the noble gesture of Alfred Nobel.

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To elect or not to elect, that is the question.  Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer the inanity of the current parliament with its showmanship and buffoonery or to take arms against this sea of trouble and by a ballot end it.  Ah to vote, perchance to get more of the same.  Aye there’s the rub.  For what spectres of absurdity might come when we shuffle off this current catastrophe must give us pause and make us rather bear those nitwits we have than to fly to others we know not of.

Such is the dilemma of the Canadian people this fall.  Michael Ignatieff vows he will bring down the government at the first opportunity.  An easy vow to make knowing the NDP is in no shape for an election and would be inclined to support the Harper government rather than fly into debt they cannot pay.  Actually Layton and the NDP had been using the same strategy vowing never to support the Conservative government in the knowledge that the Liberals at that time feared an election.  And so the brinkmanship and the nonsense continue.  Caught in the middle of the sandbox, surrounded by surly children each wanting to be King for a day or however long a government lasts these day, is the Canadian people.  Mired in recession, casualty counts from an unpopular war rising and being shafted by the so called friend (U. S.) that dragged us into this mess, Canadians are in no mood for childish behaviour.

The sad thing is that minority governments can be the best government.  Forced as they are to compromise in order to govern, history has supplied us with numerous examples of successful minority governments.  Much of the social safety net we are so proud of today was the result of minority government as were our national anthem and our flag.  Minority government can also be full term government as in the Davis minority in Ontario during the early 1980s and the King federal government of the early 1920s.  Both of those lasted four years.

In this round of minorities the egos of the players get in the way.  Mr. Harper strikes at Mr. Ignatieff’s narcissism and lengthy sojourn to the land of the drive-thru gun shop.  Mr. Ignatieff parries and replies with a thrust at Mr. Harper’s dogmatism.  The King-makers are the 2 court jesters.  Painted harlequins they prance around the two main party leaders, now getting smacked aside, now being embraced and cajoled.  Their patrons laugh and sneer at them at caucus meetings and use them as they wish in the House of Commons.  They stand as the most fitting symbol of the current state of Canadian politics:  parliament would be funny if so many people weren’t getting hurt.

Arguing that we should avoid an election now because we would just get more of the same begs the question whether we should ever again bother with such an ineffective, expensive farce.  More of the same is what we will get for the foreseeable future.  Even if one of the head knobs were to form a majority government, nothing much would change except that the opposition parties would feel even more secure in mugging for the cameras, portraying themselves as the great champion of the Canadian people.  No my friends Canadian politics has changed.  We can hope that Harper’s Hamlet and Ignatieff’s Laertes politically die on each other’s swords but the hope is probably vain as who might follow may be no better.  No my friends we must come to the realization that the only lions left in Rome are in the arena.

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What do you do if you have a relative, a brother or a cousin, maybe an aunt, who is having difficulty holding on to reality.  This person sometimes appears rational and aware of their surroundings but in the next moment can fly off to a world of their own creation.  Delusional, sometimes they think everyone is out to get them and flail madly at all around them in a paranoid frenzy, hurting themselves and anyone unfortunate enough to be near them.  At other times they pout and moan because they can’t have their own way in a melancholic narcissism.  The phantoms tormenting them do as much or more damage to themselves as they do to others.  As the symptoms worsen the family is called together and tries to come up with a strategy to help the pathetic soul caught as it is in its own delirium, tortured by demons from the depths of its own psyche.

It is never an easy decision for the family.  Parents remember the promise at the birth of their beloved child.  The bright smile, the first tentative steps and missteps.  Why did this happen?  Where did they fail?  Perhaps they were too permissive and indulgent.  Perhaps if they had given their child more discipline he would be able to deal better now with his demons.  But as it is he is out of control and drastic measures are called for.  Institutionalization or at least constant tight supervision.  And only the family as a whole can accomplish this.  If we all don’t work together then the only other solution is to euthanize the suffering creature and even that will take the strongest of us together.  It is always sad but if you truly love someone then you must do what is best for them no matter how difficult or painful.

It is time now for the world community to sit down together and decide how best to deal with our paranoid schizophrenic little sibling, the United States.

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This has been America’s summer of discontent and there is no sign of the rancour easing up soon.  From the surreal scenes at the health care town hall meetings to a furor over the president addressing school children America has not been this divided since the years leading up to the Civil War.  Earlier this summer a man showed up at one of the town hall meetings sporting an assault rifle slung over his shoulder and another a 9mm pistol strapped to his leg.  This was the first concrete evidence that things have gone too far.  The media is giving voice to an angry mob without providing context or reason.

Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes is credited with the axiom that freedom of speech does not include yelling fire in a crowded theatre.  While this is somewhat out of context of the actual ruling that Holmes was making at the time, the concept serves me well here.  If I am in a crowded auditorium or arena of some sort and I falsely begin to yell fire, it is reasonable to assume that someone may panic.  One would suspect that it was my intent to create panic as no other logical motive exists.  Panic, psychologists affirm, is very contagious.  If the building is crowded and everyone rushes toward the exits at once injuries and even death are likely if not certain.  The premise here is simple.  I have misinformed those around me who have no time or ability to judge the veracity of my assertion.  In the absence of an alternative voice shouting that there is no fire and assuming no sane person would falsely call the alarm, everyone in the building would assume that there was indeed a fire.  It is therefore prudent for them to attempt to exit the building as quickly as possible given that a clear and present threat to their lives appears to exist.  The bottleneck created by a large number of individuals acting without guidance crushing the exits insures a tragic outcome.  Because my speech led to a tragedy that I should have easily foreseen, barring any mental abnormality, I am responsible for that tragedy and should shoulder the consequences.  If someone dies, I should be charged and found guilty of at least intentional manslaughter if not a higher count as my actions were not only reckless but frivolous.

People like Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly, Rush Limbaugh and others of their ilk have been yelling fire at the top of their lungs.  They are not presenting alternative opinions and reasoned criticism but rather sensationalism in a hunt for ratings and top spot on the neo-con rubber chicken circuit.  The American people caught up in the fear mongering presented as journalism by these self-important gurus of Right-wing thought are reeling under a deluge of misinformation.  Hearing screams across the airwaves that Obama is going to murder their grandmothers and turn their children into socialist robots, fear takes over and few people make good decisions when they are afraid.  For the record, one more time, I have read Obama’s policies and watched his performance over the last several months and I can affirm categorically that he is not a socialist nor are any of his policies socialist.  On health care he is simply proposing what amounts to an extension of the existing medicaid program to provide for a voluntary opt in.  It will not solve the current problems in health care and will be more expensive than it should be because the major health insurance companies will still control the bulk of the market.  As for his speech to school children, asking young Americans to write an essay on how they might help their president and their country hardly seems indoctrination unless you follow the philosophies of Ayn Rand and believe that you should never do anything to help your community or your country.  How is it indoctrination if the children themselves will be giving their thoughts to the president on how to make a better America.  That sounds more like patriotism than indoctrination.  After all what is a country if it is not its people working towards common goals?  I thought that was the big complaint of the Republicans and Right Wing activists that the Democrats were not listening to the voice of the people.

Facing the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, mired in two foreign wars that they cannot understand and see no end to, the people of America are confused and frightened.  America no longer looks like the giant it did only a few years ago.  Americans now doubt the certainty of their childhood, that America is the most powerful and wealthy state in the world.  It’s economic dominance in tatters and its military failing abroad there is not much security left in the American psyche.  So what do these super-Americans do?  Why exploit the situation for personal gain of course.  After all that is the American way.  Lacking a coherent criticism of the Obama administration’s policies and fearing the popular surge that brought him into office in the last election, the far Right has reached into the past to resurrect the great Satan, the eternal boogie man of the Cold War, Socialism.  A word they know will fan the fear and paranoia already extant.  I see another remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers in our future.

Now people are showing up at presidential appearances sporting assault weapons.  I wonder how these same shock jocks would have reacted had someone shown up at a Bush appearance with an AR15?  Oh wait I seem to remember security ejecting a couple of people from an event for simply wearing anti-Bush T-shirts.  In America you have the right to bear arms at a presidential event but not insults.  Never mind, we on the Left prefer to take people out with footwear,  not guns.  How long before some confused and misinformed American attempts to assassinate President Obama in a righteous rage brought on by the words of these depraved disseminators of dissociative behaviour?  Or an already disturbed individual seizes his opportunity to be a hero or just to become immortal like Lee Harvey Oswald?  The stage is set.  It may no longer be an if but a when.  Rhetoric is already turning to action and unless the flames are dowsed soon it is only a matter of time before at least an attempt is made on the president’s life.  Like the reckless person in the theatre yelling fire, Beck, Limbaugh and the rest of the provocateurs should then be held accountable for their actions.  They should be charged as conspirators and if the attempt is successful, assassins.  The full weight of the law should be brought to bear on them just as it would be on me if I yell fire when there is none and someone dies.  Their actions make them as guilty as if they pulled the trigger themselves.

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When is a lie most effective?  Answer:  when most people want to believe it to be true.  Wouldn’t it be great if the world was black and white.  We could always tell the good guys from the bad guys.  But that is not reality.  The world is a grey place.  Shadows of truth swirl in between out-right falsehoods and half-truths.  We can really only rely on our own perceptions and we know that many of them are incorrect.  My father always quoted that old saw that said never believe anything you hear and only half of what you see.  It’s underlying cynicism aside it is a good rule to live by.  I tell my students virtually every day to question, question everything, never accept anything at face value.  When someone tells you something ask yourself who benefits from that understanding or approach to the situation.   If the person defining the situation is the same one who benefits be very suspicious.   

Right now Iran seems to be coming apart at the seams.  Mahmoud Ahmadinejad claimed a massive victory in the recent presidential elections which led followers of his opponent Mir-Hossein Mousavi to cry foul.  Taking to the streets, opposition protesters alleged massive fraud in the vote count.  A subsequent partial recount increased Ahmadinejad’s lead rather than diminish it which served only to ratchet up emotions on both sides.  The Iranian government, that is the government of Mr. Ahmadinejad, has cracked down fiercely on the protesters.  Several people have been killed and many more injured in street clashes between protesters and riot police.

Barack Obama and the American government deny accusations coming out of Iran that they, along with their ally Great Britain, are behind the protests.  Both the president and vice-president have specifically denied the allegations coming out of Tehran.  Barack Obama went so far as to say the American administration is making a concerted effort not to impact events in Iran even in their comments.  This is a positive change from earlier American administrations who have not hesitated to interfere in the affairs of other states or movements if it benefited American interests.  Barak Obama promised change and look here we have it.  For those of you who believe that, I have a bridge in Brooklyn for sale you may be interested in.  Obama and Biden dismiss the accusations with a chuckle as if what idiot would believe the United States is behind a popular uprising in a foreign country.  The insinuation is that only a few conspiracy freaks would be dumb enough to believe the accusations coming from Mr Ahmadinejad and Mr. Khamenei. 

The United States has overthrown more than 50 governments since the end of World War II, most of them democracies.  (Dictatorships are more efficient to deal with when it comes to the bidding of great powers.)  The Kennedy administration was active here in Canada in the downfall of John Diefenbaker although Dief didn’t help his own cause any.  (If they are prepared to interfere in the political affairs of their neighbour and one of their closest allies is there any limit to what they might do?)  More than 3500 people have died in terrorist attacks against the island of Cuba since the revolution came to power in 1959, all funded and logistically supported by the government of the United States.  The Bush administration lied in order to violate the United Nations Charter and pursue an aggressive war against a sovereign member of that organization.  The invasions of Nicaraugua, the Dominican Republic, Panama and Granada; the support of the Contras, the Kosovo Liberation Army, and the Mujahadeen; installation of brutal dictators like Mobutu in Congo, the Somozas in Nicaraugua, Marcos in the Phillipines, and the Shah in Iran; fomenting coups in Chile, Guatemala, and Venezuela;  that is the backdrop to the present administration’s denials of involvement in the Iranian protests.  The list goes on.  I have not even scratched the surface of covert and not so covert American interference in the affairs of others around the world.  How can any reasonable person believe that the United States is not involved in the protests given their track record and the obvious benefits to America if Mr. Ahmadinejad were to be swept from power. The question is not whether they are involved but to what degree and when did the involvement begin.  Were they behind Mousavi from the start or are they just being opportunists?  At what level is the United States active in the protests?  These are questions that may never be answered. 

We all decry the brutality of the crackdown on the protesters.  No one should have to put their life on the line to speak their mind.  So why was there not the same outrage over the treatment of protesters in Britain during the G20 talks?  After all London police murdered an innocent man who was not even part of the protests.  He was simply a news vendor trying to get home after work.  With the addition of the killing of a beautiful young Iranian women, outrage in the West escalated against Iran.  That in itself should scream to us.  Why were the earlier deaths of protesters mere statistics, a passing reference as the political questions were examined in news reporting?  I guess it only matters when beautiful people die.  They are the only ones who have a real future full of promise.  The less attractive only have disappointment to look forward to in this world of image mongering.  The young woman (Neda Agha Soltan) purportedly uttered an heroic phrase just before leaving that day according to a self-described fiance.   Something about staying home giving victory to the regime.  Real people usually don’t make grandiose statements when parting from a loved one regardless of events happening around them.  I would suspect the real conversation was be careful and avoid the protests and her response was something like I’ll be careful, don’t worry.  But that doesn’t make good copy in a newsroom.  That doesn’t sell papers.  Nor do rather ordinary looking plain people.  When the news of Neda’s death appeared I couldn’t help remembering another beautiful young women, with a voice like a song bird that could melt the hardest heart.  During the first Gulf War daddy Bush was trying to get Congress to appropriate money for his ‘liberation’of Kuwait.  The girl appeared before the Senate Armed Forces Committee to give testimony of the brutality of invading Iraqi soldiers in Kuwait City.  When she had finished telling those grizzled Senators how infants at the hospital had been thrown to the floor so that their incubators could be looted back to Baghdad, there was not a dry eye in the place.  Even old Strom Thurman had a tear glistening at the corner of his eye.  At the time I was skeptical about the popularity of incubators as loot but people just called me cynical.  Several months later the story broke that the young girl had not been in Kuwait City during the invasion and the entire episode about the incubators had been the concoction of Hill and Knowlton, the public relations firm.  In democracies wars and all political events have to be sold like soap powder. 

The question for all of us is what are we being sold today.  We know that the United States government is lying about their involvement in the protests in Iran.  We know that their accomplices in the mass media are selling us a point of view that may or may not have any or some legitimacy.  What apportion of guilt should be born by the Iranian government and what apportion belongs to our governments, that it to say us because we constantly tell the world that we govern ourselves.  All we are left with is our own capacity to reason and analyze, to never believe anything we hear and only half what we see and make our own judgements.  Our society and our leaders discourage us from independent thought and dismiss us as fools if we dare to question them.  Who benefits from that if we comply?  Think about it.  All I can say is ‘Fools of the World, Unite.  You have nothing to lose but your complacency.’  Our age is one of great uncertainty, impregnated with fear and possibility.  Complacency is not an option, nor is falling into the trap of lies which has become our political system.  Don’t let your abhorrence of the crackdown in Iran be used for partisan goals you may not support. 

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Barak Obama’s health care plan, as it has thus unfolded, should be a clear and final answer to all those who believed this young man would somehow change politics and create a more inclusive, just and caring society.  The pinheads who screamed that socialism would reign and undermine the American way (greed, cynical self-interest, and lack of community) can at last rest comfortably in the certainty that President Obama is different in complexion only from his predecessors.  It is clear that his campaign document, Blueprint for Change, would have been more aptly named, Blueprint for the Appearance of Change. 

Obama still has to announce many of the details of the plan but he has rejected categorically any form of single-payer public system.  His reason:  it would be too expensive given the current state of the economy.  What a crock.  Canadian labour costs have been and remain lower than American in great part because we have a single-payer public health care system  Current closing and downsizing of Canadian automotive plants is due to political considerations not economics.  American political debate would sound like a cacophony of scorched cats if GM were to close American plants and leave all the Canadian plants open.  It would make the company far more competitive if that were the only criteria for restructuring.  So Obama’s proclamation that cost factors prevent him from creating a health care system that would truly address the current crisis in medicine is just a lie.  A stronger argument can be made that the opposite is true.  The United States cannot afford not to create a single-payer health care system given the current state of the global economy if it wishes to remain competitive. 

Surrounded by the executives of the major American health insurance corporations, Obama painted himself as a man of integrity and said he would fix health care regardless of the state of the economy.  As I have said here before, Barack Obama is a master of image.  He spoke of a consensus between the White House and the insurance companies to do what was necessary to see that all Americans would have access to affordable health coverage generously provided by that bastion of social conscience, the health insurance industry.  The question arises what if someone still cannot afford the premiums set by these socially conscious corporations?  First you will have to prove you can’t afford it and if the government decides you could by oh I don’t know living in your car instead of paying rent or whatever, then the talk is that a fine should be imposed.  Only in the United States would anyone think that insurance at gunpoint would be an appropriate solution to assure all citizens have health insurance.  Obviously this policy is not in the interests of uninsured Americans so why even think of it.  Wait a minute.  It was conceived in conjunction with the major insurance companies.  You don’t think that the president and these leaders of American finance would scratch each other’s back and come up with a solution that benefits themselves do you?  Gee, the insurance industry gets to extort millions in profits from a new source, those who can’t afford medical insurance, and the government led by Barak ‘the enforcer’ Obama sees that they cough up the dough or else.  And Barack’s pay-off, I suspect a tidy little kickback to his re-election campaign.  Might as well just call him President Barack ‘Milhous’ Obama and the corporate executives B. B. Rebozo clones.  It is interesting on this note to

Save the cost of health care premiums and rent at the same time. Suicide: the most cost effective option under the Obama Plan.

mention that a criticism of Obama’s current nominee to the Supreme Court, Sonia Sotomayer, is her previous assertion that all campaign contributions are in reality bribes.  She was simply stating the obvious.  A person supports a candidate because she expects him to look after her interests and in a self-serving society like the United States that means the individual’s selfish interests not her communal interest.  A bell should have gone off back in the campaign when Obama rejected public campaign financing.  Guess we know why now.  (Actually the bell did go off but the American public was so caught up in the election of the first Black president and the fulfillment of Martin Luther King’s dream they refused to listen to those voices.  I guess that they just forgot that King’s dream was a society where a man would be judged by the content of his character rather than the colour of his skin.)

I chose to pay the rent. Now I have a permanent home.

Health care is a human right.  Money was quickly found to fight an illegal war of aggression in Iraq.  Obama while downsizing that war is ratcheting up another unwinnable war in Afghanistan and in the process propping up a government rife with war criminals.  (While Obama continually tries to compare himself to Kennedy and Roosevelt, his behaviour increasingly resembles Nixon.  Nixon while taking credit for troop reductions in Vietnam failed to inform the public that they were just secretly being deployed to Cambodia which led finally to the rise of Pol Pot and the systematic murder of millions.  Now that’s the American way in action.)  There is no question of cost for these ill-conceived adventures.   They are being fought in the name of security while they have only succeeded in making Americans less secure and making the entire world more dangerous, and more in danger.  A secure state is one that minimizes the possibility that any of its citizens will die needlessly or preventably.  Health care then is a security issue.  Not just programs to deal with potential pandemics but prompt, quality medical assistance to every citizens who needs it when they need it.  Paying the rent or saving your life should not be a choice for a citizen of any civilized country.  Today in the United States it is.  Therefore the United States in NOT a civilized country.  It is a barbaric despotism where the wealthy and powerful spend their time cheating the weak and vulnerable.  And the ‘President of Change and Hope,’ Barack Obama has revealed his true self as the ‘President of No Change and No Hope.’

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I don’t like Michael Savage, the Right-Wing radio shock jock and author.   His ideas are not just stupid, they are outrageously stupid.  He and Rush Limbaugh, Michael Reagan and the rest of the untalented meatheads spew their hatred onto an unsuspecting public every day.  They deserve to be reviled and challenged.  But they don’t deserve to be censored.  Censorship is a failed policy.  Never in history has censorship resulted in positive change.  If someone can provide me with an example I will be glad to apologize and change my opinion.  But of course if what we are allowed to know is censored, how would we know?  

British Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, included Savage (real name Michael Weiner.  Great, we Germans spend a half century trying to outlive the stereotype only to have this idiot come along.) in a list of people persona non grata in the United Kingdom.  For this Savage is threatening to sue.  He claims he has never incited violence on his talk show or in his writings.  Technically that may be true.  I have never actually heard Savage say ‘Go forth and smite down the democratic liberal wherever you find him, in expresso bar or at Gay Pride Parade.’  Does he need to say this to be inciting violence?  No.  But will shutting him up stop these attitudes? Also no.  This is hearts and mind time and censoring Savage will not change the mind of one bigot. 

Silencing his message from the public airways will only drive it underground and add to its mystique.  More, it gives the message credibility.  Why censor something unless you are afraid of it.  Believe me that will be his spin on the matter.  ‘They know I speak the truth, that is why they fear me.  They fear that I might tell you what they don’t want you to know.’  His message doesn’t need to be silenced it needs to be challenged.  Isn’t it interesting that these champions of freedom seldom allow themselves to be caught in a public debate with anyone able to expose them as the frauds and fools that they are.  Cowards naturally shrink from a fight.  When they are caught as happened when Bill O’Reilly interviewed Phil Donahue on Fox the shallowness of their position reveals itself.  When Bill began his talk-over terrorism of his guest, a style common to these types, the articulate Donahue rose to the occasion and left O’Reilly sputtering back on the ropes desperate to survive the round.  That is what is needed to counteract the menace of these self-righteous megalomaniacs. 

Those of us old enough to remember Alan Berg, a American Left Wing radio shock jock murdered outside his home by Right Wing extremists, know that challenging these sociopaths has its risks.  Glenn Beck fantasized on his radio show about killing Michael Moore saying he thought he would be able to do it himself rather than hire a hitman.  His words dripped an underlying desire to really do this not just fantasize.  Nothing worthwhile comes without risk.  If we don’t soon begin to challenge these miscreants we will condemn ourselves and our posterity.  Their view of the world is unsustainable; left unchecked apocalyptic war and environmental catastrophe are certain.  Challenging the pied-pipers of doom sounds worthwhile to me.  Donahue, Moore and others have proved it can be done.  You and I can do it too.   Don’t sit by complacently when a colleague or acquaintance parrots the latest vitriol from one of these idols of ignorance.  Fight back!  Most of us would feel uncomfortable sitting passively while someone made a pejorative remark about Blacks or women.  There is no reason why we should condone with silence similar comments and ideas about immigrants, the poor, or homosexuals or any group whose only offense is their existence.  Nor is it wise to leave unchecked ideas that will cripple our biosphere. 

Political correctness has allowed hatred to hide.  Censorship does just the same.  It makes the stupid the mysterious.  I don’t want these ideas and hatreds hidden.  I want them in the clear light of day where I can draw a good bead on them and shoot them down.  So don’t call for censorship.  Join me on the firing squad and execute ignorance with suppositories of wisdom.

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Tokens come in many forms.  They can express what words cannot and cause memories to rush back.  But tokens can also be an evil thing.  Any of us old enough to remember the civil rights movement, who are active in the feminist movement and the still struggling gay rights movements know that tokens are also a weapon of those for whom change and progress are anathema.  For a few change means direct challenges to their privileged positions as arbiters of social mores.  Change questions their divine right to be right.  Most people are followers, fearful of any turbulence that might shake their comfortable little lives.  For that mass the token is the answer.  Those who would undermine our development into a free and responsible society, who would risk the future of the planet for their own enrichment or position, once cognisant of the inability to just reject the forces of justice, use the token.  The token will appease those masses who fear disruption to their world but have a sense of guilt concerning gross injustice, by creating a semblance of justice.  Like a faux fur makes a middle class woman believe she belongs with the country club set, the token allows us to lie to ourselves. 

Business, government and social organizations rushed to find ’suitable’ representatives of discriminated minorities (of course in the case of women it has always been a discriminated majority in North American society) to diversify their public image while avoiding any substantive reform.  Society could feel comfortable in pointing to these public images as proof that things were getting better while nothing changed.  The purpose of the token is to deflect scrutiny.  For those individuals being used it was always a moral dilemma.  For them the scam was all too apparent.  Their positions often lacked the substantial authority of their peers and were often artificial creations with little or no meaningful responsibility attached.  But their rise to even those two dimensional positions were a wedge for what dreams may come.  In the ghetto, the barrio and the kitchen their image might and did provide inspiration to countless members of their community.  To youth it signaled hope.  So even in its insipid attempt at retarding change, the token could still fulfill its higher function.  A token is good when it represents substance; it is bad when it substitutes for substance. 

Unfortunately, we see tokens substituting for substance everywhere today.  The token haute architecture and flashing electric gizmos in schools substitute for education.  Twitter and other social media substitute for real friendship for far too many people.  Corporate music, advertising, television etc. substitute for art.  Charisma and glibness substitute for political leadership.  People like Bono use activism to advance their career while enriching themselves on the suffering of the many (FYI:  U2 launders its money through a tax haven which means that the people of Ireland are poorer and Ireland has less wealth to share internationally via aid.  If you talk the talk but don’t walk the walk it is self-serving tokenism.)  President Obama rejects a single payer health care system in favour of fixing Medicare and Medicaid, the fatally flawed one-two punch of American health care.  The token allows Obama to rise to the podium and proclaim himself the messiah of health care without the political consequences of standing for what is right, the health of the American people. 

Recently my local Zehr’s store started charging 5 cents for each plastic bag used to pack a customer’s groceries.  The option was to purchase a reusable cloth bag.  My wife and I have several of these and it is a good idea.  Most tokens are good ideas.  Plastic bags don’t bio-degrade.  They are a hazard to wildlife. particularly waterfowl.  They are a landfill nightmare and should never have been introduced.  It may come as a shock to my younger readers but they did not replace paper bags until well after my marriage.  I might say here that paper would still be an environmentally friendly alternative with the use recycled paper and paper from renewable sources such as hemp.  My problem is not the charge for plastic or the idea to encourage customers to act more responsibly.  Actually I think there should be an outright ban on the use and manufacture of plastic bags.  In a way the policy the store and many others like it are pursuing is actually a token of a token.  If the store, as it should, believes that plastic bags are the scourge that they are then don’t offer the option.  Giving people the choice is just passing the ball onto the consumer instead of being assertive on saving the environment.  

But the bag replacement incentive now seizing the industry is just a marketing token.  It is a token because it does not address the serious environmental problem of our modern supermarket.  I was surprised about a year or so ago to discover that a grocery store has an exponentially larger carbon footprint than a manufacturing facility of the same size.  Looking around my Zehr’s market after my epiphany I felt incredibly stupid.  It had been staring me in the face for years and I had not seen it.  Open freezers caked on the edge with frost, ceilings 25 or 30 feet high, inefficient lighting strategies, it was all there.  My Zehr’s store is less than ten years old.  It was built after global warming had become a major political and social issue.  Environmentalism in general had become a focus of social interest and concern from species diversity to chlorofluorocarbons.  The options were there for Zehr’s and other grocery stores built at the time to act responsibly to incorporate the latest in environmental engineering.  I might not have been aware supermarkets were putrid cesspools of excessive carbon spewage but the scientists were and so corporations like Zehr’s should have.  Even so, they built another environmental catastrophe anyway.  Why?  Because they didn’t care about the environment then and they don’t now.  This current little token is a marketing ploy.  There is an industry-wide competition to out-green your competitor.  The public smiles, self-satisfied in the illusion that they are doing something for the environment while the corporations laugh and rake in the profits and the Earth weeps.

Some say ‘Well they are doing something.’  Music to the ears of the corporation who pray each day that the consumer will stand up and demand they do what is right not what is profitable.  By why would we.  We have our little token, the amorphous ’something’ is being done.  And when our grandchildren ask why they must wear an air filtration mask to go out and why the weather patterns are so violent and erratic, we can smile self-assuredly and say ‘we did what we could we supported the tokens in the Age of Tokenism.’

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How many of us could afford to have our mortgage payment triple overnight?  I couldn’t and I doubt there are many out there that could.  Now with unemployment rising rapidly more and more families will end up watching their possessions parade out of repossessed homes toward an uncertain future.  Billions, trillions have been pumped into the banks and yet no one stopped them from ripping the life out from under the very people who had provided that money.  They are toxic assets now, not people, not families. 

In recent days a housing project a bank seized from a developer that went under was torn down in California.  Bank officials determined demolition would be cheaper than repairing the houses and completing construction.  Twenty houses, homes, were torn down at this particular development and workers on site reported they had a similar demolition order for another development not far away.  Squatters had moved in and vandals had caused damage.   Much of the vandalism, beyond the usual obscene words spray painted on the walls, was theft of fixtures and infrastructure carefully removed by tools.  Sounds to me like someone was cutting a few costs on their home renovations.  Probably some of the very same sanctimonious individuals mentioned above.  The squatters on the other hand may well have included some of the very people this same bank had ripped from the comfort and security of their own living rooms and thrust onto the street.  Now they became squatters and vandals, the mainstream media purposely or ignorantly making them one and the same in the minds of a gullible public.  Sleeping tonight made easier thanks to a propaganda industry dehumanizing them. 

People ask me what I have against a capitalist system.  Well open your eyes.  This is capitalism at work.  The capitalist market is amoral (I would argue immoral).  The bank has no responsibility to care what happens to people.  Bank executives don’t have to answer for the consequences of their acts.  If people suffer it is not their problem and government should not stick its big nose in, that would just mess things up.  Government doesn’t know what they are doing;  the financial geniuses of Wall Street do.   Yeah right!  Try selling that argument to anybody today.  That is why the capitalist system doesn’t work.  It argues that society should be run without any moral oversight.  The law of the jungle; survival of the fitest; all the rest of that crap.  How hypocritical.  Capitalists want society to be dog eat dog until something starts nibbling on their flanks.  Then it is ‘call in our buddies the local, state or federal authorities to pound these nuisances back into the muck they are.’ 

Okay so who brought the vaseline?

The squatters at that development needed a home and they found one.  That is dog eat dog.  They should have been allowed to defend it.  After all a man’s home is his castle and as soon as they laid down amongst their meagre possessions those houses became their homes.   Nothing is more beautiful than when an inert mass of wood and metal begins to breathe with the soul of a home.  Our so-called government authorities are truly agents of the monied classes.  Rather than stand aside and do what the capitalists argue they want from government, let the private sector function, they stick their big noses in, not to tell the bankers that they need to be responsible citizens, but to make sure the vulnerable can’t stand up for themselves. 

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