I have a confession to make, actually a couple.  A few years back the department of which I am a member was embroiled in a fervent effort to brand ourselves.  Several names for the school were bandied about, most focused on the word liberal.  In the end the selection was the School of Liberal Studies.  Confession:  the whole process bored me.  I did not pay much attention as I thought our name was unimportant.  What did it matter whether we were Liberal Arts or Liberal Studies?  Confession:  I was wrong. 

At the same time, we were working on ways to highlight our importance to the education of students in the various vocational programs.  Translation:  we were trying to justify our existence.  We developed a list of essential employability skills that students would develop though our courses, arguing this list as our contribution to the success of our graduates’ careers.  At the time I was less than enthusiastic but I was happy to just do my thing in the naive belief that no sane person would seriously cripple such an important element of education let alone eliminate it.  Confession:  Wrong again.  Well half wrong.  I still doubt the sanity of some decision-makers.

I should have read the writing on the wall (I have no excuse for not doing so as I come from the generation still capable of reading).  The whole process had been sparked by a reduction in our presence at the college in the previous year.  In praise of my institution our reduction was to the required level as we had exceeded minimum requirements before that.  So at the time I was disappointed that we had fallen from stellar to competent but entirely missed the point.  Now as the pressure again rises and rumours and hints of more efficiencies and reductions swirl the corridors, my brain has finally kicked into life and I realize the stupidity of my earlier behaviour. 

We have had and still do, among my colleagues, individuals who brilliantly built this department into something for other colleges to envy.  Over these past few years they have continued the long fight for survival.  They have stood their ground and tirelessly forced the enemy to bleed for every inch.  I am ashamed that during the discussion on our name and on our contribution that I did not contribute what I might have.  I apologize.  But as they say better late than never. 

The name of our school/department was more important than I realized.  The name itself should justify our existence and fully express what we are about.  If it did we would not have need of lists of essential employability skills or any other such nonsense.  But the name we chose, Liberal Studies, forces us to fight on the enemy’s ground.  Embattled from all sides we repeat Thermopylae and the Alamo, gallant but hopeless defences. 

Our society has become increasingly instrumental in its reasoning.  Everything today is a means to an end, and not just any personal end, but the end, the end that all humans strive for, career.  At least that is the reasoning.  Anything that does not directly bear on vocational improvement is superfluous and should be eliminated in the name of efficiency.  The ideal is the machine.  The human is weak, the machine is strong.  The human is slow, the machine is fast.  The human is imprecise, the machine is precise. We must become the machine. 

That is why I think we chose the wrong name for our department.  Liberalism is the philosophy of property and the machine.  Liberalism teaches that humans are first and foremost rational animals and that is what distinguishes us from the rest of the animal kingdom.  A rudimentary understanding of other lifeforms on this planet quickly challenges that notion.  All life forms exhibit reason in their choices, perhaps not in the abstract as we might, but reason is evident just the same.  The machine is rational, calculating.  To become the machine so must we.  There are dangers though, the rationalism of the Enlightenment led among other places to the gates of Auschwitz and Treblinka.  The Holocaust was not irrational; it was immoral.  Liberalism is the philosophy of the times which has led us to the brink of nuclear annihilation and an environmental meltdown (pardon the pun). 

I now believe strongly that we should instead be named the School of Humanities and Social Sciences because that is who we are and that is what we teach.  Then instead of trying to convince the tunnel visioned technocrats that see identity as career that we fit into their myopic little world, we can stand on our own ground and force them to justify the elimination of humanity and society from our communities.  Can anyone argue effectively that we can survive with any less humanity in the world than exists today?  Can anyone argue that the interrelation of human beings is unimportant to our continued existence?  We bring students to an understanding of themselves and in that understanding they can come to understand the Other.  Without us the blank dead stares at admission would follow the students out into their careers and our world:  A generation without the capacity for independent creative thought because if you do not come to know your Self, who and what you are, you cannot come to know the Other and without knowing the Other you cannot effectively relate to her/him.  At that moment society is no more.  We descend into a Dantian inferno and soon destroy ourselves and all around us.  We, teachers of the humanities and social sciences are all that stand between civilization and barbarism.  We are on the wall every day, a tattered assemblage of philosophers and historians, sociologists and psychologists, masters of language, communication and politics,  defending the human still left in the world.

Everyday I am reminded by the media, and by my students who have bought this line of thinking as gospel, that the world is changing rapidly and if you blink you won’t recognize what you see when you open your eyes.  They smirk and roll their eyes when I tell them that not much has changed since we climbed down out of the trees and walked upright on the savannah.  Change has particularly been a topic of discussion in class, and everywhere upright bipedal apes congregate, since the the presidential campaign and election of Barack Obama.  I was assured by Obama enthusiasts that this administration would be a breath of cool clean fresh air.  It would not be business as usual with the corporate hacks taking precedence at the expense of humanity.  But lo and behold what is that I hear?  It couldn’t be but it is.

The sweet sound of the familiar wafts out of the new Obama administration.  Hillary Clinton, Secretary of State, in her recent trip to China states that human rights must not get in the way of dealing with the economic crisis.  Although President Obama will be closing the prison at Guantanamo Bay, he has decided to continue to support the policy of extraordinary rendition which is the practice of having others do your torture for you.  I have more respect for the torturer than the sanctimonious hypocrite. 

But I guess change and a new approach don’t last as long as they used to.  A nation wept with joy and expectation as the first Black man was inaugurated as president of the United States, a country with a horrific history of civil and human  rights abuses.  The hope and the promise was that this would be a new dawning of the American dream; that all humans would be treated equally and with respect and dignity.  How could it be otherwise?  How could a Black man in the United States turn his back on civil and human rights?  How could he compare himself to Abraham Lincoln and use slavery as a backdrop for the significance of his presidency while blindly ignoring slavery in those countries he interacts with?  It seems absurd but few are questioning him on it.  Those who try are pushed to the side by the ‘mainstream Left’ who are gushing like schoolgirls in the glow of the new messiah. 

The masses that enjoy the opulence and relative ease of our society have no stomach for a debate on human rights.  I guess the condition is that rights are good as long as they don’t affect our lifestyle.  For years the United States and its industrialized friends have chided China for its human rights record at Hollywood fundraising events or at galas with other progressive groups while conducting business as usual in the corridors of power.  It is a metaphor for our time.  The ultimate Potemkin Village.  While we swim in the filth of reality we see only the crystal waters of our self-induced mirage.  So who can we really blame, the politicians that encourage our delusion or ourselves for knowingly embracing it?  What is the fear?  Could it be that we know that our society is as cold and uncaring towards us, its own members, as it is toward those who suffer the indignity every day of not being considered fully human? 

I wonder.

I have been a good boy this year.  Well I tried.  I tried to remember to be helpful and caring in my dealings with everyone.  I succeeded some of the time.  I hope you will add me to your nice list. 

I have only one thing that I am asking for this year, a new system for choosing our representatives in Ottawa and Ontario and for that matter around the world.  There are many electoral systems out there to choose from, some of which I like and some of which I think are bad.  But what I really want is not a new electoral system but no electoral system.  When people are forced to vote for one or another candidate, no matter what the system used, it always favours those with money and power to begin with. 

Santa what I want is a lottery system.  If we want democracy as we always say we do then this is the only system that can deliver.  But I don’t believe most people when they say they want democracy.   Most people believe our society is stratified (the politically correct term for a class-based society in a classless society).  Some are born to lead and some are born to follow.  You and I know that that is bogus, Santa.  We know that any average normal human being given the same information can make good decisions.  Maybe sometimes bad decisions too but no one can tell me the jokers there now have never pulled a boner.  So why not give everyone a chance, Santa?  Maybe having a single parent on social assistance contribute to the debate on a national child care program would have some benefits.  For instance, getting one!

The biggest problem with our current governments is their disengagement from reality.  None of them interact effectively with ordinary folk.  Oh they come back and live in their ridings but mostly they socialize with the local elites.  My local representative has never sat down with his wife to a meal at my nephew’s house and shown an interest in their struggle.  My nephew works a low pay job in a service industry.  He works long and hard hours to try to make ends meet.  His wife has a chronic illness that limits how much she can contribute but she does what she can.  Truth is with the medical expenses (prescriptions and such) they would be better off on social assistance.  Maybe if my member of parliament could see and understand that first hand he might make a more rational contribution to debates on alleviating poverty in Canada rather than the ideological claptrap he spouts now.  If there ever was a stupid policy it is one that makes people fools for trying to help themselves.  But this is indicative of the kind of policy being produced by our governments all the time.  So maybe it would be better for my nephew or his wife to engage in the debates and decisions themselves because they understand the situation, they live it.  Few if any of our elected representatives grew up in poverty.  Oh money was tight in my home as well and I sure knew the meaning of the word ‘no’, but there were others who were truly bad off.  And truth to tell I have yet to meet an MP that didn’t come from higher up the economic food chain than I. 

Part of the disengagement problem is the lack of diversity among our current representatives.  In any of the provincial parliaments across Canada and in the federal parliament at any given time most, sometimes as much as 75% or more, of the members are lawyers.  No need to repeat here the litany of lawyer jokes, you have all heard them I am sure.  That aside, even if all of the lawyers in the legislatures are good and talented people (gag), how is that representative of our society.  Most people in our society are not lawyers.  Now someone out there is thinking, of course they are lawyers, lawyers are the only ones who can understand all that stuff.  True, because lawyers were the people who wrote it in the first place.  If non lawyers started making policy maybe it would make more sense.  In actuality our MPs don’t write the legislation the bureaucrats do.  Politicians decide policy, what we want to accomplish.  Bureaucrats figure out how to do it.  A lottery system would create a parliament that reflected our society.  A parliament that reflects society cannot help but set goals and accomplishments that reflect the needs and visions of that society.  In the end that is what democracy is supposed to be. 

Some will say that ordinary people are just not smart enough, they don’t know enough to be able to govern effectively in a complicated world.  The world is only as complicated as we make it.  It is not the technical questions which divide us and create the chronic suffering of humankind.  It is the ethical, the principle questions.  What does our society deem just in dealing with those who face challenges in their lives?  What is a just health, education, social or security system?  What world do we want to see?  Gandhi said “Be the change you want to see in the world.”  This would be our chance to do just that.   Each of us is capable of making good decisions as I said above; we just need the information. 

Here is how it would work.  The names of all eligible Canadians would go into the pool.  Individuals who for specific reasons such as physical or mental infirmity etc. could not serve, would be excluded.  Also there would be a process to apply for specific exemption.  This is exactly how our grand jury system works.  Individual names would be selected at random to fill the 308 seats currently in parliament.  Those individuals would be notified by registered mail that they will be serving in parliament for the next however many years we decide.  It could be four or we might opt for shorter tenures.  Their employers would be expected to guarantee a return to their jobs when they are finished.  (Don’t even go there if anyone is thinking that that is an onus on employers given how many jobs in our society today are contract anyway.  I spent 5 years on renewable four month contracts before I was hired full time by the college.)  The prime minister and cabinet would be elected from amongst the selected group just as jury foremen are selected now.

This does brings up why I don’t believe most people when they say they want democracy.  I have heard it many times whenever this concept is brought up.  ‘But I don’t want to serve in parliament.  What about my life.  That is too much to ask people to do.’  As Shakespeare said, “There’s the rub.”  In western industrialized societies we only want democracy if it doesn’t inconvenience us.  Hell almost half of the population can’t even be bothered to go out and vote and their major excuse; ‘I’m too lazy to find out what is going on so I don’t know enough to vote intelligently’.  I have news for you, you just aren’t intelligent.  People get the governments they deserve.  If you want to take the time and effort to browse through the specialty shops and research the product before you buy it, you most often get a quality product.  Or you can just go to WalMart because its convenient and get crap.  Take the Stephen Harper mannequin we have as prime minister today.  Now there’s an example of cheap plastic crap.  (before anyone gets in a tither, the options currently are Mr. Potato Head and a wind up rat).  I want them all gone and in a lottery system they would be. 

So Santa, you see, if we can trust ordinary citizens, chosen at random, to determine the fate of a defendant in a court of law, why can’t we trust the same people to make intelligent decisions for the whole country.  In each case they are acting on our behalf.  Perhaps we should ask the question in reverse.  If we don’t trust them to make political decisions, how can we, in good conscience, put the life of a human being in their hands?  Here in Canada we don’t have the death penalty but 25 years and sometimes more, even natural life, is an important decision I would think  And what about those societies like the United states that do have the death penalty.  I know that you and I Santa have commiserated many times over that industrialized despotism.  There this very system is trusted to decide whether the state, in the name of its citizens, can take the life of an individual.  Is there ever a more demanding decision than the decision of life or death?

I hope you can fit this in your sack tonight.  I know I have given you a tall order.  So if you can’t deliver I understand.  I want you to make sure all the little peoples around the world are taken care of first.  So if you can’t get me this maybe you could just remind people on your travels to have faith in the human spirit and each other and just maybe my gift will create itself. 

Merry Christmas Santa.  The milk and cookies will be on the Chinese bar next to the tree as usual this year. 

Michael

With the first half of the $750B already dolled out to banks and financial institutions the results are less than promising.  First there was the frenzy to try to buy each other out.  Not more stable buying up unstable institutions, which might have made some sense in streamlining the industry and providing some stability, but the big boys trying to play a high stakes game of Monopoly with our money.  Now it seems that some individual institutions have given out more in year end and Christmas bonuses to executives than they received from the government.  I absolutely loved the rationalization given by the apologists for the banks.  It seems that these bonuses are necessary if they want to be able to keep the best people.  HELLO!  Aren’t these the same best people that got the industry into this mess in the first place?  Or was it that the best people were all on holiday for the last 20 years and the help somehow screwed the pooch without their guiding hands.  Maybe these people suffer from Multiple Personality Disorder, yeah, that’s it.  They are the best people when they are drinking champagne and celebrating their bonuses; as soon as they sit behind their desks the evil idiot inside them comes out. 

This is what happens when you hand out money with little or no oversight.  I have a major insight for all of you out there in cyberland.  Corporate executives and business people in general are just that people, with all the foibles that go along with that designation.  In fact in our system it is virtually impossible to rise to the upper executive  level and have any ethical fibre to your character.  If you aren’t prepared to pimp your mother for a nickel you will inevitably run into the glass toilet bowl on your descent into upper management.  So these guys are just being true to form.  They need those million dollar bonuses so they and their families can enjoy this festive season.  Oh and the bonuses are down from last year they assure us.  But I bet they are still more than those who are being laid off from manufacturing plants in all sectors, not just auto.  I wouldn’t be surprised to find that the envelopes in which the bonuses were delivered are worth more than some American and Canadian families have to spend this Christmas.  As a matter of fact I know they are because I know many people who have $0.00 to spend this Christmas.  But these are the entitled, the movers and shakers.  These people would be lost if they couldn’t pay people to do everything for them.

Hegel in the Phenomenology talks about the master-slave relationship.  The slave is independent while the master is dependent.  Without the slave the master is nothing and cannot survive.  First without a slave how could he be a master and secondly he relies on the slave for the means of subsistence.  The slave, however, not only provides from him/herself but also for the master.  The slave has no need of the master to survive.  The only thing the master gives to the slave is his/her slavery.  Once the slave realizes this, he/she is no longer a slave.  It is time for us to realize that we the slaves of this planet are the ones that sustain the self-appointed masters.  It is time for us to walk away and let these parasites die if they cannot adapt. 

Others are starting to do this already.  There is move afoot in South America to create an alternative to the World Bank which has enslaved developing countries for decades.  Several South American nations have paid off their debt to the World Bank by helping one another.  It is their intention to found a new Bank without the neo-colonial strings exerted by the World Bank.  Voting would be equal; one member, one vote unlike the weighted voting at the World Bank which gives control to the industrialized West.  Micro-banking is growing around the world and needs to be introduced here as well.  And it is us that needs to introduce these ideas, you and me.  Let’s just take what we provide to those who have been our masters and use it for the benefit of ourselves, the decent people in this society that actually create and sustain its wealth.

This will be remembered as the year of the big story.  The Democratic primary fight pitting the first female candidate with a chance of being nominated by a major party against the first Black candidate; leading, as expected, to one of them winning the White House.  The presidential election culminated in the first Black man to become president of the United States.  The campaign season showed us new creative heights of sexism and racism dressed up with the proverbial lipstick.  Oil prices soared and a terrified public was told to expect them to climb even higher by the winter of 2008/2009.  Then the financial crisis exploded on society.  Oil prices plummeted to just below $50 a barrel.  Banks and financial institutions that were once the pillars of American capitalism collapsed, demanding public money to bail them out of their self-created disaster.  Not only demanding but expecting the public to simply hand over their hard earned money so that they could lend it back to us with interest.  The automakers followed suit.  Detroit, who for years refused to produce environmentally friendly and efficient vehicles, wanted the public to fund their stubborn ignorance.  The sense of entitlement in the ruling financial/industrial elite expressed itself in the crass reaction to any political oversight or confrontation.  The Detroit automakers and the Wall Street financiers sat before Congress and made them an offer they couldn’t refuse; either give us the money we demand or face the horror of the deconstruction of your entire economy.  There used to be a name for this behaviour.  Now what was it again?  Oh yes, I remember, extortion.  Congress bent before the deities of commercial Valhalla, sacrificing their dignity and our money to these sybaritic gods of greed.  When it rediscovered its backbone and tried to deny the Detroit 3, the High Priest in his White Temple, Pope George,  intervened and promised to save the American car industry himself.  An incoming president promises to withdraw troops from an ill-conceived illegal invasion of Iraq only to send them, in Nixonian style to another conflict in Afghanistan.  Redefining words in ways that would make Orwell envious, withdrawal has come to mean a permanent force of at least 50,000 remaining indefinitely in Iraq. 

I often remind my students of the ancient curse, may you be born in interesting times.  Well if any times can be considered interesting these can.  We, the great unwashed (mental note need a shower today), in each historic epoch look to the heralds, the troubadours,  the minstrels, of the time, the fourth estate, in short the media to guide and inform us.  Legends in my lifetime like Neil Sheehan, Tom Wolfe, Seymour Hirsch, Woodward and Bernstein, Edward R. Murrow and more too numerous to mention have illuminated the dark underbelly of our society in an effort to help us understand ourselves and our world.  Understanding precedes correcting.  We rely on these heralds to tell us what is happening.  If they are silent then we are ignorant.  If they are biased we are misinformed.  If they are stupid we are in deep do-do.  These three are not mutually exclusive.  The greatest crisis facing our society and our planet today is that most ‘journalists’ are all three.  They are often silent because to report would challenge the underlying  ’truths’ of the ideology they are sworn to uphold.  And they are often too stupid to see their own bias.  To see it they would have to examine themselves and ask some very difficult questions and we live in a world that discourages analysis and critical thinking as dangerous. 

Bias in the media is not necessarily, although it can be in a small number of individual cases, a conscious behaviour.  Most journalists believe they report in an objective and unbiased manner, always sure to verify their information with ‘official sources’ and ‘recognized experts’.  What they don’t see is that these ‘official’ and ‘recognized’ people are just that, official and recognized, but by whom.  The ideology of liberalism has been accepted in our society today as natural.  It is the ideology that is not ideological.  In some ways this is true of every society in every epoch.  We believe that the way we live is the correct, most natural, most rational form of living.  Our thoughts and understanding become the hard truths by which everything is measured.  But how is this conditioned reached?  In other words, who made up these norms and enforces them, to different degrees punishing any who might think or act a little differently.  In Western society in the early 21st century the truth is a liberal truth, having firmly grasped European and most particularly American society in the 17th and 18th centuries, rising though the 19th to cult status and vanquishing its greatest challenger in the industrialized world with the fall of communism and the discrediting of socialism in general.  What is has displaced, vanquished and rejected is not necessarily wrong because it has lost a battle.  If losing a battle were all that were necessary to discredit an adversary then we should reinstitute trial by combat for all disputes for clearly might makes right.  I wish that those who so fondly recall John Kennedy’s remarks in his inaugural speech, Ask not what your country can do for you, ask rather what you can do for your country,would actually read the rest of the speech and see the suffering and pain Kennedy expected the American people to endure just to defeat, not the Soviet Union, but just the idea of communism/socialism.  This is the objectivity that journalists are trained to see.  Liberal perspective becomes truth.  Official sources are trusted and left unchallenged.  As John Pilger remarked, speaking at a conference about his new book, ‘Freedom Next Time’,  the bits of true investagative and reflective journalism that find their way into the pages of major papers or onto mainstream networks both radio and television, are honourable exceptions rather than the rule of modern journalism.  Can we blame the journalist for seeing the world as those around them see it?  Can we blame the journalism program at university and college for putting out people that will blindly follow those who preceded them in the industry?  The question is a little unfair, I admit.  What I am really asking is can ordinary people be blamed for being ordinary?  How can we expect journalists to all be great people?  People of high conscience, principle, and great courage.  For it takes great courage to go through life uncertain of every thought you hold.  For the great person knows she/he  may be proven wrong at any moment.  Even when forcefully and vigorously asserting a position or argument, a little voice, like the slave in the chariot during a Roman triumph, constantly whispers ‘remember, you are only human’.  That is a lot to ask of anyone, to go through life in uncertainty.  But that is the human condition.  It doesn’t mean that you must always relinquish the field to your opponent or preface every remark with ‘I could be wrong but’.  You still forcefully assert your arguments because you believe them to be provably correct.  And you believe this because you have questioned them in the first place.  Accepting that we all have an inculcated perspective based on our lifetime experience means digging deeper and challenging that perspective constantly so that when we opine we do so with the confidence that that opinion will stand up to scrutiny.   That is the mark of great character and that is what I demand of journalists.  To do otherwise would be to condemn myself and you to purgatory of totalitarianism.  Such character is not encouraged by our education system or our social institutions as a whole.  The password for smoothly sailing through life is acceptance.  Accept the world as presented.  Don’t rock the boat.  But while courage won’t make you popular, it will make you honourable.   The choice is always up to the individual  So I implore those who proceed into journalism, if you don’t have the intestinal fortitude to ask the hard questions and examine your own failing then at least become a sports reporter where even basic intelligence is optional. 

In politics the first question that should always be asked is ‘In whose benefit?’   Who benefits from seeing things this way rather than that?  Who benefits when ideas are defined this way rather than that.  If the same people who are defining the events and ideas are the same people who benefit from those particular definitions, we need to be skeptical.  Maybe they are being honest and it is just coincidence that they also benefit but to accept that as the usual is to be stupid.  And that is the situation with the media today and for most of the past 100 years.  Accepting the views or their ‘official’ and ‘recognized’ sources is doing just that.  These sources benefit by the way they define the world and these are the only sources journalists must use. 

And how do journalists deal with their inability to really question the power brokers in our society?  Look at the questions they are asking.  Recently I was reminded of a question asked right after the attacks on the World Trade Center in 2001.  I remember it being asked and at the time just shook my head in disbelief.  It has become part of the conspiracy theory industry that has grown up around that tragic day.  (The attacks have spawned several industries actually.  Only America could market tragedy like soap suds.)  The question was “Mr. President.  Where were you when you first saw pictures of the first plane hitting the towers?”  I have paraphrased as it was asked more than once directly to the president and to his media representatives.  The initial answer that he was at the school when he saw a picture of the first plane hitting which is incorrect as images of that plane hitting had not been uncovered at that point is why the conspiracy theorists are all over it.  Most likely it was the second plane hitting that he saw and the answer a result of miscommunication.  But for all the attention that the question has received because of its answer, no one has questioned the question itself.  Why would anyone, let alone someone who must by virtue of covering the White House be at an upper level of his/her profession, ask such a stupid question ?  Who the hell cares where he was when someone first showed him a picture.  What critical information is uncovered by this?  The question of when was also asked several times.  When did you know this?  When did you hear that?  When did that zit on your nose pop?  Maybe George was having a dump when his aids first showed him the pictures or told him about the collapse.  Maybe Laura wheeled a TV over to the hall and he kept the door open to watch the coverage.  If he is like me he probably got her to bring him a cup of coffee as well.  How much of this crap (pardon the pun) do we need or want to know.  Personally I have no interest in any of this.  I don’t care who told him what, when.  I would be interested in deeper questioning of his plans for dealing with the situation.  That is news! 

But news is what the heralds of these interesting times are trained to ignore.  We hear the lies repeated.  The auto industry is in trouble because it pays its workers too much.  Truth the average pay at assembly plants in the U.S. is $30 an hour.  Given the price of housing and feeding a family in America today that is not exorbitant.  But according to the heralds unless the workers stop being so greedy the Detroit 3 will collapse.  In whose interest?  The self proclaimed best political team on television asks whether President-elect Obama can move forward on health care reform in the midst of this financial crisis.  Read General Motors financial report.  You will discover that health care costs are hurting their competitiveness.  But no mention of this on CNN.  Oh! no! Wolf wouldn’t want to mention that.  In whose interest?  Victory in Iraq and in Afghanistan is necessary to secure the world (read the United States) from further terrorist attacks.  Most Americans still believe that Iraq was involved in the attacks and that the elimination of the Taliban will produce a free and democratic Afghanistan (read my earlier post Team Afghanistan for some insight into the reality).  Bringing death and destruction to those half way around the world will make them love us.  Instead every objective measure shows a more dangerous world today than before the War on Terror.  Even that phrase, war on terror is never questioned but it may tell us more than we want to know.  How can you have a war on an idea, a concept?  What would that look like?  You can’t kill an idea only the holder of the idea.  Then look at how we are proceeding in this so-called war.  In whose interest? 

In whose interest?  Over and over I ask myself that question as I watch events unfold before me.  If only journalists could find the courage to start asking those questions.  Not just of the powers that be but of themselves.  In whose interest is it that they reject information from every alternative source in favour of the ‘official’ and the ‘recognized’?  It is certainly not in mine or in the interest of society as a whole.  But it does seem to be in the interest of those who make the decision of what information the public receives.  The heralds of interesting times have much to answer for.

I have been a Phil Ochs fans for as long as I can remember.  I admit to deriving pleasure from how young people on YouTube are resurrecting his lyric to shine light on the current political malaise.  Phil’s words are as timely today as when they were written.  For that my pleasure is tinged with guilt.  Phil committed suicide in 1976 because he said no one was listening.  So please listen.  Please internalize the message this time and let’s end all this madness before one more child dies.

How many of you remember Stephen Harper the opposition leader?  Do you remember that guy who said he would usher in a new era in Canadian politics if the people gave him a chance.  A Harper government would be more open, more honest than those fat cat liberals.  Liberals had become complacent and displayed a sense of entitlement to power.  A Conservative government would be an ethical government.  What ever happened to him?  He can’t be the same Stephen Harper who became prime minister. 

Last month Canadians were treated to a federal election a year before Prime Minister Harper had promised one would be held.  He had said that governments should not play with election timing to benefit partisan interests so he would set a date at the outset that would be election day unless the evil opposition parties defeated him on a vote of confidence and forced an election.  Did I miss that?   I don’t seem to remember a motion of confidence being brought forward and the government being defeated.  Prime Minister Harper rationalized that he needed a new mandate from the people of Canada for the urgent business which lay ahead for the government.  Translation:  He thought he could win a majority. 

Still, what was this urgent business, particularly?  You and I both know that when times get rough we all hunker down and blame the government.  Well the going is getting kind of rough.  U. S. banks are failing, unemployment rates are rising on both sides of the border, and the North American auto industry faces collapse.  Gee, you don’t think ol’ Stephen knew this was coming and figured he better get an election out of the way before the subprime hit the fan?

What could be a more cynical manipulation of the power of the prime minister than that?  But that fresh faced farm boy who led the opposition to Jean Chretien and Paul Martin would never have done that.  I really wonder what happened to him.

As if their service charges were not enough, banks now want the money we collect for schools and hospitals and roads and all that other stuff we pay our taxes for.  This morning on CNN Senator Chris Dodd, when questioned about the 700 billion dollar bail out package passed by the U. S. Congress in September, reminded us that that was just the latest in a string of injections of public money into the financial sector.  The total now is somewhere around 5 trillion dollars according to Senator Dodd.  But hey who’s counting.  It’s just numbers on a computer screen.  Of course they are the accumulation of the numbers that represent what we don’t get on our paychecks.  And I don’t think that most of us thought ‘Gee, those poor bankers and Wall St. tycoons.  I can’t live with myself knowing that there are people living in multi-million dollar high rise condos, eating fish eggs and drinking fermented grape juice to stay alive.  Why they barely have enough to feed their cocaine habits.  This must not be allowed to continue in our midst one more moment.’ 

But, hey!  These are the guys who drive our economy right?  So we need to keep them in business, right?  Of course they are also the one’s that dug themselves into this hole.  But, okay, everyone makes mistakes.  I am sure these guys have learned their lesson and are putting all the public money to good use helping people renegotiate their mortgages and generally getting credit flowing again.  Well no.  Actually the first thing they did after the September package was through themselves a huge party to celebrate.  Since then they have been using the money to buy each out in an economic version of the game Risk seeing who can become the biggest empire and dominate the world.  The rest of the money they have just been hording.

Now we are going on to the auto industry.  It’s their turn to be massaged with our money.  General Motors, Ford and Chrysler can’t survive without help.  Those nasty Asians have deceptively undermined the U. S. automaker’s market by producing vehicles that work.  The fiends!  Of course the media emphasizes that the real problem is all those union contracts.  Those workers are just sucking the industry dry.  It couldn’t possibly be that the executives made some executive size mistakes in product development and marketing.  Or it couldn’t be their multi-million dollar salaries or all those bonuses.  And heaven forbid anyone bring up golden parachutes.  Executive jobs are the only ones I know of that reward you for screwing up.  If I screw up I am rewarded with a pink slip not a porsche and a condo in Hawaii. 

Every corporate executive that makes a decision that costs jobs should be forced to personally apologize to each laid-off employee and their families.  Maybe having to tell a seven year old why Santa won’t be visiting this year will instill some humanity into these spoiled brats. 

So where does it all end?  Maybe some of these corporate geniuses will come up with an answer at one of their company retreats but I doubt it.  Maybe it is time for all of us members of the great unwashed to pick up our pitchforks and torches and give them something to retreat from.  Capitalism doesn’t work.  Our current crisis is what happens whenever capitalism is left to its own devices, unregulated.  It happened 80 years ago and it is happening again.  We face the same choice they had in the 1930s.  Do we patch the old girl back together, put a new frock on her, some makeup and get her hair done?  Or do we move on to something new, something different?  In the Great Depression, after much tugging and pulling the powers that be chose the first solution.  Let’s be smarter this time.  Let’s learn from our mistakes.  I know, how about an economy that serves the people rather than forcing the people to serve the economy.  And those poor bankers and executives that would be left out in the cold by such a system, don’t worry, we can retrain them and make them work for a living instead.  It would do wonders for their self-esteem and bring a smile to these old lips to see them toiling in the salt mines.

Did you hear the lastest on the news this morning over a hundred B.C. cops have been bad boys.  From the 1000 or so complaints brought against police in British Columbia, 106 were so grievous that they couldn’t be swept under the rug.  From drunk driving to shooting an unarmed suspect without cause.  And gee nobody got arrested and charged.  Where were the cops.  Oh yeah they were there.  But I guess they let themselves off with a warning this time. 

The report that came out suggested that 8 officers should be fired immediately.  They all at least did the honourable thing and resigned first.  This is just one more instance of the growing problem within policing in Canada and throughout the Western world.  The police culture is out of step with the complexities of the modern world.  Law enforcement has embraced the technology with the excitement of a little boy on Christmas morning opening that brand new shiny toy.  And therein lies the problem.  Policing is still a masculine discipline in a world that needs a woman’s touch.