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

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.

Today boys and girls I am going to tell you a little story about how World War 3 started.  Once upon a time a village idiot went wandering (the village was in a place called Texas and Texas produced the best idiots).  After crossing the country back and forth for a year or more and talking to oh so many people, our simpleton hero was chosen by all the people of the land to be their Idiot King.  The people truly believed that this simple-minded soul, with his funny way of speaking would be the best choice to lead them into something called the new millennium.  Even after the Idiot King had hid in his special flying machine while thousands of the people died from an attack by nasty people who hated the peope of the land because they were led by idiots, the people still loved and supported their King.  Once back safely on the ground the Idiot King called forth all his jesters.  His favourite jester was a prancing little lapdog from a far off land called England.  The little doggie kissed the idiot’s feet and promised to help protect him.  The nasty people weren’t impressed by peoples led by lapdogs any more than they were by those led by idiots.  The nasty people then hated the lapdog people and even attacked them so the lapdog people could have a special date of their own to remember. 

Our Idiot King scoured the earth looking for the nasty people.  Like wheat in a field he mowed down all who stood before him hoping to find those few evil grains.  Many thousands of people died in far off places with funny names.  But that did not matter.  Only the few thousand of the entitled people mattered.  The Idiot King would show the nasty people how wrong it was to kill innocent people by killing anyone who looked even vaguely like them.  The Idiot King came upon a man named Saddam who had known his father in a place called Iraq.  “Saddam is the leader of the nasty people” said the Idiot King.  “He has magical weapons of mass destruction and he is preparing to use them against our people.  He must be stopped.”  And so the people told their King to send his armies forth and slay the evil Saddam.  A great military leader called Rumsfeld who once had been a friend of the evil Saddam and had called him a great leader told all the peoples of the world that he knew just where to find the magical weapons.  But when they got to Iraq the diabolic Saddam had thrown away all the magical weapons just to make the Idiot King look like an idiot.  The Idiot King was furious.  He needed no help from Saddam to look like an idiot he was quite capable of achieving that on his own.  In his righteous fury, for the Idiot King was very righteous and was particularly loved by those who succumb to speaking in tongues and laying hands on televisions to be healed, the Idiot King hanged the evil Saddam in true Texas fashion, as something called a reality show. 

The people gathered together on the fourth anniversary of the the Idiot King’s inauguration and crowned him King for another four years.  They knew that the evil Saddam had tricked the poor Idiot King.  But though Saddam was one of the nasty people because he prayed on Friday, the people of the Idiot King came to know that he had not been one of those who had attacked them.  And so the Idiot King convinced the little beaver who lived to the north of his land to attack a group of people known as students in a place called Afghanistan.  The little beaver was happy to help because it wanted the Idiot King to like it and not roll over on it in bed.  Apparently there was some perverse relationship between the little beaver and the Idiot King and the little beaver wanted to make sure it could be on top.  The little beaver sent its little army forth to fight the nasty students who had let the leader of the attack on the Idiot King’s people crash at their place.  They tried and tried and pretended to be just like the people of the Idiot King but the nasty students fought back which was definitely unfair.  So the little beaver found a clone of the Idiot King from a place very much like Texas, called Alberta.  And the little beaver’s Idiot idolized the Idiot King from below and sent more and more of his armies to fight for the interests of the Idiot King.  Even in the face of rising evidence of the futility of the task. 

Though Saddam was dead the Idiot King could not quiet the quarrelsome people of Iraq.  They resisted and the Idiot King came to believe that another people were helping Saddam’s people against him and so the Idiot King told his people that they had magical weapons too.  The people had told him to attack Saddam when they thought that he had those weapons.  Why would they not respond the same if he said these new people from a place called Iran had them too.  He was right for he knew the thoughts of his people were as simple and credulous as his.  The people of the land rose up and railled against the nasty people of Iran.  Crying to the world that they were evil and must surrender their magical weapons or be destroyed.  Especially those who spoke from a little glowing box called a television (see above for reference to the healing powers of this box).  And so boys and girls the Idiot King knew what he must do.  He must attack.  That is what the people wanted.  The talking heads in the box said so. 

Now the Idiot King had to move fast.  His time was almost over.  On January 20, 2009 he knew he had to go back to his village and resume his role as a simple village idiot once more.  No longer would he prance across the country and around the world as its most important idiot.  So with Christmas approaching he decided to send a gift to the nasty people of Iran, a whole bunch of flying machines full of bombs and people who would float down from the sky and others who would land on the shores of Iran from ships while more walked or rode across the border from Iraq.  Thus would end the interference of the nasty people of Iran and their arrogant leader with the name the Idiot King could not pronounce because it was multi-syllabic.  He would destroy the magical weapons and his people would always be safe. 

And so the Idiot King laid down his crown and went back to his village to sit back and behold all his idiocy.  Smiling on his porch he heard how everyone in the neighbourhood of Iraq and Iran began to follow his example and attack each other.  Soon places farther away began to see the wisdom of the little village idiot and they sent forth their armies to do battle.   Then someone used the magical weapons and there our story ends with the former Idiot King, now just a village idiot again, sitting on his porch basked in the glow of a great mushroom cloud.  A hot dry wind blowing over him.  In the distance can be heard the death shriek of the spirit of hope. 

“But teacher, what was the difference between these people that they hated each other so?”  “Our greatest minds have been unable to answer that question for they were all known as human beings.  They were all the same.  They had two arms, two legs, two eyes.  All of them had red blood pumped through their bodies by a heart.  But for some reason they each convinced themselves that they were better than their neighbours.”  “Will we ever have a World War 3 here teacher?”  “No children.  No.  For whenever we get too full of ourselves we just look up at that glowing cinder in the night sky that once was a beautiful blue planet and we are washed with the gift of humility and know that all life is precious and no problem is insurmountable and so we talk to those who disagree with us rather than fight.” 

The End.

A perennial challenge faces the new American president as he prepares to take office next January.  The words Middle East, Israel, Palestine, etc. have passed the lips of presidents almost daily for over half a century.  At the center of course is the situation in Palestine/Israel.  Shortly after the new president is inaugurated into office, the Israeli people will go to the polls to elect a new government of their own.  Recent polling places Benyamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party in the lead and likely to form the next government of Israel.  To govern, the Likud would need the support of a coalition of Israel’s smaller parties.  For Likud this means the far right religious parties like Shas.  Netanyahu has already announced he has no intention of continuing the current U. S. backed peace plan.  Well that’s okay since it wasn’t really a peace plan and the ruling Kadima party hadn’t been following it anyway.  That plan, such as it was, fell apart when the Palestinian people had the audacity to elect Hamas instead of the American backed Fatah.  I guess democracy isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.  You try to do something nice for someone like let them have a vote and they turn around and bite you in the ass by electing the opposing guy.  America won’t make that mistake again.  You can be sure that in Afghanistan next year and Iraq when its turn comes around that the American authorities will be ‘deadly’ sure their guy wins. 

Netanyahu’s partners are even more scary than he.  A leading rabbi in the Shas Party in a recent sermon called teachers in secular schools “asses” and said they taught only foolishness.  He said that they knew nothing and only taught things like history and nonsense about world nations.  And you can guess what portfolio in a Netanyahu coalition cabinet the Shas Party wants.  That’s right, education.

Some of the players within Likud itself are threats to humanity.  Former Chief of Staff Moshe Yaalon is suggesting the assassination of Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to stop Iran’s nuclear program.  He believes strongly in Jewish colonization of the West Bank and Gaza, opposing any form of autonomy or self-government for the Palestinians.  He has also been warned not to travel in several Western European countries as he has been identified internationally as a war criminal and may face arrest.  The pièce de résistance is Moshe Feiglin.  Some Israelis have compared him to Adolph Hitler.  Feiglin calls for all out genocidal ethnic cleansing in the occupied territories and a holy war against Islam, the goal of which would be the annihilation of all 1.5 billion Muslims. 

A backdrop to this is the recent Israeli Defense establishment paper calling for preparations for a military strike against Iran if the U. S. and Iran negotiate a deal.  Israel will not tolerate Iran moving forward on nuclear development, even if it is arguably for domestic purposes.  The IAEA has said Iran is not currently capable of producing a weapon but may be within 1 to 2 years. 

None of this bodes well for peace in the Middle East any time soon.  The new president of the United States will have some difficult decisions to make.  Advising him will be his White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel who in Gulf War 1 volunteered for the Israeli Defense Force rather than fighting with U. S. forces.  During that time Benyamin Netanyahu was also prime minister of Israel.  Caught in the middle once more are the Palestinian people.  Left with little or no hope as the most powerful state on earth supports an enemy bound to their eternal subjugation at best and their obliteration at worst.  I wonder how any of us would react in such a position.

Are the American people truly safer because of the war on terror? 

North Korea has exploded a nuclear device.  The casualties mount ever quicker in Iraq.  Why do so many people hate us?  Us?  Westerners?  Just Americans?

There are arguments for America invading Iraq.  Just not the ones that they wish to push in the press.  Why not tell the truth?  Well, because the American people might find it more difficult to sleep at night.  Americans want to believe in the myth that the United States is somehow different from former great powers.  America is more moral.  America intervenes to help the rest of the world; not for their own national and strategic interests.  As the last remaining superpower it is becoming increasingly difficult for U.S. administrations to keep up the façade of America as the land of liberty, the champion of the downtrodden. 

Example Iraq.

The Persian Gulf is of enormous strategic importance to the United States.  The loss of that flow of oil would hamper not only America’s military but its domestic economy as well.  So they invaded to seize the oil, no, too simple.  America invaded because Saddam Hussein was a serious threat to stability in the region and in particular to the House of Saud.  The Sauds were plucked from the desert by the British because of their willingness to accommodate Western needs.  The United States inherited the Saudi royal family along with a number of strategic assets when the British, unable to maintain their position as a global power, passed the torch to their former colony and close ally.  The royal house is not popular on the Arabian Peninsula.  Their claim to the throne is not an unchallenged one. 

The Americans, as the British before them, have expended a good deal of time, energy and money to assist the Sauds in becoming the de facto leaders of the Islamic world, or at least the Arab portion of it.  However, historically the peninsula was never the centre of Islam.  Certainly the two holiest sites in the Islamic world are situated on the Arabian Peninsula.  But that does not automatically mean that the peninsula is the centre of the Islamic or Arab world.  Compare Christianity.  The centre of the Christian world is not Bethlehem or Nazareth or even Jerusalem but Rome.  Rome has always been the political and cultural pivot of the Christian world.  Baghdad is Islam’s Rome.  The Caliph of Baghdad could be seen historically as a rough equivalent to the Pope.  That was the challenge that Saddam Hussein was laying down.  If he were to succeed at donning that mantle for himself, America would have been directly threatened. 

Saddam Hussein was a loose cannon who had shown himself capable of treachery and subterfuge.  Had he undermined the Saudi position the ramifications for the Western world would have been dire; upheaval in the economies of industrialized states and inevitable weakening of Western power over time.  Power rests not only on what you have but what you can produce and maintain. 

So the Bush administration had valid arguments for the invasion of Iraq.  Why then not use them to support the war.  Do the American people want massive unemployment and economic hardships rivalling those of the Great Depression?  Was George Bush not elected to watch over their quality of life, to make America better and more prosperous not less? 

I do not like the war in Iraq.  Tactically it was a huge blunder.  The very thing the U.S. wanted to avoid they have created, instability in the Persian Gulf.  Even a casual student of history and international relations could have predicted the sectarian violence that continues to escalate as I write.  No easy solution presents itself and is not likely to in the near future.  And expanding the war to Syria and Iran is only a prescription for greater catastrophe.  George W. Bush has put himself in the same position Lyndon Johnson described speaking of Vietnam.  Johnson said he felt like a man caught in a Texas hailstorm; he couldn’t run, he couldn’t hide and he couldn’t make it stop.  But at least Johnson recognized his position.  It is far less clear that Bush does. 

I find it unfathomable that security experts at State, Defence and the Pentagon would not have warned of this very situation.  I can only assume that politics overrode strategy and expert advice was ignored or even discouraged.  If there is one thing that distinguishes Iraq from Vietnam it is this fact.  In Vietnam all those agencies were encouraging U.S. military intervention from the beginning. 

But now the problem exists.  There is no use in wishing it didn’t.  But it is time the American people took their share of the responsibility for the actions of their government.  My advice to you all is to stop talking about democracy and start living it.  That will require that you get off you fat asses and actually pay attention.  Open your eyes to the world beyond your borders before it is too late.  Because if you don’t September 11 will become little more than a footnote in history compared to what will come.

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.

Well, the election is over and I congratulate President-Elect Obama.  I hope that the next four years prove my impressions wrong and you embark on a program that renews the promise latent in America.  If you do you will have my full support and my humble apologies.

How important is it to elect the first Black president today?  Is it so paramount that we don’t want to look at his character and his policies?  Now before anyone gets their knickers in a knot, I am not saying that Barak Obama is a Marxist.  I can categorically tell you that he is not because I am a Marxist and he has never been to any of the meetings .   On the contrary I am amazed that someone whose policy manual (Blueprint for Change) and whose campaign behaviour has been to run from every progressive cause and every opportunity to challenge America in another direction, is seen as this great agent of hope and change.  Saying it over and over don’t make it so.  On policy after policy in the ‘Blueprint for Change’ Obama fiddles with the knobs without changing the station.  But then why change when everything is going so well.  I mean what is wrong with what is?  American children are illiterate and innumerate in comparison to others countries.  That’s okay, if they can’t read they won’t have their little minds twisted by crazy things like ideas and stuff.  Millions of Americans are dying to see Obama’s new health care package and will continue to do so under it.  And the most popular colour for children’s pajamas this season among working families is sidewalk grey.  Oh no.  Let’s not look at fundamental change because haven’t you heard our fundamentals are strong.  I can sum up Obama’s policy book in one word, safe.  Say as little as possible and nobody will have anything to challenge you on. 

His record?  Well, here’s a man who abandons his friends, forces those who have actually fought in the trenches and sometimes risked their lives to kow tow to him, to humble themselves to a national audience, and reverses his position every time it is politically expedient.  I know those are the qualities I would look for in the leader of the free world.  As a Senator he supports a financial bailout that saves the Wall Street tycoons whose greed created the economic crisis while doing nothing to help the real people whose lives are being destroyed.  On the campaign he rejects public financing after promising to embrace it because he realizes he can out-fundraise his opponent and buy an election.  Much of his money coming from Wall Street and the corporate sector.  ‘Very interesting’ as Arte Johnson used to say on Laugh-In. 

I have waited a long time to see the first Black president of the United States and the first woman president and I could have tolerated Clinton.  Maybe.  Well if I held my nose.  This morning my class watched Mississippi Burning and this election kept creeping into my thougts.  I remembered the great Black leaders of my youth.  Malcolm X.  Bobby Seales.  Medgar Evers, Stokely Carmichael, Martin Luther King.  I thought about Julius Nyerere and Nelson Mandela.  Barak Obama just doesn’t fit.  It is not just that he doesn’t look like the other presidents on the dollar bills but that he doesnt’t act like those men I so admired.  I will celebrate the symbol but mourn the character of an Obama presidency.