But in 2010, as the German Chancellor Angela Merkel sat on the dais next to Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, representing the opposing powers of the conflict that had more in common than differences, where are we?  What has happened to the dream, that moment of pure joy and hope?

As its predecessor, World War Two was not the war to end all wars.  Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, the list is long and bloody.  Our ability to kill has improved with each new conflict.  Diplomacy is ridiculed as the the fires of nationalism brightly light the banners of the legions.  The eagle of Rome and Germany now demands the people of the world bow down to the eagle of  America.  That the symbol of power since early history has been a scavenger should speak to us.  But somehow it doesn’t.  Fear, distrust and ignorance drive us into our imagined communities, not seeing the realities that connect us behind the myths that divide.  And so the story continues written in the blood of millions.

Political lies continued to swim in human blood.  In Hungary and Iraq honest people were encouraged to rise up against tyranny only to be abandoned when they did so in good faith believing that they would be supported.  The Hungarians listened to Radio Free Europe spew its propaganda East.  Not realizing that this was only a tactic to undermine Soviet stability they rose up and awaited the aid implicitly promised.  They stood firm as the Soviet tanks rolled over the Hungarian frontier and into the streets of Budapest.  Still gazing West in desperation as they were slaughtered, the survivors later lost in the void of the Gulag.  The Shi’as of southern Iraq encouraged by Bush senior to rebel were again abandoned as were the Kurds of northern Iraq.  How much different is this to the guarantees given to the Czechs and others prior to the war.  Horribly the Tutsi and Hutu at different times learned that ‘Never Again!’ was hollow rhetoric as did the people of Srebrenica in their turn.

Domestic persecution so abhorred in the Third Reich still visits us as well.  From the Cold War where America and the Soviet Union tried to outdo each other with show trials and mock patriotism to the Patriot Act and Canada’s anti-terrorism laws and Arizona’s yellow sombrero law (see previous post The Yellow Sombrero) we have repeated the ideas and concepts of Hitler and Himmler.  People persecuted, hounded for what they believed or what they were not what they had done.  Over one million Canadians were blacklisted as communists/socialists.  Rarely were any Soviet spies.  That was not the point.  It was the idea that was feared, not the people.  The idea needed to be destroyed lest it upset life of the power elite.  Today it is Muslims.  The ‘experts’ talk about Islamic culture and say it is violent, that it praises terror, that it is regressive.  What they don’t say is, like Nazi depictions of Jewish culture, it doesn’t exist.  It is a fabrication.  There is no ‘Islamic Culture.’  There are several Arab, Persian, Turkic and Malay cultures.  Most North Americans see ‘Islamic Culture’ and think Arab Culture but it in itself is not a monolith and Malay is the largest Muslim ethnic group.  If the threat is real why would it be represented by a mythical creation?  It seems only that some threat must exist.  But why?  What is it that the powers that be don’t want us to see.  Today we can look back at the Third Reich and see what Hitler and Goebbels didn’t want the world to know.  Will historians 65 years from now be revealing abominable secrets buried behind American imperialism?  Research the provisions and justifications of the Enabling Laws introduced by German Chancellor Hitler in 1934 to see a reflection of the Patriot Act and its ilk.  Racial profiling of Mexicans and Muslims is no different than that used by Nazi administrations.  Look at the propaganda below showing the same basic caricature used in two contexts but really about the same people, Semites.

Mussolini said that fascism could more accurately be called corporatism.  Is that not the culture we have today in Canada and the United States?  Is not the corporation and the financial sector the new Rome?   Is it not the sum total of existence, that which gives meaning to our lives?  We are told constantly that there is not enough money, enough wealth to maintain the welfare state that was to raise all boats; to create a floor not a ceiling to use William Beveridge’s phrase.  Apparently the neo-conservative Right has taken him at his word and want to cut the floor out from under the powerless in order to extend their ceiling to the heavens.  Corporations steal our money to fund their failures.  And still George Will this morning on This Week (ABC) claims that the crisis in Greece is the masses thinking they are entitled when their is no money left to fund such entitlements.  What better example of self-entitlement than the bail out of General Motors or Lehman Sachs and the rest.  They told us they were too big to fail.  They told us we needed to give them more of our money for our own sakes.  Those who would now eject us from our own homes, destroy our retirements and deny our children of the same education and career opportunities as their children feel so entitled as to believe that such behaviour is an act of gratitude.  Don’t tell me there is not money to fund entitlements.  You mean there is no money to fund those who don’t belong to your class Mr. Will.

But corporations have always held the people in disdain.  They always believed in a natural leader class.  That is why so many of them supported Hitler and nazi ideology, before and during the war.  Ford enriched itself on slave labour in Nazi occupied Europe.  IBM vaulted to the lead in tabulation later computation by designing the system that sent six million Jews to the gas chamber.  President Roosevelt had to relieve Joseph Kennedy, father of the future president, from his post as ambassador to the Great Britain because of his praise of Hitler and Nazism and his repeated effort to undermine British resolve in the face of what he considered a superior German system. Do we believe that suddenly they changed their philosophy when the war was over?  Are we that naive?  Or just so afraid that if we say such things somehow we will be next on the train to the camps.

German education under the Nazis convinced young Germans that they were superior by blood to the other races of the world.  They twisted ancient northern European myths to create an image of the Teutonic race as the defenders of civilization against the barbarian hordes.  Anything that might bring that image into question was dropped from the curriculum.  Self appointed ‘experts’ shored up the image with quasi-science and bad academics.  Education seen as the conduit to maintain the social order whether or not that order is right.  Sound familiar?  Does to me.  I see it every day in the classroom and I am both sad and afraid.  I know where it will lead, not might lead.  Young Americans today are brainwashed into believing that the American way is not jut the best way but the only legitimate way.  Other cultures, other peoples, other values are ridiculed or vilified.  The lie of democracy used to shade the evil intent:  Power.

So what have we learned in sixty-five years?  What has happened to the possibilities of 1945?  Today they are just the puppets of power.  Power corrupts.  But mostly it perpetuates.  Those who have it seek to keep it.  Those who don’t lament their suffering as the Athenian generals counseled the Melians in Thucydides account of the Peloponnesian War,“for you know as well as we do that right … is in question only between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.” or they live Zapata’s words:  “It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees.”

Today I mourn not because nazism and fascism were destroyed but because they survived.  I mourn because the ideals of Adolph Hitler are the ideals of the Obama administration and American Imperialism.  They are cloaked in the facade of democracy and humanist rhetoric but they are the same.  I mourn because my country, like so many others, complacently accepts this outrage lacking the courage to die on our feet if needs must.  We play the Jester to America’s Lear.  Around the world today the celebrations are not of the end of something but of its perpetuation in secrecy.  Hitler’s mistake was to open a window and let the world see.  That could not be countenanced if the power elites elsewhere were to continue without public outrage.  Secrecy reigns once more and all is well in Washington as on Wall Street.  So celebrate, but excuse me if I weep.

Conservatives are often the culprits in both countries though not exclusively as the reference to Clinton shows.  It is not really that the Liberals are all that chaste.  But Conservatives are always lecturing us to be choirboys, seemingly forgetting that being a choirboy can be hazardous to your virginity.

Some of us are old enough to remember the Gerda Munsinger Affair that scandalized the Conservative government of John Diefenbaker.  Apparently Gerda had done the rounds of the Conservative party leadership including the minister of defence.  She was rumoured to have connections to the East German secret police.  The story was disseminated in the early 1960s, likely by the Kennedy administration who worked tirelessly to oust poor old Dief and install the more likable (at least to Kennedy) Lester Pearson.

More recently there was the scandal over Maxime Bernier leaving secret documents at his girlfriend’s home.  Pundits at the time wondered why he would risk his political career by dating a  woman with biker connections who had once worked as an exotic dancer.  Ah! our intrepid media, a brain trust if there ever was one.  I can give you two very large reasons up front it you would like.  If the reporters don’t realize why they should talk to their cameramen because they always seemed to place the reason front and center.

I always knew Betty Davis eyes were a popular look but Sarah Palin hair?

Now we have the dynamic duo of scandal, Rahim Jaffer and wife Helena Guergis.  Allegations have been brought to the prime minister’s attention of some shenanigans by Ms. Guergis and she was asked to resign from cabinet and was at the same time expelled from caucus.  Although no official word has surfaced as to what specifically she is supposed to have done rumours abound.  The only observation I will make is that having a minister resign is a common tactic to ease pressure and embarrassment for the government.  But also expelling the member from caucus in one fell swoop is not an every day occurrence.  Whatever this is Harper must think it makes him and his government, which is the same thing, look really, really bad.  I can hardly wait I am so excited with anticipation.

In the meantime, let’s have a look at her husband Rahim Jaffer a former Conservative MP from Alberta, land of cold hearts and toxic waste.  Apparently, Mr. Jaffer was internalizing some toxic waste of his own last September when he was pulled over by Ontario police.  He was speeding, drunk and cocaine was found in his car.  In a plea bargain the more serious impaired and drug possession charges were dropped and he pled guilty to the lesser charge of careless driving.  Wait for it.  That’s not the best part.

The reason for pleading Mr. Jaffer down was the Crown’s decision that conviction was unlikely.  Why you might ask?  Well the Ontario Keystone Cops refused to let the man see his own lawyer on request and made the poor man get naked.  That’s right, naked.   Now I know we hear constantly in the media that there is a shortage of cops out there and the workload is getting pretty heavy.  Dalton McGuinty says these little slip ups will happen from time to time.  But really now, give these poor guys some R and R and let them see their wives and girlfriends once in a while.  We can’t have police roaming the highways looking for some unsuspecting speeder to fulfill their fantasies.

Now I could be interpreting this wrong.  After all I am reading it in a CBC report where the wording could be read another way.  The actual quote is “… repeatedly denying Jaffer access to his own lawyers and a strip search after he was pulled over on a rural road …”.  So was Jaffer asking for a strip search.  Maybe he’s thought the silhouette of his body in the moonlight would bring a soft sigh and a warning rather than arrest.  Either way our police need to find better ways to relieve the tension.  Perhaps that could be a new use for those tasers they are so fond of.

Of course, even if the Crown had moved forward on the cocaine charges Jaffer could have used Richard Hatfield’s defence.  Hatfield, then Conservative premier of New Brunswick, was found at Fredericton airport with a bag of marijuana in his luggage.  He denied it belonged to him and had the police dust the bag for prints.  When his weren’t found charges did not proceed.

So thank you for being consistent, Conservative party.  Hypocrisy is what you are best at.  Good thing cause you aren’t good for anything else.  The Liberals may be slimy, power-hungry spawn of Satan who would pimp their mother for a vote, but at least they admit it.  The Conservative choir may sing like angels but up close there cassocks smell of booze and stale sex.

Families of nine Canadian soldiers killed in Afghanistan were shown on the news yesterday visiting Kandahar and the memorial to the Canadians who have fallen in that conflict.  It was a touching moment.  Emotions played on the faces of the family members as they stood before the stone etchings of their son or daughter.  The media followed by interviews with a couple of the pilgrims who unanimously support the mission and support extending it if necessary.

What did the media expect them to say?  What else can they believe but that the mission is important and necessary in order to justify the sacrifice and the grief they have suffered?  The sudden loss of a loved one in a conflict half way around the world must stand for something or their grief would destroy them completely.  All families of fallen soldiers must believe the sacrifice had noble purpose or go mad.

This pilgrimage was a personal journey and should have remained so.  What purpose was served by the media presence?  To the families no purpose whatsoever.  But for the media and for the government the purpose is clear and as petty and self-serving as the reasons that drew us into this conflict in the first place.  Each group, media and government, are attempting to assuage their own guilt by maintaining the myth.  But we don’t need our government giving us myth we need the truth and we need the media to question that truth incessantly.  That is the role of the media.  I can almost forgive the government for lying to us.  In a poll in the United States a couple of years ago the American public admitted they preferred their government to lie to them.  A lie is often easier to deal with than the truth.  Besides governments are by nature secretive little entities.  So it is the media that bears the greatest guilt because it is their job to wake up the public to the truth before it is too late.

The evidence has been there from the beginning concerning our real purpose for deploying to Afghanistan.  Our neighbour, our closest ally and our friend the United States asked us to go so they could free up assets to deploy to their upcoming Iraq invasion.  We said yes because they are our neighbour, friend and ally and because we were in negotiations with them over a  number of cross border issues at the time.  The two most important were softwood lumber and border access following 9/11.  The United States has its own reasons for being there.  Chief among those are access to Kazakh oil and gas without having to ship through Russian territory.  There is also evidence of resources in some of the other Central Asian states as well.  Nothing about this mission has been about human rights or democracy or any of the other catch-phrases that allow us to sleep at night while murdering people half a world away.

But removing the Burka, routing out terrorists, building a modern society (aka. American society) and creating democracy raises pride to console the tears and makes the whole thing a little more bearable.  This war was never about that.  The Soviet backed government of Afghanistan that we worked so hard to topple, which led us to create the Taliban and Al Qaeda was a secular government that had outlawed the burka and encouraged women to engage fully as equals in society.  It was an American tactic to encourage Islamic fundamentalism among the mujaheddin as a way to gain popular support among village elders and traditionalists.  Following the collapse of the Soviet Union the United States and its western allies supported various groups in power in Kabul including the Taliban.  The Taliban were in close negotiations for a pipeline with the U.S. government and private firms such as Haliburton whose envoy to the Taliban was Dick Cheney.

Realpolitik is messy but it, not the spirit of humanity, motivates state actions.  No war has ever been fought for humanitarian reasons and none ever will be under our current international system.  Without a compelling selfish interest no state will risk its assets.  But without a higher moral purpose no democracy will sanction a foreign war.  Hence the lie.  We are manipulated to support something we really don’t understand.  We make it about nationalism just like the Nazis, the ultimate nationalists.  We, like them, take pride in the delusion that we are creating a better world; we, like them, believe we know the mind of god and it is consumerism.

The media knows this.  Instead it pretends as if it is too stupid to be able to assemble diverse evidence into a meaningful package and present a comprehensive report to the public.  That is news and the job of the news organization.  So we don’t have to research raw government documents and expert data on our own; or interview public figures and experts to tease out meaning; the  news media is to bring all this information together, plot its interactions and present us with understandable meaning .  Instead our newsrooms more resemble the Reichsministrie of Propoganda than the movie All the President’s Men.  Much of what is reported is lifted directly from press releases and the rest is assured not to ruffle the feathers of advertisers or their close buddies in government.

It is not just the loss that we experience in the Afghan debacle but where such complicity could lead that is of most concern. We are already experiencing a powerful move toward authoritarianism in our domestic society.  The anti-terrorism laws are only the prominent tip of the iceberg.  Whether police in Ontario charge people with a law that doesn’t exist in the statutes, shoot an innocent man (Dudley George) and then perjure themselves rather than take responsibility or the RCMP taser Robert Dziekanski in British Columbia and again lie in court or  resource companies invade and pollute your land in Alberta without allowing you recourse to protect it, the breakdown in trust between the agents of authority and the citizen continues apace.  Yet the media keeps its silence filling our minds with pleasant snippets and diversions rather than attacking the issues that will impact us most profoundly, if often without our notice until it is too late.  We ourselves must shoulder some of the blame for this.   Where are the crowds outside the major publishers and broadcasters demanding their right to know.

Individual reporters take shelter in their jobs.  They can only report what their editors, publishers and news directors allow.  It is there job.  That was the defence the Nazis used at Nuremburg as well.  We were just following orders.  We had our families to think of.  If not us someone else would have done it.  All true as far as it goes.  But it still boils down to one of two things.  Either they don’t stand up because they agree with maintaining the lie in which case they are complicit.  Or they fear the consequences of standing up and speaking their mind in which case they are cowards.  Those who are complicit I have no words of comfort for you.  May you soon be together in hell with your mentor Josef Goebbels.  To those who shrink from fear I have greater understanding.  But while you might be able to lie to the country you can’t lie to yourself.  You know the truth and you know your neighbours rely on you to make decisions.  Sometimes decisions concerning the life and death of those closest to them.

Each journalist must make their self assessment  and decide whether they are collaborators complicit in undermining the ethic of our society or cowards who to save their own skin let their neighbours suffer.  But shame on both for victimizing the families again to use them as a prop in your deceit.

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.

But back to unemployment and the current financial situation.  Disasters like the current crisis should be learning tools.  They are opportunities to rethink a number of previous ideas and practices, from how we regulate financial markets to how we respond to citizens in crisis.  On the latter our system of assistance at all levels needs to be reviewed.  Our social safety net developed ad hoc, various programs appearing at various times as needs arose or ideas presented themselves.  It is time now to systematize their delivery. 

Every Canadian political party has at one time or another toyed with the concept of a guaranteed annual income.  The Conservative Party preferred to call it negative income taxing.  But all parties have considered this basic idea.   There are a number of draw backs which prevented implementation of the policy; start-up costs, bureaucratic reorganization and federal provincial relations.

Under a guaranteed annual income scheme the government would sent every citizen a flat monthly stipend.  Whatever a citizen earned over that would be taxable.  Therefore those who are not in need of the money would have it taxed back.  Our current Old Age Security program works in a similar way.  It is universal.  Those Canadians of wealth declare it as income and end up paying it all back to the government.  A guaranteed annual income would work differently in that it would not be taxable.  Only income earned over that amount would be taxed.  But there would be no personal deductions on your income tax including dependency deductions (because your dependents would be receiving their own guaranteed income).  Not only would personal income tax deductions disappear so would virtually every welfare program now in existence.  Old Age Security (mentioned above), provincial old age supplements where they exist, employment insurance (no need to worry about eligibility arguments), general welfare, disability pensions, family allowance, child tax benefit and the list goes on which shows the waste involved in the current delivery of our social safety net.  Not only would these be replaced by the guaranteed annual income but their bureaucracies would become redundant thus saving millions off the civil service payroll. 

The first year of a guaranteed annual income would be costly.  After the first year though the program would begin to pay back in savings more than it cost initially.  Within a few years governments would have the luxury of lowering taxes or investing the surpluses created.  Of course this idea of short term pain for long term gain would reverse the current philosophy of all Western governments who advocate long term pain for short term gain.  There would need to be a transition plan as the size of the civil service shrank substantially but this problem is not insurmountable.  One of the benefits of a guaranteed annual income is the stability it provides to the economy.  A secure and stable economy would create sustainable growth which would over time absorb the loss in government jobs.  Further, the ability to rely on a base income would encourage individuals to pursue ideas they might now forego for fear that basic family needs could not be met during start-up periods.  This also counters the argument that such a scheme would sap people’s initiative.  That criticism is based on the cynical myth that people only work because they have to.  Like all half-truths this myth has persisted.  The full truth is that people only work at jobs they hate and where they are abused because they have to.   Employers would certainly have to behave better than they currently do to keep valued employees.  A huge stumbling block here in Canada is the idiocy of our federal-provincial relationship.  But once the Canadian public was properly educated in what a guaranteed annual income would mean for them and the country, pity the ignorant government who tried to screw it up.  They might well face the kind of political assassination that happened to the Progressive Conservatives back in 1993.  The Canadian electorate is a fickle lot so piss them off at your peril. 

In the end a guaranteed annual income is the logical solution to our income supplement programs.  Citizens in most modern democracies expect their governments to play a supportive role in their lives.  Therefore, a guaranteed annual income is rational, cost effective, efficient and just plain the right thing to do.

The inquiry shows no indication that a life or death crisis existed at the time Mr. Dziekanski was killed.  I am not jumping to conclusions.  But I do admit a prejudice against people and organizations that exert maximum effort to deny and obfuscate their mistakes instead of owning up to them.  Something went wrong at Vancouver airport that tragic day and we could have gotten to the bottom of it long ago and implemented corrective measure had the RCMP not dug in their heels, protected officers whose testimony varied, and generally tried to push off the blame on the victim. 

If you want public respect, don’t insult our intelligence with the we know better than you defence and own up to your conduct. 

As a side note of an even scarier nature, the Commissioner was in Kandahar because the RCMP will be training Afghan police.  All I can say is the Afghan better keep their staplers holstered.

The next stage has now arrived.  Chrysler telling Canadian governments that unless they receive more public money and workers accept concessions they will close plants in Canada is a repeat of the old threat of the 1930s, ‘If you don’t like your job and what we give you, there are a hundred people waiting outside to take it.’  That’s right blame the worker because Toyota and Honda have seized the auto market.  Toyota and Honda must be genetically modifying the workers at their facilities.  Maybe they inject each new employee with some Japanese DNA.  Is that it?  Even with the concessions made by American unions, labour costs are still cheaper in Canada,  So the jobs will go to the developing world, likely Mexico where human rights and a living wage are the stuff of dreams.  So who is going to buy your cars Chrysler?  The underpaid Mexicans?  Not likely.  They have more pressing needs to spend their money on than a Neon.  You might not know this in your gated world but most people I know put food, clothing and lodging above purchasing a car.  Do you believe that unemployed Canadians and Americans will buy cars with the paltry sum allotted them by unemployment insurance schemes?  (I know in Canada Paul Martin changed it to Employment Insurance but lets not be slaves to losers and their ideas)  Henry Ford years ago realized that in order to sell his cars he needed workers who were paid enough to buy them.  Interestingly Ford has proposed that governments give consumers significant incentives to purchase rather than just pour money on the funeral pyre of the big three. 

There is another issue at play here.  We are, laughingly anyway, in a War on Terror.  Both the United States and Canada have passed draconian statutes to increase police power and undermine the basic rights and liberties that we have come to take for granted.  I abhor these laws with every fibre of my being, however, in the case of these arrogant corporate terrorists, I am prepared to make an exception.  Just as the murder of a loved one makes our opposition to the death penalty waiver if only temporarily, the spectacle of being threatened by a parasite who has gorged himself on the wealth created by my family and friends, who today face economic ruin because of the incompetence of said parasite, makes my commitment to human rights for everyone waiver.  After all, I am also a staunch defender of animal rights but I sanction the killing of rabid dogs.  At this moment I see no difference between a rabid animal and those that hold our society for ransom to protect their own affluence.  So perhaps there is a time, not against innocent individuals but against those who openly flaunt their acts of terror,  committing them before cameras with no attempt to conceal their guilt, that the new anti-terrorism laws could be justifiably applied. 

Make no mistake about it, what Chrysler did is an act of terror.  Terrorism is not about killing people.  It is about threatening people to cause them to act in a certain way desired by the terrorist.  In 2001 the attacks were not terror because they killed people but because they could be carried out.  The terror was the fear of vulnerability.  The act itself was important only to give credence to the threat.  Workers and governments have no doubt that Chrysler has the capacity to carry out their threat, at least to a significant extent.  Therefore the threat has credence.  Chrysler could reinforce the fear by cutting back or closing one or two plants but in this economic climate that would be unnecessary.  So Chrysler has carried out an act of terror.  They have threatened the well-being of Canadian society as a whole.  Hundreds of thousands of families now wait with bated breath to see the outcome.  Families that may lose their home because of it may be inclined to give in out of fear.  Far from helping, acquiescence to Chrysler’s demands would further deteriorate our economy as those who today can still maintain their home may not on lower salaries and those who might have purchased a home will not.  All the jobs that spin off from the economic behaviour of Chrysler workers and their families will be negatively affected whether Chrysler carries out the threat or not and whether the workers accept concessions or not.  The act of terror is a fait accompli.

This is exactly what Osama bin Laden attempted to do, disrupt Western economies thereby weakening our societies.  If bin Laden sat down at a parliamentary committee he would be hauled off in chains in a blink of the eye.  So why not that Chrysler executive whose actions will be infinitely more successful at achieving the goal of Al Qaeda?  As I watched the fat little slug smugly make his threats, I wanted nothing more than for the RCMP to storm into the room, shackle him and drag him off to the darkest dankest dungeon in Canada.  There to have electrodes attached to his testicles.  Then let the interrogation show begin.  I would even pull the switches myself to watch him dance and sing like Liza Minnelli. 

Perhaps in prison he would learn a useful skill.  Given that he doesn’t look much like a fighter I suspect his training will involve a shower and a bar of soap.

The longer Gaza is under siege and more Palestinians, particularly civilians, die, the broader the effects will be felt.  George Bush asked ‘why do they hate us?’  Are we really that simple?  The entire ‘War on Terror’ has been a recruiting tool for militants and has undermined any hope of a peaceful or successful resolution of the problems.  The West, twiddling its thumbs and launching platitudes in the media about the sanctity of human life, has sent a clear message to the Muslim world and to Palestinians in particular:  ‘You are on your own.’  The United States has firmly stated in act and word that Israeli deaths matter; Palestinian deaths do not.  Well if they didn’t hate us before they damn well should now. 

What should be of great concern to us is that the support of the murders in Gaza are being done in our name.  I am murdering Palestinians through my government’s support of Israel and I don’t want to.  Like me most of you who read this know that we do not really govern ourselves.   We need to admit to ourselves that our democracy is a sham and admit to the world that what the United States and its allies, including Canada, are exporting to the developing world is not democracy but capitalist exploitation.  It is the new colonialism.  If any of you are in doubt on this you need only look to Hamas.  When elections were held in the Palestinian territories Hamas won a clear victory in a clean and fair election according to international observers.  But Hamas was not the government that the United States and Israel had chosen for the Palestinians to elect and so Hamas was immediately denounced, vilified and through the collaboration of Mahmoud Abbas prevented from governing.  Israel and the United States then created an internal Palestinian civil war backing Abbas to try to eliminate Hamas.  While the attempt did not fully succeed, it has created even greater suffering for the Palestinian people. 

 As long as peoples around the world believe the myth that we govern ourselves, they will hate us because of what they perceive as our callous brutality toward them.  Our governments by their actions and their lies about democracy are endangering each and every one of us.  Most of us who followed international affairs knew that September 11 was coming.  We didn’t know exactly when or where or how.  But we knew that a major terrorist attack on the continental United States was inevitable.  Many of us, myself included, were surprised that the kill count was not higher for we had expected a biological or chemical attack.  By our failure to understand the problems and deal with them in an effective way we are guaranteeing that it will happen again and this time perhaps it will be worse.  If we are going to murder innocent people and deny the right to exist to whole populations; if we are going to condone mass murder or even genocide by our failure to effectively confront it; if we are going to say that this person because of this identifier is more important than that person because of that identifier; then we sew the seeds of sorrow and grief for all humankind.

Anyone who has ever sat in on an Anglican Church Board of Management meeting will be familiar with the words, ‘We’ve never done it that way before’.  Change is a scary thing to most people.  So why should we change our electoral system.  We have elections.  Governments get created.  So what is wrong?  In the United States, which uses the same system, the answer is a simple nothing.  America has a very narrow political culture and this is reflected in their two party political system.  The United States lacks a genuine conservatism and an indigenous socialism.  All Americans are some shade of liberal, from the classical laissez-faire liberalism of a George Bush to the reform liberalism of a Ted Kennedy.  With only two parties in play the single seat plurality system works just fine because it mimics a majoritarian system.  Once the universe of ideas expands the system begins to break down and cause problems. 

Proponents argue that the single seat plurality system (SSP) or first-past-the-post is preferable because it can produce a majority government with a minority of the vote.  The underlying assumption here is that majority governments are better governments because they are more stable.  The evidence in Canada shows that SSP fails to deliver on this approximately half of the time.  Half of all elections since 1921 when Canada’s political landscape began to expand beyond the Conservatives and Liberals, have resulted in minority governments.  Most of those minority governments have lasted two years or more with the odd exception.  Some like Mackenzie King’s 1921 minority lasted a full four years.  Provincially in Ontario, the only province with a healthy multi-party system, the final Davis Conservative minority government lasted from 1981 to 1985.  It is difficult in the face of the evidence to argue that minority government is inherently unstable.  Minority governments have often shown themselves to be very legislatively active as well.  Many of our most favoured policies such as our current health care system were the product of minority governments.  So good policy gets passed and elections are not held every other day, so what is so terrible about minority governments?  Of course you have to know how to govern.  A minority government forces compromise, negotiation and cooperation among the parties.  If you are a simple minded ideologue who cannot fathom that other people might have ideas and you must always get your own way then yes a minority government would be a problem (Not to mention any names but we all know who we are talking about here).    But those sorts of people should be discouraged from public office anyway.  Look what happened to Germany when they elected someone like that in the 1930s. 

The most consistent problem facing Canada is unity.  At times it has reached crisis level as in 1995.  SSP contributes to and exacerbates this very problem.  Our current system rewards regional parties and punishes national parties.  Let’s look at the 1993 election results.  The Bloc Quebeςois received 13% of the national vote to win 54 seats in the House of Commons and become Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition (great irony); the Reform Party received 19% of the national vote to win 52 seats just behind the Bloc; the Conservatives received 16% of the national vote to win 2 seats.  Now you don’t have to be a mathematician or a political junkie to look at this and know that something is wrong.  The two regional parties (the Bloc in Quebec and Reform in the West) received 27  and 26 times respectively the number of seats in the House compared to the Conservatives with 3% less and 3% more respectively of the popular vote.  Therefore in our system it pays to focus on a regional agenda fanning the flames of distrust between the West and Central Canada and between English and French Canada.  If there ever was evidence of the absence of character of our elected representatives this is it.  Our electoral system is tearing our country apart and they refuse to change it because they receive petty personal benefits from it.  Any parliament can change the electoral system in a matter of days if they want to.  It requires only a simple majority vote in the House of Commons and Senate.  Shame on them that they have so little regard for the nation they purport to represent.  

The more obvious and general problem with SSP is its distortion of democracy.  Democracy is supposed to mean rule by the people or the mob depending on your view.  Aristotle, from whom I derived the name for this blog, saw democracy as the best of the worst systems of government.  It appears today that many who claim to defend it are really supporting what Aristotle called a Polity, rule by the many.  In reality we are actually an elected Oligarchy, rule by the wealthy and powerful.  SSP supports this system very well.  Proportional representation would weaken but not undermine it.  As you know from my previous post no electoral system meets my standard for democracy.  But proportional representation (PR) is a step in the right direction. 

The critics of PR say it leads to perpetual minorities but I have already established that minority government does not necessarily equate to bad government.  They argue, even in the face of the historical evidence in Canada that minority government in this country is relatively stable, that should PR be adopted this would break down and elections would be a constant fact of life.  The example of choice is invariably Italy.  Now it is true that at some times Italy changes prime ministers more often than I change my underwear.  There coalition governments have been known to be quite fragile.  But that is the result of Italian political culture and not proportional representation.  Anyone familiar with Italy knows that North Italy and Southern Italy are almost two different planets.  Critics never seem to want to talk about Sweden or Germany or The Netherlands, only Italy.  Governments are stable in stable political cultures and unstable in unstable political cultures.  So there is no reason to believe that Parliament Hill would become a grand national game of musical chairs because we adopt PR.

Does the tail wag the dog in PR systems?  This is another common argument.  Proportional representation gives too much power to small parties.  I have alluded to something of that difficulty in my previous article on the upcoming Israeli elections.  Yes smaller parties become necessary partners to form governments in this type of system.  This can be a problem in Israel particularly because it is a pure proportional system.  The entire country is one single constituency so that even a party with one or two percent of the vote can win a seat.  If we were to adopt PR here in Canada it would be absurd to attempt to make the entire country one large political constituency.  As now we would divide the country up in numerous constituencies, much larger than our current ridings.  For example we might take six of our current ridings and meld them together.  In that new riding the vote would be counted and six seats would be apportioned to the parties.  This is but one example.  We might divide Canada in any of a number of ways but divide we must.  If we take the six example I have used a party would need at least 10% of the vote in the enlarged riding to receive one of the six seats.  So in Canada we are not talking about parties with one or two percent seating members in the House.  Smaller parties would still have influence and a voice but would not wag the dog.  And as much as larger parties need the smaller parties to form governments the smaller need the larger to influence policy so it is in both interests to compromise, negotiate and cooperate. 

Proportional representation would benefit Canada by easing our regional tensions and expanding our democratic culture.  Liberals, Greens or NDPs in Alberta would finally be recognized and have MPs who sympathize with and share their views to appeal to as would Conservatives and NDPs in Quebec.  There is only one real argument against adopting this system:  The self-serving pettiness of the people who have the ability to make the change.

Health care is a Right not a privilege of those who can afford it.  There are problems with the Canadian health care system but they are not insurmountable.  First let’s consider what has caused the problems.  The ideological move to the Right beginning in the 1980s and reaching full stride in the 1990s saw politicians openly state that they wanted to create a crisis in health care and in education for that matter (watch for another post on that subject in the future).  By gutting funding and other tactics they caused upheaval and discord in the system.  So, much of the problem was manufactured just so there would be a problem that these same ideologues could then use as an argument to privatize the system.  But that does not mean that there aren’t real problems.  Health care could use a shaking up.  So I am going to lay out a system that will be efficient, economical and most importantly focus on the needs of the patient. 

First the fee for service system is problematic.  Many doctors who would like to eliminate the public system have used this as a means to undermine it.  All physicians should be salaried.  I am not saying that they should make minimum wage and I would expect to see physician salaries range between $150,000. and $300,000.  That should be adequate for anyone who entered medicine because they wanted to help people and I am sure it is not enough for the many doctors who entered the profession for monetary reasons. 

Second we need to consider what doctors are necessary.  The General Practitioner today is mostly a triage and prescription service.  If a patient has anything serious wrong with them they are referred to a specialist making the General Practitioner not much more than a receptionist.  The old idea of the Family Doctor is long gone.  Few if any General Practitioners today resemble the Family Doctor I grew up with.  A doctor that knew my name and my family, who took time to know who I was beyond a file number, who respected me.  My family doctor didn’t have appointments he was in his office every afternoon except Wednesday and every Tuesday and Thursday Evening and Saturday morning.  It was first come first serve and all of us (his patients) knew one another.  Who can claim the antisceptic emptiness of their doctor’s office today carries that same feeling and the same sense of trust, knowing that you as a person mattered.  The General Practitioner should be eliminated from the system.  Her/His position could easily be replaced by nurses, nurse practioners, and pharmacists.  Nursing training today is quite advanced and nurses are already beginning to expand their role in the system.  Most emergency rooms use nurses to triage patients, sorting them into those who need the most immediate care and those who can wait.  Life and death are already on their shoulders.  With minimal skill enhancement they could completely take over diagnosis and referral to specialists.  Pharmacists and their associations have been arguing for some time that they should be allowed to directly prescribe medicine to patients.  They are more up-to-date on pharmaceutical products.  I can’t tell you how many times my General Practitioner has had to look in the compendium to figure out which drug to prescribe.  Pharmacy hours are also more convenient and pharmacists often get to know their customers better.  Removing General Practitioners from the system would be a huge saving.  Current GPs could upgrade their skills to specialist or take nurse training. 

Third we need to consider the delivery.  A Hub System would be the most efficient.  At the center of the Hub would be the full service, all the bells and whistles, modern hospital.  This would hopefully be the destination of last resort for patients in acute distress.  Surrounding the center would be local clinics with overnight beds for those who require hospitalization for observation and regulation of condition, an emergency surgical set-up, and diagnostic test services.  In this ring would also be the specialized birthing centers and chronic and palliative care clinics staffed by nurses and midwives in the case of the birthing centers.  On the outer ring would be the family medical clinics staffed by nurses, nurse practioners, homeopathic and naturopathic practioners and perhaps dental and vision care professionals.  These clinics would also work as the home base for home care providers, a much needed adjunct to our current system.  Allowing patients to stay in their homes when possible would be a great saving to the system. 

This is the rough outline of a system that would go a long way to making our system more efficient, cost effective and responsive.  It only takes the political will to implement it.

Health care is a Right.  With the above alternative we could realize that Right.