Power corrupts . . . sometimes

Tea, anyone?

It's inevitable. If you eat 1,000 more calories than your body needs every day, you will gain weight. If you drop a plate on the driveway, it will break.

     British Historian, Lord Acton (1834-1902) famously said, "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men." I imagine most of us would take exception to the last part, at least if it comes without a definition of “great.” Furthermore, women should take exception to the inference that only men can be corrupted by power. Chauvinist!

     Emperors and kings, dictators and oligarchies don't figure much in our world, at least not in the West. But through the ballot box or by appointment we bestow the burden—or privilege—of power on all kinds of people and too often what I call the Acton effect reveals itself rather quickly.

     Mike Duffy, Pamela Wallin, Allison Redford come easily to mind, and now Brad Wall is being charged by the opposition with spending taxpayers' dollars frivolously by sending emissaries ahead on trade missions to arrange his meals, accommodation, etc. This runs into a whack of money when the mission is to Asia. (The option of using travel agencies comes to mind.)

     We've been watching episodes of Wolf Hall on PBS periodically. It's centered on the court intrigue during the reign of Henry VIII; the manipulations and compromises of Thomas Cromwell in service of the king and the exercise of monarchial privilege wielded by Henry make for fascinating studies of the Acton effect in an earlier time.

     Meanwhile, I'm also reading Cleopatra by Stacy Schiff, a biography that takes us back into the century before Christ. Cleopatra inherited the throne at 18, conjointly with her 10 year-old brother (to whom she was also married for a time) and grew up in a family where members murdered one another in order to achieve and hold power. Yikes!

     Kings and dictators historically have assumed a privileged morality: kings do whatever they want—whose to stop them? Furthermore, in order to preserve the kingdom the ruler must exercise his power. He has to be, and be seen to be, leader and protector of his subjects.

     But that hardly explains Mike Duffy's finding ways to charge even his personal trainer's fees to the public purse. Many of us find ourselves entitled to expense accounts from time to time. Work on committees, appointment to leadership positions require that the personal costs we incur in order to carry out our responsibilities are reimbursed. 

     The temptation to be overly generous to ourselves is real, particularly because it's an honour system in part and cheating is easy. It is, nevertheless, theft, hardly distinguishable from shop lifting . . . ethically, morally. It's also easily justified under the rubric of “I work hard and long for this (company, committee, institution), they owe me.”

     I can also hear Mike Duffy say in his defense, “To do my job, I have to be fit; ergo, the personal trainer cost is really my employers' (taxpayers') expense.” (Politicians also need orange juice to do their job, even when it's $16.00 a pop!)

     We generally shorten Lord Acton's pronouncement to “Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Maybe it's too cynical by half. I've known a lot of hard-working board members in charitable organizations who donate not only their time and work as well as their personal expenses to the cause they're supporting through their participation.

     Corruption is not inevitable, not like overeating that leads to obesity.

     But when politicians of any stripe confuse their status with people like Henry VIII or Cleopatra, we have good reason to protest. 

     Corruption has no legitimate place in a democracy.

Alberta election ruminations

I've no first-hand experience with the dynamics of transition when a new party is elected to power, but I imagine that very soon, Alberta Premier Jim Prentice will have to go back to the premier's office with cardboard boxes to clean out his stuff, and Rachel Notley will very soon arrive with cardboard boxes full of her stuff, she'll hang pictures, move the desk slightly, sharpen pencils.

I also imagine that the outgoing premier and all cabinet ministers will meet with their incoming counterparts to brief them on what is current and pending in their departments. Dossiers will be handed over, emails will fly back and forth, deputy ministers will fear for their jobs, some MLAs may lobby discretely for certain cabinet positions, the incoming premier will meet long with advisors, and. . . and . . . and.

A few new MLAs will need a guide to show them where everything important is but will wander into closets and bathrooms by mistake anyway.

 In one of the most shameful acts in politics that I can recall, Jim Prentice resigned as PC leader AND as the representative in the legislature for Calgary-Foothills constituency—before the ballots electing him had all been counted! How could constituents not come to the conclusion that their representation had never been of any interest to him; that he would be premier or nothing?

The transition in Alberta shows signs of being difficult.In elections where the governing party is in danger of losing, I expect there's always a strong temptation to sabotage the winning rival's chances of succeeding. Short of putting bear traps under desks, there's always the option of cutting taxes and initiating expensive, vote-getting programs as part of an election platform. If the voters like these measures, you'll get re-elected. If not, you'll have made it difficult for your successors to govern without raising taxes or cancelling programs that are just not affordable, thereby improving your chances in the next election!

Our federal government is busily laying these bear traps at this moment.

I give a great deal of credit to the citizens of Alberta for placing their future into the hands of a new crew of people and out of the hands of tired corporatism. No matter how loud the protests, the idea that if the top prospers, the rest will benefit remains an invisible plank in Western conservative politics. That, or an even worse consciousness that the establishment shall always get what they want and . . . please pass the butter. Jim Prentice's actions imply that the ideals of representative democracy simply never figured in his agenda.

What is uplifting about the Alberta election, for me, is that it might set loose a consciousness in the rest of Canada that same-old, same-old doesn't have to be. Would that the young people, the ones trying to establish themselves in the grown-up world, would be more involved but then, how many Canadians of any age have a good grasp of the platforms, philosophies of the parties?

And tomorrow Great Britain elects a new government, and if the polls are as dead-on as they were in Alberta, they may find Tories and Labour in a dead heat . . . with the Scottish Nationalist party calling the shots. 

Remind you a bit of the Bloc Quebec a few elections ago?

Alberta rethinks itself . . . maybe

Gospel Hymnody recalled

The Eastern pundits were out in full, royal regalia on our national network last night, expressing loud incredulity that the NDP was leading in the polls in Alberta before next Tuesday's provincial election. True, Albertans have elected PC governments without a break for over 40 years, but the implication in all this amazement was that Alberta is the red-neck capital of Canada, a stereotype that it doesn't deserve. 

I lived in Alberta for ten-plus years, a few of them in Edmonton, the rest in the nearby bedroom community of Spruce Grove. There was plenty of progressive thinking going on in that part of the province; NDP candidates were winning some seats, were competitive in others. The view from there—uttered with a sigh on occasion—was that corporate oil and ranching agriculture represented the hard right-wing position in the province. Calgary, in other words, was the red-neck capital if any place was. Not Alberta.

There's propaganda that goes around and around during election campaigns: the NDP is a tax and spend party; Conservatives are the astute fiscal managers. The fact that history proves this to be a false analysis doesn't stop it being repeated in campaigns.

The other half of that lie is that low taxes equate to good governance, and high taxes to its opposite. This is a false consciousness: low vs. high is not the relevant criterion. Fairness and equity are the foundation for finding the right levels of taxation, understanding at the same time that taxes should be sufficient to maintain public infrastructures and ensure sound, equal health care, education, meaningful work and safe domicile for everybody.

It's social democracy. It's the difference between seeing people as widgets in an economy and acknowledging that the economy is the set of tools that can provide a satisfactory living for every citizen. What's happening in Alberta—and may happen writ large in Canada in October—is that people have begun to see the chinks in the conservative armour. For poverty, homelessness, youth unemployment, aboriginal treaty obligations, regional disparity, their world view simply can't picture answers. Their vision doesn't tend that way. Witness the mess our federal government is making in the areas of veterans' support, aboriginal relations, youth unemployment. In recognition of their failings, they can only tinker and devise absurd policies like increasing punishment as the answer to crime, income splitting, and a host of ill-advised bills struck down by the supreme court because they violated the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. 

And then during election campaigns, they resort to smear campaigns and to the handing-out of gifts to the demographics where they deem their support base to lie.

Alberta voters may panic on Tuesday under the barrage of propaganda, hold their noses and revert to the status quo. It happened in the last election, but three premiers later and an early election call by Prentice after a budget that had no answers, they just might break old habits this time.

I lived in Alberta in the 90s during which a bumper sticker was precipitated by an economic downturn, deficit budgets and wage claw-backs from civil servants: “Please Lord, give us another oil boom and this time we promise not to piss it all away!”

It's not hard to argue that, by golly, they pissed it away . . . again.

Stuff!

Getting ready to move. Downsizing time. Condo living is going to be a big, big adjustment for us. The perks? No more need for snow shovels, lawnmower, garden tools and such. The downside? I'll get back to you on that--some time this fall.

I'm reminded how much technologies have changed since I became interested in photography, for instance, back in the '70s. I've gone through about 10,000 slides, paring down from three or four big boxes to about 500 slides. I'm not sure what drove me to take all those pictures of trees and churches and waterfalls; my criterion for keeping/discarding has become this: if it doesn't have a recognizable face on it, is over or underexposed, is poorly composed, I must have had landfill in mind when I took it. 

Anyone want to buy a 35mm slide projector or a mint condition Super 8 movie projector, cheap?

George Carlin's routine called “Stuff” is not only one of his funniest sketches, but really brings home what we're going through as we begin to sell, box, discard, destroy most of our “stuff.” If you've never seen it, click here and then consider that if you haven't yet gone through the agony of down-stuffing, trust me, you will. 

Take the library we've accumulated over the years. What motivated us to buy books, read them, and then put them on a shelf. A dictionary maybe, but a novel? Who reads novels twice? 

In Saskatchewan these days, every public library is one library. Any book you want can be ordered on line in a few minutes and picked up at your local library toot sweet. Oh we say things like, “Well I just love the look and the feel of a book; I can't read from a screen!” But if feeling and looking at a book is where it's at, you really need only one book, one that looks and feels (maybe even smells) really, really good. 

Unfortunately we have book shelves our brother made for us. They're really quite lovely with their glass doors. We're giving away or recycling most of our books but we've decided to pick out some that have really attractive spines, place them tastefully on the shelves, set them off with whatever brick-a-brac stuff we haven't thrown away and . . . and postpone one bit of down-stuffing for yet another time.

Dealing with disposal of stuff is a real headache. Fortunately, we have a spunky local gal who maintains a buy/sell Facebook page and this has really worked for us. The local nursing home came by today to pick up the electric fireplace we may have used five times since we got it five years ago. (That averages out to once per year.) My snow blower has found a home with an RCMP corporal in Saskatoon.

But then the temptation to put on a garage sale rears its ugly head. So here's a packet of 7- #8, 1½ inch screws. Put them on the for-sale table? Chuck them in the garbage? So many decisions; so little motivation!

But having stuff, I mean, really good stuff has always been so comforting. Windowsills full of plant pots, shelves and shelves of books and knickknacks, ten comfortable places to sit for two people, techy stuff that makes short work of any problem, outfits of clothes for every occasion, garden gnomes and ornaments, cars and vans and pickup trucks and on and on.

Here's a rule of thumb made clearer while down-stuffing: whatever you paid for a given piece of stuff will lose 75% of its monetary value when you take it out of the bag, drive it off the lot, see the Purolater truck stopping at your door.

Tempted back to the shopping channel or Amazon? Do watch Carlin before you buy any more stuff.

An appeal to be generous to the people of Nepal

Photo taken from World Vision website

The pictures from Nepal are horrifying; if you haven't seen them, watch the news tonight. CBC has a photo crew in Kathmandu, a place that's become extremely difficult to get in and out of. After you've seen them, imagine what it would be like to be in that vulnerable city, those vulnerable villages along the line where the European tectonic plate meets the Asian. 

We're told the movement beneath people's feet measured a full meter, so imagine yourself on one of those moving sidewalks in an airport, where someone turns on, then reverses the direction every second for a full minute. Buildings made of stone and un-reinforced concrete can't survive such motion and all around you are the excruciating rumble of stone and concrete collapsing and the screaming of parents and the wailing of children pouring into the streets.

As the worst shaking subsides for a moment, your attention is drawn to the homes of family members and friends and you begin frantically searching for them and you find some but others are nowhere to be found; you know they didn't make it out.

And every few minutes, the aftershocks remind you that this is not going to be over for a very long time. When you've done all you can to find friends and family and the rescue crews are beginning their work of searching for the dead and the living, you make your way to a place where no building can fall on you, gather your children around you and try to calm them. It's not easy because you yourself are on the edge of hysteria.

The buildings that were your refuge have become savages, you dare not shelter in the ones still standing.

The crowds begin to gather in the open space you've found, a kind of common in the heart of Kathmandu. Eventually, relief will come in the form of emergency tents but for two nights, you sleep under the stars, huddling with your children under a thin blanket, shivering in the drizzle that's just begun to add to your misery. Your son is coughing and you know there's nothing to give him except to keep him as warm as possible with your body.

The tents when they come are a great relief, at least you can be dry. The blankets feel like an angel's touch after the cold and damp. By now the aftershocks are beginning to feel normal although the rumble of stones and concrete falling somewhere fills with despair: will there be a life left for you when this is over? Or would it have been better if you had all died and were lying at peace under the rubble?

And then there are food and sanitation to figure out. Earthquakes crack roads and runways and food relief can sit at airports in India or on parking lots far away, unable to proceed to the afflicted area. Stores can be raided from some buildings lucky not to have fallen, but this will suffice for a few days at best. Hidden spaces between rubble piles become open toilets that hold the promise of cholera. Despair is everywhere.

What does this mean for us where food is plentiful, the ground is flat and never moves, where incomes are high, healthcare is excellent and always nearby, and our homes aren't adequate unless they have at least two bathrooms? Relief organizations and governments have turned their attention to helping; our best help will come in giving them the resources to make help happen. It's not an occasion for twenty bucks; we ought to dig deeper, out of compassion and thankfulness that we are able to be generous.

Let's think $500, $1,000, $2,000 or more, even if we have to borrow it or pay it off in installments on our credit cards. That bit of hardship for us will be easy compared to the tribulations of the Nepalese communities struggling to survive. 

To donate, click on one of the links below (or find your own preferred organization) and follow what is usually a “To Donate” or "Donate Now" button where you can designate your gift to Nepal Earthquake relief. Donated this way, the funds will be available immediately.

Mennonite Central Committee Canada

Canadian Red Cross

World Vision Canada

Thank you!

Hockey? Me? Really?

The Montreal Canadiens eliminated the Ottawa Senators in NHL first round Stanley Cup playoffs. I rarely watch an entire game, but of this one I missed only five minutes or so at the beginning of the third period. Having seen that first and decisive goal, I could appreciate the sentiment candidly expressed by Carey Price in an after-game interview. He seemed to attribute a large part of winning and losing to “the way the puck bounces for you.”

Luck, in other words.

More astute hockey watchers will protest that you make your luck; you can't score from the penalty box and you can't get lucky at the opponents' end when the play is always at your own end. This may or may not be a metaphor for life.

The arena was full, sold out. Fans were dressed in Senators Jersey's and did the “swinging white towels over their heads” thing, chanted “Go Sens Go” in unison, and occasionally did that piece of musical doggerel borrowed from soccer, I think: “Na na, nanana, Hey, hey, hey, Clog bangh flome! (Don't know what these last three words are, never figured it out.) 

I'm not sure what fans paid to get in, but I know that prices for the Eastern Final games range from $220.00 – $445.68

I've heard sports called “metaphors for life,” and although I find it hard to apply any such definition to professional sports, I can see that in the playing of games the striving-to-win, learning-to-lose features could be said to replicate in a nonthreatening way the stuff we're about when we're active in the world.

No doubt, cheering for a team that's winning provides a pleasurable feeling as if you yourself had conquered. Carousing in the streets after a winning game looks a lot like soldiers celebrating a battle victory. Fans seem to “live” or “die” vicariously through the success or failure of their teams.

Of course, the corporate business side of all this can't be ignored. Professional sports is not dissimilar from any other production/consumption model; a corporation produces a product (entertainment) that consumers (fans) will pay good money to consume. Last night, I consumed an entire hockey game—almost—along with copious commercials including our federal government touting it's achievements using my tax money.

Meanwhile, I probably missed a really great documentary on the mating habits of chimpanzees.

Land, justice, treaties and Christ's church.

Mennonite, Lutheran and Young Chippewayan leaders sign a Memo of Understanding on Stoney Knoll

It seems that the newscasts I watch, listen to and check out on line are more than necessarily focused on politics and government. That's why it was refreshing to hear this morning that we don't always have to depend on and wait for government to fix what's broken, to prevent what's bad and encourage what's good.

MC Sask, MCC and Rosthern Junior College were cooperating on a day of student education regarding aboriginal/settler relations, Treaty 6 and specifically on an area of farm land that is occupied by descendants of Mennonite and Lutheran settlers but was in the late 1800s an Indian Reserve which the federal government confiscated for settlement. The Young Chippewayan that were granted this land in a treaty signing in 1876 were apparently desperate for food and had left the reserve temporarily to hunt in the Cypress Hills area; when they came back, their reserve had been obliterated and they were forced to scatter to other reserves as squatters. 

Only much later did their descendants begin to agitate for recompense for the injustice done to them; so far, the federal government has done nothing to right this wrong and it's only through dialogue among Young Chippewayans, the settlers of the area, MCC and Lutheran leadership as well as a handful of individuals passionate about justice for landless aboriginal neighbours that an understanding about the need for a just and honourable settlement is being pursued.

About 40 RJC students in attendance heard Chief George Kingfisher speak about the issue from the perspective of one who lived it. A residential school survivor, Kingfisher recalled how his father had said to him, “Don't bother the people living on that land; it's their home now.” Ray Funk, Leonard Doell and Lutheran pastor, Jason Johnson, filled in the historical details of the Stoney Knoll story.

Presenters seemed to indicate that if a just reclamation/reconciliation solution were ever to be reached, it would not come from government initiatives but from the people involved. If the finding of compensatory land for the Young Chippewayan happens, it will likely be as a result of the actions of local citizens motivated by good will and a desire for justice.

Our current government hasn't taken up the challenges of treaty justice. The budget, I'm told, is literally silent on the most pressing issues facing aboriginal Canadians. On the Stoney Knoll matter, the attitude of the government seems to have been, “Don't do anything unless you're forced to.” They've come up with excuses, a major one being, “If we gave land as compensation, to whom would we give it?” The response locally has been to take on a genealogical project to answer this excuse, by finding and documenting the descendants of the Young Chippewayan scattered across the province.

In a way, this news is also about government, but only in a way. The real news is about people of good will doing what needs to be done. The governments, in this case, must surely be dismissed with a dishonourable discharge, unless both their attitudes and their actions change.

 

After a meal of bannock, bison burgers, three sisters soup and ice cream with Saskatoon Berry sauce, the students were taken out to Stoney Knoll to “walk on sacred ground,” and to sign their names to a letter—if they wished—to the council of the Laird Municipality petitioning that all signs pointing to Stoney Knoll be altered to include the Cree name for this historic site. 

 

A small start toward a better future

 

(For more information on the Stoney Knoll story, click here.)

Truth or Truthiness - take your pick.

2 / 35,344,962 Canadians live here . . . for now.

In an article posted on the CBC website today, Don Pittis applies the Stephen Colbert definition of truthiness to the budget and the opening salvos of the 2015 election campaign. Truthiness is defined by Colbert as “something expressed as a truth because it is a feeling from the heart without evidence or logic.” Something like, I guess, repeated statements that “this budget is balanced,” even though no family or business, for instance, would make such a claim if selling off assets and raiding the savings account had to be included as revenue in the calculations.

“There is nothing new in the accusation that politicians are economical with the truth. In fact, in a system like Canada's, where caucus solidarity is so strongly enforced, the ability to lie with a straight face is essential for survival. That's because no matter what your true feelings are on any issue, you must always speak and act as if the party line is actually your own.”

We're going to hear a lot of truthiness in the next six months and many Canadians, I expect, will jump on one or the other truthiness bandwagons simply because they either don't have or can't process the facts. In politics, that includes believing in a party enough to vote for them on the basis of a slogan like “We're better off with Harper.” It's true that certain parts of the population will have more money to spend as a result of recent tax reductions, senior-care concessions and income splitting coming on top of the reduction of the GST earlier on. (Except for the GST reduction to 5%, none of these initiatives benefit me.)

 
The truthiness in all this is that reducing the size of government services is good for us, never mind that it selectively benefits only parts of the population, allowing them to eat a bit higher on the hog. The truth is that you can't decimate your revenue base without cutting into the services these revenues previously provided.
 
Fact-seekers will take a close look at where expenditures are being redistributed to make tax reductions possible. They'll note, for example, that funding to CoSA crime-prevention programs is being eliminated while expenditures for incarceration capacity is increasing. Others will simply continue to insist that “we're better off with Harper,” or Trudeau, or Mulcaire.
 
The truth behind the Conservative Party of Canada rests on an ideology, an ideology that's as old as the Old West in America: call it individualism to oversimplify shamelessly. The NDP platform, similarly, will reflect a worldview, an ideology, that is different from that of the CPC: collectivism, loosely described. One sees individual initiative as the key to a better world, the other sees us struggling together to achieve common goals. Somewhere between their truth and their truthiness, the Liberals tend to cut their policies to fit the occasion. That practice, too, expresses an ideology, or at least a political approach.
 
And what of us who will cast our ballots? If we don't have or don't comprehend the facts, how do we decide where to put the X? Most Canadians decided years, even generations, ago. Loyalties to a political party are probably as strong as our commitments to our various religious denominations used to be. We easily swallow the truthiness of that with which we have long associated ourselves. 

Voting is not so much an exercise in sober calculation for most Canadians as it is a contribution to a hope that “our team wins.” And “our team” is that brand with which we've come to feel at home.
 
Elections are decided by that minority of Canadians who happen to have no such long-standing loyalty—swing voters, that is.
 
A final point: The Mike Duffy trial is demonstrating again that there are flaws in the way our democracy works and doesn't work. Our inability to reform it to make it better is surely a demonstration of the entrenched value the flaws provide to the partisan system we've inherited. As long as the traditional governing parties benefit politically from the whole population being screwed by the system, there's no likelihood for change toward proportional representation, senate reform or the partisan way even parliamentary working committees function.

Mike Duffy, ho-hum.

 

Constitution making tool

It appears the Mike Duffy trial is going to dominate domestic news on the networks for the next month and more. I've been keeping up with what's being reported, but I'm beginning to suspect that the reporters sitting through the courtroom proceedings are starting to get really bored. Arguments and counter-arguments about what constitutes genuine “residency” and debating where government business separates from party business are predictable, but the fact is that both are muddy waters—or so it seems in the trial proceedings to date.

Let me clear up the confusion: place of residency is where you call home, where people go when you say, “Come on over for a coffee and a chat.” And when it comes to party vs. government business, assume that all business done by a politician is party business: wars have always been and always will be fought in order to promote a party's fortunes, for example. Budgets will be set to enhance party chances in the next election. Very seldom is there an utterance heard in question period whose first objective is not partisan.

Now I know that there is such a thing as “primary” and “secondary” residence—for the very few who can afford it—and that politicians have to have a domicile outside their constituency for periods of time. I also know that the times they are a'changin' and that in a time when a politician can give a speech in Ottawa in the morning, have lunch with a colleague in Regina and be interviewed in Vancouver in the evening, the rules as imagined when we first established Canada's bicameral parliament are bound to seem fuzzy and archaic.

Mike Duffy's trial will demonstrate in spades how poorly we've kept up with changes to our politics that would better fit the temper of the times, how hide-bound we are by tradition, our habits of thinking and the archaic ceremony of it all. A glaring example: suggestions for abolishing the senate are scoffed at because our constitution requires a level of unanimity that can't be achieved (or so it's surmised). In other words, our past dictates our future on that issue. Constitutions and Bills of Rights and Confessions of Faith and bylaws, etc. are all necessary, but when we treat them as law books rather than as living, advancing processes, they inhibit us more than they help us.

Mind you, we're still party-animals in our attitudes and ways of making decisions; some of us think more conservatively and some of us more liberally and that will affect how we react to change, how we make decisions collectively, what we assume to be necessary for our national and individual well-being. Harper's, Mulcair's, May's and Trudeau's behaviours are governed in large measure by non-identical, stable underlying worldviews. No matter how we restructure, there will always be conflict, negotiation, quarrels and dissatisfaction-with-outcomes.

The Mike Duffy trial may alert us to the degree to which we've failed to address restructuring to make the best use of our talents in governing ourselves as amicably and as fairly as possible, given the fact that we'll never be unanimous . . . on anything. The bickering over residency and party vs. government business are merely symptoms of this failure.

Abolishing the senate, inaugurating proportional representation in government would be good starts in a good direction, in my opinion.

Hold that Bill!

On the one hand, a state can run like a corporation with owner/boss/manager group at the top and the rest of us workers-without-a-union doing as we're told with cameras and spies and informers making sure we don't stray outside the boundaries set by the bosses. East Germany before 1989; North Korea today; Islamic Califate of the future. 

 

On the other hand, a libertarian state with minimal official interference in individual choices and activities is imaginable, something like today's internet writ large.

Canada today falls between the poles, obviously, but it's a sliding scale and there's always a possibility that circumstances will move us to a place where we'd rather not be. It's the fear of being shunted too far in the direction of the authoritarian state that has us spooked regarding the current security bill: C-51.

I’d be the first to admit that my life cannot be considered private, let alone secret. I went to see my optometrist yesterday and watched over his shoulder as he added to the mass of information he already had on file about me. The secretary at the doctors’ office this morning needed only to glance at my Saskatchewan Health Card to bring up on her computer all the information existing about my health, my visits, my address, age, height, weight, etc. We are a data base-driven society, and in this notorious compulsion for data gathering and saving, industry and government are probably the most efficient.

And therein lie issues that are central to our age and about which we need to debate and discuss--with reliable, non-partisan information--if we're to prevent being lulled into allowing unnecessary increases in surveillance and policing, ostensibly to protect us. It’s bad enough to send out a request on the internet  for a quote on an item and then find yourself deluged with offers and come-ons for all kinds of things from all kinds of places. It’s infinitely worse to know that a surveillance apparatus has filtered all emails coming into the federal government and bureaucracy, pulling out any that suggest a possible leaning toward an ideology or idea that the government of the day might consider threatening to the security of the state.

How much do I need to know about my neighbour in order to feel safe? Obviously, the temptation to snoop increases as my fear of his possibly-harmful inclinations increases. Hidden cameras, bugs, drones, something is necessary when you suspect your neighbour of stealing your apples. Security systems make us feel safer, but somehow or other, the need for heightened surveillance surely tells us something about relationship failure.

A majority of Canadians (by recent polling) is ready to let CSIS surveillance mandate be broadened, authority being given to a watchdog agency to act like policemen. It's not surprising now that propaganda has been doing its best to give all of us the jitters about ISIL/ISIS inspired attacks on us. But how many Canadians know that Bill C-51 is vague to the point where, for instance, an advocacy group demonstrating against a new bridge could be targeted for “interference” by CSIS if the authorities of the day deem that bridge a necessity for security reasons?

We will all be scrutinized more closely after C-51; question is, do we care? The primary tool for the establishment and maintenance of a totalitarian system is comprehensive information about individual citizens. Bill C-51 slides the bar along just a bit more to the right on the scale.

Let's think about this carefully, pay attention to what Tom Mulcaire and so many others are saying about the bill. According to Elizabeth May, one of our most astute political leaders,

“The bill's definition of activity that undermines the security of Canada ranges from influencing a government in Canada by "unlawful means" to interfering with the country's "financial stability.”

This bill needs way more thought than the government is prepared to give it.

A tolerant nation, but . . .

Eigenheim Winter

The federal government will quarrel with the Supreme Court again, this time because the wearing of a niqab by a conservative Muslim immigrant during a citizenship ceremony is considered "offensive" by the prime minister while the court interprets our existing law and Charter of Rights and Freedoms to protect being so attired as a religious right.

            Some claim that Harper's picking of this as another fight is mostly a pandering to the demographic that can't tolerate difference (he probably knows that bigotry is so entrenched in Canada that you can actually win some seats by promoting intolerance). I personally agree with the sentiment that women being required to cover themselves thoroughly in order to prevent men's lascivious thoughts and actions is as objectionable as its reverse: the libertarian assertion that "I can wear as little as nothing wherever and whenever I want, so get used to it." But my convictions were shaped by Christian community and Canadian values, not by Islam or libertarianiam.

            No religious faith I know of can withstand the scrutiny of logic, especially when applied by someone not raised in the particular set of beliefs being considered. Requiring an orthodox Muslim woman to uncover her face in the presence of men who are not her husband is probably as traumatic for her as a Jehovah's Witness adherent being forced to undergo a blood transfusion, or an orthodox Anabaptist or Quaker being compelled to march in a military parade carrying a rifle.

            Of course the response from an intolerant right wing is and will always be, "Tough! You don't like it, stay out of my country!"

            The government spokesperson on CBC's Power and Politics defended its position by saying that a judge needs to be able to see a person's face during the administering of the oath of allegiance in order to be sure she's actually saying it.  Poppycock! The option of being sworn in separately in the presence of a female justice could be easily arranged.

            Petty as this last attack on religious freedom in the Charter seems, it's only another phase of our government's narrow range of tolerance. Far more scary is the entangling of Canada in a coalition seeking to defeat "jihadist" militancy . . . militarily. I wasn't raised to value niqab-wearing, sweat lodges or the healing properties in crystals, but I "believe" that love conquers evil; nothing else can.  Counterintuitive as it will seem to most, Canada's best role in the Middle East right now would be in providing escape options, sustenance, relocation  to those being steam-rollered by ISIS.

            Most urgently, though, we need a new government. The prospect of that happening without a progressive-side merger are looking slimmer by the day.

            So sad.

  

Terror, war and propaganda



Before the Beginning

I don't know what the word terror means to you, but for me it's that feeling of being tossed about in an airplane in extreme turbulence. It's fear-with-a-deadline, it's a state half physical, half psychological, half spiritual and if that adds up to three halves, so be it; 150% of possible alertness sounds about right.  

            The word is bandied about a lot these days and anyone trained in the nuances of language has to be shaking his head in amazement when politicians quibble for days over the question of, for instance, whether or not a deranged man galloping through the capital with a stupid hunting rifle is a terrorist or not.

            Of course, agreeing on what's meant by particular words matters in law where drunk has quite arbitrarily been decided to mean +.08 blood alcohol level. But in the public square, words are not precise points, they're clouds, and when Stephen Harper declares that ISIS has declared war on Canada, he's deliberately releasing the fox into the hen house. The war cloud is big and dark in people's minds and surely we haven't forgotten how George Bush used the war word to prepare the public to accept his astronomically stupid invasion of Iraq.

            Terror, war easily become blunt but effective instruments of partisan propaganda. If we're at war, then all the tools of the wartime propagandist can be deployed: patriotism, loyalty, sacrifice, war-measures actions, curtailing of civil liberties in a dangerous time, etc. Most of all, any criticism of government can be branded as disloyal, unpatriotic, even subversive. Listen to government rhetoric; it's happening right now.

            How would our responses be different if our government characterized Al Qaeda, Boko Haram, ISIS as what they really are, criminal gangs in need of arrest and detention? I remember wincing when the war on terror phrase was introduced into political currency, handing over to Al Qaeda criminals a legitimacy they didn't deserve. We respond differently to crime policing than we do to war.

            Words, words, words.

            Terrorism does have a definition, of course. It's a strategy of inciting fear in order to gain an advantage in conflict. A definition, incidentally, that would fit many a parent, many a teacher. And quite coincidentally, Harper's declaration that "The Jihadists have declared war on us" rather neatly fits that definition as well, given that elections are about as conflict-ridden as we get here in Canada.

            Wartime governments invariably gain election advantages. If our government can't render us jubilant over the economy, by jove, they can always terrorize us into voting for them. What with the economy tanking and an election barely 9 months away, a new strategy is not a surprise. The old adage that "you can't fool all of the people all of the time" just isn't that reassuring, at least not to me; in Canada you literally need only fool a third of the people most of the time to be politically successful.

            I wonder if embarrassment is driving John Baird's resignation.

 

  

This Changes Everything, possibly

I'm reading This Changes Everything by Naomi Klein. A big, fat book with nothing on the front fly leaf but the title in a big, bold font. It needs to be big, I guess. Its subject is bigger than Santa Clause, terrorism, Buddha, democracy, free trade, the weather or the healthful benefits of regular exercise—all rolled into one.

            Lots of people have read it; but I'm guessing lots have also started it and put it down. Too much like surgery with no anesthetic. I'm only up to page 100 and my hands are already dripping with metaphorical blood.

            For example: the devastation awaiting civilization as a consequence of climate change may have reached the point of no return and all we can hope for is that we will soon muster the will to begin mitigation. We're pretty much into the chemotherapy/radiation stage of climate change and the prognosis for full recovery is not good. We've smoked too many cigarettes for too long; prevention can no longer be considered a viable strategy.

            Klein demonstrates a whole whack of stuff that we've been denying/neglecting/hiding-under-the-bed-from. For instance, she outlines with examples how the whole free trade/globalization movement of the last few decades is diametrically opposed to environmental protection; an Ontario company making state of the art solar panels is going to go under because free-trade partners protested that its hire-local policies transgressed the fairness rules of the free trade agreement. Extrapolate that to all the other regulations that will make it impossible to follow independent, innovative environmental policies and plans and it's obvious that the corporate, capitalist machine has us by the short and curlies—exactly where they've always wanted us. "Consume, consume, consume and shut up!"

            Well, that's just an example. For me, the frustration of reading material like this without any apparent means to influence the consequences of the capitalistic, free trade/growth juggernaut is pretty debilitating by now. Makes me want to crawl under the bed with a pail full of chocolates, a stack of Archie comics and no reason to come out from there . . . ever.

            Come to think of it, that's exactly what I'm doing, actually. Personally curtailing self-indulgences won't be nearly enough: driving to the city to pick up a parcel that could have been mailed, leaving unused lights on, engaging in unnecessary, extremely polluting air travel (twice as much per passenger as by car; four times as much as by train). None of this is going to solve the dilemma our unborn great-grandchildren (of which I will never have any, but you might) will be facing when all the world's resorts are submerged, drought-ridden third world countries turn on the West for having created the mess and all the food-growing ecosystems have been thrown completely out of whack.

            What Naomi Klein is suggesting here is no less than a political/economic reversal, a revolution if you will. What is tragic for us is that a compliant population in Canada today hasn't the information, the courage, the will—or all three—to insist that a realistic appraisal of the menace of free-trade/growth/capitalism vs. the future be done. It's becoming more and more clear that we won't even insist that the government we elect begin to plan for the mitigation of what is already manifest in terms of human life on the planet. Polls are showing that we're headed for a minority Conservative or Liberal government, neither of which possess the smarts nor the will to come to grips with the enormous problem we're facing. Throw the NDP into that basket as well, while we're at it. All three are clearly planning little past their strategies for winning election.

            And today, messing with the status quo is not seen as a vote getter.

            Sigh!

            Anyone want to join me under the bed? Oh, sorry. I see you're already here with me. Have a chocolate.          

           

  

There's Education, and then there's Education

RJC Class of 2014

I've spent much of this morning link-hopping. Probably wasted time, but it is informative to know which organizations see themselves as compatible enough to post links to one another. And so I began with my church facebook page which led to the Global Family Foundation page which contained a post pointing to an article called "A missional approach to education" which caught my eye because I'm a teacher and a supporter of Rosthern Junior College. The article I ended up reading is from an online magazine called World: Real Matters, and you'll find the article here.

                At that point, I began to read through the other articles in World: Real Matters and discovered that it’s stridently advocating for stances we've come to associate with "the Christian right:" pro-life, anti-gay, etc., much of it pretty vitriolic. An article called "The Most Deviant Frontier" attempts to make the case that pedophilia as a legitimate orientation will follow right on the heels of equal rights for LGBTQ. Another article calls those supporting women's right to choose legislation the "abortion cartel."

                Let me say up front that I don't want to imply that the posting of links inevitably puts all the organizations or people doing so in the same basket. Quite obviously, my church membership is highly unlikely—for the most part—to be sympathetic to the stances of World: Real Matters. At most, I would repeat the standard caution about posting anything on Facebook: when in doubt, leave it OUT.

                But my interest in the sequence of the morning's reading is primarily on the subject of education. We have supported Global Family Foundation individually; its focus on schools and educational development in poor areas of Paraguay overlaps with my church's connectedness with that country. My church has and continues to be highly supportive of Rosthern Junior College and Canadian Mennonite University, both parochial schools where the Christian viewpoint on course offerings is unapologetically advertised.

                Question is: when does the provision of an educational opportunity cease to be primarily "educational" and become "missional" in its objectives and methods? And a corollary: what do we mean when we see our schools and teaching as "missional," and does it make a difference whether the children benefitting are poor, are young and impressionable or mature enough to be capable of meaningful decision making? Is there a point at which education becomes a gift—like a shoebox full of toys—whose primary purpose is to win souls and if so, what would be wrong with that?

                We're living in a time of increasing diversity of thought, increasing mixing of cultures and liberalization of laws once thought to be immutable. Not surprising, then, that we should find ourselves at sea for a time on the question of religious freedom vs. secular law. Trinity Western University is a college that compels students to refrain from sex outside of marriage AND is seeking to establish a law school that would ostensibly graduate lawyers licensed to practice in general society. Various professional organizations have wrestled with this and have come out against credentialing lawyers with an a priori religious slant; World: Real Matters and many others argue that it's a freedom of religion issue.

                What does the future hold for religion-based education, one is compelled to ask.

                It's a new year and with it comes a time when we add up our incomes, expenses, donations, etc. in preparation for tax time. What we support and what we forego makes a difference. Mennonite Central Committee, Mennonite Disaster Service, Global Family Foundation, Caritas, World Vision, Feed the Children, etc., etc. are all "charitable organizations," meaning that donations to them reduce the tax collected by our governments. In effect, these organizations are therefore spending public money to do their work. What all this means is that donors should be completely clear on the objectives and methods of the charitable organizations they support.

                Canada Revenue Agency is scrutinizing charities to determine whether or not their activities are too political to merit charitable status; our obligation is to be sure that their goals are ethical.

                For believers—Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Buddhists, Hindu, Native Spirituality adherents, etc—learning what it means to be salt and light to the world as we understand it is a task we neglect at everyone's peril. Parochial schools have legacies of quality education on the one hand . . . and Indian Residential Schools on the other.

                How we do education, how we see our role individually and collectively is critical.