Here are the latest News

Once upon a time this was news, to someone.

Do you watch the evening News? Do you subscribe to and read a daily paper . . . daily? Do you check out the News on your smart phone regularly? I mean by going to a News channel and reading what’s offered.

I’ve no idea who first called the publicizing of the day’s events, News. “New” is an adjective, not a noun. It’s not grammatically eligible for pluralization by adding an s. If there can be a day’s News, why not a day’s bigs, or smooths, obeses, wets? The day’s wets would be all about events like floods, drinking water boil advisories, contamination of rivers, rain. It would be about events that are wet, just like CBC’s The National is all about things that are happening that weren’t happening yesterday. Events that are New.

But then, objecting to the nounification of an adjective could certainly be taken as a sign of obsessive, ludditeful Englishteacherism. Humans invented their first words, and we’re still making new ones. Like prioritize, which came in to use in my lifetime although priorize already existed for use on occasions where rank just wouldn’t do. So why not orderitize, simplifitize, managetize?

Just wait. They’re coming.

But back to the news. “Here is the evening news,” the TV announcer intones. Shouldn’t it be “Here are the evening news,” now that News is a plural noun? You don’t say, “Here is my sister’s twins.” Or do you, and have I been left behind . . . again?

George Carlin has noted that there’s really only bad news. Good news aren’t news. In one of his monologues (you can find it on YouTube) he puts into words what all of us know but aren’t prepared to admit: when we turn on the news, we want to hear of immense conflagrations, wars, floods, many people killed. We want to hear about crime, about powerful people being destroyed, of people we don’t like being masterfully humiliated by people we do like. As much as news are increasingly less able to command our attention, who on earth would tune in or read the evening paper if all the stories were about success, achievement and peace?

“An Air Canada Boeing 747 Saskatoon to Winnipeg flight took off at 7:00 am as scheduled and arrived in Winnipeg without incident an hour and twenty minutes later. The captain, Arnold Pansyfoot, and his co-pilot, Diana Gottago reported that the weather was fine and “it was clear sailing all the way.” Rounding out the crew for this flight were flight attendants Danielle Perkyhat and Orville Getarealjob, a native of Edmonton. When interviewed, passenger Jonah H. Fishbait said: “The peanuts tasted really fresh!”

Good news just isn’t. Sorry.

Lately, it seems, the news have become overburdened with a need to provide what people want to hear as opposed to what they ought to hear. News are paid for by advertising, mostly, and advertisers want to see large audiences, and so even the mainstream newspapers and broadcast media have been leaning toward the most sensational, bad news. I call it tabloidifying the news. (Or should it be tabloidicizing) “Hey folks! Follow us. We ferret out the worst news our world has to offer . . . with pictures. Parental Guidance strongly advised.”

Donald Trump is well versed in two areas: 1. knowing that there’s a huge audience for bad news and, 2. understanding that the media have an insatiable thirst for bad stories. They have to have such a thirst; their very career lives depend on it.

Here are a few news for Sunday morning: I’m still in my bathrobe at 8:00 am and, I’ll be going to church later. I’ll bet you’re hungering to hear that I crashed my car en-route. Well, maybe not you, but certainly all the news junkies out there.

If I do, it will be on the evening news. If I don’t, it won’t.

Pokeman Go and the local Museum

Do you know this great man? Do you know what he said . . . and did?

We’re always elated to see visitors in the Mennonite Heritage Museum. Especially those that ask questions, ponder the meaning of exhibits and chat among themselves and with us about the subjects we present.

So when I went to open the museum yesterday, I was excited to see four people already on the steps. Waiting for the place to open . . . I assumed. Silly, Luddite, ever-hopeful me. They were in fact four teens with cell phones gathered in by the “Mennonite Heritage Museum” sign where a PokeStop has been placed by the virtual-world “Holy Ghost” that guides the inner workings of Pokemon Go.

I’ve heard it touted as a virtual game that gets people out and about: exercising, breathing fresh air, meeting real people and making new friends. The dozen or so drawn by the game to our front yard have been uniformly oblivious to their surroundings and/or have harboured too little interest in things historical to engage with me or the museum. (I’m pretty sure I appear historical to Pokeman Go enthusiasts!) Those I’ve seen haven’t been doing any real exercise; they strolled, and lolled; one lay down on his back and held his cell phone up, arms extended for about ten minutes. I tried to engage the four yesterday in a bit of conversation; they weren’t having any of that nuisance—not with me, not with each other.

So is this new—and probably short-lived—virtualized version of geocaching a “step in the right direction” for kids who are hooked on gaming and social media? You tell me.

We see our humble museum as a classroom, a classroom where curious people can come to learn useful things, like how they and their friends came to be here, what their ancestors did to make possible the life they enjoy, what Martin Luther King meant when he said, “We don’t make history; history makes us,” or words to that effect.

The good functioning of any democracy—be it a family, a church, a community or a country—is dependent on its participants being knowledgeable about the realities of their world. Isaac Asimov has said, “There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.’”

My experience with Pokeman Go is minimal, confined to a few encounters and the reading of the game rules on Wikipedia. It doesn’t take a knowledge of logic to realize that the time Pokeman Go consumes could have been spent in other ways, like actually exercising, actually meeting and getting to know people, actually learning about the world, how it came to be what it is, what it means to wrestle with its future.

Marshall McLuhan coined the media phrase, “the medium is the message,” an insight that has supported our suspicions about TV, for instance, being more than a tool for acquiring information and entertainment; the TV in every house changed the culture irrespective of what programming was chosen to be broadcast. The car, the phone, the computer and the internet have all in their turn reshaped our culture, our politics, our socialization.

 

Pokeman Go is just another game? I don’t think so. If it were designed to be educational or even informative, it might well be a medium whose message is constructive in our culture, country, communities. But I can’t see that message there at all. The message, I fear, will again be the enrichment of a few highly-knowledgeable entrepreneurs through the further addiction of the not-yet-knowledgeable young masses.

If it would ignite enthusiasm for museums, galleries, libraries and actual travel, I would endorse Pokeman Go. If it should turn out, after all, to have this effect, I will humbly apologize—and then eat the Mennonite Heritage Museum, one brick, one exhibit at a time.

Brexit, Ad-blocking and the Blaring Trumpet.

What are you seeing from up there, Mr. Crow?

Two news stories this morning:

1. Users of the internet can buy ad-blocking software that eliminates most advertising from showing up on their mobile devices. If we all bought the software, ad revenues that pay for the production of what we use on the internet would dry up and Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn, etc. would disappear, along with a myriad of research sources, amusement sites, etc. etc. In short, the death of the internet unless its consumers would be willing to pay large fees to maintain it.       We’ve long been able to watch nearly-free television because the pesky ads paid for it for us. Same principle.
2. Britain has decided to exit the European Union. A lot of the Brexit hype stressed the economic and legal strictures the union put on Britain and the perception that such “globalization” benefits the wealthy and powerful and impoverishes the rest, and that softened borders makes it too easy for undesirables to get into the country.

Both stories are gloomy. They remind us that our unhappy marriage to corporate wealth and power is insoluble unless we’re willing to give up stuff we cling to like barnacles on a ship’s hull. The protestors against fossil-fuel dependency have to grind their teeth at the fully-justified accusations that they drive cars, fly in airplanes, use petroleum-sourced products routinely. We surely know that if the production and use of fossil fuels were made illegal right now, our lives as we know them would tank, bite the biscuit, kick the bucket, be flushed down the toilet.

      At present, only corporate or communal wealth and power is capable of building a car, manufacturing a smart phone, running a communications network, producing the necessary supplies of food, drugs, consumer goods and leisure opportunities that we either need or desire.

      Our local Lion’s Club is not about to take over the production of computers if IBM and Apple are defuncted. Churches and mosques, temples and synagogues would build lousy roads even if they were willing to attempt it.

      A commentator said that if we give people the choice of doing what’s right or doing what’s free, most of us will choose free . . . virtually always. No matter how much we rail against the tyranny of corporate wealth and power, we are bound to neglect the fact that it was our needs and wants that made them what they are, to forget who it is that fulfills our dreams. Let’s look to our own ethics first.

      We don’t want to know that the problems of climate change, earth degradation, wars and political conflict, etc., etc., are products of ours and our family’s and neighbours’ choices.

      Donald Trump is promising to take back America; his backers love the phrase but I’d venture to guess that most of them (including Trump himself) haven’t the faintest idea what that noble-sounding phrase actually means in practice. Brexit has started Britain on a road to “taking back their country.”        

     They will undoubtedly find in the end that “taking back the country” in the way they’ve visualized through rose-coloured glasses will be the equivalent of the proverbial “shooting oneself in the foot!”

      To my mind, there’s only one viable way to own both the resources necessary to provide us with the goods and services we need while keeping control over the excesses corporate wealth and power currently tend to admit, encourage. Shareholders guide the actions of corporate wealth and power, presumably, and if the shareholders are all of us—as is the case with SaskEnergy, SaskPower, SaskTel, for instance—we share in the direction setting and in the blame when mistakes are made. In such an environment, the need for a Brexit, for ad-blocking, for Donald Trump and his ilk wouldn’t arise to fuel our rage and imagined persecution.

       We should be able to kick out the management (our elected government) if the efficiency AND/OR the ethics of our corporations don’t pass muster!

      Unfortunately, private corporations now own the media, by and large, and we’ve been cajoled and “tricked” into choosing the governments that suit the wishes of private corporations even as we rail against them.

      There are plenty of photos of our real

enemy, people. They hang right above the sink in each of our bathrooms.

      For God’s sake, READ SOMETHING.

The Hooligan Temptation

Creation is hard work, destruction is easy

Gangs of Russian, English (and other) hooligans are fighting it out in the streets at the Euro Cup of Soccer in France taking place right now, Hooliganism has become an adjunct of soccer, it seems, and its participants rehearse for battle, set out with mischief-making in mind, and equip themselves to practice their deviltry, the soccer game being little more than an opening for a greater goal—the perpetration of as much mayhem as possible.
      But hooliganism wasn’t invented by soccer fans. Free Dictionary includes a couple of definitions of the word, what it’s come to mean: reckless or malicious behavior that causes discomfort or annoyance in others; the termination of something by causing so much damage to it that it cannot be repaired or no longer exists. I would probably add, “the organized creation of straw men in order to experience the longed for, orgasmic high that comes from the act of attacking and burning them down publicly.”
      I think we all recognize the biology of hooliganism intuitively. It’s not only the good deed, the making of something wonderful that can bring about the physical and emotional euphoria our minds and bodies crave. Euphoria can be had—given the appropriate circumstances—from the destruction of the good deeds and wonderful inventions that others or we have created. Typically, we attempt to escape this fact by assigning blame or praise—as the case may be—to God and the Holy Spirit or to the devil who “made me do it.”
      I’m sorry, folks, but it’s all built into us by the very creative process that made us. Fight or Flight are defensive mechanisms for our protection, the adrenaline that fuels them lives on even when danger has to be invented—the straw man. It’s why we have games like hockey and football, where danger and battle are replicated in an attempt to achieve biological euphoria, even if only vicariously. But direct participation is limited and in the need to be a part of it, fandom emerges, and it doesn’t take much beyond Psychology 101 to predict that hooliganism will break out among those for whom the vicarious experience no longer totally satisfies.
      But even if soccer hooliganism can be controlled by policing and public indignation, there exists a hooliganism that’s far more sinister, that threatens—particularly in peaceful times—to erupt and grow to uncontrollable proportions. It can be characterized as it was in a bumper sticker during the Vietnam protests as “Have patience, you say? To hell with that. I’ve got a gun and I’m gonna kill something!” (My paraphrase; that would make a far-too-long bumper sticker.) The NAZI vendetta against Jews, Gypsies and gays was hooliganism developed to its logical and predictable conclusion; the diatribes and threats against the Notley government in Alberta is the thin edge of hooliganism showing itself; the rise of Donald Trump as a legitimate (politically) candidate for president of the USA is a result of neglecting, nurturing and then legitimizing hooliganism. The method of Trump hooliganism is “ the termination of something by causing so much damage to it that it cannot be repaired or no longer exists. The support Trump is getting from the National Rifle Association is completely fitting; the very act of purchasing and owning an automatic weapon is the entertainment of the possibility of hooliganism.
      ISIS, to my mind, epitomizes well the concept of hooliganism. There comes a point where achieving euphoria through acts of mayhem becomes habitual. There comes a time when—as Shakespeare’s Macbeth puts it—“I am in blood stepped in so far that, should I wade no more, returning were as tedious as go o'er.” When you’ve beheaded ten innocent men and women for a video, pushed 20 homosexual men off the roof of a tall building, burned a pilot in a cage and videotaped it, what likelihood is there that you will say, “Oh, I’m sorry. I was wrong. I’ll make it up to you and mend my ways.” Returning would be as tedious (read, impossible) as going all the way.
      ISIS is a criminal gang; we need to think about it as massive, organized crime rather than as a war of ideals. The Mafia, ISIS, Abu Sayyaf are not, in the end, ideologically or religiously driven. They’re Hooligans who’ve stepped in blood so far that the way back has become impossible. In for a penny; in for a pound.
      But here’s my ultimate concern: when followers of Christ and other prophets of peace, love and non-violence begin to compromise their own principles, begin to ignore, condone, excuse or applaud the hooligans, begin to take their euphoria from words and deeds of belligerence and de-struction, the way back is dangerously close to becoming impossible. When Christians start “packing,” I fear for tomorrow’s children. I fear for all minorities. I fear for women. I fear for the witness of the church, the witness of peace-loving Muslims and Jews, the witness of gentle-minded Hindus and Buddhists.
      Have we stepped in so far that returning would be as tedious as going all the way? 
     I sincerely hope not.

Honour treaties: the key to Reconciliation

Fort Carlton - site of Treaty 6 signing.

I just watched a Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s short video summary of the TRC process. It ends with Shawn Atleo’s tearful assessment of what needs to happen: 1) indigenous families and communities must forgive themselves and each other for past failures and 2) they must determine not to let the pain continue.

The second item may be the toughest for—in my case—all of us who live under the Canada/First Nations accord that we call Treaty 6. It requires change. Not just superficial, surface change but a fundamentally-new way of doing politics that allows and/or forces change to happen. Figuring out how to do that is the challenge.

I live in a settler’s community—Rosthern, Saskatchewan—very near two reserves: Beardy’s Okemasis and One Arrow. There is regular, if distant, interaction between the settler folk and their indigenous neighbours, but it’s primarily commercial: some residents of the reserves shop in Rosthern. On the cultural, social level, there’s not a lot going on. The question is, should there be, and if so, would it even the playing field for indigenous families, or just put it on a friendlier basis?

To some people I meet, this is key. I’ve come to disagree. It’s essential that our day to day commerce be fair, friendly and that it respect the dignity and autonomy of everyone, but that isn’t key; it’s only essential. More an outcome of equality than a prerequisite for it.

The key lies in the guarantees for everyone that we “settler folk” have long taken for granted: decent housing, water, education, health care, etc., and access to a fair share of the resources that are required for quality life circumstances. Turns out that the treaties signed by the crown and the First Nations although well intended, were short-sighted. They should have ended with a rider that would say that adjustment of the provisions of the treaty would be commensurate with changes in population and needs from time to time.

Let me explain.

The treaty specifies “reserve land in the amount of one square mile per family of five,” and I doubt that the size of reserves has been seriously adjusted with population increases, or whether the “family of five” stipulation has ever been revisited in any meaningful way. In other words, the provisions of the treaty were colonial in nature; they made it too easy to say “a medicine chest” means what it says, rather than accept the implicit understanding that it means health care commensurate with the times . . . ongoing.

Furthermore, the $5 “gift” every treaty day, although a month’s wage at the time. now buys a pop and a chocolate bar . . . barely.

The last item in the treaty should have said “The Crown and the First Nations of Canada will each elect/appoint an equal number of representatives every five years to meet as needed to determine current implications of the treaties, and with power to enact legislation binding upon municipal, provincial and federal governments.”

The debacle of the residential school system was made real through the TRC for anyone who was listening and I won’t go into that. Except that I have this nagging question: why did first nations parents, councils and leadership not tell the Canadian government to GO TO HELL when it’s petty officials came to collect their kids? Perhaps this is what happens when starvation, abject poverty and subjugation has so cowed populations that they assume a posture and expectation of helplessness.

I can’t believe they didn’t care about their kids.

Of course, let’s all cultivate friendlier relations with indigenous neighbours, but let’s not assume that change will happen without insisting that it do so . . . to the halls of power.

Write your MP and your MLA today.

Now that would be a hopeful act of reconciliation!

the reason for government

Coming soon to a garden near here (High today, ZERO)

The basic tenet of a recent Facebook post was that since many Albertans were losing their jobs, the premier of the province—Rachel Notley—should lose hers. A silly syllogism if there ever was one, but expressive of the frustration many Albertans experienced when they woke up to realize that a social democratic government had been elected . . . by them.

      The post drew responses in the hundreds, some applauding the suggestion and some exuding unbridled hostility and rage: “we should band together to turf the b***h out!” Most however, were rebukes; how can you lay the economic problems of Alberta on Notley when the root lies in Saudi Arabia and the downturn was well underway before we ousted the Conservatives?

      Think, people, think!

      But logic and fair judgments don’t dominate discourse in a democracy based on a party system. Makes you wonder if we wouldn’t be better off under a theocracy or a dictatorship; under such governance people might be united . . . if only by their hatred for the dictator. As it is, we are systematically encouraged by our electoral system to like or dislike each other according to predispositions toward anything and anyone that isn't us, relatively stable prejudices nurtured over years.

      “Government by the people, for the people” can’t simply be assumed to be all good, all of the time.

      How we judge party A or B seems to depend much more on our attitude toward their brand than it does on their actions when in power. It makes me wonder why in this country anyone would aspire to leadership: we generally elect our governments with fewer than 50% of the vote which means that a party assuming power must realize that more than half the population will chastise and oppose them no matter how pristine their motives. We effectively elect—most of the time—a government we don’t want, as long as majority rules is how we decide stuff.

      I’m certainly not the first to say this, but it’s becoming clearer that what we have learned to like or love—and what we have learned to dislike or hate—plays a far greater role in our political choices than our thoughtful judgment ever has. We’re most attuned to hearing any sliver of evidence supporting our loyalties, castigating our adversaries.

      Tabloids prey on this tendency in us. They do best when they pick a side and hammer away at the “other side” with mixtures of information and misinformation . . . and their followers naturally lap it up. Take Fox News as an example.

      It’s one good reason for revising our democracy. Proportional representation means that no matter how we vote, our vote affects the outcome. True, this often results in a minority government, but minority governments only work if the parties cooperate, if the government is vulnerable to opposing opinions and interests. Cumbersome as such a change might be at first, the habits of consultation and cooperation could be given some hope of developing in time.

      What we endanger under the current system is the consciousness of our unity under the overarching goal that is the reason for government in the first place, namely that all citizens should enjoy their short lives: well fed, well sheltered, well educated and in peace and harmony with their neighbours.

      Rachel Notley should not be forced to resign; the hostility she faces is a consequence of the fact that our electoral system so starkly focuses on the zero-sum, winners and losers game paradigm.

      It shouldn’t have to be like this.

Donald Trump vs. the Spirited Horse

Shekinah Flood, 2013

I wouldn’t write about this except that the enormity of the American phenomenon that is the Republican Party in disintegration compels me to think about its meaning—at a minimum. Something odd is going on. Although it’s hard to separate genuine fed-upness-with-the-established-order from mass hysteria at times, the fact that a man like Donald Trump is seen as an acceptable focus of the collective rage for so very many is remarkable.

       Some would draw a parallel between the rhetoric of Adolph Hitler in the early 1930s with the venom Trump spews on a daily basis. If you’re familiar with Mein Kampf and have been watching US news, you’d probably agree that the similarities in message and the enthusiastic responses to it are startling. Both begin with the assumption that the nation is in the toilet and that it’s time to make it great again. Both assign the nation’s demise to the presence of aliens—Jews and Gypsies, communists and homosexuals in the one; Muslims, Mexicans and "bleeding-heart lefties” in the other. In both, the rhetoric is confrontational in the extreme; bellicose language gets thrown out to great applause; the applause—in turn—encourages escalation of the tone.

      I can’t imagine that all this will actually result in a Trump presidency, and when I think about it logically, I’m not sure such an event, should it happen, would be as catastrophic as some have predicted. US checks and balances system of governance has so often meant that the electorate installs an opposition to the president via the congressional elections. Electing Trump might be a catalyst motivating Americans to take a closer, more reality-based look at themselves, their structures of governance and the comical—sometimes tragic—symptoms that emanate therefrom.

      Sometimes hitting rock-bottom leads to repentance and rebirth.

      And what’s the source of the rage coalescing behind trump? From spending some time in Indiana and reading and listening to the news, I’m thinking a listing of grievances could be made something like:

• Homosexuality being not only tolerated but being granted legitimacy—all the way to same-gender marriage which is probably the straw that broke the camel’s back on this issue for many,
• Granting of choice to women on the abortion issue which many consider murder of the helpless,
• The unwillingness to be arbitrary and decisive regarding the entry and expulsion of illegals,
• The protection of America’s Muslim population who are seen as a present and future threat,
• Movement toward a more “socialistic” approach to health insurance under Obama,
• The reluctance by the Obama administration to use lethal force in the Middle East.
• The separation of religion and public education (banning of school prayer and Bible reading) characterized as an attack on Christianity,
• The suggestion that there ought to be some form of arms control, contrary to “the right to bear arms” in the constitution.
• And all the above enclosed in an envelope of moral outrage: America is sliding down the slope toward moral decadence.

These are some of the complaints I’ve been hearing. The hope that some strong man will be able to kick the ducks into orderly rows is obviously naïve, but fed by mob dynamics, Trump has been able to cast himself as the messianic answer to the frustrations of the right-wing mind.

      If venting is good for the soul, Trump may have provided the exact therapy America needs. Even rage of the most vitriolic sort eventually tires out, subsides. Let the deportations, the closed borders (to Muslims), the wall on the Mexican border, the canceling of Obama care, the re-criminalization of abortion, the re-criminalization of homosexuality begin and let the carrying of weapons become mandatory. All this will, of course, fail, but in the attempt, the reasons for liberalization as the common good may become clearer.

      In the end, retrenchment always gives way to liberalization; it’s the spirited horse on which human social evolution rides. It’s the only way humanity can survive in a world of burgeoning populations, changes due to climate warming and globalization.

      I think it was Karl Marx who said, “Progress is a spirited horse; we either learn to ride it or it will throw us.” And, no, I am not a communist and if Karl Marx didn’t say that, then attribute the quote to me.

      I know it wasn’t Pope Frances nor the Archbishop of Canterbury. If spoken to the scribes and pharisees, it might have been Jesus, although he would likely have substituted "renewal" for “progress.”

"The Victors Write the Histories"

Old Panama City

Panama City today

It’s probably safe to say—anthropologically, sociologically and archaeologically—that every age is built upon the rubble of previous ages. Unearthing the artifacts of the past contributes to a clearer understanding of the world we experience today; “visiting the iniquity of fathers on the children and on the grandchildren to the third and fourth generations.” (Exodus 34:7)

      I’m currently deep into A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn, an American historian and political scientist. The book was published in 1980 and according to a reviewer, it’s sales continued to rise as more and more profs, students and the general public became aware of it. Quoting copious letters, documents and journals of the time, Zinn traces a history that’s enlightening on the subject of a tumultuous USA today. Without going into detail (and there’s lots of it for the history buff), Zinn unearths the underbellies of slavery, of the dispossession and decimation of the Amerindian population, the exploitation of workers in the factories and plantations, the riots, murders, massacres and destruction that accompanied, for instance, the American annexation of Texas.

      Seen from the viewpoint of the exploited and the dispossessed, the rubble left behind by that history make the atrocities—horrible as they are—in Syria and Iraq read a bit like a playground brawl. Russian annexation of the Crimea and her adventures in Eastern Ukraine, Israel’s illegal occupation of the West Bank could learn plenty from the history of the politics and antics of US expansionism; all are products of racial, religious, political or cultural chauvinism supporting unstated doctrines of manifest destiny. And moneyed privilege is what inevitably orchestrates the whole, turns humans into factory “parts,” clears the deck of inhabitants for profit-making enterprise, suppresses popular dissent violently, mercilessly.

      There are two ways of looking at the enormous gap in wealth and power in the USA today, but any discussion of its precursors has to go back to a history factually recorded. Zinn acknowledges that what we see today is evolutionary as much as it is conspiratorial. It’s not surprising that the dispossessed and the poor, the unemployed or unemployable, the labourers and minions that keep the gears of business and industry humming might come to see their lot as a direct consequence of the “elite’s” machinations in the political and economic arenas. Obviously, manipulation in the industrial, labour, banking, political spheres is only possible for those who have power and means, and we have only to look back at 2008 to see that when the corporate banking/investment world faces disaster, the paeans of the world are forced into rescuing their overlords. And in America today, it’s become futile to attempt access to political influence without wealth sufficient for election campaigns.

      I recently spent a month in Panama where American and Canadian expats with the necessary means have taken up residence in it’s more favourable climate. In conversation, some claimed that their decision to move rested on their disappointment with what the USA has become. I was never sure what the specifics of their concerns were, but sensed a deep distrust of liberalism as regards immigration, security, the constitutional amendments granting the right to bear arms, free speech, etc. etc. Some analysts have labeled the tense divide in American values and fortunes a “culture war,” I see it more as a continuation of the politics, economics, attitudes and opinions developed in a few hundred years of its history.             

     There’s a distinct line between the “ownership” and reluctant emancipation of slaves and the racial turmoil of today; between the annexation of Texas and California and the “wetback”/immigrant/refugee political adversity of today; between the bloody revolutionary and civil wars and American militarism, between the expulsion of the Cherokee from settlement areas to the present-day sorry lot of the indigenous population.

      Many have apparently tried to stem the reading of Zinn’s history with cries that it’s “full of lies.” I’m not in a position to judge that definitively, but the sources on which much of this history is based were archived documents pertaining to the events under discussion.

      Cicero is supposed to have said that history would treat him kindly because he intended to write it, and Churchill is credited with the line, “the victors write the histories.” Based on my own early education, I can verify that the history of Canada I was taught was very much a sanitized version of what really happened, a version that put the explorers, the settlers, the early governments in artificial light so that they would appear as heroes, statesmen and builders while neglecting the injustices done in the name of progress.

      If anyone has an equivalent history of Canada to recommend, I’d be happy to hear it. (g.epp@accesscomm.ca)  Buffalo Shout, Salmon Cry edited by Steve Heinrichs presents a contribution in this direction. Also We are all Treaty People by Roger Epp. (If you’ll pardon a shameless plug for friends and relations.)

Come with me to Panama

Panama City from Ancon Hill

With our driver-guide, Francisco, at the Miraflores Locks

Shopping for essentials in Boqete

Where your cup of coffee began . . . possibly

Learning Spanish: I can now say: La Quenta, por favor and whether or not I have it down perfectly, the waiter returns in a few minutes with the bill. I can also say with confidence, Mi gato bebes leche, but since I don’t have a cat, telling someone that it drinks milk is not likely to come up in a conversation. Yo escribe un carta might be useful sometime but who writes letters anymore? Un cafe nigra or Un cafe, non leche, is useful; the coffee here is fabuloso and I’ve never drunk it with milk. The stop signs read Alto but that can also mean “upper” as in Alto Boqete, which is where my daughter lives. In Germany we regularly visited Oberbieber (Upper Beaver) and Niederbieber which is . . . well you guessed it. I find myself answering in German if I’m surprised by a question; the other day I said Aufwiedersehen to a puzzled store clerk. I’m still not sure about greetings, but I think Buenos Dias suits morning greetings, Buenos Tardes (?) the afternoon and “good-night” is Buenas Noches. Around here it doesn’t  matter since everyone seems just to say Buena, an all-purpose form of saying “How’re y’all doin’” which is what you’re likely to get from the Texans in church.


Laws and Limits: I was told there are laws for everything and, I’ve observed, there are police everywhere you look. However, most everyone apparently ignores the laws and the police seldom enforce them. The Pan American highway between David and Santiago is under construction and absolutely horrible for long distances, but even on the finished, paved four-lane portions, signs that help are hard to find and I wondered if one big sign at either end saying “FIGURE IT OUT, GRINGO” wouldn’t be more helpful as it would prepare you for what you’re about to experience. In construction areas, the word disculpe appears often, a word related to the English “culpable,” or guilty, and similar to the German “entschuldigen sie mir, bitte.” In other words, “We’re sorry, please forgive us.” You’d think Canadians had written their signs.


Panama City: Panama City is impressive with it’s stainless steel and glass skyscrapers . . . but situated alongside vast slums. it’s obvious that the Panama Canal has pumped a steady flow of cash into the capital. What’s also obvious is that the wealth it’s brought has never been equitably distributed. In the suburbs, acres and acres of modest, small, identical homes march up and down hillsides, a possible attempt at moving the poor out of the city proper and into better housing. Our driver-guide said that the tenements downtown “look like Cuba” and that the city was attempting to buy them but their owners weren’t willing to sell. Apparently slum landlords exist everywhere.


Driving: My son-in-law is a skilled and aggressive driver, and his style fits the going conventions well. A minimum of signs and traffic lights means that drivers have to be assertive and opportunistic in order to get from point A to B. If there’s an opening—no matter how small—take it . . . or you could be trying to get onto Balboa Calle for hours. Our driver-guide was a recent immigrant from Venezuela (he said there are 300,000 of his countrymen in Panama) and he commented that Panamanians are good drivers; I’d have to agree if in-and-out-weaving-with-horn-honking-and-jack rabbit-acceleration-and-brake-slamming is considered the measure of good driving. I can’t drive that way and, fortunately, I won’t have to. I’d rather eat bark.


English in Panama: The second language here is English; in fact it’s the only foreign language group that’s given an obvious nod by the signs and directions and by personnel in hotels and restaurants. The involvement of the USA in the progress of the Panamanian economy is obvious and Panama’s desirability as an alternative retirement haven for Americans, particularly, greases the wheels of commerce and has perpetuated a class system that remains the plague of many colonial countries. If you speak English or if you’re a Panamanian who got in on the ground floor of the Panama Canal’s largess, you’re not likely to pick fruit, cut sugar cane or rake coffee beans on the drying floor. The Hombres mixing concrete along the highway, erecting signposts, had their heads wrapped against the burning sun; their day’s pay probably amounts to less than 10% of what a Canadian would earn doing similar work. (Minimum wage levels range from $1.60 per hour for unskilled labout to 3.60 for stewards and other in-flight crew. Domestics make $200 - $250 per month) I’ve been surprised not to have seen many multinational factories here as one does in Juarez or Nogales, Mexico; what with the proximity to the canal and the low wage rates, I’d have thought the location ideal for the blood-sucking, faceless nature of multinationals. It’s possible I just missed that aspect.


But if my impressions count, I’d say that the Panama we’ve seen is a safe and friendly place. It’s people are beautiful and generous and if half the country’s citizens are super-privileged and the other half subsisting, the disparity seems not to have disturbed the general peace.


At least not yet.


I could live here.


Can’t say I belong here, though. At least not until I can say “What’s the best way to get from here to Bocas del Toro without flying to Panama City first and without driving the treacherous road over the mountains,” in fluent Spanish. That would take a while.


Or “Where can I get a shovelful of snow? I want to stick my face in it.”

The Ubiquitous THEY

At Finca Lerida

The Ubiquitous They

I just listened to a few interviews with a certain Lord Monckton, a citizen of Great Britain who claims to be “not a proponent of conspiracy theories,” and then embarks on a litany of conspiracy theories including:

1. The climate change hoax is part of a power grab and an end-around play by the EU, the Democrats in the USA and the UN to deprive people of their democratic rights and gain for themselves the power over people that they crave.
2. In the ruling by the US Supreme Court that legally legitimates same-sex marriage, they have taken the power unto themselves to dictate to the people, thereby depriving them of their democratic right to govern themselves.

I didn’t count how many times Lord Monckton used they to describe the “enemy” that’s bent on destroying democratic rights, but it was the most frequent pronoun referring to his opponents. He also used leftists and marxists a few times.

They is a universal signal telling us that we’re listening to propaganda. Not once did Monckton name a person of the purported group he was railing against. Is Ban Ki Moon, the secretary-general of the UN, a power hungry member of they? Is my local member of parliament a member of they? Is Naheed Nenshi, mayor of Calgary, a member of they? And where and when do they all get together to plot the overthrow of democracies? And why do you never hear a disaffected member of the evil they blowing the whistle on the they gang they’ve gotten themselves embroiled in?

The most obvious explanation is that they doesn’t exist. Certainly there are power-hungry people in this world who would like to subjugate all of us and make us do their will. You need only look at Saudi Arabia, President Assad of Syria, the leadership of ISIL to see that that’s true. But to extrapolate from that the assertion that our government, our United Nations, our European Union are together plotting a dictatorship is hard to believe. If we have people in governments now with those aspirations, the chance that they would get ALL their governing colleagues to agree to a plan to disenfranchise its people defies credibility.

Remember that we ousted the Harper government for displaying even innocuous hints that they were hoping to establish themselves as Canada’s party, Canada’s ideology. If that wasn’t democracy in action, I don’t know what is. The people decided. And consider who the Albertans are who are making virulent noises about overthrowing their democratically-elected government, some even suggesting assassination.

In our local institutions as in the broader world, the tendency to resort to they when group choices have to be made is a plague that does us as much harm as assumed dictatorship ever could. They is a plural pronoun. Theys are made up of individuals and unless these individuals cannot make up their own minds, cannot disagree about anything among themselves, a they, as Monckton so often uses it, never exists except in motorcycle gangs, criminal organizations, theocracies and communist/fascist/hereditary dictatorships.

Let’s either name those with whom we disagree and confront/'carefront' them or keep silence. And let’s challenge people like Monckton who keep using they as the name of everything that frightens us.

A place of fish and flowers

At Finca Lerida

Panama.

      I read in Wikipedia that it may mean a place of good fishing or a place of beautiful flowers, but that the accepted meaning is “a place of beautiful flowers and fishes.” To us, of course, it has always meant that narrow isthmus connecting Central America to South America. Oh, and with a canal running through its middle allowing ships to pass through from the Atlantic to the Pacific, or the other way ‘round.

      The language we hear most here is Spanish, of course, an echo of the conquest of this and neighboring lands by Spain when it was still a nation of strength and influence. They left behind their language and their genes before fading from significance and both are evident in the people on the streets and in the shops of Boquete and David, the only parts of the country we’ve seen so far. Dark-haired and handsome, the mixing of European and aboriginal stock over centuries has produced a people not quite like either strain, and yet not unlike them either.

      The only comparison that comes to my mind would be the Metis of Canada.

      The dwellings suggest a wide spread in the fortunes of Panama’s citizens. Our temporary home is solid, modern, set in acres of tended greenery. In Boquete, the climate is a non-issue; furnaces and air conditioners would be totally superfluous. I’m told there are really only two seasons: the wet extending from May through November and the dry from December through April. Throughout, the temperature hovers around the mid-twenties mark. The 1000-metre descent from Boquete to the Pacific coast is a one-hour car trip, but with a temperature rise of 10 degrees Celsius and a sharp rise in relative humidity.

      Ascending up the mountain from Boquete takes you through another reality. Among the coffee plantations and vegetable farms the very poor cling to life sheltered in patched together dwellings of dirt and tin and whatever can be found to keep out the rain. Our Western, Christian impulse is to give them stuff—clothes, food, soaps and pencils—a reflex of guilt for having been dealt an undeserved, large share of the earth’s bounty. The children we see along the roadsides laughing and playing, balancing with arms outstretched on the sewage pipe that runs down the mountain probably don’t know they’re poor--except when they take the bus down into town.

      I remember that as a child, we were too poor to have bicycles. It was only the fact that our neighbours had them that grew the need in us to own one. I need to think some more about the definition of wealth as the ownership of stuff, and the definition of poverty that relates to material goods and not to spirit. Hmmm.

      Boquete lies near the highest mountain in Panama, the Volcan Baru which, we’ve been promised, erupts only in intervals of hundreds of years. A few hours drive across the Cordillera that forms the backbone of Panama, and we’ll be on the Caribbean side, the coastal archipelago they call Bocas del Toro where we’ll renew a friendship rooted, almost unbelievably, in La Ronge, Saskatchewan.

      Facebook is marvelous. Through it’s “gossip column” we know that Rosthern is blanketed in snow and that last night’s temperature dipped to -25 C. No doubt, we would come to miss the snow and the crisp cold of the Canadian winter eventually.

      Today, that’s hard to imagine.

It may be too late.

It may be too late.

We've been living in the USA for the past seven weeks and have enjoyed being here. But the other day, we wondered if we shouldn't be headed home . . . for the sake of our safety. I don't have the exact statistics, but a news report here said that in the past year, America has experienced mass killings (4 or more people murdered in one event) on an almost daily basis. The big ones we hear about, the minor ones where gang shoot-outs or escalated domestic feuds are involved aren't even reported anymore.

The latest shooting in San Bernardino has been declared a terrorist-motivated attack and for some reason, attaching that word seems to clarify motives for the media and, I suppose, for most of the general public. The discouraging thing—to me, a doubly motivated peacenik, being Canadian AND Mennonite—is that each of these highly-publicized killings has resulted in spikes in gun sales. There's a mentality abroad that sees arming yourself as a way to keep you and your family safe. The logic is missing: if someone breaks into your house to rob you, precipitating a shoot-out has to be the most illogical course of action to take. And if a killer comes into a school with an assault rifle, the hope that the principal could prevent deaths with a handgun is a scenario for a video game, not for real life.

The President of the National Rifle Association made a speech on Fox news today in which he tried to make the point that the arming of citizens is the best way to safety for everyone. There are enough right-wingers in this country to make sure that nothing is done about gun control; even proposed legislation to do background checks on people shopping for assault weapons can't make it past the senate.

There's an old shibboleth that gets dragged out regularly: guns don't kill people . . . people kill people. It's true that if there were no guns, people would still be in danger of knives and baseball bats but the curse of the age is the projectile weapon, the kind that makes it possible to kill from hiding, to spray groups of people with deadly fire. You can't do that with a knife or a baseball bat; automatic weapons are what make mass murders possible.

The trend here in the USA is toward more arms, more mass killings and more determination by the gun lobby to prevent change. In fact, the trajectory of mayhem is accelerating upward at a steady, unbroken pace. The rate of killing with guns in the USA is at least 5 times what it is in Canada, per capita. It's 40 times what it is in Great Britain. There are Latin American countries, some war-torn countries in Africa that have higher gun-death rates than the USA, but the USA is not at war and has a functional government, trained enforcement and a regulated judiciary. European and Commonwealth countries typically have gun-death rates of less than 10% of what is experienced in the US.

If a snowball begins to roll down a mountainside, it gathers more and more snow to the point where it can trigger an avalanche. The place to prevent that happening is at the top where the snowball is small. When it becomes too great to be stopped, there is no other course but to hope for a miracle.

The USA is threatened by a snowball that may not be stoppable anymore. The escalating death rate from gunfire shows no sign of abating and if the trend, the trajectory, is predictive of a future, killing and shoot-outs will become even more commonplace, and that not in the too-distant future.

But I would grant the NRA one thing; the problem in America is bigger than the lack of gun control. People decide to point their weapons at other people and pull the triggers. This doesn't happen without motivation, and in a society where the rich have become obscenely wealthy while the poor are increasingly frustrated, rage is bound to germinate, grow and escalate into violence. 

And the gospel of peace at the core of Jesus' message has been so perverted by people who claim to be his followers that the witness for the Christian message is too quiet to be heard over the gunfire. For the Quakers, the Anabaptists and the secular humanists to gather a counterweight sufficient to swing the tide toward some sanity is probably a futile dream.

For America, the signs point to the possibility of its being too late. There is only one end-point to the situation that we see growing here unless congress can be persuaded to defy the gun lobby. 

It's not pretty. 

Is the snowball too big? Has the avalanche begun?