You show me your world; I'll show you mine . . .

Wait for it, wait for it . . .

It’s odd. When you’re in church and you’re singing How Great Thou Art, and the preacher’s expounding on the Beatitudes and the choir is singing . . . and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, it’s easy to see everything that was, is and will be through the window of those words, those emotions, those harmonies.

                And then you go home and you listen to the news of what politicians, kings and armies, and corporations are doing to the world, and that becomes reality and you bristle in disappointment that the world is so material and crass, that it’s all competitive and heartless and grasping and nothing like the Kingdom of God.

                And maybe you pick up Stephen Hawking and read a conceptualization of the universe to which our planet and all that’s in it are integral, where distance is measured in millions of light years and the earth as we know it is a speck, a wart on the leg of a flea on a dog’s back in some incomprehensibly massive “everything” and . . . the glory of the Lord shall be revealed seems like a long-forgotten page in a child’s book of rhymes.

                Or you take a walk in the woods, see the stars as poets have seen them for centuries, lose yourself in a Manet landscape and the whole idea of belief falls away and the universe—you realize—is inside you, a something in your brief soul that is, in the end, the only reality there may ever be. It’s joy, it’s discovery, it’s art, it’s music. For a moment, sheer exhilaration casts off all those other “truths” like spent, dried shells.

                Is it any wonder that the concept of believing is being rethought by anyone who is well-off enough to own access to many different windows: television, radio, newspapers, the internet, books, lectures, schools, galleries, etc. Unless one is able to hold competing “beliefs” without too much dissonance, life becomes a game of accepting this, rejecting that or the other way ‘round. Not that that won’t always be the case to some extent, but it seems to me that the “everything” has to be—in the end—one thing, and that the apparent worlds have to be—logically—one world. In other words, the “everything” is a unity, no matter which window opens upon it at any given time.

                For most of us, most of the time, living actively in the idea of a unified “everything” is just not possible; it’s a case of trying to force a litre of water into a teacup; there just isn’t room. Lately, I’ve been finding some solace in exercising what is called in German, Gelassenheit, most closely translated into English as “yieldedness,” a sentiment that’s familiar to us in the proverb illustrated above and translated: “God grant us the serenity to accept the things we cannot change, courage to change the things we can, and wisdom to know the difference (generally attributed to Reinhold Niebuhr).” By all means, enjoy studying the “everything” through all the windows available to you, but yield to the knowledge that in all time to this date, no one has been found who is able to gaze through all the windows at once with the sense of the completeness for which we long so desperately.

                There are plenty of witnesses around who will gladly draw the blinds for you on all the windows but the one that is their view of choice. Gelassenheit, to Niebuhr, never meant settling for ignorance, for the single-window understanding of the world. To that, I would guess, Niebuhr would say that choosing to explore a broader—as opposed to a manageable—range of possibilities falls into the category of “changing the things we can,”

              . . . and that takes courage.

                 

               

Wounded Soldiers

Viking Warriors Imagined

Veterans groups are turning on the federal government. Roughly, the complaint goes like this: you send us into dangerous battle in the interest of protecting lives and propagating Canadian democratic values abroad and when we come back—many of us wounded physically and/or mentally—you drop us like hot cannon balls! We deserve better than that!

               I don’t know how the armoured, sword-and-dagger-wielding gladiators of medieval conflicts behaved after battle, but the high rate of post-traumatic stress disorder among soldiers returning from Afghanistan should tell us that modern-day warfare is taking a terrible toll on soldiers. As to veterans’ contention that the government that sent them into battle is not sufficiently grateful, the suicides and the fights over compensation for the wounded speak for themselves. 

               But wait; doesn’t this bypass a bigger question? Is the work of a soldier really that heroic that special treatment for the wounded is obvious? Heaven knows that many of us are wounded performing day-to-day, unheroic services to humanity: road and bridge building, construction, farming, commercial fishing, and I’ve seen numerous teachers come away after a season with unruly classes exhibiting what could be called post-traumatic stress disorder. Granted, many injured civilians are fighting with Workers’ Compensation and disability pension providers much like the veterans are struggling with the federal government. Agencies that ostensibly provide backup services in case of injury at work are good at taking in premiums, not so good at paying up; a budget-balancing government is no different.

               Had Afghanistan been a war where a decisive victory over an enemy could be declared, the situation of veterans of that conflict might be different. But as I’ve said in earlier posts, the Afghanistan intervention had the flavour of a fool’s errand; Talibanism is woven into the cultural and faith fabric of that country and you don’t successfully combat religion with conventional military warfare. El Quaeda was driven out of Afghanistan but simply relocated, possibly only temporarily.

Granted, schools were built and large numbers of children—including girls—are attending, but it takes a great deal less effort to burn a school down than to build one. Maybe the slim hope that a few years of education will have changed what has been the oppressive factor in that culture can be legitimately held up as a worthy achievement of that war, but if that’s the case, the real evidence won’t be demonstrable for some time. The proof will be in the pudding, and this kind of pudding takes time.

Neither the Taliban nor El Quaeda have surrendered.

It’s my suspicion that Canadians just want to put Afghanistan behind them like a hockey game they should have won—but lost in a shoot-out. This is not good news for wounded veterans trying to rebuild their lives without adequate means to do so successfully.

              

Soon, but not yet

I enjoy watching Peter Mansbridge's The National in the evening, especially when the “At Issue” panel is on and his three clever informants analyze what we've been seeing and hearing . . . but might not be understanding. Last night's conversation was about the Quebec leaders' debate, Joe Oliver's appointment as finance minister and Alison Redford's resignation as premier of Alberta.

Hot topics of the day; some days, there's not enough new “news” to make it riveting.

      I watched it again on my computer this morning for two reasons: the first was to assess for myself how they expressed their opinions on the issues as opposed to what they said. It's my understanding that the exchanges among Peter Mansbridge, Andrew Coyne, Chantal Hebert and Bruce Anderson are only broadly scripted, that they are aware of the questions they will face beforehand but are speaking ad libitum. In other words, they're thinking and talking at the same time.

       It's when speaking extemporaneously that facility with language—or clumsiness, for that matter—sticks out like like either a well-turned or a sore thumb.

       My second reason for wanting to review the exchange was to hear again the use (or misuse) of the phrase, it begs the question. I thought I recalled Andrew Coyne using the expression in last night's At Issue and I guess I wanted to catch him “red-handed,” because all three of the panelists are—to my mind—eloquent . . . in general. I'd long been annoyed by the use of the phrase to mean it raises the question when it actually refers to an argument in which the whole point being made is supported by a premise that is unproven . . . as if it were proven. Put as simply as possible, the statement “Because boys are naturally cleverer at mathematics than girls, they are likely to do better in engineering disciplines,” is a case of begging the question. It's a logical fallacy described long, long ago by Aristotle: the argument requires that we accept the unproven premise that “boys are naturally cleverer at mathematics.” It's very much like the logical fallacy we call a non sequitur: the conclusion doesn't follow from the premise.
    Begging the question is also described as "a fallacy in which the premises include the claim that the conclusion is true or (directly or indirectly) assume that the conclusion is true," as in "She's not pretty because she has unattractive features."

     I didn't find the phrase in question; maybe I missed it, imagined it or remembered it “out of place.”

      And besides, does it matter that we use begging the question in a different way than was once intended?

      One thing seems apparent to me: politicians utter begging the question statements all the time; it's a tragedy that we don't educate our children to recognize them when they hear them. Take this argument: “The Harper government is good for Canada because it has managed to maintain economic growth through a difficult recession.” The premises that the Harper government is responsible for the “maintenance of economic growth” or that the recession was “difficult” need to be shown with some proof before the argument, “good for Canada” even becomes a satisfying rhetorical conclusion.

      The question of whether or not “ecomonic growth” can be assumed to be good in any case begs yet another question. That premise is most certainly unproven, especially as it pertains to the generations yet to come.

      Meanwhile, I like watching and listening to At Issue.                

     Sometimes, I even pay attention to what's being said.

On Modest Proposals

COMING SOON . . . to a garden near you.

Ireland. 1729. 

     Superficially, it could be described as being populated by peasants of Catholic persuasion starving under the yoke of Protestant English landlords. So harsh are their lives that women can be seen everywhere, dragging their swarms of ragged offspring through the streets, begging for the means to survive for yet another day. Men are demoralized by their inability to provide, reduced in their ambitions to only two impulses: to live for one more day and/or to find oblivion in a bottle.

      Enter essayist Jonathon Swift with his acerbic pen and the still-infamous satire, A Modest Proposal, in which Swift proposes that the problem of poverty and hunger be resolved by fattening up these hordes of starving children and selling them to the landlord class as table delicacies. “I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy Child well Nursed is at a year Old, a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome Food, whether Stewed, Roasted, Baked, or Boyled, and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a Fricasie, or Ragoust.” (http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Texts/modest.html)

      There are readers who recognize satire when they read it, and there are readers that don't. In the case of Swift's pamphlet even those who recognized its intent were shocked; we don't eat our young under any circumstances, and certainly don't sell them to our overlords to solve poverty and hunger! We don't even suggest it! (Never mind Swift's depiction of the cannibal-chef as an American. What eyebrows that would have raised if it ever found it's way into the hands of US citizens . . . who could read!*)

      A Modest Proposal illustrates a critical dilemma; we tend to see issues through narrow slits in our field of vision, a phenomenon that is well characterized by the expression, thinking inside the box.      

     In the case of the starving Irish peasants, and regarding their fertility, I expect that most saw the world through the small aperture provided them by their clergy: "be fruitful and multiply" and "the poor you have with you always" and "be content with your lot" stuff. The landed gentry no doubt analyzed the problem of Ireland through a different—if an even narrower—slit: we are entrepreneurial and deserving; Irish peasants are lazy, undisciplined, stupid and therefore undeserving.

      A Modest Proposal certainly urges its readers to broaden the slit, to think differently for a change.

      I've been pondering Swift and wondering what he would say about the big dilemma civilization is rapidly approaching today: far too many consumers chasing scarce, non-renewable resources. Specifically, I wonder how he would satirize overpopulation today, given that that was central to A Modest Proposal. I doubt he would modestly propose eating our children: been there, done that. And the likelihood that he would suggest eating our seniors is not only equally bizarre, but dangerous. Irish children probably couldn't read; our seniors can . . . and do.

      But thinking outside the box would at least suggest that it not be only birth control that crosses our minds when we think about overpopulation and gluttonous consumption. We are living too long; we are spending nearly half our lives consuming without producing, being kept alive by more and more, costlier and costlier artificial remedies for ailments that had the potential for ending our demands on the planet at the proverbial three score and ten years.**

      It's food for Swiftian satire, isn't it?

On a different—but related—subject:

      Olivia Chow has decided to run for the position of mayor of Toronto. I just read My Journey, (review will appear soon, hopefully) Chow's autobiography . . . to date, and concluded that she has broad insight as opposed to the tiny slit through which the current mayor seems to see things. Indeed, our current governments generally look out on the world and see little but the economic-growth landscape and like the Irish peasants under their English overlords, we will certainly suffer for allowing them to mis-shape our world.

      Where is a good satirist when you need one! If reality doesn't convince us, could satire?

      

P.S. Olivia, you go girl!

* satire . . . I love Americans!

** not that keen on this debate since I passed 3 score + 10 . . . three years ago.

Zaporozhye, Kiev, Moscow and Batoche

The Capture of Batoche - French Metis vs English Colonialists (borrowed from Wikipedia)

My great-grandfather lived his entire life on and near the banks of the Dnieper River, inside the area we now know as Ukraine, specifically on the outskirts of current-day Zaporozhye:

In 1789 Mennonites from Prussia accepted an invitation from Catherine the Great and settled in what became the Chortitza Colony, northwest of Khortitsya island. Mennonite-owned mills and factories were built in Alexandrovsk and later expropriated by the Communist government. After the Russian Revolution [they] emigrated, fled as refugees, or were deported from the area. Currently few Mennonites live in Zaporozhye. Mennonite buildings still exist in the area and in the other main Mennonite colony center, current day Molochansk. (A cursory and mainly accurate account from Wikipedia)

It wasn't the Mennonites' religion so much as their ethnicity and their economic dominance that rankled the Russian authorities in 1914 and onward, and for which their lives were gradually made unbearable. My family had left much earlier.  After my great-grandfather died, his widow and offspring emigrated and settled in the Rosthern area in 1892-3.

     Note that it was Moscow that called all the shots for the region we now call Ukraine, not Kiev.

     The degree to which ethnicity and language continue to act as divisive markers continues to be as tragic a presence in the region as it was when the Russian Revolution overran the area. Putin's excuse for sending troops into the Crimea is ethnically driven in part--along with strategic considerations, of course:

“Putin has defied calls from the West to pull back his troops, insisting that Russia has a right to protect its interests and Russian-speakers in Crimea and elsewhere in Ukraine.” (http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/ukraine-president-sounds-alarm-as-russian-military-gains-ground-in-crimea-1.2556858)

The psychology of all this is complicated, but it's probably safe to say that my German-speaking ancestors fared better in Canada than they did under absolutist monarchies and communist dictatorship because here they had landed in a working democracy with a bit of experience in multiculturalism and multiethnicism. They were scorned for their unwillingness to bear arms during the World Wars, but the most Canada would do to express this resentment was to require their participation in forced labour camps as “conscientious objectors.” (Herding Japanese-Canadians into concentration camps was another matter; being of European descent apparently stood for something.)

     It's easy to come to too-broad conclusions about the conflict in Ukraine. Some media are portraying it as Russia and the West engaging in a tug-of-war for the hearts and minds—and the loyalties—of Ukrainian citizens. Others interpret it economically: Ukraine is an economic basket case currently dependent for survival on outside help, some preferring that it come from the East (the ethnically Russian), and some looking westward for a better, more modern future (the ethnically Ukrainian). It's probably accurate to say that whatever the immediate causes of the conflict, the deeper ones are a combination of grinding dissatisfaction with national poverty and ethnic and political animosities reaching way back in history to the Czars and the old Soviet Union.

     The closest we come to the Russian/Ukrainian divide here in Canada has to be the French/English “situation.” As in the Ukraine, we have here two distinct groups, both of which are large enough to affect the economic, nationalist aspirations of the other. It's probably naive to think that the kind of dangerous confrontation currently building between the two groups in the Ukraine could never occur in Canada, hard to imagine as that may be. Perhaps it seems so unlikely because there are elements in a working democracy that keep us reaching for negotiated conclusions and not for rifles. It's been a long time since we resorted to guns to settle differences here in Canada; where I live, since 1885 at Batoche and Duck Lake.

     As for protesting and ousting the government through demonstrations, have you been outside today? It's a frozen hell out there!

     Harper, you're safe until the next election, at least. That's the way we deal with unpopular leaders here in Canada. Yawn.

Make Sure youse Guys Right Good!

Whitakers Almanack, 1893

Maybe it's my reawakened interest in old books that leads me to wonder about our evolving language. I've been reading lately in a textbook titled Essays & Essay-Writing, an anthology of personal essays selected from The Atlantic Monthly and authorized for use in English classes at the Grade 12 level. It was published in 1933 and my copy comes complete with names scrawled in the frontispiece and flyleaves and the scribbled notes tell me that this copy was read (or, at least, possessed) by a series of senior students at B.L.C.H.S, which may be Blaine Lake Central (?) High School.

      An essay called “The Flavor of Things” by Robert M. Gay chronicling the author's defective relationship to mathematics contains the following sentence about people who love that particular discipline:

Permutations and combinations and the doctrine of chances filled their souls with elation; they would rather wander over the area of a parallelogram than over the greenest meadow under heaven, collecting angles and sides as another would daisies and buttercups, and chasing the unknown quantity as another might a butterfly (p. 17).

One can hardly read this today without visions of quills and inkwells, oak desks and tweed-jackets-with-elbow-patches springing to mind. The written word has changed a great deal since 1933, not only in the abandonment of antiquated diction (word choice) but in the aversion to long sentences, elaborate metaphors and the eschewing of contractions, slang and colloquialisms.

    A present-day version of Gay's sentence might well read, “Some guys really dig math.”

    I worry some days about the consequences of abandoning sensory writing and enlarged vocabulary, about the increasing inability to deal with complex sentence structures. I may be considered a language Luddite for such apprehensions, reinforced, possibly, by the style in which I've chosen to write this essay. Indeed, I've been accused in the past of writing in an archaic style that makes comprehension difficult. (Someone said to me about my book, What I Meant to Say Was . . . that they enjoyed what I'd written, even though they didn't understand much of it!)

    Go back to my first paragraph for a moment. If I had asked you to point to the frontispiece or flyleaf in a book, would you have been able to do it with confidence? These terms are book jargon, of course, and you don't have to know what they mean to be a connoisseur of literature, but I've long been of the opinion that a larger vocabulary is better than a smaller one, especially if being able to understand what's going on in the world and/or participating in significant dialogue matters to you. Likewise, if you want to read past page 5 in Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow's The Grand Design with some understanding, a broad—as opposed to a narrow—vocabulary is almost mandatory.

    I don't know how the students of the Thirties fared with Essays and Essay-Writing, although I have noticed that some of the easier essays—language-wise—were more marked up than the more complex ones, a pretty good indication that the teachers using the text deferred to the apparent comprehension levels of their classes.

    In these days of the diminishing use of books for learning about the world, the questions, “what are we losing?" and "what have we lost?” seem relevant to me. Are you a bibliophile like me? Do you know what a bibliophile is? Do you share my concerns about language evolution?

    If so, let me hear from you and we can start a Language Complainers' Club! Be a nice change from complaining about the Harper Conservatives.

Ten Reasons to be excited about Sochi (and past and future Olympics)

Satirical Olympic Symbol
The Harsh Light of Day 

Ten Reasons to be excited about Sochi (and past and future Olympics).

1. The Olympics are the one remaining bastion of unselfishness; athletes compete on behalf of  the nation that raised and nurtured them, not for personal glory. That's why any medals they win are melted down and sold, the proceeds given to the fight against illiteracy, poverty, disease and desecration of the environment.
2. They are an opportunity for wealthy corporations to express their humanitarian impulses by donating millions, not in the hope that advertising value will come out of their association with the athletes but for the good of all the peoples of all the nations of the world.
3. They cost virtually nothing because the athletes are amateurs who hold regular jobs and train on the weekends when they're not volunteering in soup kitchens and nursing homes. Sport, they contend, should never be dependent on government or commercial handouts since the participants are the fittest in the land and there are many people who need such assistance far more than they do.
4. The cost of the infrastructure is negligible as the hundreds of billions spent, for instance for the Sochi event, will leave behind wonderful facilities so the locals can learn to excel in slope-style snowboarding, speed skating and exhilarating mogul skiing.
5. They are one event in which nations put aside all political, adversarial impulses and put first the pure delight of being part of one universal brotherhood-of-man: everyone equal, everyone empathetic to the needs of others, all swords melted down to make farming implements.
6. It's a time when all subjective impulses are put aside and the judges—no matter which nation they come from—rule purely on objective criteria so that we always know that the gold medal went to the very best performance.
7. We all put aside our chauvanism for a time, so much so that it doesn't matter who wins the games but only whether or not they all had a good time and played their best. This impulse so energizes us that we don't even keep track of winners' and losers' nationalities. We eulogize the beauty of the achievements, not the zero-sum, winners/losers obsession that takes place in professional sports fandom. We are better people and much more sportsmanlike for having lived the experience in front of our TVs.
8. Olympics are and have always been models of pure sport; only athletes who recognize this and don't try to gain an advantage by consuming various performance-enhancing drugs ever aspire to these games, knowing full well that to cheat there is to lose big time, whether one "medals" or not. The games teach their countrymen what we need to know about honesty and integrity as being more important than acquisition and glory.
9. The games produce an aura of international unity; emotional boundaries among countries magically fade away and for weeks and years following, all peoples of the world lay down their armaments and resolve to live together as one peoples, the children of one creator.
10. Human rights take on new meaning because of the games; discrimination on the basis of age, gender, religion, sexual orientation, nationality or race melts away and those persons formerly despised for their differences suddenly appear as equals to everyone, by everyone. 
    
    Such is the power of the Olympics, a blessing to be savoured by all. Indeed, can you imagine a world without them?

Great Grandpa and I go to the Olympics

Jacob David Epp and wife Justina ca. 1864

Chortitza Mennonite Church ca. 1850

My Great Grandfather could have taken a one-hour flight to Sochi, flying over the Sea of Azov, then down the coast of the Black Sea—about the distance from Saskatoon to Winnipeg. He probably wouldn't even have been served a lunch on such a short flight.

      Alternately, he could have traveled over land, taking the M18 from Chortitza down to Dzhankoi on the Crimean Peninsula, stopping there for lunch and switching to the M17 East to Kerch where he'd have to wait for the ferry to cross the Strait of Kerch between the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea. From Ilyich, it's a pretty long but simple drive on the M25 down the east shore of the Black Sea to Sochi.

      He had only one functioning eye, but he could at least have watched half of the Olympics.

      Or he might, like me, have had very little interest in gatherings of “elite athletes” to see who can slide down a hill the fastest, and might have stayed in his home/hovel in Novovitebsk and written a sermon for the following Sunday, not bothering even to check in on the endless hours of Olympic hype on TV. 

     But he would still have been aware that just a hop over the Black Sea, the world is gathering to be thrilled by the spectacle of professional athletes hitting a rubber puck with sticks, apprehensive at the same time because just a few hours East is the city of Grozny in Chechnya, where rebels know how to make bombs, and suicide bombers are willing to deploy them.

      I'm a Luddite where both sports and independence movements are concerned. Regarding the former, I just don't understand the motivation behind all the time, effort and money that's required to earn the right to slide down an ice chute on a bobsled to arrive at the bottom—hopefully—one-one hundredth of a second faster than the next-fastest slider. And regarding the latter, why would you insist that a province that doesn't want to be a part of the nation anymore nevertheless be forced to remain? Kick them out already! Let's have some peace and quiet for a change!

      And then there's that “Own the Podium” thing that's an embarrassment to any thinking Canadian, or will be after the Americans, the Russians, even the Scandinavians deservedly kick our asses in pretty much every event as they're likely to do. “Own the Podium” indeed. What arrogance. What a waste of millions. What a set up for being shamed when the snow finally settles.

      Do we still call this sport?

      I'm pretty sure Jacob David Epp in his home/hovel in Novovitebsk would have shaken his head in amazement and expended a chuckle or two. Would that I could share the amusement with him!

     I, too, have only one properly-functioning eye. Thanks for that, Great Grandpa.

Now I See Through a Glass Darkly

Reading it ain't easy!

Gerald Gerbrandt, former president of CMU (Canadian Mennonite University), gave his first talk on “Hearing the God of Scripture” last night at the Rosthern Mennonite Church.  The first session encouraged us to think of the scriptures that have been passed down to us as “story, art and drama.” 

    Three more sessions are planned.

     I had lunch with a friend newly-returned from a week in Israel the other day, and in the course of our chatter he asked me what I considered to be the solution to the impasse in Palestine and might it come through the Christianization of the people there, which would make our role more missional than diplomatic. I said I didn't have anything to offer as a solution; for one, I've never been there, never had the opportunity to “feel” what it's like to be Israeli or Palestinian in that small part of the world in 2014.

     What's becoming clearer to me is that Christians are no more “of one accord” than anyone else on the subject of bringing peace to the Middle East. In part, their ambivalence is tied to the way in which scriptures and the historical records are read. We may be looking through the same windows, but interpreting what we see has a host of antecedents.

     Harper really did us all an injustice when he brought the word antisemitism into the dialogue on his recent visit there. There are probably numerous people for whom a hatred of Jewry figures in criticisms of Israel's behaviour, but to link such criticism—for instance of the establishment of West Bank settlements—to antisemitism tends to stifle dialogue and generosity of spirit in the ongoing efforts to broker a lasting and just peace.

     There are other trigger-words about. For instance, who could blame a casual reader of scripture for linking the Israel of the Old Testament with the name of the present state of Israel, and present-day Jerusalem with the New Jerusalem in the book of Revelation? (“I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband.” -Revelation 21:2) For many a scripture-reader, dividing the modern-day, secular, political democracy that is Israel from the Biblical chronicles doesn't come easily.

     Gerbrandt urged us to think of scripture more as artful story than as rule book. Many of the laws in the book of Leviticus, for instance, have long since been rendered obsolete by the passage of time and new experiences. Meanwhile, there is clearly an over-arching “story” in scripture, an establishment of basic principles that include, at least, justice, empathy and compassion as the birthright of every living creature. Neither Israel's treatment of Palestinians nor the Canadian treatment of Aboriginal citizens historically can pass the smell test when the principles in the scriptural story are applied: both fail on justice, empathy and compassion standards even when the behaviours in question can be rationalized legally.

     That's not being antisemitic; that's being human and, hopefully, in synch with the appeals of the whole scriptural story.

     Gerbrandt's seminars are timely—and much needed.

15 Milligrams of Neil Young - twice a day with meals.

aserotonin-specific reuptake inhibitor

It was an amusing exchange: Neil Young against the CEO of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP) on the subject of the Oil Sands. Young, of course, emphasizing his rage with hyperbole and metaphor at the devastation caused by oil sands mining (including a simile conjuring images of Hiroshima) and the CEO of CAPP dismissing Young as ignorant, more or less. “Neil Young doesn't know what he's talking about,” was the gist of DavidCollyer's response in an interview with CBC.

      Someone in the media (can't remember who) characterized the exchanges as arguments of the deaf.

      Somehow all this resonates with an experience through which I'm going at present.

      Some 15 years ago my family doctor diagnosed me as needing the assistance of what is called an aserotonin-specific reuptake inhibitor, or SSRI—Paroxetine or Paxil being its familiar names. I've been sailing along with full, if misplaced, confidence in the inventors—GlaxoSmithKlein—and my family doctor and my pharmacist, who either did not know—or knew and didn't inform me—of the potential side effects; I was initially assured it wasn't habit-forming besides.

      If you are taking an SSRI for depression or anxiety, the benefits might well outweigh the detriments for you, but the following information should at least be made known to everyone for whom such drugs are prescribed:

Paroxetine is an SSRI anti-depressant released by GSK in 1992 and sold as Paxil, Seroxat, Aropax, Brisdelle, Pexeva and Sereupin. The company's promotion of the drug for children was one of the grounds for the 2012 fraud case in the United States. [for]10 years the drug was marketed as "not habit forming," which numerous experts and at least one court found to be incorrect. Approximately 5,000 US citizens have sued GSK after using paroxetine; lawsuits have also been filed in the UK. The lawsuits allege that the drug has serious side effects, which GSK downplayed in patient information. In 2001 the World Health Organization ranked paroxetine as the most difficult antidepressant to withdraw from. In 2002 the FDA published a new product warning about the drug, and the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers' Associations said GSK had misled the public about paroxetine and had breached two of the Federation's codes of practice.

In early 2004 GSK agreed to settle charges of consumer fraud for $2.5 million; the drug had $2.7 billion in yearly sales at that time (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GlaxoSmithKline).

 At this point, halfway through a withdrawal regimen, I can substantiate from personal experience that the drug's negative side effects are real and serious and that discontinuation is beastly; I'm still not certain of success.

      What has all this to do with oil sands? you ask. Well we should never fall into the trap of assuming that corporations are in the business of seeking ways to make our lives better, slick advertising notwithstanding; their motivation is maximum return on investment. In the case of GlaxoSmithKlein, the profit motive produced real and dangerous effects for consumers of their product. The courts as well as the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers' Associations determined that GSK deliberately and maliciously misled the public in order to maintain and increase highly profitable sales.

      Similarly, members of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers are not engaged in helping us wean ourselves of our carbon-based energy addiction, their interests lie in expanding the market for their product, and like GSK, if necessary, by misleading the public and confining the debate to what they call “the real world”.

      Question is, which is the “real world?” Is it Neil Young's or David Collyer's? In fact, David Collyer's portraying Young as ignorant of the facts is—at best—the pot calling the kettle black; I would venture to guess that David Collyer's knowledge of environmental and biological sciences is as deficient as Neil Young's knowledge of fracking.

      Hence, the strident, angry arguing of the deaf.

      You will all draw your own conclusions, of course, but the elephant I ride on is holding onto the tail of Neil Young's elephant. I believe the earth should be seen as if from outer space, a small, fragile and vulnerable planet which is nevertheless the source and sustainer of all the life that exists in the universe—as far as we know. If life is important, then its wellspring ought to be tended and nourished.

      It's this to which the the corporate mind is wilfully blind.

      One more thing needs to be said, among many that could be said. An aspect of Collyer's argument was that the very public decrying the expansion of the fossil fuel industry is addicted to their product, uses their product on a daily basis and therefore their criticism of the oil sands projects is hypocritical. On its surface, this seems a logical and fair argument; but let's think for a moment. That would also make me a hypocrite for criticizing GSK because I was, after all, a consumer of their product. That's nonsense unless I used the paroxetine with the full knowledge of possible consequences, which the company and purveyors of pharmaceuticals withheld from me.

      There are numerous ways in which the corporate world and corporate government can manipulate consumers' choices: Saskatchewan winters are cold, I need to heat my house to live, I use natural gas to do that because the means to heat with solar panels and wind generators or hydro-generated power does not exist where I live, and I haven't got the investment means to bring their existence about; it's the corporate world and corporate government that manage where investment dollars go.

      Meanwhile if you catch me slamming doors, screaming curses at the sky and/or withdrawing from this world, you may assume that my tapering-down project is not going well.

Solidarity Forever, for the Union Makes us Strong.

Poor pay, poor conditions (dust, knee strain, etc.), no benefits! Where's my shop steward??

Today I'm disturbed by government efforts to shrink the influence of unions, part of an ongoing phenomenon in North America that you already know about if you watch the news. I'm disturbed because I just read Kathleen Monk's blog post on the subject, and if you don't have a lot of time, click on the link and read her post instead of this one.

My first job was as a lumber yard go-fer. I was told what I would be paid ($100/month, 1960) and my employment conditions were laid out for me. I went from that to working for the Bank of Montreal at a salary of $1200/yr., also laid on without my input. One day the accountant told me to go out and buy some new shirts because my frayed collars didn't look seemly for a business person. I couldn't afford shirts, even in the singular. From there I went on to Teachers' College and a teaching career, all of it as a member of a union. I served as a local president, was involved in negotiations of salaries and working conditions and as a result of past negotiations, enjoyed health benefits, sick leaves etc., that would have been unheard of at the B of M at the time. My wife and I now benefit from pensions that wouldn't have been ours had it not been for collective bargaining.

I don't have to go into the role of collective bargaining rights in freeing society from child labour practices, starvation take-it-or-leave-it pay, abominable working conditions, etc.; this should be common knowledge to anyone who paid attention in high school History. What the past has shown us is that commerce and industry leadership/ownership doesn't like to see employees having a say in their work lives; it compromises control, impinges on profits. If unions are being systematically weakened these days, we ought to check out who's cheering; it certainly isn't the burger flipper at McDonalds or the welder at a non-union shop, except . . .

. . . except that there's been a steady campaign of union demonization going on for years, so much so that even people who have benefited from the social improvements made through collective bargaining are bad-mouthing the hands that fed them. If a service like garbage collection is suspended by a strike, it's the union's fault; if the stoppage results from a lockout, it's also the union's fault for making unreasonable demands. Somehow, gouging corporations and businesses have won the public relations war, a sad phenomenon that unions will have to find better ways to counteract.

For me, the bottom line is this: the employer who invests and the employee who sweats are equals, humans in a world where racism, gender-ism, ageism, etc. are not permitted. That employees should have the right to sit across the table from employers and negotiate the conditions of work and their remuneration seems a human right that ought to be obvious, unless we insist that the world be organized vertically. 

It's noteworthy that as unions are losing their effectiveness—generally through legislation and bad press—inequality is increasing. 

The connection is obvious. 

Do read Kathleen Monk.