Earth, People, Energy

Energy. It's one of the most intractable preoccupations of world governments these days.

We learned in high school physics that you can't make energy; you can capture it, you can store it but you can't make it. Nature stores the sun's energy in ingenious ways: in the berries we pick and eat, in the coal and oil in the ground, in the wind that drives dynamos, in the snows that fall on mountain tops to melt in the spring and rush down again to drive hydro generators.

Two days ago, we made a quick trip to Saskatoon, I hosted a museum tour, we packed and hauled several carloads of stuff to the condo and by evening, any energy I had captured through eating and stored in my muscles had been spent and I was running on empty. What I was feeling is what the earth is feeling; too much energy demand, not enough charge in the batteries.

But my case was renewable. I could eat stored energy, rest to let my batteries be recharged with it and get up to face another day.

The problem is not so much that we can't capture and store energy enough to move our cars and trucks and trains and airplanes, it's that the processes required to capture and store it threaten to destroy us: greenhouse gasses that contribute to global warming, pollution that makes air in China and Mexico city unbreathable, methane gas release that contaminates water supplies, destruction of arable land and life-giving forests.

So the challenge governments face is to capture more and more energy to satisfy the burgeoning demands of a growing population while cutting back on those processes that are—in the end—robbing Peter to pay Paul. 

We've made considerable strides in reducing our demands as in more energy-efficient homes, cars that consume less fuel per kilometre, light bulbs that provide more light energy and less heat energy, etc. But I'm pretty sure that the solution for phasing out fossil fuel energy consumption will require two things: a more serious effort to switch to non-polluting wind, sun and tides energy and a massive tax on energy use so that individual households and industries are actually required to reduce consumption or face significant consequences.

B.C.'s carbon tax is a move in that direction but if Naomi Klein (This Changes Everything) is right, the cap and trade alternative is a farce, a way to put a better face on industrial pollution without actually reducing world carbon emissions appreciably. The NDP government in Alberta has just announced tax disincentives to make carbon dioxide emitters get serious about reducing their contributions to global warming.

 

We all want to be comfortable and happy, entertained and “massaged.” For some, for instance, that currently means flying to exotic places and warm beaches whenever means and schedules allow. This won't be possible in a post fossil fuel, energy-efficient world. At present, it's only an option for the top 10% (more or less) of world citizens, the same 10% that are consuming multiples of actually-required energy.

In the future world, people won't live in massive detached homes; condos and apartments require far less energy per person than stand-alone homes. They may not own cars but rely instead on commuter trains to get them to work.

Question is, can we be happy living and working closer to home? Can we relearn what it means to take pleasure in small things, in making music, in community dances, in the parks and flower beds just across the road, in a new kind of culture that is far less demanding of energy stored in the earth than on energy delivered daily by a sun that has never yet failed to shine on us?

Can we rediscover the community that actually includes our next-door neighbours?

2,300 is 2,300 too many

An anemone of Hope and Peace

“More than 2,300 Afghan soldiers, police and pro-government fighters have been killed since the start of the year — more than the total number of U.S. troops killed since the 2001 invasion that ended Taliban rule.”

Sometimes what's reported as a minor detail in a news story grabs you like an epiphany. The casualty figure above was part of a narrative about an attack on the Afghan parliament by the Taliban yesterday. All seven insurgents were killed; no Afghan fighters or civilians died in this particular attack but the number of dead Afghan soldiers and police who've died since January—2,300—gives pause. 2,300 is the approximate population of the bustling little town I live in plus it's nearest neigbour village.

Well, you might say, that's not so many. What's the big deal?

Being members of the Afghan army and police, I'm guessing that these were all, or nearly all, men. I'm guessing further that they had families, so it's obvious that at least 2,300 families lost a father or brother, son or son-in-law. Picture this number as men lined up in rows of 100, 23 rows ranged on a soccer field, then strafe them with machine gun fire from the stands until all are dead.

It doesn't seem like such a minor number illustrated this way. It's more than the total number of US soldiers killed in the 2001-2014 fight to oust the Taliban from power though. Canada lost 158 military personnel in that war, so just a row and a half of fathers, sons, sisters, mothers, brothers and sons-in-law, daughters-in-law.

Canada has recently been a participant in Western military interference in Afghanistan, Libya and now, Iraq/Syria. It seems a fair question to ask: has our military involvement in these places rendered the lives of civilians better, unchanged or worse? Libya is in a state of murderous anarchy, Iraq is dealing poorly with a growing ISIS that makes the Taliban look like a consortium of Sunday School teachers and Afghanistan, although not governed by the Taliban, must deal with their insurgent threat on a daily basis.

Apparently only the NDP and the Green Party have dealt with this question thoughtfully. So far, Harper hasn't got past the simplistic paradigm that there are only two choices: bomb ISIS or do nothing. Trudeau's position on this is similar to that on Bill C-51: appear as much as possible to be on both sides of the question lest a genuine decision should turn out to be electorally unpopular. Thomas Mulcair and Elizabeth May have seen some daylight on this: military involvement by us in foreign wars has historically contributed little more than the appearance of strength and resolve. Contrarily, the best propaganda for ISIS may well be the fact of Western powers dropping bombs on their country.

No, 2,300 is not a big number as far as war statistics generally are concerned. But to be blasé about even one death deliberately inflicted is to abrogate our responsibility as peace builders and pursuers of justice—and to throw in our passive lot with the Harperites and Bushes of this world. 

Claiming to follow Jesus and taking the high road that he took presents a true test of courage. 

Black and White America

A few days ago Rachel Dolezal's parents (who are white) outed their daughter (who was passing herself off as black) and the media feeding frenzy was on. That is, until Neil MacDonald of the CBC put some perspective on the thing in a piece titled Why can't Rachel Dolezal be as black as she wants to be?
 
People identify with—even pass themselves off as members of—cultures and groups to which they don't belong by birthright. Take Grey Wolf, for instance, an Englishman who passed himself off as Aboriginal for years. 

And then there are the politicians who pretend to be leaders by reeling off talking-points with a show of confidence, or people with little applicable skill pretending to be teachers, doctors, etc.
 

The furor over Dolezal's story indicates once again that the most important marker of identity in America is race.

I remember my older brother participating in a quartet that performed Stephen Foster songs at a community event. They blackened their faces with . . . I'm not sure what. The practice of blackfacing and performing in a way that comically presented the stereotypes of the descendents of slaves grew up in the USA and was called minstrel show, or minstrelsy. Click HERE to read more about this practice.

In South Carolina, a 21 year-old walked into a black church yesterday, apparently sat in the pews for an hour or so and then stood up and shot and killed 9 people. He was white, they were black. Reports so far suggest that they were shot only because they were black; the perpetrator had a history of expressing white-supremacist sentiments.

It's difficult for me to imagine what changes would have to occur in the USA in order to turn it from a black and white country to one in which race is no longer the divisive identity marker that it is today. Perhaps a massive crisis would do it, some catastrophe that would make everyone dependent on cooperation for survival. I've heard that people who find themselves in life and death situations lose sensitivity to racial or ethnic distinctions . . . at least until the crisis has passed. 

Dolezal claims that although she may not be black biologically, she is black culturally. That is, she's come to identify primarily with the American black sub-culture. And we all know that owning a satisfying identity is enormously important to a person's mental health.

Denying people a satisfactory identity is a sure-fire formula for deviance, even violence. “Who steals my purse steals trash,” Iago says in Shakespeare's Othello. One might well add, “who steals my identity, however, robs me of my most precious treasure.”

I'm with MacDonald on this. If Dolezal has come to feel more at home in black circles than in the culture into which she was born, what in heavens name is the problem?

Miller, Milgaard, Fisher and 'pure evil'

TESSIE, WHO HARBOURS NO EVIL THOUGHTS WHATSOEVER

Many of us remember it. It was 1992. The question of David Milgaard's responsibility for the rape and murder of Gail Miller in an alley off Avenue O in Saskatoon was reopened in the Supreme Court of Canada (SCC). Milgaard had spent 23 years in jail for that murder, but emerging new evidence seemed to point to possible errors in his conviction.

The newly-developed ability to connect perpetrators to their crimes through DNA evidence was finally a clincher in proving that it was not David Milgaard but Larry Fisher who was guilty of the brutal attack on Miller. Fisher was eventually convicted of the crime, even though he had appeared before the SCC as a witness only, and was sentenced to life in prison.

Fisher died in prison this week.

An abbreviated story of the dramatic turn-around in which a witness became a suspect can be read HERE. Under questioning by Milgaard's lawyer, Hersh Wolch, Fisher was led to set the stage for his own conviction.

The same article on the CBC website quotes Wolch in a later interview as saying: "My impression was that [Fisher] was pure evil." My understanding of the comment is that Wolch saw in Fisher only evil thought and action, uncontaminated by any trace of goodness or kindness. Pure in other words.

The choice of that adjective is interesting, if odd.

It's no accident that if you add a “d” before evil, you get “devil,” the immortal, anti-god of religious tradition who is blamed for urging humanity to undo what is good and replace it with hate and violence. Anthropomorphised in mythology into a horned creature with a lashing tail, the contradiction of his immortal nature technically admitting to two gods in a monotheistic faith seems to have been lost.

We're generally past the time of diagnosing pathological mental illness as “demon possession,” although for some strains of Christian religion, that view of evil persists in part because scriptures reinforce it. (eg. Gaderene swine episode; for a dark painting by Briton Riviere of this event in Mark 5:1-13, click HERE.) The treatment of sociopathy and psychopathy could never have developed until that mythology had been abandoned. That Larry Fisher suffered from psychopathy is hardly in doubt; that it was not suspected and diagnosed before he went on his rampage of rape and violence is the weak link in our understanding of what goes wrong in the minds of men and women.

Evil obviously conjures images of a leering Satan when used as a noun. As an adjective, it has its place. Larry Fisher was not “pure evil”; had he been raised attentively and with an eye to his developing exploitative, cruel behaviour, Gail Miller's life might have been saved. A number of women would not have experienced his brutal attacks.

Some would urge treatment of people like Fisher with exorcism, some with drugs or other therapies. Our current government thinks the correct treatment is severe punishment, the problem with that being that punishment always follows the evil act, contributes nothing to prevention.

For Milgaard, Miller and now Fisher, all the potential options have gone under the bridge. Sad beyond belief.

"The Star-spangled Banner" . . . and all that

Found Beauty

“Quebecois pretend not to know English just to irritate you when you're buying gas there,” and “Americans don't know anything about Canada.”

Two of my pet-peeve urban myths.

The latter myth was “illustrated” by a CBC story about a Jeopardy category involving Canadian cities in which the American contestants got not one answer correct. I'm skeptical about this proving anything; the clues were pretty abstruse: "An intersection in this provincial capital is the original western terminus of the Trans-Canada Highway." I would have said “Vancouver?” and I would have been wrong—it's Victoria. I guess I was blind-sided by the “highway” word so that I missed the “provincial capital” phrase. 

Highways don't generally cross features like the Strait of Juan de Fuca.

Another question asked for the name of a Canadian city whose inhabitants were called “Moose Javians,” and I wondered how many Canadians would have known the answer. Another depended on your knowledge of Shakespeare and his city—Stratford upon Avon—to come up with Stratford, Ontario which is also located on a River Avon.

The myth of American congenital ignorance about Canada came up in one of my adult ed classes. I countered it by asking them questions about the USA: “If you drove straight south into the USA from Westlock (where the class was), which state would you be in?” Nobody knew. I could have countered with “It would be Montana, and what is the capital city of Montana?” I wonder how many Canadians know that it's Helena.

It's pretty easy to show that Americans ignorance about Canada is equalled—and possibly exceeded—by Canadians lack of knowledge about the USA.

As regards the myth about Quebecois pretending to be French-only, I'd remind people that the majority of English Canada is also uni-lingual. I live across the river from St. Isidore de Bellevue, a French-speaking village, and I'm totally incapable of conversing with them in their language. Am I pretending when they come through Rosthern and ask me for directions in French?

Such myths encourage stereotyping, and stereotyping is one of the scourges of our age. In police forces, it results in profiling so that the majority of people stopped for questioning in the street by the police are black or aboriginal young men. In the general public, it restricts individuals in minorities from involvement in the affairs of the community; if one is stereotyped, profiled, judgements are made about you by people who don't even know you. You're pre-judged, the origin of our word, prejudice.

To sum up: the range of ignorance/knowledge among Americans is very similar to that of Canadians, and French Canadians who can't help me out in the English language are no different from me, who can't be helpful to them in French.

Shame on the CBC for reprofiling Americans on the basis of one category in one Jeopardy episode.

Slippery Slopes

Cookies

I've never held much with “slippery-slope” arguments. The kinds that say if we make one small change, it will lead to other changes of greater magnitude and like a snowball rolling down a hill (slippery slope??) will gain momentum and size and the world will go to hell in a handcart.

But there are slippery-slope cases in our history and in our current reality that are either getting—or ought to be—real attention and action.

Today Justice Murray Sinclair presents the final report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The report will show that what appeared to be a solution to the “Indian problem” for fully 100 years turned out to be a thinly-veiled conspiracy to commit what is now called “cultural genocide.” Residential schools alienated children from their parents, parenting practices with thousands of years of history behind them were disrupted, destroyed, it's effects echoing down the hills of time to the present—and likely beyond. That decision to use education to “take the Indian out of the man” represented a true slippery-slope turning point in our history.

Another item in the news today should probably be given some serious slippery-slope analysis. World unemployment is rising, the reliance on part time work, handouts and low-paying, meaningless work for survival is on the increase world wide. Globalization, free-trade agreements, have meant that jobs can go anywhere in the world, and generally to the poorest areas where desperation has meant that people either work for a pittance or content themselves with nothing at all. 

Failing to check the corporatization of industry and government was a “small change” that was a snowball at the top of a slippery slope. It's not a precursor for global peace, is it? Here in Canada, the attack by industry and governments on trade unions is symbolic of a process having the effect of enriching upper classes by shrinking the possibilities of those who do the work.

The worst unemployment rates are in the Middle East and in Northern Africa, according to Brian Stewart. These are also the regions where uprisings and insurgencies are decimating populations, creating massive refugee problems and rendering states ungovernable. Although we blame "evil people" like ISIS (ISIL?) and Al Qaeda for the problems, the turmoil may be nothing more nor less than a logical conclusion to decisions made earlier, decisions that failed to recognize potential slippery-slope effects.

As regards Truth and Reconciliation in Canada, another failure to reset the relationship between First Nations and the Canadian government will undoubtedly have quite predictable effects down the road. It's up to us settler-citizens to make sure that the recommendations of the Commission are seriously addressed.

The most pernicious aspect of slippery slopes is that once you start the slide down one, it's damned hard to stop yourself.

Garage Sales and Soccer

For Sale: 25 cents Or Best Offer

Sunday morning. Town's quiet. Our B & B guests are getting acquainted over omelets and toast.

When God declared a Sabbath for rest from our labours, I don't think he had in mind the rigours of garage sales and soccer.

Rosthern's population doubled on Saturday. The under-8s and under-10s soccer tournament brought in 600 kids along with parents and brothers and sisters. We and about a dozen other residents had determined that it would be a great weekend for garage sales and some of our customers had made a day of it. Two office chairs went to the Prud'homme Library, for instance, carried back home by a soccer mom.

I'm not sure what's behind the impulse to frequent garage sales. It's apparent to me that some (hoarders maybe?) come out with a few dollars and a hope that they'll be able to fill their trunks with neat stuff for next to nothing. Some are looking for treasure and some actually need items that are bound to appear once in a while at a good price. 

Others, I'm convinced, are voyeurs; garage sales give them an opportunity to snoop into private lives. It's obviously a simple diversion for others: the Garage Sailors.

I remember driving through Somerset county on a leisurely Sunday and seeing a “Boot Sale” sign pointing toward a meadow with cars parked in two rows. “Need boots?” I asked Agnes, but it was curiosity that made us turn off. The cars had their “boots” open, of course, from which they were selling, well, the same kind of stuff we sell at garage sales.

Another version of the flea market, a concept older than Dickens.

We live in an age where recycling, reducing and reusing are taken for granted. Our landfill sites are bursting with our 'stuff' and our resources are depleting. To see a table we can no longer use go to someone for whom “it's perfect!” provides some satisfaction, even if the item cost $300.00 and you're selling it for $50.00. And the office chairs will do well for Prud'homme's library, especially since, like all libraries, they're starved for cash.

A young boy—probably about 12—picked out a book for which he paid $0.50; it was a very old German, Mennonite hymnbook. I didn't get that. Maybe he liked the smell or the heft of it.

Another man said he'd decided to spend $5.00 but so far had only reached $4.00. He was looking for another $1.00 item to add to his cache. I didn't get that either. We had plenty of change.

Anyway, meeting people has to be the highlight of sitting on your driveway for two days like children with a hopeful lemonade stand. The 8-year old soccer stars in their cleats and knee socks cuddling the stuffed animals with which our kids used to play, well, that's priceless.

Murphy's Law of Soccer and Garage Sales reads as follows: Put on a garage sale or tournament and clouds will gather, the temperature will drop and the wind will pick up. The forecast for the Sunday after: sunny with a light breeze and seasonal temperatures.

I think we sold a few blankets to moms watching the soccer from the sidelines.

Omar Khadr - Child Soldier

Found Glory

The granting of parole to Omar Khadr and the Canadian government's attempts to stop it was big in the news a few weeks ago.

There's no disputing that Khadr was a juvenile at the time of the incident for which a military court tried him at Guantanamo Bay. There's no dispute about his having been on the al-Qaeda side of a firefight with US Special Forces. There's still uncertainty about whether or not it was he who threw the hand grenade that killed US officer Speer largely because the interrogations and the trial of Khadr included torture and the denial of basic rights like access to legal council for the first two years of incarceration and a three year delay in laying charges.

In other words, Khadr's “confession” would be thrown out in any legitimate court.

Human Rights Watch wrote a letter to Stephen Harper on February 2, 2008 outlining the degree to which the trial of Khadr violated international—even US—conventions on the treatment of juvenile offenders. Click on the link above to read it for yourself.

For me, an open question has always been this: in a war situation where combatants are firing at each other, is it a crime under international law or the conventions of war to kill one of the enemy? If so, should the US soldier who shot and wounded Khadr also be brought to trial for committing a war crime?

Should Khadr have been released on parole? Of course, but the more relevant question is whether or not he should ever have been imprisoned, tried and convicted as he was in the first place. A 15-year old brainwashed by his father and al-Qaeda, fighting to save his life in a combat situation, surely falls under the conventions of child soldiers and juveniles generally:

“International law recognizes the special situation of children who have been recruited or used in armed conflict. The Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict (“Optional Protocol”), which Canada ratified in 2000 and the United States ratified in 2002, requires that all states parties provide for the rehabilitation of former child soldiers within their jurisdiction, including all appropriate assistance for their physical and psychological recovery and their social reintegration.” (HRW letter to Harper)

Canadian government appeals to quash the decision to parole Khadr were dismissed in short order by the courts. Nevertheless, these actions provided the government with a couple of really useful narratives for the election campaign: “We are the party that protects you from terrorism,” and “The courts in Canada are interfering in democracy; now they're making law instead of judging it!”

For Canadians who like simple, black on white narratives, such campaign scripts may be encouragement enough put an X beside the Conservative candidate's name on the ballot. For voters who understand that the rule of law exists for very good reasons, not so much.

Who needs birds anyway?

According to The Nature of Things, hosted by Dr. David Suzuki, the official stance in the neurological sciences has long been that animal minds are “black boxes,” that the existence or non-existence of thought and emotion in animals is unknowable. 

Dog owners, particularly, would always have objected. The antics of their German Shepherd when he sees the leash and collar come out is just too much like the elation in a child upon seeing mother come through the door. It's difficult to dismiss as something other than joy. The baleful look and the cowering of a dog being scolded is too characteristic of human behaviour in such a situation to be dismissed as something other than an emotion.

 

The documentary goes on to talk about recent research that points in the direction of rethinking the “black box” assumption. We humans have brains with left and a right hemispheres; the left controls the right side of our bodies—including our faces—and the right controls the left. But the left also houses our affective (emotional) controls and when we meet a stranger of whom we are apprehensive, we unconsciously focus on the right side of the persons face; it's where emotions first reveal themselves.

Interestingly, dogs do the same thing when they meet a person-stranger. So even if they don't experience joy, sadness, anger in the same way we do, they obviously recognize these emotions in us.

I suspect the “black box” sentiment was more a defense against the guilt of killing and eating animals than pure science. If animals experience fear, anger, joy, love in a similar way to humans, slaughterhouses begin to seem more and more like NAZI death camps. Furthermore, the bond that grows between people and their pets surely argues for more “feeling” than that between a human and a china cat.

Something we no longer practice—or are even conscious of, seems to me—is the reverence for living things and the elements that sustain them. Major world religions lack a doctrine of the interconnectedness of life on the planet; these days our relationship to living-things-that-are-not-us has been dictated by economists, lawyers and corporate entrepreneurs through manipulation of our governments.

The numbers of those who have embraced the dream of a more humane and sustainable world are increasing but we're nowhere near a tipping point. My personal hero in the struggle is Trevor Herriot and one of my favourite books is his Grass, Sky, Song: Promise and Peril in the World of Grassland Birds. Herriot is the advocate general for the birds that lived in abundance on the Saskatchewan prairies before agricultural and industrial “progress” forced them into smaller and smaller habitats.

Like the canary in the coal mine, the elimination of species with a cavalier “who needs birds anyway” attitude is a signal of enormous loss that will both haunt and bite us back in the future.

Anyone who has seen a tiny bird's antics in protecting her nest can surely see that birds want to live; they struggle to protect their lives and those of their loved ones. What part of that can't we humans understand?

I'm grateful to CBC and to Dr. Suzuki for championing a better way to be in the world through The Nature of Things. Hopefully, more and more of us will begin to turn away from Two and a Half Men to The Nature of Things to learn about the world—but how many crises will it take to make that happen?

I haven't a thing to wear.

“Spaghetti straps. Ultra-short skirts. Excessive cleavage. Midriff-baring tops. Shorts with a hem shorter than where a person's fingertips graze when they are standing.”
     Here we go again! That old what's-appropriate-for-girls-to-wear-to-school-and-what's-not debate. True, school boys are required to “dress appropriately,” but when the question resurfaces—as it's done constantly since coed education was invented—it's the girls who make it into the news.
     The CBC story about 17 year-old Lauren Wiggins being sent home from school for wearing an off-the-shoulder, full-length halter dress to school elicited the old saws about what clothing is appropriate for the classroom and what isn't. “It's a sexual distraction,” her teachers said, and others said that assuming boys to be helpless against bared shoulders, cleavage and belly buttons isn't helpful in their development as women-respecting men.
     I went to a high school where school uniforms for girls were mandatory and boys couldn't wear jeans or shorts to class. 60 years later, they all wear “uniform” clothing to class, but they have choices among a number of prescribed items. 
     The most compelling argument for uniforms in my day was that they relieved anxiety about what to wear, particularly for girls. I guess the fringe benefit was that girls wouldn't dress to provoke and distract the boys.
     Surely, attracting or distracting, being noticed—or at least fitting in—are what dress and fashion are about. Lauren Wiggins certainly got noticed; she made it onto national television! She'll be lucky if the on-line taunting doesn't undo her in the end, though.
     Wearing a ball gown to class is not a crime. But for appropriateness, it has to rank with the wearing of high rubber boots to gym class.
     Individualism has been given a boost in the post modern age. It's not unusual for people to play the “I have my rights” and “you can't make me” cards when confronted about their behaviour. Surely education is partly about teaching the balance between individual rights and community needs. Lauren Wiggins hasn't accepted the need for such a balance, yet. But she's only 17, right in the middle of her Sturm und Drang period.
     Often, I find, these teapot tempests are symptomatic of unresolved social tensions. In this case, it's the ambivalence about human sexuality. This confusion, in turn, can be traced back to the simple fact that we have, over the centuries, evolved dramatically in our capacity to reason, to organize and to assume mastery over ourselves and our environments. Meanwhile, our procreative instincts remain unchanged; our biological “progress” has hardly surpassed that of the Bonobo monkey. This discrepancy represents a Gordian Knot that we are having a hard time untying.
     The Christian Bible is clear in its admonitions of sexual restraint. But restraint is not a watchword in currant Western cultures; permissiveness, maybe. But I fear that a tug-of-war between permissiveness and restraint (externally applied, if necessary) is not ever going to resolve issues involving sexuality.      
     Until Lauren Wiggins sees conformity in the area of dress as beneficial and satisfying, I expect she will continue to seek attention in an “off-the-shoulder, full-length halter dress” manner.
     And the restrainers will feel forced to pounce.

Are you an antisemite? Am I?

A blessing found in a ditch

I am an anti-Semite . . .

at least according to Minister of Public Safety, Steven Blaney,  who has characterized criticism of Israeli actions as a new antisemitism. I support the efforts of Christian Peacemaker Teams as they accompany Palestinian children to school to protect them from harassment by West Bank settlers and Israeli soldiers. I applaud the United Church and Quakers for speaking up for a humane, negotiated settlement of the Israel/Palestine question.

Ergo, I am on the side of Jew haters . . . according to Blaney.

If Blaney is incapable of separating genuine concern for the future of all people in the Middle East from holocaust-style antisemitism, he ought not be in charge of a government department. Antisemitism exists, of course. Terrorism and extremism too. Guarding against both is logically an important task for the Ministry of Public Safety. In his naivete, Blaney has actually encouraged the conflating of Jewish ethnicity with the secular state of Israel, an action that will promote rather than discourage antisemitic sentiments in people.

These pronouncements can't, of course, be separated from the election campaign. Indeed, all utterances coming from politicians from now until October have to be seen in the light of that reality. The rhetoric surrounding terrorism and related subjects coming from the Harper government recently seems to be painting the world as a place pervaded by evil, where citizens are in imminent danger and the current government is very decisively and wisely taking the necessary steps to protect them.

Something had to be found to redirect our attention when the economy began to tank.

I know persons who staunchly believe that the citizens of present-day Israel are the living remnant of the Children of Israel in the Old Testament. That's not an illogical conclusion as regards genetics and religious tradition. Another reading of the history will show that the Children of Israel were being punished for their error as often as they were being blessed for their faithfulness. Either way, any conclusion about the legitimacy of the state of Israel as it exists today can't possibly exclude the raising of concerns regarding those actions it takes that directly affect its neighbours.

A hallmark of naivete is the promotion of simple answers to complex questions. If campaigning politicians are banking on the electorate swallowing simple answers, they may well be shrewd.

Shrewd, however, is not necessarily wise, and to attempt to castigate and muzzle organizations that promote a negotiated settlement and the rule of law in Palestine is clearly a case of shrewdness trumping wisdom.

Short-term gain for long-term pain, I'm afraid.

conversation is not just talk

Blackstrap Lake

Obviously, there's a lot more to conversation than the words that are spoken. You put yourself in the company of friends and you can safely assume that there will be conversation, although the range of topics is unpredictable. Maybe the point is not the topic but the interaction, like a friendly game of tennis. One serves, the other returns, repeat, repeat.

Too much non-interaction feels awkward and we all have the experience of “groping for a topic” when the silence gets uncomfortably long. You can't play tennis without a ball. It would look stupid.

All around the country men are going to coffee in the mornings—some in the afternoons and evenings as well. They obviously don't need the coffee; they've got coffee at home. It's conversation that's the real need here, especially for retired folk who no longer have a regular workplace where a full quota of interaction used to happen routinely. A bit of tennis is what's wanted.

Although the topics may not be the important components of coffee or party conversation, the choices aren't insignificant either. If you've little knowledge of machinery and the dialogue seems always to wander toward engine displacement, transmission lubricants and horsepower, you very soon begin to feel like you're on the tennis court without a racquet.

Someone speculated that conversation falls into three categories. In descending order of quality are conversations about ideas, things and people. Engagement in ideas, then, is the highest order. Gossip the lowest. A somewhat elitist view of the world, others would say, but there's merit to the concept in that idea conversations are more likely to include everyone around the restaurant table or in the living room.

As an example, take ideas about how we design our houses. Everyone lives in a house, must maintain it and deal with its idiosyncrasies. Talking about the best doorknobs available, though, is a “things” conversation; debating whether or not we generally build our houses too large is an “ideas” conversation. Exchanging information on how poorly the Jones maintain their yard is a “people” topic. It's easy to see that idea-dialogue provides scope for imagination and invention; the other topics may seem mundane in comparison. The last one may even prove destructive.

Thing is, we generally end up in groups that are conversationally compatible, individuals that share common interests, that naturally veer toward topics in which all can participate. Groups in which attention is paid to ensuring that everyone has a racquet.

Should the art of conversation be a school subject? History tells us that Cleopatra was a persuasive conversationalist, fluent in six languages, a student of history and culture and oratory. Alexandrian education was not so much job-oriented as it was geared to personal development. In a time when Roman women were chattels for trading, she so adeptly won Roman emperor Caesar to her cause that she was able not only to bed him but to bring his battalions to her aid.

Alexandria was obviously not Rome.

Because in the end, it's a satisfactory, rewarding, uplifting interaction that we came for. Isn't it?

Power corrupts . . . sometimes

Tea, anyone?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

     Corruption has no legitimate place in a democracy.

Alberta election ruminations

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Alberta rethinks itself . . . maybe

Gospel Hymnody recalled

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Stuff!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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