Smell the Coffee



Morning sun in the garden



As I worked on a review of Thomas King's, The Inconvenient Indian, it occurred to me that my oft-expressed opinion (that the State of Israel's right to exist shouldn't be considered a given) might be somewhat hypocritical. Or maybe a lot hypocritical. Sandy Tolan's The Lemon Tree talks about one Palestinian family's expulsion from their home near Ramallah to make way for Jewish settlement. Thomas King's The Inconvenient Indian talks about the settlement of North America on lands that had first to be cleared of Aboriginal people. The comparison is simplistic, I know, but it seems to me that at the core of both stories is conquest and subjugation along with property theft and persecution of the weaker by the stronger. Manifest Destiny; the inevitability of progress as justification for both the means and the end.

            It comes as no surprise that our current government is unapologetically pro-Israel, and maybe that wouldn't be so bad if they were at the same time sympathetic to the people of Gaza and the West Bank who did not create the circumstances in which they find themselves. Maybe they've figured out that if Israel doesn't have a legitimate right to exist as a state, then Canada might not have that right either. Morally, ethically I mean.

            But I doubt it. Our government believes that civilization rests on economic growth to the point that hindrances to its expansionist goals are anathema. If this seems like an exaggeration, pick up Yves Engler's The Ugly Canadian: Stephen Harper's Foreign Policy and give it a read. The ferocity with which our government lobbies for corporate oil is embarrassing. In this light, it makes sense that Israel would be our pal; Gaza has nothing to offer us—economically. It seems that TV commercials extolling the oil sands of Alberta are broadcast every fifteen minutes by now. Climate change must be good for us; we can make lots and lots of money if only those tree huggers in the USA and the First Nations of BC will get the hell out of our way!

            I worry about the complacency of the middle classes in this country who should have figured out by now that the goal of our current government is to rewrite the values on which this country has heretofore based both its foreign and domestic policies.

Think past the next pay check, people. The oil sands may pay our bills for a time, but at what cost? Siding with Israel exclusively may work today, but how will the Palestines of the world relate to us in the future? I could go on and on in this vein, might even throw in the irony of the freak flooding that will cost billions to repair happening in the same province that stakes its future on the production and sale of as much ‘dirty’ oil as possible

 . . . as if the two were unrelated.

            Its time for principled Canadians to wake up and smell the coffee. 

Breakfast at Academy B & B

 

P.S. Perhaps the waking up is actually happening. A Nanos Survey published by CBC this morning indicates that dissatisfaction with the Tories is growing and that 51% of Canadians no longer see Harper’s team as an option they might choose in future. Mind you, that can all change before 2015.

Irises, Indians, Erdogan and Harper

Whatd'ya know . . . I DO like purple!

 

I’m three-quarters through The Inconvenient Indian: a curious account of native people in North America, by Thomas King. Look for a review on Readwit soon. For now, just a few pithy quotations:

       “. . . colonists . . . could always console themselves with the knowledge that Whites, who had found their way to North America, were part of God’s master plan. And Indians, who had been here all along, were not (24).”

        “North America decided that Native education had to be narrowly focused on White values, decided that Native values, ceremonies and languages were inferior and had no value of place in a contemporary curriculum. This was the first abuse of the residential school system (119).”

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                 How would you like to be Recep Tayyip Erdogan these days? Prime Minister of Turkey, he’s faced (apparently) with the dilemma of ardent support by half (give or take) of the population while the rest despise him and are as ardently determined to undermine his leadership and get him ousted if possible. Should he be reviewing recent history in Libya, Egypt or Syria to help him decide on a course of action? It’s probably hard to resist applying lethal military might, ready and waiting to do battle. “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable” said John F. Kennedy. Franz Kafka is reported to have written, “Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy.”

             I doubt that Erdogan reads Kafka, or would take council from any American President right now . . . not even a dead one. 

*********

           You’re right; it’s Jim Flaherty and Prime Minister Harper in Dublin on their way to the G8 summit. They’re holding a Canadian Rugby team jersey and grinning into the camera like typical tourists do when overwhelmed with the enormity of where they are and what they’re doing. “Look mommy, Here I am in Ireland and I went in a pub but didn’t drink any beer! Honest!” 

         Whether posing under the Guinness is Good for You sign was deliberate or not, I’d be surprised if the brewing company didn’t use it somewhere in their advertising, or if the Liberals and the NDP hadn’t already earmarked it for the next election campaign!

Wanted: Steady supply of Sodium Thiopental

Real books - headed for the museum?

“States are scrambling to find enough sodium thiopental after its sole U.S. manufacturer ceased production and some overseas supplies dried up.” http://ca.news.yahoo.com/justice-department-reviewing-request-13-states-help-finding-20110208-104211-661.html



Sodium thiopental is an anaesthetic drug which has been used in a cocktail to effect executions. Lethal injection, it’s generally called. Lately, it’s been used straight-up in massive dosage for reasons I don’t fully understand, nor do I need to. The drug is also used in tiny doses in general anaesthesia and the induction of comas for medical reasons.


It’s in short supply, and you have to go beyond the Yahoo News story above to find out why. The drug was developed in the 1930s by Abbott Laboratories. Abbott Laboratories later moved its medical drug development and manufacture into a branch company called Hospira. It’s Hospira’s decision to cease manufacturing the drug that is responsible for the current shortage. In a statement last September, Hospira said:


"Hospira manufactures this product because it improves or saves lives, and the company markets it solely for use as indicated on the product labeling. The drug is not indicated for capital punishment, and Hospira does not support its use in this procedure."{McKinley, Jesse (28 September 2010). Judges Question California's Motivation on Execution". New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/29/us/29execute.html.}


I’m not finished my review of Tongue Screws and Testimonies yet, and my journey through the massive Martyrs Mirror in preparation for the review has left me shaken once again by a knowledge that there are humans in the world who can look another human in the eye while they methodically take away his or her life. The cruelty under which many of the Anabaptist martyrs died leaves me with the distinct impression that given license to kill, a mass of humanity would emerge from the cracks and line up for the opportunity to inflict cruelty and death on others.


And then I read about the shortage of sodium thiopental in the USA and these suspicions are reinforced. And I remember that in a recent interview with Peter Mansbridge, Prime Minister Harper said, “I believe that there are circumstances where capital punishment is justified,” and I wonder if humanity is always just one careless slip away from barbarism.


Even though we’re still struggling as a nation to recover from the most recent recession, our current government is gearing up to build prisons so that harsher and longer penalties can be applied. I would wager that they’d get far more bang for the buck if they put that money into evening sports, recreation, arts programs for junior high-aged kids.


A wise person probably came up with the following definition as advice to the republican/conservative thinkers of the world: "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again but expecting different results." (Rita Mae Brown?) Are you listening, Stephen Harper?


Meanwhile, there’s a tremendous economic opportunity out there for some Canadian laboratory. Produce sodium thiopental for the US capital punishment market. Maybe their folly can help drag us out of the recession!

An Evening with Yann Martel

Scene from "The Keeper" coming to the Station Arts Centre March 3-14

It was a great evening; most people I talked to agreed. Yann Martel came to the Station Arts Centre and he and his wife and their baby mingled with about 50 or 60 of us in a fund-raiser to kick off the project to re-roof the library. The library board had done a great job; good food, some local poets reading and words from a great author. A summary doesn’t do it justice, of course. Two high school students read from their poetry and a member of our writers’ group enthralled the audience with imagery that literally pings off people’s experiences of life.

Martel’s wife, Alice Kuipers, read from her novel—about to be published—and then it was Yann’s turn. Yann has set himself a project to send Stephen Harper a different book every two weeks along with a letter suggesting why he—as Prime Minister—ought to read this book. Martel reminded us that when Canada’s political leaders were all asked what their favourite book might be, Harper chose Guiness Book of World Records, a book most of us enjoyed—when we were twelve! He read us several of his letters to the PMO.

Yann’s view is that fiction reading is essential to the balanced development of every person. He says that in the reading of the novel, one allows an alternative view into one’s consciousness and lives with it for a while. Sort of a walking-for-a-time in another’s shoes. What this provides is a moral, ethical exercise, an accepted invitation to reconsider one’s own worldview and an opening of the door to honest dialogue.

I agree. In a recent interview I did with the local paper, I said that I consider the art of the short story to be a natural progression from the parables used to teach in earlier times. Stories are not only that, of course. At their best, they also offer relief from the sameness of our days, recreation of our spirits and repeated reminders that the world is a whole lot bigger and provides many more possibilities than our day to day striving would lead us to believe.

In other words, a person who does not read voraciously and who doesn’t have a history of appreciation for novels and short stories can hardly be fit--in at least one aspect--to lead a nation. Something is bound to be missing, and it may be the most vital element of all.

If you don’t know Yann Martel, read Life of Pi, winner of the Man Booker prize of 2002. It’s scheduled to be the basis of a movie soon.

42 Minutes that (did, did not) change the world

Grand Canyon Denizens; The telescope array in New Mexico (where part of the movie, Contact was filmed. Click to enlarge.)

Today, Prime Minister Harper will meet with President Obama for a scheduled 42 minutes. 42 Minutes!?! Considering that Canadians buy more products from the US and sell more energy, wood, grain, meat, iron, nickel, etc., etc. to the US than any other country, 42 minutes strikes me as a bit chintzy. What does the Prime Minister of Luxembourg get when he calls? 1 Minute, 27 seconds? Frank McKenna said on TV last night that the meetings with Congress members are more important than the few minutes with the president. They could hardly be less important if the 42 minutes is a measure to go by.

Which brings up the question of US-Canadian relationships generally, doesn’t it? Our tourist industry is suffering (I’m not sure they know what true suffering is) because Americans now need to be carrying a valid passport TO GET BACK INTO THEIR OWN COUNTRY. I sincerely doubt that Obama can reverse this madness; the signs of a more liberal approach to policy are there, but the bones still have no meat. In the health care insurance debate, we see again the degree to which the fierce insistence on minimal government involvement in the marketplace has been engrained in the population. One would have thought that the current recession would have provided some insight into the consequences of a greed/deregulation regime.

The right wing, conservative thinkers (I use this word advisedly) in the world today are powerful, and it’s understandable why this would be so. Their thinking is simplistic; they need only hold one or two pieces of conventional wisdom in their heads to feel righteous. In the US, the two bits of “truth” need only be “it’s a free country so get the hell out of my face,” and “foreigners are trying to get me, so don’t mess with my guns,” to frame a disastrous public policy like we see around security matters today.

Since the turn of the century, about 360,000 people have been killed on US highways, 4,500,000 have died of cancer and 2,993 died as a result of terrorist acts. For the fiscal year 2008-2009, the Bush administration requested 145.2 billion dollars for the Global War on Terror, but only 70.4 Billion for the entire budget of the Department of Health and Human Services. These comparisons shouldn’t be taken as the complete picture, but they do give an indication of the preponderance of security consciousness in the US, out of all proportion to the reality.

I wonder if Harper will point this out to Obama and to Congress. I actually doubt it.

Sorry, Sorry, Sorry . . .

South Saskatchewan River, Saskatoon

While we’re apologizing . . . ©

By George Epp

A few days ago, Stephen Harper and the other party leaders apologized to the Aboriginals, Métis and Inuit of Canada on my behalf (except for those in Newfoundland & Labrador, Prince Edward Island and New Brunswick). They told them I was sorry for the policy that took their children away from them and put them into boarding schools with the express purpose of forcefully assimilating them into the culture, religion and language of the colonials invading the continent.

Well I’m deeply sorry that that was done. But I find myself wanting to get more off my chest than just the residential school issue, which was horrible enough. So here I offer to the Aboriginal people and their descendants in ALL of Canada, a few more apologies:

1) I’m sorry that I benefited from the process that saw you marginalized by an imperialist and ethnocentric power—in your own country, and failed to recognize that fact.

2) I’m sorry that I continue to live on land that was stolen from you and then sold to others, and finally to me.

3) I’m sorry that you are still not considered worthy of the same property rights as other Canadians.

4) I’m sorry that when one of your women—a bright, influential health-care administrator—attempted to reserve a meeting room at a Winnipeg Hotel, she was presumed to be a prostitute and was told to take her trade elsewhere. (Apply this apology as needed to the thousands and thousands of incidents like this that whittled away at your self esteem and self confidence, and for which my protests were far too weak and half-hearted.)

5) I’m sorry that land agreed to be yours by virtue of signed treaties was confiscated in many places whenever the government felt a need for it.

6) I’m sorry that I didn’t punch my neighbour in the mouth for you when his truck was vandalized and he jumped immediately to the conclusion that it was “those damned Indian kids from the trailer park.” (Multiply this apology by several thousand, on second thought.)

7) I’m sorry that when one of you is discussed, you are an “Indian” and when a neighbour is discussed, he is a “person.”

8) I’m sorry that we have not done enough to focus on the basics of health and education as stepping stones to dignity and equality, and have reverted instead to a welfare and indigence model.

9) I’m sorriest for the fact, however, that despite the magnitude of the apologies, the conditions in which you find yourselves will probably not change noticeably, because the ones who made them are good at words, but not so good at doing what’s right.

10) I’m sorry that I belong to the group that precipitated the apology. I hope I can be a contributor to any group that forms to make real changes.