No blooming jobs here…
… to convince the Canadian electorate that they’re working hard to protect jobs and the environment, evidence seems to be somewhat to the contrary. Down 50 000-odd jobs in the country with BC leading the way on the downward spiral. Think the tenor of the ad campaigns will change?
From the moment life left the body of former Alberta Premier Ralph Klein, there arose such a clatter that, hummmm, no one seemed to know what was the matter. Here was a politician who ensured that everyone possible in Alberta bought the cowboy myth, adopted “Don’t Tread On Me” as a personal motto and “I’m all right, Jack” as a personal ethos, all the while shovelling boatloads of cash to oil interests both in and out of Alberta (and Canada). “He” paid off Alberta’s debt: that is to say, he was hailed as having engineered that feat of financial prestidigitation, but did it with Alberta tax dollars and very much at the expense of social programs. He also did it with cash out of the pockets of every Canadian driver, so, while we ought to give King Ralph credit for having the cojones to pull the con game on a grand scale, there is perhaps a little room in the outpouring of sentiment for some skepticism in regard to the monetary genius or the societal innovator as which he’s been hailed over the last few days. My reading (I get to do that here) is that he was not a particularly nice man, either, given to blustery pronouncements on those less fortunate or who would dare dissent and descending into outright loutishness at times. I get the feeling when I hear that a figure of this nature has moved on that I will have to avoid all media for a week or so until the balm of saccharin has run its course in the hope that another event of like nature and stature will not follow up too closely.
The Pope prayed for peace in the Middle East.
People have been praying on all sides for generations, and the arms makers are the only ones gratified. This painful little cancre is but a reflection of broader issues, but will remain a pustulating sore as long powerful lobbies continue to set the agenda.
Am I the only one who thinks that the run a partial treaty settlements with First Nations in BC is politically motivated? Why, in the last dozen years, has the pace of negotiations continued at the same senatorial crawl until the last couple of weeks when, suddenly staring down the barrel of an election, several groups on Vancouver Island start getting what amounts to a down payment on an eventual settlement. So lovely it is to see Ida Chong’s smiling face and sincere pronouncements about how this government has done so much to resolve the treaty process: I wonder what her position was when her leader Campbell ran a referendum back in 2002 to determine the future of treaty negotiations based on what all the citizens of the province had to say (did he submit the HST to referendum before moving ahead?). This fits well with DeJong’s interpretation of the latest Dominion Bond Rating Service report which he calls supportive of the BC Liberal government and implies that the province’s credit rating will surely take a hit if we have the audacity to elect someone else. It would be the subject of ridicule were it not for the reporting that fails to call his point of view into question, or to cite the folks who might care to interpret the report in another fashion. Our dear Liberals can’t seem to find anything remotely resembling a principle or the truth. They need to be held to account for their misdeeds, as to their enablers in the press, especially so that those who come along after them will know just what to expect.
Sometimes it’s better to say nothing.
From the Vancouver Sun:
“At this key juncture, I hope the people of Venezuela can now build for themselves a better, brighter future based on the principles of freedom, democracy, the rule of law and respect for human rights,” Harper said in a statement Tuesday evening.
Of course, the Venezuelan government sent a note of protest. They, too, shouldn’t have said anything. Is it any surprise that a leader held in complete thrall to the fossil fuel industry would be happy to see the passing of someone who has used wealth to fund education, housing, healthcare and the general welfare of the general populace?
Once again, Mr. Harper has shown a lack of diplomacy and a streak of unpleasantness unbecoming any leader, but especially a leader of a country that once considered itself to be polite and restrained, even with those with whom we disagreed.
Mr. Harper makes reference to a better future, but I suspect that his vision of the Venezuelan future is predicated on control of the economy and political apparatus by the likes of Carmona, and a return to the enrichment of the few who play nicely with Exxon, Shell and BP at the expense of the broader community of the citizens of Venezuela. His only love for democracy is for that version exported by the Washington Consensus, a rule of, by, and for corporations.
Don’t Look Back?
We are witnesses to, as well as participants in an extraordinary set of circumstances as the much-touted end times fantasy becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy under the mandate of the greedy and ignorant (or wilfully malicious) managers of the world’s resources. This mythomania, based on what might likely have been men of ancient times with an agenda (more likely a set of agendas) so powerful that it persists to this day and continues to cloud minds all over the planet. Hence, we’re seeing a degradation of our living space that has already become fatal to thousands of species, and which threatens the existence of the rest of life on Earth. Certainly, there is much evidence of bad behaviour in many iterations of our current societies around the world, but nowhere is there more rampant corruption, greed and destructiveness than in the managerial levels, amongst those who would pass themselves off as the governors, including the puppet masters we rarely glimpse. It is a temptation to contemplate at great length the breadth and depth of the destruction being wrought on both our physical and social living spaces and, like Lot’s wife, to be come transfixed to the point of paralysis. There is a balance between being aware and being self-preserving, and a big part of bringing that balance into something constructive is to find what looks like a path forward, a manner of addressing crisis in a way that might produce results that help to redress some of the wrong being done.
Myths can be wondrous if we remember that they are metaphoric and can see current parallels. For instance, the Tower of Babel has some interesting current applications in the different levels of jargon that haunt the professional and political spheres, as well as the consistent failure of groups in conflict to analyze the roots of their conflict with an eye to stepping back from the brink of destruction. Of course, the destruction serves the interests of some, so the likelihood of finding clarity is considerably reduced and the probability of mayhem is greatly enhanced.
The story of Pandora’s Box is another tale that has serious implications for humanity in an age where we continue to unleash all manner of technology on ourselves without proper consideration of possible downstream toxicity. GMO tech is one of my favourite targets as everything that could go wrong with them appears to be doing so in a Murphian dystopian unravelling. We are also suffering from addiction to the same fossil fuels that seemed to make us so comfortable for the last dozen decades. Much of this is a result of doing what we can do instead of what we ought to do because it’s easier and more profitable (we can make it so) than working on the pressing problems of over-population, starvation, disease, degradation of the environment and whole societies based on inequity.
My mother’s family were all Keenans and O’Connells, Irish as Irish could be and generally proud enough of it to make it known to whoever would listen. We made a couple of trips to Ireland, in 1985 and 1993, including a visit to Daniel O’Connell’s grave. This was particularly interesting for a couple of reasons.
The first is that, like many venerated figures from history (we’re discussing the Irish Liberator here), the story behind the man is terribly interesting and not as unambiguous as what was presented to me in my youth. Mr. O’Connell really did oppose the union of Great Britain and Ireland and worked for the rights of Catholics to sit in Parliament, but it seems he was also a bit of a high lifer and not uninterested in forwarding the cause of Daniel O’Connell along with that of the downtrodden Irish. The Wikipedia article on him is enough to whet my appetite (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_O%27Connell).
The second part of this, the part that leads to an observation or two about John Kerry, and possibly about his Canadian counterpart, John Baird, is that our friends in County Sligo, including Bert, who hailed from Galway, were given to telling us myriad Kerryman jokes. The Irish are constantly the butt of jokes in England relating to mental feebleness, laziness, maladresse and a panoply of sins. Of course the Irish have to have someone as the butt of their jokes: rather than going abroad, they chose the men of Kerry in the far southwest corner of the Isle to stand as the object of their humour. So it turns out that the Liberator/Emancipator was from Carhirsiveen, a burg on the way out to the tip of the Ring of Kerry at Derry Nane. He was, therefore, a Kerryman through and through.
So…I caught a bit of a presser featuring Kerry and Baird and was horrified to hear Kerry mispronounce Kazakhstan and refer to the Prime Minister of Mexico in doing something of an imitation of the man to whom he lost the 2004 election (not lost if you follow the writings of the ever-incendiary Greg Palast). It isn’t that I miss Hilary (I winced at her platitudes and lies), but to come out of the gate so weakly hardly inspires confidence that the world is heading into calmer waters with Kerry at the helm. The fact that he chose to meet with Baird before getting to some of the other bagatelles that confront American “diplomacy” speaks more to the fossil fuel lobby than to any sentiment that Canada is really such a good pal. I have to say, too, that I tend to see in Mr. Baird an air of someone just arrived from a frat party. He has a ready tongue and an aggressive and overbearing demeanour that admits no debate. Should we be surprised when an appointee of this nature, one Patrick Brazeau, steps over the line? Was his role to be the First Nations representation in a party that militates to erase any distinction for First Nations and to remove all political and environmental barriers to unbridled exploitation of Canada’s resources? Whatever it was, and whatever Baird, Van Loan, Toews, Flaherty, Ambrose, MacKay, Kent and the like may say, the joke is mostly on us, the citizens of Canada from all ethnic backgrounds. Is what the current bunch in Ottawa doing to First Nations so different from what the English did in Ireland? Always worth a thought in passing.
Trying to determine what is going on in the world by reading newspapers is like trying to tell the time by watching the second hand of a clock.
-Ben Hecht
A quickie update: seems there are many who are having similar thoughts.
http://saltspringnews.com/index.php?name=News&catid=&topic=8
While it may have been staid and a little stodgy, the old CBC had a ton of good content and listening to The World At Six used to leave me with more a feeling of being informed.
I made a mistake: I watched some television news. I must have been bored, or I would have left the room. Wait, I never get bored. It must be some twisted sense of nostalgia and longing for a time when I felt as though I at least had an inkling of what was going on in the world, and that through the lens of newspapers, radio and television. I think most people don’t like being in the room with me when i watch news, or listen to it on the radio, given that there’s this almost constant stream of what I would call counter comment and frequent interjections of judgment of value stemming from variations on bovine excrement. Yesterday, there was an unbelievable tsunami of hand-wringing and chatter over the eventual disappearance of the penny: no one mentioned a thing about devaluation and debasement. There was much gushing about Beyoncé and her performance, including an extended piece on Newsworld about a new biopic about the performer, something we could expect from the entertainment shows, but hardly worthy of a mention on a serious news network. There were reports of missing people who are still missing, missing pets who’ve been found and a ton of human interest stories that paper over the very real shabbiness in the fabric of society. There was, lo and behold, a story about an IPP on the north end of Vancouver Island, but a failure to mention the terms of the contract which, typically, includes provision for the buying of the resulting electricity by BC Hydro at multiples of the market rates at which the utility will be able to sell the power, and, to cap it off, much time for Minister to spout about possible changing conditions that mean that these IPPs will be a bargain in the future. But the absolute killer was when the ominous music came through the set, that Daah duh-duh-duh daah dhu-duh-duh daah that tells me that we’re into the next Olympic cycle/blitz, and that all media will be devoting precious resources to the least related Olympic factoids. At least this time around, the proceedings will be held in a venue far enough not to affect events in this lovely neck of the woods.
Worth a look, though the complete film will provide a more in-depth look and answer some of the questions raised in the trailer:
A succinct visual representation of the charity versus justice dichotomy:
First As Tragedy, Then As Farce (Animation)
(There is a ton of other good stuff on the RSA site! I also really like Annie Leonard’s work, definitely worth a gander for those who haven’t dug in already.)
Hey! I just found this (silly me) bit that is very much on point:
http://www.storyofstuff.org/movies-all/story-of-cosmetics/
Yet another roadblock in the BC Rail affair: Justice Bauman of the BC Supreme Court has ruled that the Auditor General does not have a right to view all the documents relating to the $6 M settlement of Basi and Virk’s legal fees because it would breach solicitor/client provisions. These clowns have taken a plea, done light duty and escaped with their assets pretty much intact, it seems, while the citizens of BC look to have been bamboozled and robbed by the people who were supposed to look out for their interests. Everything about the whole process, the resulting raids and the ensuing judicial dance carries a whiff of barnyard mixed with brimstone, and at some point, having excused the accused from further prosecution, it seems like time to shine an array of lights under this rock. If there is nothing slimy there, we can put the rock back in place and leave it there, but there can be no accountability (a word so dear to Campbell and company) and no trust in the government or the political process as long as affairs are conducted behind multiple screens of secrecy by people who seem on the face of things to be as untrustworthy as a group could be. It will be interesting to see if a change of government in May produces a couple of results:
1) a complete reversal of the narrative of openness and transparency. Don’t say it, do it.
2) a complete reckoning with all and sundry involved in the privatization of common resources needed to keep the citizens of BC engaged in reasonable participation in their economy. Note that Liberals can’t even whimper about anything that any other government does, given their record of stonewalling.
Failure to follow up on these items will ensure that people will dissociate themselves from being part of the governance of their province, a short-term boon to those looking to profit from indifference and corruption, but a powder keg of discontent in the longer term.
