Tell the Truth?

Posted on 2024/03/11 by Dan Schubart

I come to bury Caesar…

The outpouring of adulatory sentiment in the wake of the passing for former PM Brian Mulroney leaves me somewhat bitter and scratching my head. While not totally unmitigated, I can only see his time in office as a disaster. He was less elected in 1984 than John Turner was turfed unceremoniously from office for leading a tired and scandal-ridden régime left in his charge by a Pierre Trudeau become arrogant frustrated, and impatient, promising a new government of openness, transparency and honesty. It was a manner of only weeks before the Oerlikon scandal broke, only the first in a long series that eventually consigned the Mulroney to a fate similar to John Turner in 1993, where the Conservative Party was reduced to two seats in Parliament. Despite shepherding some “green” initiatives and working to end apartheid in South Africa, Mulroney’s close relationship with a caustic US administration based on a personal relationship with Ronald Reagan and a community of interest in expanding unfettered capital dominance across North America and around the world worked to ensure that no meaningful action would be taken to mitigate most of the looming environmental crises or the damage to society from the privatization of public assets and the institution of Free Trade, NAFTA, and the GST.

Various laudatory bits on Briam Mulroney from the Globe and Mail

Oh, Brian, did we really know ye?

A raft of politicians of many stripes ran to the nearest microphone to sing Mulroney’s praises, but there was little mention of all the dark and dubious transactions that marked bhs time in office and the aftermath, wherein he continued to be a standard bearer in the international community for the Con program of privatization and austerity that continues to plague us with very real consequences to this day and well into the foreseeable future. As we can see from the front page of the G&M’s site, the same treatment is being prepared for out current PM, though he’s young enough that we have to wait some time to see the outpouring of fawning smarm.

This happened again recently with the passing of a local politician who was praised to the heavens for her profound influence on local politics… politics that have remained unaltered since long before her election to council and that are likely to persist well into whatever future we may face. This is not advocacy for speaking ill of the dead, but rather for telling true stories, however uncomfortable they may be. As long as we keep those rose-coloured glasses perched on the end of our noses, we are unlikely to engage in the hard work of facing down nasty environmental, social and economic quagmires.

https://youtube.com/clip/Ugkxwo2pDmLRMFtbdknFnEBoYn_X4Ox38IL-?si=u_oKHM1bj20SNncc

Victoria…

Posted on 2024/03/11 by Dan Schubart

…is, according to an article linked to the Globular Male front page, the most liveable city in Canada:

A fair city.

I’m reminded of the lyrics I first heard from Joan Baez long ago:

What hills, what hills are those, my love
That rise so fair and high?
Those are the hills of heaven, my love
But not for you and I

And what hills, what hills are those, my love
Those hills so dark and low?
Those are the hills of hell, my love
Where you and I must go.

The price of both rents and real estate ownership, as well as the disconnect between prices and current salary levels are an inhibiting factor in keeping people as far as possible from agglomerations with favourable climate, cultural depth and diversity, and security of life and limb. Victoria is also in the throes of becoming a victim of its own success, a process of Cory Doctorow’s enshittification and the fraying of the fabric of society.

Do ya think?

Posted on 2023/12/22 by Dan Schubart

According to the Globular Mail, the competent authorities (already tells you something) have approved the takeover of HSBC by RBC. They likely have some justification or another but it really doesn’t matter. RBC wanted it, so it’s not a big surprise that after much hemming and hawing and seeming deliberations on behalf of the Canadian public, the green flag came out. Once again the system feeds itself, as it intended. Who knew?

You’re not supposed to get it!

Henry The K has left the building

Posted on 2023/11/30 by Dan Schubart

Listen to them fawn https://i0.wp.com/boingboing.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Henry_Kissinger.jpg?fit=1200%2C1008&ssl=1

Going about my business here at the old homestead, I was treated to a snippet of news from our public broadcaster on the passing of Henry Kissinger, the puppetmaster of foreign policy under Nixon and Ford. The piece included a eulogy from Anthony Blinken, the current Secretary of State, extolling his influence on history, an influencer of which the current generation of media mongrels would have difficulty conceiving. Jaysus Murphy, they even gave the guy a Nobel Peace Prize. At least Obama got his before he started serious bombing operations.

Once Blinken was done with his little bit of praising Caesar, the news reader noted only that he had had the ear of powerful people right up until his death yesterday at the age of 100. They didn’t mention that he never did go to Oslo, and that this was due to the prospect of being arrested for war crimes. Kissinger was a major architect of US policy in the ’70s and particularly in Southeast Asia, although it seems clear that he might very possibly been at the root of the unceremonious unseating of the Allende government in Chile, as well as a good bit of the strife and instability that characterized life in most of Central America both during K’s tenure and after. But the CBC doesn’t see fit to mention any of what, for people who read a little more broadly, constitutes a legacy akin to Pol Pot, but which doesn’t quite rise to the glory of the Belgian monarchy, of Stalin, of Hitler, of Mao. His pals call him a master of Realpolitik. They are enablers of war criminals, and CBC, by its silence becomes, in however minor a way, complicit.

The more we sweep this stuff under the carpet, the more death and destruction we will be forced to endure.

My Eyes…

Posted on 2022/12/27 by danneau

… are quite red from all the rubbing.

Here are a few items that have had my head swivelling back and forth, even as I rub my eyes:

Where’s the middle ground between authoritarianism and democracy?georgelakoff.substack.com

As much as to say that you can neither be somewhat pregnant, nor somewhat fascist, and that that “fair and balanced” crap is just that, a fence on which to sit so as not to alienate anyone, especially paid advertisers.

Mussel Farming Is Healing the UK’s Coastal Food Chain

This resembles some of the work of the Savory Institute in rehabilitating land using integrated animal management to enhance the soil biome, increase plant diversity, deepen root masses and store carbon.

https://www.sfgate.com/politics-op-eds/article/should-have-listened-to-oppenheimer-17670146.php?IPID=SFGate-HP-CP-Spotlight

A figure from the past shows us something about the trajectory on which we find ourselves, in large part because of the influence of those bent on control and private gain, in this case, the military and arms manufacturers, in our current pass, those same as well as entrenched fossil fuel concerns, bankers, Big Ag, Big Pharma, Big Health, and a slew of governments and their attendant bureaucracies who are all too comfortable denying reality.

https://thetyee.ca/Culture/2022/12/22/Why-I-Stopped-Giving-Food-Bank/

One of my primary bugaboos of late, wherein people directing society seem willing to slough of responsibility for the remediation of the ills created by a throwaway attitude towards whole segments of civilization and pass that on to the charity industry, composed of people wanting to do well for the less-fortunate, but having morphed into huge bureaucracies who look increasingly as though their real raison d’être is to ensure its own continued existence, rather than the elimination of the circumstances that cause poverty, homelessness, malnutrition, energy poverty and the like.

https://nor-re.blogspot.com/2022/12/failure-pure-and-simple.html

Owen Gray riffs on an article from Andrew Nikiforuk, an author not at all afraid of staying on point when the slogging is glum, frightening and depressing, on the state of our interactions with the COVID pandemic, and the willingness of our leadership to gloss over the harm for the economic benefits that wide-open business confers on us, or those that survive. There is also the little Montaigne quip in the header graphic about cowardice being the mother of cruelty that is worth a bit of contemplation in passing.

Rewilding the Political

Here is a piece that draws some neat parallels between some work that needs to be undertaken to ensure biodiversity in nature and how that approach might apply to a stultified and stagnant system of governance that builds in the exclusion of discussions of the most pressing problems and any likely real solutions, Much of this stems from the scaffold of regulation, law, and tradition put in place to support our current economic/social/environmental paradigm.

https://www.thestar.com/business/opinion/2022/12/24/the-worst-is-yet-to-come-the-effects-of-inflation-policies-will-dominate-2023.html

How do we address economic stress? We increase the tension, and in such a way that it had negative impacts on those most likely suffering already and leaves untouched the hoards of of them that’s already gots. This brings on a ton of thoughts about the nature of money and how it can be used as a weapon, as well as how we might revise our conception of wealth, its accumulation and distribution.

There is never a shortage of mental fodder for the serious grazer.

Confronting A Dark Past

Posted on 2022/05/18 by danneau

Photo by Yann Allegre on Unsplash

One of the gravest defects of religion is that it can be used to keep the poor contented with their lot, which is very convenient for the rich.

—Bertrand Russell

This morning, according to a Globe and Mail headline, Prince Charles pointed out that Canada must confront ‘darker’ aspects of its past, just the sort of gratuitously obvious statement one would expect from a royal speaking to the colonials about indigenous relations, and, in particular, the history of residential schools.

Yes, we Canadians need to confront and redress the harm done, and I wouldn’t presume to say how that needs to come about, given that more august personages than I have already chimed in on the subject, and in full knowledge that there is a long and likely painful path for all of us to get to a point where First Nations feel that they have achieved their rightful place in the life of this land. The process is complicated by the presence of a slice of the population who would just as soon ignore the issue and continue with business as usual, particularly in those instances where major adjustments might need to be made in the way we do business and in the way that the benefits of doing business get divided up.

However, it strikes me as a little tone deaf for the future king and descendent of Queen Victoria, to be lecturing anyone on the perils of failing to confront the ills of past empire. In the good old Kipling days of White Man’s Burden, the sun never set on the British Empire, and where there was empire, there was a bleeding off of resources and personnel to serve said empire and its principals, at the top or which pyramid sat Charles’ forebears.

Yes, so, the House of Windsor can speak from a position of authority based on personal experience and hand out free advice to others will have to bear the brunt of any real reconciliation before skipping back to that green and verdant island for a few chukkers of polo. The same applies to the Archbishop of Canterbury, and our progressive Pope. They seem to all be endowed with the same propensity for high-sounding rhetoric devoid of any real meaning whose greatest local proponent would be none other than our current Prime Minister, though there would be many others vying for a position at the top of that scale.

The monarchy, the papacy and the corporate hierarchy represent power and money, both of which are notorious corrupters of any notion of morality (the possible exception being the theocratic republicans wrestling for some notion of the soul of the US, Canada, Hungary, Poland and other jurisdictions where notions of fairness and equity are seriously on the wane) exactly because the deed of reconciliation, all over the World must imply a different way of conducting the business and different outcomes relating to the distribution of wealth. This in not a comfortable notion for those holding the economic and power cards as currently dealt.

Misplaced Priorities

Posted on 2022/05/15 by danneau

So Mr. Horgan will spend the better part of a billion dollars on a rebuild of the Royal BC Museum and tout it as a vital step in reconciliation with First Nations…

I believe that it’s a good thing for a society to maintain artifacts that document its history and cultural antecedents, but this project speaks to a level of extravagance that defies comprehension. We have to wonder how much consultation there was with First Nations about the disposition of such a large whack of provincial funding at a time when the health system seems to be coming apart, when forestry is in ruins, when there are staffing crises in most sectors of the economy, and where civil service bargaining is on the horizon.

Is this the way that FN would choose to spend the loot? might there not be a need to reorient forestry and mining jobs to focus on a truly ecologically sound economy (Clean BC and current forest practices being basically business as usual)?

Here’s a cheap start: take the Royal moniker off the establishment. The Crown continues to be exploitative and contributes nothing other than some phony cachet to our institutions. We may not do so terribly well at governing ourselves (look at the two parties that have alternated in power and their tweedle-dee, tweedle-dum approach to multiple existential crises), but the need for this other layer of Crown interference perpetrates a long tradition of colonial exploitation and pomp that helps to exclude the little folk from the business of governing (as opposed to the political shenanigans that take up the bulk of question period).

Also, lest anyone think of this as an endorsement of any party currently active in BC, let the intellectual net be case a little more widely. The Green caucus has emitted a steady diet of common sense and bold initiative that is a marked contrast to either Liberal of NDP sludge, but a caucus of two and the lack of a coherent party apparatus (which may be what allows the quality of thought to seep through) eliminates the possibility of a government in any foreseeable future. The NDP has dropped the ball on so many fronts that they become almost indistinguishable from the Liberals who preceded them, and the current version of the Liberal Party seems to be just chomping at the bit to get their faces once again fully immersed in the trough of public largesse.

The prospects for both near and distant future become increasingly bleak with each advancing session of the legislature, and wandering off in the weeds with a cool billion is emblematic of our current willingness to bury our concerns in a stinking heap of indifference and vanity.

Addendum: note that Mr. Horgan, following cancer treatment is less filled out than he once was previously. This puts me in mind of a quip from Bertrand Russell that I quoted a couple of times to Scott Fraser when he was our MLA and held ministerial portfolios. The first time it was cautionary, the second in anger at the two-faced nature of the government in relation to Indigenous Relations and to all aspects of environmental policy. I’m feeling the same way with our current MLA and Minister of Municipal Affairs, Josie Osborne:

“No diet will remove all the fat from your body because the brain is entirely fat. Without a brain, you might look good, but all you could do is run for public office.”

—Bertrand Russell

Airshow MacKay Wins!

Posted on 2022/03/30 by danneau

I see the figure for he purchase of F-35s looks like the severe low end of possible contracts for supply of the aircraft, and it will be interesting to see where it lands in terms of provision of proprietary associated infrastructure and other cost overruns. The project is a long and woeful history of ballooning development costs, underperformance, multiple returns to the drawing board, and, finally, a Stealth Fighter that is neither particularly stealthy nor particularly capable as it would need to be in its various appointed rôles, other than fattening the bank accounts of the execs and shareholders at LMM, and the politicians they’ve bought. But, y’know, there’s a war on, and we have to assert out Arctic sovereignty and contain the break-out of autocracy from Moscow.

Not that the scenario would be much better with EADS, Saab, or Boeing/McDonnell/Douglas. We’re investing in war and that’s more than likely to beget war of some sort. We still haven’t found a way to invest in peace. Sorry for all of us.

The Key

Posted on 2021/11/01 by danneau

The Globe and Mail this morning has a post on its site in which it, unsurprisingly, trumpets that:

Private sector holds the key to reaching sustainability, climate goals

The problem is the skepticism engendered by the long history of the private sector spending lavishly to buy favour in the corridors of power precisely so as to keep the aforementioned key buried under a mass of commercial profit-making activity and hidden in a safe where no one is allowed to see it. This goes a long way to explaining why so many governments have continued to be willing partners to destructive business initiatives, and it wouldn’t surprise many of us that the global media have been active in lulling people all over the world into a sense of security and entitlement of what has come to be known as “normal” The recently-concluded G20 hasn’t produced any tangible results, and COP 26 could easily turn into a brilliantly-laundered word-churn accomplishing nothing.

Citizen Science and Halloween

Posted on 2021/10/29 by danneau

For the better part of two decades, we’ve been growing these Baby Bear pumpkins whose seed we get from Johnny’s Selected Seeds in Albion, Maine. They are great eating pumpkins, pie pumpkins, carvers for the not-too-ambitious, and keep well into winter. They have semi-hulless seeds that toast into a most delicious snack. They are the antithesis of what goes on in some corners of the pumpkin patch.

My wife showed me a picture back in the very beginnings of our hanging out together showing a child draped over her father’s giant pumpkin, a whopping 165 pounder. It was not long after that when I first read the name Howard Dill in, I believe, Organic Gardening. Dill’s claim to fame was that he had grown a 439 pound pumpkin, eventually patenting the results of his breeding program as Atlantic Giant seeds, His final largest pumpkin, per Wikipedia, weighed in at 459 pounds.

In the ensuing years, giant pumpkin growing seemed to become quite popular with weigh-ins being held yearly in several strategic locations. A local gardener actually had one of the main heavyweights a dozen or so years back at 1 565 pounds, but I don’t believe it was a record. This morning in the Guardian, I was confronted with a whole tale of this year’s big pumpkin results, always interesting, and it lead to some thoughts about what these growers are accomplishing and some parallels to other areas of human endeavour.

For decades, the weather service in the U.S. was supported by a network of citizen observers and chroniclers who faithfully filed data with the service, building an enormous data base for the study of weather patterns and climate, though this may have fallen by the wayside as populations got more mobile and as satellite data became available to fulfil the same function as the citizen observers. We have a network of air quality sensors around many communities in the province, and I’m sure that similar efforts are in place around the globe. but these networks are much more structured than the pumpkin breeding folks, and it speaks well for the hive mentality that results on the current scale have been achieved over a relatively short span and with minimal outside coaxing. Perhaps the greatest influence here is the lack of profit motive, derived from the growers’ sense that this is a fun and worthwhile past time, and that money shouldn’t enter into it.

Would that our medical and pharmaceutical research might be conducted on the same basis, where research would be funded, but not for profit, where the benefits could be universally available, and where publication wouldn’t be a smoke screen to hide flaws and downstream consequences in aid of turning a buck in the meantime.

Rub Eyes, Shake Head

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