Open Up The Gnarly Gates

The Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers is featuring a series of pretty upbeat ads showing how good the tat sands business is for the whole country, that, dadgummit, they fuel all our activities, and besides, they ensure that people all over the country benefit from jobs in manufacturing and transportation, not to mention spin-off jobs and what a wonderful world it is. You can see this all for yourself at

http://www.capp.ca/Pages/default.aspx

On the other hand, there is the statement issued, today, I think, by some egghead scientists, any one of whom has more credibility in the cuticle of the nail of his left pinky than the whole phalanx of oil patch shills. You can see it here:

http://mahb.stanford.edu/consensus-statement-from-global-scientists/

I can give you the short version, but I recommend you check out the statement and peruse the rather lengthy list of those who’ve signed on in support of the document: it basically tells us what some of the more forward-thinking writers have said for decades, that there are too many of us, that our patterns of consumption are unsupportable, that our living space is already seriously toxic, that we’ve managed to wipe out a huge swath of species, and that we’re staring down our own demise due to accelerated climate change. Of course, a lot of us are staring at our own demise with a blindfold securely covering whatever we normally use to see, and it comes as no surprise that a big part of the blindness is brought on by the smokescreen of don’t-worry-be-happy advertising thrown up by the same people who benefit short term from the destruction they intend to continue wreaking. the same people who have bought, on the cheap, governments who participate fully in the fraud that will kill us all. All parties on that side of the “equation” (a formula which, in this case, represents no equilibrium at all), when caught in a situation where the facts belie what they say, make up their own facts as though they alone can defy the laws of physics, and when they are caught in an outright fiction, their strategy is most often, to lie some more. It’s sad in a way that those who vote for Harper, Wall, Redford, Clark, et al, have so little idea of their share of responsibility for recreating a new version of the middle ages, but at least it will be short-lived as the rulers die in the same cataclysm that will envelope us all.

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.

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.