While he's supposed to be a voice of the Right, you might be hard-pressed to come to that conclusion by reading today's New York Times column by David Brooks.
Brooks laments that his country is becoming a "broken society":
"The public has contempt for the political class. Public debt is piling up at an astonishing and unrelenting pace. Middle-class wages have lagged. Unemployment will remain high. It will take years to fully recover from the financial crisis.
"This confluence of crises has produced a surge in vehement libertarianism. People are disgusted with Washington. The Tea Party movement rallies against big government, big business and the ruling class in general. Even beyond their ranks, there is a corrosive cynicism about public action.
"But there is another way to respond to these problems that is more communitarian and less libertarian. This alternative has been explored most fully by the British writer Phillip Blond."
Communitarian? Did I read that correctly? From David Brooks? Yes, that is indeed the case Brooks makes in his column.
Blond argues that over the past generation we have witnessed two revolutions, both of which liberated the individual and decimated local associations. First, there was a revolution from the left: a cultural revolution that displaced traditional manners and mores; a legal revolution that emphasized individual rights instead of responsibilities; a welfare revolution in which social workers displaced mutual aid societies and self-organized associations.
Then there was the market revolution from the right. In the age of deregulation, giant chains like Wal-Mart decimated local shop owners. Global financial markets took over small banks, so that the local knowledge of a town banker was replaced by a manic herd of traders thousands of miles away. Unions withered.
The two revolutions talked the language of individual freedom, but they perversely ended up creating greater centralization. They created an atomized, segmented society and then the state had to come in and attempt to repair the damage.
...The effort to liberate individuals from repressive social constraints didn’t produce a flowering of freedom; it weakened families, increased out-of-wedlock births and turned neighbors into strangers. In Britain, you get a country with rising crime, and, as a result, four million security cameras.
In a much-discussed essay in Prospect magazine in February 2009, Blond wrote, “Look at the society we have become: We are a bi-polar nation, a bureaucratic, centralised state that presides dysfunctionally over an increasingly fragmented, disempowered and isolated citizenry.” In a separate essay, he added, “The welfare state and the market state are now two defunct and mutually supporting failures.”
...Economically, Blond lays out three big areas of reform: remoralize the market, relocalize the economy and recapitalize the poor. This would mean passing zoning legislation to give small shopkeepers a shot against the retail giants, reducing barriers to entry for new businesses, revitalizing local banks, encouraging employee share ownership, setting up local capital funds so community associations could invest in local enterprises, rewarding savings, cutting regulations that socialize risk and privatize profit, and reducing the subsidies that flow from big government and big business.
...Essentially, Blond would take a political culture that has been oriented around individual choice and replace it with one oriented around relationships and associations.
...Britain is always going to be more hospitable to communitarian politics than the more libertarian U.S. But people are social creatures here, too. American society has been atomized by the twin revolutions here, too. This country, too, needs a fresh political wind. America, too, is suffering a devastating crisis of authority. The only way to restore trust is from the local community on up.
With Brooks it's always a good idea to wait for the other shoe to drop in a week or a month down the line but his analysis sounds sensible - and radical - coming from an American conservative. However it reminds us that not all American conservatives are the malevolent scum manifested in the Cheneys and today's Republican Congress. There are indeed moderate, fiscal but not social conservatives struggling to find a way to regain control of the American Right. We should all wish them well.
Friday, March 19, 2010
The Supreme Court Hands Harper a Thick Slab of Raw Meat
It was a tough case and came down to a 4-3 decision but the Supreme Court of Canada today aquitted a Saskatchewan man of kiddie porn charges. The case came down to the validity and scope of the search and seizure of the man's home computer.
It's a highly technical and complex legal decision on a subject that the public will not abide. The Court showed great courage in holding the line even though it meant aquitting a child pornographer. The fact that the Court was do sharply divided will do nothing to quell the inevitable outrage the Harpies will delight in exploiting.
R. v. Morelli
It's a highly technical and complex legal decision on a subject that the public will not abide. The Court showed great courage in holding the line even though it meant aquitting a child pornographer. The fact that the Court was do sharply divided will do nothing to quell the inevitable outrage the Harpies will delight in exploiting.
R. v. Morelli
Canada Thwarts Bluefin Protection
The Atlantic bluefin tuna is on the ropes. Overfishing has caused stocks to drop by 75% and many countries, including the United States, warn the prized species is seriously endangered. That's why the Harper regime joined forces with the Japanese to sabotage a proposal to ban the export of the bluefin.
In keeping with its enthusiastic support for seabed trawling, Canada joined other nations in rejecting a bluefin ban proposal that came before a United Nations conference on the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species in Qatar.
But wait, there's more!
Canada also blocked an American proposal to ban the international trade in polar bear skin and parts.
Oh well, did you hear about all the gold medals we won at the Olympics?
In keeping with its enthusiastic support for seabed trawling, Canada joined other nations in rejecting a bluefin ban proposal that came before a United Nations conference on the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species in Qatar.
But wait, there's more!
Canada also blocked an American proposal to ban the international trade in polar bear skin and parts.
Oh well, did you hear about all the gold medals we won at the Olympics?
Arms Race Update - Attack of the Drones
North Americans have been largely spared the sort of attacks experienced in other lands. We're surrounded by oceans vast enough to have kept most potential aggressors at bay. The Japanese sent over a few dozen balloons and their subs lobbed a few shells on shore targets but, by and large, we've not had much foreign aggression to contend with.
We did, however, institute a joint US-Canada air defence command, NORAD, to monitor the aerial approaches to our countries and maintain a fighter deterrent to potential aggressors. The focus was mainly on the bomber threat from the former Soviet Union. We deployed a sophisticated, conventional force to meet a somewhat less sophisticated, conventional threat. Well, what about the unconventional?
The Brookings Institute is examining the risk to the North American homeland from attack by unmanned, aerial vehicles, UAVs or drones. The point is no place is out of reach when "..a 77-year-old blind man from Canada designed an unmanned system that in 2003 hopped the Atlantic from Newfoundland to Ireland."
America has gone heavily into drone technology and its potential rivals and its enemies have been watching. Today, two-thirds of military expenditures on drones and drone technology is coming from countries other than the US.
Anyone with the money and a moderate amount of skill can acquire, assemble and launch an intercontinental drone from components freely available on the marketplace. And, as the Brookings report showed, drones can be devilishly hard to track, much less down. They're relatively stealthy and fighter jets have great trouble flying slowly enough to gun them down.
So, here we have an emerging 21st century threat to North American security with an enormously high-tech but potentially ineffective 20th century defence. We know that we're vulnerable, the bad guys know that we're vulnerable and, now, you know it too. It's conceivable that even Peter MacKay and Stephen Harper have finally clued into it ...but then again.
The question is what are we going to do about it? That the threat is real is beyond question. If the bad guys want to hit hard at Main Street, USA, drones are a far better option than highjacking airliners to fly into buildings. These can deliver real WMDs and they don't even have to succeed. The psychological blow is struck as soon as the public learns somebody actually launched one of these drones that could have caused widespread devastation, because, once it's happened the only question on peoples' minds will be when the next one will be launched, the one that will actually get through?
We've spent a lifetime, my lifetime at least, taking war to other peoples' backyards. In fact we're currently waging protracted but ineffective wars in the Middle East specifically (so the Right tells us) that we don't have to fight "them" at home. What if these rightwing nutjobs are wrong? What if their perpetual war actually ensures that the bad guys have every reason to bring their war to us? Tough questions, tough times.
We did, however, institute a joint US-Canada air defence command, NORAD, to monitor the aerial approaches to our countries and maintain a fighter deterrent to potential aggressors. The focus was mainly on the bomber threat from the former Soviet Union. We deployed a sophisticated, conventional force to meet a somewhat less sophisticated, conventional threat. Well, what about the unconventional?
The Brookings Institute is examining the risk to the North American homeland from attack by unmanned, aerial vehicles, UAVs or drones. The point is no place is out of reach when "..a 77-year-old blind man from Canada designed an unmanned system that in 2003 hopped the Atlantic from Newfoundland to Ireland."
America has gone heavily into drone technology and its potential rivals and its enemies have been watching. Today, two-thirds of military expenditures on drones and drone technology is coming from countries other than the US.
Anyone with the money and a moderate amount of skill can acquire, assemble and launch an intercontinental drone from components freely available on the marketplace. And, as the Brookings report showed, drones can be devilishly hard to track, much less down. They're relatively stealthy and fighter jets have great trouble flying slowly enough to gun them down.
So, here we have an emerging 21st century threat to North American security with an enormously high-tech but potentially ineffective 20th century defence. We know that we're vulnerable, the bad guys know that we're vulnerable and, now, you know it too. It's conceivable that even Peter MacKay and Stephen Harper have finally clued into it ...but then again.
The question is what are we going to do about it? That the threat is real is beyond question. If the bad guys want to hit hard at Main Street, USA, drones are a far better option than highjacking airliners to fly into buildings. These can deliver real WMDs and they don't even have to succeed. The psychological blow is struck as soon as the public learns somebody actually launched one of these drones that could have caused widespread devastation, because, once it's happened the only question on peoples' minds will be when the next one will be launched, the one that will actually get through?
We've spent a lifetime, my lifetime at least, taking war to other peoples' backyards. In fact we're currently waging protracted but ineffective wars in the Middle East specifically (so the Right tells us) that we don't have to fight "them" at home. What if these rightwing nutjobs are wrong? What if their perpetual war actually ensures that the bad guys have every reason to bring their war to us? Tough questions, tough times.
Thursday, March 18, 2010
Third Time... Lucky? Or Why Does Stephen Harper Hate Theresa Fraser?
It seems the Harper government can't wait to see Theresa Fraser in the cold, cold ground.
The poor 77-year old from, get this, Garden of Eden, Nova Scotia, has twice been given up for dead by the feds in just the past five months. The government Scrooged Mrs. Fraser the first time in November when she drove into town to do some Christmas shopping. She went to the bank to get out some of her pension money only to find the cupboard bare. The insanely cruel Harper government had stopped depositing her cheques when another Theresa Fraser of Pictou County died.
The bank teller helped Mrs. Fraser get the Canada Revenue Agency sorted out, but not for long. Last week she received a letter addressed to the "estate of Theresa Fraser" demanding return of the $94 GST cheque they had mailed to her in January.
Mrs. Fraser hopes to get this mess sorted out before the Feds are right.
The poor 77-year old from, get this, Garden of Eden, Nova Scotia, has twice been given up for dead by the feds in just the past five months. The government Scrooged Mrs. Fraser the first time in November when she drove into town to do some Christmas shopping. She went to the bank to get out some of her pension money only to find the cupboard bare. The insanely cruel Harper government had stopped depositing her cheques when another Theresa Fraser of Pictou County died.
The bank teller helped Mrs. Fraser get the Canada Revenue Agency sorted out, but not for long. Last week she received a letter addressed to the "estate of Theresa Fraser" demanding return of the $94 GST cheque they had mailed to her in January.
Mrs. Fraser hopes to get this mess sorted out before the Feds are right.
Flakoboucci
Flak. Today, it's a mildly perjorative term for those who toil at "public relations" which is, itself, a highly flattering title for what are often little more than rank dissemblers, obscurers and spin meisters who seek not to 'relate' to the public but to mislead, confuse and manipulate the public. The name itself comes from the German Fliegerabwehrkanone or anti-aircraft cannon that barraged Allied bombers in an attempt to rattle their crews and make them miss their mark.
We're told that the already hyper-secretive Harper regime is not going to allow Parliament to see its documents pertaining to the handling and subsequent treatment of Afghan detainees but, instead, is going to have ex-judge Frank Iacoboucci review them so that he can opine on what MPs may and may not see. Judge Frank has been given guidelines with more than generous wiggle room for him to pass judgment on these documents.
How do we know Judge Frank will be more jurist than flak in this job? Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Who watches the watchmen? Why, I guess that would be Stephen Harper and Peter MacKay, wouldn't it? And isn't that precisely the problem that brought us here?
The opposition needs to dig in on this one but I can't see them willing to risk facing an election over a few tortured Afghans. No, I think they'll use it to make a bit of noise before scampering back into their dark corners. Brace yourselves kids, we may be in for the full Flakoboucci.
We're told that the already hyper-secretive Harper regime is not going to allow Parliament to see its documents pertaining to the handling and subsequent treatment of Afghan detainees but, instead, is going to have ex-judge Frank Iacoboucci review them so that he can opine on what MPs may and may not see. Judge Frank has been given guidelines with more than generous wiggle room for him to pass judgment on these documents.
How do we know Judge Frank will be more jurist than flak in this job? Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Who watches the watchmen? Why, I guess that would be Stephen Harper and Peter MacKay, wouldn't it? And isn't that precisely the problem that brought us here?
The opposition needs to dig in on this one but I can't see them willing to risk facing an election over a few tortured Afghans. No, I think they'll use it to make a bit of noise before scampering back into their dark corners. Brace yourselves kids, we may be in for the full Flakoboucci.
Just Plane Screwy
The Federal Court of Canada has ruled that flight attendants can refuse to fly with a pilot they deem suicidally depressed.
Fair enough.
In August, 2008, four Air Canada cabin crew refused to fly to Paris with a pilot who, on the previous trip, had talked about flying his aircraft into the Atlantic. Air Canada was so concerned that it rounded up replacements and the flight proceeded from Toronto to Paris.
Wait a minute.
Shouldn't Air Canada have handled this just a bit differently? Shouldn't the airline have also found a replacement pilot at least until the situation could be looked into? Maybe the captain was just fine but, when four crew members are willing to risk their jobs over it, shouldn't Air Canada have done just a little more for the passengers and changed pilots?
Just sayin.
Fair enough.
In August, 2008, four Air Canada cabin crew refused to fly to Paris with a pilot who, on the previous trip, had talked about flying his aircraft into the Atlantic. Air Canada was so concerned that it rounded up replacements and the flight proceeded from Toronto to Paris.
Wait a minute.
Shouldn't Air Canada have handled this just a bit differently? Shouldn't the airline have also found a replacement pilot at least until the situation could be looked into? Maybe the captain was just fine but, when four crew members are willing to risk their jobs over it, shouldn't Air Canada have done just a little more for the passengers and changed pilots?
Just sayin.
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
Bravo for the Bloc
BQ MP Francine Lalonde has shown the sort of courage we could use a lot more of in the opposition ranks. She's introduced a private member's bill to amend the Criminal Code and legalize euthanasia and assisted suicide in Canada.
Lalonde, who has herself battled cancer on and off in recent years, is morally and ethically right on this one. From the Toronto Star:
"Helping someone to die gently and without pain, can we call this murder? Many would say 'no.' And that's what I say," said Lalonde (La Pointe-de-l'Île).
"People who are going through a painful terminal phase, we should not refuse them the right to die with dignity.
She said her bill would allow terminally ill patients to "decide for themselves the time of death."
Ms. Lalonde provoked the expected outrage from Conservatives, especially the hysterical social cons like my MP, James Lunney. "Contrary to her intentions, this bill will allow doctors to provide a patient with a lethal injection, making many Canadians vulnerable to premature death," said Conservative MP James Lunney (Nanaimo-Alberni).
This "slippery slope" argument is utter nonsense and Lunney could and should know that. He lives just a few hundred miles north of Oregon which introduced its own assisted suicide legislation several years back. Anyone interested in this would do well to explore Oregon's experience.
In Oregon, terminally ill residents diagnosed with less than six months to live can apply for their programme. This is followed by counselling and interviews with independent physicians. If the applicant meets the criteria and satisfies the physicians there is a waiting period and a subsequent review. Only after that is the individual given a prescription for life-ending drugs.
The patient is given the prescription, that's it. They can have it filled or simply leave it unfilled. As it turns out, only a small percentage get it filled and fewer yet take the drugs. And that's the point, make no mistake about this.
What Oregon's programme does is alleviate the fear of the terminally ill that they may experience absolutely intolerable pain in the process of dying. This programme effectively targets the fear of an anguished death. It is about providing assurance and comfort to those facing the end. That's why most don't take the drugs. They only wanted them to ease their fears.
What kind of animal would refuse that ease of mind to the terminally ill?
Lalonde, who has herself battled cancer on and off in recent years, is morally and ethically right on this one. From the Toronto Star:
"Helping someone to die gently and without pain, can we call this murder? Many would say 'no.' And that's what I say," said Lalonde (La Pointe-de-l'Île).
"People who are going through a painful terminal phase, we should not refuse them the right to die with dignity.
She said her bill would allow terminally ill patients to "decide for themselves the time of death."
Ms. Lalonde provoked the expected outrage from Conservatives, especially the hysterical social cons like my MP, James Lunney. "Contrary to her intentions, this bill will allow doctors to provide a patient with a lethal injection, making many Canadians vulnerable to premature death," said Conservative MP James Lunney (Nanaimo-Alberni).
This "slippery slope" argument is utter nonsense and Lunney could and should know that. He lives just a few hundred miles north of Oregon which introduced its own assisted suicide legislation several years back. Anyone interested in this would do well to explore Oregon's experience.
In Oregon, terminally ill residents diagnosed with less than six months to live can apply for their programme. This is followed by counselling and interviews with independent physicians. If the applicant meets the criteria and satisfies the physicians there is a waiting period and a subsequent review. Only after that is the individual given a prescription for life-ending drugs.
The patient is given the prescription, that's it. They can have it filled or simply leave it unfilled. As it turns out, only a small percentage get it filled and fewer yet take the drugs. And that's the point, make no mistake about this.
What Oregon's programme does is alleviate the fear of the terminally ill that they may experience absolutely intolerable pain in the process of dying. This programme effectively targets the fear of an anguished death. It is about providing assurance and comfort to those facing the end. That's why most don't take the drugs. They only wanted them to ease their fears.
What kind of animal would refuse that ease of mind to the terminally ill?
The Rank Hypocrisy of the Right Makes Even the American Enterprise Institute Puke
It's not easy to get something as far right as the American Enterprise Institute to turn on its own but congressional Republicans and their backers in America's delusional rightwing media did just that.
Norm Ornstein, writing in AEI's Enterprise Blog tears a strip off congressional Republicans, the Wall Street Journal, and all the Republican hacks that infest America's TV and radio outlets:
...I can’t recall a level of feigned indignation nearly as great as what we are seeing now from congressional Republicans and their acolytes at the Wall Street Journal, and on blogs, talk radio, and cable news. It reached a ridiculous level of misinformation and disinformation over the use of reconciliation, and now threatens to top that level over the projected use of a self-executing rule by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. In the last Congress that Republicans controlled, from 2005 to 2006, Rules Committee Chairman David Dreier used the self-executing rule more than 35 times, and was no stranger to the concept of “deem and pass.” That strategy, then decried by the House Democrats who are now using it, and now being called unconstitutional by WSJ editorialists, was defended by House Republicans in court (and upheld). Dreier used it for a $40 billion deficit reduction package so that his fellow GOPers could avoid an embarrassing vote on immigration. I don’t like self-executing rules by either party—I prefer the “regular order”—so I am not going to say this is a great idea by the Democrats. But even so—is there no shame anymore?
Norm Ornstein, writing in AEI's Enterprise Blog tears a strip off congressional Republicans, the Wall Street Journal, and all the Republican hacks that infest America's TV and radio outlets:
...I can’t recall a level of feigned indignation nearly as great as what we are seeing now from congressional Republicans and their acolytes at the Wall Street Journal, and on blogs, talk radio, and cable news. It reached a ridiculous level of misinformation and disinformation over the use of reconciliation, and now threatens to top that level over the projected use of a self-executing rule by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. In the last Congress that Republicans controlled, from 2005 to 2006, Rules Committee Chairman David Dreier used the self-executing rule more than 35 times, and was no stranger to the concept of “deem and pass.” That strategy, then decried by the House Democrats who are now using it, and now being called unconstitutional by WSJ editorialists, was defended by House Republicans in court (and upheld). Dreier used it for a $40 billion deficit reduction package so that his fellow GOPers could avoid an embarrassing vote on immigration. I don’t like self-executing rules by either party—I prefer the “regular order”—so I am not going to say this is a great idea by the Democrats. But even so—is there no shame anymore?
Saturday, March 13, 2010
A "Must Read" for the Liberal Right
Canadian liberalism seems to have lost its way in the Liberal Party's quiet drift to the right under Michael Ignatieff. The Liberal leader is unquestionably well-educated yet he regularly demonstrates the limited value of intellect alone.
Michael's Gumby-like character that seems capable of stretching in any direction on any issue at any moment should be enough to give all Liberals real cause for concern. It points to a serious character flaw, the sort of failing that allows a person to endorse illegal war of conquest before repudiating it or to condone torture before rejecting it or to pre-absolve Israel for its war crimes in Gaza. A person who vacillates so easily, so repeatedly and to such extremes is mere chaff blowing in the wind. You cannot find vision in beliefs anchored to the briefest moments in time.
I don't think the Liberals have much hope of regaining their former prominence until the party returns to the centre-left. And, until it does, I think Canada will be much the worse for it. We will pay a real price, in the medium and long-term, if we don't even our own keel. One point demanding Liberal intervention is the growing wealth gap between rich and poor in Canada.
To those on the right end of the Liberal spectrum I invite you to read "The Spirit Level" by two prominent British epidemiologists, Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett. In Spirit Level, Wilkinson and Pickett bring the scientific approach of epidemiology to bear on the issue of income inequality, the gap between rich and poor, and its effects on modern Western society.
The authors digest half a century of data from the industrialized democracies of Europe, North America and Asia and similar data from each of the United States. The nations and the states are ranked from least to most-inequal and against that are charted their respective performance on everything from mental health, drug use, physical health and life expectancy, obesity, educational performance, teen births, violence, imprisonment and punishment and social mobility. Whether it's a comparison of individual states or of various nations, the results are consistent. Societies with the greatest income inequality always have the poorest performance records. As wealth gap narrows, performance improves. As it widens, conditions worsen.
What's most impressive about Spirit Level is the depth of the research and the manner in which the authors foresee and pre-empt rebuttals about causation, ethnicity and historical influences. They examine and dispose of each of these at length relying not on professional opinion as much as half a century of observation and study.
The lesson of this book is that income inequality results in societal dysfunction. The authors show that this isn't merely a blight on society's poor but also has profoundly negative impacts on all social stratas save for the narrowest at the top. The likewise show that measures to curb income inequality benefit almost all social segments proportionally.
Why I feel it urgent that Liberals open their eyes to the realities of Spirit Level is that it reveals we are closely and perhaps inseparably intertwined with the most dysfunctional society in the developed world, the United States of America. Despite Barack Obama's grand promise of change, the U.S. continues to trend very negatively on income equality and the social ills that it spawns.
A dysfunctional society is a weak society. It is a vulnerable society. Weak or failing societies and enormous social upheaval are expected to be the hallmarks of the 21st century. Even the Pentagon and the CIA have warned this is our future whether we acknowledge it or not. Canada needs a strong, healthy and resilient society even if the United States sees the situation differently. Liberals need to embrace these lessons and realize that Canada and Canadian society may pay dearly for acquiescing to the current drift to the right. Getting back to an even keel isn't going to be easy. It's going to take a leader with resolve and vision and principle.
Michael's Gumby-like character that seems capable of stretching in any direction on any issue at any moment should be enough to give all Liberals real cause for concern. It points to a serious character flaw, the sort of failing that allows a person to endorse illegal war of conquest before repudiating it or to condone torture before rejecting it or to pre-absolve Israel for its war crimes in Gaza. A person who vacillates so easily, so repeatedly and to such extremes is mere chaff blowing in the wind. You cannot find vision in beliefs anchored to the briefest moments in time.
I don't think the Liberals have much hope of regaining their former prominence until the party returns to the centre-left. And, until it does, I think Canada will be much the worse for it. We will pay a real price, in the medium and long-term, if we don't even our own keel. One point demanding Liberal intervention is the growing wealth gap between rich and poor in Canada.
To those on the right end of the Liberal spectrum I invite you to read "The Spirit Level" by two prominent British epidemiologists, Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett. In Spirit Level, Wilkinson and Pickett bring the scientific approach of epidemiology to bear on the issue of income inequality, the gap between rich and poor, and its effects on modern Western society.
The authors digest half a century of data from the industrialized democracies of Europe, North America and Asia and similar data from each of the United States. The nations and the states are ranked from least to most-inequal and against that are charted their respective performance on everything from mental health, drug use, physical health and life expectancy, obesity, educational performance, teen births, violence, imprisonment and punishment and social mobility. Whether it's a comparison of individual states or of various nations, the results are consistent. Societies with the greatest income inequality always have the poorest performance records. As wealth gap narrows, performance improves. As it widens, conditions worsen.
What's most impressive about Spirit Level is the depth of the research and the manner in which the authors foresee and pre-empt rebuttals about causation, ethnicity and historical influences. They examine and dispose of each of these at length relying not on professional opinion as much as half a century of observation and study.
The lesson of this book is that income inequality results in societal dysfunction. The authors show that this isn't merely a blight on society's poor but also has profoundly negative impacts on all social stratas save for the narrowest at the top. The likewise show that measures to curb income inequality benefit almost all social segments proportionally.
Why I feel it urgent that Liberals open their eyes to the realities of Spirit Level is that it reveals we are closely and perhaps inseparably intertwined with the most dysfunctional society in the developed world, the United States of America. Despite Barack Obama's grand promise of change, the U.S. continues to trend very negatively on income equality and the social ills that it spawns.
A dysfunctional society is a weak society. It is a vulnerable society. Weak or failing societies and enormous social upheaval are expected to be the hallmarks of the 21st century. Even the Pentagon and the CIA have warned this is our future whether we acknowledge it or not. Canada needs a strong, healthy and resilient society even if the United States sees the situation differently. Liberals need to embrace these lessons and realize that Canada and Canadian society may pay dearly for acquiescing to the current drift to the right. Getting back to an even keel isn't going to be easy. It's going to take a leader with resolve and vision and principle.
How We Lose Afghanistan
Afghanistan today is really little more than an unresolved civil war in hiatus. We have interceded between the main protagonists, the Northern Alliance warlords, and the Taliban. In the process we have handed over the levers of power to the brutal, corrupt and treacherous warlords of the Northern Alliance while we stepped into their shoes to give battle to the Taliban.
While the warlords have certainly entrenched their cancerous hold on Afghanistan, we have fought a half-hearted, short-sighted war against the Taliban that has seen the 'bad guys' return as an insurgency that morphed into a full-blown rebellion, holding or controlling territory that is supposed to belong to the regime in Kabul.
If we believed we actually had a chance at defeating the Taliban that's what we'd be doing. But we know - and they know - we're not going to defeat them and so, in a war where there is no Option "B", we've decided to go with Option "B" and seek to bring "the Taliban" into a power-sharing arrangement with their Northern Alliance brethren.
As I said at the outset, there is no Option "B" and there never will be. Option "B" is at best a fantasy, at worst a dangerous delusion. Option "B" presumes the existance of a valid central government onto which we can graft the Taliban. Afghanistan has no valid central government, merely a "criminal enterprise" based on a nexus of a corrupt administration and a narco-economy undermined by warlordism and tribalism. We can't even get that to stand up on its own much less graft something else onto it.
Option "B" also presumes we can somehow get these disparate groups to set aside their rivalries and join to form a harmonious, marginally democratic government that will be compatible with our own geo-political interests in that region. We want a proxy state and nothing less. We want a pro-Western Iraq to the west of and a pro-Western Afghanistan to the east of Iran. We want a fortress with which we can contain not merely Iran but also the energy hungry appetites of China and Russia. We want it all.
We want the unreliable Karzai out. He knows it. He knows that Britain and the United States are going behind his back to erode his support among Afghan leaders. We know it. He knows it. Iran knows it. China knows it and Pakistan knows it. Iran and China are moving vigorously to consolidate their positions in Afghanistan. Pakistan wants in too, especially as Karzai has tested the winds and knows there is much to be gained by dumping Islamabad's rival, India, in favour of an Afghan-Pakistan alliance. Iran, China and even Pakistan may have a great deal to gain by backing Karzai, particuarly if that drives a deep wedge between Kabul and Washington and London.
They know our Achilles' Heel - time. Time is not on our side. We can't sustain public support for the Afghan war much longer. The longer Karzai and his backers can dig in their heels, the weaker becomes our hand. We need momentum, they need only inertia.
This might be an ideal moment to fall back on our own default option when dealing with an intractible puppet regime - a military coup. Unfortunately in our eight years of warfighting in Afghanistan we've failed to build an Afghan army capable of taking control of the place.
If nothing else, Afghanistan will have been a terrible expensive object lesson. It has taught us that overwhelming military firepower is no cure all for lousy political leadership.
While the warlords have certainly entrenched their cancerous hold on Afghanistan, we have fought a half-hearted, short-sighted war against the Taliban that has seen the 'bad guys' return as an insurgency that morphed into a full-blown rebellion, holding or controlling territory that is supposed to belong to the regime in Kabul.
If we believed we actually had a chance at defeating the Taliban that's what we'd be doing. But we know - and they know - we're not going to defeat them and so, in a war where there is no Option "B", we've decided to go with Option "B" and seek to bring "the Taliban" into a power-sharing arrangement with their Northern Alliance brethren.
As I said at the outset, there is no Option "B" and there never will be. Option "B" is at best a fantasy, at worst a dangerous delusion. Option "B" presumes the existance of a valid central government onto which we can graft the Taliban. Afghanistan has no valid central government, merely a "criminal enterprise" based on a nexus of a corrupt administration and a narco-economy undermined by warlordism and tribalism. We can't even get that to stand up on its own much less graft something else onto it.
Option "B" also presumes we can somehow get these disparate groups to set aside their rivalries and join to form a harmonious, marginally democratic government that will be compatible with our own geo-political interests in that region. We want a proxy state and nothing less. We want a pro-Western Iraq to the west of and a pro-Western Afghanistan to the east of Iran. We want a fortress with which we can contain not merely Iran but also the energy hungry appetites of China and Russia. We want it all.
We want the unreliable Karzai out. He knows it. He knows that Britain and the United States are going behind his back to erode his support among Afghan leaders. We know it. He knows it. Iran knows it. China knows it and Pakistan knows it. Iran and China are moving vigorously to consolidate their positions in Afghanistan. Pakistan wants in too, especially as Karzai has tested the winds and knows there is much to be gained by dumping Islamabad's rival, India, in favour of an Afghan-Pakistan alliance. Iran, China and even Pakistan may have a great deal to gain by backing Karzai, particuarly if that drives a deep wedge between Kabul and Washington and London.
They know our Achilles' Heel - time. Time is not on our side. We can't sustain public support for the Afghan war much longer. The longer Karzai and his backers can dig in their heels, the weaker becomes our hand. We need momentum, they need only inertia.
This might be an ideal moment to fall back on our own default option when dealing with an intractible puppet regime - a military coup. Unfortunately in our eight years of warfighting in Afghanistan we've failed to build an Afghan army capable of taking control of the place.
If nothing else, Afghanistan will have been a terrible expensive object lesson. It has taught us that overwhelming military firepower is no cure all for lousy political leadership.
Global Warming - Looking At Denialists
Those who "get " the science of global warming now call the naysayers "denialists" or "deniers." They, naturally, cloak themselves in a mantle they ill-deserve, "skeptics." They're skeptical, not readily taken in, not gullible, not weak-minded like the global warming crowd and that dreadful IPCC.
A letter written to the folks at realclimate.org has put the real nature of the denialists in a clear and refreshing light:
"...there are plenty of ill-considered opinions to be found either side of any issue, but only the most ignorant person could fail to see the terrible intellectual gulf between the quality of so-called skeptic sites and those defending the science behind the AGW thesis."
And so the point is driven home. There is legitimacy in true skepticism, an authenticity of approach and process, that the denialists reject. Yet they seek to wrap themselves in a legitimacy they themselves don't respect much less uphold.
My friend Scruffy Dan regularly engages the denialist crowd in his posts, rather graciously taking apart their shallow, brittle arguments one by one. Recently one commenter upheld two leading denialist figureheads. Dan pointed out that these two advanced arguments that were not merely inconsistent, but contradictory. He noted that the denialist community is full of 'experts' who regularly run afoul of each other's theories. The denialist replied that didn't make the slightest difference. I couldn't help but interject that when there were 20-people in a room, each with a different reality, we used to call that an asylum.
A letter written to the folks at realclimate.org has put the real nature of the denialists in a clear and refreshing light:
"...there are plenty of ill-considered opinions to be found either side of any issue, but only the most ignorant person could fail to see the terrible intellectual gulf between the quality of so-called skeptic sites and those defending the science behind the AGW thesis."
And so the point is driven home. There is legitimacy in true skepticism, an authenticity of approach and process, that the denialists reject. Yet they seek to wrap themselves in a legitimacy they themselves don't respect much less uphold.
My friend Scruffy Dan regularly engages the denialist crowd in his posts, rather graciously taking apart their shallow, brittle arguments one by one. Recently one commenter upheld two leading denialist figureheads. Dan pointed out that these two advanced arguments that were not merely inconsistent, but contradictory. He noted that the denialist community is full of 'experts' who regularly run afoul of each other's theories. The denialist replied that didn't make the slightest difference. I couldn't help but interject that when there were 20-people in a room, each with a different reality, we used to call that an asylum.
Sunday, March 07, 2010
Cut It Out, You're Scaring the Driver!
I swear, I promise never again to use the metaphor about 'throwing somebody under the bus.' We've all gotta stop, please?
Put yourself in the shoes of the humble bus driver. Imagine. All you ever read about is people throwing other people under your bus. In other words, you're being used - apparently constantly used - as a freebie executioner. I can't understand how a driver could even look underneath his bus. Every little muffled thump, every bump, you'd be wondering if you just ran somebody over.
There was a time we used to throw people off a cliff or throw them to the wolves or toss them to the lions. My point is there are options. And I'm sure with a little creativity we can come up with no end of new things to throw people to or under or off.
But, please, let's lay off bus drivers - at least for a while. Please?
Put yourself in the shoes of the humble bus driver. Imagine. All you ever read about is people throwing other people under your bus. In other words, you're being used - apparently constantly used - as a freebie executioner. I can't understand how a driver could even look underneath his bus. Every little muffled thump, every bump, you'd be wondering if you just ran somebody over.
There was a time we used to throw people off a cliff or throw them to the wolves or toss them to the lions. My point is there are options. And I'm sure with a little creativity we can come up with no end of new things to throw people to or under or off.
But, please, let's lay off bus drivers - at least for a while. Please?
Maybe the RCMP?
When opposition parties of the past thought the government of the day was up to no good, they would meet with the Commissioner of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and ask the force to investigate. Harper even used the tactic with a compliant (and subsequently disgraced) Commissioner in order to successfully skew an election his way.
So, why don't Iggy and Layton and Duceppe hop OC Transpo to Alta Vista for a sitdown with the current Commissioner?
Oh dear!
That would mean sitting down with the RCMP's first civilian commish, a veteran Tory fixer and lifelong bureaucrat, Harper appointee, Bill Elliott.
"Hey Bill, think you might have a look at this and see if Harper or MacKay or Hillier should be chucked into the Greybar Hotel?"
Okay kids, this one's for the lawn furniture, what do you think are the chances that would get anywhere?
So, why don't Iggy and Layton and Duceppe hop OC Transpo to Alta Vista for a sitdown with the current Commissioner?
Oh dear!
That would mean sitting down with the RCMP's first civilian commish, a veteran Tory fixer and lifelong bureaucrat, Harper appointee, Bill Elliott.
"Hey Bill, think you might have a look at this and see if Harper or MacKay or Hillier should be chucked into the Greybar Hotel?"
Okay kids, this one's for the lawn furniture, what do you think are the chances that would get anywhere?
Saturday, March 06, 2010
Dear Judge Iacabucci - Sorry To See It End This Way
Dear Frank:
You're old enough that you'll be familiar with the line about getting your tits caught in the wringer. Well Frank that's the sort of predicament you've gotten yourself into right now.
You've got another highly esteemed legal mind, international credentials and everything, who has seen the same documents you're going to be reviewing. For all we know he's got copies of them. It seems the guys who are using you screwed up royally and let the smoking guns out long ago on a Freedom of Information enquiry.
Worse still, Frank, this esteemed legal mind has made accusations that take these documents right out of the 'national security' discussion and into the realm of criminal coverup. This guy, Ottawa U law professor Amir Attaran, says you'll be reading documents that make plain that the government was knowingly complicit in torture of Afghan detainees. Attaran says you're going to read that we handed detainees over to Afghan torturers so they could wring intelligence out of them.
And, Frank, the instant you read that and realize what it means, you're going to have to ask yourself if you've been set up to participate in a conspiracy to conceal war crimes. At that point all this 'national security' bullshit becomes just that - bullshit, neck deep.
You know Harper has no legal right to withhold these documents from Parliament. You know it's an abuse of the Canadian constitution to do that. You also know that if Harper had any genuine belief otherwise, he'd be arguing his point before real judges, the folks sitting just a block away, not an ex-judge.
Once you see evidence of a conspiracy to conceal war crimes, you're right between the rock and the hard place. Professor Attaran has given you a gentle reminder that Harper has let these documents slip through his fingers already. At this point you're being set up as Harper's political shill, his beard. You're not to determine fine points of national security and you're not even being asked to deal with the constitution. You're a prop and that's it, a public relations gimmick for the 30% of Canadians who haven't clued in to what a petty tyrant we have running this country.
You've had an impressive career Frank. You built a fine reputation. Too bad you're willing to let Harper throw all that off a cliff to save his political skin.
You're old enough that you'll be familiar with the line about getting your tits caught in the wringer. Well Frank that's the sort of predicament you've gotten yourself into right now.
You've got another highly esteemed legal mind, international credentials and everything, who has seen the same documents you're going to be reviewing. For all we know he's got copies of them. It seems the guys who are using you screwed up royally and let the smoking guns out long ago on a Freedom of Information enquiry.
Worse still, Frank, this esteemed legal mind has made accusations that take these documents right out of the 'national security' discussion and into the realm of criminal coverup. This guy, Ottawa U law professor Amir Attaran, says you'll be reading documents that make plain that the government was knowingly complicit in torture of Afghan detainees. Attaran says you're going to read that we handed detainees over to Afghan torturers so they could wring intelligence out of them.
And, Frank, the instant you read that and realize what it means, you're going to have to ask yourself if you've been set up to participate in a conspiracy to conceal war crimes. At that point all this 'national security' bullshit becomes just that - bullshit, neck deep.
You know Harper has no legal right to withhold these documents from Parliament. You know it's an abuse of the Canadian constitution to do that. You also know that if Harper had any genuine belief otherwise, he'd be arguing his point before real judges, the folks sitting just a block away, not an ex-judge.
Once you see evidence of a conspiracy to conceal war crimes, you're right between the rock and the hard place. Professor Attaran has given you a gentle reminder that Harper has let these documents slip through his fingers already. At this point you're being set up as Harper's political shill, his beard. You're not to determine fine points of national security and you're not even being asked to deal with the constitution. You're a prop and that's it, a public relations gimmick for the 30% of Canadians who haven't clued in to what a petty tyrant we have running this country.
You've had an impressive career Frank. You built a fine reputation. Too bad you're willing to let Harper throw all that off a cliff to save his political skin.
A Shot Across Iacabucci's Bow?
Ottawa University law professor Amir Attaran may have thrown a wrench into the gears of Harper's determined, perhaps desperate efforts to conceal documents pertaining to torture of detainees captured by Canadian forces and handed over to Afghan captors.
Professor Attaran claims he's seen the documents and they're unequivocal. He maintains they show detainees were handed to the Afghans for what Michael Ignatieff politely refers to as 'enhanced interrogation' in order to extract intelligence from them.
There are some fascinating dimensions to Attaran's gambit. He says the documents exist. He says they show a deliberate policy of torture. In other words, Professor Attaran is telling the public that retired Justice Frank Iacabucci will be receiving unredacted documents that plainly show we had a policy of using Afghan government thugs to torture detainees to extract intelligence.
But wait, there's more!
What's also implicit in Attaran's statement is that we did this, we duly recorded the fact and that information was conveyed through channels to Ottawa. People in Ottawa knew and that means they'll be accountable for their actions once they knew. Who would that be? Almost certainly it would include senior officers at the Defence Department and, unless they're willing to throw themselves on their swords, the knowledge trail would likely skip right over the Laurier Bridge to Parliament Hill.
But wait, there's even more!
How did a law professor come to see these unredacted documents when the Harper regime has them so securely under lock and key? The most likely explanation is that someone inside thought they needed to be leaked and was willing to risk the consequences to prevent them from being buried. Who, what, when? I would expect professor Attaran has already had his first sit down with the RCMP. We know that Harper doesn't like upstarts telling the public the truth he doesn't want them to hear.
And, you guessed it - even more.
Now most of you kids are probably too wet behind the ears to recall a guy named Daniel Ellsberg and what became known as the Pentagon Papers. Ellsberg was a Pentagon analyst who leaked rafts of documents showing that the Pentagon knew Vietnam was unwinnable. That was quite the scandal. The American newspapers had a field day with that. The point is, once this sort of stuff is leaked, the genie is forever out of the bottle.
I'm guessing that Attaran was shown these documents by someone of conscience unwilling to let them be buried. That suggests the documents Harper is struggling so fiercely to bury have already fled the coop and may be circulating in public.
My bet is that Amir Attaran has fired a shot across Justice Iacabucci's bow. He's just told Frank Iacabucci and Stephen Harper and all those safely-retired generals that they've lost control of these documents and, if they don't release them, someone else just might. And, if Attaran's accounts of what's in these documents is right, that kids may be game, set and match.
Professor Attaran claims he's seen the documents and they're unequivocal. He maintains they show detainees were handed to the Afghans for what Michael Ignatieff politely refers to as 'enhanced interrogation' in order to extract intelligence from them.
There are some fascinating dimensions to Attaran's gambit. He says the documents exist. He says they show a deliberate policy of torture. In other words, Professor Attaran is telling the public that retired Justice Frank Iacabucci will be receiving unredacted documents that plainly show we had a policy of using Afghan government thugs to torture detainees to extract intelligence.
But wait, there's more!
What's also implicit in Attaran's statement is that we did this, we duly recorded the fact and that information was conveyed through channels to Ottawa. People in Ottawa knew and that means they'll be accountable for their actions once they knew. Who would that be? Almost certainly it would include senior officers at the Defence Department and, unless they're willing to throw themselves on their swords, the knowledge trail would likely skip right over the Laurier Bridge to Parliament Hill.
But wait, there's even more!
How did a law professor come to see these unredacted documents when the Harper regime has them so securely under lock and key? The most likely explanation is that someone inside thought they needed to be leaked and was willing to risk the consequences to prevent them from being buried. Who, what, when? I would expect professor Attaran has already had his first sit down with the RCMP. We know that Harper doesn't like upstarts telling the public the truth he doesn't want them to hear.
And, you guessed it - even more.
Now most of you kids are probably too wet behind the ears to recall a guy named Daniel Ellsberg and what became known as the Pentagon Papers. Ellsberg was a Pentagon analyst who leaked rafts of documents showing that the Pentagon knew Vietnam was unwinnable. That was quite the scandal. The American newspapers had a field day with that. The point is, once this sort of stuff is leaked, the genie is forever out of the bottle.
I'm guessing that Attaran was shown these documents by someone of conscience unwilling to let them be buried. That suggests the documents Harper is struggling so fiercely to bury have already fled the coop and may be circulating in public.
My bet is that Amir Attaran has fired a shot across Justice Iacabucci's bow. He's just told Frank Iacabucci and Stephen Harper and all those safely-retired generals that they've lost control of these documents and, if they don't release them, someone else just might. And, if Attaran's accounts of what's in these documents is right, that kids may be game, set and match.
If Frank Iacabucci was supposed to be Stephen Harper's beard, he just got trimmed.
Friday, March 05, 2010
Is There A Smoking Gun on Afghan Torture Waiting for Iacabucci?
According to an Ottawa University law professor the documents to be laid out before retired Supreme Court of Canada justice Iacabucci reveal Canadian officials handed over Afghan detainees to torturers for the specific purpose of gaining intelligence.
Professor Amir Attaran has told CBC News that he's read the unredacted documents the Harper government is hiding: "If these documents were released [in full], what they will show is that Canada partnered deliberately with the torturers in Afghanistan for the interrogation of detainees," he said.
"There would be a question of rendition and a question of war crimes on the part of certain Canadian officials. That's what's in these documents, and that's why the government is covering up as hard as it can."
If professor Attaran is right and if these documents become public, either by being released by Iacabucci or through back channels, it's foreseeable that the chain of command of culpability could reach straight up to the upper echelons of the Defence Department and into the Harper cabinet as well.
In the United States this would be brushed off as all but completely irrelevant but isn't that mentality part of what has brought that once great country low? If professor Attaran is right, if these documents contain what he says he's read with his own eyes, then it'll be our turn to confront government criminality. Will we stand against it? Will we refuse to tolerate it? Will we demand that wrongdoers in high office be punished? Or will we follow the example of the American people, shrug and avert our eyes to it?
How we, the Canadian people, respond to this may define the kind of people we'll be and the Canada we'll have for decades to come. Let's hope that we appreciate what we may be coming up against.
Professor Amir Attaran has told CBC News that he's read the unredacted documents the Harper government is hiding: "If these documents were released [in full], what they will show is that Canada partnered deliberately with the torturers in Afghanistan for the interrogation of detainees," he said.
"There would be a question of rendition and a question of war crimes on the part of certain Canadian officials. That's what's in these documents, and that's why the government is covering up as hard as it can."
If professor Attaran is right and if these documents become public, either by being released by Iacabucci or through back channels, it's foreseeable that the chain of command of culpability could reach straight up to the upper echelons of the Defence Department and into the Harper cabinet as well.
In the United States this would be brushed off as all but completely irrelevant but isn't that mentality part of what has brought that once great country low? If professor Attaran is right, if these documents contain what he says he's read with his own eyes, then it'll be our turn to confront government criminality. Will we stand against it? Will we refuse to tolerate it? Will we demand that wrongdoers in high office be punished? Or will we follow the example of the American people, shrug and avert our eyes to it?
How we, the Canadian people, respond to this may define the kind of people we'll be and the Canada we'll have for decades to come. Let's hope that we appreciate what we may be coming up against.
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