The Liberal Party is broken: A new Policy focus needed

The Liberal Party of Canada is broken. Its political strategists are grossly incompetent and the party has no long term strategy to speak of. However that is not the worst of it; the party has lost the ability to inspire; it is party without a soul or character.

The confrontational, impish, poetic and witty Trudeau is gone, as is the crusty, cagy street fighter Chrétien. The last Liberal leader neither inspired Canadians with his intellect and humor, nor did he have our grudging respect as many had for Chrétien’s plebian tenuousness. Martin was not hated; he was the kind of Prime Minster a focus group would prefer; he was good on paper. However, in reality Martin’s temperamental conservativism, stuttering, dithering and lack of conviction, corporate world view that shone through even in the name given to Liberal candidates, viz., “Team” Martin, dampened the enthusiasm for those how supported Liberal social policy. Such was the case with child care and SSM. His naïve belief that he could use Gomery to win the Liberal civil war and still come out unscathed was one of the biggest blunders in Canadian political history. Such was Martin’s talent, people thought he was lying even when he was telling the truth.

Graham is little better, but he is only a temporary plug.

In order to capture the imagination of Canadians the Liberals need to develop policies that are as readily comprehensible as tax cuts are. Simply promising to improve health care, the environment and education mean nothing. Indeed, as a rule of thumb if the negation of a promise makes no political sense, then such appeals are so much hot air and noise. Furthermore, although promises to increase funding to the aforementioned big three are not completely void, Canadians need to know just how increased funding will be cashed out, so to speak.

The Liberals need to look beyond our borders as a guide, but they need first look back at the past. Trudeau’s lasting legacy will be the Charter and the Charter, or more correctly the longing for “a Just Society” that the Charter symbolized are still part of the Liberal brand name. The Charter is designed to help make a dreams come true. Incidentally, unaware of the significance and meaning of Trudeau’s legacy, Martin perverted Trudeau’s vision in defending SSM. For Martin, the Charter was not a tool to better ourselves with and not a symbol of hope for a better tomorrow, but a legal framework compelling us to act a la Max Weber’s Iron Cage of Rationality. “Our hopes are high. Our faith in the people is great. Our courage is strong. And our dreams for this beautiful country will never die” became one can not “cherry pick rights”; the implication being that SSM was not a cherry. For Martin’s Liberals, SSM was not a righteous cause, but was rather the straight man’s burden.

Part and parcel of rediscovering Trudeau’s legacy is that the Liberals need to rediscover universality. Under Mulroney and Chrétien universality died as Stephen Harper duly and happily noted in 1994.

"Universality has been severely reduced: it is virtually dead as a concept in most areas of public policy…These achievements are due in part to the Reform Party.”

Under Martin the Liberals did rediscover universality again – well sort of. They promised to implement a “universal” early childhood education program that would in drips in drabs grow bigger over literally decades with no time line as to when the program would become truly universal. The more the Liberals talked up the need for more child care the more inadequate and lackluster their proposal appeared. Needless to say, piece meal universality is no universality at all and if the Liberals want to capture the imagination of Canadians by promising a universal program they better make sure that they are able to deliver and all at once.

One issue worth exploring is expanding the Canada health care to include dental care. As business picks up most of the dental tab already, the idea of offloading the coasts of dental to the public sector will have its supporters even on the corporate right. Paul Martin may be of some use still.

Alas it is unlikely that the current crop of Liberals will move beyond their commitment to universal early childhood education for 10 to 15 percent of children 3 to 6 in 5 to ten years time. Worse, the way Harper is going the ability of the Federal government to implement any social programs is quickly being crippled.

One thing that Liberals can certainly do is to steal a page from the rest of the Western world minus the US and give Canadians more vacation time. Everyone else gets at least 4 weeks: Canadians deserve no less.

If the Liberals going to recapture the hearts of Canadians they are going to have stop acting and sounding like a bunch of ninnies and above all stop trying to please everyone. Paul Martin sometimes acted as if he was heading up Disney and not a political party. Martin acted as if scandal and controversy were of a piece. They are not. The foundation of many a government is controversy and confrontation. Isn’t that right Ralph Klein? The foundation of Klein’s rule has been opposition to Ottawa and it not just a coincidence that Klein was being ushered out the door as a new Conservative Prime is being ushered in. Anyway, back to Trudeau for second. Could anyone ever picture Martin saying the following?



“Yes, well there are a lot of bleeding hearts around who just don't like to see people with helmets and guns. All I can say is, go on and bleed”



Rhetoric only goes so far though. If one is really going to piss off a targeted group and have them scream bloodly murder, there is no substitute for policy. Now, pitting one region of the country against region is not good long term strategy. It limits one potential for growth. The targets should be selected on primarily on the basis of ideology and the nature of the confrontation should be just that. For the Liberals, as I have said time and again, angering social conservatives and the Bush administration is winning strategy, particularly with regards to Quebec. And as I have said time and time again, promise to legalize marijuana, for one, and force Stephen Harper into defending an intellectually bankrupt prohibitionist along with Bush administration and James Dobson. Every bad word from Dobson and Bush is a free ad time as far as the Liberals would be concerned. What seals the deal is that unlike opposition to SSM employed by Karl Rove in the States, legalizing marijuana is a good politics because in the long term it is the right thing to do and as such a good long term play.

Kyoto represents one of the failings of the Martin government. Martin was not entirely to blame. The opposition successfully saddled Martin with Chrétien’s poor environmental record even when Martin’s financial commitments to Kyoto were quite substantial. Where the Martin government fell down was that Martin’s environmental policy depended upon the public understanding Kyoto. They did not and quite frankly never will. The same thing can be said about Global warming. It is an abstract concept and one that probably appeals to many Canadians in winter. Moreover, as with SSM, Martin emphasized not the merits of Kyoto, but Canada’s Kyoto obligations. I image many Canadians recalled their mothers urging them to eat their broccoli as homage to the starving kids in Africa whenever they heard Martin talking about Canada’s Kyoto obligations.

Kyoto is important yes, but the Liberals have quite a bit of leg work before it can become a burning issue. What the Liberals need to do is they need to draw out the immediate to long term consequences of smog, say. In order to sufficiently appeal to Canadians the Liberals need to forget about thinking globally and focus locally.

Vancouver and Toronto should be two of the focal points. Vancouver is rightly regarded as one of the world’s most beautiful cities, the ocean and the Mountains being its two biggest selling points. However every summer brings more smog and the view of the North Shore Mountains becomes a little less stunning. If this continues, there will be potentially huge long term consequences for Vancouver’s tourist industry to mention just one. This point can brought home by juxtaposing older clear pictures of mountains of Santiago Chili and LA with newer ones taken from the same vantage point showing them obscured by smog.



As for Toronto, the emphasis should be on how air pollution is affecting the daily lives of people who live there. How many smog days are there? What is the impact on the cities most vulnerable? As with Vancouver, juxtaposing older and newer pictures of cities aboard should be used. Pictures of people in Tokyo; the older ones showing people walking around without masks and the newer ones of people walking around wearing masks, should hit home. Two pictures of the same person would be good.

Is "only the fittest survive" a tautology?: A Wittgensteinian Take

“One of the best documented examples of natural selection in modern times is the English Peppered Moth. Typically, this moth is whitish with black speckles and spots all over its wings. During the daytime, Peppered moths are well-camouflaged as they rest on the speckled lichens on tree trunks. Occasionally a very few moths have a genetic mutation which causes them to be all black, so they are said to be melanistic. Black moths resting on light-colored, speckled lichens are not very well camouflaged, and so are easy prey for any moth-eating birds that happen by. Thus, these melanistic moths never get to reproduce and pass on their genes for black color. However, an interesting thing happened to these moths in the 1800s. With the Industrial Revolution, many factories and homes in British cities started burning coal, both for heat and to power all those newly-invented machines. Coal does not burn cleanly, and creates a lot of black soot and pollution. Since lichens are extremely sensitive to air pollution, this caused all the lichens on city trees to die. Also, as the soot settled out everywhere, this turned the tree trunks (and everything else) black. This enabled the occasional black moths to be well-camouflaged so they could live long enough to reproduce, while the “normal” speckled moths were gobbled up. Studies done in the earlier 1900s showed that while in the country, the speckled moths were still the predominant form, in the cities, they were almost non-existant. Nearly all the moths in the cities were the black form. It was evident to the researchers studying these moths that the black city moths were breeding primarily with other black city moths while speckled country moths were breeding primarily with other speckled country moths. Because of this, any new genetic mutations in one or the other of those populations would only be passed on within that population and not throughout the whole moth population. Additionally, because the city and country environments were different, there were different selective pressures on city vs. country moths that could potentially drive the evolution of these two populations of moths in different directions. The researchers pointed out that if this were to continue for a long enough time, the city and country moths could become so genetically different that they could no longer interbreed with each other, and thus would be considered distinct species. In this case, what actually happened is that the people of England decided they didn’t like breathing and living in all that coal pollution, thus found ways to clean things up. As the air became cleaner, lichens started growing on city trees again, thus the direction of the selective pressure (birds) was once again in favor of the speckled moths. By now, English cities, as well as countrysides, all have speckled moths, and all are interbreeding at random, thus were not separated for long enough to develop into separate species.”

Let us suppose that contrary to all expectations after the trees of Northern England were no longer covered in soot the black coloured moths continued to thrive at the expensive of the speckled coloured moths. Some have implied that this would be a strike against Darwinian Theory; the theory would have predicted a falsehood, viz., only the fittest survive. I think they are mistaken. Only the fittest survive is not proposition and as such true or false. Rather, survivability is a built in criterion of fitness.

Back tracking a bit, I think we can agree that the reason the speckled coloured moth was expected to resume its original predominance was that it was presumed to be better suited to its environment. In other words, it was presumed to be fitter. Here in lies the problem for opponents of my view. By holding that “only the fittest survive” is like any old proposition they unwittingly run two empirical propositions together, viz., the notion that only the fittest survive and the notion that speckled colouring confers fitness. As a result, they render both unfalsifiable. Indeed, faced with such contradictory evidence one can always insolate one proposition by rejecting the other. Either, the speckled coloured month’s colouring did confer fitness and Darwinian maximum is wrong, or the moths colouring did not confer fitness and the Darwinian maximum still holds.

Conversely, in accordance with what I said above about “only the fittest survive” being a criterion of fitness, I would say that the hypothesis that the speckled coloured moth’s colouring gave it a selective advantage is false. This is also the conclusion I think scientists would draw. By holding out survival as a criterion of fitness we are able to test our predications as to who we think is fit in present day populations (e.g. a population of moths). I suppose we could do something similar using complex computer programs for past populations. Feeding all the information we have about old environments into computer simulation program, we could test various adaptationist explanations.

Before I am dismissed as an adherent of the view that the Darwinian maximum reduces to completely vacuous “only survivors survive”, let me say this. Populations change from generation to generation and often in a particular direction. This is denied by no sane person. The rub for scientists has always been how to account for these changes. There have been many ill fated attempts. Lamarck’s theory of acquired characteristics being passed down to the next generation being the most well known. Darwinians say that “natural selection” can explain at least some of these changes in populations and most people, even creationists, have no trouble conceding that it can (e.g., as in the moth example quoted at the beginning). Darwinian Theory fits with our understanding of genetics and there are powerful mathematical models that explain how selective pressures can change the distribution of any one gene in a given population and at can explain at what rate that change occur. (Of course, these models also explain why artificial selection works) All in all, Darwin has offered up the most coherent and popular theory to date. Where they part ways with many lay people, at least in the States, is that Darwinians believe, as any believer in evolution does, that these changes can eventually lead to speciation.

All that being said, it seems outrageous to say that the success of Darwinian Theory rests on some slight of hand. There is good reason for this. When you really get down to it what Darwinians do is to come up with just so adaptationist stories for why this or that trait or behavior evolved and make predications about survival rates based upon what who they think is fit. As noted, there is nothing suspicious about the latter. As for the former, many are admittedly speculative. However, they are no more mysterious, or on a less academically sure footing than many other historically based fields of endeavor. Moreover, many of the best known evolutionary theorists (e.g., Stephen Jay Gould) reputations rest or rested on their willingness to rein in those who went beyond the available evidence.

Another fundamental misunderstanding concerns the nature of the maximum itself. A statement is tautological in so far as the meaning of the terms are defined by means of each other. In this case, so the argument goes the fittest are those who survive, and those who survive are deemed the fittest. With regards to the famous Darwinian maximum this is false. It only makes sense to talk about fitness in terms of populations that have undergone or are undergoing selective pressures. A segment of the population is fit relative only to another segment of the population that is unfit. If one invokes another mechanism to explain some trait’s dominance, then strictly speaking there is no segment of the parent population that is fitter than any other and consequently it would be inappropriate to describe the offspring (i.e., survivors) of that population undergoing, for example, genetic drift as being fit or not. To think it otherwise leads to the strange conclusion that any Darwinian who wanted to stay true to the maximum would have to avoid ever adopting another evolutionary mechanism.

In coming to this conclusion about the nature of Darwinian maximum, I did not draw my inspiration, Popper, who at one time thought the Darwinian maximum to be a tautology, but rather Wittgenstein. Wittgenstein rejected the Logical Positivist mantra that some propositions are true by definition (e.g. “All bachelors are unmarried men” is true by virtue of the meaning of “bachelor” and “unmarried men”). However, Wittgenstein thought the positivists like so many before them were right to think so called analytic statements were special. He thought, though, they were wrong to think them propositions. According to Wittgenstein such statements are, rather, explicit rules for how to use words (e.g., “All bachelors are unmarried men” rules out the use of word bachelor in the following sentence. “She was a lifelong bachelor.”) Wittgenstein likens these explicit rules to the hum drum rules of grammar. Indeed, he deems them as being part of grammar proper. Like the everyday rules of grammar, they help constitute the bounds of what is sensible and unlike propositions are neither true nor false.

Wittgenstein thought that not all grammatical statements were so easy to pick out. In fact he held that people frequently mistake some grammatical rules as normal propositions (e.g., Sensations are private) When that happens he said, “language goes on a holiday” and the only way “to shew the fly the way out of the fly-bottle” is to investigate, hence the title Philosophical Investigations, the relationships between the offending rule and others parts of language. In Wittgenstein’s case, what such a typical investigation involved was Wittgenstein showing how treating a particular grammatical rule as a proposition leads to absurd conclusions. If successful a cloud of philosophy would be condensed into a droplet of grammar.

If I had to classify “only the fittest survive”, I would say it was a grammatical statement and the absurd conclusion that is avoided by treating it as such is the possibility that sometimes the weakest survive.

Official Multiculturalism: Part 2

I would like to make two clarifications about the last post. First, Multiculturalism helped speed up the process of cultural change and make the transition less painless. It was not the driving force behind cultural change; increased immigration was. Another important factor that helped birth the new Canada was that social mobility for new Canadians has been, relatively speaking, pretty good. Too be sure, there are areas of Vancouver, say, were virtually all school children are members of minority groups. However, all regions of Vancouver have a large ethnic mix. This is in marked contrast to areas of many ethnically diverse cities in the UK and the US, where white enclaves still exist. (Speaking of ethnically homogenous, you could literally have counted the number of people of colour at the Yankees and Red Sox games playoff games.)

Yes, multiculturalism sometimes encourages people to fail to take ownership of their membership within Canadian society, but outside of Canada’s native communities (a separate issue really) I do not see this as a big problem. More and more Canadians describe themselves as Canadian and this is particularly true of young Canadians. More than anything else, the risk is that multiculturalism could provide fertile ground (e.g., by making various cultural institutions (e.g. Sharia law) more available) for this trend reversing itself. Since 911 and start of the War on Terror, some members of well integrated and prosperous groupings in the States (e.g. in LA’s Iranian community) have started to turn their back on American society and have sought to crave a more “authentic” identities for themselves. (The New Yorker had a profile of two Americans of Iranian decent who had sought to create such an identity. It made for strange reading. The teenage son of long time US citizens was using the very writings of the same Mullahs his parents left Iran to escape to create for himself a new identity. Also strange was how much to his consternation and surprise the Iranian traditions and language he picked up in LA alienated him from his Iranian cousins. The idiom and slang he used was 25 years out of date and made him sound not like his peers put like their parents.)

Official Multiculturalism

Official multiculturalism has been a success, but not in ways usually appreciated. Official multiculturalism proved to be the death nail Anglo Canadian identity based on god, king and country. As it stood Anglo Canadian values were not woven together by prominent national myths as in the United States and without official state sanction such an identity simply dissolved as Canada opened its borders to more and immigrants. Only trace elements remain.

The policy was not nearly so successful when it came to Quebec. Quebec nationalists have for decades used to state institutions to sew together a new secular identity out the historical threads of an older catholic Quebec that modernity had unraveled. Thankfully, the emergence of a large “ethnic” community has made Quebec nationalist identity based on blood and shared historical grievances into an anachronism. Perhaps with help of Harper, the sovereigntists dream may very well be realized, but it will not be the Quebec Lévesque wanted.

Official multiculturalism has done something else. It has severed as an anticoagulant, preventing a crust from forming on top of the Canadian melting pot. Canadian identity is, as it should be, a work in progress. There is no Canadian dream as there is an American dream. We are not limited that way. We do not believe in passing down a script of what it means to be Canadian down from one generation to the next. We leave it up to each generation to decide who they are through existential engagement. The process only allows a generation to do decide who they were by retrospectively looking back; for Canadians as for Hegel, the Owl of Minerva only flies at night. For those who are still the sunshine of their lives, they simply say want they know they are not, viz., Americans.

If there is a downside of official multiculturalism it is this: it has helped encouraged certain forms of ethnic essentialism. Cultural traditions are not something that can be boxed away and put in a museum. Cultural traditions are by products of a great interplay of forces (political, social, and economic) and it is these forces that give the traditions their meaning. Take the Hindu prohibition against killing cattle. Taken alone the prohibition seems strange. However, the important role the cow has played, and indeed in some parts of India continues to play in the lives of peasants, such a prohibition becomes intelligible. (Cow dung was important source of fuel and building material. Cattle were used to plow fields and of course cows are source of milk.) Removed from social-economic body, these traditions harden and eventually die.

That said, not everyone recognizes this, including it seems the government of Canada, and here in lays the rub. Things can go badly in one of two ways. Parents may force these traditions that once where alive for them onto their children for whom they never where, or children can adopt these dead traditions as means of creating an identity for themselves (e.g., the large number of North African youth in France turning to Fundamentalist Islam). The former creates generational divisions and is natural enough. The later is far more serious. I think it is safe to say that it heightens ethnic tensions, but it does something else as well. As these cultural traditions are not given any meaning by the larger societal forces, they only come to have meaning by virtue of them being practiced exclusively by a particular group and more often than not by all supposedly self conscious group members. The many people who stray from identity supposedly prescribed to them by such things as skin colour are not looked upon kindly by “self conscious” members of the same group and a whole host of names have evolved to describe them. Apple for example is used to describe a native Canadian who is red on the outside but is white on the inside. Banana is used to describe someone of Chinese origin who is yellow on the outside but white in the inside. Oreo is used to describe Black person who is black on the outside, but white in the inside. On the flip side of things, people who are supposedly not free to develop such practices are guilty of cultural appropriation.

Belief and Desire not Choosen

Beliefs are not something one chooses. I do not choose to believe there is a computer screen in front of me, nor do I choose to believe I am now typing. I just so believe. The same goes with desires. I do not choose to desire a glass of water. I just desire one. Why anyone would think it any different when in comes to sexual desire is beyond me. The whole debate about whether homosexuality is a byproduct of biology, while interesting, is complete red herring. Whatever the casual history of a desire it is not chosen.

Why we should not care about a guility Mind

In order to be found guilty in our system one has to have a guilty mind. It is for this reason that young offenders, children, people with mental defects and the criminally insane are given lesser sentences or no sentences at all. They are deemed not as capable of understanding all our some of the consequences of their actions. It is also for this reason that people found guilty of manslaughter receive a lesser sentence than people guilty of first degree murder. And finally, it is for this reason that people of Native decent are to be treated more leniently by the courts. In the eyes of the law makers, the social environment is a mediating factor and must be taken into account when sentencing Native Canadians.

One problem with all this is roughly as follows. Rather than being able marshal the full weight of the sciences in its efforts to curb future criminal acts, our legal system is undermined by some of them. Indeed, the social sciences, in so far as they are, as any first year professors will tell you, deterministic, are like little factories producing ready made mitigating factors.

Now, when defense attorneys use one of these ready made mitigating factors, the response of many people is to jump up and to do what amounts to denying the validity of these areas of study. “His childhood had nothing to do with it. He knew exactly what he was doing and he chose to do wrong.” This response is neither legally sound nor rationally convincing. Worse still, it takes the focus away from the true source of the problem, i.e., the notion of culpability. There is no better demonstration of this than the XYY chromosome defense and the decision to have the courts treat Native Canadians more leniently.

Used in the 1970s the XYY argument is in its most basic form this. Males with an extra Y chromosome are inherently violent and thus are not criminally responsible for their actions. The defense failed, but only because the defense was based on bad science. In theory is could have worked. In our legal system, it is possible that someone could be found not guilty because they are inherently violent.

As for Native Canadians, the powers that be looked at the crime figures and saw that Native peoples commit an unusually large number of crimes and have a higher rate of recidivism. They, rightly, concluded that their social environment had something to do with it and in a highly controversial decision decreed that Judges must consider the social environment when sentencing Native peoples. Put differently, their reasoning was this. The social environment predisposes Native Canadians to commit a greater number of crimes, hence high crime rate, and because they are so predisposed Native offenders are not as culpable and therefore should be sentenced more leniently. This is, indeed, consistent with our current understanding of culpability, but needless to say it seems just, well, ass backwards. If someone is more likely to re-offend, or commit some other crime, than it only seems reasonable to give them a stiffer sentence and not a lighter one.

Smoking Bans

While people, can certainly choose what pubs and clubs they go to and while people can refuse to work in a certain establishments, most people have no choice but to work. As such, most people would agree that in theory that the government should prohibit employers from needlessly exposing their employees to danger. Alas though, theory is one thing and practice is another. For all sorts of reasons, regulatory bodies sometimes turn a blind eye to work place dangers and when called on this they simply deny the obvious. There should be no such discrepancy in the case of second hand smoke. The government readily acknowledges that second hand smoke is dangerous. It is for this reason that they require tobacco companies to say that “second hand smoke kills” on cigarette packaging and it is for this reason that they have already banned smoking in most workplaces already. Some governments have even mulled over the suing tobacco companies over the damage that second hand smoke has caused. All of this makes the failure of certain governments to extend such a ban to all workplaces particularly galling. But there is more. Eventually someone will get around to suing one or more levels of government for this and while private individuals and entities can always argue the merits of claim that second hand smoke is dangerous, the government, whose stated position is that second hand smoking is dangerous, would be forced to either concede the point, or undermine the basis one of largest public health campaigns in the country’s history and worse still the very legitimacy of all future public health campaigns.

Dangerous Offender Status and Capital Punishment

Even though there is no proof that capital punishment serves as a deterrent, I think a case for capital punishment can be made. From time to time certain criminals hit a societal nerve. Not surprisingly, once caught and convicted these people become the face of evil for whole communities. Here in lies the problem; so long as these people remain alive these communities remain haunted by such figures. There is no better example of this than Clifford Olson. Since, his arrest in 1983, Olson has found himself in the media spotlight from time to time and whenever that has happened old wounds where once again ripped open. Olson also has become the living embodiment of what people think is wrong with the justice system. Executing Olson and his kin seems the only way giving afflicted communities, but certainly not loved ones, a sense of completion and peace and clear sense that justice has prevailed.

The problem is that if Canada were to reintroduce the death penalty as a punishment for first degree murder, some of the same problems that plague the States and helped get capital punishment abolished in the first place would again plague the Justice System. Most notably, while the introduction of DNA evidence has lessened the likelihood of innocent person being put to death, the likelihood of an innocent person being convicted of a capital crime, somewhere down the line, is still pretty high. As such, just as Olson has become a living argument for capital punishment, Guy Paul Morin has become a living argument against capital punishment.

I think there is a way around this objection, but to my knowledge I am the only one to have put it forward. What I purpose is that the state be allowed to execute someone not for what they have done per say, but for what they are. In a Canadian context what this would boil down to is this: Rather than defining what is a capital crime, the notion of Dangerous Offender should be refined to include people convicted of murder and that authorities should have the option of executing, at least offenders, deemed such because they met the first criteria listed below. Technically speaking, the possibility of executing a person for a crime they did not commit would not exist. Currently, “under the Dangerous Offender provisions, the Crown can ask that an offender be sentenced to remain in prison for as long as he or she is considered dangerous, which in some cases, can be indefinitely. This must be done through a special court hearing held soon after the offender has been convicted. Not all offenders are considered dangerous. In order to be considered a DO, an offender must have committed a "serious personal injury offence" (for example, sexual assault, manslaughter or aggravated assault). Murder is not included since a conviction results in an automatic life sentence. In addition, there must be evidence to show that the offender constitutes a risk to others, based on any one of the following:

•a pattern of repetitive and persistent behaviour that is likely to lead to injury or death, or a pattern of aggressive behaviour showing indifference to the safety of others;

•the likelihood of injury through a failure to control sexual impulses; or

•a crime so "brutal" that it is unlikely the offender can inhibit his or her behaviour in the future.

Incidentally, "as of September 24, 2000, there were 276 active Dangerous Offenders in Canada; representing approximately 2% of the total federal offender population.”

Tuition Hikes

I am puzzled as to why I keep coming across the following rather stupid argument for hiking tuition fees in Canada. The argument goes something like this. There is a wide income gap between people with university degrees and those without degrees. Clearly, obtaining a university degree leads to better things and given that gap seems to be ever widening, having a degree will probably be even more valuable in the future than it is now. That being the case, it is only right that those that who benefit from obtaining a degree pay more towards what it costs to educate them.

Now, leaving aside the problems associated with drawing a causal relation from a correlation, problems associated with projecting data well into the future and whole host of other missing caveats, let us just assume that they have hit the nail on the head. Obtaining a university degree is well worth it.

Does it follow from this that the only way of having students give back to society is by having them pay higher tuition fees? Of course, it does not. As a population, those with degrees earn more than the rest of the population and so pay more taxes. Once more, the way the system is currently set up the more you benefit from your degree the more you pay.

I dare say, the tax route is a much more attractive option for other reasons too. People are not burdened with the expense of having to pay for their education at a time when they can least afford it (when they first step into the working world), but will instead be able to pay for it at a time that they can most afford it. What is more, this way the person that benefits from the having a degree is more likely to assume more of the financial burden. After all, in many cases a student’s family fits all or part of the cost associated with obtaining a degree.

The real beauty of this argument, though, is that it can be employed against those who object to tax option on the grounds that a degree holder pays the same tax rate as a non degree holder in the same tax bracket. Tongue firmly in cheek, simply agree that, alas, this is true. Despite the fact past graduates had their education supplemented by tax payers to a much larger degree then is the case now, university graduates pay no more than non degree holders in the same tax bracket. Having said so, ask the following question: If current students, who have yet to benefit from their education, should be made to pay for a larger chunk of what it costs to educate them, should those who are currently benefiting from having a degree also be made to pay retroactively for a greater chunk of what it cost to educate them?

Different rules Different Game

During a conference on female circumcision a French theorist stood up and questioned the very validity of the conference. I can not remember exactly what he said, but he was a moral relativist and what he said went something like this: Who are we to tell them that female circumcision is wrong? There are no absolute criteria by which they can be judged.

Now, typically moral relativists buttress their arguments by employing concepts like "language games" and "incommensurability". However, I have not come across someone who has employed concepts such as those against moral relativism. This, though, is what I will attempt to do.

"Who are we tell them that a rook can not move diagonally?" What makes this sentence seem perfectly odd and "Who are we to tell them that female circumcision is wrong?" common place? Are we right to treat the two differently?

With regard to the first of these questions, there is, of course, nothing wrong of a conceiving of a game in which the “rook” can move differently. It is just that that this game would not be chess. The pieces might be the same and the board might be the same and the other pieces might move in identical manner. However, the game of chess is, by and large, no more then the sum of the rules that make up the game and moving a “rook” thus would violate those rules. (It should be pointed out that a chess piece, such as a rook, is a chess peace by virtue of the rules of the game not by virtue of what it is called or how it is shaped. For this and other reasons, a move is only a move in a game.) Different rules different game. (To be sure, it is possible to conceive of chess as being played in alternative manner. Imagine for example that in the Western world the pawn can be moved two spaces forward on its first move, like it is now, but that the Chinese forbid it. My playing partner and I could then ponder whether we wanted to play by Western rules or by Chinese. However, there would be no non question begging why of determining what was the right way to play chess, the Chinese way or the Western way. Minor differences do not always add up to a difference in kind.)

Now, there are societies in which female circumcision is consistent with “moral” teachings of those societies. That is not in dispute, nor is the notion that female circumcision violates “western” ideas of what is right. What I think should be disputed is the notion that we can not condemn the practice because other people “conceive” of “morality” differently. The problem for the moral relativist is not that, dammit, female circumcision is just wrong. His problem is it is not enough to say that Westerners engage in particular language games and that the rest of the world plays in some cases altogether different games. What he needs to do is akin to explaining how a game of chess is more than just the sum of the rules of the game. He needs to show that the game westerners play is the same game that other people play, only it is played according to entirely different rules. Only then will he be able to say in the case of female circumcision that for one group the move is legitimate and for the other group illegitimate.

The problem is, though, that failing to condemn female circumcision would send logical tremors that could threaten to break apart the series of interlocking language games we call morality. We can no more recognize an alternative account arising from a different set of moral precepts than we can recognize a game in which a “rook” moves differently as chess.

All told, if we conceive of morality as simply a bunch of interlocking language games, what we end up with is remarkably similar to the static universal morality that the moral relativists dismiss. The moral relativist is right about the very human origin of morality and chess. However, what makes, say, a game of chess a game of chess is simply that the game is played in accordance with the rules that make up the game. As such, there are limits to the extent we can change the rules of the game and have it still have it remain the same game.

Dick Pound is an Idiot

IOC should stop trying to ban every conceivable substance that might enhance an athlete's performance. There is simply no way of ever achieving a mythical level playing field. Indeed, the fact of the matter is that access to good trainers and good training facilities, being able to afford the right equipment, good nutrition, excess to health care and having the time to train are far more of an advantage than downing a few cans of Coke before a race. This is the reason why Norway (population 4.5) beats China (population 1.4 billion) in the Winter Olympics. Instead, what the IOC should seek to do is to ban substances that both improve performance and that have not been proven to be safe. In other words, the IOC should seek only to ban substances whose use would threaten workplace safety.

This should go for other sports as well. As it stands, the emphasis on potentially banning any substance that may improve performance regardless of the health costs associated with it has driven a wedge between various parities in the sporting world in part by obscuring just how some performance enhancers can reduce workplace safety. (It has also led to some pretty strange talk. For example there was talk of banning oxygen cambers for awhile. The reason being there is that although they are not in anyway dangerous, there is some evidence that by speeding up the healing process -- god forbid! -- it “artificially” improved performance.) No where is this more apparent than in major league baseball. Fearing what testing might mean for a few individual players, the major league players union has lost sight of the following. Most major leaguers who use steroids feel that the lax testing in baseball, do in large part to the players union, has created an environment where they are forced to take them in order to keep up with other players that use. Asked if they would then welcome more stringent testing, the vast majority said yes.

A Paradox

If you feel that a group should abstain from a particular activity for the simple reason that they lack the ability to fully appreciate the consequences of carrying out such an activity, then what sense does if make to try to convince them of that? Indeed, either such an enterprise would undermine the very basis for having them abstain from the activity in the first place (by helping see the possible consequences of a given course of action), or it would be a complete waste of time (i.e., they would not grasp the link between a given course of action and a possible outcome). However, such seems to be the case for many school programs. Teachers regularly delineate possible outcomes of certain activities (e.g., choosing to become sexually active). They then test them to see whether they understand these links. At the end of the day, however, no teacher that I know tells students that have mastered the subject matter that they should now feel free to become, say, sexually active.

At best, what can be said in the case of alcohol is this: "Yes, there are plenty of teenagers that know how to drink responsibly and you might be one of them. However there is a critical mass of teenagers that do not. With this in mind, the courts have set the drinking limit at 19. Now, in order for the law to be workable, the law must target all of those under the age of 19 and not just those who drink irresponsibly.

Continuing on in rant mode, it is clear that the just say no drugs and alcohol model simple does not work. Now, let me add to the speculation as to why. Somehow it is not dawned on the just say no crowd that some teenagers will continue to drink and do drugs no matter what and that by tailoring their message only to those kids who are having drugs pushed on them they are, among other things, failing to reach one of the most influential segments of teenager culture, viz., those that push drugs onto other kids. One needs to acknowledge this group and teach them to respect those who refuse their overtures.

Liberals must Court Controversy

The timing of the 2004 election call was all wrong for the Liberals. I told this to a Liberal MP during the 2004 election. He agreed. I said that he should have called a late fall election to coincide with the US election. The Liberals could have more easily painted Bush and Harper as two peas in a pod. However, Martin never fully realized what a pariah Bush had become until well into 2005 and he was reluctant to go back on a promise to Canwest Global and CEOs everywhere to improve relations with the Bush administration (Incidentally, when CEOs call for improved relations with Bush what they are really calling for is for the road to further integration not be blocked by politics.) In typical fashion, Martin took that tact an election too late. By December 2005, Harper had realized that he had to distance himself from Bush if only on the surface. Harper managed to do this rather effortlessly. It did not matter a lick that Harper uses Republican talking points by the volume, has repeatedly bashed Canada in terms that would make Carolyn Parrish blush, ends his speeches with “God bless Canada”, supported the Iraq war, promised that SSM would wreck havoc on the country and what he has to say about government is more or less indistinguishable from Grover Norquist. Harper’s word that he was not a Republican want to be was good enough for docile, biased, gullible, ignorant and lazy political Canadian punditry.

The other reason why Martin was an election too late in his anti-Bush rhetoric was that Bush was a spent force politically in December 2005; he was less threatening as a result; he no longer represented the same ideological challenge and Canadians could not as easily define themselves as being anti Bush because America, Canada’s identity foil, no longer believed in him. Indeed, by the fall of 2005 it was clear to everyone that Bush administration had made some serious errors in Iraq and top officials, most notably Rumsfailed, are incompetent. After Katrina, the competence critique became received wisdom and not only with regards to Iraq but virtually all areas of governance. The red state blue state debate that many Canadians had lived vicariously through various US media outlets died down and after a while it just seemed that the media was piling on.

Yet another reason why the timing of the 2004 election was all wrong was that it was too close to the breaking of the sponsorship scandal. The more time that eclipsed the better for the Liberals.

Without Bush as foil, what is the Liberal Party to do? Set the media agenda. The Liberals might have been in power for the last 13 years, but it is conservatives have determined what the media has talked about for most of it. Not all this is the Liberals fault.

Tory Toadies Worthington, Yaffe, Michael Campbell, Frum, Harvey Enchin, Trevor Lautens, Don Martin, Charles Adler, Lorrie Goldstein, Paul Jackson, Ken Whyte, the list goes on and on, are all de facto agents of the Conservative party. These pundits figure that it is too much trouble to critically examine Conservative talking points when you can mindlessly repeat them as if they are some sort of Buddhist chant designed to clear the mind. Take Dingwallgate, for example. For a whole month various Tory Toadies across the land went off about Dingwall wild expenses. Assuming that most of them truly believed what they said, they had no excuse for not having done some basic fact checking and their lack of outrage at Conservative Pallister for magically transforming, for one, a 2 day conference for 24 a romantic dinner for two speaks volumes about their complete lack of regard for the most basic tenant of their profession, i.e., a respect for the truth. The fact that some of the pundits are now blaming only Chicken Little Martin for having fired Dingwall is a further affront to the reading public.

As a group, these Tory Torries are not, however, without a sense of humor. Virtually all insist they are courageously fighting a rear guard action against the “mainstream media”; in their mind the "MSM" love the Liberals and are dangerously anti-American. Needless to say, all of available evidene proves that anyone who believes this is either ignorant or retarded. Declan from Crawl accross the ocean sums up the findings of the 2006 McGill Media study and makes clear that things were no rosier for the Liberals in 2004. http://crawlacrosstheocean.blogspot.com/2006/01/conservative-media-part-3.html



quote:
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"During the campaign there were 3,753 articles written about the election in the 7 newspapers studied (The Calgary Herald, The Globe and Mail, The National Post, the Toronto Star and the Vancouver Sun, La Presse and Le Devoir)

Of those 3753, 3035 mentioned the Liberal party. Out of those 3035, there were 40 with positive mentions of the Liberal party and 445 with negative mentions of the Liberals, giving a 11 to 1 ratio of negative mentions to positive (slightly higher than last election's 10-1 ratio).

Meanwhile, for the Conservative Party, the figures were 2730 total articles, including 144 positive mentions and 127 negative mentions, for a slightly positive overall slant (the positive mentions were similar to last election, but the negatives were cut in half).

The NDP garnered 2% positive mentions and 3% negative mentions, while the Bloc received 2% positive coverage, 4% negative.

The numbers for the party leaders are quite similar with Martin getting 5 negative mentions for every positive one, while Harper received more favourable than unfavourable mentions."
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Operating under this assumption, they give Conservative leader Stephen Harper free reign to deride Canada as some second class banana Republic whenever the urge strikes him, but screamed bloody murder when back bench Liberal MP blasted arguably the most hated man alive, viz., George Bush. Indeed, such unforgivable blasphemy was countered in a front page editorial (The Vancouver Sun) on at least one occasion. All of this has left a remarkably strange record in the annals of Canada’s press. References to former Liberal back bencher Parrish’s transgressions abound, but Conservative Leader, and current Prime Minster, Stephen Harper’s Canada bashing has only ever reached the light of day when the Liberals have leaked it to the media and is never touched by pundits working outside of Toronto. Type in "Damn American, I hate those bastards" (Parrish) in a Canwest archive and you get 324 hits. Type in "second-tier socialistic country" as in http://www.stephenharpersaid.ca/


quote:
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Harper: "Canada appears content to become a second-tier socialistic country, boasting ever more loudly about its economy and social services to mask its second-rate status, led by a second-world strongman appropriately suited for the task.Albertans would be fatally ill-advised to view this situation as amusing or benign. Any country with Canada's insecure smugness and resentment can be dangerous."
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You get 28 hits. Indeed, when such an unfortunate speech came to light last election, Canwest global did its best to both distance itself from the bad news, by implying that their reporters and pundits would never dream of actually finding out what Harper has said of their own accord, and to try to harm the Liberals at the same time, by printing the following from the Conservative war roomers at Canadian Press. http://www.canada.com/national/features/decisioncanada/story_05.html?id=0177dfdd-e9c6-4275-9749-7278ab7cf64d




quote:
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“OTTAWA (CP) _ An eight-year-old Stephen Harper speech dug up by Liberal researchers cracks a rare window into campaign war-room strategy, media manipulation and the ethical quicksand that sometimes underlies an election leak. This is a tale that reflects well on no one. In its simplest terms, the Liberals used a third party to put a buffer between them and a story that was unflattering to the Conservative leader. It began the day before the first
televised leaders' debates in Vancouver, with the Liberals scrambling to change the channel following the already infamous ``beer and popcorn'' gaffe by communications director Scott Reid and an unusual mid-campaign broadside from the U.S. ambassador to Canada.Alex Munter, a former Ottawa city councillor and
well-known gay rights activist, helped set the ball in play.”
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Once one gets past the Tory Toady crowd, there is the Conservative ideologue crowd, Andrew Coyne being its most prominent member.

However, truth be told Paul Martin never met a Conservative issue he did not like. Whether it was addressing the “democratic deficit” or as mentioned previously promising better relations with the US, Martin was there. Indeed, it is debatable whether Martin or Harper liked to talk about the sponsorship scandal more. (It was obvious to all but Martin and the beer and popcorn crowd that calling the Gomery inquiry would a) prolong the amount of coverage the sponsorship scandal would receive, b) drive up support for separatism, and c) magnify the affects of scandal on party by airing the party’s dirty laundry in a public forum. The smart thing to do would have been to call an RCMP investigation. However, I have sneaking suspicion, and I am just speculating here, that Martin, confident in the belief that he was not involved, thought he could use the Gomery inquiry as a means of crushing the Chrétienites once and for all. If this was his motivation and he seriously thought that he could call such and inquiry and not fatally damaging his party’s reputation at the same time, he was hopelessly naïve. One can not wholly rebuild a ship while out at sea.

The only way the Liberals are going to set the agenda in this media climate is if they grow some balls and court controversy. One would think that a party rocked by scandal would have done so long along (e.g., Martin could have used the Terri Shivio debate late last March, just before the April bombshell, as a pretext for promising to introduce something that might actually find favor with Quebecers because it is well progressive, viz., a euthanasia bill.) After all, doing so would have been a good way of changing the subject. However, Martin had his eye on the ball the whole time; he did not wish to divert the public’s attention from the sponsorship scandal least they forget that it was he who called the Gomery Inquiry.

So, what issues are likely to grab the media’s attention and to be treated by them in judicious manner? I just mentioned one. Euthanasia is a so called hot button issue. Another issue is the liberalization of Canada’s marijuana laws. (In the wake of the Alberta shootings, the number of articles dedicated to the subject was fairly substantial. If legalization was ever seriously on the table, the amount of coverage this subject would garner would easily match the amount of attention SSM garnered and, given the weightier consequences, likely surpass it.) If things worsen there and public opinion is marshaling against the mission, Afghanistan is potentially another.

One reason the Liberals have avoided hot button issues in the past is that voters, as older people vote in disproportionately large numbers and young people vote in disproportionately small numbers, tend to be more conservative than the population on the whole. Older people tend to be bigger defenders of the status quo then younger people. On the surface not rocking the boat is the smart play.

However, politics is all about defining yourself and opponent(s) in terms that are favorable to oneself. SSM was not a winning issue in terms of the support it garnered amongst voters, but having the Conservatives defend a legally, morally and intellectually bankrupt position certainly helped the Liberals. Indeed, it was the only issue that Martin and crew really stuck it to the Conservatives.

Of the three mentioned above, there is one issue in particular that could turn into next election’s SSM issue and that is a promise to legalize marijuana. It not a particularly pressing issue and it is certainly not the most important, but then again neither was SSM. Tackling it would, however, put the Conservatives in the position of defending an intellectually bankrupt prohibitionist stance. It is also an issue that would garner a lot of international attention, particularly south of the boarder -- attention that would not be flattering to the Conservatives. Rock stars, sports stars, Hollywood, academics, high brow papers and magazines, such as the New Yorker and NY Times, would side with the Liberals; the Christian right, a Bush administration with no credibility and fox news would line up behind the Conservatives. The prospect of such a policy dealing a death blow to the US war on drugs would really stoke interest.

The bonus for the Liberals is support for such a policy is strongest in BC and Quebec, two provinces that they really need to make gains in.

Trevor Carolan: North Shore News Columnist and Conservative Toadie

Conservative MPs and ideologues alike have adopted 2006 Conservative candidate’s Rondo Thomas’s most famous utterance as their mantra: “the facts don’t matter.” North Shore News columnist Trevor Carolan is such an ideologue. He is trying to wrestle the title of village idiot away from fellow North Shore News columnist Trevor Lautens. The North Shore News meanwhile seems eager to recapture the title of Vancouver’s most backward newspaper, a title it automatically won every year Doug Collins was on Staff. Here are his most recent idiocies:

“Fellow citizens never mind the avian flu. Consider instead the contagionof
unelected officials their weight around with the health of our civil society.In
Ottawa, Bernard Shapiro, the unelected Liberal-appointed parliamentary
ethicscommissioner, is hassling Prime Minster Harper about David Emerson.”

I am not sure if Carolan is calling for an elected MP to be sworn in as ethics commissioner. (Incidentally, the ethics commissioner has no power to sanction anyone. That is left to the house.) Needless to say, that is as bad idea as appointing Stockwell Day to cabinet.

Anyway, Conservatives have tried to paint Shapiro as a Liberal appointed hack. He is not and the Conservatives have some nerve painting him as one, but this is politics and Harper knows that lying has served his mentors in the Republican Party well. Carolan, on the other hand, has no excuse. There is no reason for him to parrot Conservative party talking points. He should know that all parties backed Bernard Shapiro’s selection in the spring of 2004. He should know that one of Conservative’s campaign promises was to the "Strengthen the role of the [aforementioned Liberal appointed] Ethics Commissioner”. He should know that Harper’s threat to not cooperate with the ethics investigation was not exactly in keeping with the following: "Stephen Harper will . . . prevent the prime minister from overruling the ethics commissioner on whether the prime minister, a minister, or an official is in violation of the conflict of interest code." Hell it is was not even in keeping with the code of ethics: “27.(5). Once a request for an inquiry has been made to the Ethics Commissioner, Members should respect the process established by this Code and permit it to take place without commenting further on the matter.27.(8). Members shall cooperate with the Ethics Commissioner with respect to any inquiry.” The PMO said Harper was “loath” to cooperate.

That said, in light of Shapiro’s most recent report, do not expect the Conservatives to introduce a new ethics commissioner any time soon. They already have their man, only Carolan did not know it at the time is probably wishing he could go back in time and rewrite his column. It is hard for Carolan to pronounce Shapiro’s report objective having just characterized him as a hack. After all, hacks are by definition guided by something other than the facts and as in common law, precedent matters.

“But Shapiro’s ethics appear selective: Where was he when Belinda Stronach
wasinstantly rewarded with a cabinet post after defecting to the Liberals
lastyear, foreshadowing the Emerson switch.”

Does the North Shore News employ a fact checker? The reason why Emerson was investigated and Stronach not was that Shapiro was asked to investigate Emerson, but was not asked to investigate Stronach. The CBC explains the relevant Act. "the 2004 amendments to Parliament of Canada Act that sets out Shapiro's powers and duties, requires him to investigate anytime he has had a formal request from a member of the Commons or Senate. The act allows him to discontinue an examination if he finds no merit to the allegations. But even if he discontinues it he still is obliged to provide the prime minister and Parliament with a report setting out the facts in question and his own conclusions."http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/realitycheck/20060308sheppard

“Under the gutless Federal Liberals the Supreme Court began flexing its
abs,functioning as judicial activists rather than interpreting laws.”

Yet more parroted dribble from Carolan. What the hell is an “activist” judge? As the class of Vancouver Sun's editorial deparment Peter McKnight pointed out, the only coherent and comprehensible definition of judicial activism is when the courts over rules government legislation. The problem for Conservatives is that by that measure the most conservative Justices in both Canada and the States are also the most activist. In study after study conservative judges over rule more legislation than liberal judges. That little ditty should not trouble Carolan though. For him, “the facts don’t matter”.

Trevor Lautens Election Wrap UP

Trevor Lautens begins his 2006 election rap up http://www.nsnews.com/issues06/w012206/014306/opinion/014306le1.html with “So the West wanted in.” He must be recycling old material from elections past. The Liberals won the most seats in Vancouver and NDP the most seats on the Island. Both are West of Alberta, and Prince George. Politics in Canada is no longer dominated by regional animosities the way it once was. If there is a geographical split it is more rural/urban than Western Canada/Eastern Canada. The Conservatives took no seats in urban Toronto, Montreal or Vancouver. This was a trend that was readily apparent last election too. In other words the “west” died before it ever got in.

Anyway, who needs facts? Not Lautens. He has rhetoric, clichés, dogmatism and Conservative talking points. Apparently, the Vancouver Sun several times, the Georgia Straight http://www.straight.com/content.cfm?id=15430 , the Vancouver Province, and the Tyee http://thetyee.ca/News/2006/01/11/MuffledModerate/ do not count as media. All mentioned the fact that Bell and Silver went to the same church. “the media glossed over the fact that her Liberal opponent, the aforementioned Don Bell, attends the same evangelical church Silver does.” None mentioned though that only Silver had personally (A petition submitted by Ted White
http://www.parl.gc.ca/english/hansard/previous/106_94-10-07/106RP1E.html ) and professionally (the Vriend case http://www.lexum.umontreal.ca/csc-scc/en/pub/1998/vol1/html/1998scr1_0493.html ) pushed for employers to have the right to fire employees simply because they are gay, but hey Bell and Silver go to the same Church and so they are two peas in a pod right. All Christians take such a position.

Finally, a Lautens article would not be complete without an attack on the country’s pro Liberal media; needless to say, the fact all of print media, with the exception of the Toronto Star, endorsed the Conservatives was not addressed by Lautens.

“The Liberals tried to make much of some supposedly scarifying Stephen Harper
statements in past speeches in the United States. But what bubbles up to the
media surface can be remarkably selective. I can't recall hearing this reported:
Stephen Lewis, as I found in an idle Internet moment, spoke to the Canadian
Council on Social Development in Winnipeg in 2004. He told attendees that he had
spent the previous week in Las Vegas, Salt Lake City, Washington and New
Orleans, and went on, ‘Precisely, all of the pre-Paleolithic Neanderthals you
can imagine at a variety of speaking events.”

I was wondering the same thing myself. Why was the media not publishing old Stephen Lewis speeches dug up by the Conservatives? After all, Lewis has only been away for politics for 28 years now and was not running in last month’s election.

Speaking of old quotes, Silver brought up retired Carolyn Parrish during the election. I guess she thought the Liberals made the Conservatives look bad when they kicked her out of office. You see, serial Canada basher Stephen Harper has said “Any country with Canada’s insecure smugness and resentment can be dangerous” http://www.stephenharpersaid.ca/ and was elected Conservative party leader. Conversely Parrish called Bush and company names and was eventually dropped from caucus. The straw the broke the camel’s back was her ridiculing none other than Paul Martin. http://www.cbc.ca/story/canada/national/2004/11/18/parrish041118.html

She had no reason to fear. Parrish comments have recieved more media attention over the years than Harper's. The same goes for Ducros' "moron" comment. The press cares little about what Harper has actually said. Indeed, in two successive elections now the Liberals have dug up and leaked to the press constroversal speeches, this 2004 http://www.ccicinc.org/politicalaffairs/060103.html and this in 2006 http://www.cbc.ca/canadavotes/leadersparties/harper_speech.html . In a surreal turn that speaks volumnes about poverty of news coverage in this country, during the last election some news organization decided that the fact that the Liberals leaked the speech was itself newsworthy. I guess it did not dawn on these organizations that reporting such an item as news damaged these organizations' reputation by revealing that they were unaware of the speech for all this time and that they only discovered it because of the digging done by a politcal party.

Cindy Silver Sharon Hayes Endorsement Goes Missing

North Vancouver Conservative candidate Cindy Silver once listed former Reform MP and current Focus on the Family board member Sharon Hayes as having backed her campaign. The endorsement has vanished from her website, but it can still be found. "When I first met Cindy twelve years ago I saw in her a unique combination of skills. Here is a woman whose personal priorities are in place, who gets to the crux of the legal issues and find solutions, who speaks and writes well, and is willing to work with and on behalf of others. As one of the first women elected to represent the Reform/Alliance Party, I would be delighted to see Cindy take the baton and run with it in the next Conservative government." Sharon Hayes Reform Party MP (Port Moody–Coquitlam) 1993-1997"

(Somehow Cindy Silver’s people where able to remove the link from google cache. However, Bouquests of gray, who made news headlines for his work on the Grewal case, was too quick on the draw. http://bouquetsofgray.blogspot.com/2005/12/why-did-cindy-silver-remove.html )

Presumably one problem with Hayes endorsement was that in an attempt to throw cold water on a UN women’s conference in China Hayes once sent out a news letter alleging that the Chinese government permitted the “consumption of human fetuses as health food”, thereby implying that this practice existed in China. “Chinese doctors” eat them just "like vitamins." In the eyes of Chinese medical community, they "even better than placentas" in terms of the health benefits that can be derived. Even after the controversy broke and even after it was pointed out to her that the basis for the story had long since been debunked, her constituency office continued to send out stories about alleged Chinese cannibalism. (Journalist Murray Dobbin’s old Reform watch site a good place to start looking if one is interested, but there no shortage of Vancouver Sun and Province articles as well. ) The other problem was that none other than Cindy Silver’s then employer Focus on the Family sent a pamphlet to two million American and Canadian households containing the allegation and this reassurance. "For the benefit of the skeptical, let me assure you that every word in this letter has been carefully documented. Nothing has been exaggerated or overstated." As with Hayes, they wanted to disrupt the upcoming conference. Two Vancouver Sun letters to the editor, sent the same day, provide a nice point of contrast between the public’s outrage and the Focus on the Family intransigence.

“The fetus story certainly seems consistent with other policies of the Chinese government in regard to abortion -- and the devaluing of females and families with more than one child. What alarms us at Focus on the Family is not just the track record of the conference's host country, but the agenda of those who have worked tirelessly behind the scenes and in the preparatory meetings at the UN to attack the family. It may make great newspaper copy, but to quote an Anglican woman as saying Focus on the Family is ``the devil in disguise'' and ``anti-women and homophobic'' is certainly inflammatory. It is offensive to us because of its inaccuracy and its potential effect on people who don't know us. Our constituents know us well enough to understand that we support women in the various roles they take in society as wives, mothers, single parents, businesswomen, etc. Our only fear about homosexuality is in regard to its well-documented dangers. JIM SCLATER Focus on the Family”

``Chinese people are cannibals'' by Reform MP Sharon Hayes (Reform MP attacks ``ultra-pro-feminist summit,'' Aug. 21). Born and raised in China, we have never heard of eating human fetuses as medicinal practice. Surely, there are components in Chinese herbal medicine that might seem strange to other cultures, but with a civilization almost 5,000 years old, behaviors such as incest and cannibalism were abandoned even in ancient China. Ms. Hayes' accusation of the Chinese being cannibals is based solely on a Hong Kong tabloid newspaper, the nature of which is similar to the National Enquirer. This accusation has not been confirmed by any other news organizations. Furthermore, we support the United Nations Conference on Women. The goal of such a conference is to try to provide equality to all women in the world and this concept is not ``ultra-pro-feminist.'' …. This type of rash accusation and ignorance form the basis of racism and hate crimes.”

Buckets has posted elsewhere about Cindy Silver

Summary http://bouquetsofgray.blogspot.com/2005/12/hiding-agendas-cindy-silver-north.html

7) http://bouquetsofgray.blogspot.com/2005/12/hiding-agendas-7-cindy-silver-on.html

6) http://bouquetsofgray.blogspot.com/2005/12/hiding-agendas-6-cindy-silvers.html

5) http://bouquetsofgray.blogspot.com/2005/12/hiding-agendas-5-cindy-silvers.html

4) http://bouquetsofgray.blogspot.com/2005/12/hiding-agendas-4-cindy-silvers.html

3) http://bouquetsofgray.blogspot.com/2005/12/hiding-agendas-3-look-ma-no.html

2) http://bouquetsofgray.blogspot.com/2005/12/hiding-agendas-2-learning-code.html

1) http://bouquetsofgray.blogspot.com/2005/12/hiding-agendas.html

The Iraq Fly Paper Theory

According to the so called fly paper theory, the jidadists have diverted most of their resources to attacking US soliders in Iraq. This argues Bush and company has made America safer. It is much better for the US to have their troops fight it out with Jihadists in Iraq than to be sitting back and having terrorits attack US civilians back in the US. The latter is precisely the position the US would be if the US had not invaded Iraq.

The flypaper theory, needless to say, has always struck most as being highly dubious. However, until now there has between little direct empirical evidence to contradict the Bush
Administration’s claims.

Two recent studies hav confirmed many what many long suspected; far from attracting terrorist to the Iraq war is helping to create more in two respects. http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/world/3269420 Namely, the Iraq war motivated many to join the Jihadists and second it provided these raw recruits with the training they would be unable to recieve in their own countries. Indeed, in a strange twist of fate, the situation in Iraq is such that terrorists have been able to replace the terror camps in Afghanistan with on the job training in Iraq. The local population has been welcoming enough and forthcoming enough with information such that the Jihadists have been able to establish some sort of base of operations within the country coupled with some semblance of a command structure. Indigenous forces (e.g., ex Republican guardsmen) have also provided Jihadists with invaluable training.

To say, as Bush does, that the US is safer now that thousands more Jihadists are proficient in the use of explosives strikes me, at least, as rather odd.

That said, what is truly troubling is what all of this bolds for the future. Afghanistan did not become a problem right away. It was really only after the Soviets pulled out that returning Jihadists began to cause major problems. Ironically, the US may find itself in a situation where victory in Iraq may spell greater danger for the US as Jihadists leave Iraq for greener pastures.

The best that can be said about the fly paper theory from a US point of view is that it has brought the “war on terror”, via Al Jazzera and other Arab networks, into the living rooms of those in the Arab world. This has and will continue to stimulate debate in the Arab world.

Wild and Crazy Guy

As Bart Simpson would say "Ay-carumba". I thought nothing could top Stockwell Day in a wet suit. It appears I was wrong. Hat tip Warren Kinsella http://www.warrenkinsella.com/musings.htm

That said, give "Angry man" his due. He is trying hard, a little too hard perhaps, to change his image.

Saving Private Ryan as TLGW?

This is an older essay of mine (pre 911).

In his review of Pearl Harbor http://groups.yahoo.com/group/onfilm/message/3463 ) , SFU (Vancouver, BC Canada) professor of American History, Michael Fellman contends that “ever since that silly Second World War film, Saving Private Ryan, the last Good War, (hereafter TLGW) has been filling American screens and spilling over on to ours.” This trend troubles him for more than just aesthetic reasons. As Fellman sees it “TLGW is not just about cleansing the past and putting young butts in theatre seats.” It is helping provide the ideological scaffolding the Bush administration needs to justify billions of dollars in increased defense spending. More generally, TLGW films help sustain one of a few popular myths that “provide cover stories for militarism, racism and poverty.”

That said, what films does Fellman count as TLGW? Fellman names four, U571, Saving Private Ryan, Pearl Harbor and the Patriot. Although the last of these is not about the WWII, but is rather about the American Revolution, Fellman contends that the Patriot is structured in much the same way as the other films thus “establishing the United States in 1776 becomes the same as preserving it in 1941.” Indeed, according to Fellman, not only are the British depicted as being as “utterly dastardly” as the Nazis, but they are shown as doing things that the British never did but that the Nazis did do. Most infamously, they lock members of one town in a Church and burn it.

As mentioned above, one of the things TLGW films function to do is that they smooth over some the more troubling aspects of America’s past. Fellman cites two main examples. First, he notes how in U571 the US is seen as successfully planning and carrying out a mission to capture a German Enigma machine and in the process gaining an immense intelligence victory that ultimately saved not only many US lives but the lives of many of her allies as well. In so doing, he contends that film makers give credit to the US for something the US did not do. The British, he notes, captured the first Enigma machine 7 months before the US even entered the War. Equally important, “this construction evades the award question about what in fact the Americans were doing sitting out the war for so long, while the British, Canadians and the Russians were doing the dying.” Second, having noting that race relations are one of the biggest obstacles facing TLGW film makers, Fellman looks at how race plays out in the Patriot. He notes that whereas in the Patriot, the British are depicted as kidnapping happy and loyal free black folks at gunpoint, in reality, the Santee River Basin in South Carolina, the setting for the movie, had the dubious distinction of having the highest concentration of slave-owners in the American colonies and “thousands of slaves fled to the British, who offered them and their families freedom in exchange for enlistment.” Once more, he notes while the efforts of one black soldier in the Patriot were enough to convince even the most hardened racist in the movie that there should be a place for African Americans in the emerging American democracy, the constitutional fathers soon built black slavery into the national compact and that the descents of that soldier’s South Carolinian compatriots would later fight a war to keep slavery.

This brings me to the matter that I want to pursue. Namely, although I think Fellman is right in believing that since Saving Private Ryan there have been a number of TLGW films, I think that Fellman is mistaken in believing that Saving Private Ryan is itself a prime example of a TLGW film. Sure, it shares with these other movies some characteristics. There is, literally, a bit of flag waving and it is about a good war that the Americans fought. However, on one level Saving Private Ryan is not even about Americans vs. bad Nazis, but is rather about a tiny band of men trying to create some meaning out of all the destruction - and they do that in typically Spielbergian fashion - by coming to believe, in some way, that the saving of one human life is an affirmation of humanity (a la Schindler's list). As Tom Sizemore’s character says near the end of the movie, “some day we may decide that saving private Ryan was the one decent thing that we were able to pull out of the whole god awful shitty mess.”

As Fellman see things one of the key characteristics of TLGW films is that “although actual combat is always morally compromising with soldiers on both sides committing atrocities, in Hollywood, American soldiers are always high-minded, and the American soldiers would never imagine nasty stuff like shooting captured Nazis.” Any doubt that Fellman thinks Saving Private Ryan shares this characteristic is clarified later on in his discussion of Senator John Kerrey of Nebraska: who, Fellman adds “was outed as a lieutenant who led his patrol into killing 14 defenceless women and children in a nasty little ‘action’ in Vietnam.” Fellman contends that even though “any honest combat veteran will tell you that what Kerrey’s patrol did was common in their war, as it was in the Second World War,” John Wayne is preferred, not only by the American people but also by “Spielberg and the other producers of this genre”, to a decorated War hero like Kerrey.

Now what is surprising about all of this is that American soldiers in Saving Private Ryan do not show the “Nazis” any quarter. A soldier is who is about to finish off burning German soldiers is ordered by a superior not to do it and instead “let them burn”, thus prolonging their suffering. Later on, in one of the more interesting sequences of the film, an American soldier accidentally brings done a damaged wall of a house and in the process reveals a number of concealed German soldiers. Shown to be but a few feet away from each other, the stand off between the two equally matched sides is made all the more intense by Spielberg switching from a close up of the Germans to a close of Americans. However, rather than having the Germans or Americans successfully negotiate a peaceful resolution to the stand off, as is usual movie protocol, Spielberg has a second group of Americans massacre the Germans before the eyes of the first group as a lone American translator tries frantically to communicate with the Germans over the shouting and confusion. Most important of all though, Americans do shoot captured Nazis in Saving Private Ryan and furthermore some take a sadistic delight in doing so.

Saving Private Ryan is unlike the other films mentioned by Fellman in other ways too. For instance, whereas the token African America makes an appearance in the Patriot, U571, and Pearl Harbor, there is no such role for anyone in Saving Private Ryan. The only African American actor in the film, Vin Diesel, is made out to be an Italian decent and not African American at all: something that is partially palatable due to Vin Diesel’s relatively light skin colouring.

Another thing that is missing in Saving Private Ryan is that the role of the protagonist is not that of a leading man. Rather, Tom Hanks, Hollywood’s every man, serves at one level as a father figure to Matt Damon’s character and at a another level as a symbolic representative of a whole generation of young soldiers, who sometimes had to make the ultimate sacrifice, as Tom Hanks character does, to “Save” a future generation. Hence, at the end of the movie an aged Ryan says while leaning over Sergeant Miller’s Grave (Hanks) “I hope I have earned what all of you have done for me.” This is in marked contrast to the role carved out for the likes of Mathew McConaughey, Mel Gibson and Ben Affleck. Indeed, in these later films these leading Hollywood men play roles geared to, well, leading Hollywood men. To this end, McConaughey, Gibson and Affleck are imparted with special powers usually imparted to leading men. Thus, Ben Affleck, Josh Hartnett by themselves account for a third of all the Japanese plans downed on the eventful day. Mel Gibson with the help of two young boys is able to take out 20 British soldiers, with a bunch of muskets no less. And McConaughey is able to sink half the German navy with but a handful of torpedoes, a crippled sub, and a skeleton crew.

Furthermore, not only does Tom Hank’s character (Miller) not posses these gifts, he is not blessed with an ingrained historical consciousness of the events that are enveloping him. This reveals that there is wide gulf between his character and always historically self consciousness leading TLGW characters.

Indeed, one of the large themes of the movie is communication or lack there of. The most memorable example of this is when the troop meet up with the wrong private Ryan and wrongly inform him that his brothers have been killed in combat. However, the theme is apparent right at the beginning. The landing is not well coordinated and when Miller tries to contact his superiors the radio operator and radio are shot up. As for the mission itself, although the meaningfulness is apparent to those in command, they are unable communicate the reasonableness of the mission to Miller and his troop. In their minds, “the mission is serious misallocation of valuable military resources.” To them, it makes no sense to send the eight of them to save Ryan accept in so far as a “public relations” ploy. Adding to the mix is the presence of Corporal Upham, who despite having the express desire to write about the commutative bond that develops between fighting men, does not have the first idea how converse with the others in the troop.

One result of this lack of communication is Captain Miller is unable to maintain discipline. Unmoved by comments like “we are not here to do the decent thing. We are here to follow fucking orders.”, the men, most notably Reiban, regularly disobey orders. Things finally come to a head with the death of Wade. Disgusted that Miller would allow a German prisoner to go free, Reiban threatens to walk out on the unit and soon after finds himself looking down the barrel of Sgt. Horvath’s gun (Sizemore). Before things could be taken any further Miller intervenes. Revealing what he did back home, Miller begins an extended monologue about how the war has changed him and how by saving Ryan he can reverse the process. “Back home I tell people what I do and they say, well it figures. But over here it is a big mystery. So, I guess I changed some. Sometimes I wonder if I changed so much my wife is even going to recognize me when ever it is I get back to her? If going to Romel and finding him [(Ryan)] so he can go home if that earns me the right to get back to my wife well that is my mission. [All I know is] the more men I kill, the further away from home I feel.”

What Miller’s monologue does is it gives meaning in an existential way not only to mission, but to the deaths of Wade, Caparzo (Diesel). Indeed, if you recall Caparzo died trying to save a little girl that looked just like his niece back home and Wade literally died carrying Caparzo’s message of home. Later Miller will die trying to delivery Ryan home so, as stated above, he could get home. As for Sgt. Horvath, when Miller begins to have renewed doubts after Ryan refuses to abandon his company, Horvath reminds Miller of his own words.

If there is one striking similarity between Saving Private Ryan and these other films it is this: In all four films various characters are able to, in the vast majority of cases through their engagement in the war, transcend various obstacles. Besides the token black figure in U571, the Patriot and Pearl Harbor struggling to overcome racism, there is Ben Affleck’s character struggling, if only briefly, to overcome his dyslexia, and a fellow pilot who struggles with stuttering. In the case of Saving Private Ryan, it is the aforementioned Corporal Upham struggling to overcome his fears, his deficiencies and his naïve understanding of the realities of war so as to gain acceptance of his peers.

That said, the manner by which he transcends these things is problematic for TLGW filmmakers. Let me explain. As mentioned above, Captain Miller intervenes on the behalf of German prisoner who his troop where planning to execute. However, it is Upham that first comes to the prisoner’s defense. Common to Vietnam films, characters who take on such a position are almost always cast in a positive light. However, in Saving Private Ryan things are turned right around. The prisoner is, as was mentioned, spared, but not because the group was swayed by the moral force of the Upham’s argument; indeed, his fellows believe that his arguments lend credence to their belief that he lacks a true understanding of what it is to be one of them. (It is no accident that Spielberg had the German translator make this argument. Upham is the only one capable of understanding the German's common humanity. To the others the German's pitiful attempts at speaking English are devoid of intelligence and they are unwilling and or unable to let Upham make sense of his yamerings) Rather, Miller, having changed his mind on the matter, decrees, much to the displeasure of the majority of the troop, that the prisoner be set free. Miller’s decision in turn leads to the show down between Reiban and Sgt. Horvath described above and Upham in particular is singled out for criticism. Reiban and the others see it if he had just gone long with them in the first place and ignored the German’s pleas to spare his life, Miller would not have had the time to change is mind and they would have been able to avenge the death of one of their own.

In the closing battle scene Upham reaches the point of no return. After having helplessly stood by while a German sinks a knife into the heart of one of his compatriots, Upham is left with a choice. Either he must make amends by doing something heroic or fall into psychological oblivion. Mustering all his courage Upham single handily takes a group of Germans prisoner. One of prisoners is the very German prisoner that he had earlier helped spare and who just delivered the fatal blow to captain Miller. Now, here is what is problematic about Upham’s coming of age theme. Immediately, after having taken the group of prisoners, the German tries to manipulate him so as to again gain his freedom. However, having proved his mettle in battle, Upham completes his transformation into one of the guys by immediately shooting the German dead. In so doing, he gives into a temptation that no true TLGW character would give into: namely he kills a villain who is at his mercy. Upham was able to form a bond with the rest of the troop, but in the process he had lost his way home. He let the war dehumanize him. He did the very thing that he counseled Captain Miller not to do, viz., take revenge for the killing of one of the troop.

So, why go to all this trouble to differentiate Saving Private Ryan from TLGW films? Well, as stated at the outset, Fellman feels that “TLGW is not just about cleansing the past and putting young butts in theatre seats.” Specifically, he feels that TLGW films are effacing a generation of antiwar films about the Vietnam War in the public consciousness and in the process helping to clear the way for George Bush Junior’s New World Order. I feel Fellman is greatly overstating his case. If the antiwar movies no longer have a hold on the public imagination these days, it is because the Gulf War and Serbia have fundamentally altered the American public’s view of war. Prior to that, movies such as the Deer Hunter, Platoon, Apocalypse Now, Full Metal Jacket, and Born on the Fourth of July, had an impact on American culture because they were able to give voice to a number of, sometimes unconnected, concerns the American people had about the Vietnam War and about war generally. That said, the same can not be said about TLGW films. Salvaged by critics and not greatly liked by movie goers, Pearl Harbor, U571, and the Patriot made a scant dent on the American consciousness and as a result will quickly disappear from popular memory. This leaves Saving Private Ryan. It was the only one of the movies that Fellman mentioned that captured the imagination of American movie goers and it is not, as I have argued above, a good example of a TLGW film.