Image via Wikipedia Rupert Murdoch (“What Nixon did – and what Ailes does today in the age of Obama – is unravel and rewire one of the most powerful of human emotions: shame,” says Perlstein, the author of Nixonland. “He takes the shame of people who feel that they are being looked down on, and he mobilizes it for political purposes. Roger Ailes is a direct link between the Nixonian politics of resentment and Sarah Palin’s politics of resentment. He’s the golden thread.”)
Image via Wikipedia I see that Arthur Goldreich has died in Israel at the age of 82. He was remembered in a Globe and Mail obituary as a romantic revolutionary, but I remember him as one of the most eloquent, riveting orators I ever heard.
He is certainly a man who deserves to be honoured, because he was one of those white activists in South Africa who, in the 1950s and early 60s identified themselves with the struggle for freedom of the black people of the country, who were being treated as worse than animals by the Africaans government and its lunatic policy of apartheid. Goldriech was a rich, Jewish architect, one of a number of remarkable Jews who joined the African National Congress, and did not shrink from it when armed struggle was the only action left open to them.
Rivonia was a wealthy suburb of Johannesburg, where 19 leaders of the ANC were arrested on July 11, 1963 in a house owned by Arthur Goldreich called Liliesleaf Farm, that had been used as a hideout place for ANC leaders. Mandela had previously been imprisoned on various charges, and was not among the 19 arrested, but when the trial occurred he was among the leading accused. It was at this so-called Rivonia trial that he made his famous speech to the court in which he said:
“This is the struggle of the African people, inspired by their own suffering and experience. It is a struggle for the right to live. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society, in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunity. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and achieve. But, if needs be, my Lord, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.”
With that he was sentenced to life imprisonment, and was not released until 1990, after 27 years in Robben Island prison. A man of such moral courage that he dictated the terms of his own release.
Five or six white Jews were among those arrested, along with two Indians, and several Xhosa, symbolizing the fact that the ANC programme was for a non-racial South Africa.
Goldreich and his friend Harold Wolpe bribed a guard during their imprisonment who allowed them to escape. They hid in various safe houses for two months, and finally escaped from South Africa by posing as priests. They went to England, and on arrival directly to the annual conference of the Labour Party, which was already underway. That is where I heard them speak to one of the many side meetings that always took place at this conference, where their presentation of the facts of South African life electrified the crowd, especially when presented in the golden oratory of Goldreich.
I interviewed Harold Wolpe after that meeting, and became a close friend of him and his wife Anne-Marie in succeeding months. He has always been my model of what a hero should be. He had been for many years a solicitor who had represented the ANC leaders in the many court cases that were brought against them, often, but not always, for the most trivial offences. He ran through for me the legal history as he had experienced it. It was a shattering story because although they often succeeded in winning victories in court, the apartheid government saw to it that the laws under which they had succeeded were changed so that they could never again win under those laws. One by one, in this manner, the outlets for peaceful protest were closed to the oppressed black Africans, until, if they were to resist at all, no outlet was open to them except armed rebellion. That they formed a wing of their movement devoted to armed struggle was against all their inclinations: in fact, since the party had been founded in 1912, they had always tried to follow lawful and peaceful means to express their programmes, but were prevented from doing so.
At this time I also became a close friend of the ANC’s representative in England, Robert Resha, a man whose only wish in life had been to become a sports writer, but whose treatment by the government, simply because of his skin colour, was so barbarous that he was forced to enter politics if he was to retain any dignity at all. In those days a black man could be stopped at any time and required to produce his pass: Robert was arrested 28 times on pass offences, I remember him telling me.
Goldreich did not linger too long in England, but left for Israel, where he lived the rest of his life. According to the Globe obituary, he was always bothered by the fact that he had never paid the guard the bribe he had promised him, and after South Africa gained its freedom, he returned there and paid off this debt of honour.
Harold Wolpe and Anne-Marie lived for several years in England, Harold became an adult education teacher somewhere in the north of England, and returned to South Africa after liberation. Today his memory is honoured in that country by a Harold Wolpe lecture that is given every year on some important aspect of South African life.
Robert Resha died while still a young man, only 53, before liberation had been achieved. He had lived a most frustrating life, touring around the world trying to drum up physical and political support for the cause of the ANC and African freedom. He was a wonderful man, the only man with the qualities to have become a Prime Minister I ever knew, yet one who could never aspire to such an office. Sadly, he fell into some political disagreement within the ANC, and the occasion of his death was mentioned in the ANC newsletter only in an abrupt two-line item. Some reward for a lifetime given to the struggle. But he was honoured at a special service in St.Paul’s cathedral, presided over by the leftwing cleric, Canon Collins.I have heard that his memory has been rehabiklitated since liberation was achieved. I certainly hope so. His sidekick in the London office, Raymond Munene, a poet, became a professor at the University of California in Los Angeles for several years, and on his return became the champion of Xhosa literature, a professor at the University of Natal, and a writer much honoured for his contribution to the African cause.
I have always regarded my friendship with these men as one of the most important events of my life. They were all people ready to put their lives on the line when the crunch came. Not only South Africa, but all of us, owe a great deal to them and the honorable lives they led.
Image via Wikipedia Link of the Day 1, May 17 2011 If there is anybody out there who still believes the USA is in a position to lecture other nations about democracy and the rule of law, two articles recently published should disabuse them. First, Jane Meyer in The New Yorker for May 23 offers an astounding account of the National Security Agency, the world’s biggest and most secretive agency for intelligence-gathering; and of the whistleblower who is being prosecuted as a traitor for trying to alert the public to the Agency’s breaking of the law. Read her article, The Secret Sharer, here. It is astonishing. The second article is linked to in the item below. 
Image via Wikipedia Goldman Sachs tower
Link of the Day 2 May 17 2011: Matt Taibi writes a remarkable article in Rolling Stone: The People vs. Goldman Sachs: A Senate committee has laid out the evidence. Now the Justice Department should bring criminal charges
Image via Wikipedia For the last three weeks or so I have been watching carefully, as I cycle around Dow’s Lake and the canal, for the first family of ducklings to appear. The earliest date I have ever spotted such a family was May 13, but for some reason this year I was hoping to beat that record.
No such luck, I’m afraid, although I identified many couples among the ducks who looked like they could become proud parents at any moment. Pure imagination, of course.
About he only interesting things I saw during these weeks were some loons, which one can depend on turning up during the migratory year. At least, I think you can. And I think they were loons. Can’t be altogeher sure, of course.
My concentration on ducklings got me to wondering about the method of their birth, emerging from an egg. And that set me to wondering how a duck knows that if she sits on this egg, it will produce a small baby. The only reason I could come up with was that it is instinctual, they just have an instinct that this is the way to do it? Instinct? Does it exist somewhere in the living organism, or is it like that other puzzler, among humans, the soul? Personally, I always deny that there is any such thing as a soul. No one has ever seen it. No one knows where it is to be found. In fact, most people find it impossible to describe exactly what it is. Therefore, it seems to me there is a good case for whichever philosopher it was who claimed that to talk of a soul was simply a way of talking about something. The ghost in the machine, I think is how this bloke described it.
Well, what the hell is instinct? When I tentatively suggested it is something inbred, one of my friends said, ah, yes, but the duck knows to sit on the eggs by having seen it done before, it is a learned behaviour.
Really? That surprises me, if it is so. It would be like saying that for a goose to set out on a migration route to some place it has never been before would be a learned experience. Impossible to have learned it if he has never done it, right?
I looked up various definitions of instinct, and since I tend to reject anything that might be described as faith-based, I veered towards the scientific description.
If anyone is interested, the American Heritage and Science Dictionary says that instinct is an inherited tendency of an organism to behave in a certain way, usually in reaction to its environment and for the purpose of fulfilling a specific need. The development and performance of instinctive behavior does not depend upon the specific details of an individual's learning experiences. Instead, instinctive behavior develops in the same way for all individuals of the same species or of the same sex of a species. For example, birds will build the form of nest typical of their species although they may never have seen such a nest being built before. Some butterfly species undertake long migrations to wintering grounds that they have never seen. Behavior in animals often reflects the influence of a combination of instinct and learning. The basic song pattern of many bird species is inherited, but it is often refined by learning from other members of the species. Dogs that naturally seek to gather animals such as sheep or cattle into a group are said to have a herding instinct, but the effective use of this instinct by the dog also requires learning on the dog's part. Instinct, as opposed to reflex , is usually used of inherited behavior patterns that are more complex or sometimes involve a degree of interaction with learning processes.
So far so good. But where the hell is this instinct? Can I touch it?
It makes me think of a young woman friend of mine, a recent mother, who, every time I see her tells me she has moments of unexpected pure joy, as for instance, when her baby smiles at her. This is something she didn’t expect, although it is also something that many people would describe as part of a mother’s instinct. Yet it is known many woman don’t have this particular instinct, but prefer not to have any children at all.
Don’t ask yourself questions that require knowledge to answer, Boyce. You are too dumb for this game.
Meantime I continue to look out for the first ducklings of the year.
Image by Getty Images via @daylife (“In the whirlwind of lies and hypocrisy engulfing the Osama bin Laden hit job, the key justice-related fact is how an unarmed man, codename "Geronimo", was captured live then summarily executed in front of one of his daughters - after a lightning-quick invasion of a theoretically ‘sovereign’ country.”)
Image via Wikipedia Dan Duryea in the film Scarlet street One of my sons, Thom, who is a walking encyclopedia of the movies, has this remarkable gift of being able to quote hundreds of lines he remembers from movies. I have never been able to do that, but I do remember a lot about various actors and actresses I saw when I was a kid. One of these, an actor who for me typified the essence of sleaze, was the actor Dan Duryea.
And the particular scene of his which has stuck in my mind was in a long-forgotten movie in which he was playing as the lover of Joan Bennett, playing a sultry temptress who was no better than she should be. At one climactic moment Bennett says “If I had any sense, I’d leave you.”
To which Duryea responds by slapping her across the face, back and forth and emitting the immortal line, “But you haven’t got any sense, see?”
Or at least, that is my memory of the line. But what do you know, just tonight on Turner Classic Movies I am watching a drama in which another of my childhood favorites Edward G. Robinson plays a meek, foolish little man , long married to a nagging wife, who makes an acquaintance with a lady of the streets played by Joan Bennett, and becomes totally infatuated with her. The man from whom he was rescuing her when he first ran across her was played by Dan Duryea, but as her friendship with Edward G developed she pretended Duryea was her roommate’s boy-friend.
Robinson was a part-time painter: to get away from his wife’s nagging, and to establish his relationship with Bennett, he hires an apartment and moves his paintings into it. Robinson starts to steal from the firm to which he has given 25 years of impeccable service, to pay for Bennett’s constant demands for money. Duryea persuades Bennett she should sign the paintings and pretend she was their creator. They become an instant success, but naturally, the idyll is over when the little man hears his inamorata tell Duryea she really loves him. Subsequently she tells Edward G. that he is a pathetic little creep whom no woman could love, and in a fury he stabs her to death.
It is in the runup to this that I heard that line I had carried around with me since the 1940s, the line that exemplified the essence of movie sleaze. But now I have to report my memory was slightly faulty. The line is as I remembered it, except that it does not conclude with the emphatic “see!….” But you don’t have any sense,” was all. Not quite as effective, I have to confess, as my line.
Naturally, to please the movie censors, although it was Dan Duryea’s character who swung for the murder, Edward G.’s conscience would not let him alone, and the movie ends with him as a bum dragging himself through the streets of New York with his lady friend’s voice insistently declaring her love for the other man.
Afterwards Robert Osborne said the film was rejected by the New York censors when first released because of the excessive violence of the stabbing. But the kerfuffle about it created such attention that when it finally was cleared for release in September 1945 the movie drew huge crowds everywhere it showed.
The name of the movie is Scarlet Street, an obvious attempt to impregnate it with a sense of shocking sin.
Image via Wikipedia Plaque commemorating the foundation of the British Labour Party by the trades unions in 1900 I have to confess it in my eighty-fourth year --- I am never going to live in a country that can expect drastic political change.
That has been made obvious by the recent breakthrough of the New Democratic Party being accompanied by the even more pronounced dominance of the Conservative party, now ready to govern almost unchallenged for at least the next ten years. Could anything be more depressing for a guy with my outlook?
I grew up in what I like to think was a socialist country, New Zealand in the 1940s. Our Labour government was elected in 1935, when I was seven, but they performed excellently, especially considering that most of their ministers were self-educated working men.
In fact, it was from that government that I developed my preference for politicians from the working class. When I moved to England I discovered the Labour Party there, although led by the upper middle class products of universities, also had its good admixture of working class activists, most of whom learned their political techniques in the labour movement.
Thus the Labour party in those days was a party which varied between supporting the status quo and injecting some realism into the search for an egalitarian society.
I have lived in Canada since 1954, off and on, and have long since become accustomed to the dominance of capitalist-oriented political parties. Mind you, I have always recognized that the very existence of the NDP has been a major influence in the differences, such as they are, between this country and the United States. But anyone who thinks that an NDP government will in anyway transform Canadian society is out to the races, as we used to say. In case you haven’t noticed, leaders of our so-called socialist party, many of whom I have interviewed in the last 50 years, would sooner drop dead that utter the word socialism.
There are countries whose residents can hope for drastic change in their lifetimes. Most them would be within what we have grown accustomed to calling the Third World. Of course sheer weight of numbers will dictate that dramatic change must come to India and China, but if I had written this a few months ago I would probably not even have mentioned the Arab countries of the Middle East, who now seem to have entered waters so uncharted that whatever will emerge is anybody’s guess. That it could take a socialist direction does seem unlikely.
Most African countries seem to be mired in corruption, and their economies seem to be irrevocably in the grip of the capitalist drive that has led to globalization with all its problems. Capitalism doesn’t give a shit about poverty: in fact, its very success depends on robbing poor nations of the resources they are sitting on, and keeping them poor. The only thing that matters to the capitalist world is that its growth-ethic be undisturbed, no matter how absurd it may be to imagine that it can go on forever.
That probably leaves only some Latin American nations that have recently shown signs of shaking off the old imperial controls. Countries like Brazil, Venezuela, Bolivia possibly Argentina, with some hope for such as Uruguay, Chile and even Paraguay and Ecuador. A leftist orientation seems to have taken root in some of these nations that could, in the longer term, possibly lead them to creating some sort of economy analogous to what exists today in Scandinavia.
Of course any move leftward by any nation on earth must expect immediately to meet the ferocious opposition of the United States, for whom interference in the affairs of other nations seems to have become almost a reflex action. Their recent invasion of Pakistan with the intention of kidnapping, killing and disposing of the leader of a small terrorist organization is just the latest in a long line of interventions, and will certainly not be their last.
All of this leaves Canada more or less on the sidelines, so far as the possibility of social change is concerned. We can forget about it for the next ten years, and even longer, except that the Harper government will be active during all these years in imprisoning people for minor offences in terrible inhumane prisons from which they can be depended upon to emerge --- if they ever do emerge --- embittered, angry, and criminal in intent.
What a prospect!
(“Money talks, and it is corrupting politics and markets all over the world….Every Wall Street firm has paid significant fines during the past decade for phony accounting, insider trading, securities fraud, Ponzi schemes, or outright embezzlement by CEOs. A massive insider-trading ring is currently on trial in New York, and has implicated some leading financial-industry figures. And it follows a series of fines paid by America’s biggest investment banks to settle charges of various securities violations.”)
Image via Wikipedia: US Declaration of Independence, the hypocrites' charter I thought maybe it was just me, but I am happy that I have heard one person on TV, and read one letter to the editor by people who share my distaste for the horrible American jubilation at the death of Osama Bin Laden.
Okay, the guy is dead. Okay, he wasn’t a nice man, he was a killer himself. But surely I wasn’t the only person who felt it was beneath the dignity of the President of the United States to announce that he had personally ordered and had carried out the murder of this man, living in a foreign country which was never notified of the attack. Killed, the body secured, then dumped at sea. Was this some kind of Mafia operation?
For a while, as I registered my feeling that there was something wrong with this celebrating in the US streets, I began to be overcome by a creeping fear that maybe I was, sub-consciously, some kind of closet Christian. A fate worse than death, I would say.
Anyway, not to keep making jokes about my unexpected compassion, there were also political reasons for my feeling that the news should be met with a decent, hands-off dignity. The fact is, the Americans have always, since the day the 9/11 attack happened, made too much of it. They acted as if no one in the world had ever suffered a similar disaster. Of course, the number of people killed was exceptionally large, but that was a result of a circumstance which even the terrorists involved could never have expected, the total collapse of these tall buildings in New York. Without that unexpected event, the death toll would have been about the same as in many such incidents that have happened over the years around the world. In other words, the only exceptional thing about the attack was that it happened on American soil, and took the lives of American citizens. As we know, the assumption in the United States is that an American life counts more than does the lives of any number of other nationalities.
Thus, the assumption that the death of the so-called (but even this is unproven) mastermind of the incident is an event of epoch-making importance because it is somehow an act of American revenge for the death of Americans is all of a piece with the assumption that the original attack on the World Trade centre was an event of exceptional importance because it happened to Americans.
It is all, I suppose, part of the colossal error of judgment by George W. Bush to launch the United States into a “war on terror”, and to declare that whoever was not with them was against them in what he called a war on evil --- as if evil is waiting out there, armed to the teeth, and ready to launch an assault at any moment on the Army of the Good, comprised of young Americans.
Consequent on this colossal misjudgment has come the building of the special prison at Guantanamo Bay where people who have never been charged can be kept incarcerated indefinitely; and that, too, presupposes a change in the underlying concepts of justice administered through the rule of law that the United States always boasts is its peculiar contribution to the goodies in this world.
In describing these peculiarities of the US system of government, I am inexorably forced back on to one overwhelming fact: the basic document by which the US system of government was established, known as the Declaration of Independence, not only dedicates the nation to the concept that all men are created equal, but was drawn up --- no doubt with tongue firmly implanted in cheek --- by slaveowners. This is a contradiction, or, if you like, an hypocrisy, that has informed the whole history of the United States ever since it was founded. And its existence has led inexorably to this moment where the people are dancing in the streets because their president has presided over the illegal murder of an adversary.
It makes me shudder, this while thing.
Well, this is one of those days that I celebrated in my last entry, when the political opposition sweeps us all aside and bestrides our politics with menacing threats to change the country. I have been through it all before so many times I have lost count.
First, it was Sid Holland, the malevolent leader of the New Zealand Nationalists in 1949. Then it was the appalling right-wing Churchill in Britain in 1951; then on to the lunatic Diefenbaker in Canada in 1957; on to the disgusting Brian Mulroney --- you name ‘em, I remember them all with dread and dislike. And a recognition that somehow I and we have survived the worst they could do.
Now it is this terrible person, this cold, calculating fish, Stephen Harper, who has never made a secret of his contempt for what I call the good, social values of Canadians, who is ready to ruin our political landscape with his fighter jets, his mega-prisons, his slashing of the social agenda that still sort-of separates the less fortunate Canadians from the street corner begging bowl.
They aren’t going to be pretty these next four years; and worse is the prospect that at the end of it he will have so effectively lined up all the owners of wealth behind him, with their mega-media empires, that the brainwashed people, dazed and drugged by their experience of staggering through it all, will renew his mandate as the values of the better Canadians are divided between the two or three opposition parties so as to guarantee this asshole an almost permanent majority.
Even though he is detestable, he could become one of the most firmly entrenched leaders Canada has ever had.
Okay, you say, at least the NDP has come up through the middle into second place. But what the hell does that mean, in practical terms? Can anyone who is not blind and dumb really believe that Canadians are just waiting for a kindly NDP government to step into the breach against the party they are currently supporting to the hilt, this capitalistic, swaggering, antediluvian ragbag of people like Vic Toews and Jason Kenney and Jim Flaherty and Tony Clement and various other detestable and deplorable people? No, the fact is, Canadians as they prove every few years, are not really worried by the drift of their country into a small copy of the worst features of the American system,. They hunger for it, in fact, almost as if they are getting their kicks from seeing all those unfortunate beggars lining the city streets.
Oh, well, call me a poor loser, if you want. Or call me a realist, who can only for so long stagger on with the wool pulled over his eyes by faint hope.
Ladies and gentlemen, we are in for it in the next four years. So brace yourself for the worst these assholes can do. It will be terrible, believe me.
Image via Wikipedia These are heady days for a guy like me, who has voted for left-wing candidates ever since I recorded my first vote in Invercargill, New Zealand in 1946. By the following election in 1949 I was on the losing side, and I remained so until 1964, when Harold Wilson’s Labour party was elected in England, and I cast my vote for it.
I have never been on the winning side in Canada, where, more often than not, in sheer desperation, I voted for Communist candidates several times. Of course, from time to time, I have voted for candidates who actually won seats, but only on three occasions has the party I supported been elected to government.
So this remarkable surge that the pollsters have identified for the NDP comes as a matter of total amazement to a guy like me, who can hardly believe it is real.
Of course, it may turn out not to be real, it could happen that these prospective NDP voters will get cold feet as they enter the voting booth, or that the last-minute scare tactics of the terrified Liberal and Conservative leaders would convince many people to play it safe. In other words, I am as skeptical as the pollsters themselves and all the commentators, but I am hoping that for once my skepticism is misplaced.
What I have to say, however, is that the panic-driven responses of Harper and Ignatieff are full of rubbish. “Amateur-hour” is what Harper called the possibility of an NDP government. And Ignatieff has told people to “get serious”, as if the challenge mounted to their own ridiculous policies by the humane policies offered by Jack Layton and the NDP are somehow merely hallucinatory visions that have somehow lodged in the brains of the leftists.
This is total rubbish. The NDP spokespersons keep repeating that all their projections for spending have been audited by Mike McCracken, a thoroughly excellent economist who does, however, tend to pay more attention to the problems of ordinary people than do most economists.
Furthermore, I don’t need the validation offered by a Mike McCracken to very much prefer the NDP policies. Who in his right mind could vote for Harper with his promised, totally unnecessary billions of projected spending on super-prisons? This is lunacy if ever I saw it. And how about the lamentable quality of his Cabinet, people such as Vic Toews, Jason Kenny, Bev Oda and many others. Complete ciphers, and ignorant to boot.
Similarly, what the hell do we need with fighter planes? Who are these machines to be directed against? Which country is lining up to attack us, in the nightmare scenarios offered by the two major parties?
I heard Ignatieff make a speech yesterday, broadcast by CPAC. I must say, he did not sound so out of touch as all the commentators keep telling us he is. He was talking about the Liberal’s “family pack”, which sounds okay, if you can forget the way his party diminished the social network when they were in power with the millionaire businessman Paul Martin as their Minister of Finance.
In the past the Liberals have introduced some good social legislation, notably that under Lester Pearson, who was very much influenced by Tom Kent, my old former editor at the Winnipeg Free Press. I have reason to believe that Kent was really a British socialist who decided, just as Rene Levesque later did in Quebec, that if he wanted to have any influence in Canadian politics, he had to do it through the Liberal party.
That is the kind of compromise sensible people make from time to time, but it is not one that ever recommends itself to me. I am one of those guys who knows what he believes, and am not about to change my mind to match changing circumstances. I have always, for example, hated banks and insurance companies, and believe they should all be nationalized.
Canada has been well served by the continuing existence of the NDP as a party of the vague left because they have kept alive ideas in our normal political discourse that have always been anathema in the politics to the south of us. In fact, to a very large extent, this is the single factor that has kept Canada distinct from the United States.
If the nation is now about to acknowledge this by giving the NDP a major role in government, than all I can say is, “It’s about time.”
My fingers are crossed until I hear the election results.
Image via WikipediaI have been driven to the conclusion that what is now called the commentariat, that body of people whose business it is to comment on elections, is comprised for the most part of self-important nitwits. I came to this yesterday after watching the rather impressive interview given by Michael Ignatieff to Peter Mansbridge. Given a chance to express himself in the calm of a studio, Ignatieff gave an excellent account of himself. And although pressured unreasonably by Mansbridge on the question of what he would do in the event of various hypothetical results, he gave what I thought was a fairly scholarly, but absolutely correct description of how Parliament works. At the end, I thought, “Well, he must have done himself some good with this interview, at least.”
Within minutes, however, the commentariat gathered to pontificate on Evan Solomon’s (hopelessly self-important) show, were denouncing Ignatieff for having, they indicated, fallen into one of the oldest traps in the business of elections. He had talked extensively about something that, they said, he would never have mentioned if he had had any sense. They were raising, not to put too fine a point on it, an immense hoo-haa which simply took my breath away. Instead of praising the guy for the clarity, straightforward honesty and precision of his observations, they were denouncing him in the most strident tones, as if they alone knew all the secrets of how to win an election, and anyone who varied from their idiot prescriptions deserved the warmest condemnation.
Give us a break, fellers! You are a bunch of trumped up, narcissistic amateurs pretending to be seasoned professionals.
Ignatieff gave a measured account of what would happen if Harper, having won the most seats, but short of a majority, were unable to receive the backing of the House of Commons. What would happen then? insisted Mansbridge. Well, said Ignatieff, what would happen is that he would go to the governor-general, who would decide either to dissolve Parliament and call another election, or ask the party leader with the next-largest number of seats if he could try to receive the support of the House of Commons. This leader would canvass the other parties for their support, trying to find what compromises each party would have to make to make such a thing work.
That is how the system works, said Ignatieff. I respect the system, and I want to tell Canadians that I respect the system, and will work within it.
What the hell is wrong with that? Ignatieff, for reasons that escape me, has always insisted he will never enter a coalition, in other words, if he forms a government he would not include ministers from other parties. Mansbridge asked him why had this idea of coalition, which was working satisfactorily in most parliamentary democracies, become such a dirty word?
There was one curious aspect to Ignatieff’s interview. He said he could have been Prime Minister, if he had accepted the proposal made a couple of years ago for a coalition. But, after signing on, he had changed his mind, and rejected it “because I thought it was not in the national interest.” That certainly shows a becoming modesty, but it also leaves him open to the charge that he really didn’t want to be Prime Minister, one of the reasons, no doubt, for his having flounderd so badly through his time as Leader of the Opposition.
Still, to hear these idiots of the commentariat declaiming in horror at Ignatieff’s gaffe, as they described it, one would have thought he had precipitated a world war. I don’t support Ignatieff, but it seems that the poor guy is irrevocably fated to be damned whatever he does or says.
So on, Jack Layton: it is beginning to seem that the only hope of beating the damnable and dangerous Harper lies with you.
(Keibo Oiwa is a remarkable Japanese anthropologist, who knows Canada (and many other countries) well, and has founded in Japan a so-called Slow Movement designed to slow down the pace of humanity’s frenetic search for progress. He wrote his Ph.D thesis on the subject of St Laurent Main, the dividing street in Montreal, and at that time became a close friend of my son Thom with whom he has since worked on various projects. He recently wrote this thoughtful reflection on the results of the earthquake and tsunami that has devastated so much of Japanese life.)
With all the events of the few weeks following 3/11, I often had difficulty in focusing and thinking clearly. But while a bit confused, I was hoping that going through this would make me more courageous and creative. And now that I have come out of the tunnel, I feel much better and positive, and see things more clearly.
What Japan has experienced since 3/11 is like X rays; yes, all of us and our society were X-rayed and have now become transparent. What do I see? That what we need now is a bit of silence, time for mourning, prayer, and awe. We must contemplate on the dead and realize, as Thich Nhat Hanh said in his recent message to Japan, that part of ourselves, part of the earth, has died, and the dead is and will be in us forever.
We are shocked to see in front of our own eyes our arrogance and the illusion that we can somehow control our Mother Earth. The Earth that created the great tsunami is the same Earth that has been giving everything to nurture us. We must re-instill the sense of awe that we might have been missing for a long time. We must meditate so that we can rediscover a way to reconnect ourselves to our Mother.
We see clearly that we have been a part of this civilization and its violent system built upon our own greed, hatred and ignorance, or what Buddhists call the three fundamental poisons. Instead of accusing TEPCO (Tokyo Electric Power Company) and the governments, we must realize that it is we who created this monster called TEPCO that has become powerful enough to control governments, media and other big businesses. Yes, they had a kind of dictatorship, and we were willing to support and embrace it, increasing our consumption of electricity 5 times since the 70’s. With their massively financed “All Denka (entirely electrified homes)” campaign, they have been successfully made us believe that more and more nuclear plants are necessary to live comfortably.
The fisherman-philosopher Masato Ogata once said “Chisso is me.” He is a survivor and witness of the Minamata environmental crisis and was referring to the powerful Chisso Corporation that caused the mercury poisoning of the ocean killing innumerable lives including humans. Yes, TEPCO is me.
One of the most important lessons we learn and relearn from the events of 3/11 and after is that our way of living was created and barely maintained only by causing irreparable damage to the Earth, thus curtailing the possibility of a good future. The mass media is now busy orchestrating a cheerful chorus of “recovery” and “reconstruction.” But the question is what we are going to reconstruct? The same kind of towns and villages that have been proven too many times in history to be so vulnerable? The centralized massive energy system that has made our democracy hollow and has made the rural communities and remote regions enslaved by the big cities, electric power companies and central government? Reconstruct the banks and walls to protect the 50 plus nuclear power reactors, and make the reactors themselves strong enough to beat the next challenges of earthquakes, tsunamis, typhoons, floods and landslides? Recover the once famous Japanese technology and the invincible “kamikaze spirit” that would make no more mistakes and neglects like the ones we witnessed this time? Reinvent the once miraculously growing economy that required us to endlessly consume, to build all those nuke and other power stations, to destroy much of our once healthy ecosystems, and to sacrifice our rural communities and their beautiful landscapes?
I can already hear politicians in future elections talk loudly of those “reconstructions.” But then we will have to remember that we can never reconstruct the world without the horrifying amount of toxic nuclear waste which will be with us for thousands of years to come. Every step we made during the last several decades with more and more nuclear reactors was to make both the reconstruction of a healthy past and the construction of a healthy future harder and harder. Put another way; the reconstruction of a pre-3/11 world would mean extinguishing the remaining hope for a healthy, sustainable world. So let us say No to “reconstruction” of our previous Japan and choose from the remaining possibilities.
I can also hear clever people repeat the same old pre-3/11 stuff, saying that without giving an alternative, the argument against nuclear power is not persuasive. To this, I must repeat what the political scientist Douglas Lummis once said; the alternative to nuclear power is no nuclear power. Let us stop acting as if we still have a choice. We cannot afford another disaster, and that’s how disastrous our situation is.
This is a new era that has started on the March 11th. This is the age of what the Buddhist philosopher Joanna Macy called the “Great Turning,” that has been prepared for in many parts of the world. According to her, the Great Turning has been occurring on three simultaneous levels; environmental movements, anti-globalization and re-localization activism, and personal, spiritual awakening. Let us, too, join in the creative process with the new vision given by the 3/11.
Of course, there are not too many reasons to be optimistic. Even if we turn around and shut down all the nuclear plants today, we have to spend decades to make sure that all the reactors continue to be cooled, and many generations after us have to invent ways to deal with the enormous amount of toxic nuclear waste that is already here. So shall we continue our pursuit of wealth and luxury without turning around? Why not stopping later instead of now, if it’s too late anyway?
Again let us stop acting as if there is a choice. We must turn around not later but now. And that is if we are still interested in human survival. Let us become a “nuclear guardian” as Joanne Macy has urged us, accepting responsibility for the nuclear materials produced in our lifetimes. Macy is not optimistic, either, but her words are deeply consoling.
“Even if the Great Turning fails to carry this planetary experiment of ecological revolution onward through linear time, it still is worth it. It is a homecoming to our true nature.” (Joanna Macy “The Great Turning”)
Remember that the Chinese characters we use for the word “kiki (crisis)” can mean both danger and opportunity at once. This must be a great opportunity for us to grow spiritually, while stop growing materially, learning how to slow down, scale down and simplify. The real wisdom is to know how we can downshift joyfully and thankfully. This must be the moment of truth.
Keibo Oiwa is a cultural anthropologist, author, translator, environmental activist, and public speaker. He lived in North America for sixteen years and holds a Ph.D. in Anthropology from Cornell University. Since 1992, he has taught in the International Studies Department of Meiji Gakuin University. The founder of the Sloth Club, an ecology and Slow Life NGO, he gives lectures and workshops on social and environmental issues.
Cover of Judy Holliday Since I was so grossly offended and disgusted by Birth of a Nation two or three days ago, I have seen three old American movies. For those who may have thought I was unkind to American movies in my previous piece, I can report that of the three, one was almost as disgustingly racist as D.W. Griffith’s so-called classic, and two were delightful comedies, both of which I have seen before several times.
So, just to take racism as the measure of judgment, that makes two out of four which were offensive, or 50 per cent, not a very good score. The second objectionable film was called Tarzan Escapes, with Johnny Weismuller and Maureen O’Sullivan, from 1936, which seemed to indicate that as far as racist attitudes went, little if any progress had been made between the making of Griffith’s film in 1915, and the making of this Tarzan epic 21 years later. In addition, it was reported that the Tarzan movies were among the best-grossing films of their time, a barely credible fact (at least seen from this distance.)
In this particular epic, one of three made by the Weismuller-O’Sullivan combo, a wicked white hunter captures Tarzan and threatens to take him back to civilization where he would be put on show. He was aided in this by a group of African tribesmen who were portrayed as being entirely brainless, cowardly and incompetent, just as Griffith portrayed American blacks of the reconstruction period after the Civil War.
Enough of that --- except to say that Miss O’Sullivan, who was a long-standing Hollywood star mostly notable for having married the director John Farrow, and sired Mia Farrow, the longtime consort of Woody Allen, and a woman who became the grandmother of the many damaged children adopted my Mia from around the world, was, as a young girl, an extremely toothsome little piece, as the saying goes.
The two comedies put an altogether finer light on the United States. One of them was Born Yesterday, the classic comedy that brought to stardom Judy Holliday, as the dumb blonde whose ignorance concealed a shrewd cunning the moment it was scratched by the reporter hired by the girl’s brutal boss to teach her some manners. This role is played by William Holden, who, naturally, exposed to Miss Holliday’s bumbling charms, immediately falls for her, and conspires with her to bring about the overthrow of the man who has held her in virtual slavery for some eight years--- a socko performance by Broderick Crawford. He has been using her --- she is a former chorus girl --- to sign papers that she didn’t understand, but that allowed him to carry out all sorts of illegal skullduggery without putting his own neck on the chopping block. It all comes out well in the end.
The theme of the second comedy, Ball of Fire, is similar, except reversed. Barbara Stanwyck plays the part of a nightclub stripper with underworld connections, who, on the lam from the police, takes refuge in a house that is occupied by eight wonderfully eccentric professors engaged on a momentous research project of some kind. These professors and the thugs who arrive among them to rescue Miss Stanwyck comprise some of the most memorable actors from the golden years of Hollywood --- S.Z.Sakall, Henry Travers, Oscar Homolka, Dan Duryea, (always one of my favorite heavies) and Dana Andrews. Miss Stanwyck plays this unaccustomed role to the hilt, and of course not only captivates Gary Cooper, the best-looking and most articulate of the eccentrics, but also the whole bundle of them. This, too, comes out well, after some hectic moments involving the professors somehow or other getting guns and shooting it out, more or less, with the baddies.
So, so soon after having denounced the USA, as I love to do, I am forced to remind myself that it is the home of some of the greatest comedy ever produced, as well as the unique and marvelous popular music for which it is known and loved throughout the world. Can any nation be wholly bad that gave rise to Louis Armstrong?
