Talismans

It was just under 9 years ago. It was a Wednesday in September, I was a student, but I had no classes that day. Instead I was at work in the grocery store which’s meager pittance helped pay for my school.

My assistant manager called me over to show me what he’d found. In a styrofoam cup he’d cling wrapped was a cold-stunned black spider. He shook it slightly & told me he’d found it in some grapes. As the groggy arachnid rolled around inside the cup, I noticed the red hourglass on its abdomen. Before saying a word, I placed the cup on the wrapper & covered it in another layer of cling-wrap. I told him what it was - that it was a black widow! - & he laughed & said he didn’t believe me. It took another coworker corroborating my evaluation to drive home how dangerous what he’d found was.
That’s my last coherent, positive memory from that day. 

The next thing I remember, my best friend’s mom - a second mother to me - was calling my cell to ask me if I was okay & if I was safe. A shooting had been reported at my school. My friends were all hunkered down & locked away in classes all over. The woman who would become my fiancée (& who later would become a stranger, but that’s a different story) could not be reached. Her phone went straight to voicemail.

The radio at work was reporting conflicting stories, but people being interviewed were saying that a girl had been shot. Two hours of frantic calls to friends, to my then-girlfriend’s family… Nothing. I was trying to grapple with the possibility that the worst might have happened. I worried for her, for the friends I still couldn’t reach, for the ones I had reached who were still on-site. How many shooters were there? In the end just the one, but the news was shouting that there might be as many as 3.

Finally, my phone rang. It was her, she was safe. She’d huddled in a bathroom in the basement for safety. The girl who’d died was someone else’s friend, daughter, loved one… Someone else would have to face the unbearable grief I’d only ever so briefly stared into the face of. 

I didn’t see her that day. She spent the evening, understandably, with her family. 

I met her the next morning, purchasing a zippo lighter that had seemed to call to me from a store on the way. It had a montreal flag on the front with a black border, as though it had been ready to express the mourning that the city was feeling in its bones that day. I placed it in my pocket, met her & hugged her as tightly as I could.

Our story went its own way from there, & doesn’t need rehashing here. But that lighter was imbued that day with a sort of meaning I haven’t ever quite understood. It’s been in my pocket nearly every day in the decade since that event & the few days it hasn’t been, I’ve known where it was. Yesterday that changed. I lost it (or, I thought I did) - I spent the day in a sort of panic, feeling exactly as I had in the hours I spent in uncertainty all those years ago.

I got it back. My new girlfriend found it in our apartment. But I felt better. I relaxed.

In that moment I understood something I hadn’t before. That lighter was (is), for me, a sort of talisman. All those things about that day that I find too difficult to face, all the unresolved pain & trauma & panic & fear I felt on that day are still with me. I’ve simply set them aside in an innocuous object so I don’t have to face the reality of my own feelings. It is a strange thing to understand something like that about oneself. It is a stranger thing yet to accept it as okay, as an acceptable compromise between living w/ trauma & getting therapy to resolve it.

& yet… That’s where I am.

Intent, Bill 60 & Mammon

I have not posted to this blog in far too long, so when I went off on a rant on FB the other day, I thought it might be worthwhile to repost it here. So here goes:

In the context of hearings over Bill 60 this week, a certain Martine Desjardins decried the wearing of the hijab as a "strategy" in the "expansion of political Islam." That statement is utterly racist on the face of it and is not a particularly strong argument for a charter of values one way or the other, but I want to use her argument to illustrate why the Charter's proposed banning of religious symbols is difficult to take seriously.

So, now, if we leave aside that it would be a really shitty strategy in the secularized & liberal west. If we also leave aside the obvious tales of successful integration of Italians, Greeks, Chinese, Haitians, Armenians, Germans, Vietnamese & god knows how many other cultures into the fabric of Québécois society without the assistance of a Charter of Values over the last 7 decades or so, Bill 60 is still fairly evidently a farce. Specifically, the clause regarding ostentatious religious symbols. It is laughably unenforceable, doesn't address what it claims to and certainly doesn't mitigate the threat Mme Desjardins is trying to warn us about. Moreover even if it did, it simply would not live long enough as a law to be of particular inconvenience to anyone at all.

Allow me to explain. Let us accept, for the sake of argument that Mme Desjardins is right. There is a conspiracy of political Islam to expand & change the way societies and cultures operate by proselytizing through the ostentatious display of religious symbols so that eventually Islam & Islamic culture & politics edge out existing entrenched cultural, religious & political norms. Let's also assume, for the sake of argument, that this would be a bad thing. (For the record, the first assumption is not true, but even if it was, the second assumption does not necessarily follow from the first)

In such a world, Bill 60 would seek to curtail the wearing of the Hijab, the Burqa & the Niqab, but would not in any way interfere with a man wearing a ritualistically unshaven beard - an ostentatious religious symbol. In fact, there are little to no ostentatious religious symbols worn by men which would be the target of this bill. Sure, Kirpans & Kippas & a few other odds & ends, but ultimately the list is biased to favour Christians & Men. That said, a whole crapload of ink has been spilled addressing these shortcomings & I shan't dwell on them further, except to point out that in all of these cases we are banning an article of clothing while assuming intent - & in the case of Mme Desjardins pointing to a perceived potential threat if we don't.

But what if there was a religious group that was a proven threat to our values and way of life that wore an ostentatious religious symbol & practiced strange rituals every day in full view of the public? What if this group had caused the collapse of the world economy, leading to *hundreds of thousands* of evictions & foreclosures, thousands upon thousands of cases of homelessness and thousands of death by suicide related to depression as a result of long term unemployment? What if this group worshipped a god - let's call him Mammon? & what if their ostentatious religious symbol was the business suit?

Would we ban that, then?

Okay, sure, you're right, the business class do not actually worship Mammon, it's just a biblical turn of phrase. So it's not a religious symbol, they get to keep it. But it sure as hell is a lot more menacing than a biology major trying to write an exam with a pretty scarf wrapped around her head.

So if the pretty, non-threatening scarf has to go, but not the business suit, then the government is drawing a distinction between whether the wearer intends for the article of clothing to be a religious display. So what if I, an atheist, wear a Kippa because I like the look? Or what if a nun dons a headscarf that happens to look a little bit like a hijab to shield herself from the cold? The text of Bill 60 already indicates it's not ready to make that distinction for these particular articles of clothing, and yet it's already made a number of distinctions as far as what gets covered in the first place.

What that means is that if this bill is adopted, it will not *just* be challenged in court on the basis of it violating the religious freedoms of Canadian citizens, but also by people claiming their freedom of expression has been violated in a simply non-religious sense. Oh, I almost forgot, it will also be challenged on the basis of unfairly singling out women & violating the equality rights of Canadian citizens under the Charter of Rights & Freedoms (& yes, this includes state secularism, ironically enough, as Bill 60 clearly favours one religion over others).

With so many challenges, the bill will nearly certainly be struck down quickly. Which means that the Quebec government would have to use the Notwithstanding clause to force the bill to remain in effect for 5 years. How does the PQ *really* feel about their chances? If they use the notwithstanding clause to explicitly deprive Québécois of rights, do they honestly believe they'll have the reigns of government to do it again in 5 years when their likely tweaked Charter is challenged again?

This whole thing is a bad joke. It is clearly unconstitutional. It even violates the *existing* Quebec Charter of Human Rights & Freedoms (though it would get around that by amending that particular law - because rights can just be written off by a legislature if they're inconvenient, right?). It is divisive, it pits Québécois against Québécois & Métropole against Capitale. It needs to stop.

Society has Failed Feminism?

Last night I read a very good article on AlterNet about the way our society's view of libido and sexuality is so broken that many of our cultural problems with gender, sex & equality can trace at least a portion of their insidiousness and apparent unshakeability to that broken conception. It got me thinking about how the feminist movement set out to raise social awareness, elevate women to an equal status in society, undermine rape culture and generally make society a place where all human beings can have an equal claim to a healthy life & to comfortably express their economic potential, identity, gender, sexuality and personality. The line of thought inevitably led me to a realization:

We have put a lot of social discourse into attaining the feminist goal, but very little by way or real, legitimate effort has been made toward acheiving that goal. The fact is, our society has largely accepted the precepts of equality that feminism has brought to its attention. The fact that with that acceptance has come so very few results, to my mind, means one thing and one thing only. Society has failed feminism.

It's a bigger problem than some out there might wish to admit. As much as the feminist critique largely focuses on redressing those sectors of our society and culture where there has been abject failure to ensure the physical and mental health, economic well-being and equal status of women, we often forget the consequences of those failures. Women are not the only victims of this social failure (as the AlterNet article touches on). When women cannot expect to make the salary they deserve, the economy suffers and problems of unemployment can quickly be exacerbated; when women cannot expect to control their reproductive lives, the health and social costs to society can become staggering, social mobility for men and women at the bottom of the economic spectrum becomes utterly stunted; when women cannot expect to be believed when they claim that they have been raped, men cannot expect their sisters, mothers, aunts, neices or daughters to feel safe, be safe or expect justice; when society paints every woman as a sexual commodity, it robs our government of true representation because women cannot be expected under such circumstances to compete fairly in the democratic process; it means that men can only expect to be viewed as predators or consumers of sex and marginalizes assertive women, emotionally sensitive or expressive men and anyone at all who isn't willing to agree to be a dominantly sexual man or a submissively sexual woman.

That is a very short list. But it speaks to an unbearable failure. It speaks to a society that values neither women, nor men, nor anyone at all - or at least that the value assigned to each is lower than anyone really agrees it should be.

The most terrifying part of that failure is that we all have internalized it to some extent. I am, with the love of my life, living in a sex-positive open relationship and I wrestle with unreasonable and ineffable guilt every time I spend a moment with another woman. I struggle with jealousy whenever my love spends time with another man. But it doesn't make sense. I want to spend the rest of my life with her and she with me, we love each other comepletely and we ensure that every moment we have together is ours in a way I don't think I've ever experienced. And yet... I feel society's yoke around my neck. I'm certain, to a lesser or greater extent, you, my reader, do as well.

I think it is necessary for us, as a precondition to living up to the expectations and ideals of the feminist movement, that we attempt to shake off that yoke. It cripples our capacity to move forward by impairing rational moral thought. It cripples our capacity for compassion for the same reason. We need to be better than we are. I need to be better than I am.

Forget 1968, Let's Talk 1984

I feel I need to begin this post with a disclaimer: every discussion of modern society's descent into Orwellian dystopia is, almost by definition, a cliché attempt at dramatic hyperbole that does little besides demonstrate that the author has read 1984 and keeps half an ear to the ground either politically or culturally. I hope that the bit of text I am presenting here does not fall under that rubric. This is, of course, a hyperbolic exploration of a theme. It is my hope, however, that it will prove to be a fruitful & useful one, rather than merely an exercise in intellectual masturbation.

The reason I have chosen to discuss 1984 now is, to be frank, my revulsion at the way police, the media and the government have behaved vis-à-vis the Occupy movement in the US primarily, but also here, in Canada. My thoughts began from there and went on to ponder a much larger political and cultural reality, but I want to be straightforward & state very clearly that a support for the Occupy movement served as my starting point.

Ultimately, during the course of my musings, I was forced to conclude that we in North America have a serious problem with the language we use to discuss all facets of our political reality. Language has always been a weapon in politics, and no one saw more clearly what it could accomplish in that capacity than George Orwell did in the shadow of World War II. It is therefore difficult to truly grasp how twisted our language has become without contrasting what is happening in our very real, everyday, actual world with the events in Winston Smith's fictitious world of 1984.

WAR IS PEACE

In 1984, this refers to a perception fostered by the political régime of Oceania that peace is impossible without perpetual war against either Eastasia or Eurasia (the enemy du jour being retroactively edited into records as having always been the enemy, with the ally du jour receiving the same treatment). The war is not perceived as perpetual, mind, merely as necessary to ensure peace.

In 2011, ten years after the declaration of the War on Terror, we are repeatedly reassured that "Thanks to the [war in Afghanistan] our citizens are safer and our nation is more secure;" that internationally illegal incursions over the borders of sovereign, ostensibly allied countries in order to commit state-sanctioned murder are "justice;" moreover, the same state-sanctioned murder is celebrated with elation in the streets of the capital of the most powerful country on the planet, a scene disturbingly reminiscent of the cheering depicted during the public hanging of Eurasian prisoners of war in Orwell's book. In a very real sense, then, we in 2011 understand - or at least our governments would have us understand - that WAR is, indeed, PEACE.

FREEDOM IS SLAVERY

This is where the coverage of the Occupy movement got my thought process moving. Now, admittedly, the example I will use for the real world cannot genuinely be called slavery. That is a hyperbolic exaggeration that trivializes the reality of slavery as it was experienced by millions over nearly four centuries & as it is experienced by millions more today in the world's poorest & most despotic régimes. That said, the contrast between what can & cannot honestly be called freedom is one which I feel must be drawn.

In the world of 1984, every party member is free to think exactly within the boundaries drawn by Big Brother & no further. Language itself is being curtailed, remade into newspeak, in order to eliminate the very possibility of heterodox thought. People's minds are being made slaves to ingsoc orthodoxy in order to allow them complete freedom within a terribly limited scope of behaviour. Proles - that is the bottom level of Oceanic society - have far more freedom than Party members, but theirs is a different slavery: no education at all; given the most menial & unintellectual tasks in society; kept drunk & hooked on mechanically generated radio shows meant to keep them distracted & uniterested, proles are slaves to vice, forever unable to manifest into a genuine political or social force.

The modern example, while nowhere near as insidious, is nevertheless worrying in the extreme.

In 2009, the Tea Party movement made headlines by carrying guns & behaving in an intimidating fashion at political rallies under the dual protections of the first & second amendments to the United States Constitution. Their extreme, but ultimately conservative (& therefore Orthodox) message was protected. I can find no instance of police intervening to break up a single Tea Party rally or protest in any periodical online.

By contrast, the more heterodox liberal/socialist message of the Occupy movement has provoked multiple & violent interventions by police to silence, displace & disperse the movement's encampments in municipalities all over North America. The protesters deserve it because they have no clear demands. They are hippies. They need a bath and a job. Never mind their rights as US or Canadian citizens.

No appeals to either the First Amendment in the US or the Canadian Fundamental Freedom of Expression (which is a little less narrow a right than the American Freedom of Speech in that is a. covers more than speech & b. does not only refer to the citizen's interaction with government) have allowed these protests to resist being shut down or violently attacked by police. In situations like these it becomes abundantly clear that freedom of speech is a freedom only so long as the message being articulated is consistent, at least in part, with the prevailing political orthodoxy. If the message is counter to that, it would seem, then it is not subject to any freedom at all.

IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

The 1984 version of this is subtle. It is considered a strength to be able to believe two completely opposite statements; to be able to forget words & vocabulary that express things beyond the doctrine of the party & to be able to forget the true course of events & history in favour of history as prescribed by the party. In this world, it is willful ignorance which is considered strength, true; but it is willful ignorance achieved through willful & selective amnesia.

The contrast with modern politics is striking. There is no willful amnesia among the modern electorate - merely a glorification of ignorance. How else do we explain candidate Herman Cain's statement that "we need a leader, not a reader?" Or the attacks against Obama as an intellectual, a lecturer-in-chief, a professor or an elitist?

This is a polity in which it is a disadvantage to be educated. The evidence is everywhere: among the websites above, "Harvard-educated" shows up as a slur; there are dozens of news stories google-able with headlines like "don't believe what they say;" for god's sake, Michelle Bachmann repeatedly demonstrates unbelievable ignorance & gullibility & remains a semi-viable candidate in the GOP presidential primary.

***

Do we live in a 1984, Winston Smith, Big Brother kind of world? I like to think, & hope, not. But the language we use to talk about our politics & the culture surrounding the big questions of leadership, freedom, the economy & our government are geared to produce a very limited & limiting outcome that favours one specific segment of our society. It is difficult to pin down exactly when it happened, but at one point since the 1970s, war did, indeed, become peace. Freedom, while not quite slavery, became a far more limited notion than we might imagine. Education became a liability, not a strength.

There is something worrying in that. The potential consequences of this perversion of political language and culture are terrifying to behold & we should be wary of allowing it to exacerbate the already tenuous situations of our economy & civil rights.

Occupons Montréal: Don’t Listen to the Media

He was working at the base of the statue of Queen Victoria when I photographed him. The tools of his trade were a simple black marker & a small sheet of plywood. What he was drawing was a beautiful, if a little terrifying, piece of artwork. This was the moment that my scepticism about Occupons Montréal faded & was replaced with hope – cautious hope, cautious optimism – but hope nonetheless.

The reason I had felt sceptical, the reason I had felt that Occupons Montréal might fade into irrelevance until I saw it for myself, is rooted in my understanding of other occupations worldwide – most notably, Occupy Wall Street, where the message is much clearer than the media is portraying it to be & the protestors’ organizing prowess & sense of community repeatedly seems to win out against the established powers & authorities. Globally, we are seeing a sort of 1968 all over again – a mass protest movement, simultaneously local & international in scope, with issues ranging from ending war, economic justice, student debt, unemployment, animal rights, etc. The momentum of this movement seems implacable & the energy of the people participating in it is contagious when you are around it.

So when I saw, over the weekend, a headline on the Le Devoir website saying that Occupons Montréal was associating itself with a march for Québec independence (the headline has since been removed), I felt my heart sink. The rest of the world was challenging an unfair, unscrupulous & predatory economic system that is pushing governments to austerity & here I was seeing my city’s Occupation rehashing old battles & using old, still-divisive politics to undermine its own message & popular support with nearly half of Québec’s population.

Except it wasn’t, and it isn’t. The Occupation General Assembly’s Minutes don’t mention a word about sovereignty or independence. The Occupation seems to be about changing the system to make it fairer for the people in our society who aren’t at the top of the wealth & power pyramid; the old battles are being brought up in the media, but not in the discussions I heard people having down in Square-Victoria-cum-La-Place-du-Peuple. Some of the ideas being discussed are frivolous, unachievable, blue-sky pushes for revolutionary, total world-system reform, but mostly what’s talked about seems to be about making the movement work, making the occupation durable &, beyond those goals, it seems to be about making the world better for people who need it. Allowing people not just to exist, but to live.

 

So yes, my scepticism faded. It faded because of the message of the Occupation, which is simply “Here are the problems foisted on our society by the wealthy & the powerful at our expense & in our name. Fix them. Now.”; it faded because of the people at the protest, who are living together with a sense of community I have simply never seen in Montreal; it faded because artists are sitting next to enthusiastic political activists, drawing pictures & sculpting stones while someone lectures about inequality and social justice, just because this place has given them the opportunity to express themselves in a way they could not before; it faded because in a city where people will riot because a band can’t play a gig for being held up at the border, there is a village of tents cooperating in an astonishing display of direct, deliberative democracy to change things for the better & not only has it not descended into chaos, but it has grown larger, more organized & more beautiful.

The artist with his plywood canvas sat on the plinth of a statue in a true, 21st Century Agora. If nothing else is accomplished by this movement, the community & the sense of being at the bustling, creative heart of a true democracy will nevertheless stay with me always.

China isn't Egypt

Or Yemen, or Tunisia, or Syria, or Libya, or any of those North African & Middle Eastern nations seeing nascent democratic - or at least rebellious - movements within their polity.

The People's Republic of China [PRC] will not see its government overthrown in the next few months by hordes of repressed, outraged, angry Chinese protestors clamouring for régime change & democracy. Sorry for deflating the bubble, but that is just the truth of the matter. There are a number of reasons for this. The Chinese government has tighter control (though this is by no means hermetic) of foreign press than Egypt, Tunisia, Lybia or Yemen; issues in China are largely local & issue based (see Charter '08), rather than national & personal/general; additionally, the economic situation in China is positive, growing &, importantly, provides full employment. That last factor is, by far, the most important to consider.

Media wise, it is true that young people in China can and do use proxy servers to easily circumvent the national firewall. This means that foreign media & information contrary to political doctrine is hardly difficult to access. It's propagation is not particularly restricted, either. Free speech is not total in China, obviously, but it exists in a great enough degree that the state cannot be accused of grossly violating it. Nevertheless, the average citizen is subjected only to media that exists in partnership with the State; there are enough people in China that even if millions upon millions of people circumvent state media & propagate that information, the vast majority does not. As such, the population is less likely to be swayed by external support, pressure or information than the middle-eastern countries abovementionned.

As for the issue-based Chinese outrage: China is very much a country in development with much work that remains to be done. The Chinese people know this and they are willing to work at it & make the country better. A great example of this is the young Rock & Roll musician in the Tank Man documentary who tells the interviewer that an full-fledged, complete transformation of China that would solve every problem the country faces and give them democracy & free choice is unrealistic. That improvement will take work and slow, methodical change.

And so the Chinese people work at it, pressuring their government one issue at a time. Weathering leaders like Jiang Zemin & embracing leaders like Hu Jintao, they work toward a better country.

Importantly, in many ways, they live in a much better country than they did in 1989, when a lone man stared down a tank in order to stand up to his government. The Special Economic Zones [SEZ] have been massively expanded. Every major eastern urban center is as capitalist as New York ever was. The Chinese people realize this success is true, aswell.

The old adage says, "It's the economy, stupid!" It isn't a lie. For every problem China faces, the fact remains that the Chinese Communist Party [CCP] has delivered on its economic promises. Chinese economic growth is just plain staggering and as long as it remains that way - as long as the CCP continues to deliver on Deng Xiaoping's promise to make China prosperous - the real risk of rebellion in China is infinitesimally small.

The argument can be made, aswell, that China has been revolutionary since the Taiping Rebellion; that what we're seeing in China is the slowest, most utterly complete, most methodical revolution in world history. That we won't see new revolutions in China because they aren't done with the one at hand. I think there is some truth to the argument. & I believe that the outcome of this revolution is far from certain: we may witness something novel in China in the coming years. Not Communism, Socialism, Liberalism, Corporatism or any other permutation of socio-political organization we're familiar with, but rather a sort of new social order... With Chinese characteristics!

Hang on & enjoy the ride. This one'll be interesting.

Cliché Time: Walk Like an Egyptian!

Mubarak is gone. The protestors have won this one: score one for non-violent revolt (and this was a successful revolt, not a revolution - revolution requires an upheaval of the social, legal, economic and political order, as far as we have seen, only the leadership in Egypt has been removed); score one for humanity.

It is important, in the wake of this victory, to take a look at the International Relations side of the events of the last two and a half weeks. People are questionning the fact that the White House showed support for Mubarak right off the bat. The idea is that the unideological pragmatism of the American Executive's foreign policy is opportunism, that it is somehow mistaken and wrong.

The fact is, such analysis is blind to the very complex realities of long-term diplomatic relations within which all countries - the United States far more than others - must work. Such analysis forgets how much work it takes to convince foreign governments to undertake courses of action which help the American agenda forward.

The White House, has, in effect, been balancing the politics of placating the moral, ethical and ideological mood of its own electorate and the requirement that it maintain its international commitments. The maintenance of international commitments is important, not based only on principle, and certainly not based on whether or not there is a likelihood of a cause's success, but rather for a reason that is almost ridiculous in its simplicity: it is about keeping up appearances.

The projects of the American diplomacy are manifold. They include peace on the Korean peninsula, the halting of Iran's nuclear programme, the tightening of relations with Russia, the tightening of relations with China, etc. Many of these are interrelated. Peace in the Koreas, for example, can only happen with the consent of China and this can only happen if relations between the US and China are improved. Likewise the halting of Iran's nuclear programme can only happen if pressure on Iran is significantly increased, and that can only happen if China and Russia agree to impose economic and political sanctions on the country, which itself can only happen if... Well, you see the point.

These relationships - these interwoven networks of commitments and expectations - rely very heavily on countries doing and saying what they agree to do and say. The White House's initial support for Mubarak had very little to do with Israel. Far less than it had to do with the international perception of the USA's willingness to support its allies in times of crisis above and beyond the point where it blatantly serves its interests.

There was never any doubt that the administration would eventually come down on the side of protestors (as it did, yesterday); the last two and a half weeks have been about gradually changing position, so that it would not outpace events and so that foreign allies - especially dictatorships - could feel that they could continue to count on the political support of the United States. Could it have done so earlier? I would argue that, if not for an unfortunate statement by President Obama during the State of the Union about American support for the democratic aspirations of all peoples, the White House could very well have taken a concrete position well before last night. Additionally, there may have been slightly less urgent pressure from the domestic front to take position on the matter (ie, it may have been possible, without that statement, for the administration to handle this crisis through Secretary of State Clinton alone, rather than requiring the attention of the President himself).

That said, the administration has done a skillful job of navigating the International Relations entanglements of this crisis. It has done a skillful job of managing the domestic politics involved. It should be commended for its work in this matter, as the west can only gain from its handling of the situation.

How to Bring Back the Canadian Voter

A recent election in Canada saw Voter Turnout somewhere in the neighbourhood of 40%. This was rightly decried by Ed Holder on twitter as being detrimental to the democratic process. Unfortunately, as I’ve said before on this site over and over again, the Canadian electoral system is broken – voting has become a complicated calculus over whether your vote will tip the scales towards a majority government (which, as we have seen with Jean Charest and the Bill 103-cum-115 fiasco, leads to an unchecked legislature capable of ignoring the voters entirely), whether it will maintain a functional minority (or lead to a severely dysfunctional one which will need prorogation to set right) or whether it’ll even count (let’s face it, a vote for anyone but the Bloc in Bloc country will almost never mean the Bloc candidate will lose). The Canadian Electoral system is barely democratic.

Why is that?

There are two major reasons I’ve harped on in the past. The first is the plurality, first-past-the-post system. This is the most fundamental and easy-to-grasp, and probably the most generally displeasing of the problems with the electoral system. The knowledge that most of the people representing Canadians in the House of Common are doing so with fewer than half the votes from their riding is a tough pill to swallow while simultaneously believing the system is democratic.

The second is the problem of Party Discipline: when our representatives are called on to vote, they do so as liberals, or as conservatives, or NDP members, or Bloc members. They do not do so as representatives of their ridings. This leads to an even greater dissociation of the political process from the voters who enable it.

There are other, more minor issues that tend to disincentivize voters to schlep their way to a ballot-box. These are things like proportional representation (which, admittedly, is related to the plurality issue), the Triple-E Senate (because nominees are ever-so-democratic) and the question of the role of the Governor-General in providing a check against the power of the Prime Minister.

So how do we solve this problem? How do we get people to get passed these problems and get back to voting?

The answer is actually simpler than one might think: change the system. Don’t try to make it seem appealing, instead fix the problems. Now I say this is a simpler answer only in that it does not make a convoluted attempt to coax voters into pretending the system isn’t broken. It is simpler, but it is not easier. It will require work and a clear set of solutions – and so here’s my attempt at laying out a few of them.

Plurality: The problem here is manifold, and so there are several changes which will have to happen to rectify it. My suggestions are the establishment of a Triple-E Senate, a Proportionally Representative Commons and the institution of a system of Run-Off, True-Majority elections.

• The Triple-E Senate: Elected, Equal and Effective, a reformed Senate with, say, five senators per province, would allow for equal representation across the country and a check on what would be a reformed House of Commons. It would also allow the Senate to become a body which provides a greater check on the House of Commons and, whether Party Discipline is overcome or not, might allow to mitigate its effects, somewhat. That alone would make the political process appear more democratic and representative.
• Proportionally Representative Commons: This is the idea of a House of Commons which’s ridings represent all Canadians equally, according to their population rather than according to the hodgepodge of criteria that give PEI  & Saskatchewan a relatively greater share of legislative power than the Central Provinces (although this is a relative, rather than absolute measure). This would, of course, diminish the importance of less populous areas in the House of Commons, but this change would be completely mitigated by the equal standing of the Upper House, which would be Triple-E. Proportional Representation should not be enacted without first instituting Senate Reform.
• Run-Off, True-Majority elections: This measure would prevent any representative from being elected to his post with less than 50% of the vote. The reason for this is fairly straightforward – any elected official would be a genuine representative of the majority opinion of his riding. Party Discipline might still manage to mitigate this move, but it would be a start and would at the very least give a greater appearance of legitimacy to elected representatives.

As for that problem, Party Discipline must be relaxed, significantly. The only way for Canadian Voters to once again trust in their elected officials to represent them is for those representatives to begin, once again, to listen to their constituents. They need to vote the way their constituents want them to.

If these issues are addressed, the results will become apparent very quickly. Those results will, over the course of several elections, eventually lure Canadians back to the ballot-box. Our government would cease to be a cruel elitist joke and Canadians might once-anew become interested in our political process.

My last proposal is one to address my own pet-peeve. The ability of the Prime Minister to negate the power of the House of Commons by proroguing parliament or dissolving it on a whim with a simple phone call to the Governor-General is far powerful for it to be considered even mildly democratic. I have thought long and hard about how to address this problem feasibly, and I believe I have figured it out.

Every 5 years, the Reformed Senate would nominate three or four people for the position of Governor-General and a Council of Premiers would be called. The 10 Provincial Premiers would then vote and the two nominees garnering the most votes would be kept in considerations. The premiers would then take the Question back to their home legislatures, where a vote would be taken. The nominee who garnered the support of 7 legislatures representing at least 50% of the Canadian population would become the new Governor-General and would act in consultation with the Provinces. ^{(N.B. This could also be accomplished through a national consultation after the vetting process of Senate-nomination & a vote of the Council of Premiers, with a direct election from 50% of the population)}

The Governor-General would of course have discretion in the exercise of his or her functions, but the position would become one of provincial oversight. If the Prime Minister were to ask, once again, to prorogue Parliament, the Governor-General would have to consider whether or not prorogation would be in the interest of the provinces, or if it would garner the approval of the provinces. This new discretion would apply to all the functions of the Governor-General, including the ability to veto Acts of Parliament which go against the will of the Provinces. The net effect of this would be to allow the Federal and Provincial Governments to act in a more concerted and effective way.

Or I might just be some internet crank who has no idea what I’m doing.

Reflections on the End of Something Good

There comes a time which, I hope, is far from universal.

It is the moment when you realize that everything you were is dead and gone and that, far from being reborn, far from being rebuilt and renewed and revitalized, the person you are going to be is still, as yet, unborn. In this limbo, in this middle-ground, you are lost. There is despair in this place, despair and sadness that threaten to overwhelm you every moment you are awake. This is a place where you realize you are simply, completely, absolutely alone. You wish someone would put their arms around you, if only so you could cry on their shoulder - anyone's arms, anyone's shoulder... And the only thing saving you from it is knowing that no one will.

And you have no choice but to go on about your business. You've got to keep working, and you've got to keep smiling and pretending that everything is okay, even though it isn't. Even though it'll never be 100% okay again. You can't talk to anyone anymore, because they think it's been two months and you're past it and they have their own problems they need you to listen to. And you do, because you care about them.

But it kills you.

You're not a person anymore, at that point. You're just a clump of memories and pain and sadness with the occasional smile, thrown in. You wish you could fight for what you were, for what you had, or for what you will be and what you will have, but you can't. There's nothing to fight, no enemy or challenge to vanquish. You wish you could spit vitriol and invective at the woman who said she'd marry you and then took it back - but you can't. You can't because you love her and you can't hate her, no matter how much you try.

So you go for walks, or drives, alone. You think about the children you'll never have and you weep. You think about the good times and you smile through tears. You think about the future you no longer have and you cower.

It is at moments like this when you feel like there is nothing in the world worth what you had, and that - in spite of the rational knowledge that it is not the end - you have nothing at all to look forward to that will ever make you as happy as you were.

I miss her. I miss my in-laws. I miss seeing her smile as she walked towards me after a long time apart. I miss the smell of her hair and the feel of her arms around me. I miss hearing her call me a dork when I said something silly and I miss calling her a freak when she did something ridiculous.

Homophobic Maine and a Bottle of Rum

Well, there you go. Again the American electorate is asked to allow loving couples to live together under the same social and legal protections as exist for half-miserable (50% divorce rate) straight couples and again, the idea of two dudes kissing has proven just too damned icky to allow such a thing as equality, decency or compassion to gain even an inch of ground.

It's fucking sickening to think that such an inhuman mass of knee-jerk, unthinking, prejudicial and downright cruel people lives just a stone's throw from my home.

Shame on you, Maine. You're better than that.

On Voting in Canada

I just got back from voting in my municipal election and, in a bizarre twist of circumstance, my vote will be counted. Usually, by day’s end, the election officials look at my ballot and say, “Fuck.”

I spoil my ballots.

Hear me out: Canada functions using the First Past the Post, Plurality system; no runoffs, no second round, nothing to give any candidate any more than his 30% – 40% “legitimacy.” It’s an anti-democratic fraud foisted upon the Canadian people more regularly than we’d like with results you might expect; corruption, dissatisfaction and generalized apathy pervade the Canadian political climate and no one harbours any hope of changing it.

You’ll recall from my discussions of Minority Governments that it is only through these that, in our system, we manage anything near democratic representation (Remember, if the Conservatives got 37% of the vote, that means fully 63% of the population voted against them).

So I’ve taken a stand, now; every time I vote in an election with more than two parties and no hope of a runoff or second round election, I don’t cross either box and I write “La Pluralité est Anti-Démocratique” across the names of all the candidates – it is a practice I urge (whether in french or english doesn’t matter) on all electors, that we might one day, maybe, effect a change in the system.

Not today, though; in my little suburb, the election was between two candidates and the result was guaranteed to be a genuine majority-rules election. So I voted.

That being said, it was only a majority election by default and had there been a third candidate, I would again have spoiled my ballot. I don’t believe in two party systems, so I urge everyone to urge their MPs to discuss election reform that would include runoff elections to proper plurality votes that we may end up with a truly representative parliament.

Louise Harel and a Bottle of Rum

Which, for the record, is the only way you could convince me to vote for her. Drinking is the sole explanation for how a significant portion of the population could be lining up behind a woman who is proud of her refusal to debate in the language of fully one third of the island she wants to be in charge of.

That's really the heart of this, for me; Harel, by refusing to communicate her message to the massive number of electors in Montreal who might want to hear it but who simply don't understand French has essentially told them that she is not concerned with them. So does Montreal want a mayoral candidate who will not represent its whole population? Does Montreal want a mayoral candidate who'll once again try to divide it along linguistic lines?

Nearly 3 centuries of coexistence in Montreal has finally begun to unite the population in common interests; Harel isn't charismatic enough to undo that, but with power she could push some people to saying and doing very stupid things. It's something we don't need.

Anti-Vax and a Bottle of Rum

Alright, I'm posting from my iPod for the first time since it got all appstored, so bear with any difference in formatting and all that. All future iPod posts will bear the "...and a Bottle of Rum" suffix in the title.

***

Okay, this H1N1 thing has got the crazies coming out of the woodwork. "Injecting a disease in your arm is dangerous!" they shriek; "I knew someone who got crazy sick because of the flu vaccine!" they continue. All of it faster than you can say "post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy" Which I guess is true of most phrases.

Here's the brass tacs: polio and smallpox are GONE. They don't exist in the western world BECAUSE of vaccination. Influenza mutates more quickly and dramatically, so we haven't been as lucky, but vaccines do help us build up partial immunities, so that if the strain we were vaccinated against comes around, we're unaffected and if some variation on that strain comes around, our odds of dying are significantly lower.

We don't have any native immunity to H1N1. The government of Canada is giving away vaccines. H1N1 is killing young adults and pregnant women. Smarten up, take an hour off work and take a god damned jab in the arm.

For better, more educated info, check out www.sciencebasedmedicine.org and glance at Thunderf00t on Youtube. The blog is obviously more complete than the videos.

Just Something I’ve Been Meaning to Say

iTunes is, in my opinion, one of the heaviest, most unwieldy and least useful pieces of software ever created by any major developer in the history of computing. It is clearly a lazy port job from the apple platform over to windows and it needs to be scrapped and built from scratch in a platform-specific way. That or it needs a team of competent porting programmers.

A Corollary to Pascal’s Wager

You must wager; it is not optional... Let us weigh the gain and the loss in wagering that God exists... If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation, that He exists. (Source)

The Wager, as it has stood for so long, maintains that the Believer has nothing to lose, should he be proven wrong in the end; I would argue that this is not only mistaken, but that from the Atheist’s view it is ultimately the Believer who has the most to lose.

This may require some explanation:

If there is no other life, then the only one that matters is this one. That is a simple, elegant truth that is implicit in the idea of Atheism (or PEARLism as the wonderfully eloquent Thunderf00t likes to describe it). In such a paradigm, it is a crime against one’s self and one’s life to deny those instincts and pleasures permitted by proper social morality and pragmatism in order to maintain the self-abnegating, rigid, irrational pseudo-morality of scripture in hopes of meaning in a non-existent afterlife.

Self-abnegation is an evil doctrine; I do not mean, of course, that human beings should indulge every single urge which takes hold of them, or that we should feel compelled to act on every instinct. What I mean is that we should feel free to apply common sense and good judgement to our choices without the interference of superstitious, ancient tribal dogma. To claim that homosexual love is immoral on the sole basis of scripture ignores the impact of such judgement on those who have no other choice but to live and love that way. To claim abortion is wrong under every circumstance on the sole basis of scripture ignores the larger issue of circumstance, which, in cases of rape and extreme poverty can make the carrying to term of a child costly, dangerous and damaging on a personal, filial and social level.

These are only two of the more flagrant cases in which adherence to the morality of Christian scripture (which is one of the more lenient of the Big Three) corresponds to a direct and drastic diminishing of human quality of life; they do not begin to scratch the surface of other so-called “moral” doctrines, like male dominance, pre-marital celibacy and capital punishment.

These behaviours, this so-called morality, cheapens the only life we have on this earth. It robs people of the choices which allow them to live full, meaningful and happy lives and it unnecessarily adds misery, confusion, conflict and pain to a life already shot through with all of the above. When a believer dies, whether or not he has lived his life to the fullest, whether or not he has experienced a life of meaning and happiness, whether or not he has managed to accomplish all those things he would have liked to do, he is still dead. While he may not be able to regret the life he has wasted, he will nevertheless have wasted it.

So my corollary to Pascal’s Wager, or at least my modified wager, would be this:

The non-believer who places all meaning on this life may find, after death, that he is held to justify his actions and beliefs before a creator; this may lead to an unpleasantly long stay in hell.

That being said, the believer who places all meaning on the afterlife may find, upon his death, that he is losing his life without having lived it. Furthermore, if he is right and there genuinely is a creator, the likelihood of his believing the faith that the creator requires (assuming that it is one of the hundreds or thousands of denominations of the “revealed” faiths of earth) is so slim that regardless of his belief he may nevertheless end up joining his non-believing counterpart in hell.

Author’s Note: I do not include agnostics in this because I believe it is a bad scientific position to hold and that, upon examination, agnostics usually fall into the category of non-practicing religious people or weak atheists rather than anything in between.

As far as the first point, allow me to illustrate; if I tell you that there is an invisible unicorn under your bed that cannot be touched by human hands but that grants wishes if you believe in it just enough, you’d be completely right not to believe me – there would be no evidence for it. This is the same position one must take vis-à-vis religion; in the absence of proper evidence, the only sustainable position is disbelief. Agnosticism is the practice of saying “That’s all well and good, but there could be a unicorn there.” It is useless, contributes nothing to the conversation and is the doctrine of the terrifyingly politically correct.

Edit: The believer being referred to here is one who believes and practices his religion; the non-practicing believer is in the same boat as the atheist in that he may well enjoy his life to the fullest or what-have-you, but by not adhering to the dogma and doctrines of his faith, he will, by his own beliefs and by those of most others, be damned to hell.

On the Chaplaincy

Most people would agree that a modern democracy owes it to itself and its citizens to maintain a secular approach to affairs of state; the separation between the church and the people's sovereign institutions of governance is imperative to those same institutions' impartiality before all citizens and their proper service of state interests.

So why is it that our armed forces are still maintaining an active chaplaincy - either at home or in missions abroad - on the public dime? Is it so strange that our enemies think we're fighting religious wars against them? Our own government is paying to ship priests overseas to preach the Christian message.

I understand that our soldiers are doing a tough job and some of them need a bit of spiritual guidance or what have you to be able to go out and face those realities every day for however long their tours of duty end up being. But the abovementioned proper service of state interests requires that we consider the ramifications of state-sponsored religious figures in our state-sponsored war-machine (not that the Canadian war-machine is particularly terrifying, but I wouldn't wanna piss 'em off, anyway). The trick, I believe, lies in the "state-sponsored" bit.

Soldiers who want spiritual guidance should be given the same choice as people all over Canada and the United States: pay the Tithe. The military could cut funding to the chaplaincy entirely, paying only for their transportation, while the soldiers themselves pay the tithe from their salaries to keep their regiments stocked with all that's required to satisfy their spiritual needs. This hands-off approach may not be immediately appreciated by our enemies on the ground, but the intellectuals (and yes, our enemies do have a class of intellectuals interpretting world events for them) may well understand the intention behind the change.

Additionally, the stories of soldiers forced to attend services by social pressures might change if the culture of religious kow-towing espoused by the people at the top is, in this way, forced to change. I doubt it, but one can hope. The real pay-off will be in the long run; every other facet of our society has benefitted from the democratization and accessibility that secularization has brought with it, the military will prove to be no exception.

Pour Myra

Myra,

Nous sommes ici pour te dire au revoir, te commémorer et surtout pour partager nos souvenirs de ton âme si chaleureux. Ton âme nous a si profondément touchés; si bien entouré d’amour et de tendresse. Tu as projetée cette même tendresse à tout ceux qui, par leur chance incroyable, on pu te connaître.

Myra, tu as semé la joie dans nos coeurs et tu vas nous manquer. Ta persévérence et ton effervescence laissent un vide intense au centre de nos coeurs. Nous ne pourrons écouter Jonathan Painchaud, Les Colocs, Les Backstreet Boys où Roch Voisine sans se souvenir de cette passion pour la musique qui fût constante tout au long de ta vie remarquable; remarquable autant pour ses difficultés que pour l’attitude avec laquelle tu les surmontais. Nous ne pouvons qu’espérer un jour ressentir pour un bref instant et pour les choses les plus précieuses, l’amour que tu démontrais pour les mélodieuses créations de tes artistes préférés.

Myra, notre belle, notre douce Myra. Ton épreuve est terminée et nous avons tous été enrichis par ton passage.

Ton sourire et ton sens de l’humour vallaient leur pesant d’or. Ta franche appréciation de tous les gens que tu rencontrais, tout simplement pour ce qu’ils étaient, représente une qualité trop peu présente chez le commun des mortels, et sans toi, nous n’aurions jamais connu sa valeure réelle.

Certe, ces qualités que tu possédais nous ont marqués, tous et chacun. Elles ont faites de nous de meilleures personnes. Nul ne peut nier cette réalité. Mais la vrai richesse que tu nous laisse, la mémoire qui restera toujours avec nous, c’est l’amour.

L’amour était le cadeau que tu nous réservais tous; l’amour que nous ressentons tous aujourd’hui; l’amour que nous avons toujours ressenti pour toi et avec toi.

Cet amour nous convoque aujourd’hui. C’est cet amour qui nous porte à célébrer la merveilleuse personne que tu étais et c’est cet amour qui nous uni aujourd’hui dans notre peine de t’avoir perdu et dans notre soulagement à savoir que tes souffances sont enfin terminées.

Oui, tu vas nous manquer! c’est avec des coeurs un peu plus légers que nous te disons au revoir; nous t’aimons de plus profonds de nous.

Repose en paix, Myra

A Curriculum Vitae for the Future

For Rent:

Semi-autonomous organic machine, useful for almost any physical task. Recently acquired clerical & research-dedicated programming. Operating system and memory based on an bio-electric processor and Electrically Erasable Programmable Read-Only Memory.

All commands can be entered verbally. Programming can be accomplished through visual, tactile and auditory inputs. Data transfer rate of four to twelve words per second, depending on a variety of variables.

Flexible fuel compatibility allows the unit to be run on any number of biological and organic materials. Fuel efficiency and processing power can be increased by the catalyst C₈H₁₀N₄O₂ known colloquially as caffeine.

Operating System has some quirks and operates on a paradigm basis and sometimes will have difficulty with verbal commands if they violate previous assumptions about the operational environment. Both the Operating System and the unit itself require regular rest and cannot be operated indefinitely. Brief pauses every few hours followed by a longer pause after 8 to 12 hours of operation are required in order to ensure the unit's continued efficient operation.

Asking rental price: 11$-25$ per hour of operation, depending on the nature of the task required.

The Computer as Mind

Is it possible that human beings have accidentally shaped the computer as an avatar of the human mind? The autonomic system (BIOS, Processor, Buses, Communication Protocols, etc), the subconcious (daemon programs, background processes, root-programs, etc) and the concious (GUIs, active programs and processes and real-time access to memory & data) minds are all represented...

Just a thought.

Countdowns and Transitions

Our neighbours to the south have just inaugurated themselves a new President and his first major action was signing an executive order to close the Guantanamo Bay Prison before the year's out; the transition begins. Executive orders are all well and good, but it remains to be seen how he'll steer the country itself over the next four years (and my money's still on boring and ordinary).

That being said, there are countdowns on in this country, one of which is related to our own governance: Stephen Harper's delay tactic comes to an end in four days. Parliament will be confronted with his new budget and, if cooler heads haven't prevailed, we'll be looking at a very interesting end to the month of January; the liberals and NDP know the damage to their reputation is already done, and they may grab the coalition just to make sure they can wield power for the next two years or so and maybe get credit for steering Canada out of the coming economic quagmire - the only way they might salvage their political reputations before any more elections are called. I'm keeping an eye on CPAC.

Oh, and the all-star weekend begins in Montreal tomorrow night. Woohoo!