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.

Damage Done

It's been a hell of a week. There's been a lot of damage - the most important instance being, of course, Her Excellency the Governor-General's choice to prorogue parliament effective immediately, rather than awaiting Monday's (now cancelled) confidence vote. This is an absolutely terrifying precedent; Stephen Harper and Michaëlle-Jean have essentially established that any Prime Minister faced with a sure-loss confidence vote can go ahead and ask for a prorogation and avoid the hammer of the House's voice - at least for a time.

Harper will face the same problems he left the parliament with when it reconvenes on January 26th. The coalition may not survive until that date, but Harper has lost the confidence of our elected officials. They will not forgive him and he needs to resign. Canadians will not forgive him - or, at the very least, if they do, Québecois will not. The Conservatives will deliver a budget more quickly than the coalition could and for that I support their mandate to govern. However, it is my sincere belief that Stephen Harper must resign.

Not just because he's lost the confidence of the house, but because his treatment of the bloc during this crisis was shameful. I've stated before that attacking the bloc's legitimacy attacks the legitimacy of the whole French-Canadian franchise, it accuses Québecois who want their own country of being anti-Canadian in a way that is patently false and stirs up a unity crisis in the middle of a constitutional crisis and an economic crisis. It is a third crisis we simply do not need!

Bloc MPs are elected just as legitimately as their conservative, liberal and NDP counterparts - in many cases, they're more legitimately elected than their counterparts, as they often garner real majorities in their ridings, rather than mere pluralities. For some reason, the Right Honourable Stephen Harper is unable to accept them as fellow Members of Parliament with the same democratic authority as his own duly elected and Right Honourable Albertan ass. Such discrimination in parliament is just as dangerous as his prorogation precedent.

That dangerous precedent was accompanied by a litany of lies from his Right Honourableness; his claim that the Bloc Québécois' interests lie in the destruction of Canada are patently false! In fact, for a separate and prosperous Québec to exist, a strong, economically independent Canada would have to exist and continue to exist. It is intrinsic to any sovereignist option to prop up and improve Canada in every possible way. In that sense, there is nobody in parliament I would trust more to ensure the stability of either a coalition government or a revitalized conservative one.

And these facts were not lost on the Bloc, the PC, Québec Solidaire or any of the Sovereignist parties - the work done by the Liberals and Conservatives over the last thirteen years, placating Québec and solidifying a United Canada may aswell be flushed down the toilet. Stephen Harper threw it away to save his political career.

Mr. Harper, please step down.

Stability & The Economy

The Government's rhetoric, over the last two days, has stressed the unstable element that a coalition propped up by the Bloc Québécois would bring to the country and its economy; at a glance, this would appear accurate. The Toronto Stock Exchange has seen its value fall steadily since the announcement of a coalition agreement on Monday, and its volatility has been higher than usual since rumours of a coalition began flying after the economic update on Thursday. This, however, is more appearance than reality.

The current instability of the government is causing trouble with the stock market; investors unable to know whether a divided parliament will continue past Christmas, whether government will be dissolved until spring while the country runs another election that may yield another dysfunctional House or whether the Governor-General will ask the coalition to step in and govern. I believe that the most likely desired result on the part of investors lies in either a Harper-less conservative government, or in the implementation of the Liberal-NDP coalition. The Bloc's commitment to the coalition would ensure rather than oppose the stability Harper claims he fears for so much from the Opposition's agreement.

In promising, within the context of a legally binding document, not to defeat a coalition government for 18 months, the Bloc has ensured that no one short of one of the governing parties could join the Conservatives in bringing them down - stability, thy name is coalition.

That they are promising, in addition to the measures implemented by the conservative government, to invest massively in Canada's manufacturing and agricultural sectors in order to protect them from the forecast economic downturn is yet another reason for investors to remain optimistic about a coalition being invited to form Canada's government. In fact, the most damaging thing the Governor-General could do for the economy at this point in time would be to okay another election.

A Marxist Perspective

While I do not agree with their position, I'd like to present columns by my friends over at Fight Back. They've presented their opinions on the current goings-on in Parliament and I think it's an interesting take on what is obviously becoming a crisis worthy of the name.

The first article discusses the causes of the current crisis in the framework of a move towards socialization:

http://www.marxist.ca/content/view/399/1/

While this second article addresses the concessions made by the NDP in order to form the potential coalition (interestingly, it ignores the Québec factor when trying to explain why Gilles Duceppe is so damned happy):

http://www.marxist.ca/content/view/402/1/

Pay them a visit, give them a read - they're interesting enough, and provide a lot of good insight, even if (like me), you don't agree with their motives or their direction.

The Animosity in Canadian Parliament - A Letter to Stephen Harper - Video

A Letter to Stephen HarperI sent this email to the Prime Minister a moment ago

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The Animosity in Canadian Parliament - A Letter to Stephen Harper

Mr. Harper,

The events of the last week have me concerned, I'm afraid, for the future of my country. I have stated, in public and on my blog (http://moopthas.blogspot.com), that the Canadian electoral process is inherently undemocratic and that the minority forum of parliament is the only way of approaching, through that process and in a representative fashion, the true desires of Canadians. So understand that I do not believe that the mandate to govern falls necessarily on the winning party of an election (in your case, the Conservative Party), but rather on the House of Parliament, whose makeup is reasonably close to the will of the Canadian people.

So it is with consternation that I witnessed your move to consolidate your party's power and capitalize on your Opposition's divided nature. It is with consternation that I witnessed your shock as your Opposition banded together to decry your heavy-handedness. It is with consternation that I witnessed you accuse the opposition, who together hold a majority of both the popular vote and the House, of acting undemocratically and it is with consternation that I witnessed your Sun King approach to party politics, reining in the dissent of those members of your party, such as the Honourable Mr. Day, who disagreed with your approach to the situation.

The absolutist approach you've employed, Mr. Harper, has given you one advantage. It is an advantage you can use to save your party's government from being toppled by the coalition; it has drawn responsibility away from your party and onto yourself and so, by your resignation and by your party's nomination of a new leader, you can save the Governor-General from setting a new, dangerous and potentially costly precedent in Canadian political history.

Please understand that I send this letter as a concerned citizen, looking to protect my country. I want the last year's economic growth (because while our neighbours to the south suffered a recession, our economy grew 1.7%) to continue and I want our country to survive what is a very uncertain economic period. I want the government to remain stable and I want you to resign, Mr. Harper, in order to accomplish that.

My name is Steven Alleyn, I thank you for your time and I hope this letter finds you well.

P.S. I do not support them, but the Bloc Québécois is a legitimate political party seeking to protect the interests of the Province of Québec. While their charter establishes them as a separatist party, history shows that they have acted in the interest of Quebec and Canada and have not directly acted against Canadian unity. Attacking their credibility and their legitimacy can be construed as an attempt to discredit the opinions and legitimacy of the entire French Canadian franchise; it is not in keeping with the political shrewdness you have demonstrated over the last eight years.

And We Have a Winner!

There is only one winner of the coalition agreement reached today by the Grits, NDP and Bloc, and that's the Bloc. The Liberals and NDP between them do not have the clout required to form a functional coalition government; they have 114 seats between them, not enough to even pretend to oppose the Conservatives; the coalition is entirely dependent on the Bloc's willingness to support it.

That kind of leverage will not be overlooked by an idealist - an intelligent idealist - like Gilles Duceppe. The Bloc can ask for whatever they want, within reason of course, and get it! This wasn't lost on Stéphane Dion, Jack Layton or their respective caucusses, and there's an agreement - an official, legally binding agreement - for the Bloc not to defeat the coalition government for 18 months.

That leaves the Bloc with a lot of leeway. They hold the balance of legislative power and can block legislation, they can allow the Conseratives to run their legislation through anyway and oppose anything the government tries to pass unless their demands are met.

If I was Gilles Duceppe, I would be giggling maniacally.

Democracy's End

Here's how Harper pissed off the opposition to the point where he can now declare his political career officially dead:

He presented preliminary financial measures, leading into the budget to be released next month, which undermined the already tenuous democracy of Canada's electoral process. His measure rescinded the right of political parties to receive public financing for every vote garnered at the polls, which would have effectively rendered every vote not cast for a winning candidate utterly worthless.

The opposition exploded; an attack on democracy and, more importantly for the self-interested politicians, an attack on their bottom line! It was unacceptable - it is unacceptable. The public financing measure was the only thing standing between Canadian Democracy and its transformation into a complete farce.

For those of you who find the coalition proposition undemocratic, I've got news for you; the opposition, between them, control a majority of the seats in parliament. The coalition is essentially more democratically legitimate than the minority conservatives, in that it has the support of 163 MPs, versus the 143 seats held by the Conservatives.

Democracy in this country is a joke.

The Coalition of the Willing - Video

The Coalition of the Willing - Canadas Political Woes

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The Coalition of the Willing

Today, the Liberal, NDP and Bloc Québecois Parties came to an agreement, in principle, to form a coalition government and replace the duly elected Conservatives under the guidance of the Right Honourable Stephen Harper.

Harper played chicken with the opposition, as he is wont to do, only this time they didn’t flinch. Now, if I may be allowed to complete the metaphor, the paramedics – in the person of Michaëlle-Jean – must pry a functional government out of the wreckage.

If she allows Harper to kill the current parliamentary session and pick up in January, we’ll be no better off; he’s lost the confidence of the opposition parties and he’s not getting it back. If she allows him to dissolve parliament and call an election, the Canadian people will elect another Conservative Minority and we’ll be right back where we started. There are only two ways out of this mess:

The Governor-General can allow the opposition to go through with their plan to form a coalition government, or she can allow the Conservatives to keep power on the condition that they replace Stephen Harper.

No matter what happens, Harper’s down for the count.

I Was Wrong

Okay, so my prediction could have been a little bit better; the final results can be found here if you haven't gotten a glimpse of them, yet. It's my fault, really, for calling it based on the polls running up to the election; I should have called it based on the fact that the prairies are, by in large, polarized rather than scattered across the political spectrum.

As I drove home, last night, from an evening spent watching the election results come in at my friend's house, I heard commentators on CJAD (a local AM news station located at 800 kilohertz) declare that "the only wasted vote is a vote not used!" Anyone with even a cursory knowledge of the function of the Canadian Electoral System knows that such a declaration is naïve in the extreme, the most glaring example of the fallacy of his statement being the polling results for the NDP and the Bloc Québecois versus those same two parties' seat results. With nearly ten percent more votes than the nationalist Bloc, the NDP somehow managed to gather 13 fewer seats.

The fact is that the First-Past-the-Post electoral system is broken, it yields shoddy results at best, and gives a party with less than a majority of the popular vote a carte blanche to do as it pleases at its worst. The fact is that anyone not voting with the majority in their particular riding is wasting their vote, because short of a small stipend paid to their party, the people they voted for can do exactly nothing with that vote.

Canada is not a democracy - as long as we have minority governments, it is close to one, but do not, for even one moment, think that we live in a country which in any way democratic. If we did, the liberals would have two thirds of the seats of the conservatives (and not a small fraction up from half) and the NDP would be a close third, with the BQ trailing far behind and the Greens a little bit behind them.

Oh, and we might have a minority that represented us, for once.

Status Update: Pauline Marois Still a Wad

You've probably heard about it already, though if I know you, my compatriots, as well as I believe I do then you have yet to read the actual wording of the Quebec Identity Act. This is a hateful piece of legislation which - while the rest of the modern world hurtles towards a more open and accepting society, replete with the freedoms and rights that Mill and his ilk yearned for one hundred and fifty years ago - seeks to turn back the clock of Québec's social development something on the order of two hundred years; minus the catholic church, of course.

It proposes a "Québec Citizenship" in which new applicants cannot "(1) run in municipal, school and legislative elections; (2) participate in the public funding of political parties; [or] (3) petition the National Assembly for the redress of grievances" unless they "(1) has been a Canadian citizen for at least three months; (2) is domiciled in Québec; (3) has effectively resided in Québec for six months, including the three months preceding the date of the person's application; (4) has an appropriate knowledge of the French language; and (5) has an appropriate knowledge of Québec and of the responsibilities and advantages of citizenship." This is essentially an attempt at exclusionism, an attempt to keep not only immigrants but also anglos moving from elsewhere in Canada from having any say in Québec's political process.

Besides the fervent nationalism, redundant ammendments to the Quebec Charter of Rights & the provocateur BS this bill - which is destined to die on the floor of the National Assembly - obviously represents, there are far more insidious motivations at work here than most people understand. This bill is an attempt at pushing further the meter of acceptable legislation in Québec, legislation being set up in order to further isolate - hermeticize - Québec's legal system from the Canadian one which - you no doubt anticipate me here - is another step towards, say it with me, referendum!

That's right, even from the back bench, the PQ is harping after their founding goal which, let's face it, most of us are fed up with hearing. So they don't talk about it out loud, instead they lay the scaffold & the foundation; they attempt to create a seperate and complete social, legal, judicial, diplomatic and political infrastructure within Québec so that it shall be a simple matter of cutting the umbilical when their prophecied national rapture pops back onto the provincial radar and we're once again - for the third time - asked to endorse an unrealistic and unfeasible goal which will, whether it passes or not, decimate our provincial economy for at least a decade thereafter.

Who else is tired of repeating history?

Accommodating Accommodation

The debate is officially in full swing; ignorant bigots debating with religious fundamentalists can actually be spotted on city buses calling each other liars and making outrageous claims as to the nature of the administration of foreign countries they have either never visited or know only from the biased propaganda of their own home countries.

I know, because I had to crank the volume on my CD player (yes, I'm a dangerous anachronism) up to dangerous levels just to tune them out whilst I read a very interesting book by late history writer, poet & novellist Martin Booth. Unfortunately, concerned as I am for my own hearing, I had to tolerate some intrusion into my personal bubble and I did glean one thing from their conversation; Québecois absolutely refuse to accept that the "they'd do it to us so it's okay to do it to them" argument just doesn't hold any water.

There is an undercurrent of bigotry in this province the likes of which we haven't seen in a very long and which every one of them will deny vociferously with the tried and true claim of "I'm not a racist! Some of my best friends are muslims!" Sound familiar? People have been saying that since the civil rights movement gained enough ground to establish its own taboos & stigmas.

It's enough. We've heard enough. Culture is not static and the Québec's insistence that it must be is counter to the nature of the human being as a social animal. Protectionism must end because its continued existence is a threat to peace in our country. It's a threat to decency in our country. It's a threat to civility in our country.

So, as I've asked before, as I've pleaded with my readers & will continue to plead with all Québecois, please, for the love of Mill & Nietzsche & Stirner & Locke & all the glorious intellectuals of our great, western civilization, stop.

Pauline Marois is a Wad

"Il faut briser la perception voulant que le Québec soit bilingue et expliquer aux immigrants que le Québec est une nation francophone qui respecte les droits de la minorité anglophone." -Pauline Marois

More on this when I'm less pissed off.

-Update-

I sent a letter to my MNA, Pierre Curzi. Chances are nothing will happen, but I figured I'd republish it here and hope for the best:

Monsieur Curzi,

Mon nom est Steven Alleyn, je suis un membre de votre compté électorale et je n'ai pas manqué la chance de voter depuis que je suis rendu à l'age légale de voter. Je vous écrit pour vous communiquer mon inquiétude par rapport au propos récents de la dirigeante de votre parti.

Je parle, bien sûr, de sa déclaration alors qu'elle parlait à l'assemblé nationale, au sujet de l'immigration: "Il faut briser la perception voulant que le Québec soit bilingue et expliquer aux immigrants que le Québec est une nation francophone qui respecte les droits de la minorité anglophone."

Elle a raison qu'il y a une perception qui se doît d'être briser, mais ce n'est pas celle là; la perception qui a réussi à s'insinuer au centre du débat nationaliste, celle que les droits de la collectivité prennent précedence sur les droits de l'individu.

L'individu est l'unité de base de la collectivité et on parle ici d'une question de la liberté d'expression. Alors que le droit de l'individu de s'exprimer se trouve brimer, l'habileté de la collectivité de faire pareille est abimé; détruite, complètement. L'immigration n'est pas une question d'assimilation des immigrés à notre société, mais plutôt d'une ouverture de notre société aux bienfaits que les immigrés peuvent nous apporter. Les lois protégeants les individus du danger n'ont pas à être changer; l'abus des femmes et le port d'armes dans les places publiques ne sont pas des questions d'ouverture culturelle: on parle ici seulement d'une ouverture par rapport au droits d'expression et de religion des nouveaux venus ainsi que ceux des Québecois "pure laine."

J'aimerais, s'il l'est possible, que vous puissiez faire parvenir cette lettre à Madame Marois. De ma part, je la republirai sur mon blogue (http://moopthas.blogspot.com/) sous mon nom-de-plume en espérant suciter l'intérêt des citoyens de notre province. Il n'est plus acceptable de brimer la liberté d'expression de nos propre citoyens au nom d'une entité qui ne peut exister sans ces mêmes citoyens.

Merci de votre attention,
Steven Alleyn
Otterburn Park, Québec
Compté de Borduas

The Debate on Accommodation

Welcome to the new racism.

The fact that we even need to have these accommodation hearings is disturbing in the extreme. Religious acceptance isn't what I'm known for, but I don't think that other people's minds is any more my jurisdiction than anyone else's. We have to realize this, collectively, as a society. Ideas in people's heads are important because, as John Stuart Mill said in his trailblazing essay On Liberty, very rarely are the opinions we possess the entirety of the truth; it is through discussion and interaction with people of different mores, values, opinions, ethics and traditions that we continue to approach a more complete, more factual version of reality and truth.

I saw a headline today on a newsstand; rough translation "Is diversity detrimental to society?"

That question is offensive simply for being asked. Diversity is the engine of improvement for a society. The most heinous, totalitarian and immoral societies in history have been homogeneous; united in all their ideas and opinions and mores and values. The more I see this sort of thing pop up, the more I believe that On Liberty should be required reading in ethics & diversity classes in high school and recommended reading in every level of higher education.

These roving hearings are going to reveal one thing; the isolationist sentiment which has dominated Québec politics for nearly forty years has had a detrimental effect on the social and political (sociopolitical?) climate and has left the province (are we still saying nation?) outside of the island of Montreal virtually inhospitable to immigrants; there's a certain spillover effect as the venom from the more isolated regions of the country and the current global climate of xenophobic paranoia (thank you, Osama) gradually infiltrates Québec's multicultural metropolis and poisons the citizens there against immigration. It is ironic that some of the most vocal opponents of integration (reasonable accommodation, I guess) - in my experience, not in any sort of scientific polling - are italians, second only to Francophone proles.

There is no accommodation, accommodation implies an expected standard; we must tolerate all actions and ideas and hold no standard, as long as those actions and ideas affect only those who they belong to and are not detrimental to anyone else. This is not for their good, but for ours; we benefit from the polylogue (dialogue means two interlocutors) of multiculturalism, just as everyone else does. We would be remiss were we to pass up such an opportunity.

Russian Roulette Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea

The argument that we aren't in colonial times anymore, that planting a flag somewhere is not proof of conquest anymore, is not really a valid one. This is because it is redundant; it isn't valid because it isn't valid and that's why it's not done anymore. There are other arguments, however, which invalidate the Russian bid to secure arctic control with a flag and a submarine. One of them stands out above the rest.

Occupation. Use. They are the sole determinants of whether or not a piece of land belongs to anyone - short of a land deed, proving ownership through acquisition. Unfortunately, this doesn't bode particularly well for Canada's land-claim, either, but the fact of the matter is that, unless either country can prove that it has the means, desire, opportunity & motivation to make use of the arctic and arctic waters - even if those motivations are martial & defensive in nature.

The deep water port & icebreakers proposed by Harper's government would prove that martial intent, but until they're actually built & deployed, it's still anyone's game. The arctic is no man's land and the Russian flag sitting on the bottom of the ocean under miles of ice won't change that. Not until they decide to use it.

Rushing to Get Things Done

Québec's agriculture lobby (farmers' union, whatever) has asked for a grace period (moratorium) in order that they might be able to comply with recent changes to environmental laws without bankrupting themselves in the process. The union represents independent farmers who cannot afford the massive technological, technical and chemical changes that their massive corporate cousins can get away with and, let's face it, their grace period is not an unreasonable one - the government has agreed to it for that reason; the environment has survived some very abusive conditions since the beginning of the industrial revolution (150 - 175 years ago...) and three years to allow some hard-working people to keep their livelihoods is a perfectly acceptable compromise which will not adversely affect the environment very much more than is already the case.

Greenpeace disagrees; they have demanded that the Québec government rescind their moratorium so that a few thousand fish may live while dozens to hundreds of farmers get deeper into debt or go altogether bankrupt, robbing the food supply of some of its power to stay as cornucopian as we're used to here in North America in the process. Their claims that there is no time to allow for any sort of transitional greening of the UPA would be more credible if they weren't in the habit of using scare tactics to force government hands.

It is unfortunate that Canadian libel laws prevent me from saying that Greenpeace is a terrorist organization without any proof. I have to find more roundabout and indirect ways of saying Greenpeace is a terrorist organization. What is true is that Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth advised a Zambian leader not to accept food offered to his country in foreign aid that Zambia desperately needed because they said it would cause allergies in his citizens, essentially they scared him into not taking food that could feed thousands, saving them - at least temporarily - from starvation and death, by saying it was poisonous. They used fear to get a high-level political leader to say something bad about GMOs so that they could claim that capitalism is destroying the world.

The use of fear and sacrifice of innocent lives to achieve a political aim... Wow, I really shouldn't say that Greenpeace is a terrorist organization.
A side note - I'd like to thank 'This Hour has 22 Minutes' for teaching me about how libel laws work.

Reciprocating Redundant Repetition

Why does this province's democratic process seem to be on an endless cyclical loop, rehashing the same subjects over and over with little-to-no apparent progress or Will to Progress (yes, I've been reading Nietzsche) since 1970? Is it simply agenda pushing idiots who've gotten us caught up in this political quagmire or is there some sort of greater cultural problem at work here?

This week, again, saw hue-and-cry over the Canadian Health Care system and a rash of people calling to privatize the system ASAP. I have already dealt with this, briefly at moopthas' old address and I'll expand on a few different themes here.

The main problem with establishing a private system is maintaining a parallel social system; regulations cannot be extended too far into the private sector because if they are, it simply won't establish itself, so with reduced restrictions a series of private hospitals and clinics would, as soon as they entered the market, begin competing not only with each other, but with the social system aswell. And here's the big, dirty secret about the private sector: competition isn't limited to consumer-side services. Supply-side services compete with each other, aswell.

Doctors want better wages, like anyone else, for that matter, and so do nurses and orderlies and everyone else involved in the health system. The private sector, unregulated, has no problem offering them. It pays based on individuals' merit and therefore soon draws the best of our professionals out of the public system. In order to preserve even a modicum of competent function in the public system, the wages within that system will have to be raised in order to match the private ones. The private system, in charge of its own pricing, will be able to compensate and maintain its hold on those doctors who represent our best and brightest.

The same is true of every kind of specialist and professional involved in medicine. Of course, the consumer will not tolerate an endlessly rising inflation and, based on his/her Will to Pay, the prices and wages would inevitably stabilize at one point; it would not happen before the public system had been ravaged - irrecoverably demolished.

The cost of professionals wouldn't be the only thing to suffer - the cost of procedures and insurance would soar, briefly, as they acclimatized themselves to a new market (as they surged to compete with and overthrow the social system). A look at the US system is the simplest way of confirming these suspicions; drug companies would follow suit as deregulation and increased insurance coverage would give them the leeway they need to gouge more and more out of their hapless customers.

They may have had some success with the system in Great Britain and Europe, but the facts of Québec's almost perverted mixture of right- and left-wing politics/government, along with this country's proximity to the USA and the bleed-over effect of their instant-gratification culture on our own make any proposal to privatize a segment of the Canadian Health System completely unviable. Unfortunately, our geo-political climate makes it an all-or-nothing situation and scrapping public health simply is not an option; it is unethical and contrary to the basic human rights we believe in - or claim to believe in - in this country.

Lucid Lucien Ludicrousness

The former Québecois Premier, the Honourable Lucien Bouchard, is hellbent on getting his provincial compatriots to put their noses right up to the grindstones - even if that means getting those noses ground off. The premier's position, and the province's current statistics / predicament were perfectly outlined in the Montreal Gazette by Janet Bagnall [Link] and I shan't delve much further into those aspects of the situation. Instead, I wish to examine Mr. Bouchard's motives in suggesting a surge towards economic growth through the abolition of free time.

Essentially, the purpose of economic growth is to increase the material prosperity of the individuals who contribute to the economy. Why? Well in capitalism growth is for growth's sake, but the idea is that increased material prosperity leads to happier, healthier, more content little capitalist citizens.

And therein lies the essential protest, the argument against the call to the grind. What good is it to work every waking minute of every day, increasing wealth and accumulating stuff if the individuals working don't have the time to themselves to enjoy those things? Mr. Bouchard is having a conniption fit because, of the 260 days he would have Québecois work, annually, they take an absolutely terrifying 14.3 days! A terrible 5.5% of the time he wants all of us to reserve for our corporate overlords!

Let's be serious; senseless growth for growth's sake accomplishes nothing. A little bit of leisure, especially for people who're a bit further down the financial food-chain than Mr. Bouchard and his 400$/hour law practice, is something that, in at least some small measure, is absolutely necessary.

Because sometimes a two day weekend just isn't enough to catch your breath.