Person of the Year - Declined

I'm honoured, really, and I thank everyone who nominated me for this award. I'd like to thank my mother, who was always there for me, my agent and, of course, the Lord, for making me the man I am.

But, with some regret, I'm afraid I must decline Time's nomination of Me as Person of the Year.

I never thought I'd ever feel the need to decline an award. There aren't very many awards, in general, about which I feel so negatively that I'd find it incumbent upon myself to decline them on principle. Since I'm not in line for any knighthoods, I rather assumed the subject would never come up.

First of all, the award is really lame. As cool as all of those youtube.com videos are, I don't think anyone deserves an award for putting content on the Internet. This would be akin to offering every lunatic on the street an award for drooling and hurling invective at passers by. Entertaining? Possibly. Award-winning? Doubtful. I think the threshold for distinction ought to be somewhere a bit beyond "making noise in public".

On to point number two. The mainstream media being as it is, I prefer any number of alternative sources for my news. I also appreciate the power of all of those miniature video cameras out there, showing when the LAPD taser down their latest minority. But really, have all those in the alternative media, all of those bloggers and indies, really managed to affect mainstream opinion in any significant way? What percentage of Americans still think WMD were found in Iraq? What percentage still think Saddam had anything to do with Al Qaida and 9/11? What percentage of Canadians even know that we knocked over a democratic government in Haiti or that the lion's share of our money spent in Afghanistan is spent on destruction rather than construction?

I don't think "we" deserve such an award when we're so clearly failing to reach the public with such simple facts.

The third point is the simplest. Though the people at Time are the ultimate arbiters of who receives their award, it's supposed to go to the single person who has the largest affect on the news. To pretend that all those bloggers out there had more impact on Time Magazine's coverage than Bush, Rumsfeld, Bin Laden or any number of other people is pure pandering.

So, on two counts of "lame" and one count of "not good enough", I'm afraid I must decline Time Magazine's nomination as Person of the Year.

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Answers For God

I was about five years old when the subject of reproduction came up. I didn't really care about the technical details, but I had just learnt that people grow older, that children become adults and that they have children of their own.

That meant that my parents had parents of their own. Turned out that these were the people I'd been calling my grandparents. In fact, it turns out that everybody has a mommy and a daddy. It started to come together. Did my grandparents have mommies and daddies, too? Yes, they did. Indeed!

So it keeps going back like that? Yes. A moment of consideration ... then, "How did it start?"

Turned out that God Did It. He made the first two people, Adam and Even, and they were the mommy and daddy that started it all out.

God? Having established that everybody has a mommy and a daddy, I foolishly decided to ask the blasphemous question "Who were God's mommy and daddy?". When I was told that God didn't have a mommy and daddy, my reply that this was unbelievable (had we not just established the necessity of mommies and daddies?) marked me as hellbound.

Threats of hell didn't help answer the question. I was still stuck with this unreasonable and absurd thing we call "the universe", which somehow exists. Throwing an old man with a white robe and a long beard in to the mix didn't really help. That just gave me one more thing to explain and explaining a thing that could create universes wasn't any better than having to explain the universe.

It used to bug me at night. Why was there any stuff at all? The universe really had no business existing in the first place. I would go to church, obligatorily, every Sunday, and watch all the fine-looking people in their best clothing going through the staid aerobics of a Catholic mass. I would look at those adults and say to myself, "There must be something I'm missing that all these grown ups understand. When I'm older, I'm sure I'll have it all figured out, just like all these people."

And furthermore, the classic fallacy that works so well on children, "Everyone else believe it ..."

It was twelve more years before I realized that none of those adults had a clue, no more than I have a clue today. The absurdity is the existence of the universe. If you want to believe in a God of some kind, go ahead, but you've not reduced the absurdity one iota.

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Liberal Leaders

I watched bits and pieces of the Liberal leadership convention on the weekend. (My television can be configured so that I can play Super Mario Golf on one half while I get broadcast signals on the other half. Handy, that.)

The front runner was a quiet professor named Michael Ignatieff. Well versed in international politics, well travelled, quite intelligent, he seemed to have a lot of the qualities that one would admire in a statesman. Then I read this particular piece: Ignatieff on Iraq


This is Ignatieff going on about the importance of fighting "preventative" wars - wars against enemies which aren't actually a threat but might someday be a threat. He gives the garbage example of Bosnia and Kosovo, where NATO invented a genocide out of non-existent mass graves to justify an invasion of a democratic nation that wouldn't play ball with Wall Street.. He also gives the rationale that "we" have to stay in Iraq until it's better than the way "we" found it.

So: Ignatieff out. I'm glad he lost. He might as well sleep in Harper's bed with attitude.

Next up: Bob Rae. This has to be some kind of joke. This is the man who, intentionally or not, destroyed the NDP in Ontario. He intentionally antagonized his base - the teachers, nurses and public servants. He formed himself in to a caricature of socialism - the ridiculous idea that "everyone is equal" and the only thing preventing a mentally retarded child from becoming a neurosurgeon is the stigma placed on him by those around him. He gave money away like it was going out of style. He "de-streamed" high schools so that the slowest and smartest kids were crammed together in one classroom. He could not possibly have done a better job of setting back socialism if that had been his goal (and maybe it was, I'm not a mind reader).

Now, when the chance comes, he jumps for leadership of the Liberal party? Glad he lost.

Stephane Dion and Gerard Kennedy were rounding out third and fourth place. Kennedy, realizing he could not win, threw his support to Dion, putting Dion over top of the two leaders. Dion was one of Chretien's guys and found himself on the outs when Paul Martin took over as leader of the party. Things shifted and, being as popular as he was in Quebec, he became Minister of the Environment in 2004, a post he held for approximately 18 months before the government fell.

Dion is proclaiming himself as something of an environmentalist. There is some conservative material attempting to blast him for his record as Minister of the Environment, but this material is clearly inaccurate.

I find it hard to believe that Canada's greenhouse emissions actually rose 34.6% in the 18 months Dion was Minister of Environment. More likely, this is the number for the entire increase while the Liberals were in government.

Is he sincere? I have no idea. But he isn't a horse-jumping joke like Bob Rae, and he isn't a pro-Iraq-war bandwagon jumper like Ignatieff. If he actually implements the laws in his 70-page environmental book... if he actually fails to behave like every other politician once in office ... then, yes, he sounds great.

But does anybody believe politicians anymore?

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Remembering Peace

Every year, around Remembrance Day, I usually write a piece about peace.

When I learnt about Remembrance Day, as a child, there were always two important lessons.

The first is that a lot of people - millions, in fact - had sacrificed their lives or had their lives sacrificed, in the name of protecting the freedoms we have today. We have a duty to remember those people. While there is a debate as to which wars were really fought for noble causes, this does not detract from the sacrifice these people intended to make.

The second lesson always was this: never again. This is a lesson we can learn whatever it is that we believe about the real causes of the World Wars and all the wars since. This is a lesson taught directly from the butchery of all those sacrificed on all of the false altars that lead us to war. Whether that altar is called the "Fatherland" or the "Queen" or "democracy", we are supposed to have learnt by now that any resort to war is a failure on our part. It is failure on the part of us, the human beings living on this planet, to properly honour and remember those who have suffered the horrors of all previous wars.

We've been slaughtering each other for millennia. With the advent of civilization, we were supposed to smarten up and stop this nonsense. Somehow, though, we fail. We let every manner of thing steer us to violence against one other.

Sometimes it's religion. Sometimes it's a crucial resource. Sometimes it's patriotism. It's almost always someone with a lot of power wanting more, whether that person be priest, nationalist or power baron.

We the people, however, have an obligation to see through the lies. The people of Germany had an obligation to realize that Poland wasn't amassing an army to attack them, and certainly an obligation to realize the lie afterwards when it took but three days to conquer that country. The people of Israel and Palestine have an obligation to realize that four thousand year old bloody histories don't entitle them to each other's land. The people of Canada and the United States have an obligation to realize when their patriotism is being manipulated to seize the oil, land and cheap labour of other nations.

That, to me, is the meaning of Remembrance Day: the obligation to remember the horror of war and to see through the lies that caused it in the past so as to prevent them in the future.

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American Election

(from Nov 9, 2006)

On Tuesday, the Americans held an election. Their system of government, mildly more complicated (and considerably more influenced by lobbying cash), held two important levels of election.

The Senate, a law-making body of 100 senators, elected one third of its members. The House of Representatives, with considerably more members, flushed itself clean and elected some 435 members. Both of these levels of government were controlled by the party of George Bush, the party that calls itself Republican. Both of these levels of government are now in the control of the Democrats, the part they call "left wing" in the United States, but would be called "right wing" anywhere else in the world. It only appears "left" relative to what we in Canada would call the "extreme right" of the Republicans.

What does this mean? Technically speaking, it's going to make things harder for Bush. Where before the Republican House and Senate would vote on laws and Bush would sign them, those two bodies will now produce "left-leaning" Democratic legislation, which the President can always veto (requiring a larger majority to override the veto). So we should all dance in the streets, right? No more unilateral invasions of random countries? No more Haiti, Iraq, Afghanistan? We'll have less combative policies out of the U.S. regarding North Korea, Iran? We'll have fewer wars over hydrocarbons?

No.

Left and right are all matters of degree. In Canada, we have Conservatives, whom we expect to represent the interests of fairly rich people and corporations. We have Liberals, whom we expect to represent the middle class workers, but who increasingly represent rich people as well. We have the NDP, whom we expect to represent the working class. In the U.S., it's not the same. The Republican party represents the extraordinarily rich, the CEOs - the richest of the rich whom George Bush calls his "base". The Democrats represent, actually, almost the exact same people, all they do get the support of trade unions and other organizations on the basis that they're not quite as bad as the Republicans.

But look at the facts: most Democrats voted for the war in Iraq; no Democrat has come out against it; when Clinton was president, he maintained the debilitating, starving sanctions in Iraq and approved the invasion of Kosovo. If you're expecting massive change, don't look here. Don't expect any attempt to disengage the North American mouth from the Middle Eastern oil teat. Don't expect to see all those permanent bases in Iraq pull up stakes. Oh, there'll be a bone thrown to the poor - an increase in the minimum wage. There'll be some window dressing regarding 9/11. But will the black site prisons in Eastern Europe be shut down? Will the prisoners in Gitmo get their trials? Will the torture stop at Abu Ghraib? Will the "Oil Exploration" welfare be diverted to research in to solar and wind power?

Of course not. The two parties in the United States are owned by, basically, the same groups of people - oil barons and arms manufacturers. The Democrats won't be as bad, but don't expect massive change.

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Beating Our Chests

DTK

The DTK, much like the Canadian military, is stuck on the subject of Afghanistan.

General Fraser on the subject of Afghanistan.

It's hard to find polite words to describe what I think of this particular Canadian General. "On his way out, fortunately" only covers some of my feelings.

He claims that (quoting the article) more Canadian soldiers will be killed but the cost in blood must be paid in Afghanistan unless Canadians want to fight Islamic jihadists at home. "I don't want my sons to be doing what I'm doing here on the shores of Canada", he said. Really? Do you really believe that we'll have Islamic radicals landing en masse in Vancouver if we pull our troops out of Afghanistan? Perhaps he's speaking figuratively.

I can't see any reason for the fanatical members of the religion of Islam to hate Canada or Canadians. Well, wait a minute. I can think of one reason: we keep killing hordes of their civilians in Afghanistan. Bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy, then, isn't it? What he really means to say, in that case, is, "We'd better *continue* killing their civilians here, or they'll get their act together and come get us." Doesn't have the same fiery rhetorical punch, though, does it?

How about this line: "Canadians should actually do something very un-Canadian-like and pound their chests and be proud and tell everyone, because all the other nations down here are talking about Canada."

Um, yeah. Look, Brigadier-General David Fraser, I don't know what part of Canada you're from, but we really don't do the "our military is awesome" chest beating thing around here. We're proud of a lot of things, nation wide, and our military certainly has a proud history in many theatres of operations. But we aren't the "chest-beating" types. You may be thinking of some other country - perhaps with envy. But even our Americans neighbours had to fire Jay Garner when he made the same "let's beat our chests" comment with respect to killing lots of people in Iraq.

I can only hope that the same fate awaits David Fraser. The last thing we need in the Canadian military are generals making public statements about how proud they are to kill people. Yes, it's your job. Yes, you should be proud of your work. But you also have to acknowledge that killing people is nothing to beat your chest about and really indicates that somewhere, someone has royally screwed up.

The General is also irked that the twenty million that has been spent on reconstruction and development in Afghanistan is being ignored by the media. Well, General, there's a reason for that. It's because the government has stated that the military mission over the next couple of years is going to cost over three *billion* dollars. It's a relative thing. When destruction outspends construction by two orders of magnitude, it tends to take precedence in the news.

Lastly, to rub it all in, we bring in the bit about how we're really "peacekeeping". No, General, we're building an oil pipeline. Your right wing rhetoric notwithstanding.

If you really wanted to keep peace, the first thing to do is stop making war.

Greg.

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The Canadian Dream

Once upon a time, there was a dream called Canada.

In Canada, the children were taught about a thing called the National Identity.

The first chapter of National Identity was always Counterculture, wherein we tell the children that we often define ourselves as simply being "not American". The next chapter is usually named the "Legacy of Peacekeeping" wherein we tell them that our proud military history contains only victories in protecting the weak from the strong and keeping the peace so as to teach enemies to be friends.

They lied to us.

I don't know when the lying started. I'm pretty sure it was sometime before I was born, but it's hard to tell because the media fall in so well with the lies that it's hard to dig them out. I know, with certainty, that the framework for lying was already well in place when NATO, including Canada, began bombing Serbia. They told us that the Serbs were "ethnically cleansing" Kosovo of all non-Serbians. We were told that there were mass graves containing, in total, perhaps 100 000 Kosovars.

Then Canada, as part of the NATO mission against Serbia, committed terrorism. There was no UN approval. There was no Parliamentary vote. There was no declaration of war. Serbia never attacked us in a way that would activate the NATO alliance. Civilians were bombed and killed for the purpose of changing a government we didn't like.

http://www.converge.org.nz/pma/shown.htm

The Serbs were not ethnically cleansing Kosovo. The Serbs were not expanding beyond their borders. There was never any proof of this, just allegations to trick us in to supporting the war. All that NATO and human rights investigators could later find were normal graves containing about equal numbers of fighting men from both sides - those having been killed in the battles between foreign funded Kosovo Liberation Army guerrillas and the government armed forces. General Lewis MacKenzie was upset, as was Canada's former ambassador to Yugoslavia, James Bisset.

General LEWIS MacKENZIE: "Where have all the bodies gone?"

Ambassador James Bisset: "The NATO bombing: an assault on sovereignty"

A New York Times writer had the clever comment "You want 1950? We can do 1950. You want 1389? We can do 1389 too". He was only reflecting, in that sycophantic mainstream media style, the attitudes of the NATO commanders toward the general Serbian population. Here was NATO, promising to bomb the infrastructure of the country until it changed governments. Radio stations were hit. Hospitals were bombed. Finally, Milosevic surrendered. They sent him to the Hague, where they couldn't a thing to pin on him. Eventually he died of some heart ailment. In a fit of irony, it was the invading NATO commanders that accused him of terrorism and invented the term "ethnic cleansing".

We went along with those lies in Serbia. We went along with the lies in Haiti. We're going along with the lies in Afghanistan. I don't know how many other lies we're permitting.

There was a dream that was called Canada and I never once feared that it could be destroyed.

Once, there was a dream called Canada, and I fear it will fade away from the apathy of its citizens.

Greg.

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