Odious blogger exposed

Anonymity is the bane of blogging. Nothing undermines the quality of discourse in the blogosphere more than the ability of anyone with a computer to spew toxic verbiage into the web world without any accountability whatsoever. It is as surprising as it is depressing to observe what mischief even normally responsible people will get up to under a pseudonym. I believe there is a blogging law that says if a thread reaches more than ten posts someone will have been called a nazi.

Perhaps the uncivilized behaviour characteristic of so much blogging will be suppressed a little by a recent court case in New York. Model Liskula Cohen, slandered by an anonymous blogger, went to court and forced Google, whose Blogger service the culprit used, to reveal the identity of her tormentor. The case has been described as a "landmark." Ms. Cohen is now able to sue the offending blogger for slander.

Most people who abuse blogging are probably quite decent human beings who would never say the trashy things they do in their posts if they were speaking to their victims face to face. Anonymity simply brings out the worst in them. If this case curbs some of the worst, it will be a victory for responsible blogging everywhere. As a blogger myself, I thank Ms. Cohen, her lawyers and Madam Justice Joan Madden of the Supreme Court of the State of New York.

Want to get high? Sniff your wallet

Don't panic, but you are probably carrying cocaine around in your purse or wallet. Scientists from the American Chemical Society report that 85 to 90 per cent of American and Canadian banknotes are contaminated (their word, not mine) by cocaine residue. This is up 20 per cent from a study conducted only two years ago.

The scientists tested banknotes in five countries -- the United States, Canada, Brazil, China, and Japan -- and found “alarming” evidence of cocaine use. The U.S. and Canada had the highest levels while China and Japan had the lowest.

Of course this doesn't mean that 85 to 90 per cent of Canadians are rolling up their banknotes to snort cocaine. Much of the contamination is no doubt being spread from bill to bill. Nonetheless, obviously a lot of people are using their money to do more than just buy the stuff. And hey, you over there, stop sniffing your purse.

Guilty or ill? A crime problem or a health problem?

At one time, mentally ill people, with their often anti-social behaviour, were locked away in what were little more than prisons. Eventually our understanding of mental illness improved and allowed us to advance beyond this barbaric practice. Now we may be on the verge of yet another advance in both our understanding of and our reaction to anti-social behaviour.

Studies on impulsively violent men and psychopaths show that their brains are different from those of normal people. Brain imaging technology reveals that the amygdala, the part of the brain that processes emotions and aggression, and the orbitofrontal cortex, which handles impulses and decisions, are structurally and functionally different in psychopaths. Furthermore, levels of serotonin, the neurotransmitter that regulates aggression and impulsivity, are generally low in these people. To put it simply, their brains don't work right.

It may be hard for us to accept, but the fact is that the impulsively violent and the psychopathic are victims. They suffer from a mental handicap. They are no more responsible for their condition than a crippled man is for his crooked leg, and they are no more responsible for their antisocial behavior than he is for his limp. When they harm others, how are they more guilty of a crime than someone who has a contagious disease who unknowingly spreads it to others? Their disorder is much worse, of course, because it robs them of their basic humanity.

When they pose a threat, they must be sequestered from society, but should they be imprisoned or hospitalized? We can legally detain people with contagious diseases. It's called quarantine. It would seem reasonable to do the same with the dangerously antisocial. We have long had mental institutions for the criminally insane, but their incarceration has always depended on an arbitrary definition of "insane," specifically, knowing right from wrong. Well, psychopaths know right from wrong, at least in the legal sense, yet they too are "insane." They, too, are not responsible for their actions, or at least only marginally so. They do not have free will. (Of course, maybe none of us do, but that's another question entirely.)

This new knowledge offers real promise. If these people suffer from mental conditions, we can develop ways of treating them. By therapy, with drugs, perhaps even with a computer chip in the orbitofrontal cortex. We might eventually be able to turn a serial killer into a perfectly normal human being. Courts and prisons could be replaced by medical treatment just as the old asylums were.

This would be an enlightened age, but it would throw many of our concepts about justice into confusion. The desire for vengeance is very powerful. If a serial killer was cured, if he was literally a different person free of antisocial urges, what would be the point of incarcerating him? And if he were allowed to walk freely amongst us, how would we sate our desire for vengeance, particularly that of his victims?

And then there would be the question of our right to engage in mind control. How far might some in authority want to go in controlling the minds of "anti-social" citizens?

We might do well to ponder these questions. We see promise of knowledge that could revolutionize crime and punishment, and offer us much safer societies, yet offer us also moral challenges we haven't yet faced.

Anti-Semitic Semites?

Critics of Israel's policies toward the Palestinians are frequently charged with anti-Semitism. Which inevitably leads to the question, is the charge justified or is it the old demagogic tactic if you can't attack your opponent's argument, attack your opponent. Bernie M. Farber, CEO of the Canadian Jewish Congress, has attempted to clarify the matter. "Criticism of Israel crosses into anti-Semitism ," Farber says in a letter to The Globe and Mail, "when it calls into question the legitimacy of Israel's identity as a Jewish state."

Unfortunately, Farber's definition sounds rather like the demagogic tactic. How can one not call into question the legitimacy of Israel as a Jewish state? Twenty per cent of the population is Muslim Arab. What are these people? Invisible? Nonentities? Members of a lesser race as Winston Churchill once referred to them? To ignore such a substantial minority and define a state by its racial majority is in itself racism. And if this minority is Semitic, as of course it is, then is not the racism anti-Semitism? If so, then Mr. Farber would seem to have his argument backwards.

And we should not be surprised. The whole point in creating Israel was to create a racial state. So we should expect its supporters to justify its definition as such. And to support, also, the continued exile of millions of Palestinian Arabs, denying them the right to return to their homeland solely on the basis of their race.

Or is it race? Is the failure of the Arabs not race but religion? Is it being Muslim that puts them beyond the Pale? Is the prejudice religion rather than race, or is it both? Racio/religious prejudice, so to speak. Not that it matters much, defining a nation by either or both is an odious practice.

Jews such as Mr. Farber are often in the forefront in defending human rights. They were prominent in the struggles against segregation in the American south and against apartheid in South Africa. Yet when it comes to Israel, the same people exhibit a curious blind spot. The rednecks in the South and the Afrikaners in South Africa only wanted one thing -- to maintain the integrity of their race, to maintain their identity as a people. And that is what the Jews of Israel are trying to do. Unfortunately, they are doing it with ethnic cleansing, collective punishment, apartheid and relentless land theft, all of which puts them roughly in the same league as the rednecks and the Afrikaners. Perhaps they have now discovered a little empathy for their former foes.

Farber accuses critics of attempting to "punish Israel for wanting to retain its Jewish identity." Unfortunately, Israel retaining a Jewish identity means marginalizing and punishing Palestinians. So what choice do people of conscience have but to call into question that "identity"?

The Globe leads with an environmental story? What is the media coming to?

I reached for The Globe and Mail today in its usual place on the paper rack and immediately thought my news dealer had messed up. The paper I was reaching for had a lead story about an environmental crisis. Couldn't be the Globe, I thought, must be some ecology rag that got stuck in there by mistake. But I was wrong. Sure enough, the lead headline in the Globe today was "Salmon Run Disaster: 10.6 Million Sockeye Expected... Only 1.7 Million Came: Where Have All the Salmon Gone?" A long headline emphasized with half a page of very red fish.

Destruction of the environment isn't something the corporate press has shown a lot of interest in. Global warming, humanity's greatest threat, ought to be the number one media issue yet it struggles to get a mention. Preserving the environment might involve consuming less, and that's something the corporate press, whose prime function is selling stuff, really isn't eager to talk about.

Maybe the only reason the collapse of a fishery makes the front page is because it's worth a lot of money, but nonetheless I appreciate front-page attention to the biggest challenge facing us -- saving our planet from our own greed, stupidity and arrogance.

Will the Globe keep it up? My mind says not a chance. My heart says maybe. Hope springs eternal.

Is protectionism a bad thing?

The chief economic bugaboo among politicians at all levels these days seems to be protectionism. American protectionism specifically. Prime Minister Harper whispers his concerns in President Obama's ear at every opportunity. The premiers cry out for a new trade deal to save us from Buy America policies, frightened by Canadian municipalities' threats to apply their own buy-local policies in retaliation.

But is protectionism such a bad thing? Indeed, it seems odd for Canadians to wail against protectionism when a version of it just saved our financial bacon. Despite enormous pressure from the U.S. to deregulate, i.e. globalize, our banking system, Paul Martin resisted. If he hadn't, our system would have crashed just as the Americans' did, and Stephen Harper wouldn't be able to boast about what good shape our financial house is in.

John Maynard Keynes, the economist we keep returning to because of his good sense, once said, "Ideas, knowledge, art, hospitality, travel -- these are the things which should of their nature be international. But let goods be homespun whenever it is reasonably and conveniently possible; and, above all, let finance be primarily national.” Keynes was talking about the conservative virtue of self-reliance -- let us be open to the world but let us take care of our own needs. That worked for our banking system, why not for other things and for other people?

So I have a certain sympathy for those Americans who choose to depend primarily on their own resources. Why shouldn't they take care of their own people -- their own companies and their own workers -- first? Why shouldn't they seek self-reliance? And why shouldn't we?

In any case, what is so often pedaled as "free trade" is nothing more than corporate advantage. NAFTA is a good example. It allows American corporations to freely exploit cheap labour in Mexico but does not allow Mexican workers the right to exploit high wages in the U.S. What kind of "free" trade offers freedom to corporations but denies it to working people? Some freedom. The protectionism so feared by politicians and business people is revealed as essentially protection for corporate profit, particularly through exploitation of cheap labour.

Recent events have suggested that strength in the economy is like strength in nature. Strong systems need flexibility and that means they need variety. The more uniform the international economy is, the more a failure in one part affects the whole system. Our banking system remained strong precisely because it retained its individuality, its independence.

Sadly, all political parties have joined the "free" trade bandwagon. Premier Gary Doer has threatened Manitoba municipalities with legislation if they reject a new trade deal with the U.S. "If we have an agreement with the United States, it's my responsibility to deliver it in my own province, through the legal means we have possible," he has said. The right of local governments to choose their own economic path would be overridden. One wonders what happened to the "democratic" in New Democratic Party.

Knee-jerk acceptance of globalized trade, with its erosion of local democracy, workers' rights and self-reliance, is dangerous. We have just witnessed a good example of just how dangerous it is as the whole international system crashes because of irresponsibility in the United States. Protectionism, or self-reliance, or independence -- choose your term -- deserves more than simple dismissal. The fact it was advocated by John Maynard Keynes tells us that.

The welfare state as recession-proofing

One set of countries -- Sweden, Denmark and Norway -- seem to be enduring the current recession rather better than most. According to Harvard Business School economist Christian Ketels, "The outlook for these countries is good. They are going to return to normal quicker, and in better shape, than everybody else."

There are a number of reasons for this. All had sound public finances to begin with. All were running budget surpluses and all had tightened their banking regulations in the 1990s. Norway has accumulated its oil and gas revenues into a sovereign wealth found now worth $420-billion which provided ample funds for stimulus without running a major deficit. And the Scandinavians run highly competitive economies.

That competitiveness hints at yet another reason. It is supported by large, well-funded public sectors. The World Economic Forum insists that high levels of investment in education and training are a key to Scandinavia's success, stating in its competitiveness report, "This has provided the workforce with the skills needed to adapt rapidly to a changing environment and has laid the ground for their high levels of technological adoption and innovation in recent years."

Of particular importance in a recession, these countries' high-tax, high-benefit welfare systems stabilize their economies. Swedish workers who lose their jobs can expect to receive up to 80% of their wages for the first 200 days out of work, dropping to 70% for the next 100 days. In Norway, unemployed workers receive 62% of their salary for up to two years. This makes for a powerful economic stimulus by helping to keep demand high, and it does it by subsidizing working people rather than bankers and car companies.

Norwegian Finance Minister Kristin Halvorsen observes, "We notice more interest around the Nordic model because we manage to combine productivity, growth and welfare. A large public sector is a buffer against the turmoil of the markets." That others are interested is hardly surprising. It has recently become graphically clear how very important a buffer against economic turmoil is in a globalized capitalist economy. We Canadians will be well-served by taking the message to heart and beefing up our welfare state.

Nicaragua's assault on women

Amnesty International has issued a new report claiming that Nicaragua's total ban on abortions endangers the lives of girls and women, denies them life-saving medical treatment, prevents health professionals from practising effective medicine and contributes to an increase in maternal deaths.

The new law, introduced in 2008, makes abortion a criminal offence in all circumstances and provides for lengthy prison sentences for women and girls who seek an abortion and for health professionals who provide them. It allows no exceptions. It applies in situations where continued pregnancy risks the life or health of the woman or girl, and when the pregnancy is the result of rape. Even a pregnancy that cannot possibly result in a viable baby has to be carried to term.

The law goes even further. Medical treatment which results in the unintentional death or injury of a foetus is a criminal offence, regardless of the intention of the medical professionals concerned or the circumstances. Doctors who act to save a patient from dying as a result of obstetric complications risk their career and possibly their liberty. Examples of such interventions include treatment for malaria or HIV/AIDs, urgent cardiac surgery or intervention in a complicated birth. Even health care providers trying to save the foetus during a difficult delivery which results in the injury or death of the foetus can be prosecuted. A pregnant woman with cancer has to have the baby first, then treatment for the cancer, no matter what the risk to her survival.

And it goes further yet. Amnesty reports the law may punish girls and women who have suffered a miscarriage as it is often impossible to distinguish spontaneous from induced abortions.

And yet further. According to Amnesty, "Women human rights defenders have been subjected to legal harassment and accused of the public defence of a crime (apología del delito) for campaigning for therapeutic abortion. This legal harassment has caused some fear on the part of others, such as doctors and nurses, and discouraged them from becoming too actively involved in campaigning on the issue. "

Kate Gilmore, Amnesty International's executive deputy secretary general, states, "There is only one way to describe what we have seen in Nicaragua ‑ sheer horror. Children are being compelled to bear children. Pregnant women are being denied essential life saving medical care."

The rape statistics lay out some of the horror to which Ms. Gilmore refers. Seventy-seven per cent of rape cases in Nicaragua involve girls under 17. Between 2005 and 2007, sixteen per cent of those crimes resulted in pregnancy, and the great majority were in girls of between 10 and 14. Wealthy women may, however, be spared the horror. It is an open secret that many well-off families send female relatives to Cuba for the procedure.

The question is why a government led by Daniel Ortega would pass such legislation. Although Nicaragua is overwhelmingly Catholic, the government is independent and secular, and Ortega is a socialist whose first term as president from 1985 to 1990 saw almost a third of executive positions occupied by women. We can only conclude that Ortega decided achieving victory in the 2006 election made a necessity out of betraying women to a misogynistic Church. Sacrificing young women to the gods has a long history in Latin America. The tradition continues.

Big Pharma mugs Obama

President Barack Obama, in pushing for health care reform in the U.S., has emphasized the increasing costs of health care at least as much as he has emphasized the lack of adequate coverage for Americans. "This is an issue that affects the health and financial well-being of every single American and the stability of our entire economy," he has said. That statement is impossible to debate. About one out of every six dollars spent in the U.S. goes on health care, and two-thirds of bankruptcies in the country arise from medical bills. Three-quarters of those bankruptcies come from individuals who already have health insurance.

If Obama achieves universal coverage, ordinary Americans should be financially secure on the health front, but his plan may not do all that much for overall cost. In the first place, it won't include a single-payer system, an important element in reducing costs.

And that's only a start. After hearing from the pharmaceutical lobby, the White House and the Senate have agreed to omit from proposed medicare legislation the government's right to negotiate prices directly with drug companies. This measure has been highly successful in Canada in controlling costs, not surprisingly since drugs are the fasting rising component of the health care bill. Nor will the U.S. government allow cheaper drugs to be imported from Canada. Obama had included both these items in his campaign platform.

Obama and the Senate know that if they are going to get health care legislation passed, they have to take Big Pharma's money out of the equation. American politicians, like our own, answer to two constituencies: the people and the corporate sector. The American political system, again like ours, is less a democracy and more a hybrid system, with a democratic component and a plutocratic component. Both have to be placated. The American people will get the health care system they want to the extent the pharmaceutical companies get the health care system they want. Such is politics in the 21st century.

The Pope as economist

I have long felt that the answer to achieving a humane and sustainable economy lay in neither extreme of a state-owned economy or a purely capitalist market economy, nor in a state plus capitalist economy, but rather in an economy that entertained both state and capitalist participation while emphasizing co-operative entrepreneurship. I am pleased to see that the Pope agrees.

In his recent encyclical letter "Caritas in Veritate," Pope Benedict XVI comments as follows in Chapter Three, Sections 38 and 39:

Today we can say that economic life must be understood as a multi-layered phenomenon: in every one of these layers, to varying degrees and in ways specifically suited to each, the aspect of fraternal reciprocity must be present. ... What is needed, therefore, is a market that permits the free operation, in conditions of equal opportunity, of enterprises in pursuit of different institutional ends. Alongside profit-oriented private enterprise and the various types of public enterprise, there must be room for commercial entities based on mutualist principles and pursuing social ends to take root and express themselves. It is from their reciprocal encounter in the marketplace that one may expect hybrid forms of commercial behaviour to emerge, and hence an attentiveness to ways of civilizing the economy. Charity in truth, in this case, requires that shape and structure be given to those types of economic initiative which, without rejecting profit, aim at a higher goal than the mere logic of the exchange of equivalents, of profit as an end in itself.

The exclusively binary model of market-plus-State is corrosive of society, while economic forms based on solidarity, which find their natural home in civil society without being restricted to it, build up society.

Amen to all that.

We have seen in very recent years the failure of both extremes, of a state-owned model -- Soviet-style Communism -- and of the unbridled capitalist market model of neo-liberalism. We have been reminded, in a particularly dramatic way, of the need for balance. What we need to see now is a greater emphasis on what the Pope refers to as "commercial entities based on mutualist principles and pursuing social ends," i.e. co-operatives. A globalization where "we must compete in the global marketplace" is replaced by "we must co-operate in the global society" is one I could believe in.

Israeli apartheid comes out of the closet

Little angers Israel's supporters more than the accusation that the country practices apartheid. In the country proper the accusation has limited merit. Although Arabs are not equal citizens, they enjoy substantial rights, including the right to vote and run for office. In the West Bank, it's a different matter. There a system replete with walls, roads and checkpoints effectively maintains a high degree of segregation. The Israeli justification is of course the need to protect Jews from Arab terrorists, a justification not particularly satisfying considering that most of the people being protected are illegal settlers.

In any case, this kind of apartheid is now emerging in Israel itself. The minister of housing and construction, Ariel Atias, intends to implement housing policies that create separate townships for Jews and Arabs. He doesn't bother to justify this on the basis of security, but simply on the basis that Jews and Arabs shouldn't mix. His claim is disturbingly similar to the arguments Europe's anti-semites used over the centuries to justify confining Jews to ghettos.

Expressing his concern about the growth of the Arab population in Galilee, Atias observed, "If we go on like we have until now, we will lose the Galilee. Populations that should not mix are spreading there. I don't think that it is appropriate [for them] to live together."

To be fair, Atias is an equal opportunity bigot. He argues further that segregation should exist not just between Jews and Arabs, but also between ultra-Orthodox and secular Jews. He obviously has quite a tidy little country in mind.

How happy are you?

I have posted before about the need for something better to measure a society's well-being with than Gross Domestic Product (GDP), the overwhelming favourite, if not the only, yardstick used by the economic, media and political elite. I have discussed the Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI) and the Canadian Index of Wellbeing (CIW), both excellent measurements of a society's overall health. Now another alternative has come to my attention, the delightfully titled Happy Planet Index (HPI) , a product of the new economics foundation (nef).

The HPI is an innovative measurement that shows the environmental efficiency with which human well-being is delivered around the world. It reflects the average years of happy life produced by a given society, nation or group of nations, per unit of planetary resources consumed. It incorporates three separate indicators: ecological footprint, life-satisfaction and life expectancy. The nations that top the index aren’t necessarily the "happiest" places in the world, they are nations that are achieving, long, happy lives for their citizens without over-stretching the planet’s resources.

The leading nation according to the latest nef report is Costa Rica with an HPI of 76. Zimbabwe ranked lowest out of 143 nations with an HPI of 17. Canada came in 89th with a score of 39.

You can determine your own HPI on the Happy Planet Index website. I calculated mine at 70, short of the target (a good life that doesn't cost the Earth) of 83 but better than the world average of 46. Apparently I am using 2-3 times my share of the planet's resources, which surprised me considering I live in a small apartment and drive a small car which I don't drive that much. On the other hand, I ranked tops in the satisfaction with life category. So it would seem I can be best described as a happy glutton.

Happiness is an arbitrary concept of course but it has meaning in a human life that GDP simply does not. The fact we are seeing more attempts to measure the health of our societies comprehensively in ways that matter rather than just on how much stuff we consume is a healthy sign, a sign of maturity. There may be hope for us yet.

Is it still five minutes to midnight?

The last time the board of directors of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists reset the Doomsday Clock was on January 17th, 2007. As a result of North Korea's testing a nuclear weapon, Iran being suspected of nuclear ambitions, the renewal of American emphasis on nuclear weaponry, and the continued presence of the U.S. and Russia's 26,000 nuclear weapons, and the addition of climate change as a threat to humanity, the scientists set the clock ahead two minutes to five minutes before midnight, the metaphorical moment of humanity's catastrophic destruction.

Perhaps a recent development will lead the scientists to set the clock back a few seconds. Russia and the United States, who between them have 95 per cent of the world's nuclear weapons, signed an agreement on Monday to reduce their strategic nuclear arsenals by at least one-quarter. This is intended to be a first step toward drastically reducing the threat of such weapons and preventing their spread to unstable regions. The agreement sets the stage for a treaty that will reduce the number of warheads and missiles to the lowest levels since early in the cold war.

President Obama considers the spread of nuclear weapons an urgent issue, "one in which the United States and Russia have to take leadership” he has said, adding, “It is very difficult for us to exert that leadership unless we are showing ourselves willing to deal with our own nuclear stockpiles in a more rational way.” He is of course perfectly right, particularly keeping in mind that under the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty the two countries are obligated to reduce and eventually eliminate their nuclear arsenals.

This is a small step with a long, long way to go, but it is at least progress. It should be worth a second or two off the clock.

Urban VIII and Exxon: from denying heliocentricity to denying climate change

Urban VIII was no dummy. Pope from 1623 to 1644, he was a patron of the arts, church reformer, composer of poetry and hymns, and holder of a doctorate in law from the University of Pisa. He was also the pope who arrested Galileo for promoting heliocentricity.

The pope was a friend and admirer of Galileo, yet he stood him before the Inquisition. Why would Urban, an intelligent, well-educated man, turn on his friend because of an idea? Some historians even suggest he accepted the idea of heliocentricity himself. The reason, we suspect, is because his first duty was not to ideas, not to knowledge, but to his institution. He saw heliocentricity as a threat to the Catholic Church, and if the truth had to be sacrificed to defend his institution, so be it.

Remnants of medievalism we might think today. After all, Urban was also the pope who excommunicated smokers because he believed the habit led to sneezing which resembled sexual ecstasy. But modern, enlightened, well-educated men of today are as capable as Urban as putting the interests of their institutions ahead of the truth. I offer as an example the heads of ExxonMobil, the world's largest oil company. ExxonMobil has for some time funded groups involved in undermining the science of climate change. It had promised to stop, but in 2008 was still supporting global warming deniers such as the National Center for Policy Analysis and the Heritage Foundation. The question is why men of this stature who are not only well-educated but who depend on science for their livelihood would betray science in this way, and the answer is almost certainly that, like Urban VIII, they put the interests of their institution ahead of the truth, even if they believe it themselves.

It is rather more serious now, however. Whether or not anyone believed the Earth circled the Sun was perhaps of importance only to the intelligentsia. But if climate change is not broadly recognized and dealt with, humanity is in grave danger. We simply can't afford Urban VIII's today. Modern technology threatens the planet in a way men of the 17th century couldn't imagine, and our leaders, in business as well as government, must rise to the challenge. Unfortunately, the leaders of one of the world's premier companies still linger morally in the Middle Ages.

Why privilege the sons and daughters of the military?

Four Canadian universities will participate in a program that offers scholarships to children of parents killed in active Canadian military missions. "It is ... a way of honouring those who pay the ultimate price for serving their country," said University of Calgary vice-provost Ann Tierney.

The program raises some obvious questions. For instance, why offer scholarships selectively to the sons and daughters of parents who died serving in the military? Surely, other young people who have lost a parent are equally deserving.

As for their parent's sacrifice while serving their country, why should that privilege the sons and daughters? They didn't make the sacrifice. And what is special about dying while serving your country in the military? We all serve our country, at least those who are employed do, and people in many professions make the ultimate sacrifice while performing that service: construction labourers, fishermen, firemen, journalists, and so on. The project was launched by retired general Rick Hillier, now chancellor of Memorial University of Newfoundland. As a Newfoundlander, Hillier should recognize that the son or daughter of a fisherman who is lost at sea is every bit as deserving as the son or daughter of a soldier who is lost in Afghanistan. It may be politically incorrect to say so, but I see no reason to especially honour those who serve their country wearing uniforms and carrying guns.

If any young people are burdened in obtaining their education because of the loss of a parent, let's help them according to their need, not according to who their parents were.

Calgary papers opt out of free speech

Calgarians bridle at references to their fair city as cowtown. And rightly so. There is much more to Calgary than cows. Judging by the behaviour of our two daily papers, however, one might think otherwise. The Vancouver Humane Society wanted to run an ad in the Calgary Herald and the Calgary Sun critical of calf-roping. Both papers refused to run it, even when it dropped a reference to the Calgary Stampede. "The greatest outdoor show on Earth" has often been thought to hold excessive influence in the city, but I hadn't thought it had enough to scare the press. Although it may have, I suspect the papers' timidity has more to do with the defensiveness against outsiders more typical of small towns than mature cities.

Calgary Sun publisher Gordon Norrie claimed the ad is in "bad taste." A Sun newspaper complaining about bad taste -- now that's rich. Actually, the ad is in rather good taste. No nudity, no four-letter words, some violence -- a photo of a man hurling a calf to the ground -- but no blood. The theme is that men who bounce baby animals off the turf are bullies. A soft-hearted ad, perhaps, even misguided from a macho perspective, but hardly in bad taste.

The Stampede didn't approve of the ad of course. They trotted out their usual line about caring passionately about animals, etc., etc. According to spokesman Douglas Fraser, "If we in any way mistreated our animals, they would not perform." The animals are performing? I think running for their lives is more accurate.

In any case, all is not lost for the Humane Society. The weekly newspaper Fast Forward is running the ad. It's reassuring to know some press people still respect dissenting opinions, even those critical of sacred cows (OK, enough about cows already).

Welcome, Al Jazeera

Good news. The CRTC is expected to allow the Al Jazeera English-language television network to be broadcast in Canada. The Qatar-based international network has been attempting to enter this country since 2003. The CRTC approved carriage of the Arab version at that time but attached such stringent conditions none of Canada's major carriers wanted to take it on. It has agreed to work with some of its opponents such as the Canadian Jewish Congress and B'nai Brith Canada and has agreed to have its on-air content reviewed ever six months. These concessions are a slap in the face to freedom of the press but such is the power of the Israeli lobby.

While I welcome the entrance of Al Jazeera TV into the Canadian broadcasting realm, the network is not new to me. I have been checking out its English website daily for years. Although not as edgy as the Arabic version, it nonetheless provides something of an alternative to the Western media while doing some excellent journalism. It was, for instance, the only international English network on the ground during the recent Israeli invasion of Gaza.

Tony Berman, managing director of Al Jazeera English and former CBC executive, says the network is trying to shed some of the old stereotypes about anti-Western bias. Considering that it's material is watered down from the Arabic version already, I hope he doesn't go too far. Some of that bias is a refreshing change from the Western-centric, pro-Israel perspective of the commercial media in this country.

Gay birds - an evolutionary advantage?

The most common argument against accepting homosexuality as a social norm is that it is unnatural. Sex is for reproduction the argument goes, and same-sex couples can't reproduce (they can, of course, just not with each other), so it goes against nature. Furthermore, homosexual sex can't produce progeny, therefore it is an evolutionary dead end and must be not only unnatural but a conscious choice.

All of this has now been debunked. Same-sex relationships have been observed in a host of species, including bonobos, dolphins, penguins and fruit flies. The relationships show great variety. Male penguins form long-term sexual bonds. Toads will hop on any other toad that gets within range, regardless of gender. Marine snails all start out male, but when two males copulate, one conveniently changes gender. Male and female bonobos fornicate indiscriminately.

Given that it is universal in nature, the argument that homosexuality is unnatural falls apart. Nor, if fruit flies and penguins are doing it, can we argue that it's a matter of conscious choice. Obviously, evolution has not only allowed for same-sex relationships, it would seem to have a purpose, or purposes, for them.

Scientists are now ferreting out those purposes. They believe, for example, that male bottlenose dolphins engage in same-sex liaisons to facilitate group bonding. In a social species, stronger groups mean stronger individuals. Female Laysan albatrosses (shown above), who may remain pair-bonded for life, co-operatively raise their young, with greater success than heterosexual couples. About a third of Laysan albatrosses couples are female-female, for whom males apparently are of but transient utility.

According to Nathan Bailey, a biologist at the University of California, "Same-sex sexual behaviors are flexibly deployed in a variety of circumstances, for example as alternative reproductive tactics, as co-operative breeding strategies, as facilitators of social bonding or as mediators of intrasexual conflict. Once this flexibility is established, it becomes in and of itself a selective force." Why it evolved in humans is rather more difficult to determine than with albatrosses given the distance that human behaviour has drifted from what might be termed "natural." The mystery is deepened by the presence of our fertile imaginations. Sexually-speaking, are we bonobos, dolphins or fruit flies? I'll leave that question to the biologists.

Iran - an historical perspective

Iran is building a new kind of society -- an Islamic republic -- a project it has only been at for 30 years since it emerged from the dictatorship of the Shah, a dictatorship imposed by Great Britain and the United States. The events in Iran today are tragic, but building new societies is a process often replete with bouts of violence.

Consider, for example, the United States. Some Americans, former presidential candidate John McCain among them, are criticizing President Obama for not responding more strongly to the events in Iran. They forget their own history. In building its republic, the United States has endured repeated events of intense violence. It was founded in war. Within a century, it was engaged in one of history's bloodiest civil wars. It grew by crushing the native peoples. The struggle for human rights convulsed its people in violence up until the late 20th century -- two hundred years after the birth of the republic, its cities were burning and blood ran in the streets. Mr. McCain et al. can hardly expect more from the Iranians after only 30 years.

For Iran, whose civilization dates back millennia, 30 years is but a moment. We can only hope the violence of the current moment will be minimized and will lead ultimately to a better society, i.e. a step forward. In the short term, unfortunately, it's looking much more like a step back.

Getting beyond the GDP

Gross Domestic Product. The total value of all the good and services produced in a country annually. The GDP is not only the most common measurement of our economic well-being but often of society’s overall health. It is quoted ad nauseam as “our standard of living.”

This was not the intent of Nobel Prize winning economist Simon Kuznets, the inventor of the forerunner of the GDP. Kuznets had grave reservations about applying such an instrument too broadly. In his first report to the U.S. Congress in 1934, he warned, “The welfare of a nation [can] scarcely be inferred from a measurement of national income as defined above.” He later added, “Distinctions must be kept in mind between quantity and quality of growth, between its costs and return, and between the short and the long run. Goals for ‘more’ growth should specify more growth of what and for what.”

Kuznets cautions have been long forgotten and the GDP is applied very broadly indeed. Yet its weaknesses are as obvious as they are dangerous. For starters, it only values in terms of money, so those activities in which money doesn't change hands, including some of the most important work done in society, volunteer work for instance, or housework, are considered worthless. Unlike sensible accounting, it fails to include negatives as well as positives. Forests cut down are counted when they are sold for lumber, and later for finished products, but the cost of the loss of a forest, economically and environmentally, is ignored. Nature is not paid for her losses, so Her contribution doesn’t count. The planet could be sucked dry while the GDP soared merrily upward and our progress celebrated. The GDP has no interest in the future even though responsible accounting would insist that depleting Nature is depreciating an asset. Nor is polluting Nature a debit even thought its costs may prove catastrophic.

And many of the positives in the GDP are socially destructive. For example, a major growth industry in the U.S. in recent years has been incarceration. Imprisoning ever-increasing numbers of young men would seem to represent a failure in society, but the GDP notes the boom in expenditures on prisons, police, lawyers, courts, etc. and declares it a success. According to the GDP, crime definitely pays.

Factors that illustrate social progress may be of little account or even negative. Falling crime rates may lower the GDP. Reducing disparity between rich and poor is irrelevant. In Canada, while our GDP has steadily risen over the past two decades, income distribution has become increasingly skewed, living standards have been stagnant, housing affordability has diminished, job quality has deteriorated, and Canadians' own rating of their health has declined.

Some economists and others have called for better yardsticks to measure human progress -- or lack of it. The San Francisco-based group Redefining Progress has created a more comprehensive measure of progress which they call the Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI), an instrument that starts with personal expenditures similar to the GDP but then deducts social and environmental costs such as crime, pollution, loss of leisure time, unemployment, etc., adds in non-monetary contributions such as housework, volunteerism and natural resources, and also adjusts for income disparities. It represents something closer to the economy that people actually experience as opposed to an economist’s abstraction such as the GDP. Indexes such as the GPI have shown that when the GDP is rising, overall quality of life may well be falling, i.e. that our belief our standard of living is improving may be an illusion.

Now Canada has come up with its own yardstick. Former Saskatchewan premier Roy Romanow has spearheaded the creation of the Institute of Wellbeing, an organization dedicated to reporting on the quality of life of Canadians and promoting a dialogue on how to improve it through "evidence-based policies that are responsive to the needs and values of Canadians." The institute recognizes a growing consensus about "the need for a more holistic and transparent way to measure societal progress – one that accounts for more than just economic indicators such as the Gross Domestic Product and takes into account the full range of social, health, environmental and economic concerns of citizens."

The institutes's "signature product" is the Canadian Index of Wellbeing (CIW), which will evaluate the quality of life of Canadians overall and specifically in areas such as health, quality of the environment, education and skill levels, the use of time, the vitality of communities, participation in the democratic process, and the state of our arts, culture and recreation. It will provide detailed reports on the various areas and ultimately a composite index, a single number that will give a snapshot of whether the overall quality of life of Canadians is getting better or worse. At long last we will have a single, national instrument, designed from a Canadian perspective, that shows whether our quality of life in all of its dimensions is getting better or worse. The institutes's first report entitled How are Canadians Really Doing? can be found here.

Cocaine ... the hidden report

In the early 1990s, the World Health Organization (WHO) undertook the largest global study on cocaine ever. It collected information from 22 cities in 19 countries about the use of the drug, the users, and the effects it has on users and the community. The conclusions it came to include:

• By far the most popular use of coca products worldwide is the snorting of cocaine hydrochloride. Most participating countries and sites did not report significant cocaine-related problems among this group of users.
• The smoking of coca paste and crack, and the injection of cocaine, are very much minority behaviours in the countries surveyed, and are mainly seen among the unemployed, the homeless, the poor and other minority and socially isolated groups such as sex workers and street youth.
• Most participating countries agree that occasional or experimental cocaine use does not typically lead to severe or even minor physical or social problems.
• Current national and local approaches which over-emphasize punitive drug control measures may actually contribute to the development of heath-related problems.
• Despite a broad range of educational and prevention approaches, this project has determined that most programs do not prevent myths but perpetuate stereotyping and misinformation in the general public.
• Users of minority background or low socioeconomic status are most subject to arrest and prosecution, while wealthier users are virtually immune to prosecution or rarely imprisoned.
• The aim of education about cocaine and related products should be to increase understanding about known high-risk patterns of cocaine use, in particular the intensity of use, drug combinations, and the potentially greater levels of harm associated with smokable and injectable methods of coca product administration.
• Use of coca leaves appears to have no negative physical effects and may have a therapeutic value as a tonic.

About cocaine use in Canada, the report had this to say, "Use in Canada does not typically cause even minor physical or social problems and use remains confined to a small minority of individuals. The few who suffer serious or chronic effects are usually intensive users. ... ex-addicts list more negative effects of use. Recreational users report positive results, claiming that cocaine provides energy for work or study and enhances creativity. ... Few recreational users intensify use over time or experience financial distress, though "addicts" are often made insolvent by cocaine expenditures."

Despite the comprehensive nature and quality of the report, and the substantial contribution it could have made to dealing with cocaine use, and drug use generally, it never saw the light of day. The United States government went apoplectic over heresies such as, "Most participating countries agree that occasional or experimental cocaine use does not typically lead to severe or even minor physical or social problems," and, "Current national and local approaches which over-emphasize punitive drug control measures may actually contribute to the development of heath-related problems." The Americans threatened to cut off their funding for all the organization's research projects and interventions unless it dissociated itself from the study. It did. Publication was canceled and as far as the WHO is concerned the report no longer exists. However, if you would like to read it, try www.tdpf.org.uk/WHOleaked.pdf.

Another corporate front, this one in the capital

The Fraser Institute is about to be complemented by another right-wing think tank, this one in Ottawa. Brian Lee Crowley, president of the Atlantic Institute for Market Studies and F.A. Hayek disciple, is raising support for his Macdonald-Laurier Institute. Needless to say, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty is ecstatic. He will host a private dinner at the Albany club to drum up Bay Street support for the institute.

Crowley claims his think tank will be non-partisan, but there's little doubt who will be paying the piper to hear appropriate tunes. Now that corporations are severely limited federally in their contributions to political parties, think tanks make excellent outlets for their propaganda. Of course they claim to be non-partisan, but who are they kidding with Bay Street picking up the tab. You don't have to tell hookers to wear short skirts -- they know what the boys like.

What annoys me is that we all have to pay the hookers. The money that corporations contribute to their various interests ultimately comes out of our pockets. If we want to eat, wear clothes, put a roof over our heads, etc., we have to buy stuff and that means putting money in the hands of businesses. That they use a portion to support right-wing propagandists like the Fraser Institute is damned annoying, yet impossible to avoid. You may prefer not to buy products from companies that contribute to groups you disapprove of, but because this is private business, their benefactors are confidential. You can never be sure who contributes to whom. You are not free to choose.

Democracy means political equality, and nothing corrupts political equality like money. If we want a truly democratic society, the effect of money must be neutralized and that means any organization that involves itself in politics, not just political parties, should be subject to strict funding rules. Contributions should be limited to individuals and to amounts most citizens can afford. Only if Crawley limits his institutes's funding thusly can he claim it to be non-partisan.

Gun love is killing the U.S.

In 2001, the year Islamic extremists took 3,000 lives in the United States, Americans murdered 8,000 of their fellow citizens with handguns. Almost three times as many. And they do this every year. George W. Bush could have done his people a far greater favour by declaring war on handguns than by declaring a war on terror. But that would have been a mighty challenge indeed, declaring war on a love affair, the love that his fellow citizens have for guns.

The results of American gun-love transcends borders. The thousands of guns that pour into Mexico every year, from handguns to high-powered assault weapons, most bought legally in the United States, arm the Mexican drug cartels. There are over 6,600 licensed gun dealers along the border alone. Whatever damage drugs do in the U.S., other than that done by their own drug laws, can be attributed in large part to those weapons.

And not only Mexican drug lords take advantage. The U.S. is a veritable supermarket for terrorists seeking high-end weaponry. During a recent investigation, government agents posing as private buyers bought military-grade body armour, technology to stabilize and steer guided missiles, a device that can be used to detonate nuclear weapons, and other munitions -- all by legal means.The companies selling the equipment had not violated any laws or regulations. Investigators reported that the problem was sensitive military equipment barred from export was often legal to sell within the country. Smuggling the material out is apparently a minor challenge. How much of this weaponry is then turned against Americans is difficult to assess but given the American presence throughout the world, particularly in regions of violence, it could be a lot.

The American proclivity for guns as a solution to problems leads them into a war every generation if not every decade and sends young men and women to die often pointless deaths -- almost 60,000 in Vietnam and over 4,000 in Iraq to date.

And there are other ways to die than needlessly in war. One cannot help but wonder if the United States wouldn't have provided all of its people with good health care years ago if it didn't spend excessively on armaments. Its military spending is almost equal to the total of all other countries in the world combined which is absurd. One of the few American politicians who dares to challenge the military-industrial-congressional complex, Congressman Barney Frank, insists it should be easy to persuade Americans "that their well-being is far more endangered by a proposal for substantial reductions in Medicare, Social Security or other important domestic areas than it would be by cancelling weapons systems that have no justification from any threat we are likely to face." I doubt it's anywhere near as easy as Congressman Frank thinks.

But the greatest damage to the United States from its grossly inflated military spending may be that it is simply bankrupting the country. The American federal government is expected to run a record deficit of $1.8-trillion US in 2009 (13% of GDP), adding to the rapidly rising U.S. federal debt of 11.4-trillion US (about $37,000 for every American). Not even the richest country in the world can persist in this degree of financial irresponsibility forever. Yet not even Barack Obama dares to cut spending on weapons.

How ironic that the paranoia created by 9/11 is doing more harm than the attack itself.

Civilized behaviour trumps politics as usual

So Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff have agreed their two parties will work together to examine employment insurance reform. Two political leaders not shouting at each other long enough to agree on a common effort for the public good is a rare and beautiful thing indeed.

After a series of face-to-face meetings -- in my mind the heart and soul of democratic process -- the two leaders will create a working group on employment insurance with three members selected by each of their parties. The prime minister is "optimistic" a deal on "realistic" changes to the EI system can be reached, and the opposition leader added, "We have found a way to make progress. We’re going to try and make it work and get good results for Canadians." How salutary, how refreshing.

If only this could become the modus operandi of the House of Commons. If politicians of all parties could work together to deal with issues, we the people would benefit from the intelligence, wisdom and imagination of all our elected representatives. We would have better legislation, we would be better represented and we would probably have a great deal more confidence in the system. But I'm dreaming, aren't I? This display of good will is really just a one-time exercise in election-avoidance. Still, it's nice to see, rare as it is.

Obama's curious confusion about violence and history

Obama's speech in Cairo would certainly seem to signal a new era in American foreign policy. It sounded rather like a retreat from empire, even though the audience was required to sit in their seats for two and a half hours before the imperial president appeared. He even spared us the word "terrorist" which was refreshing. But quite aside from the overall direction of the speech, on the critical issue, Palestine, he lectured the Palestinians with some curious logic.

"Palestinians must abandon violence," he insisted, "Resistance through violence and killing is wrong and it does not succeed." If he had just limited his remark to the Palestinians, he may have been on solid ground, but once he generalized he was in strange territory indeed, territory very much at odds with the American experience. He seemed to have completely forgotten that the United States liberated itself from Great Britain through violence. Can he possibly be implying that the American Revolutionary war was wrong and did not, in fact, succeed?

He went on to say, "For centuries, black people in America suffered the lash of the whip as slaves and the humiliation of segregation. But it was not violence that won full and equal rights. It was a peaceful and determined insistence upon the ideals at the center of America's founding." Violence may not have won American blacks full and equal rights but it certainly liberated them from the lash of the whip. Is he suggesting that Abraham Lincoln was wrong and freeing the slaves was a failure?

"It's a story with a simple truth: violence is a dead end," he concluded. Well, the simple truth hasn't ended the American use of violence. They are the most violent nation on Earth, currently fighting two wars and prepared for more with dozens of military bases established throughout the world. Obama himself is a big fan of the Afghan war.

It's when he goes on to say, "Hamas must put an end to violence, recognize past agreements, recognize Israel's right to exist," that we get a a hint of what this may be all about. The Palestinians must put an end to violence, but not the United States, and certainly not Israel, the most violence-prone nation in the Middle East. Violence, in other words, is legitimate for us and our friends, but not for you Palestinians.

As far as the American contribution toward peace in Palestine is concerned, he said, "We cannot impose peace." Actually, they can. They can get tough with Israel. Indeed, that may be the only way to achieve peace in the region because Israel has little incentive otherwise. Every day it steals more land from the Palestinians and further intensifies their segregation. Obama's position seems to be the United States will not pressure Israel into making peace and the Palestinians must forego violence. That would seem to leave the Palestinians entirely at the mercy of Israel. One could be excused for thinking Obama had been briefed by Netanyahu. To the point of forgetting his own history.

Contemplating the extinction of Homo sapiens

The recent report by the Global Humanitarian Forum, entitled "Climate Change – The Anatomy of a Silent Crisis" contains some news which I would say is alarming but, since so few people in the corridors of power are alarmed by climate change, I won't. For example, it states that climate change kills over 300,000 people a year through hunger, sickness and weather disasters, seriously affects 325 million people, and creates economic losses of $125-billion U.S. Four billion people are vulnerable and 500 million are at extreme risk, with the number of those affected more than doubling in the next 20 years. Meanwhile, scientists tell us that the problem isn't a greenhouse gas effect but rather a runaway greenhouse gas effect. In other words, barring dramatic action, it will soon be beyond our ability to control.

And the will to get it under control seems lacking in both leaders and populations at large. The only Canadian leader who took a serious policy on global warming into an election was Stephane Dion, and we all know what happened to him. We not only rejected him, we humiliated him. Get out of here, you silly man, we seemed to say, and take your carbon tax with you. The winners of the election show little interest in doing anything serious about climate change except meekly following the American lead.

This leaves Barack Obama as the great environmental hope. But this hope is increasingly faint. The U.S. House of Representatives is working on legislation that includes a cap-and-trade system for greenhouse gases. This would provide improved environmental protection but is being so watered down it will be nowhere near strong enough. Scientists claim the U.S. must cut its emissions to 20 per cent below 1990 levels by 2020 to slow global warming. This legislation calls for only four per cent. And even this weak effort may not ultimately pass the House and Senate.

So global warming marches on and we fail to face up to its challenge. One wonders how far this can go. To the collapse of civilization, perhaps, or even to the collapse of life on Earth? Could we turn our planet into another Venus or would the collapse of our civilization limit the damage we could do? In any case, the extinction of Homo sapiens has become a real possibility.

And not only from climate change as we know it. Catastrophic war seems to be an increasing possibility as more nations go nuclear in order to play with the big boys, and nuclear war could in itself cause climate change. And then there's the possibility that chemical or biological warfare could run amok.

Any of these could result in our inability to physically or financially contain our technologies once catastrophe has unleashed them. Nuclear power plants, oil fields, chemical factories, could rage out of control. Add in the political and social breakdown that would result as governments collapse, massive population shifts occur and rogue armies rampage, and Armageddon starts looking like a real possibility rather than just a metaphysical prophecy.

Quite aside from catastrophe, our technology could turn on us in other ways. It may simply evolve beyond us -- the next logical step in evolution, so to speak. We have, for a long time, built machines that are vastly superior to us physically, now we are building machines that are superior to us, in some important ways, mentally. There doesn't seem to be any reason we can't build ones that are superior to us in all ways mentally. Maybe even superior to us emotionally. That certainly wouldn't be hard. And if we do produce machines -- robots -- who are physically and mentally superior to us, what will they need us for? House pets? Will they put us in kennels while they go off to explore the universe?

We are an intelligent species but not a wise one. We have always used our intelligence to destroy as much as to create. We are bright enough to create ever more advanced technologies but not wise enough to restrict their use to productive purposes. We are too violent, too greedy, too arrogant, too narrow, or at least too many of us are.

You might say we are too smart for our own good. We are like the dinosaurs in a way. They dominated the Earth for 1,000 times longer than we have been here. Their advantage was their size, their big bodies. Then one day, because of an asteroid landing or whatever, size became a huge disadvantage and the dinosaurs were finished. Our advantage, the thing that has allowed us to dominate the Earth, is our big brain. Now, it has become a disadvantage, a terminal disadvantage, like the dinosaurs' big bodies. It has led us into creating the means of our own destruction.

Oddly, I find myself quite philosophical about the possibility of our extinction. I am distressed neither intellectually nor emotionally. Maybe it's because at my age I'm facing my own extinction, but I don't think that's the reason. I have just become more analytical about Homo sapiens, simply recognizing that, whether individual or species, extinction is part of evolution, the natural road of life. We have our little moment, our speck of existence in an infinity of time and space, and then we disappear. If we, Homo sapiens, were a credit to our home, there might be room for regret, but we aren't. In our little moment, we have done massive damage to the planet, including driving thousands of other species into extinction. There would be a certain ironic justice in doing the same thing to ourselves. If we are to go, we won't be missed.

All hail Stephen the Red

Oh how time and fortune wear on our principles. Not very long ago Prime Minister Stephen Harper was among the strongest advocates of smaller government. Now he has made the biggest leap into the market by a Canadian prime minister since Pierre Trudeau and Petro-Canada. He has, on behalf of Canadian taxpayers, just "invested" $7.1-billion of our money in General Motors Corp.

This is the same Mr. Harper who once referred to Canada as a "Northern European welfare state in the worst sense of the term" and insisted we were "very proud of it." Well, we are now the very proud owners of 12.5 per cent of a bankrupt American corporation.

So rejoice Canadians. Led by our intrepid neo-socialist leader we are now in the car business.

U.S. security -- the ignorance factor

American ignorance about Canada is a rich source of humour for many Canadians. Generally it isn't something to be taken seriously because, after all, we are a bit player in the grand scheme of world affairs and they are a giant. Why would they know very much about us? Oh yes, we are their major trading partner but trade is dull, not something most people spend a lot of time chatting about. So they know little about us, so what.

Well, occasionally it does matter. One such occasion is their obsession with security. Their hardening of the border, to use the current expression, to bolster their security is creating considerable difficulties for both trade and travel across the no longer "world's longest undefended border." To the extent it interferes with trade, as boring as the subject may be, it has serious ramifications for the economies of both countries, particularly ours. And, unfortunately, it appears the U.S. concern about security is based to no small degree not only on paranoia but on ignorance. Leading Americans from Hillary Clinton to John McCain to, and here is where it becomes deeply troubling, the head of U.S. Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano, have at one time or another claimed the September 11 attackers came from Canada. In fact, none of them had been in Canada and all had entered the U.S. on valid American visas.

Napolitano has now retracted her view but was still expressing it up until a month ago. And her retraction was phrased oddly. "Now we know the 9/11 terrorists did not use the Canadian border," she is quoted as saying, as if her agency had just discovered something new.

If senators of border states (and Clinton wasn't the only one), presidential candidates and, of the greatest importance, the key figure in the American security establishment, all believe in this blatantly false but critically important piece of information, how badly informed are the Americans about security over all? Is their intelligence about Canada on this issue of the same standard as their intelligence about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq? This is a scary prospect.

Canadian Public Safety Minister Peter Van Loan referred to Ms. Napolitano's comments on the issue as a "slight misspeak." Let us hope he's just being tactful.

Three women honoured, one gratuitously insulted

Yesterday's issue of The Globe and Mail stood out for its inspiring stories about not one but three women of extraordinary achievement. The first was about Canada's very own master of the short story, Alice Munro, "our Chekhov," and her winning of the $100,000 Man Booker International Prize for fiction. Selected from a short list of internationally renowned writers, Ms. Munro adds the Man Booker to her impressive list of awards, including the Governor-General's Award for fiction (three times), the Giller Prize (twice), the U.S. National Book Critics Circle Award and the W.H. Smith Literary Award in Britain. She has had 48 short stores published in the New Yorker and has been described in the New York Times as having "a strong claim to being the best fiction writer now working in North America."

Appearing on the front page of the Globe with Ms. Munro was U.S. President Barack Obama's nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court, Sonia Sotomayor. Growing up poor in the Bronx, Ms. Sotomayor now aspires to the highest judicial office in her country. If she is confirmed by the Senate, as she almost certainly will be, she will become the first Latina justice on the Court.

Featured on the Globe's Law Page was Canada's most successful jurist, Louise Arbour. She achieved the highest honour available to a Canadian judge -- elevation to the Supreme Court -- and is also the most accomplished Canadian jurist internationally. She served as chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunals for Rwanda and the Former Yugoslavia, and recently completed a term as United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.

At a recent meeting of the UN Human Rights Council, Ms. Arbour was praised by ambassador after ambassador, all expressing regret she was not seeking another term. All except the Canadian ambassador that is, who made no reference to her decision. The Harper government is known to have differences with her, but on occasions such as this, good manners call for differences to be set aside to say something nice about the person being honoured. But the Harperites seem to have great difficulty setting differences aside, it is always us against them. One wonders what the representatives of other members of the international community thought about this boorish slight by the Canadian ambassador toward one of his own.

Ms. Arbour will continue to play an international role, assuming the positions of president and chief executive officer of the International Crisis Group, an independent organization that analyzes conflicts around the world and proposes solutions. Congratulations to her, and to Mses. Munro and Sotomayor, and a raspberry to Canada's ambassador to the UN.

Ahmadinejad challenges Obama

So Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has offered to debate U.S. President Barack Obama at the United Nations on, in his words, "... global issues as well as world peace and security." Challenging the elegant, eloquent Obama is quite the display of confidence for the bumptious Iranian.

Nonetheless, the debate could prove interesting. Top of the agenda would probably be nuclear weapons with Obama demanding that Iran refrain from developing them. He would point out that Iran is a signatory of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty which forbids non-nuclear nations from developing atomic weaponry. Ahmadinejad would have little trouble countering this. He would claim Iran was not working on a weapon, but only advancing peaceful uses of the atom, and he could refer to the U.S.'s own intelligence reports to support that position. But that would just be for starters. He could then ask Obama why the Americans' best friend in the region, Israel, is allowed to have nuclear weapons and the U.S. has nothing to say about it. He could go on to point out that the Non-Proliferation Treaty also requires nuclear nations to disarm themselves of atomic weapons, which the United States is not doing and is therefore in violation of the treaty itself. Ahmadinejad wins this one easily.

Next up, probably, would be bringing peace and stability to the Middle East. Obama would accuse Iran of providing weapons to terrorist groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah and thereby creating instability. A fair charge. But again, Ahmadinejad could easily rebut it, stating that in the view of most people in the region Hamas and Hezbollah are legitimate resistance organizations. Obama would have trouble with that considering both groups have been legitimized to a U.S. standard by engaging in the democratic process and in fact being quite successful at it. As for the terrorism charges, both organizations have used terror but then so have Israel and the United States. And as for Iran's support of Hamas and Hezbollah, the United States has provided massive military aid to Israel creating a huge imbalance of power in the region. It is hypocritical, the Iranian president might say, to criticize Iran for providing a much smaller amount of aid to the other side, particularly as that side is the victim. In any case, after the Iraq debacle, the Americans have little credibility when it comes to peace in the region. Once again, Ahmadinejad has the edge.

A real danger for Obama would be Ahmadinejad going on the offensive about the history of the U.S./Iran relationship. He could bring up United States collaboration in the overthrow of the democratically-elected Mossadegh government, the first Islamic democracy in the Middle East. This was where the current hostility between the two countries really began. Not only would this put Obama on the defensive, it would undermine one of his real strengths, his country's support of democracy.

Will Obama take up the challenge, assuming Ahmadinejad wins Iran's June 12th presidential election? He has said he wants dialogue with Iran -- here is a splendid opportunity. As for my prediction for the debate, should it take place: Ahmadinejad wins on facts hands down. Obama, however, seduces the crowd with his charm and eloquence. I'll leave the final verdict to the members of the General Assembly.

The Tamil tragedy and their psychopathic leader

Psychopaths, bereft of conscience, commonly resort to violence in the pursuit of their pleasures. In normal human intercourse, this often leads them into behaviour that is unacceptably anti-social or even criminal. But when violence is socially acceptable, such as in war and revolution, the psychopath comes into his own. He can use violence to aggrandize himself not only with impunity but with honour, even glory. Rather than a social pariah, he becomes a revolutionary hero. History is replete with such figures: Lenin, Mao, Mugabe, the list is long. And recently another has been much in the news -- Velupillai Prabhakaran, the founder and leader of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.

Leading his Tigers in a just cause warped to his own sordid methods, Prabhakaran pursued a bloody, destructive civil war for 26 long years until finally dying, as he lived, by the sword. A master of assassination, suicide bombing and child soldiers, he was a man of considerably skill. Typical of psychopaths, despite his unimpressive appearance and unassuming manner he had a powerful charisma, described as an extraordinary "focus." He created a formidable military, complete with army, navy and even an air force.

Despite his substantial ability, his war was a miserable failure. He ruled the Tamils with the same merciless brutality he fought his Sinhalese enemies with, killing anyone who had the temerity to defy him. He brought his people 26 years of death and suffering and left them worse of than they were before. And one can't help but wonder how they would have fared if he had won. Not only does managing a country require very different skills than fighting a revolution, what would life under such a thug been like? Like Russian under Lenin? China under Mao? Zimbabwe under Mugabe? One shudders at the kind of society he may very well have created.

A more constructive, and far more enlightened, course for the Tamils was offered by a former revolutionary leader in neighbouring India. I refer of course to the greatest man of the twentieth century, Mahatma Gandhi, who showed all of us that great things could be done, including liberating the second largest population on Earth, without raising a hand against anyone. Such inspiration so close yet the Tamils missed it and paid a terrible price.

But now, with the Tigers defeated and their leader dead, the opportunity presents itself again. If the Tamils take it, if they pursue justice in Sri Lanka, or even a state of their own, by the methods of Gandhi, or at least peacefully, one thing is certain. They will do no worse than they did under the leadership of the psychopath Prabhakaran.

Chernobyl still vexes British farmers

When on April 26th, 1986, reactor number four of the nuclear power plant near Chernobyl in the Ukraine exploded, radioactive dust quickly drifted across Europe. Reaching the British Isles within days, carried in fine rain, it seeped into the hills of England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland and there it remains. Hundreds of farms are still restricted in how they are allowed to use land and raise sheep. Radiocaesium-137 passes easily from soil to grass and accumulates in animals. Sheep grazed on upper pastures, where radioactivity levels are highest, have their heads painted red to identify them, and if a farmer wants to sell them for food, they must be scanned.

The number of farms requiring scanning steadily declines as the radioactivity fades, but the red-headed sheep will for a long time be reminders of the dangerous reach of nuclear power, even in its peaceful mode.