On listing "terrorists"

Terrorism is once again in the news. The end of the Tamil Tigers, pioneers of suicide bombing, is nigh in Sri Lanka. In the United States, increasingly disturbing revelations about the Bush administration's use of torture in their "war on terror" is riling tempers. And our government leaves Canadian Abousfian Abdelrazik to rot in the Sudan because it has concluded, against all evidence, that he's a terrorist.

But if I'm going to talk about terrorism, I should first define it. To me, it means the use of terror against a civilian population to coerce it into adopting a certain political position. A definition is necessary because the word tends to be applied highly selectively, used by governments and others to demonize some individual or group they find disapprove of.

Essentially, terrorism is a military tactic, like an air raid or a blitzkrieg. It is sometimes called the weapon of the poor because it tends to be used by those who lack formal militaries, the Palestinians for example. Nonetheless, it is used by a range of agents, some poor, some not so poor. The greatest terrorist attacks in history, the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, were carried out by the United States, the richest, most powerful nation on Earth. and a democratic nation it is important to note. Probably the greatest use of terror overall has been by governments against their own people.

We consider terrorism to be particularly repugnant because it's directed at civilians rather than military personnel, i.e. at innocents. This is a finer distinction than it immediately appears, however. In modern warfare, most casualties are civilian. Consequently, when a nation decides on military action, it is consciously deciding to kill civilians. Distinguishing terrorism from conventional war is, therefore, somewhat arbitrary. Whether you die from a specifically terrorist attack or from collateral damage in a war zone is small consolation to the dead.

This reveals the rather arbitrary nature of terrorist lists. Placed on a list, an individual or organization becomes a pariah, not to be dealt with in any way by respectable people, possibly under threat of prosecution. The Canadian government has listed the Tamil Tigers as a terrorist organization, and therefore put them beyond the pale, and they have indeed done terrible things, but then so has the government of Sri Lanka, including the systematic repression of the Tamil people, yet with them we maintain full diplomatic relations. We have also put the Palestinian organization Hamas on a terrorist list and that both lacks logic and adds to the difficulty of creating peace in the Middle East. Yes, it has a military arm and that arm has used terrorism, but it also has a social arm that has brought much needed social services to the Palestinian people, and it has a political arm that is willing to participate in the democratic process which it has done with great success. To categorize a comprehensive organization such as Hamas as a terrorist organization makes no more sense than categorizing the United States and Israel as terrorist states because they have also used terror when it suited their purposes.

Listing groups as terrorists can at times be downright perverse. For instance, al-Qaeda and Hamas get lumped into the same do-not-touch category, yet have little in common. Hamas is an organization willing to subject its political and ideological goals to negotiation and democratic process. As a major player in Palestine, it can and should be a participant in the Middle East peace process. Al-Qaeda on the other hand answers only to God and therefore does not negotiate and pursues its ideological objectives only by violence. Hamas has goals amenable to reason, al-Qaeda does not. Hamas can be treated as a political entity, al-Qaeda only as a criminal organization. Treating Hamas as if it were al-Qaeda is a folly that leads only to hostility and lost opportunity, an action neither useful nor justified.

The situation with individuals is parallel. Abousfian Abdelrazik has broken no law, yet our government abandons him in a foreign land. The ostensible reason is that he is on the UN blacklist, yet the very placing of an individual on the blacklist egregiously violates due process. A government simply submits a name to the Security Council along with supporting details. The government doesn't have to publicly identify itself (in Abdelrazik's case it hasn't) and no formal standards of evidence are required. If there is no objection within five days, the person is added to the list. Their assets are frozen and they are not allowed to travel internationally. The person doesn't get a hearing and can't submit evidence to refute the allegations. They are guilty until proven innocent.

In Abdelrazik's case, the RCMP and CSIS have both vouched for his innocence, but our government remains unmoved. They do this to him because he is accused of being a terrorist; he'd be much better off if he were accused of being a common criminal. And that of course is how such situations should be dealt with. If he is suspected of committing a crime, subject him to due process; if he isn't, treat him as an innocent man. The same applies to groups who practice political and ideological violence. If they commit crimes, treat them as criminals. The law has ways of dealing with members of a criminal organization.

Listing is an arbitrary process that does more to confuse and subvert the search for peace and security than it does to enhance it. It should be abandoned along with the curious construct, the "war on terror," that gave it life.

"Taxes are the price we pay for civilization"

It's April 30th, a day occasioning two things to smile about: the death of Hitler in 1945 and the filing deadline for your income taxes. As for Hitler shooting himself in the head on April 30th, 1945 ... well, enough said. But paying your income taxes is worth a few words outlining one of our country's best bargains.

At least that's what authors Hugh Mackenzie and Richard Shillington call it in their report, "Canada's Quiet Bargain: The Benefits of Public Spending," published by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. The report is full of intriguing observations such as the fact that, depending on the type of tax cut, the vast majority of Canadians are better off with improvements in public services rather than tax cuts, and benefits from public services adds up to more than 50% of the household earned income for more than two-thirds of Canadians.

These conclusions support the opinion of the great American jurist, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., that "taxes are the price we pay for civilization." Taxes allow for not only the basic infrastructure of a society but also for a more equitable, more compassionate society, i.e. a civilization.

As for the argument high taxes diminish a society's prosperity, an argument endlessly repeated in the corporate press, that is a lie. Sweden has the world's highest taxes, and it also has one of the world's highest GDPs per capita, higher than any country in North America. This is hardly a surprise. We should expect a healthy, well-educated population and good physical infrastructure to contribute to a successful economy. Quality is expensive and high quality public services require relatively high taxes. The price is high but the product is, as Mackenzie and Shillington report, a bargain.

The press will continue to push for lower taxes. They are good and faithful servants of the corporations who own them and corporations, focused solely on profit, always want lower taxes. We would all like to pay lower taxes, of course. I would like to pay less for bread, too, but not if it's mouldy. I'm willing to pay the price for good, tasty bread not past its due date, just as I'm willing to pay for high quality public services. I suspect most Canadian feel the same way, both about the bread and the taxes. Best then, to ignore the corporate propaganda.

So send in your taxes and smile; you're about to pay for the biggest bargain in the country. As the report says "For the vast majority of Canada’s population, public services are, to put it bluntly, the best deal they are ever going to get."

When torture worked

"We have met the enemy and he is us."

These immortal words of Pogo have been used a lot lately in the U.S. in the heated debate about the use of torture. Pogo was referring to pollution of the environment, of course, whereas current use refers to the Bush administration's pollution of American values.

Whether or not torture worked for American intelligence continues to be debated, but it certainly worked for the bad guys. I wouldn't attempt to get inside the heads of people who fly planes into tall buildings, but if I had to guess what their objectives were I would suggest two. One, to undermine American values, and two, to ignite a war between the West and Islam.

As far as the first objective is concerned, once the Americans turned to torture, they eroded one of their fundamental principles: respect for human dignity. The Eighth Amendment to the American constitution forbids the use of "cruel and unusual punishment." American values had been successfully undermined by the Americans themselves.

Regarding the second objective, there too, torture proved useful. When Colin Powell made his now-infamous speech at the United Nations to justify to the world an invasion of Iraq, he claimed Saddam Hussein was assisting al-Qaeda in obtaining weapons of mass destruction, and the U.S. knew this because of information they had received from "a senior terrorist operative" who was "now detained." The Americans had indeed obtained such information from a captured member of al-Qaeda, but it was obtained under torture, and it was a lie. The terrorist later recanted his confession, saying he had only wanted to stop the pain. Be that as it may, his information helped achieve exactly what his comrades wanted, to start a war between the West and Islam. Once again, the U.S. had followed the terrorists' script.

The Bush administration had met the enemy and it was themselves.

Jeffrey Simpson, anti-American?

Although I read a daily paper, I don't pay a lot of attention to columnists. Not that their opinions don't matter -- everyone's does -- it's just that, with a few exceptions, most of them are neither entertaining nor informative nor thoughtful enough to spend time on. Their prose is no more rewarding than chatting with the anonymous guy at the bus stop.

I do routinely read Jeffrey Simpson, however. Why I'm not sure, perhaps he's just become a habit. His comfortable, middle-of-the-road style is somehow relaxing, addicting even. That's why his column in last Saturday's Globe "Can We Reduce Our Dependence on America?" caught me off guard. Like many liberal and conservative writers, Simpson feels obliged from time to time to accuse the left of being anti-American. In this column he surprisingly took on task himself. Catch a load of this:

The U.S. got itself massively indebted through terrible government decisions. lax regulation, private-sector greed and a political culture that refused to face elementary facts.

Or this:

... the United States, a country whose share of world trade and general economic activity is declining, whose massive indebtedness and self-indulgence are weakening its power, and whose overstretched military is bleeding the country's resources.

Wow! Let's see a run of the mill anti-American top that. Of course, everything he says is simply the truth, but still, it's quite the rant. And what's this all about? Well, here's the point -- and it's sharp:

It's one thing to be an appendage of a country in the ascendancy; it's quite another to be one of a country that has screwed itself up. Such is Canada's fate.

When even an anti anti-American tees off like this, a mere anti-American may be inclined to think he was right all along.

Tough choice in BC

As much as I appreciate exercising my right to vote, I'm not unhappy I won't be required to exercise it in the coming B.C. election. I would face a choice I would rather avoid. My usual party of choice, the NDP, are on the wrong side of one of the issues of greatest importance to me and sitting on the fence on another.

I believe electoral reform is an essential step toward improving our democracy. The egregious weaknesses of our current voting system, first-past-the-post, are well known. In the upcoming May 12th election, B.C. voters will have the opportunity to dump first-past-the-post and replace it with an excellent proportional system, single transferable vote (STV). To my chagrin, the NDP is not officially taking a position on the referendum even though the great majority of its members support the need for reform. The party of the people is not, it seems, unduly concerned about ensuring the people are fairly represented in their legislature.

An even bigger issue is global warming. Indeed this is the mother of all issues, the one that has to be dealt with if any other issues are going to matter at all. (I don't much like single-issue voting, but when it comes to the most important issue facing humanity, I could make an exception.) One of the key instruments in dealing with global warming is a carbon tax. We, all of us, should pay for our pollution. The B.C. NDP thinks otherwise and promises to rid the province of its carbon tax if elected. After Dion's hapless promotion of it in the federal election, this could fatally harm one of the best tools we have to deal with the greatest challenge we face.

All is not lost however. The B.C. Green Party supports both STV and a carbon tax. As a B.C. voter, I would have an alternative without having to support Gordon Campbell and his Liberals (mind you, they deserve credit for introducing a carbon tax in the first place). Only with reluctance would I abandon the party of which I am a member, but on two issues of this exceptional importance, I would feel forced into it. The NDP complains about the Green Party undermining the left by taking votes away from them --- in B.C. they are handing the Greens votes on a platter.

George W. Bush and Lady Justice

The United States Senate released a report yesterday that directly implicates senior members of the Bush administration in the use of torture. The report, the most detailed investigation yet into the background of "harsh interrogation," undermines the claim of administration officials that the abuse of prisoners in Iraq was solely the work of rogue military personnel. The report connects the dots from former defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld to Guantanamo to Afghanistan and to Iraq. It states, "The abuse of detainees in U.S. custody cannot simply be attributed to the actions of 'a few bad apples' acting on their own. The fact is that senior officials in the United States government solicited information on how to use aggressive techniques, redefined the law to create the appearance of their legality, and authorized their use against detainees." It also claims the administration rejected advice against the techniques from the military, who questioned both the morality and the reliability of information gained. The release of the report coincides with President Obama's setting the stage for possible prosecution of Bush officials.

Bush and his colleagues stand accused of a number of violations of American and international law, but the biggest offence goes deeper. It is the violation of the Rule of Law itself, one of the pillars of our civilization. The Rule of Law simply says we are ruled by laws, not men. Laws are made by men, of course, but once made, they are supreme, even over those who made them. Justice is blind, and therefore does not distinguish between the great and the small. We are, each and every one of us, equally subject to the law. Nowhere is this more important than at the top. The greatest benefit, indeed the prime purpose, of the Rule of Law is to protect society against arbitrary rule. And the Bush administration was very arbitrary, making up the rules as it went along and abandoning U.S. and international law on the way.

Now Americans must decide. Will they allow George W. Bush and his constitutional bandits to get away with breaking not only the law but with fracturing its very foundation? Will they allow the murderers of 9/11, who no doubt intended to assault American values, succeed in undermining one its most fundamental principles? It appears President Obama may be preparing to say no.

Is Ahmadinejad entirely wrong?

Yes, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad does shamelessly grandstand, and yes, once again he has set the cat among the pigeons on the racism front, but is much of what he says not true? In his tirade at the UN anti-racism conference, he is quoted as calling Israel a "cruel and repressive racist regime."

Let's parse that phrase in terms of Gaza. Wasn't the slaughter of 400 children during Israel's invasion of the strip earlier this year "cruel"? Is not the continuing blockade of Gaza "repressive"? And is denying the one million Palestinian refugees in Gaza the right to return home simply because of their race and religion not "racist"? So where in that phrase is Ahmadinejad wrong or anti-Semitic?

The problem is that Israel wants to maintain its racial integrity -- its very purpose -- and when you do that in a heterogeneous region you wind up doing unpleasant things. Like ethnic cleansing. like apartheid, like collective punishment akin to terrorism, all of which Israel has done. We in the West have great difficulty saying these things because our collective guilt over our mistreatment of the Jews, culminating in the Holocaust, has made Israel by far the most politically correct issue around. Serious criticism just isn't on. Ahmadinejad is not bound by this political correctness and says what he thinks, much of which is nonsense, but some of which is inconveniently true. He says that the Holocaust was a "pretext" for the dispossession of the Palestinians, and wasn't it? It is certainly used by us in the West to justify the state of Israel.

Various motives are ascribed to Ahmadinejad for his attacks on Israel. He is accused of playing to the home crowd with an election coming up, of trying to establish Iran as the leader of the Arab World, of appealing to European anti-Semitism, and maybe some or all of these accusations are true. But is it not also possible he is simply very angry about the suffering of the Palestinians? A great many people in the Middle East are, a sentiment we in the West do not seem willing to accept.

Worth noting is that while European diplomats boycotted the conference or walked out on Ahmadinejad's speech, the representatives of Third World nations stayed to listen, many to applaud. I suspect this is because his views are close to the Arab people's, many of whom understandably see Israel as a colonial imposition, and Third Worlders generally are much more sensitive to colonialism than we are. If we want to contribute to peace in Palestine, and in the Middle East generally, while removing one of the major catalysts of hostility toward the West, we might try listening to Ahmadinejad. Filtering out the chaff, certainly, indeed condemning much of it, but paying attention to the kernels of truth, and certainly appreciating the passion of a Third World voice more broadly representative than we might like to think.

Chavez as Oprah

Look at this picture. It is not a fake. That is the president of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, presenting a book to the president of the United States, Barack Obama, who is graciously accepting it. And yes, I am not making this up, Chavez is quoted as saying to Obama, "I want to be your friend." Hell may not have frozen over, but relations between the U.S. and its nemeses in Latin America appear to be thawing out. To quote the Venezuelan leader again, "President Obama is an intelligent man, different from the previous one." Yes, indeed, Mr. Chavez, very different indeed.

The book, "Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent" by Eduardo Galeano, has already surged to sixth place on Amazon's U.S. paperback sales chart. Three years ago Chavez praised a book by Noam Chomsky, "Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance," and it too shot up to the top of Amazon's bestseller list.

No word yet if Obama is reading his book.

India does democracy proud

Democracy has sometimes been considered a luxury reserved for rich nations. India has, for over 60 years, proved that notion wrong. Despite great poverty and illiteracy, a huge, almost unmanageable, population, and a vast range of ethnic groups and languages, India has remained steadfastly democratic for three generations.

Today, it embarks on its 15th election. It will be, as it always is, the largest democratic ballot in history with over 700 million voters eligible to troop to the polling booths. In order to manage the massive vote, the election will be held in five phases over 28 days. Candidates of over 1,000 registered political parties, from untouchables to members of the upper castes, from cricketers to Bollywood stars, will contest 543 parliamentary seats.

That such a populous, diverse and poor country can succeed at democratic governance is encouraging to democrats everywhere.

Calgary rides the wind

Considering it's a conservative city and home of Canada's oil industry, Calgary is establishing an impressive independence from fossil fuels. The C-Train system already runs entirely on power generated by the wind, and the city is now committing $250-million over 25 years to have all of its operations run by green power. An agreement with city-owned utility Enmax Energy will ensure all municipal operations, from swimming pools to city hall, follow the C-Train lead and are powered by the wind. Enmax will use the $250 million to build more wind farms. "We will become the largest green power consumer of any municipal government in Canada," boasts Mayor Dave Bronconnier. Calgary expects to reduce corporate greenhouse gas emissions to 50 per cent of 1990 levels by 2012.

Environmentalists are quite naturally pleased. Alex Doukas of the Pembina Institute sees this as an example for the province as a whole. "Alberta could go from 70 per cent coal-fired electricity, which is what we have today, to 70 per cent clean electricity in 20 years," he observed.

If the oil capital of Canada can do it, any city can.

Buying a financial crisis

Financial deregulation, the root cause of the current economic crisis, did not occur spontaneously. It is thought of as a product of the ascendancy of neoconservative philosophy since the Reagan/Thatcher era, and of course it is, but it took more than the intellectual force of neoconservatism to make it real. It took cash, and lots of it. According to the report "Sold Out: How Wall Street and Washington Betrayed America," by Robert Weissman and James Donahue, it took at least $5.1-billion US.

That's the amount the financial sector spent on federal lobbying ($3.4-billion) and political campaign contributions ($1.7-billion) in the U.S. in the decade leading up to the meltdown. Merrill Lynch alone spent $68 million and Citigroup $108 million. Big money for big rewards. In 2007, the financial sector was engaging 3,000 lobbyists to influence the federal government, more than five for each Member of Congress, and that only includes those officially registered. It doesn't include corporate PR campaigns or state lobbyists. The crisis was well and truly paid for.

This buying of Washington reveals a truth about our North American political systems. They aren't democracies, they are hybrid systems -- part rule by the people at large, part rule by the rich; part democracy, part plutocracy. The plutocratic part not only buys great influence over politicians, but through its control of the mass media, controls political discourse. And this aside from the power it exerts through domination of the economy.

The crisis has once again reminded us of the greatest challenge facing democracy in the 21st century: the struggle to diminish the power of the plutocracy. We need reminding because the plutocracy often exercises its influence in opaque and insidious ways: lobbying in backrooms, for example, and subtly requiring fealty from its media servants. We are currently paying the price for allowing this plutocratic mischief.

Growth: recipe for salvation or catastrophe?

One thing the nations of the world agree on during the current economic crisis is a need for growth. "The message is growth first," says John Kirton, director of the G20 research group at the University of Toronto. Some world leaders, like U.S. President Barack Obama and British PM Gordon Brown, emphasize stimulus, and others, like German Prime Minister Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy, emphasize regulation, but all support growth.

The need for a rejuvenated economy is overwhelmingly obvious, but is growth the panacea world leaders, uncritically supported by the mass media, think it is? They seemingly refuse to recognize that growth has limits. The planet is finite. And we are exhausting it. We are well past the point where it can sustain itself against our ravenous demand for growth.

Actually, growth hasn't been doing us all that much good lately. At least not us rich folks. Inequality is higher in the OECD countries than it was 20 years ago, and middle-class incomes in Western countries were stagnant in real terms long before the recession. Growth has, however, benefited poor nations. In China and India, for example, it has lifted millions of people out of poverty and we in the West can hardly criticize that. Nonetheless, we are left facing the outcome of billions more people aspiring to the level of affluence of the wealthier nations. To achieve that equality, the world economy will have to increase 15 times by 2050 and 40 times by the end of the century. At that rate, we will soon have an environmental crisis that will dwarf the existing economic crisis ... if it doesn't already.

The challenge, therefore, would seem to be less about restoring the destructive economic model of the past and more about replacing it with a sustainable yet balanced model, a world economy that reduces exploitation in the West while allowing undeveloped countries to catch up, an economy less about growth and more about sharing. The current crisis presents an opportunity to take up this challenge, to take a serious look at the structure of the world economy and consider serious changes.

An essential start is redefining prosperity. We seem to rely solely on GDP to measure our economic status even though it's more a yardstick of exploitation than of human welfare. There are a number of indexes out there that focus on human well-being generally, including the state of our environment, rather than solely on consumption as the GDP does. Any new definition must in its international application redefine prosperity so as to allow room for much-needed growth in poorer nations.

A recent report entitled "Prosperity Without Growth: The Transition to a Sustainable Economy," issued by the Sustainable Development Commission, the British government's "independent watchdog on sustainable development," presents a thorough analysis on how to shift to a world economy the planet can live with. The report recommends 12 steps to achieve a sustainable economy. These include investing heavily in jobs, assets and infrastructure for a green economy, increasing financial prudence, developing more environmentally sound measures of economic accounting and prosperity, sharing work and improving work-life balance, reducing economic inequality, creating healthier and more resilient communities, reversing the culture of consumerism, imposing clear global limits on resource use and pollution, creating ecological-based tax systems, promoting technology transfer to undeveloped countries, and funding investment globally in renewable energy, energy efficiency, and the protection of carbon sinks and biodiversity in developing countries. Each of these steps is expanded upon in detail in the report.

Economic growth has become discordant with both environmental sustainability and human well-being, and it is time for world leaders to seek economic structures that are compatible with these elements. Unfortunately, they are rising to the challenge only with reluctance ... if at all.

Woe is us, we may have to go green

Our federal government's malingering when it comes to action against global warming is becoming an embarrassment. Yesterday's headline in The Globe and Mail is an illustration. "Ottawa faces pressure to align with U.S. on green plans," it reads. Our neighbours have to force us to accept our environmental responsibilities? How sad.

The U.S. Congress is proposing legislation that would include border duties on imports from countries considered lax on limiting greenhouse gas emissions, and God knows we are lax. Leading Democrats, with President Obama's support, intend to strictly limit the emissions that industries are allowed. In order to protect their industries against competition from countries with lower standards, the proposed legislation would require the U.S. government to take action when American manufacturers lose market share to foreign companies that enjoy an unfair environmental advantage. This approach is essential if global warming is to be dealt with. Without counter measures, countries with low standards will not only have an unfair trade advantage but will be more attractive to investment and thus undermine environmental efforts. The only alternative to unilateral action is strong international standards.

Needless to say, the legislation will be opposed. Republicans and conservative Democrats, particularly those from coal-mining states, will seek compromise. Predictably, the Canadian Manufacturers & Exporters association is complaining. China is not happy with the legislation, particularly about suggestions it will protect American jobs. China has profited greatly from both low labour and low environmental standards; perhaps the American action will put pressure on them to at least raise the latter.

It will certainly put pressure on us. Even our reluctant Minister of the Environment, Jim Prentice, admits as much. "There are clearly measures that would have trade related consequences for Canada if we don't have equivalent environmental legislation in place," he says. So there you have it. The Conservatives may not care unduly about threats to the planet, but threats to trade get their attention in a hurry.

I would prefer to see us leading the way in the fight against global warming rather than being whipped along by economic threats, but if threats are the only way to get us to do the right thing, then I welcome them.

The RCMP encounters democracy

Democracy and uniforms are often incompatible. Institutions whose members wear uniforms tend to be rigidly hierarchal and therefore resist the democratic impulse. This, however, has not prevented police forces across the country from adopting the workplace's major instrument of democracy -- the labour union. Unions are in themselves run democratically while allowing workers to be fairly represented independent of management and collectively bargain for their working conditions. Indeed, collective bargaining is a major manifestation of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms Article 2(d): freedom of association. It is rather remarkable, therefore, that it has taken so long for the Mounties to have this right recognized in the courts.

On Monday, Ontario Superior Court Justice Ian MacDonnell struck down a section of the RCMP Act that precludes unionization. Finally the Mounties have the right to join their brothers and sisters in other Canadian police forces and enjoy the privileges of a democratic workplace. "Why," asked Judge MacDonnell, "does the wider jurisdiction of the RCMP, or its status as a unique Canadian institution, make the labour relations modes in place for other police forces inappropriate?" Why, indeed.

The Mounties have experienced some bad patches lately, in part at least due to a seeming breakdown in communication or rapport between the members on the street and the brass in head office. A union will clarify that relationship, and will offer security to those members who are critical of upper management. As for the force going out on strike, the public needn't worry; Canadian police forces generally give up that right. We may freely welcome the redcoats to the world of democratic governance.

Should we bail the bastards out?

Initially, I supported the bailout of the auto companies. The idea of GM and Chrysler crashing and tens of thousands of workers losing their jobs was too much to contemplate. Then I watched the documentary "Who Killed the Electric Car?" and I changed my mind. The documentary, a remarkable tale of corporate chicanery, details how General Motors trashed their own car. They hadn't wanted to make an electric car because the big money in the auto industry is in service and electric cars require very little service. However, California was threatening stringent emission standards which GM, supported not surprisingly by the Bush Administration, was fighting in court, and they needed a plan B in case they lost. The electric car was Plan B. As it happened, they won. They then proceeded to call in all the electric cars they had leased and crush them. That, of course, is why they leased the cars rather than sell them. The lessees loved their cars and vigorously protested their destruction, but to no avail. GM, the Bush Administration and the oil companies won; California, the drivers of the electric cars, and the environment lost. The "free" market got hustled as it frequently does. And now GM wants a handout, a reward so to speak, for its malfeasance.

So should we help them out of their self-imposed misery? It's not as if people are going to stop driving cars. The automobile market will still be there although possibly for different types of vehicles. Workers would suffer, but then GM's manufacturing work force in Canada is predicted to fall to 6,000 from 22,000 a decade ago anyway. A collapse of GM and Chrysler may simply make room for other companies to step in and start making cars for the 21st century. They will probably be foreign, of course. Japan, South Korea and China are all well ahead of North American companies in producing green cars. China's BYD is building a car so appealing to investors that Warren Buffet's MidAmerica Energy Holdings has bought ten per cent of the company and will help distribute its cars in the U.S. China intends to make electric cars its forte. The answer to job loss may be to encourage companies like BYD to set up shop in North America, as Honda and Toyota have done. We might have to pay out a lot of unemployment insurance in the meantime, but will it be more than the $3-billion we are offering to bail out GM and Chrysler? And would it not be worth it if the result was a much greener automobile industry?

Foreign car-makers have honed the art of making a profit from small, efficient cars while the North American giants intend to continue to rely on bigger vehicles, crisis or no crisis. GM has shown no interest in building electric cars in Canada and I doubt very much the environmentally-challenged Harper government will pressure them to do it. So maybe it's time to let market evolution take its course. Let the dinosaurs die out, or at least restructure themselves into viable enterprises, while we welcome the new species of auto-makers that are better adapted to their environment.

Karzai -- a 21st century Diem?

The United States and its European allies are ­about to demote Afghan president Hamid Karzai. They intend to appoint a new chief executive who will "partner" Karzai and assume whatever decision-making the allies feel appropriate. They also intend to devolve spending power from Kabul to the provinces. They are, apparently, fed up with the corruption around Karzai and intend to bypass him. The diminished role for the president will be unveiled at a special conference on Afghanistan at The Hague on March 31. Top candidate for the new job is Interior Minister Mohammed Hanif Atmar, an American favourite.

It seems only yesterday NATO was crowing about the democracy they had brought to Afghanistan, wonderfully illustrated by the election of Karzai as president in 2004. Now he has become a liability, and apparently the allies won't be taking chances on elections this time.

This is yet another echo of the Vietnam war. In 1963 the Americans, led by a charming, young and progressive president, watched as the incompetent leader of South Vietnam, Ngo Dinh Diem, steadily lost ground to the Viet Cong insurgency. The Americans acquiesced, therefore, when the South Vietnamese army decided to depose Diem. The U.S. president, John F. Kennedy, was apparently horrified when the military not only deposed him, they executed him. This time the Americans and their allies will do the job themselves.

Karzai will probably fare better than Diem, although there is the problem of what to do if he rejects the allies' plans, an anti-colonial stand many Afghans would support. He recently declared he would resist any dilution of his power. "Afghanistan will never be a puppet state," he is reported as saying, perhaps under the illusion that because he was elected it's his country to run. No doubt Diem felt the same way. Like Diem, he will soon be disabused of that notion. The quagmire deepens.

Please don't exacerbate me

Exacerbate. The ugliest word in the English language, yet one of the trendiest. A person can't read the daily paper, a magazine or a book without encountering an author who feels obliged to throw in an "exacerbate." To many authors, it seems to be a de rigueur word, essential to establishing their credentials as a modern writer. What he or she usually means to say is "aggravate," a perfectly good word. How then did this unfortunate situation come about?

The problem seems to lie in the double meaning of "aggravate." The common meaning is "to make worse"; however, it can also mean to "irritate" or "provoke." But if "aggravate" is used in the sense of "provoke," how does one intensify the provocation? The writer is deprived of the usual progression from irritation to aggravation. The answer it seems has been to drag in "exacerbate." Then, for some perverse reason, it has become a trendy replacement for "aggravate" in any sense.

I cringe every time I encounter the word. So please, fellow scribblers, do me a favour. If you mean "to make worse," use the sensible, and quite agreeable, "aggravate" and leave "exacerbate" in your thesaurus. As New yorkers would say (and some people blame them for the problem) spare me the aggravation.

The Guardian or the local rag?

Newspaper readership, we are told, is declining. That may or not be true. No doubt the readership of hard copy newspapers is declining, but I suspect readership of the web versions is increasing. It certainly has for me. I still buy a daily paper -- as I mentioned on a previous post, I'm addicted -- but I also do a lot of newspaper reading online. In fact, I have a routine which I follow most days. Starting with the CBC website, I then do the Guardian, Al Jazeera and the New York Times, in that order. And maybe one or two others if it's a slow morning.

I have little interest in my local papers, the Calgary Sun and the Calgary Herald. Both right-wing, they have little to say to me, and why would I buy a second or third-rate paper when I can read the best in the world such as the Guardian and the New York times -- and for free? This, I suspect, is the case with many readers. They haven't given up on newspapers, they've just given up on their local rag.

Eventually a day of reckoning will come, of course. The papers almost certainly can't make enough money from advertising on their websites to keep their newsrooms going, so presumably one day they will have to charge for reading their online versions. That will be fine with me. At least I'll be able to support a first-rate newspaper rather than a second-rate one. In the meantime, I'll just enjoy the free ride.

Executive pay: how much is too much?

The U.S. is quite rightly experiencing a flurry of outrage about AIG execs scoffing up healthy bonuses after running their company into the ground, and this on top of the corporation accepting a $170-billion handout from the federal government. Scandals about corporate executives piling up exorbitant incomes from salaries, bonuses and stock options, even if their companies are tanking, are commonplace these days. It prompts the old question: how much should the top guys be paid? How much more reward do they deserve than the people at the bottom?

The usual corporate defense of excessive incomes for executives is that they have to pay these amounts to get the best people. The United States most successful investor, Warren Buffett, disagrees. Mr. Buffet, chairman and chief executive of financial conglomerate Berkshire Hathaway and the world's second richest man after Bill Gates, pays himself, as he has for years, an annual salary of $100,000. Including directors' fees, he makes a grand total of $175,000 a year. He is somewhat more generous with his employees but not excessively so. The highest salary at Berkshire Hathaway is paid to the company's chief financial officer, Marc Hamburg, who made $786,500 in 2008. Buffet is an outspoken critic of lavish executive compensation packages and doesn't offer bonuses and stock options. If Berkshire Hathaway can achieve the outstanding success it has without paying anyone more than a million dollars a year, it's hard to see why any company should have to.

The idea behind generous compensation, particularly with stock options, is that it will improve executive performance and therefore company performance and therefore provide bigger rewards to stockholders. Unfortunately, the compensation seems to have become an end in itself, independent of either improved executive or company performance. That isn't surprising considering boards of directors determine executive pay, and boards of directors tend to be made up of local management and presidents and chairmen of other companies, usually chaired and dominated by the CEO himself. Quite naturally, these incestuous bodies take care of their own. And in doing so they often overlook the fact that all employees contribute to a successful organization, not just the top guys.

In any case, it hasn't worked. Lavish salaries seem to contribute more to greater greed than greater performance. Corporations might all do better following Warren Buffet's example: if it's over a million, it's too much.

Is this why our government doesn't give a damn about global warming?

Is the mystery unravelling? I have long wondered why our federal government doesn't unduly concern itself with global warming, the greatest threat facing our species. Finally we have a clue. We have a science minister who as much as admits he doesn't believe in evolution. Gary Goodyear, Minster of State for Science and Technology, apparently thinks evolution is a religious matter, not a scientific one, and doesn't care to talk about it.

This certainly explains why the Harper government shows little interest in basic science. Goodyear doesn't agree, of course, saying he is "passionate" about his portfolio and insists that because he experimented with automobile engines in high school, he's "been there on this discovery stuff."

Christian fundamentalists such as Goodyear tend to have trouble with facts about our universe, evolution first among them. If he has trouble with a pillar of science like evolution, is it possible he has doubts about global warming as well? And if Harper's minister of science has doubts, then perhaps others in the cabinet do also? Certainly, Environment Minister Jim Prentice seems more interested in defending the tar sands than in defending the environment. It's hard to believe this could be true, yet there must be some explanation for their cavalier approach.

That Christians had trouble accepting evolution was no great tragedy -- life went on --- but if we don't accept global warming and respond appropriately, life as we know it won't go on. The stakes are very much higher. We can no longer afford scientific ignorance, and that may just mean we can't afford this government.

Is the world coming to its senses on drug policy?

As the United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs met in Vienna this week to set world drug policy for the next decade, a European Commission report claimed the UN strategy over the past decade has been a failure. Ten years of that strategy, operating under the ludicrous slogan "a drug-free world - we can do it," was described in the report as providing, "no evidence that the global drug problem was reduced," and went on to say, "Broadly speaking, the situation has improved a little in some of the richer countries while for others it worsened, and for some it worsened sharply and substantially."

In the United States, chief promoter of the hardline approach, half a million citizens languish in prison for non-violent, drug-related crimes, yet drug use persists while prices decline. Last year, 6,000 Mexicans died in wars between the cartels. Recently, yet another leader of a drug-ridden country -- Guinea Bissau -- was assassinated. The United Nations estimates 70 per cent of international crime is fueled by drugs, an industry worth over $300-billion U.S. a year. Millions of victims suffer from HIV contacted from dirty needles. The failure has many faces but most stem from the laws, not the drugs.

The Economist magazine, which refers to past drug policy as "a disaster, creating failed states in the developing world even as addiction has flourished in the rich world," has proposed an approach that offers a way out of the current morass, arguing for legalization as the least bad solution. "Legalization," the Economist suggests, "would not only drive away the gangsters, it would transform drugs from a law-and-order problem into a public health problem, which is how it ought to be treated." The Economist approach would have governments tax and regulate drugs and use the revenues raised, as well as the billions saved on law enforcement, to educate the public about drug use. Prices would be set such that they would encourage neither drug use nor illegal trafficking with its attendant theft and prostitution. Justice systems would save enormous sums, and control of drugs would be transferred from criminals to the state.

As to the argument that legalization would contribute to more drug use, the Economist points out that "citizens living under tough regimes (notably America but also Britain) take more drugs, not fewer." As for addiction, while Sweden's drug laws are harsh and Norway's relatively liberal, the two countries have identical addiction rates. The Economist nonetheless concedes that cheaper, safer, legal drugs might lead to increased use. This would be balanced, however, by the ability to deal with use and addiction properly.

The United Nations admits it is losing its war on drugs, yet the action plan produced in Vienna remains focused on eradicating supply. The plan does, however, include support for "mainstreaming drug treatment and rehabilitation into national healthcare systems; and ensuring accessibility to drug demand reduction services." The intent of the plan is somewhat in the eyes of the beholder. More progressive countries, including Germany, the U.K. and Australia, interpret it as including harm reduction such as needle-exchange programs, while others, including the U.S., Colombia and Russia, object to that interpretation, saying it condones drug use.

While the UN conference showed little progress, developments in the United States show promise. President Obama has appointed a progressive as his new drugs czar. As Seattle's chief of police, Gil Kerlikowske oversaw treatment and rehabilitation replace prosecution as the first choice for dealing with drug abuse. If his nomination is approved by the Senate, Kerlikowske will become director of the office of national drug control policy for a president who has declared that the U.S. war on drugs, now 40 years old, is "an utter failure." A more enlightened approach from the traditional leader of the law-and-order crowd would be helpful indeed.

So small flashes of light are appearing in the darkness that is world drug policy. Legalization remains a distant goal, but we seem to be inching in that direction. No doubt it involves risk, too, but abandoning a policy that only makes things worse justifies a lot of risk.

The United States and the right to meddle

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recently lashed out at Iran for its meddling in the Middle East. "It is clear that Iran intends to interfere with the internal affairs of all of these people [in the region] and try to continue their efforts to fund terrorism, whether it's Hezbollah or Hamas or other proxies," said Ms. Clinton.

This criticism of Iran's machinations in its own backyard exemplifies the Americans' monumental hypocrisy and lack of introspection. They have for many years meddled in the affairs of nations in their region as a matter of course. Nor have they been content to limit their interference to the affairs of countries in the Americas. They make the world their playground.

Yet when Iran involves itself in the affairs of its neighbours, including its quite legitimate support for Hamas and Hezbollah, the U.S. cries foul. It would appear meddling is the exclusive property of the Americans -- and perhaps its allies, at least if they are enhancing American interests.

If American meddling was a positive force, it might have some justification, but in the Third World it is more often negative. A good example is U.S. collaboration in the overthrow of democratically-elected governments, from the Americas, e.g. Guatemala in 1954 and in Chile in 1973, to the Middle East, e.g. in Iran in 1953 and in Palestine today. Indeed, it has been meddling in the Middle East for a long time and almost everyone is worse off for it, except Israel and amenable Arab dictators like Arabia's Sauds and Egypt's Mubarak.

Despite Clinton's bellicose statements, the Obama administration does seem to be shifting toward a more constructive and co-operative foreign policy putting, one hopes, the neocon policies of the Bush administration behind them. For example, they have convinced NATO to resume high-level relations with Russia, with Ms. Clinton calling for a fresh start with that country. And, in a very encouraging move, she announced the administration has proposed a conference on Afghanistan that is likely to include Iran, setting up the prospect of a face-to-face encounter between the two countries.

These are good signs. They don't presage an end to American meddling, of course, but they suggest at least a less belligerent, less self-righteous and more consultative approach. Perhaps even including a little more introspection along with more empathy for other peoples. That would be progress ... something to hope for, to borrow President Obama's favourite word.

Maybe the ICC isn't just "white man's justice" after all

On Wednesday, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant for President Omar al-Bashir of Sudan, accusing him of "directing attacks against an important part of the civilian population of Darfur, Sudan, murdering, exterminating, raping, torturing and forcibly transferring large numbers of civilians, and pillaging their property." In January, the Court began its first case with Thomas Lubanga, former militia leader in the Democratic Republic of Congo, in the dock. So far the Court has indicted thirteen individuals, all Africans. This emphasis on Africans has led to suggestions the Court is focusing on Third World leaders while overlooking the sins of Western nations such as the horrors inflicted on Iraq by former U.S. President George W. Bush.

African Union spokesperson Jean Ping, while supporting the Court, has nonetheless said, "What we see is that international justice seems to be applying its fight against impunity only to Africa as if nothing were happening elsewhere, [such as] in Iraq, Gaza, Colombia or in the Caucasus." Apparently more than 40 African countries are thinking of withdrawing their membership from the Court.

The ICC, the first permanent tribunal set up to prosecute war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide, is a major step forward for international justice, and it would be tragic if it were tarred with the brush of discrimination. A new investigation may put paid to that. The Court is considering whether the Palestinian Authority will be allowed to bring a case against Israel for war crimes committed in the recent assault on Gaza.

Proceeding will not be easy. There is a question of whether the Palestine Authority is sufficiently like a state to qualify for bringing a case. To date, the ICC has not recognized Palestine as a sovereign state and it is not a member of the Court. In addition to members of the Court, cases can be brought by the UN Security Council or the Court Prosecutor. The U.S. would veto the former possibility so hopes for an indictment may very well rest entirely with the Prosecutor. The odds of prosecution are not good, therefore, but the fact the Court is conducting a serious investigation may at least allay concerns that Western nations have immunity.

Beating crime with research

Sometimes a particular confluence of news items seems to jump out at me. Such is the case with three recent items: first, the Harper government's get tough on crime rhetoric; second, the concern expressed by science researchers about lack of support from that same government; and third, some intriguing research on FASD (fetal alcohol spectrum disorder) in the Prime Minister's home province of Alberta.

The Conservative government has introduced new crime legislation that would classify gang killings as first-degree murder, create a new offence and a minimum four-year prison term for drive-by shootings, and toughen Criminal Code sections on assaulting police officers. Even though the Liberals and the NDP have promised to support the provisions, Harper characteristically engaged in a preemptive attack, insisting, "Look, we know we're going to hear these critics. We know we're going to hear the Opposition parrot some of these critics because they all believe in soft-on-crime policies."

While Harper lashes the opposition for a lack of support for his crime legislation, researchers lash his government for a lack of support for scientific research. The connection? Well, as I have mentioned on this blog before, research can can be a critical tool in fighting crime. It can reveal the roots of crime and therefore offer prevention as an alternative to punishment. A good example is research being done on FASD in Edmonton by the Chimo Project. FASD refers to a range of disabilities observed in people whose mothers drank alcohol while they were pregnant, including learning problems, memory loss, short attention spans and difficulty understanding the consequences of actions. These can lead to serious anti-social behaviour. Indeed, not only is fetal alcohol syndrome the leading cause of brain damage in this country, up to 60 per cent of the people in jails are victims of it.

Researchers with the Chimo Project are finding that with animal-assisted therapy, FASD victims show significant increases in their social skills, as well as in their participation and motivation. The researchers use cats, birds, dogs, even a miniature horse, to get children to open up, and to decrease their levels of anxiety and depression. According to Kristine Aanderson, senior program manager for the Chimo Project, "We spent 10 years amassing this evidence about how effective it is. We've really reached a point now where the world is starting to recognize ... this is something amazing and it really can help these clients."

When every pregnancy is a healthy pregnancy and every infancy a healthy infancy, crime will drop like a stone. In the meantime we have to deal with realities like FASD and research is showing us how to do that. By developing ways of treating the victims of FASD and dysfunctional family life generally, we can save many of them from lives of crime and save the rest of us from becoming victims of that crime. Applying methods like animal-assisted therapy early is better for all of us than relying on the Criminal Code later. Hopefully, the Prime Minister and his Minister of Public Safety are paying attention.

Of course the U.S. is not leaving Iraq

I hate to say I told you so. Well, actually I don't mind at all. This is what I said in a posting on July 4th'08 about Barack Obama's promise to remove U.S. troops from Iraq:

"The United States now has a major military presence at the centre of the largest conventional oil reserves in the world and they are going to walk away from that? Not likely."

Some Americans, and others, weren't paying attention to the fine print of Obama's claim. What he has been saying all along is, to quote from a recent speech, "Let me say this as plainly as I can. By August 31, 2010, our combat mission in Iraq will end." Note the phrase "combat mission." He doesn't mention the occupying mission. He says he intends to leave up to 50,000 troops to advise Iraqi forces and protect U.S. interests. I suspect the emphasis will be on the latter and the major interest will be oil.

Nor, in fact, is he completely forgoing combat. He states that protecting U.S. interests will include "conducting targeted counterterrorism missions." Sounds like combat to me.

He does insist he will adhere to the deal that the Bush administration made with the Iraqis to remove all American troops by the end of 2011. Any bets on that?

Here's an idea: tax marijuana

California is in deep financial trouble. Like many states across the U.S., its coffers are almost empty. State Assemblyman Tom Ammiano has a solution. He has introduced legislation in the California legislature that would legalize and tax marijuana. He would have growers and wholesalers charged a $5,000 franchise fee with a $2,500 annual renewal fee, and would levy a $50 per ounce fee on retailers. He estimates this would contribute $13-billion a year to the government's revenue. "It is simply nonsensical that California's largest agricultural industry is completely unregulated and untaxed," said Marijuana Policy Project California policy director Aaron Smith. The bill probably won't pass, even if it gets out of the committee stage, but what an idea. And proponents haven't even included the huge costs to the justice system that will be saved by legalizing the drug.

Canadians should take note. Marijuana is B.C.'s biggest cash crop, making up over five per cent of the province's GDP and employing around 100,000 workers in full or part-time cultivation, distribution, smuggling, and retailing -- almost double the employment in logging, mining and oil and gas combined. Estimates suggest that in Nelson as many as 30 per cent of households are involved in grow ops. I doubt many of these citizens are reporting their pot revenue on their income tax.

Here's an opportunity for Canadian governments to jack up their revenues in these deficit days. Think of what B.C. could do with franchise fees, retail licenses, and income and business taxes on an industry that makes up over five per cent of its GDP, while at the same time relieving itself of the major legal expenses of prosecuting marijuana crime. These are times for innovative thinking on the economic front. So come on Canadian legislators, Assemblyman Ammiano has offered you an idea. Go for it.

Reining in the rogues: Europe calls for global financial reform

Let's face it. The world's financial system is a mess. Unencumbered by appropriate regulation it has run amok for years. It has finally crashed and taken the economy down with it. Europe's leading nations are now serious about fixing it.

A few hundred international currency traders, including big banks, mutual fund managers and other investment dealers, shift trillions of dollars around the world every day enabled by the modern miracle of telecommunications. Their influence is impressive. In 1992, one trader, George Soros, almost single-handedly drove down the British pound, forcing it out of the European Monetary System. The British public’s respect for their government went down with it. The power of money traders is on a par with nations. Soros himself has said, “The main enemy of the open society, I believe, is no longer the communist but the capitalist threat.” He predicted a global system dominated by finance would disintegrate. He was right.

These transient trillions are primarily speculative. Only a small portion of foreign-exchange transactions go into world trade. We have become captive to the vagaries of the world’s largest lottery. Quite aside from its inherent arbitrariness and instability, it is tailor-made for gangsters, money launderers, terrorists and tax evaders.

Other observers than George Soros have recognized the need for action. James Tobin, a Nobel Prize-winning American economist, has suggested a one per cent tax on all foreign currency exchange transactions. When Paul Martin was Finance Minister, he pushed finance ministers in other countries to give the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank greater supervisory powers over international financial markets. He observed, “I’ve felt we had to go much further in terms of supervision and international regulation and that has been borne out by the Asian crisis.” Germany has for years attempted to tighten controls on hedge funds but has been stymied by Great Britain and the United States.

It is now clearly time governments reined in the rogues of finance. Government’s right, if not obligation, to regulate markets has been recognized even by free-marketers back to Adam Smith. If we can extend this right to negotiate a world-wide General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, we can negotiate supranational regulations for financial markets. This, the Europe Union's most influential nations plan to do. Germany, Britain, France, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic and Luxembourg have issued a joint statement that they will push for international standards requiring banks to hold larger reserves, requiring market participants to exercise greater transparency, and allowing international authorities to clamp down on tax havens.

The Americans, whose inclusion is essential to such a plan, may resist. They are ambivalent about international financial regulations. They would like to track the financial arrangements of terrorists, gangsters and tax evaders, but on the other hand they are reluctant to interfere with their own investors and havens for shady operators -- Dubai, for example -- are helpful to the U.S. for other reasons. Needless to say our government, still largely driven by its neocon ideology, will support the Americans in any opposition. But the U.S. has a new man at the helm, a man of progressive persuasions, and the crisis is dire indeed, so perhaps good sense will prevail and global finances will finally be subjected to transparency and responsibility.

Will we ever see environmental leadership in this country?

"[The oil sands] massively increases Canada's geopolitical importance, above all, to the United States. ... This is a very important partnership and they should balance their legitimate environmental concerns with an understanding of just how important the oil sands are to the future of the American economy."

This is not Prime Minister Stephen Harper extolling Canada as a world energy power, it is Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff extolling the value of the Alberta tar sands. Ignatieff goes on to say, ""The stupidest thing you can do [is] to run against an industry that is providing employment for hundreds of thousands of Canadians." So there, Stephane Dion. It would appear Ignatieff has set aside follies such as a carbon tax and embraced the Conservative environmental policy, which can be summarized as "protect the tar sands at all costs." Ignatieff reinforced Liberal acceptance of the Conservatives' cavalier approach to global warming with his support for their budget which ignored a huge opportunity for a major green shift.

We can appreciate the politics of Ignatieff's position. He sees pandering to the energy industry as the political reality of rebuilding the Liberal party in the West. Unfortunately, in this instance political reality and environmental reality may simply be incompatible. Environmentally, the reality is global warming and the tar sands are a major contributor to global warming.

During Obama's visit, Harper made the odd comment, "The fact that we have a President and an administration that wants to see some kind of regulation on this is an encouragement." So it's all George Bush's fault that Canada doesn't have a meaningful policy on global warming? We Canadians are incapable of developing a policy ourselves? Not very convincing when you keep in mind that, despite Bush, the Americans have reduced greenhouse gases more than we have over the last eight years.

Harper is right about Obama, though. Expectations for Obama generally are probably running much too high; nonetheless, he has moved firmly in a green direction with his stimulus package. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act invests heavily in renewable energy, energy efficiency and green transportation. "We've never had a jobs program before in American history where the heart and soul of it was a commitment to clean energy," remarked former president Bill Clinton.

As for us, apparently we will continue to do next to nothing while the two governments explore ways to co-operate. And how optimistic can we be about that? Obama has said he wants to work closely with Canada to come up with a new strategy to reduce emissions. That may or may not be a good thing. If it means he will take Michael Ignatieff's advice and accept our tar sands friendly policy, either because of American lust for oil or because he wants to be nice to us, the new strategy may be full of holes. We must hope he will cleave to what appears to be a solid commitment to a greener future and drag us willy-nilly along. Sadly, when it comes to dealing with global warming, the great challenge of our age, we have little to offer.

Looking forward to CanWest bankruptcy

I hate to wish anyone bad luck, but I'll make an exception for media giant CanWest as it plunges into a debt crisis. CEO Leonard Asper is desperately seeking financial help as the family-run media empire inches toward bankruptcy. The good news is that even if he gets it, the financial benefactors may demand he step down as CEO and the family eliminate the dual-class share structure that allows them to control the company. That one family can control over a quarter of the daily newspaper circulation in the country, along with a host of other media outlets, is an insult to democracy. Indeed it isn't democracy, it is plutocracy, or oligarchy if you prefer. To a democrat, the Asper empire's financial problems are promising news. The icing on the cake would be to see the empire broken up into a number of smaller media companies with a variety of editorial positions.

The power of such a vast media network has corrupted political debate in this country. Middle Eastern coverage serves as an example. CanWest's unequivocal support of Israel combined with the extensive reach of its propaganda makes criticism of Israel a dangerous business for politicians aspiring to high office. The result is a highly one-sided debate.

I would not of course wish ill to any employees of the empire as it suffers through the crisis. I wish them all gainful employment in the reincarnation whatever that may be, although columnists with a broader range of philosophies would be welcomed.

CanWest may very well fall into the hands of yet another right-wing media baron, of course -- certainly no one on the left has the necessary cash to buy a daily newspaper, much less a chain -- but it's hard to imagine a more stifling media presence than the Aspers.

Crime: prevention or punishment?

With the recent spate of gang shootings in Vancouver, the hue and cry for tough measures is in full force. One is hard pressed not to join the chorus. When shooting people in broad daylight seems to be turning into a street sport, forceful action is called for. More police might be a good idea. The mayor of Vancouver, Gregor Robertson, has pointed out how understaffed his police force is compared to Toronto and particularly to Montreal.

The federal government focuses on stricter laws. Ottawa has already introduced mandatory minimum sentences for weapons offences. Public Safety Minister Perter Van Loan would now like to go further and introduce mandatory minimums for drug crimes, seemingly oblivious to the fact that the major contributor to drug violence is the illegality itself. Just how much tougher sentencing will help is moot. The United States incarcerates seven times as many people as we do, mostly because of drug offences, and Americans are hardly safer because of it. The only result is the world's largest prison bill.

Ultimately, the solution is prevention, dealing with the roots of criminal behaviour. Essential to that is understanding those roots. Here surprisingly, the federal government is reducing its efforts. One of Canada's top researchers in identifying why children develop serious behavioural disorders, McGill University's Michael Meany, has seen his federal funding dry up. Meany is recognized as a a world leader in investigating the interaction between genes and the environment. His research, investigating why some children survive impoverished, stressful childhoods unscathed while others develop serious problems, should ultimately be able to determine the conditions that lead to psychopathological behaviour, i.e. to crime. Meany has recently been asked to set up a similar program in Singapore, for which he will receive eight times the funding he received here, funding that has now been discontinued.

This kind of knowledge won't prevent gang shootings on the streets of Vancouver today. It will, however, assuming it's acted upon of course, provide solutions in the long term. But the long term begins today. Unfortunately our federal government seems reluctant to take the first step.

On commemorating folly

The battle about the battle is over. The plan to reenact the battle of the Plains of Abraham has been canceled, announced Andre Juneau, head of the National Battlefields Commission. While the idea quite naturally outraged many Quebecois, the organizer of the event, Horst Dresler, who has been involved in a series of reenactments of battles of the British conquest of North America, claims the motive of the organizers was innocent. "We're just celebrating history," he insisted, "We're not actually celebrating who won, who lost, whatever. It's to commemorate and honour the people who were there." Mr. Dresler, now a resident of Vermont, was born in Quebec and should have understood the sensitivities involved.

But there's a bigger question here. Why on earth was celebrating this battle considered seriously in the first place? Is war not the bottom of the barrel of human behaviour? And the British and the French killing each other over a continent that didn't belong to either of them certainly wasn't one of humanity's finer moments. Not that I'm suggesting we forget our history. On the contrary, it's important we remember the foolish things we do so we don't do them again. But how do we avoid repeating our stupidity if we commemorate war and honour the men who engage in it?

The planned restaging was apparently canceled because of a fear that demonstrations at the event might turn violent. A celebration of violence canceled because it might turn violent -- now there's irony.

If Mr. Dresler and his merry band of reenacters want to pursue their hobby privately, that's their business, but it should not involve public expense. The cancellation was most appropriate. On the other hand, if they want to conduct a memorial to the pointless deaths of foolish men and to the suffering of their innocent victims, that's a different matter.

Less globalization? More self-reliance? More Keynes?

John Maynard Keynes, commenting on internationalism, 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 value of self-reliance. Let us be open to the world, but let us take care of our own needs. Self-reliance now seems almost quaint in light of international currency trading, global corporations, the NAFTA and the WTO.

We are, however, paying a price for the globalization of goods and finance. Some gross irresponsibility takes place in the United States -- the lending of money to people who can't afford to pay it back -- and the world economy topples into free fall. If Keynes advice had been heeded, and finance kept national, a global collapse would have been unlikely.

More and more, it seems, we must call on Keynes to understand our economic problems and to seek out solutions. Countries around the world have abandoned reliance on unrestricted free markets and adopted Keynes advice for governments to spend their economies out of recession. Now perhaps we should also consider his advice to "let goods be homespun" and "let finance be national," at least as best we can in an increasingly connected world.

This must not mean throwing up walls between nations. We are all aware that when the U.S. passed the protectionist Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act in June, 1930, the world was plunged into an international tariff war that dramatically reduced trade, contributing to the Great Depression. The last thing we want to do is completely crash the current system, dysfunctional as it may be. The first order of business is to restore it to working order. Then we can begin to work toward a more humane, more sustainable system.

We might start by entrenching in our collective minds the lesson that unfettered capitalism is a recipe for economic disaster. Alan Greenspan, Chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve Board from 1987 to 2006, believed we could let a bunch of aggressive males run loose in the economy without binding them to strict rules and they would behave responsibly. The American government allowed him to guide their economy on that gravely flawed assumption. This sort of naivete we cannot afford to repeat.

Letting finance be primarily national, as Keynes suggested, is difficult in an electronic world, but we need at least to develop a system of international regulations that prevent currency speculation and irresponsible financial behaviour from wreaking havoc throughout the world. In short, we need to rethink the global financial infrastructure.

Letting goods be homespun involves a variety of issues. We should insist that homespun be at least able to compete fairly. This means building labour rights into trade agreements so that countries such as China can't profit from coerced labour. It means building environmental responsibility in as well to prevent nations using lax environmental laws to provide a trade advantage. Trade must be fair as well as free. Governments must be allowed to encourage local products and industry, including co-operatives. Trade agreements as we know them have been designed to advantage global corporations, particularly to provide them with cheap labour; trade agreements in the future should be designed to favour local and co-operative enterprise. And distributing the wealth fairly must be at least as important as creating it. The goal should be to create self-reliant communities within an open, tolerant and equitable global society. It means changing our emphasis.

We are social animals and we achieve things as societies, as communities. But we also want each member of the community to achieve a reasonable degree of self-reliance. This makes the community stronger because it has greater flexibility, greater resilience. A society that is too interdependent, too communal, is brittle. If one part breaks down, the whole community is threatened. This is what has happened with our global system. It has become too interdependent. One part, the American financial system, breaks down, and the entire global economy is in serious trouble. We have strayed too far from the optimum balance of interdependence and self-reliance.

Now is the opportune time to redress the balance. Strong, independent local communities are no more inimical to a healthy global society than strong, independent citizens are to a healthy local community. Independence and self-reliance won't weaken global society, they will strengthen it. They will create a more flexible, resilient, stable world, and we will all be better off.

Working less -- the overlooked solution

As the economy worsens and unemployment increases, it is time to take yet another look at an overlooked approach to work that will maintain high employment while improving quality of life. I refer to shorter work times.

Early in the 19th century, people worked on average about 3600 hours a year -- 70 or 80-hour work weeks. Since then, workers have struggled to reduce working hours to a level compatible with the increasing ability of machines to do our work for us, to 60 hours a week early in the 20th century and to 40 by the 1960s. Despite working less, we prospered more, by replacing manpower with machine power.

Since the 1960s, however, despite extraordinary technological innovation, the average work week has hardly changed at all. Indeed, we are working harder than ever. In 1960, 70 per cent of families consisted of two adults with one working full time outside the home, the other full time inside the home -- two people, two jobs. Today, in most two-parent families, even those with small children, both parents work outside the home. But the home work still has to be done, so the situation now is two people with three jobs, or in the case of single-parent families, one person with two jobs. And of course many people, particularly salaried people, work more than the standard 40 hours, often in fear of losing their jobs if they don’t.

Our challenge during the current crisis is to increase time for the overemployed and increase work for the underemployed to create a balance of meaningful work for all. In other words, share the work. We can do this in various ways. Longer holidays, reducing overtime, mandating a four-day work week, are all possibilities.

The French, Germans and Scandinavians already work far fewer hours per year than North Americans do, yet enjoy a comparable prosperity. And of course they have more time for family, recreation, politics – whatever – to live fuller lives.

As far back as 1930, W. K. Kellogg, a truly visionary capitalist, went to a thirty-hour week by shortening the work day in his plants from eight hours to six in order to save jobs. Kellogg was later able to say, “The efficiency and morale of our employees is so increased, the accident and insurance rates are so improved, and the unit cost of production is so lowered that we can afford to pay as much for six hours as we formerly paid for eight.” Kellogg’s idea would be overdue today even if we weren't in the middle of an economic meltdown.

Everything to date in both the American stimulus plan and our federal budget has been about spending more – much, much more. And that may be necessary to keep as many people as possible employed. But we need also to hear about working less – much less – to keep as many people as possible employed. In the long run, this will be the best basket to put our eggs in.