jellyfish

Last November I was verbally attacked for not voting in the US elections. Then as now, I don't feel I have the ethical right to vote in the US anymore, despite what is technically true. More importantly to me, I feel the system is fatally corrupt. I believe US elections are a sham, a palliative to present the appearance of democracy, to make us believe things aren't as dire as they really are. I just feel finished with it.

And even if I could stomach the system, I can't stomach the Democrats. They sicken me and the idea of voting for them sickens me further.

Without my help, the Democrats won the day, and there was much jubilation over the supposedly good guys - the better guys, anyway - taking back Congress.

And what has happened since then? For the last four months, the Democrats have had the power to end the war. What have they done?

In what may be the largest supplemental in U.S. history, the House appropriations committee passed a $124.1 billion emergency funding bill – more than $25 billion more than requested by President Bush.

The bill is touted as changing course in Iraq because it requires troops to be out by August 31, 2008. But even then there are four exceptions that troops can remain in Iraq for including "capturing or killing" members of Al Qaeda or other terrorists.

Remember "starve the beast"? That's conservative shorthand for cutting revenue (taxes), which in turn cuts spending on social programs, and supposedly reduces the size of government. How about starving the gargantuan beast that is the war machine? Put another way, has anyone ever heard of a war and occupation ending because it was getting more funding?

This post is coming more from my heart and my gut than from a careful following of every move the Democrats have made, or failed to make. I don't follow news of the US Congress that closely. I read a headline and a few paragraphs and I think, that's just Dems being Dems. What did anyone expect?

So this morning I did a little searching to see if I could find a good wrap-up. Thanks to Alexander Cockburn for providing it.

This last Sunday Harry Reid, the incoming Democratic majority leader in the US Senate, went on ABC's Sunday morning show and declared that a hike in U.S. troops in Iraq is okay with him.

Here's the evolution of the Democrats' war platform since November 7, 2006, the day the voters presented a clear mandate: "End the war! Get out of Iraq!" and took the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives away from the Republicans.

So somewhat to their surprise the Democrats recaptured both the Senate and the House. Then they went to work--to obliterate the mandate.

Read Cockburn's story. It's very good.

Here's an interview with Dennis Kucinich, a true progressive, about what his colleagues are doing.

Another excellent piece is this editorial in The Nation.

The House and Senate have the authority to end the war in Iraq quickly, efficiently and honorably. Claims to the contrary by George W. Bush and his apologists are at odds with every intention of the authors of the Constitution. Which part of "Congress shall have the power to declare war... to make rules for the government and regulation of the land and naval forces...to make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers" does the White House fail to understand? Unfortunately, it may be the same part that cautious Congressional leaders have trouble comprehending.

With the announcement of spending legislation that includes benchmarks for progress in Iraq, and a plan to begin withdrawing troops if those benchmarks are unmet, Pelosi has begun to define a Democratic opposition to Bush's policies. But she has not gone nearly far enough. . . .

Forcing Americans and Iraqis to die for Bush's delusions for another year while emptying the Treasury at a rate of more than $1 billion a week is unconscionable. That is why House members who have battled hardest to end the war are so frustrated with Pelosi's approach. "This plan would require us to believe whatever the President would tell us about progress that was being made," says Representative Maxine Waters, speaking for the bipartisan Out of Iraq Caucus. Congressional Progressive Caucus co-chair Lynn Woolsey has been blunter, saying of the legislation, "There's no enforcement mechanism."

. . .

The haggling over compromises points up the flaw in Pelosi's approach: It is too soft, too slow, too open to lobbying mischief and abuse by a President who has done nothing but abuse Congress for six years. America and the world are not crying out for a timeline that might begin extracting troops from Iraq a year from now. Almost 200 American soldiers, and thousands of Iraqis, have died since the Democrats took control of Congress. To accept that the war will go on for another year, at the least, is to accept that the death toll will continue to mount.

Democrats should recognize that the time has come to use the full power accorded Congress in time of war: the power of the purse. As Senator Russ Feingold says, "Some will claim that cutting off funding for the war would endanger our brave troops on the ground. Not true. The safety of our servicemen and -women in Iraq is paramount, and we can and should end funding for the war without putting our troops in further danger."

Instead of negotiating with Bush to give him another year of his war before facing consequences, Democrats should refuse to write another blank check.

This column by Jonah Goldberg in the Los Angeles Times gives the full run-down on the Democrats betraying their base. (Look how he begins the piece! Is it really ironic?)

None of this is the slightest bit surprising, and that what makes it so very, very sad.

bad intelligence

From Frank Rich, courtesy of truthout:

In the broad sweep of history, four years is a nanosecond, but in America, where memories are congenitally short, it's an eternity. That's why a revisionist history of the White House's rush to war, much of it written by its initial cheerleaders, has already taken hold. In this exonerating fictionalization of the story, nearly every politician and pundit in Washington was duped by the same "bad intelligence" before the war, and few imagined that the administration would so botch the invasion's aftermath or that the occupation would go on so long. "If only I had known then what I know now ..." has been the persistent refrain of the war supporters who subsequently disowned the fiasco. But the embarrassing reality is that much of the damning truth about the administration's case for war and its hubristic expectations for a cakewalk were publicly available before the war, hiding in plain sight, to be seen by anyone who wanted to look.

By the time the ides of March arrived in March 2003, these warning signs were visible on a nearly daily basis. So were the signs that Americans were completely ill prepared for the costs ahead. Iraq was largely anticipated as a distant, mildly disruptive geopolitical video game that would be over in a flash.

Now many of the same leaders who sold the war argue that escalation should be given a chance. This time they're peddling the new doomsday scenario that any withdrawal timetable will lead to the next 9/11. The question we must ask is: Has history taught us anything in four years?

Here is a chronology of some of the high and low points in the days leading up to the national train wreck whose anniversary we mourn this week [with occasional "where are they now" updates].

Read it here.

peace actions

As we approach the 4th anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq, there were more than 1,000 actions for peace around the United States, and many more throughout the world.

On this thread from Democratic Underground, you can see photos from various demonstrations and vigils. (Thanks to Evil DUer Redsock.)

If you have photos of your own, or links to photos from other demos, please feel free to post them in comments.

* * * *

On a personal note, it kills me not to be in Washington or New York City for every major protest, and many minor ones. However, I'm about to re-launch myself into the movement in a way I'm really excited about. Details as they develop.

what's next

Recently I achieved some clarity on a dilemma about my time, my writing, and the direction to take in the near future.

Here's the background. I write for a magazine called Kids On Wheels, a unique, progressive magazine for young people who use wheelchairs. I'm one of three writer/editors who comprise the core of the magazine; we've all been with Kids On Wheels since its first days as a resource guide.

Like all my writing, it's something I do out of interest, passion, and dedication. I do get paid, but a young, specialized magazine cannot afford very much. Over the course of the year, the fees add up, but it's less than half of what I would earn from a large commercial magazine. On the other hand, my experiences with large commercial magazines have ranged from frustrating to hellish.

I like to be paid for my writing, but that's not my primary goal. If all I wanted from my writing was income, I'm sure I could be writing full-time, but my goals are more complex, and more elusive. I want to educate, inspire and entertain my readers (preferably all at the same time); I want to promote progressive values; I want to write about subjects I care deeply about; I want to challenge myself as a writer.

It's a tall order. When I can find the right mix, it's fabulous. When I can't, I enjoy the free time. I no longer take writing gigs just for money, because I learned that, for me, it just isn't worth it. If I'm going to do something only for money, I'll work overtime on my day-job. It's a lot easier.

Kids On Wheels has been going really well, but it's becoming routine. It's begun to feel like a poorly paid part-time job.

So here's the crux of the dilemma. Because KOW doesn't pay very much, I have to work full-time hours (which I do in a three-day work week). But KOW takes up enough time that I don't have adequate time to develop other writing projects. And now that KOW has become routine, it's no longer satisfying enough to be my only writing.

Last year I approached our publisher about turning my freelance position into a half-time salaried job, which would enable me to drop one day a week from my day-job. As I suspected, the funds just aren't there. I go back a long ways with this company - I've written for the adult wheelchair-user magazine, New Mobility, for 10 years, and I know they treat me fairly. They're not bullshitting me, they pay what they can - but that isn't much.

For many months I've been letting the issue sit on the mental back burner, knowing that eventually I would know what to do. That's what's great about getting older, for me. Questions that would have once made me anxious and worried as I tried to force a decision now just simmer away and let me know when they are cooked. (Sorry about that awful cooking metaphor!) I guess that means that I trust my process.

So a few days ago - just before the clock started ticking on my day-job - I knew what to do.

I have to stop writing for KOW, or at least greatly cut back my involvement. It's sad, because I love the magazine and I contribute a lot to it, both in writing and ideas. But it's time to move on. I have several ideas that I need to try. I don't know if any of them will come to fruition, but that's a separate issue, and mostly not in my control. I need to give some other things a shot.

I just turned in my assignments for the spring issue, and the summer issue will be my last, at least for the foreseeable future.

This morning there was, perhaps, a bit of serendipity. In today's Star, there's a big story about girls' issues, which is really a PR piece for a new girls' magazine and website. It sounds perfect for me, and it's perfect timing. They've just launched, and I'm just freeing up time.

what i'm watching: the u.s. v. john lennon

As Movie Season winds down, we saw another good one last night: "The U.S. v. John Lennon". It's a documentary about John Lennon's transformation from apolitical musician to peace activist, and his fight to stay in the U.S. - specifically in New York City - despite the politically motivated deportation proceedings against him. Through that lawsuit, Lennon's paranoid beliefs were confirmed: he had been under FBI surveillance.

There are clips of interviews with Walter Cronkite, Gore Vidal, George McGovern, Angela Davis, Noam Chomsky, Bobby Seale, and on the other side of the divide, G. Gordon Liddy, and a former FBI staffer, as well as Yoko Ono and close friends of Ono's and Lennon's.

The movie is also full of archival clips from the 1960s and 1970s, but it's not the usual footage that we've all seen hundreds of times. Filmmakers David Leaf and John Scheinfeld used some eye-opening clips that really held my interest.

"Held my interest" is a bit of a euphemism there. I wept through much of this movie: hearing Nixon tout his "secret plan" to end the war in 1969, knowing in reality he was escalating the aggression and widening it, knowing how many people were yet to die - seeing the massive protests, the head-smashing in Chicago, the murders in Ohio. At least hearing that scumbag Liddy blame the protesters - "What did they expect?" - got me back from sorrow to anger. But soon tears were running down my face again. Mostly for my country, doing it all over again.

I wept, too, listening to the chants in Chicago, as the cops split heads and beat the backs of peaceful protesters, as the bloodied bodies were hauled off, the rest of the protesters chanting, The whole world is watching, the whole world is watching... I wept because the US government learned those lessons so well. Now no one can watch.

And speaking of chanting, I'm pretty sure there was footage from my first political action ever, the 1969 Moratorium. I was 8 years old. I went to Washington DC with my father, on a bus with textile workers and other union types. We held our arms in the air, our fingers signifying peace, proudly waving our arms in unison, more than a million of us, in front of the Washington Monument, chanting, All we are saying... is give peace a chance.... all we are saying... is give...

More than ever I feel that the peace movement in the US won't break wide open, won't reach the massive level too huge to be ignored, until there is a draft. And, as Allan said last night, that's why they're doing everything possible to avoid that politically unattractive necessity. Yet until young men and women are being hauled off to the Middle East in large numbers - large, middle class numbers - the peace movement will struggle for traction.

The movie also made me think about timing, about the arc of justice. All of us who are old enough to remember other movements need to help younger activists understand how long these things take - how there is no such thing as immediate results. That is, we need to talk about how a movement builds. By 1970, 1971, massive anti-war demonstrations were commonplace in the United States - but the end of the war was many years, and many deaths, away. The war ended because of the movement. The movement succeeded. But it took a very long time and a tremendous amount of work.

During Lennon and Ono's Bed-In in Montreal, a reporter asked about their billboards, how much is this costing you, where are you getting the money? He said, Whatever it costs, it's less than a human life.

I was never a huge John Lennon fan or follower, although I acknowledge his talents as a songwriter. Seeing this movie, I gained a new appreciation of Lennon's commitment to peace activism. I realized he was a true hero of social justice.

I also really appreciated the fair and admiring treatment of Yoko Ono. When I was younger, Ono was universally - and, I thought, unfairly - despised as "the woman who broke up the Beatles". People didn't understand her art, didn't seem to understand that the Beatles were obviously going to break up anyway, as they grew up and in different directions, and, amazingly to me, didn't understand that John Lennon was a grown man who made his own decisions. In "The U.S. vs. John Lennon," you see that in Ono, Lennon had found his true life partner, and as a team, they both flourished.

This movie is well worth seeing, especially if you stand for peace.

vagina follow-up

In case you haven't heard, the three girls who were suspended for uttering the evil word "vagina" onstage at a school event have had their suspensions rescinded.

Eve Ensler, author of "The Vagina Monologues," will speak at the school, at the parents' invitation. Also, Ensler and the three girls will address the district school board. The school faculty supports the three girls, and will hold a discussion about the play.

This outcome is more consistent with the suburban New York State I grew up in. I had been wondering if wingnuts had taken over Westchester County, and am relieved to know that reason has prevailed.

Bill O'Reilly disagrees.

Thanks to M@ for alerting me to the follow-up, as I was lost in a writing assignment.

zip shapes up

The customer service manager at Zip.ca told me they were changing some procedures, and service would soon improve. It did.

Whether the improved service was coincidental to my complaint, or a function of it, I don't know. But since I complained, we've been receiving our top priority movies, even after I added many titles back on our ZipList.

The race was on to see which would come first, "The Departed" and "Borat" DVDs, or baseball season. We just mailed back "The Departed," and Zip says that "Borat" is on the way. Yay!

I'll actually be out of town for the first two weeks of baseball season, so my first real games will be the Red Sox here in Toronto. Double yay!

what i'm watching: the departed, scorsese on scorsese

We saw "The Departed" this week, which we both really enjoyed. Highly suspenseful, great plot twists, brilliant writing and the usual fantastic filming and directing from Scorsese and his crew. I even liked Jack Nicholson's performance. In recent years he has seemed like a caricature to me, playing Jack Nicholson more than anything else. Perhaps the Scorsese touch resuscitated his talent, or perhaps it was the material, but I found Nicholson's performance very credible and compelling.

But that's not why I'm blogging about this. "The Departed" on DVD comes with a bonus disk that is well worth your time. There's a fascinating featurette on some of the real-life underpinnings of the movie, the notorious Boston crime boss Whitey Bulger and the Irish-American neighbourhood of South Boston that helped shield him.

There's also an entire second movie, Scorsese On Scorsese, which originally aired on Turner Classic Movies, part of their Directors on Directing series. Scorsese walks you through his filmography, talking about his influences, his intentions, his goals. There are some fascinating bits of background, and although I know quite a bit about Scorsese's life and influences, it was still exciting to hear the man talk about his own work.

I used to love Martin Scorsese's movies. I saw them all up to a certain point, then found myself losing interest in his material, and skipped several of his latter-day efforts. I never saw "Casino," "Kundun," or "The Aviator" (which still looks dreadful to me), although we did see, and loved, "Gangs of New York". Some clunkers aside (and all great artists have them), Scorsese is one of the greatest American filmmakers. Hearing him talk about his own movies is a real treat. Did you know "Are you talking to me?" was originally ad-libbed?

Anything about Scorsese's early influences and movies is also about New York City. I never get tired of seeing the City's influence on any artist's work. The only disappointment for me in the "Scorsese On Scorsese" movie was there was nothing about "The Last Waltz"! He references that period only once, in a bit of heavily coded shorthand: "Then I had some problems of my own, came out the other side, and woke up alive." Problems indeed. He was busy doing massive amounts of drugs with Robbie Robertson and the rest of The Band, filming all day, doing drugs all night, seeing how far they could push both enterprises. Even knowing Scorsese almost died from the experience, I am still wildly envious.

There are two other tracks on the bonus disk. One is about Scorsese's take on organized crime. This is marred by the inclusion of film critic Peter Travers, who gives the most banal, obvious commentary. Scorsese himself is also in this one, and it would have been much better to hear the director's own words, instead of Travers's boring pseudo-analysis. There are also the usual deleted scenes, but each scene is prefaced by Scorsese explaining what he was trying to do and why the scene didn't make the final cut.

If you're into movies, it's worth renting "The Departed" on DVD even if you don't want to see the movie again. It might make you add 5 or 10 movies to your must-see list.

unemployment

The law firm where I work three days a week is dissolving.

This firm has been a Toronto institution for more than 40 years, and the news is rocking the Toronto legal community. My co-workers are all freaking out - and of course everyone will be going after the same jobs.

My situation is different, since I want to work on weekends. There aren't many weekend positions, but there are even fewer good people to fill them. Plus, I was already looking - trying to find something with better hours. Of course, I was hoping to be employed while I looked, but hey.

The firm is paying us until June 6. That's a decent amount of time to find something. And if nothing comes up, I can always temp.

green bin comes to mississauga

Our green recycling bin was delivered yesterday, the next step in the long-range plan for waste in the Peel Region.

First, some months back, we were able to combine all our recycling into one bin - paper, plastic, glass, foil.

Next, we received several information bulletins about organics recycling, what it would look like, how it would work, when it would be implemented.

Then yesterday our green bins were delivered: one large container with wheels and a locking cap for the garage, and a smaller container with a lid for the kitchen. The contents of our collective green bins will be composted.

Organics recycling for Peel begins on April 2. In October, the three-bag standard for garbage - that is, how many bags of trash you can leave at curbside for pick-up - will be reduced to two. The eventual goal is to divert 70% of Peel's trash from landfill by 2016.

People who already have green-bin recycling have told me that their weekly trash output is one grocery bag's worth of garbage each week. Between the various recycling containers, I think we'll hardly have any garbage at all.

Many wmtc commenters already have green-bin recycling, but many other readers don't, and I had never heard of it before moving to Canada. It fairly amazes me. Delivery of these large, sturdy containers to every home in this sprawling region amazes me.

In fact, the whole regional landfill diversion plan, and the progressive attitude towards recycling, amaze me. It's fantastic.

But it's also so frustrating that we - all of us - didn't start thinking this way a long time ago, and that so much of the world still does not.

Since our trip to Peru last year, I always imagine that beautiful country filling up with plastic water bottles. An economy dependent on tourism, plus unhealthy, undrinkable water, plus no plastics recycling, equals millions upon millions of plastic water bottles. Where are they all going?

Then I imagine all the countries of the earth, filling up with plastics.

open thread

I have a deadline this week, and am feeling a bit pressured. It's possible that by the end of the day, I'll be in great shape and ready to blog again. Until then, please feel free to post off-topic, recommend websites, link to YouTube clips, mangle the English language, or ridicule the government. Any government will do.

myth

Here's something else from a New York Times book review.

Jacob Heilbrunn reviewed two books that are highly critical of the Bush regime - one ostensibly from the left, Joe Conason's It Can Happen Here - Authoritarian Peril in the Age of Bush (which I blogged about, and which I feel transcends the left/right divide), and one from the right, Michael Tanner's Leviathan on the Right - How Big-Government Conservatism Brought Down the Republican Revolution.

Michael Tanner is a Reagan Republican who feels the promise and glory of Reaganism has been squandered by those who would be his successors. "To dramatize this fall from grace," Heilbrunn, the reviewer, writes, "Tanner evokes a lost conservative golden age that stretched from Barry Goldwater to Ronald Reagan." Then, much to his credit, he reminds us:

Tanner is a lucid writer and vigorous polemicist who scores a number of points against the Republican Party's fiscal transgressions, but he has ultimately produced a fairy tale.

The notion that Reagan actually fought for small government is wishful thinking. The Gipper didn't abolish a single major federal agency, he strengthened Social Security by approving a payroll tax hike and he added $1.4 trillion to the national debt. It was Bill Clinton who left behind a $236 billion surplus in 2000, which Bush promptly squandered. Contrary to Tanner and many other Reagan idolaters, Bush hasn't forsaken Reagan's legacy; by engaging in simultaneous tax cuts, massive military spending and deficit spending, he has continued it.

What's more, Tanner glides rather easily from linking the corruption of the Republican Congress to big government. There is no necessary connection between the two. The fact that a Republican Congress looted the government on behalf of big business and itself does not discredit Social Security, Medicare and a host of other programs. It simply testifies to the venality of the Republican Congress. Perhaps Tanner's most questionable claim is that "politically, for all the internal disagreements, support for a strong national defense remains the glue that holds the various wings of the Republican Party together. The debate that will truly matter is whether or not conservatives still believe in small government." Like it or not, conservatives such as Tanner will have to grapple with the political, moral and fiscal consequences of an imperial foreign policy.

This is a bit of a non sequitur, but any truth-telling about the Reagan presidency is a breath of fresh air, and worth mentioning.

oh, the irony, part 2

Catching up on some book reviews yesterday, I came across something pertinent to one of our recent discussions. Patricia O'Connor, reviewing two language books for the New York Times Book Review, writes:

Get a few language types together, and before long someone will bring up the great divide between the preservers and the observers of English, the "prescriptivists" and the "descriptivists" — those who'd rap your knuckles for using "snuck" versus those who might cite Anglo-Saxon cognates in its defense.

The truth is that the divide isn't nearly as great as it's made out to be. Most grammarians, lexicographers, usage experts and linguists are somewhere in between: English is always changing, but that doesn't mean anything goes.

Ben Yagoda, the author of "When You Catch an Adjective, Kill It," is with the right-thinking folks in the middle. His book, an ode to the parts of speech, isn't about the rights or wrongs of English. It's about the wonder of it all: the beauty, the joy, the fun of a language enriched by poets like Lily Tomlin, Fats Waller and Dizzy Dean (to whom we owe "slud," as in "Rizzuto slud into second").

. . .

While some things bug Yagoda (he despises "enthuse," for example), he has a healthy skepticism toward language extremists. The rule-bound sticklers leave no room for change, and the descriptivists are inconsistent: they sneer at Miss Grundy, "yet in their own writing follow all the traditional rules."

One might make the same complaint about Yagoda. He says it's time we embraced "they," "them" and "their" as sexless singular pronouns (as in "Who lost their lunch?"). Sure, Ben. Then why don't you use them yourself?

David Crystal, on the other hand, has the courage of his convictions. You'll find sexless pronouns and more in "The Fight for English: How Language Pundits Ate, Shot, and Left," his survey of the 500-year-old crusade for correctness in English. By and large, he's against it — not the correctness so much as the crusade.

His subtitle is an allusion to Lynne Truss's best seller "Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation," and his subject is "the whole genre of books which that book represents." His beef isn't with standards for punctuation or other rules; he doesn't believe that anything goes. It's with a "zero tolerance" attitude better suited to "crime prevention and political extremism."

Crystal, an eminent British linguist and the author of "The Stories of English," "The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language" and about 100 other books, manages to be genial and irascible at the same time. He acknowledges that the emergence of standards is natural. It's the umpires he can't abide. He sees them as "self-appointed language watchdogs" with a "social agenda": to promote the interests of the ruling classes and make the proles feel bad. He then lumps together just about everyone from Johnson and Swift to Fowler and Strunk as enemies of linguistic tolerance and diversity.

He sees spelling, grammar and pronunciation as battles in a kind of class war. In one camp are the descriptivists, academic linguists like himself. In the other are the prescriptivists, politically incorrect language cops.

There are two points to be made here. First, this is not a class issue. Fowler, who was more interested in puncturing pomposity than in oppressing the underclass, would have snorted at the notion that he was elitist. The worst crimes against English are committed not by the underprivileged but by bureaucrats in academia, government and business.

Second, Lynne Truss aside, most writers on usage today agree with Crystal on the big issues: Change is inevitable. People don't talk the way they write. Dialects are the life of the language. The sillier "rules" of grammar were just stupid misunderstandings.

Now can we dispense with the labels? Usage guides have their uses. Since language is forever changing, it's nice to be able to look up a word and see how most people currently use it, spell it and say it.

. . . .

Much as I admire both Crystal and Yagoda, I can’t believe the singular "they" will become accepted in educated writing in our lifetime. Of course, I could be wrong. In the words of Fats Waller, "One never knows, do one?"

This helped me articulate where I come down in this quasi-debate. I respect the rules of language; I like to know them and strive to use them correctly. Incorrect usage and punctuation bother me. But, like David Crystal, the self-righteous umpires bother me more.

american invasion

I have another thought to share from The Promised Land.

Immigration to Western Canada was planned, purposely and methodically, by the federal government, both to create farms to feed the East, and to increase the market for Eastern-made goods. Immigrants were lured to Canada with the promise of freedom: free land, and freedom from the semi-feudal system that was still entrenched in Europe. The settlers came mostly from Eastern Europe, Sweden, Germany, and Britain.

They also came from the US - where land was extremely expensive and trade was controlled by monopolies - in droves. In the early part of the 20th Century there was "an American invasion" that helped shape Western Canada. Americans, with their money, their optimism and their industriousness, were very welcome in Western Canada (as long as they were white).

There was, of course, the usual fears of annexation, but not necessarily among Canadians.

The American invasion caused considerable soul searching on both sides of the Atlantic. What would be the result of all this influx? It was certainly changing the West; would it change Canada? Would the nation become "Americanized", or, worse still, would it become part of the United States? Many Americans thought so. Would the American presence mean a loosening of Imperial bonds? Many Britons believed it would. Or would the West become a separate nation, neither British nor American? The American frontier novelist James Oliver Curwood was convinced of that. "A new nation," he declared, "will be born in the West, formed of the very flesh and blood of the United States." As Curwood noted in Alberta, "every town is hustling with American spirit" and former Americans were entering politics, becoming reeves and councillors in Alberta communities.

The general attitude south of the border was that the [Canadian] West would soon be part of the United States. The Saturday Evening Post referred to Alberta as "the Yankee province." Such Eastern papers as the Brooklyn Eagle, the New York Post, and the Detroit Journal were convinced that annexation was inevitable. Western American politicians echoed these sentiments. Senator Moses E. Clapp of Minnesota thought the union would come as the result of assimilation. Marsh Murdock, the powerful Republican congressman from Kansas, was for outright capture. The Governor of North Carolina predicted a struggle that would result in "one great republic under the government of what is now the United States."

Such a possibility failed to raise the hackles of Canadians, giddy from the prosperity the Americans were bringing. [Influential newspaper editor] John Dafoe said he "saw no sign that Westerners viewed the invasion with any feeling
of dread". Frederick Haultain, the Premier of the North West Territories, agreed that there was no political danger in the influx. The Toronto Globe was worried at first: five out of eight Alberta newspapers were edited by former Americans. It sent a reporter out, west only to be told that the editorial ideas expressed were no different from those of other Canadian newspapers.

The Americans in the West, in fact, turned out to be among the most enthusiastic Canadians. "It is the Americans rather than the Canadians who show jealousy at the flocking in of people of other nationalities and raise the cry of 'Canada for the Canadians'," the national president of the British Brotherhood Movement discovered during a trip to Canada. Those Americans who were not European-born or ex-Canadians were, in the words of Dr. Peter Bryce, chief medical inspector for the Immigration Department, "accidental" rather than "essential" Americans. This type of American, Bryce explained, "came to the [American] West for bread, and not for liberty; he will come north into Canada for bread, regardless of national flag or tradition."

It was the British in Canada and the British press in the mother country who worried about the effects of the American invasion. British periodicals and newspapers were concerned about the dilution British blood in Western Canada, the "loosening of ties," as a writer in the Fortnightly Review called it. The Americans might make good Canadians, he wrote, but would they become loyal subjects of the Empire?

what i'm reading

I've finally finished Pierre Berton's The Promised Land, which I first blogged about here.

This excellent book completes Berton's tetralogy (one more than a trilogy) about the settling of the Canadian West. Now I've read all four. My next Canadian history project will be - at some future date - Berton's three books about the War of 1812.

In the early days of wmtc, one of the principal readers and commenters was a guy named RobfromAlberta. Rob (he doesn't blog anymore) is a Western conservative with a lot of animosity against Ottawa and Ontario, and an advocate of Alberta secession. There was always a lot of spirited debate between Rob and some other commenters, and through those discussions, I learned something about Western Canadian disaffection and alienation.

When I asked what caused such regional dissension, some people said it dated back to the National Energy Program, or NEP, when the federal government nationalized oil production. Well, reading The Promised Land, I've learned that Western resentment of and animosity towards Ottawa dates back a hell of a lot longer than that. Its roots are in the very beginning of white settlement of Western Canada.

The Western territories were essentially colonies under the control of Eastern Canada, which in those days meant Ottawa and Ontario. Eastern business interests controlled Western resources and the terms of Western labour, and used protectionist tactics to force extremely one-sided trade agreements for Eastern-produced goods.

The federal government had given the settlers free land, and had built the railroad that connected them to the rest of the country. But that railroad was hated beyond measure for its protectionist tariffs, its corrupt land speculation, and its monopolies on farmers' trade.

Even after Alberta and Saskatchewan gained provincial status - after a long, bitter battle - the federal government still controlled their resources and much of their policy. That was already the arrangement with Manitoba. It was, Berton writes, "a status, the Times of London, in a prescient editorial, predicted would sow 'the seeds of future mischief.'"

The hatred wasn't completely one-sided. Folded into the anti-Eastern sentiment, there was also racism: the West was anti-Catholic, anti-French and mostly anti-British, too.

The Western Canadian settlers were bound together by a shared experience: the hardships they endured as they carved a society out of wild land. They didn't have to cope with the kind of violence that raged in the Western US, but they did endure incredible hardships, clearing and farming the land (many farming for the first time in their lives), the harshest of winters (without any modern conveniences), poverty, fires, and terrible loneliness for which no one could have been prepared. This shared suffering bound them together and created a cooperative spirit, which would later help form the roots of Canadian socialism.

Westerners' sense of themselves as a breed apart, more Western than Canadian – which Berton goes to great lengths to illustrate – combined with the perceived oppression from the East gave rise to radical politics. With help from the US agrarian movement and the British labour movement, radical and populist political movements gained traction and strength in the West.

Also, in the Western cities, there was vast poverty, slums and degradation - the underside side of the capitalist expansionist spirit which dominated the land. Here the great Canadian radical reformers Nellie McClung and J. S. Woodsworth enter the scene. It's no surprise that, as in the United States, the Western provinces were the first to grant women the right to vote. This is where the Canadian labour movement was born (which, from what I gather, followed the same trajectory as the American labour movement), the land from which Tommy Douglas would emerge, and where the CCF, the forerunner of the NDP, would be born. If I understand correctly, the NDP still forms the provincial governments of Saskatchewan and Manitoba.

An aside: J.S. Woodsworth's illustrious public career would end in 1939, when he rose in the House of Commons to declare that his conscience could not allow him to vote for a declaration of war.

missed opportunity

I've been trying to stay away from email. Not my personal email, I'm as obsessed with that as ever. But I'm trying to check the email listed on this blog a little less frequently. No more than once daily. Or even to skip a day now and again. I mean, what's the point, why am I so obsessed with email?

Here's why.

Yesterday I got an email from a reporter at the Toronto Star, who wanted to interview me for an article about Conservapedia in the Sunday paper. He emailed on Thursday afternoon, but I didn't see it until Friday morning, and by that time his deadline had passed. That could have been some very nice publicity for wmtc!

That's what I get for trying to be less obsessed.

oh, the irony

Although I ask people on this blog not to correct each other's spelling, usage and grammar, this is not to say that incorrect usage doesn't bother me. It does. Sometimes it drives me nuts.

Yet people who are very nitpicky about other people's grammar and usage also drive me nuts. I think we should all be more generous with each other, and that what's important is that we communicate, not that we communicate according to a specific set of rules.

Clearly these two modes of thought come into conflict.

And it's with that preface that I write this post, which is not aimed at anyone in particular, certainly not at anyone on this blog.

When it comes to language, the thing that drives me the nutsiest is the spread of fake words or meaningless expressions in the media. If you follow a sport, you see this all the time in the sports media. Words spread through interviews like wildfire cliches. One season everything will be prefaced with "obviously" or "and again...", whether or not it's obvious, whether or not the person is repeating him or herself. Another year it will be "Having said that...". Right now words are being turned into adverbs with abandon. "Relatedly", "admittedly" and "belatedly" are just a few that are making the rounds.

But here's my point, and I do have one.

Would everyone please stop calling everything IRONIC???

Every little coincidence is not ironic. Every time something happens that even vaguely resembles or contradicts something else, it cannot rightly be described as "ironically".

How's this for a sentence? I won't provide a link because I have no wish to embarrass anyone. In a history of First Nations people in Canada, I read, "...which happened ironically on September 11, 1883".

Can something that happened to native peoples in the Canada of 1883 be described as ironic? Because it occurred on a date that, 118 years later, would be famous for something else? That's at most a coincidence, but it's really not even that, as there's no connection between the two events.

Here's a coincidence. Two people meet in Chicago on September 11, 2012. It turns out they both lost partners in the World Trade Center attacks. They fall in love. Their meeting on September 11 is a coincidence. Their falling in love might correctly be described as ironic, although I don't think so. But September 11, 1883? There's nothing ironic there.

On the bus yesterday, I overheard this, "I'm telling you, she's out to get me. And it's so ironic, because I hate her too, but there's nothing I can do about it."

What is ironic about that?

For the next week or so, listen carefully to what you hear at work, on the street or on TV. When you read the newspaper, especially letters to the editor, keep an eye out for the word "ironically". See if what's being described is actually ironic.

That is all. Rant over.

vagina

Is everyone still alive? Did anyone have a heart attack when they saw the title of this post?

By now you've probably all heard about the three girls who were suspended from school for saying the word "vagina".

At a school event, three honour students at a suburban New York high school read a selection from Eve Ensler's "Vagina Monologues". They were warned in advance not to utter the terrible word, but they did. The girls say, "We want to make it clear that we didn't do this to be defiant of the school administration. We did it because we believe in the word vagina, and because we believe it's not a bad word. It shouldn't be a word that is ever censored, and the way in which we used it was respectable."

School officials insist the girls were not suspended for what they said, but for insubordination: they were told not to do something, and they did it anyway.

But why were they told not to? Because, according to the New York Times, "young children could be in the audience"!

Young children? How young do you have to be to not know what a vagina is? Not what it looks like, or even what it does, and forget about the lengths people will go to be near one. Just what it is. If you're old enough to be in school, you should know what a vagina is. And if you're so young that you don't know what a vagina is, you won't understand anything that's being said, so it really doesn't matter.

When it comes to things biological or sexual, I didn't grow up in a very progressive household. But I knew the correct names for the body parts that I have, and the ones that I don't have. I knew the words vagina and penis. The other words for those parts I found out on my own, like everyone else. Are there really parents out there who don't want kids to know the correct name for parts of their anatomy? Don't answer that, my head will explode.

The three girls have gotten tons of support, including a phone call from Eve Ensler. Fun!

If you don't know some of the the background to this story, you can read about it at Chez Crabbi. Not long ago, I blogged about people going nuts over the word "scrotum" in a children's book - also used in a completely non-sexual context.

This stuff just baffles me. I mean absolutely baffles.

Hey, is it just me, or do you think the New York Times headline writer was having a little fun with this headline: 'Monologues' Spurs Dialogue on Taste and Speech?

who is tala?

So who is this fluffy white dog with the skinny little face and the radar-tower ears who came to live in Canada? (That's a song, you know. I sing it to her...)

She is very sweet and super affectionate, exactly what I was craving, living with Cody, the dog-who-is-really-a-cat. Tala loves to be hugged and snuggled, she's always happy to be petted and stroked, she's only too happy to shower you with kisses.

She's very smart, and loves to do training. Those same smarts also make her a little devil. Dumb animals, like dumb children, are easier to control, but not nearly as much fun. Tala very quickly learns what we want, and if it's not something she also wants, she learns how to get around it. When she resists, it isn't because she doesn't understand; it's because she has a mind of her own.

For example, she's crated at night and when we're not home. (It's a kennel crate, so she can see out of all sides, and it's right in the middle of the bedroom floor.) If it's bedtime and we ask her to "go on in" (our oldest command, back from Gypsy and Clyde), she trots right in and lies down. When the dogwalkers ask her to go in, she also obeys, because she knows they have to leave. But if Allan and I are going out without the dogs, Tala plants herself in a downstairs corner, the farthest distance possible from the stairs and the crate, and stares stubbornly out, immobile. She knows we won't leave if she's not crated, so this is her simple solution to prevent us from leaving. Once we either chase her upstairs or entice her up with a treat, she walks into the crate, resigned.

Tala is very friendly, but she has many enemies. The vacuum, the broom, the snow shovel and the iron are all on Tala's Enemy List. Her nemesis, the Maximum Evil Genius, is the handheld cordless vacuum. The dishwasher is under investigation, but is showing signs of joining the dark side. Allies are closets (every closet is a walk-in when you're Tala), garbage cans, and our desks, which she likes to sit under.

Tala's a great watchdog, another asset I was looking for, since Cody loves all visitors, and would be just as happy to be visited by burglars as anybody else. Tala's actually too good a watchdog, barking fiercely every time a doorbell rings on TV, or when a squirrel dares to hop across her lawn.

Like most dogs and cats, she loves to look out the window. We have a big picture window, facing the street, in both the living room and the bedroom. Upstairs there are vertical blinds and she pokes her head through the slats. Cody does this only rarely, but Tala is on sentinel duty several hours every day.

She had a few health problems, nothing major, and very common when you adopt a rescue. But it seems that our terrible experiences with Buster have left me a little gun-shy. I was worried - fearful that a minor illness would snowball into something life-threatening. I still recall the day we came up to see the house in Port Credit, and Buster got sick that morning. That was the beginning. I have to work harder to remember all the little minor illnesses that all our other dogs had over so many years, that were normal occurrences and easily solved.

Of course everyone wants to know how Cody is doing. Cody is... coping. I think she was happier without Tala around, but I don't think she's suffering. She seems to have aged a few years in the last month, but maybe she just seems older and slower compared to the white ball of energy.

I may have mentioned that when we first brought Tala home, Cody spent three days snarling and growling at her. Anyone who knows the sweet, mild, laid-back Cody would have been shocked to see her teeth fully bared and hear the vicious sounds rumbling out of her throat. That gradually stopped. Tala quickly learned to leave Cody alone - not to eat her food or bother her when she's eating (one stern "NO" from me seems to have done it, permanently), not to try to steal her treats, and not to try to play with her inside. They play together outside, all kinds of complicated keep-away games and tug-of-war, but when Cody is inside, she doesn't want to be bothered.

The only time Tala slips up is in the morning. She's full of energy, and it just spills over. Cody's like me before I've had my coffee. I won't bite your head off, but I will move away and expect you get the point.

We're really happy to be a pack of four again. It must be our natural state of equilibrium. At least once a day, either Allan or I announce "I love Tala" or "Tala is such a great dog" or "isn't Tala great?"

it's been too long...

...since I've posted a picture of Tala!

Tomorrow, more about Tala and how great she is.

notice anything different?

Did anyone notice there are different photos in the banner? I think not.

The photos will change every few weeks as I change banners. They're not drastically different. Each is a Toronto skyline, one of my favourite NYC buildings, and one local photo.

I like the idea, but it doesn't seem to have made a big impression.

the museum of sounds

A story on the CBC website alerted me to the latest additions to the Library of Congress Recording Registry.

The registry was begun in 2000, to preserve sound recordings were at risk of being lost through deterioration or changing technology. Every year the Librarian of Congress chooses various sounds to add to the collection, based on both expert recommendations and nominations by the public.

This year's inductees include several favourites of mine, from Allen Ginsberg and Franklin Roosevelt, to Charley Patton, Jelly Roll Morton, and Mick and Keith. It also includes something I intensely dislike, but I won't tell you which that is.

2006 National Recording Registry (in chronological order)

"Uncle Josh and the Insurance Agent," Cal Stewart (1904)

"Il mio tesoro," John McCormack, orchestra conducted by Walter Rogers (1916)

National Defense Test, September 12, 1924 (1924)

"Black Bottom Stomp," Jelly Roll Morton’s Red Hot Peppers (1926)

"Wildwood Flower," The Carter Family (1928)

"Pony Blues," Charley Patton (1929)

"You're the Top," Cole Porter (1934)

"The Osage Bank Robbery," episode of "The Lone Ranger" (December 17, 1937)

Address to Congress, December 8, 1941, Franklin D. Roosevelt (1941)

Native Brazilian Music, recorded under the supervision of Leopold Stokowski (1942)

"Peace in the Valley," Red Foley and the Sunshine Boys (1951)

Chopin Polonaise, op. 40, no. 1 ("Polonaise militaire"), Artur Rubinstein (1952)

"Blue Suede Shoes," Carl Perkins (1955)

Interviews with William 'Billy' Bell, recorded by Edward D. Ives (1956), representing the Edward D. Ives Collection held at the Maine Folklife Center, University of Maine, Orono, Maine and the Archives of Traditional Music at Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana

"Howl," Allen Ginsberg (1959)

"The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart," Bob Newhart (1960)

"Be My Baby," The Ronettes (1963)

"We Shall Overcome," Pete Seeger (1963) recording of Pete Seeger's June 8, 1963, Carnegie Hall concert

"(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction," Rolling Stones. (1965)

"A Change is Gonna Come," Sam Cooke (1965)

"Velvet Underground and Nico," Velvet Underground (1967)

"The Eighty-Six Years of Eubie Blake," Eubie Blake (1969)

"The Wailers Burnin’," The Wailers (1973)

"Live in Japan," Sarah Vaughan (1973)

"Graceland," Paul Simon (1986)

More about the registry, and a brief explanation of each 2006 choice is found here at the Library of Congress website.

I love the idea of sound preservation, which I discovered through Alan Lomax, and his efforts to preserve (and sometimes unethically profit from) a huge variety of indigenous American sounds.

If this also interests you, you might enjoy seeing the complete list of the National Recording Registry.

if you are a woman on this planet...

If you are a woman on this planet, you are more likely to be poor, more likely to be a victim of violence, more likely to be voiceless and more likely to be exploited. You are less likely to have access to education, services or corridors of power.

. . .

When we look at those who earn less than $1 a day globally, 70 per cent are women. Of the 80 million children who aren't in school, most are girls. Every day, 1,400 women die needlessly in pregnancy and childbirth. One in five women will be a victim of rape or attempted rape in her lifetime. Women are overrepresented among the 8,000 people who die every day as a result of the AIDS pandemic, mostly in the world's poorest countries.

More than half the world's food is produced by women, rising to 80 per cent in many developing countries, yet tradition, laws and discrimination mean many women cannot own land, access credit or control the fruits of their labour. It is women and girls who have first felt the brunt of climate change as they spend a growing number of hours each day walking ever farther to fetch water and firewood.

. . .

As Canadians, we pride ourselves on the progress we've made to recognize and promote women's rights and equality among women and men. But our record is spotty at best. Women in Canada, too, are more likely to be poor, earn less than men and find themselves the victim of violence. The horrific experience of the disappeared women of Vancouver, Edmonton and elsewhere haunts us.

Women with whom we work in Zimbabwe, in Guatemala, in Ethiopia can't quite believe that in a country as rich as Canada we have women in aboriginal communities and elsewhere across this country who can't exercise their right to access basic services. They wonder how they can overcome huge barriers in their own countries when they see a country such as Canada stepping back from its obligations to ensure women's rights are respected.

The removal of equality from the mandate of the Status of Women department, the gutting of its budget and the closure of most offices sends a chill down the spines of women around the globe who are committed to ending discrimination. Equally disturbing is the prohibition on federal funding to support advocacy and campaigning on women's rights. These actions, after eliminating the Court Challenges program that played such a key role in protecting women's and minority rights, send exactly the wrong signal to the world about Canada's commitment to promoting full respect for women's rights.

When combined with the reversal of the national child-care program and other actions, it seriously undermines Canada's progress toward meeting its obligations under the United Nations Convention to Eliminate all Forms of Discrimination against Women.

Tomorrow is International Women's Day. Read this column by Robert Fox, executive director of Oxfam Canada.

what's that floating in my river? the multicultural balancing act

A big story in Canada recently revolved around the ejection of a girl wearing a hijab from a soccer field in Quebec. Although opinion is always divided on these issues, it seemed to me that most public opinion was opposed to the referee's decision, and FIFA's unfortunate decision to allow it to stand in the name of local ref autonomy.

A similar type of story, though lesser known, is being played out in the Ontario's Peel Region, where I live. As part of their traditional worship, Hindu people have been "leaving offerings" - flowers, statues, jewelry - in the Credit River and other creeks in the area. In addition, people have been releasing the ash remains of cremated bodies into the river.

In the past, it was more common to send ashes to India, to be released into the Ganges. But now the Hindu people of Peel often have little connection to India. They are Canadians, and they want the ashes of their loved ones to be released in Canada.

What to do? One person's offerings are another person's pollution. People need to freely practice their religion, and it's their unequivocal right to do so. But dumping - placing, offering - things into the waterways is harmful, and illegal. In response, many Hindu people are leaving the offerings secretly, at night.

Hindu leaders in Mississauga want to work with the local government to find a compromise - a place where the community can release ashes into the water safely and legally.

It's an interesting problem, and if not unique to the Peel Region, certainly not something you'd hear about in most North American communities.

Toronto Star article here.

...and the other truth that was revealed

In my anger over the (unsurprising) revelations at Walter Reed Army Hospital, I forgot to mention something very important. Fortunately two wmtc readers conspired to remind me.

When James noted that the wingnut spin on this debacle is "this proves the government can't run health care," M@ noted that the reality is quite the opposite. The short-term culprit here is privatized services, run for profit, through contracts handed out by patronage. The federal government is being run like Boss Tweed New York, but now tax cuts are handed out instead of turkeys.

Some bloggers who've teased out the whole IAP/Walter Reed/Weightman story are Liberal Avenger and Unbossed. I recommend reading both those great posts.

Paul Krugman addressed the larger issue in a recent column, brought to you by the good folks at truthout.

When Salon, the online magazine, reported on mistreatment of veterans at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center two years ago, officials simply denied that there were any problems. And they initially tried to brush off last month's exposé in The Washington Post.

But this time, with President Bush's approval at 29 percent, Democrats in control of Congress, and Donald Rumsfeld no longer defense secretary - Robert Gates, his successor, appears genuinely distressed at the situation - the whitewash didn't stick.

Yet even now it's not clear whether the public will be told the full story, which is that the horrors of Walter Reed's outpatient unit are no aberration [emphasis mine]. For all its cries of "support the troops," the Bush administration has treated veterans' medical care the same way it treats everything else: nickel-and-diming the needy, protecting the incompetent and privatizing everything it can.

What makes this a particular shame is that in the Clinton years, veterans' health care - like the Federal Emergency Management Agency - became a shining example of how good leadership can revitalize a troubled government program. By the early years of this decade the Veterans Health Administration was, by many measures, providing the highest-quality health care in America. (It probably still is: Walter Reed is a military facility, not run by the V.H.A.)

But as with FEMA, the Bush administration has done all it can to undermine that achievement. And the Walter Reed scandal is another Hurricane Katrina: the moment when the administration's misgovernment became obvious to everyone.

The problem starts with money.

Read Krugman's column here.

in the scandal over walter reed, a basic truth is revealed

Now that the world knows something about how wounded American veterans are treated at the US's flagship veteran's hospital - the good one, the one with the funding - many of us in the peace movement can't help but think: we knew this all along. This is what we've been trying to tell you all these years.

Of course we didn't know the exact location of the most disgusting hospital building (the now-notorious Building 18), or the specifics of the degradation (mold, vermin, cockroaches). But we've known that there is little funding and support for the scores of grievously injured men and women returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, because the United States government doesn't give a shit about them. They call the veterans heroes and pose with them for photo-ops when it's useful. Other than that, who gives a shit. Put a sticker magnet on your car and call it a day.

Ever visit a VA hospital in the US? I have. They're disgusting. Under-staffed, under-funded, dirty, they are places of last resort. There are some great programs coming out of VA hospitals, like support groups and wheelchair sports teams, but those are the work of veterans or advocacy groups, not the Veterans Administration.

I'll repeat something I have written in various forms over and over again.

Of all the hypocrisy and lies perpetrated by the US government, for me the worst, the absolute lowest, is the shameful treatment of the armed forces. Lie to these people, betray their trust, cut off their options so the military is one of the only ways to get an education, use them for propaganda - then spit them out. Cut funding for the ongoing medical treatment they'll need long after their dues have been paid, give their families only partial benefits because they were reservists, deny them even proper protection in combat - it's a long list.

And do you know what? It was ever thus.

Here's something else I've posted before. From Lord Arthur Ponsonby's, Falsehood in Wartime: Propaganda Lies of the First World War, published in 1928.

1: We don't want war
2: The enemy bears all the responsibility.
3: We are not waging war against a people, but against an evil leader.
4: We are fighting for a noble cause, not for material interests.
5: The enemy commits atrocities.
6: The enemy is using weapons that are not permitted.
7: Our losses are limited, the enemy's losses are high.
8: The artists and intellectuals support our cause.
9: Every war is a 'holy war'.
10: Anyone who calls the propaganda into question is a traitor.

Facts must be distorted, relevant circumstances concealed, and a picture presented which by its crude colouring will persuade the ignorant people that their Government is blameless, their cause is righteous, and that the indisputable wickedness of the enemy has been proved beyond question. A moment's reflection would tell any reasonable person that such obvious bias cannot possibly represent the truth. But the moment's reflection is not allowed; lies are circulated with great rapidity. The unthinking mass accept them and by their excitement sway the rest. The amount of rubbish and humbug that pass under the name of patriotism in war-time in all countries is sufficient to make decent people blush when they are subsequently disillusioned.

Through time, and through history, young men (and now woman, too) have been called upon to give up their bodies, their lives, their limbs, their eyesight, their sanity, for the furtherance of someone else's profit and power. Read (or re-read) All Quiet On The Western Front, and think about how little has changed.

follow-ups

It occurred to me that I should follow up on my posts about my problems with Zip.ca and Vonage. Since I publicly complained about both companies, I should also make their responses public.

After life settled down a bit, after moving and bringing Tala home, I printed both blog posts, wrote a cover letter updating the situation, and mailed them - paper mail is still the most effective way to file a complaint - to both companies. Here are the results.

First, Vonage. As I've said before, I love VoIP, and Vonage generally has been great. It's reliable, full of great little extras, with simplified flat-rate billing, at an extremely reasonable price. Everything you need is self-managed through the website, and very easy to use.

My issue was unusual - which in no way excuses the crazy runaround I endured, but does make it extremely unlikely that you'd encounter the same problems. In fact, unless you're trying to change from a US account to a Canadian account, you're guaranteed not to.

But indeed, I did have those problems, and they weren't minor.

So I mailed my cover letter and blog post to both the president of Vonage US and the president of Vonage Canada. A few days later, I received a long voicemail from the head of Vonage Canada's "executive response team". The message was a long apology, with assurances that the company took my complaint very seriously (he said my letter had been copied and forwarded to every department!), and that they were taking steps to ensure nothing like this ever happens again. Apparently my request wasn't that difficult after all, and could have been easily accommodated.

He went on for quite some time, and also tried to reach me the next day. I finally left him a return voicemail, so that he would stop calling. I don't feel the need to talk about it, and would rather not spend the time on the phone. But I do appreciate that he was trying to contact me.

Finally, he credited our account with two months worth of free service. Considering the extent of the problem and how many times he apologized, I actually thought two months was inadequate. But I'm glad I successfully lodged my complaint, and I'm glad the company paid attention. Now my service is back to normal, and all is well.

Zip.ca was not as simple, but then, it was a different kind of issue.

First customer service repeatedly told me that the problem wasn't happening, even going so far as to try to prove that it wasn't (although they couldn't actually do that). After getting no satisfaction from their customer service drones, I asked how I could contact the head of customer service. They refused to give me an email address, and said that "Zip.ca does not accept complaints through the postal mail". (So what, if they get a letter, they send it back?) They insisted that the only way to contact the company is through the web-based complaint form. That's impossible, of course.

After much wrangling, I obtained a paper mailing address. I also gave in and did what they suggested: I put the manager's name in the subject line of the complaint form.

The customer service manager responded promptly. She apologized for the service not being everything I wanted it to be, and explained from Zip's perspective why Zip cannot meet Netflix's standards. And, true to Zip form, she suggested that I am part of the problem: "As mentioned, we are addressing this concern from our end, but request that you assist us and yourself in maximizing the value of this service."

In general, she took the correct approach: she apologized, thanked me, explained the issue from the company's perspective, and was honest about the possible outcomes. Idealistic Pragmatist, who has complained to Zip about the same issue, noted that it was the first time Zip actually admitted that their service was less than ideal. That's something. However, I felt that the crux of their response was to ask me to lower my expectations.

So, to recap.

I recommend Vonage without reservations. I still love them. If you have a high-speed internet connection and use a home phone, Vonage is great.

[You know what, I shouldn't say I recommend Vonage without reservations. Their service is excellent. But if you do have problems, they're not the best at resolving them. For me, that has only happened twice in seven years, and both times I was asking for something a little out of the ordinary. But I should be completely honest, so that's my one caveat.]

If you see a lot of movies, I'd recommend Zip, with reservations. It's best if you don't particularly care in what order you see your choice of movies. They're not as good as Netflix, but they're alright.

lest we forget: make lists

Since September 11, 2001, so much has happened, and so quickly, that it's impossible to keep track of all the lies, deceit, brutality, hypocrisy and terror unleashed by the junta in Washington. It all blends together into a terrible blur.

Whenever I find lists enumerating those high crimes and misdemeanors, I try to read and save them. Will Pitt's sentence (which I posted earlier today) is such a list. I once compiled a short list of civil rights abuses against American citizens, by no means complete.

I notice many essays on Common Dreams and truthout are forms of lists. You know how we make lists in our personal lives to remember what we need to do? These lists serve the same function for our collective memories. We're all reminding ourselves and each other what's been broken, and what needs to be repaired.

And we need reminding. If there's one thing I've learned from writing about disability issues, it's that human beings are endlessly adaptable. Most human beings can adapt to almost anything. This is essential for personal survival, but it can be doom for the survival of the world and the forms of life we cherish.

As we adapt, we forget how things used to be. Then those in power rewrite history, and that becomes our new collective memory. People like George Orwell, and Milan Kundera, and Nadine Gordimer, and Noam Chomsky, and Amy Goodman, and Ted Rall, and Naomi Klein, and a million others, are all about helping us remember. We have to remember. We have to borrow a tired slogan too often associated with war: Never Forget.

* * * *

Today the New York Times has run a to-do list for the United States. They note that the list "sadly, is hardly exhaustive". I'm reprinting in its entirety.

How can anyone read this and not see that the United States has become an authoritarian state? You think because you can write a letter to your local newspaper, because Keith Olbermann hasn't been arrested, you think because there's such a thing as Election Day, that we're safe? Read this list, and ask yourself, is the work of a democracy?

The Bush administration's assault on some of the founding principles of American democracy marches onward despite the Democratic victory in the 2006 elections. The new Democratic majorities in Congress can block the sort of noxious measures that the Republican majority rubber-stamped. But preventing new assaults on civil liberties is not nearly enough.

Five years of presidential overreaching and Congressional collaboration continue to exact a high toll in human lives, America's global reputation and the architecture of democracy. Brutality toward prisoners, and the denial of their human rights, have been institutionalized; unlawful spying on Americans continues; and the courts are being closed to legal challenges of these practices.

It will require forceful steps by this Congress to undo the damage. A few lawmakers are offering bills intended to do just that, but they are only a start. Taking on this task is a moral imperative that will show the world the United States can be tough on terrorism without sacrificing its humanity and the rule of law.

Today we're offering a list — which, sadly, is hardly exhaustive — of things that need to be done to reverse the unwise and lawless policies of President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. Many will require a rewrite of the Military Commissions Act of 2006, an atrocious measure pushed through Congress with the help of three Republican senators, Arlen Specter, Lindsey Graham and John McCain; Senator McCain lent his moral authority to improving one part of the bill and thus obscured its many other problems.

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Our list starts with three fundamental tasks:

Restore Habeas Corpus

One of the new act's most indecent provisions denies anyone Mr. Bush labels an "illegal enemy combatant" the ancient right to challenge his imprisonment in court. The arguments for doing this were specious. Habeas corpus is nothing remotely like a get-out-of-jail-free card for terrorists, as supporters would have you believe. It is a way to sort out those justly detained from those unjustly detained. It will not "clog the courts," as Senator Graham claims. Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont, the Democratic chairman of the Judiciary Committee, has a worthy bill that would restore habeas corpus. It is essential to bringing integrity to the detention system and reviving the United States' credibility.

Stop Illegal Spying

Mr. Bush's program of intercepting Americans' international calls and e-mail messages without a warrant has not ceased. The agreement announced recently — under which a secret court supposedly gave its blessing to the program — did nothing to restore judicial process or ensure that Americans' rights are preserved. Congress needs to pass a measure, like one proposed by Senator Dianne Feinstein, to force Mr. Bush to obey the law that requires warrants for electronic surveillance.

Ban Torture, Really

The provisions in the Military Commissions Act that Senator McCain trumpeted as a ban on torture are hardly that. It is still largely up to the president to decide what constitutes torture and abuse for the purpose of prosecuting anyone who breaks the rules. This amounts to rewriting the Geneva Conventions and puts every American soldier at far greater risk if captured. It allows the president to decide in secret what kinds of treatment he will permit at the Central Intelligence Agency's prisons. The law absolves American intelligence agents and their bosses of any acts of torture and abuse they have already committed.

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Many of the tasks facing Congress involve the way the United States takes prisoners, and how it treats them. There are two sets of prisons in the war on terror. The military runs one set in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay. The other is even more shadowy, run by the C.I.A. at secret places.

Close the C.I.A. Prisons

When the Military Commissions Act passed, Mr. Bush triumphantly announced that he now had the power to keep the secret prisons open. He cast this as a great victory for national security. It was a defeat for America’s image around the world. The prisons should be closed.

Account for 'Ghost Prisoners'

The United States has to come clean on all of the "ghost prisoners" it has in the secret camps. Holding prisoners without any accounting violates human rights norms. Human Rights Watch says it has identified nearly 40 men and women who have disappeared into secret American-run prisons.

Ban Extraordinary Rendition

This is the odious practice of abducting foreign citizens and secretly flying them to countries where everyone knows they will be tortured. It is already illegal to send a prisoner to a country if there is reason to believe he will be tortured. The administration's claim that it got "diplomatic assurances" that prisoners would not be abused is laughable.

A bill by Representative Edward Markey, Democrat of Massachusetts, would require the executive branch to list countries known to abuse and torture prisoners. No prisoner could be sent to any of them unless the secretary of state certified that the country’s government no longer abused its prisoners or offered a way to verify that a prisoner will not be mistreated. It says "diplomatic assurances" are not sufficient.

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Congress needs to completely overhaul the military prisons for terrorist suspects, starting with the way prisoners are classified. Shortly after 9/11, Mr. Bush declared all members of Al Qaeda and the Taliban to be "illegal enemy combatants" not entitled to the protections of the Geneva Conventions or American justice. Over time, the designation was applied to anyone the administration chose, including some United States citizens and the entire detainee population of Gitmo.

To address this mess, the government must:

Tighten the Definition of Combatant

"Illegal enemy combatant" is assigned a dangerously broad definition in the Military Commissions Act. It allows Mr. Bush — or for that matter anyone he chooses to designate to do the job — to apply this label to virtually any foreigner anywhere, including those living legally in the United States.

Screen Prisoners Fairly and Effectively

When the administration began taking prisoners in Afghanistan, it did not much bother to screen them. Hundreds of innocent men were sent to Gitmo, where far too many remain to this day. The vast majority will never even be brought before tribunals and still face indefinite detention without charges.

Under legal pressure, Mr. Bush created "combatant status review tribunals," but they are a mockery of any civilized legal proceeding. They take place thousands of miles from the point of capture, and often years later. Evidence obtained by coercion and torture is permitted. The inmates do not get to challenge this evidence. They usually do not see it.

The Bush administration uses the hoary "fog of war" dodge to justify the failure to screen prisoners, saying it is not practical to do that on the battlefield. That's nonsense. It did not happen in Afghanistan, and often in Iraq, because Mr. Bush decided just to ship the prisoners off to Gitmo.

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Prisoners designated as illegal combatants are subject to trial rules out of the Red Queen's playbook. The administration refuses to allow lawyers access to 14 terrorism suspects transferred in September from C.I.A. prisons to Guantánamo. It says that if they had a lawyer, they might say that they were tortured or abused at the C.I.A. prisons, and anything that happened at those prisons is secret.

At first, Mr. Bush provided no system of trial at the Guantánamo camp. Then he invented his own military tribunals, which were rightly overturned by the Supreme Court. Congress then passed the Military Commissions Act, which did not fix the problem. Some tasks now for Congress:

Ban Tainted Evidence

The Military Commissions Act and the regulations drawn up by the Pentagon to put it into action, are far too permissive on evidence obtained through physical abuse or coercion. This evidence is unreliable. The method of obtaining it is an affront.

Ban Secret Evidence

Under the Pentagon’s new rules for military tribunals, judges are allowed to keep evidence secret from a prisoner’s lawyer if the government persuades the judge it is classified. The information that may be withheld can include interrogation methods, which would make it hard, if not impossible, to prove torture or abuse.

Better Define 'Classified' Evidence

The military commission rules define this sort of secret evidence as "any information or material that has been determined by the United States government pursuant to statute, executive order or regulation to require protection against unauthorized disclosure for reasons of national security." This is too broad, even if a president can be trusted to exercise the power fairly and carefully. Mr. Bush has shown he cannot be trusted to do that.

Respect the Right to Counsel

Soon after 9/11, the Bush administration allowed the government to listen to conversations and intercept mail between some prisoners and their lawyers. This had the effect of suspending their right to effective legal representation. Since then, the administration has been unceasingly hostile to any lawyers who defend detainees. The right to legal counsel does not exist to coddle serial terrorists or snarl legal proceedings. It exists to protect innocent people from illegal imprisonment.

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Beyond all these huge tasks, Congress should halt the federal government’s race to classify documents to avoid public scrutiny — 15.6 million in 2005, nearly double the 2001 number. It should also reverse the grievous harm this administration has done to the Freedom of Information Act by encouraging agencies to reject requests for documents whenever possible. Congress should curtail F.B.I. spying on nonviolent antiwar groups and revisit parts of the Patriot Act that allow this practice.

The United States should apologize to a Canadian citizen and a German citizen, both innocent, who were kidnapped and tortured by American agents.

Oh yes, and it is time to close the Guantánamo camp [emphasis mine]. It is a despicable symbol of the abuses committed by this administration (with Congress’s complicity) in the name of fighting terrorism.

ancient peru at the rom

The Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto will be exhibiting treasures from ancient Peru. I'm very excited about this! Our trip to this region of Peru was among the highlights of our trip, and that is really saying something.

I'm wondering, however, why the ROM refers to the origin of these treasures as "Sican". In Peru, it is "Sipan". We were there, and it is most definitely Sipan. Why this word Sican, I wonder? I will try to find out.

Meanwhile, the exhibit begins March 10. It will be my first time at the ROM.

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Update. Apparently there's Sipan and Sican. Although they have similar descriptions - both north coast, both Moche, both skilled in metallurgy - they were separate empires. Funny that in my Peru research I never came across Sican. I'll discover them in Toronto!

one sentence

The always-excellent William Rivers Pitt has written a sentence that you should read. It's here at truthout.

ouch

Well, I had my first experience with a hospital emergency room in Mississauga. I'm fine, and feeling a little silly that I went to the hospital, but I guess that's how it is when it turns out nothing's wrong.

Walking the dogs yesterday morning, I slipped on the ice and fell. Hard. And my head hit the sidewalk - hard.

It's been warm during the day, the snow melts, then it's colder at night, everything freezes again, and in the morning the sidewalks are treacherous. There was a light dusting of snow obscuring the ice, and the next thing I knew, I was flat on my back. There's nothing quite like the sound of your own head slamming down on the pavement.

I wasn't knocked out, and I got up, found my glasses in the snow (all bent out of shape) and limped home. Allan took me to get my glasses fixed, but after he went to work, I had a horrible headache. Half my family is in the health professions, and I've known a few people with head injuries, so I know you have to take it seriously. I don't have a car on Saturdays (Allan drives to work), so I called a cab and went to Trillium.

What can I say? It was the same as hospitals anywhere. Much less crowded than an emergency room in New York City where half the people are there for primary health care, but more crowded than your doctor's waiting room. It was probably busier on a weekend when the walk-in clinics are closed, but it wasn't what I would call an overcrowded zoo.

I waited, I was seen, I was fine. I have a mild concussion, and today I feel like I had the most strenuous workout of my life. Every muscle hurts. But nothing worse than that.

As I said, I feel a little foolish that I went to the hospital. But if Allan had fallen, I would have said, Go. My sister (a nurse) said, if it were my child, I'd take them to the ER. So in my attempt to treat myself as well as I would treat others, I went.

The moral of the story is don't walk your dogs on the ice.

the court philosopher

Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., a great writer and historian, and an old-guard liberal, died this week at the age of 89.

Schlesinger was a Kennedy administration insider, and sometimes a Kennedy apologist. But he was a proud liberal to his dying day.

I met Schlesinger several times in 1992 and he seemed very old and frail then. I'm amazed he lived this long, and I'm sorry for his passing.

Here's the New York Times obituary.

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I used to have many connections that caused me to meet famous people. I didn't have these connections in order to meet famous people, it was just the way my life was. But they're all gone now; I've moved on and so have they. My famous-people-meets are growing old and stale.

political compass part 2

James plotted all our results on a graph. I asked him to also include Political Compass's placement of the 2004 US Presidential candidates and the parties in the 2006 Canadian election.

As West End Bound pointed out in comments, even the most conservative among us are still in the same quadrant as the NDP. No current wmtc reader who took the test is in the same sector as John Kerry, George W Bush or Stephen Harper.

But check out the Canadian Conservative Party and John Kerry, relative to each other. This is what I'm always trying to tell people! And do you see why I say Harper is not a Bush clone?

I know it's difficult to read. Click on the image to go to the Flickr page, then click on "all sizes" to see the original.

Many thanks to James for using his free time this way!

what i'm watching: ken burns, unforgiveable blackness

Last night we watched the rest of the Ken Burns film that I blogged about yesterday: "Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson". It was truly excellent.

It occurred to me that if you have never seen a Ken Burns film, this would be a perfect introduction to his work. At two 90-minute segments, the length is not intimidating - by Burns's standards, it's a short-short! - but it still works in the the signature Ken Burns style. Wynton Marsalis did the music, a who's-who of great actors did the voices - including Samuel L. Jackson reading Jack Johnson's words, Billy Bob Thornton and Ed Harris, among many others - plus the usual great interviews. The writer and critic Stanley Crouch is terrific, and James Earl Jones, who created the role based on Jack Johnson in the Broadway play "The Great White Hope," is a brilliant inclusion.

Above all, "Unforgivable Blackness" explores Burns's vision of the United States of America, in all its glory and all its insanity. In terms of racism and racist violence, the first decade of the 20th Century was probably the worst at any time since Emancipation. While Booker T. Washington was telling Negroes to work hard and keep their heads down, while lynchings were rampant, while newspapers depicted African Americans as clown-faced buffoons and referred to them in articles and editorials as coons and darkies, while most African Americans were denied the basic rights of citizenship - in the midst of this, one man declared he was free. One highly intelligent, supremely talented, and thoroughly confident man said, No. This is my country. I am free. I am a man. I will do as I please. How that man lived in that world, and how that world reacted to him, is revelatory.

"Unforgivable Blackness" is available for rent on a 2-DVD set. It includes a making-of feature, which, if you don't know how Burns makes his movies, will be a real treat.

what i'm watching: sarah silverman tonight

"The Sarah Silverman Program" debuts in Canada tonight on The Comedy Network.

This show has a lot of potential. Many of us loved Silverman on the brilliant "Larry Sanders Show" (one of the greatest TV shows ever), "Greg The Bunny" and "Mr. Show", among other spots. She was hilarious in "The Aristocrats".

"The Sarah Silverman Program" co-stars Silverman's real-life sister Laura Silverman, the voice of the disgruntled receptionist on "Dr. Katz". Don't even tell me you don't know Dr. Katz.

what i'm watching: unforgivable blackness

Last night we started watching "Unforgivable Blackness," Ken Burns's film about the boxer Jack Johnson.

Johnson was one of the greatest American athletes of all time, and in his day, undeniably the greatest. But what makes Johnson an irresistible historical figure was his complete refusal to live by the rules white society demanded of African American men in that era.

The most vivid example of this was his choice of partners. In a time when black men were killed because someone suggested they glanced at a white woman, Johnson openly lived and travelled with a succession of white women who called themselves his wife. He was the first African American popular icon, then was persecuted by the government, and eventually brought down.

Johnson's career and his life story perfectly expose the twisted logic and utter ludicrousness of Jim Crow America.

In the early 20th Century, boxing was one of the three major sports of the western imagination (along with horse racing and baseball). The title "Heavyweight Champion of the World" was the most coveted title for any individual athlete. It bestowed riches, fame and glory on its holder in a way unimaginable today.

Johnson defeated all African American opponents, and any white boxer who would step into a ring with him. But convention had it that no Heavyweight Champion would ever fight a black man. That would risk the title being held by a black man, and that could not be allowed to happen.

Johnson would not accept this, and he made it his life's quest to goad a Heavyweight Champion to meet him in the ring. When it finally took place, the match was viewed as a contest of supremacy between the "white race" and the "Negro race". The results sparked deadly riots throughout the country.

It's an almost unbelievable story, and I don't want to say too much about it, as watching Ken Burns unfold it for you is so fascinating and compelling. I'm an unabashed Ken Burns fan. I missed "Unforgivable Blackness" when it first ran on PBS, but with this Zip rental, I think I've now seen every film he's made. He never disappoints.