Friday, August 6, 2010

One Dead Indian, and one shamed Province

Having just watched the film, One Dead Indian, on the aptn network, I am a little in shock.
Born and bred within a few kilometers of the Parry Island Indian Reservation, and having attended both elementary and secondary school with many of the kids from "The Island" as we used to say, and having carried fond and beautiful memories of more than one of their number, specifically,  I can remember Les Tobobadung who played for the Provincial Junior C Hockey champions with elegance, grace, dignity and finesse, and having worked closely with his sister Dora, daughter of the former Chief, Flora Tobobadung in "lawyer Green's" office for several summers, and having eaten fillets of pickerel brought to my father each year for many decades by Solomon King from the Parry Island community, out of his fondness for my dad, I am somewhat familiar with individual First Nations people, and with their culture. For a few years, my family also had a long-term lease on a piece of land on Parry Island where we had a small and very modest cottage on a beautiful sand beach.
I can remember that the band office were less than "orderly" in their file-keeping about land leases; I can also remember that there were long periods of time between road work on the island road; I can also recall a decision, after I left school, when the children from the island, after a band council decision, were bussed 25 miles down the road to a private school in Rosseau, because the band believed that their children were experiencing discrimination at the local high school.
I can also remember the occasional sleeping, and presumed intoxicated, native man on the steps of the local bank on a Saturday morning and I can also remember when another native man was hired to work in a local pharmacy. It was an occasion second only to the hiring of Dora in the lawyer's office. There were small break-through's visible to anyone in the town willing to see.
Violence is not native to the First Nations people I know. Violence is not something they advocate, practice or even contemplate. Dedication to the history and the burial grounds of their ancestors, however, is something they value and honour. And those who might, or would, interfere with their perception of that sacred trust could run a risk of tormenting a generally "sleeping lion."
The conversation that followed the film, reporting on a conversation which included the then premier, Mike Harris, indicating "we have pandered to those people for far too long and this government needs to be seen taking action" is not the history, tradition, culture or memory of the Ontario in which I was raised.
In fact, it is a direct confrontation and assault on that Ontario.
This is the same man, who as Premier, delivered a memo to the then Dr. Allan King, who was at the time designing curriculum for the grades nine and ten history courses to be taught in Ontario secondary schools, directing "that no references to the role of First Nations,  Labour unions or women" were to be included in the curriculum design. In essence, the memo directed that our Ontario students were not be taught about these three subjects in their Canadian history course!
 Appalling? More like tragic!
Ideological? More like adamantine!
And settling the law suit brought against the person of the then premier just might indicate that there is more to the smoke that still rises from these bonfires of the 'vanity' of the government that white lines in the sky.
Ontarians can thank God for Officer Terrien the man who courageously challenged the evidence that "Dudley George was carrying a gun" from a vantage point behind the officer who shot and killed George. He knew and told the "Dean" trial on criminal negligence, that George carried only a stick, and was not a danger to anyone, from the perspective of firearms, nor was anyone else in that Ipperwash encampment. And the judge believed his testimony so there is at least the reassurance that this judge could see the tree for the forest.
Banana republics have constabularies paid to operate in the manner depicted by this film, albeit made by and for the First Nations Cree Band themselves. And we can only hope that this blood on the hands of all Ontarians is the last time our citizens ever have to witness blood on our hands, blood that never should have been shed.

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32nd Hymn to Sarah, August 6, 2010

This is the day Christians call
Transfiguration, and the day
remembered in Japan as the day
the bomb fell on Hiroshima...
so there are other reasons why
the date is special for others, but for me
it is the day when I waken to the
memory of walking to the window
in the delivery room of St. Joseph's
hospital with the body of a new
life of only minutes lying serenely
in my arms, not yet named
she was to become
Sarah Jean, after her
maternal and paternal
great grandmothers
Tuck and Nolan respectively
and she has walked now
for thirty-two years giving
that name, and her ancestors
nothing but pride in her
presence, and honour to be
knowing and getting to know
her as a little girl who loved to
help 'Dennis' shovel his driveway,
and play with her friends, sometimes
with her sisters, and go wherever
she was asked with her Dad,
she was the one, at three who asked
from coast to coast, 'how far is it
to the next pool?' and would hear,
about "one Sesame Street and one Mr.
Dressup"...her favourite shows and her
grasp of length of time...and then
there were metronome times for
piano practice and recitals and
festivals even for the wrong piece,and
there were times to drive the golf cart
while her dad tried to hit the ball around
the course, and 
there were seconds,
at the close of a basketball
game as she, point-guard, found her
team-mates and put them, with the ball,
in front of the net, to score
and there were college days, graduation and
a beautiful art-gallery wedding and
now, another new life, on March 17, her
Mila has taken her place on the front of
Sarah's stage, and makes her own
entrance every two or three hours
for nourishment, for bonding and for
the love of her mother that knows no
bounds, and this new grandfather
smiles secretly in wonder at the
thread of life extended again
miraculously to Mila
and her smile graces our lives
as Sarah's once did so
generously like a
flower in constant bloom
when no water or sunlight
seemed available, it was
Sarah who brought the missing
nourishment to every table, and
room and encounter and Mila
is following her mother's
legacy of love and hope and
togetherness as she begins
to weave her own tapestry of
love in her own
design.

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Thursday, August 5, 2010

Attack Dog Harper, no substitute for a real Prime Minister

By Lawrence Martin, Globe and Mail, August 5, 2010
Mr. Harper’s primary political mission in life, as anyone who knows him well will testify, has been to tear down the historically dominant party. His energies as PM have been devoted excessively to that purpose. It explains his passion for the politics of destruction – the attack ads, the smear campaigns, the attempt to strip parties of public funding, his turning of his Conservatives into what has been called a garrison party – a political/military machine.
The significant problem with a Prime Minister whose prime ambition and goal is to destroy the enemy is, obviously, that the interests of the country are not part of his equation.
While most will agree that politics is a blood sport, and there are certainly political wars and skirmishes fought every day, we like to think, naively, that the issues are merely presented in a manner that addresses the needs of the country, in the widest and most hopeful perspective.
And yet, in recent weeks, Tony Clement has taken pork-barrel politics to a new level, even for Parry Sound, which has known about the approach intimately for decades, given the provincial Tories revival of the Highway 124 construction immediately prior to the next election, for at least the last half century;
Stockwell Day has taken voter gullibility to a new level, with his comments that Canada needs $6 billion plus in new prisons "because many crimes go unreported"...leaving us all with gaping mouths: what crimes are going unreported, and what does that have to do with the need for new prisons;
Or, are am just being perverse, because with the new census, omitting the "invasive" long form, no one will know whatever the government doesn't want us to know, because no one will have ansered the questions that enabled hundreds of business and non-profits to set goals and policy, and then the Day "clarification" will make sense to everybody?
Oh, and remember the attack ads that painted Stephane Dion as "not a leader" because he wasn't Alpha-dog, in the stereotypical archetype....another of Harper's character assassinations, that the gullible public drank, like cool-aid in Jonestown.
With both Liberals and Conservatives polling around 27-28 percent, so close as to be within the statistical margin of error (but who cares about formal statistical norms anyway, any more?), it is just possible that the voters will rouse from their summer slumber, in time for hockey season, and then go back to forgetting how authentic governance used to look, under governments led by Liberal and Conservative Prime Ministers who, while conscious of their political enemies, were not fixated on their destruction, because in some mysterious way, all parties needed all other parties just for a decent, honourable and sometimes even ethical debate...and there was a modicum of honour and decency in the political process of governing the country that made "decency" its signature around the world.
Remember????

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Monday, August 2, 2010

Ice-Age Conservatives pushing glacially to change Canada

(By Jim Travers, Toronto Star, July 31, 2010)
Harper’s federal party learned much of what it needed to know from the Ontario Mike Harris Common Sense Revolution and continues to benefit from both a fissured opposition and an apathetic electorate. But the critical factor, the catalyst for Harper’s transition from chattering class laughingstock to the presumptive favorite to win a third consecutive mandate, was Conservative willingness to confront and then embrace a hard truth.
Tom Flanagan, once the Prime Minister’s mentor and now something of a nemesis, best deconstructs that challenge in his fine, must-read 2007 book, Harper’s Team. In it the University of Calgary political scientist concedes that Canada isn’t naturally the conservative country his party wants it to be. Shifting the country on its political axis, Flanagan says, is slow work best done in almost imperceptible increments.

No other Conservative has been this candid about the ruling party’s tactics and strategy. “Small conservative reforms are less likely to scare voters than grand conservative schemes, particularly in a country like Canada, where conservatism is not the dominant public philosophy”.
Agreed; we are not a country where conservatism is the dominant public philsophy. And for that we can thank Trudeau, and many others who sacrificed much to move the country to a far more compassionate and a far more humane place, that is far more tolerant than the place to which Harper wants to lead us.
And it is an apathetic electorate that, in part, permits a "fissured opposition" because when the people sleep-walk through decades of Liberal governments, more-or-less competent governance, the backrooms are left to the "backroom" guys, (and let's face it, it is so far as we know, exclusively "guys"). And their antics, along with the over-weening ambition of Paul Martin and the poorly advised Stephane Dion, leave this country with no real official opposition who can command sufficient votes to topple the Harper/Harris conservatives.
Yet, anyone who looks at the destruction in Ontario in the wake of the Harris government has to wake up to the reality that a more liberal public philosophy does not stand a chance without constant re-invigoration by new applications from new voices and new imaginations and new leadership. The public purse, in the hands of the sitting Prime Minister, and even a minority government, create an "establishment" which becomes ever more difficult to remove the longer it stays in power.
We are in danger of allowing ourselves and the country to be slowly, almost imperceptibly, nudged, pushed, even seduced into thinking and perhaps believing that Harper's goal is non-toxic, that his changes are "not that bad" and that his legacy can and will be reversed, as soon as the Liberals (and the liberals) return to power.
Apathy, complacency, a little bit of trust..even a rather short rope (of granting him a minority, and not a majority)...these are precisely the attitudes that Harper is counting on...and the more we grant them, even by default, the more the process will continue, down a path that may become irreversible.
Just ask yourself a few simple questions: Are the poor better off today than they were when Harper came to power?
Are people more secure in their jobs and in their retirements today?
Are Canadians more secure in our National Health Act today than we were when Harper came to power?
Are Canadians taking responsibility for our share of greenhouse gases, at the national level, today, after five years of Harper's government?
Are First Nations peoples committing suicide at a lower rate today, with enhanced living and working conditions, after five years of Harper's rule?
Are corporations paying their fair share of taxes, or are they being granted special favours by this government?
Do we really want more prisons, and more prisoners, under the guise of increased public security, as this government is intent on achieving, while they close the prison farms that produce their own food?
We need a new government, a more centrist, more liberal and a more humane and compassionate and more tolerant, (and more statistically responsible) government, and we need it from the next election, not the one after that.
The Harper legacy is not the one Canadians want to leave to their grandchildren. Certainly not this grandfather!

Sunday, August 1, 2010

WikiLeaks: begs many questions

The founder of this “media insurgency,” as The New Yorker calls it, is an obsessive, anti-war Australian named Julian Assange. He is a gifted cryptographer and former hacker with a strong anti-authoritarian streak who says he doesn’t believe in official secrets of any kind. When he got his hands on the cache of Afghan war documents, he made a shrewd decision. Instead of doing a giant dump online, he decided he’d get more impact if he teamed up with the old-line media. So he contacted The New York Times, The Guardian and Der Spiegel and offered them exclusive access for a few weeks via an encrypted website. They assessed the material, decided it was for real, and synthesized it into powerful news stories that were published on the same day he put all the raw data on his website. It was the first such collaboration in media history. (Margaret Wente, The Globe and Mail, July 27, 2010)
WikiLeaks did the unthinkable, and until now, undoable. They commandeered the legitimate press into enlarging and enhancing their epic "dump" of secret classified documents.
Wente points to physicist Assange's "antiauthoritiarian streak."
It is this streak that is at the core of his life. He loves to poke the eyes of those in authority, especially those who use that authority, as he sees it, abusively, as in unnecessary war. And being opposed to war, all wars are unnecessary, as are all secrets.
So in Assange's world, there would be no secrets and no wars. Interesting....hmmmmm!
Would the elimination of secrets move us away from wars?
Would the elimination of wars move us away from secrets?
Is the kind of epic proportioned antiauthoritarianism necessary following the epic abuse of authority by Cheney-Bush?
Is Assange's providing an unanswerable, unaccountable and unmonitored encrypted website for those who have access to documents locked under various "classified" and "secret" and "national security" files an important answer to the public's right to know?
While the Army private who sent WikiLeaks the thousands of documents is waiting his military fate, is there also a criminal fate awaiting the agent? Is Assange guilty of any criminal offense, or is he merely "using" unknown and like-minded, and like-spirited accomplices for his own personal agenda?
And is that agenda in the public interest?
Clearly, the press has been co-opted by the media owners in most countries. They love to bring out smarmy stories about the sexual or financial peccadillo's of the political class, but they are not doing a very comprehensive and commendable job of investigating the larger issues, having fallen victim to the deadline and the ratings measurement of journalism, not to mention the "egoism" that underlies all journalism.
And who, what analyst agency, including the New York Times, is going to be able and willing to spend the time to make sense of the documents? Hence, what of the credibility, not so much of the miniscule facts, but of their "gestalt" impact?
Any journalist can pounce on a few of the more scarlet headlines and create a media frenzy, but it will take historians decades to analyse, with perspective and with objectivity, and with some clarity and responsibility, their full meaning, if any. And without that time and perspective, we run the risk of turning these "info-bytes" into bullets for a different kind of war, the kind that Assange wants us to sign up for.
It is a war of complicity in the campaign for information supremacy!
And it will be fought under the rules of engagement of the giant information corporations, who themselves, have their own secrets, and their own secret agendas and wars, that will remain secret and ready for disclosure when the battle warrants.
Speaking on NPR's OnPoint, with Tom Ashbrook, Daniel Ellsberg, the man at the centre of the Pentagon Papers, that helped to end the VietNam war, said that he thinks the society will lean more on the side of secrets than on the side of disclosure in the future even though he supports the release of these classified documents.
Do we want the military/political giant holding and operating from an "inside" position on information, or would we prefer the corporate giant operating from an inside position on information. Or do we really have a choice, when the military and the corporate and the political worlds are so enmeshed as to have become one "complex"...the one President Eisenhower warned us against in 1960?

Parent-child: no recipe for a mature society's dialogue

In his introduction to "The Wizard of Oz," Ray Bolger quotes Lyle Blair, then director of the Michigan State University Press, who praised the work: "...the book(s) stress 'love, kindness, and unselfishness' and that the Grimm and Andersen tales contain a lot more horror and fear than the Baum books. (L. Frank Baum is the author of some forty "Oz" books.) Mr. Blair issued another statement saying that 'creative people are all for the Oz books,' because they are 'imaginative' books and tend to counter 'a prevailing group thinking disease.' Part of this disease, he said, is 'momism,' which demands that all children be cast in the same comfortable mold. (Ray Bolger, Introduction to The Wizard of Oz, p. ix)
Momism is a word that few have heard. It has more connotations than mere demanding that all children be cast in the same comfortable mold. It has the sense that "momism" is a social value, that wayward people need mothering, or parenting, because they have lost their way, and "mom's" know best what is wrong with the country.
Isn't this the line that Sarah Palin preaches wherever and whenever she opens her mouth? "Watch out for angry mom's! They are going to move this country in the direction it ought to be heading, and not the direction Obama and the Democrats are taking it.
And the premise on which such statements are made is that "mom" knows best, and that the others are little children gone astray and need their mother's guidance, wisdom and maturity to bring them back into line. It is the implicit patronizing, condescending and demeaning of the others that marches through every sentence of the Teapartyers' discourse on their way to whipping up the fears and the anxieties of the crowds that appalls.
The theme of parent-child in American politics, whipped into a frenzy by a dash of feminism gone off the rails, is the wave that Palin is riding.
And that wave is bereft of any intellectual rigour; it is merely a monstrous demonstration of the ability to throw off words that are familiar to every mother and father of every child. Only, in this case, it is the political arena, and while the words may be familiar, they are not appropriate for the adult political debate that is so crucial, especially in the run-up to the November 2010 elections.
If any male politician in any country even whispered words like, "Watch out for angry fathers; we are a force to be reckoned with in the upcoming elections because we are going to take the country back!" the pundits would dub such a man nothing more than a poor comic. And that is appropriate.
Why is it not appropriate for the Democracts to point to the same reduction when Palin speaks?
Maturity comes from a general cultural, political and literary acceptance of the "adult" in everyone and the need to examine every issue in a mature and adult and intelligent and somewhat objective manner.
When E.J. Dionne and the Chairman of the American Conservative Foundation cannot even agree to be arguing "on the same planet" because the conservative will not agree that it is the "right" that has made up facts and sprinkled them into the debate (as in death panels in the Health Reform Bill...there are none!), on a debate on NPR's Onpoint, with host Tom Ashbrook, then we all know that Ashbrook, and the few other hosts who attempt to maintain a healthy, adult, intelligent respect for all political views, have more than enough work to do, for the next millenium.
And if I wrote, "Grow up America," I would be justly accused of "parenting" the American child, from an invalid Canadian perspective.

Patenting the pre-emptive strike: The Last Picture Show

Peter Bogdanovich's movie, The Last Picture Show, while produced and released in 1971, depicts a small town in Texas in the fifties, during the Korean War. Tumbleweed rolls up and down the vacant streets at the "whim" of the strong winds blowing through the flatlands. A pool hall, diner, movie house and high school seem to be the magnets of the farming community where everyone knows who is sleeping with whom.
And that seems to  be the central theme of this adolescent town, stuck as it is in it own groin, where even the mentally challenged is accused of "molesting" a little girl, the football coach's wife is sleeping with one of the team's players, the wife of  the richest man in town is sleeping with the owner/operator of the pool hall and the movie house and the diner, and the teens are vying for maturity through their "everybody-has-to-strip- naked-on-the-diving-board-of-the-pool" parties.
In the genre of Peyton Place, this is another of the U.S. attempts to "arouse" the movie-going public, this use of sexuality for power and for dulling the pain of otherwise vacant, empty and tragic relationships, lives gone to seed and a culture empty of purpose, except for the church-imposed morality of "don't you know that it is a sin to sleep with someone before marriage" from a co-ed to her mother who has just asked if her daughter is sleeping with "Duane" in the hope that she is, so she can find out how monotonous he really is.
The mother, herself, wife of the richest man in town is, herself, secretly in love with the poolhall owner and has been for twenty plus years, while "parenting" her manipulative, power-driven, empty but beautiful
daughter. When an innocent young man falls deeply in love with Jaycee, her daughter, and they secretly marry, of course the parents, outraged, demand the marriage be ended, and the mother tells the young man, "It is good we got you away from her so early, so you wouldn't get hurt by her!"
This movie would qualify for a list of movies as required viewing for young men, preparing to cope with both their feelings around beautiful women, but also about how those women manipulate their men as playthings.
That same mother, in conversation with her daughter comments, after her daughter says,"Well, you married daddy when he wasn't rich and now he is," "Well, I frightened your daddy into getting rich, and you're not that frightening!"
Little wonder the country that produced this story and movie has a larger military budget than all countries, combined, in the world. Their fear is so palpable that it becomes an excuse, and a reason for their bullying, even before they are threatened. Sexual power of women over men, almost in retaliation for the failure of the men to "relate" in ways the women find tolerable, seems to stalk stalk the town, just like those tumbleweeds.
Talk about pre-emptive strikes, as in the Bush doctrine in the Iraq War, this Texas town patented the pre-emptive strike by women against men, long before feminism had ever been heard of. And the men didn't even know what hit them!