Junot Diaz: Apocalypse and the human race

From NPR's OnPoint with Tom Ashbrook Website, May 18, 2011

Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Junot Diaz (writes)  on our arc of disasters—from Haiti to Japan to the Mississippi—and what it tells us about ourselves.
Natural disasters, like the Haitian earthquake are not only catastrophes; they are also opportunities for introspection, says Junot Diaz.
The Dominican-American writer Junot Diaz got everybody’s attention, and a Pulitzer Prize, with his fierce, funny, tragic first novel “The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.” Now, in a big new essay, Diaz has moved on to bigger themes — like apocalypse and the fate of the human race. (Photo by AP)
Junot Diaz looks at our recent headlines of earthquakes, tsunamis, meltdown fears, and floods and sees revelation. Not of the hand of God, exactly. But of human realities running amok.
Listening to Diaz for one hour was like listening to a voice whose owner would be welcome for dinner at our house. When he noted that New Orleans, one of the most historic and culturally rich cities in the U.S. has been allowed to virtually disappear as a result of hurricane Katrina, he wondered out loud, "When people around the world take note of how unconcerned we were about one of our own cities being removed from the map, they will certainly have no help for any of us should we encounter a similar catastrophy.
From the Dominican Republic, Diaz is emminently familiar with her neighbour Haiti. And his perspective on Haiti is both dramatic and incisive.
According to Diaz, Haiti rejected slavery at a time when much of the world approved of slavery, and as a result, Haiti was ostracized for her decision, and as a consequence of that, Haiti was denied the usual support to build the necessary infrastructure that would sustain a civilization and a culture. So, whenever a disaster like the earthquake of several months ago hits, there is simply no civilization to provide the needed medical and housing and nutrition support for the people. By contrast he point to Chile which also suffered an earthquake, but because she has the infrastucture and the supporting culture, she did not suffer nearly as deeply.
According to Diaz, we need to look at the things that are happening around us, and learn from them. When he looks at the recent tsunami and earthquake in Japan, he notes that it is still possible for the nuclear fallout to reach Tokyo, and, imagine, he says, what would happen if Tokyo should, God forbid, have to be abandoned.
And yet, in our insatiable appetite for power to generate industry and to light and heat homes, offices and factories, it is quite conceivable, according to Diaz, for politicians in North America to build many more nuclear reactors on seismic fault lines, or near coastal regions subject to more tsunami's. Are we never going to learn? Do we simly not reflect on the things that are happening right before our eyes, not exclusively from the perspective that some religious literalists would have us read the Book of Revelation, but more from the perspective that we are making statements in many of these large disasters about our own future.
From Wikipedia:
Currently, Díaz teaches creative writing at MIT and is also the fiction editor for the Boston Review. He is active in the Dominican American community and is a founding member of the Voices of Our Nations Arts Writing Workshop, which focuses on writers of color. Diaz was a Millet Writing Fellow at Wesleyan University, in 2009, and participated in Wesleyan's Distinguished Writers Series.

Attack and destroy in politics and in hockey...with impunity

By Susan Delacourt, Toronto Star, May 16, 2011
The Canadian forces’ best weapon may be Don Cherry and the particular brand of combat patriotism that he pushes on Hockey Night in Canada, according to a new study.

Cherry is the common link among hockey, soldiers and a bolder, more aggressive strain of Canadian identity — an identity that may leave some women and multicultural communities cold, according to the study by University of Western Ontario academics John Nater and Robert Maciel.
Cherry speaks of soldiers almost as much as he talks about hockey in his Coach’s Corner segments, according to Nater and Maciel’s analysis.
“For Cherry, Canadian nationalism rests on an unquestioning support for the military, support of traditional institutions and (a) view of hockey that highlights the physical nature of the game,” they write in their study.
“This guy has a huge viewing public and, even if it’s only a small segment of society that actually takes what he says to heart, it’s a significant audience that he reaches with this particular view of Canadian nationalism, which doesn’t take into account multicultural society (or) women,” said Nater, who provided an advance copy of his paper to the Star.
Let's assume for the moment that there is truth to the thesis that physical rough hockey is the model for the new kind of Harper politics.
Just think of the casualties in both arenas:

• Sidney Crosby taken out by an irresponsible elbow perhaps in a career-ending casualty to the game's admittedly best player, without so much as a penalty, a fine or a suspension...the offending player's name is Stekel and he continues to play without tarnish to his career. Crosby has not returned from the hit he took in the first week of January.
• Max Pacioretty, the Montreal Canadien who was drubbed into the stancheon  and broke his neck, driven there by Sdeno Chara of the Boston Bruin, once again without penalty, fine or suspension for the incident
• Stephane Dion, that former Leader of the Liberal Party, literally and metaphorically driven out of the leadership by what were obviously political assassination attack ads, without any penalty, fine or suspension for the kind of politics that Harper has become famous for
• Michael Ignatieff, once again, politically assassinated, left with a broken political neck and a concussion from the "legal" attacks of the Harper Conservatives....

The case has so many examples that it  can rest on these few, as illustration. And what's more, it is a sign of a kind of masculinity that is based for the most part on a denial of the potential of any sophistication, nuance and sensibility that accompanies both the kind of hockey played by Wayne Gretzky, Mario Lemieux, and yest even Sidney Crosby that uses skill, imagination, intuition and discipline as its hallmarks, rather than the kind of back-street bullying kind of mentality that requires a punch from  Todd Bertuzzi that results in a career-ending blow to the head of his opponent while the courts consider the civil suits that are still pending.
Perhaps, in order to terminate this kind of political/hockey supremacy, Dion and Ignatieff need to take up a class action suit against Harper and his gang of thugs, and let the Supreme Court decide if this is the way Parliament was intended to be operating.
Anyone seeking funds for such an action, please given me a call and I will be happy to both subscribe and to offer whatever time and muscle I have to that cause.

NDP not the "Quebec First" Party in Ottawa

By Lysiane Gagnon, Globe and Mail, May 15, 2011
Quebeckers now expect that the NDP will morph into a clone of the Bloc. Because he owes part of his victory to Quebec, it is expected that Mr. Layton will forget his real ambition, which is to become prime minister of Canada, and will be happy to serve as the full-time champion of Quebec. If these foolish expectations don’t diminish with time, Quebeckers’ disappointment with the NDP will be huge – and the big bubbling orange wave will quickly dissolve before the next election.

Having bought in to the Bloc's template that all federal parties ignore the interests of Quebec for the last 20 years, it seems, according to Ms Gagnon, that they have merely transferred their perceptions of "Quebec first" along with their expectations, to Jack Layton and the NDP.
Certainly, from outside the province, perceptions that many Quebecers jumped on a band-wagon without much thought or reflection when they entered the voting stations are rampant. If they were tired of the dead-end approach of the Bloc, and searching for an alternative, naturally they found the approach of the NDP, if they looked at it at all, closely resembling their political comfort level, given the most advanced social policies of any of the provinces and territories.
However, now that some 50 of the Quebec MP's (out of 75) sit in the NDP caucus, the expectation that Quebec's interests will trump those of the "nation" does not follow. Layton's prime goal, according to his own words, is to become the Prime Minister of Canada. Feeding the Quebec appetite first, before examining the interests of the whole country will land Layton in a buckey of molasses. He will be stuck in a no-win proposition the imbalance of which will find those Quebec votes, along with thousands from the rest of the county will be very short-lived.
However, neither Harper nor the Liberals can claim any foothold in Quebec, so the spotlight will be on Layton and his band of MP's from Quebec, to attempt to balance their own re-election aspirations in Quebec with their political "reserve" in the rest of the country. And that will not be an easy task.
With the Liberals showing strength in Eastern Canada, the NDP in Quebec, the Conservatives in Ontario and the West, there continues to be a question about the governability of the country, through the resources of a single national party. We are a country of regions, and the regions have been given precious little to educate them with the common intersts shared with the other regions. We have been historically slow to recognize the strength that comes from provincial collaboration unless that effort was/is dedicated to "bashing" the federal governnment. And that has become a provincial  hobbyhorse for decades.
However, there is a country to govern. The provinces have constitutional responsibility for those matters that most directly impact the lives of citizens like education, health care, social services, with funding coming from the single collection agency, the federal government. However, it is time for the provinces and the federal government to, once again, hold regular formal and informal sessions to bring the national goals and interests into the picture for the provinces to see where they are in the national picture.
For example, the needs of the people in each province can be, rather obviously one would hope, recognized as more similar than different, from the needs of people in other provinces and territories. And this provincial competition must give way to a national concensus, a legitimate goal of the national government to facilitate.
No one really wins when the interests of the provinces (no matter which province) are given a high priority that the interests of the nation, by the people of each province. Quebec is not in competition with the rest of Canada, no matter which party is the governing party in Ottawa. Alberta and Ontario should and must not be vying in competition for dollars for federally financed programs, because they happen to hold a majority of the seats in the Conservative caucus.
It is long past time for the country's interests, including but not restricted to those of language and culture, to be given a priority that can be both seen and appreciated by all Canadians, so that the balance in the federation is more collegial and collaborative than competitive and divisive. And Quebec's political climate can take the lead in helping to create such a new climate for Canadian federalism.

Israel turns 63...thanks to their people for their gift to the world

By Ethan Bronner, New York Times, May 14, 2011
JERUSALEM — Tensions were high in East Jerusalem on Saturday as hundreds of Palestinians buried a 17-year-old demonstrator and preparations were under way for rallies on Sunday to mark the founding of Israel 63 years ago, an event that Palestinians call the “nakba,” Arabic for catastrophe.
The dead teenager, Milad Ayyash, was shot in the stomach on Friday during stone-throwing demonstrations in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan and died in the hospital on Saturday. A police spokesman, Micky Rosenfeld, said police officers had not used live fire and were investigating the cause of his death.
Witnesses said the gunshot came from inside Beit Yonatan, a Jewish-owned building in Silwan, either from a security guard or a resident. The teenager’s family declined to allow a police autopsy, Mr. Rosenfeld said.
On Saturday, mourners carried the boy’s body through East Jerusalem. When the procession passed Beit Yonatan, they threw rocks at the building. The police arrested four people and used stun grenades, causing several light injuries. The burial took place without further disturbance.
The police presence ollahis expected to be heavy across Israel on Sunday. “Obviously what happened yesterday and today will influence how we deploy tomorrow,” Mr. Rosenfeld said.
After Israel declared independence on May 14, 1948, armies from neighboring Arab states attacked the new nation; during the war that followed, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled or were driven from their homes by Israeli forces. Hundreds of Palestinian villages were also destroyed. The refugees and their descendants remain a central issue of contention in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Israel celebrates its independence day according to the Hebrew calendar, which this year was last Tuesday.
To this observer, it seems there is not a day that passes without more violence over the mere existence of the state of Israel. Often, the stories originate with the Palestinian side, or from Hamas or from Hezbollah, or from one of the many states whose only perspective on the state of Israel is outright hatred, contempt and even  a commitment that the state must be eliminated from the face of the earth.
No state, regardless of the history of its faith and culture, would survive in such a constant state of war, and a constant state of fear that it would be both attacked and removed, if possible, as the preferred solution to the Israel-Palestinian "problem". It must take incredible courage for the Jews in the diaspora even to visit the homeland, given the level of risk and danger they face while visiting. It also must take incredible vigilance, from the Israeli's themselves, to be on constant guard against another attack.
I recently listened as a former adviser to Yassar Arafat, then leader of the PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization), spoke of his views on On Point with Tom Ashbrook, NPR's flagship news talk show. He commented that, prior to achieving the two-state solution, it would be advisable that at least a healthy ONE-STATE solution would be a worthy goal. His view was that even with Israel itself, it might be possible for both sides to reach a kind of accord that provided some peace and security for their separate people's to live within the existing borders.
Most of us in the west simply do not understand the complexities of the conflict. We know that land that was previously considered "Palestinian" was carved out to create the state of Israel, but the move seems never to have been either consummated or agreed to by the Palestinian side. And today, that side is ennobled by the millions of Muslims of both Shia and Sunni stripes, who seem committed to a self-proclaimed role of a permanent cancer in the heart, blood, lungs, brain, and major organs of Israel.
To an outsider, it comes as a shock that the Israeli people have even survived these last 63 years. No other group, from no other language, history and culture, it says here, would have lasted intact under so much duress. Not only did their forefathers suffer the ignominious suffering and loss of 6 million of their number in the gas chambers, but forever since, their newly 'created' homeland has been under seige.
When is the world, especially including those Muslims seeking so desperately to eliminate the state of Israel, and, for their purposes also remove the people who call themselves Jews, from the face of the earth..when are they going to open their eyes to the realization of the gift to the human civilization that is both Israel and the Jewish people.
Their contributions in every single field of human endeavour is exemplary. Their doctors and their scientists have discovered many of the very approaches that save lives today. Their thinkers and their theologians have contributed many of the world's most insightful and penetrating observations. Their lawyers and businessmen have designed and delivered many of the nuanced contracts that help to underpin many of our organizational structures for peace, for governance, for philanthropy and for the study of human history. Their musicians, and their artists, and their dancers and singers and writers and directors and producers have generated much of the best classical, semi-classical, and popular entertainment genres across the globe...theatrical experiences that have given life to generations of people from all faiths, religions, cultures and histories...and all of this has been accomplished to the drum-beat of constant gun, rocket, missile and verbal assault against their very existence.
This writer is in awe at the depth of both the artistry and the courage of the Jewish people, whose songs can be heard in the midst of their excruciating pain, whenever such pain is "imposed" by hate-mongers. And their sheer joy at being alive is nothing short of a miracle given the 6-plus decades of their tormented history.
It is to call Israel "nakba" that is the catastrophe, not their very existence.

Melissa Fung, one-on-one with Peter Mansbridge

Melissa Fund, CBC reporter, was kidnapped and taken hostage by some Taliban in Afghanistan, and held captive for some 28 days in a hole in the earth. She appeared yesterday in an interview with Peter Mansbridge and told her story from the perspective of four years later, and following the writing of her story, a deed she says she would likely not do again if she had the chance.
The pain of returning to the pain, by revisiting the details of her memories, for the purpose of the book, was the hardest for her, even though she was quite conscious that others had suffered much more than she.
"What is the most important thing to take away from the book?" asked Mansbridge. "That nothing is ever black and white, that everything consists in many greys and that is why I so enjoy being a reporter to explore and to discover those greys," Fung replied with some urgency, but certainily no melodrama.
What an irony! A seasoned national, international reporter telling the Senior Correspondent of a national news network that nothing is ever black and white, but a complicated array of greys she delights in pursuing as as reporter.
And yet, most news reporting comes to us as a divide: either the human subject of the news item is a hero (es) or some kind of evil perpetrator.
And yet, Fung came to learn about the human struggles and pain of her captor(s) and when the principal captor was leading her toward her release, he kept apologizing: "I'm so sorry! I'm so sorry! Please don't hate me! Please don't hate me"
To which she reports that she replied, "Of course I do not hate you!"
Her book, Under an Afghan Sky: A Memoir Of Captivity, tells the story of the kidnapping and her reflections. I intend to read it, if for no other reason than I was captivated by her authenticy, her sound judgement and her profound honour as a human being.
Footnote: Mansbridge seemed completely comfortable, and Fung indicated the two of them had talked several times about her experience. The questions flowed as if over a kitchen table, without any hint of the camera. And the audience was privileged to be a silent, inconspicuous "fly on the wall" in a very nearly sacred moment.
Just try to defund CBC, Mr. Harper, and you will find people like me taking to the streets in protest, no matter how ineffectual those protests. Here is one institution you need to keep the government's hands off, and even increase the government's support for the work it is doing. And if you don't believe me, try watching the Mansbridge interview with Melissa Fung, and then re-think your stubborn and despicable bias against this proud national institution.

U.S.Hubris linked to Shadow Denial

By David Olive, Toronto Star, May 11, 2011

It’s impossible with certainty to know how deeply Osama bin Laden reached into his pocket to finance the September 11, 2001 attacks on the U.S. The consensus estimate is $500,000, or less than the current average house price in Vancouver.
The estimated cost to the United States from its reaction to those attacks range from $4 trillion (U.S.) to $6 trillion, a “return on investment” unsurpassed in the annals of terrorism.
And the Americans did this to themselves.
Transfixed by the television images that morning, I kept thinking of The Day of The Jackal. What this called for was an intelligence operation to hunt down the perpetrators.
Instead, America over-reacted, beyond Osama’s most ardent hopes.
Osama’s goal was to bankrupt the U.S. In his earlier role in helping reverse the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Osama did his part in bankrupting that 73-year-old empire. The Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, scarcely three years after the chastened Soviets gave up their decade-long failed effort to “pacify” Afghanistan.
“We are continuing this policy of bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy,” bin Laden said in a 2004 video dispatched to news outlets. Any hint of another al-Qaeda attack on U.S. assets at home or abroad, bin Laden was convinced, would “make generals there to cause America to suffer human, economic, and political losses without their achieving anything of note other than some benefits for their private corporations.”
There is a link between over-arching paranoia and over-arching pride. As opposite sides of the same coin, and as defining book-ends of American culture, the dual dynamic continues to play itself out in American politics. Just this week, after nearly ten years of bankrupting military and intelligence activities “to stop terrorism,” the U.S. Congress is continuing to wrestle with budget cuts to the most needy and vulnerable, without casting even a glance at stopping the war in Afghanistan. And both the pride, and the profound paranoia are driving the U.S. treasury into such a deep debt-hole that it could be argued China is now more in control of U.S. National Security than the U.S. itself, given the percentage of U.S. Treasury Bills owned by China.
By the first week of August, 2011, the U.S. will have to extend its debt ceiling by an act of Congress, in order to avoid shutting the government down.
The U.S. cultural and political discourse almost completely disavows any discussion of the Shadow side of the collective unconscious. A good analogy for this crops up each time Len Goodman tries to offer a negative criticism on the popular “reality” TV show, Dancing with the Stars, and the studio audience invariably utters loud boo’s burying his comments with their loud rejections. In political debating terms, Standard and Poor’s announced that the U.S. was in danger of seeing its credit rating drop from triple A to much lower, if the Congress did not address both the debt and the deficit. For at least a decade, in direct response to Al-Qaeda, the U.S. has roamed the world with hundreds of thousands of soldiers, sailors and air-force personnel committing mayhem in Iraq, and then in Afghanistan, “so that the whole world will hear us” as George W. Bush so proudly and brazenly put it standing on the rubble of the Trade Centre Towers, a few days after the deadly event.
Where is the “political equivalent of “Dr. Phil” who can and will tell the U.S. government and through it to the American people, “You are addicted to power and dominance you will do anything, literally anything, to sustain that addiction, including destroying your country!”?
That voice would be considered “un-American” just as the five oil executives who told the Senate Finance Committee yesterday that for it to consider removing the tax subsidies from their industry, in the face of some $34 billion in profits for the past quarter, a 42% increase over last year, and the equivalent of $379 million in profits every day, not to mention $4.00/gal gasoline at the pump, that such a move would be “un-American”.
Henry Kissinger, in a recent NPR interview, pointed out one difference between the U.S. and China that seems to fit here. China, according to Kissinger, sees all events in patterns, where the U.S. sees each event “on its own merits” without being part of a pattern. Also the U.S. looks to the future for solutions to its problems, while China looks to its past. In refusing to look to its past for solutions, the U.S. is in serious danger of denying its own hubris and falling into the trap of bankrupting itself while keeping up appearances around the world. This reminds one of the tech executives in Silicone Valley who, after they lost their jobs in the dot-com bubble, purchased motor homes with a few of their buddies in the same tragic fix, took their showers and dressed in their suits every morning and “went to work,” to those motor homes parked in the parking lots of the establishments from which they had been fired only days or weeks ago, without informing their spouses of their tragic fall, because to do so, they believed, would prompt those same spouses to leave the marriage in divorce.

Sarah Ferguson:"How do I get self-worth?" an existential cry for help

It was Sarah Ferguson, divorced wife of Prince Andrew, appearing on the Oprah Winfrey show yesterday, in a clip from an extensive documentary to be aired on Winfrey’s own network about her “search for herself” when she pleaded with Susan Orme, the financial guru, “Please tell me, how do I get self-worth?” that triggered something inside.

First, I was watching the program with my wife when I was struck with Ferguson’s desperate plea, as if there were something “outside” that she could “get” in order to become more acceptable to herself. Earlier, in another clip with Dr. Phil, he had told her directly, “I believe you are addicted to acceptance and approval of others.”
Here was being played out something that has become a Jungian Shadow for millions of people around the world, whose self-worth is measured in cars, square footage of their homes, the titles on their desks, the degrees on their walls, and the millions in their bank accounts. With all of these “objective” measurements of value, complete with the best brand names, people have become so accustomed to “having” and to measuring themselves by the value that others give them, that, as Ferguson also pointed out, when recalling negative press on a trip to Australia, when they dubbed her “fat, frumpy Fergie” shortly after the birth of her first daughter, “I believe my own press.”
What is politically correct, what is orthodox, what is conventional, what is stamped as “acceptable” are those whose conformity to the accepted and restricted way of being, of speaking, of acting, of dressing that we have become a “high-school” culture, in which the acceptance of our peers is more important than the strength of our opinions, our feelings, our attitudes and our beliefs.
We have become the pawns in a massive game of manipulation by advertising executives, whose control of the money that draws the designs, not only of our clothes but also of our preferred attitudes to race, to intellectual pursuits, to faith issues, to political ideology, to athletics, to food, and even to body size shape and “sensuality.”
We watch something called “reality” TV, seduced by the extreme manipulation of both the advertisers and the producers of those shows, into believing that these are “reality” portrayals when, in fact, those very shows are more manipulative of our attitudes and perceptions that most television and film dramas. The reality shows cost between 50 and 75% less to produce than scripted dramas. They are left on the air for much longer, with lower ratings, whereas the dramatic shows with higher ratings are removed. Within the shows themselves, the editing and the staging and the final effect from what goes to air is so massaged as to be far removed from what reality actually gives us.
The U.S. president recently allowed that “the reality shows have seeped into our political discourse” suggesting that what is truth has become so blurred as to be almost indistinguishable from misrepresentation. The “reality” of the president’s birthplace has become a chapter in a kind of reality TV show, for the benefit of those whose contempt for the president knows no limits.
And then we wonder why, for example, young children and adolescents are struggling with sacks of unnecessary and dangerous excess “fat” that has grown on their bodies from the overstuffing of junk food in what is obviously an attempt to “medicate” their pain of being bullied, or ostracized, or ignored, or betrayed, or abandoned, or under-funded, or poorly mentored (if at all)…and we blame the problem on technology because they kids are spending too many hours in front of their gaming computer.
Is it not feasible that those games are another “medication” for their pain of being rejected? When they are playing those games, they know the rules, and they know the rewards, and they can trust that the program will operate in the same way each time they approach the keypad, or the joystick. There is a kind of predictability and a kind of stability that does not reject them.
Rejection, alienation, abandonment, bullying, physical and emotional abuse…these are all experiences that have scarred millions of boys and girls around the globe. And the churches have a large part to play in that dynamic. Labelling all people “sinners” as the starting place for the Christian church has given millions of parents license to parent ineffectively, using guidelines that were completely inappropriate to the situation, and to their own children.
In spite of words that commend the experience of love, acceptance and support, we have created a society in which every single person is anther “consumer” for another profit, for another human agent, for another victory…and in the process we have demeaned the definition of what it is to be human, at our peril.
We have created a war with ourselves, in our cynical vision that the more we have, and the more others "value" us, the more self-worth we have. It is a lie that is, like all lies, simply unsustainable. And the price is being paid in shattered dreams of the innocents from all walks of life on all continents.