Men: Say "NO" to victim ads and dumb men in TV and movie scripts NOW!

"Victim" male in advertising (from Good Men Project website, March 2, 2012)

By Ben Cake, The Good Men Project website, March 2, 2012
The claim is clear: Women are meant to dole out abuse, and men are meant to take it, again and again, without complaint.

This is the theme of many current magazine advertisements, according to Mr. Cake. And he rightly blames men for their existence, given that men are not complaining publicly, for many reasons, some of which include the fact that, in some cases the ads themselves look silly, stupid and not worthy of comment.
However, we all know that if the photo were reversed, and a male had his foot on the female head, there would be an outcry, as there should be, by women everywhere.
I, as one simply blogger, sitting on the shore of Lake Ontario, in what can be called a border town steeped in its own history, (the first Canadian capital, and all that) and also steeped in political correctness, would be highly unlikely to actually see an advertisement in a local publication such as the one depicted above. However, in the U.S. as Mr. Cake rightly points out, such ads could easily appear beside such highly respected and thoroughly researched magazine pieces as "The End of Men"....which did appear in a not too far distant copy of The Atlantic.The feminist movement in its original version took as one of the principle pillars of its argument that some men in an organized and manipulative manner got together and decided to put women down, as a political and cultural act. That premise would have to assume that there were ever a movement, like feminism itself, to which most men subscribed as a conscious decision. And that assumption would be a likely to occur as it would be for someone who loves cats to "herd" them all together and march them down a street in a civic parade celebrating "Cat Day" along with the rest of the townsfolk.
Absurd!
The developing version of feminism that holds men responsible for everything that is wrong with our world, a position espoused by extremely angry, vocal and intolerably cruel women, is, like many of these ads, both ridiculous and hateful. However, for men to get together and form a movement around the abuse of men by women seems to most men not only a waste of time, but also a counter-intuitive idea, given that women would not likely listen anyway.
First, it would appear to other men that if such a movement developed, those within the movement would be dubbed "wimps" both those outside the movement. The analogy is perfectly clear already, when we hear men talk of other men as "pussy-whipped" by their female partners. And the same men who make such a charge often go home to a relationship in which they are not equal to their female partners, simply because they do not have the language or the patience or the inclination to advocate for their views in the face of what they might consider an unsympathetic "ear".
Second, for a cluster of men to take up Mr. Cake's challenge to publicly complain about the kinds of magazine advertising would, once again, require that that group of men consider the "problem" worthy of their time, compared to the "dissing" they would get from other men.
Let's be very clear about one thing, as an analogy here:
It is men who are virulent, and often violent, opponents to gays and lesbians, not women.
It is men who, apparently find their sexuality so fragile that they cannot even contemplate the fact that some men seek and find other men as sexual partners.
It is men who use their Bibles, and their Korans and whatever other religious books to justify their homophobia, and other men rarely, if ever, confront these homophobic men.
While I have never seen a scientific study to prove this, my gut tells me that the ratio of homophobic men to women who are intolerant of same-gender relationships is likely 1 million to 1 or some such ratio. Either women are more tolerant, or more secretive about their attitudes to men and women who choose partners of the same gender.
So, as one voice in the wilderness, I personally object to the kinds of photographs to which Mr. Cake refers in his piece;
I ask the executives in the advertising industry to reflect on their "standards" when designing and selecting their photographs for publication, regardless of the desires and intentions of their clients.
I also ask other men to find both the words and the courage to confront such ads as not merely ridiculous, or laughable, but hateful and unworthy of both the advertising industry and the publications in which they are found.
I also ask the female partners of men, who concur with this view, to speak up even through innocent questions to their partners, to begin a dialogue that might enhance the sensibility of the male partner to just how damaging these ads, and the many stereotypes of "dumb males" who find their way into many television and movie scripts, and onto our in-home and in-theatre screens, without a peep of complaint or resistance from the males in the audience.
We permit the repetition of such stereotypes not only at our own peril, but at the peril of our sons, grandsons and great-grandsons. And we do not do that with impunity..there will be a very high price.

Putin's mistake: playing tsar and taking Russians for granted...sound familiar?

By Anya Schmemann, CFR.org, from CNN website, March 2, 2012

Editor's Note: Anya Schmemann is director of communications at the Council on Foreign Relations.

By Anya Schmemann, CFR.org
Since the outburst of Russian disapproval in December over reported fraud in the parliamentary elections, Putin has shored up his base, activated his impressive political machine, reminded Russians of the chaos of the 90s, and pulled out the well-worn “foreign interference” card. He has kept his opponents marginalized and divided, and they have been largely invisible.
While Putin cruises to victory, much on the surface of Russian politics looks the same as it was. It would be a mistake, however, to assume that nothing has changed. The shifts occurring deep within Russian society may take time to alter the political landscape, but they are fundamental and will have far-reaching consequences.
Although he remains powerful, Putin’s aura of invincibility has been punctured and his legitimacy seriously undermined. For their part, Russians are learning how to be active participants in their own polity.
Across Russia, people of all ages, backgrounds, and income levels joined demonstrations, commented on blogs and in social media, and have made their voices heard. While the numbers in the streets have been remarkable, most striking has been a fundamental change in attitude.
At a recent demonstration, one participant noted that Russians were trying to remember what it was like to be citizens and not subjects. He said (as quoted in the Washington Post), “I hope that year by year our Russian people will make themselves masters of their own fate.”
Russians have very little experience with “citizenship” in the Western sense. Under the Russian monarchy, they were subjects of the tsar and were only awarded some of the rights of citizens in the 1860s. Efforts to shape a modern concept of Russian citizenship came to an abrupt halt with the Russian revolution.
Since the Soviet Union collapsed, Russians have been citizens in name, but have not had much opportunity - or desire - to exercise their rights as citizens.
Citizenship, in the classical definition of the concept, confers rights as well as responsibilities on both the government and the people. The state exists for the benefit of its citizens and must respect their political, civil, and social rights. For their part, citizens should be actively involved in civic and government affairs.
Putin’s miscalculation was to play tsar and take the Russian people’s support for granted. When he cavalierly announced that he planned to be president again, he awakened in many Russians a sense of righteous indignation.
Many of the demonstrators say that while they do not want a revolution, they do want a more accountable and responsive government. They seek an end to corruption, cronyism, and repressiveness. Like all citizens everywhere, they want to know that they matter.
Putin will win this election and will likely serve his six-year term. He may even win the next term. But the Russian people have demonstrated that they are ready to challenge the status quo and that they are finally yearning to be involved citizens.
Tsar Vladimir will find, as have many monarchs and strongmen in world history, that a country with active citizens is not so easily manipulated.
The views expressed in this article are solely those of Anya Schmemann.
"Putin’s miscalculation was to play tsar and take the Russian people’s support for granted."
Is this sentence, quoted from above, not one that we could apply to many current situations around the world, where a leader makes a (mis)calculation "to play tsar" and "to take the people's support for granted"...and learn only too late that it was, in fact, a MIS-calculation.
It could apply to the Libyan dictator, the Syrian dictator, the Russian dictator, the Yemeni dictator, the Tunisian dictator, and without doubt several smaller "dictators" particularly in African countries, one of whom is currently standing trial in the Hague.
It is still a stretch to use the phrase, "play tsar" in application to the Canadian Prime Minister, especially when compared with other "real" dictators.
However, context really does matter, and in the Canadian context, there are any number of moves which qualify as unilateral, without consult, without even listening to the people that have emerged from Ottawa since the government received its majority.
One interpretation of this developing political dynamic, of people taking power back from perceived dictators, is that social media have made it much easier, given the ease with which people from disparate locations, within a country, can speak, easily, and inexpensively, with those of like mind and form a time and place to meet, to air grievances and to potentially grow into a full-fledged movement.
Another, complementing view is that globalization has resulted in the displacement of thousands, perhaps millions of workers, many of them highly educated, who want to work, earn a decent living and raise a family. Unfortunately, that dream has become "out of reach" for too many, living in political systems that are unresponsive to their needs.
Of course, the availability of 24-7 wall-to-wall global news coverage also means that whatever happens in the streets of Moscow is instantly relayed around the world, making global politics now more "part of the neighbourhood" than ever.
So the phrase, "all politics is local" from the former Speaker of the House of Representatives in the U.S. Congress, Tip O'Neill, now literally applies to the whole globe.
Tsars, we can only hope, represent a time period that we have left behind, regardless of their language, their culture and their nationality.
People demanding that they be taken seriously, we can only hope, will claim their rightful place in the body politic of both their respective nation and the world. There are, however, still too many ways to subvert the democratic process, including the voting process itself, and those ways are extremely tempting to those whose need for power trumps their ideals for their country. And that is not a Russian phenomenon, nor an American nor an African, nor an Asian characteristic. It is a human trait.
And, if politics is ever going to minimize the impact of that personal need for power, it will have to find ways to counter the collective thrust of personal ambition for power, and not for "the national interest."
Some of those ways to impede the influence of personal power neurosis have already been devised and implemented. Certainly, campaign finance reform is one of those impediments, and it needs shoring up in every country in the world, including those neophyte democracies who can only benefit from the negative experience of many of us in the so-called developed world.
Let's join with the Russian people, in relegating "tsars" to the ash-heap of history, in all countries, for all time. And let's also join them in demanding that elections in all countries be open, fair, accountable and just, not only in fact but in appearance. And perhaps, the world movement of "people" that is ordinary people, will eventually achieve what the Russian people, among others, consider their right....to be taken seriously, and never again taken for granted.
And there is a page there for Mr. Harper to read, as well...soon!

How dangerous is Harper?

By Gerald Caplan, Globe and Mail, March 3, 2012
Mr. Harper’s Conservatives, many of us fear, have changed the entire game. In fact for them it’s not a game at all. Like their cherished American Republican role models, when they speak about their war room, they mean it. And in war, it hardly needs saying, there’s little tolerance for democratic niceties.

Do I exaggerate? Listen once again to Tom Flanagan, former Harper strategist and a powerful voice still among conservatives and Conservatives. A Globe piece by Mr. Flanagan before the 2011 election was actually titled “An election is war by other means,” while earlier he had compared the 2008 campaign to ancient wars in which Rome (the Conservatives) defeated Carthage (the Liberals) and “razed the city to the ground and sowed salt in the fields so nothing would grow there again.” This is crazy talk.

The University of Ottawa’s Ralph Heintzman sums up this Harper credo: There is a “lack of sense of inner self-restraint on the part of the Prime Minister, a sense that it is some kind of war and therefore anything is legitimate, that it's quite acceptable for a prime minister to lie, for example, about how our parliamentary democracy works.”
It’s within this context that Robo-gate should be viewed.
Would a party that believed in politics as war hesitate to use the latest technology to keep opponents – the enemy! – from voting? Would a party that has already systematically undermined many traditional parliamentary and democratic niceties, as The Globe’s Lawrence Martin has repeatedly documented, hesitate to violate accepted democratic limits? Does a party that has already been found guilty of violating the election laws and that deliberately attempted to destabilize a sitting Liberal MP deserve the benefit of the doubt?
Here’s the problem. Both sides know with certainty the answer to these questions. Those of us who wouldn’t trust Stephen Harper if he told us today was Friday have no doubt who organized Robo-gate. In fact, I’m informed by a former Conservative operative familiar with both the party and technology that there’s far more to be revealed in this saga. This is said specifically to involve close ties between the Harperites and American Republicans who have been constructing a terrifying, full-blown voter suppression machine, as The Nation magazine, among others, has well documented and CBC Radio’s The Current has noted. I have no idea if this will be found to be true, but based on the record, it is surely not implausible.
Yet Mr. Harper's faithful base, that slightly-more-than-one-third of the electorate on whose behalf the entire government of Canada operates, knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that this is some kind of vicious Liberal frame-up and that their man is as innocent and pure as the driven white snow we occasionally still get.
Both sides can’t be right here. Let’s all pray mine is wrong.
We have been writing for months that the Harper gang is a Canadian derivative of the American Tea Party, and  if Mr. Caplan's source is correct, and there truly is much more to be revealed in this saga, given the documented model of voter suppression in the U.S., Canada could be in for a very rude awakening.
It was back in the 1990's when the then Harris gang lifted election strategies from the then Republican Governor of New Jersey, Christine Todd Whitman, in preparation for their "common sense" revolution. So there is certainly precedent for a Canadian conservative party to "borrow" (or steal or mimic or duplicate) the strategies and tactics found to be successful south of the 49th parallel.
Voter suppression by the Republicans demonstrates a vaccuity of policy alternatives and a failure to come together on more than a few "slogans" by which they were able to ignite an angry electorate during the 2010 election.
If Harper's gang have crossed a traditional line in voter suppression in Canada, let's hope the Canadian electorate will retain the memory of the facts, beyond the normal 48-hour news cycle, and turf them out in 2015.
Clearly, we can only identify with Mr. Caplan, as to how dangerous Mr. Harper is, and hope, with him, that we are both wrong.

Political organizations as "learning organizations"...serving their members, not vice versa

Process versus Content...this is a vote for the latter over the former!!
I have watched federal and municipal politics for nearly four decades as a journalist, voter, activist, and educator. I have done my share of interviewing of federal, provincial and municipal politicians, over the years, for print, radio and television. And for the most part, I have been struck by the commitment to policies (usually one per interterview session) of the politician to the cause. The question of process, or how to navigate the obstacles to the vote, or how to attract new followers, was invariably left to the backroom, where the deals were concocted, the compromises were proposed and agreed to, and really none of that was any of the reporter's business, unless and until that process spilled out onto the floor of the city council chambers, where political foes debated their opponents' arguments, in a relatively civilized manner, depending often on the strength and degree of respect for the "chair" usually the Mayor.
Today, there seems to have been a significant shift in the political world resulting in the elevation of the process of politics over the political agenda, the issue, the interests of the city, the province or the nation. How to break down the electorate into micro-demographic bytes, and then target that segment with a specific message, while at the same time targetting another "byte" with a different and often conflicting message seems to have become the "expertise" of the political animal, the backroom advisor, the public relations "specialist". Rather than putting the interests of the voter, the citizen, at the top of the list of priorities, the personal, professional ambitions and political interests of the "actor" have taken a larger bite out of both budget and schedule for the politician.
Consequently, money, the collection of money, the methods of raising that money, the accounting for that money, the spending of that money....all of these "issues" (really part of the process) have become the agenda of the political community. Whether or not to "fight" for or against a certain public issue rarely if ever rises to the level of the agenda, because most of the time is spent in housekeeping, publishing and distributing the politicians newsletter, firming and expanding the speaking agenda of the politician so as to "cover" as many potential voters as possible. Running a political organization, even one on behalf of a respected politician, is about attempting to recruit volunteers with specific skills, so that those skills can be put to the use of the political organization, and the message of the health of that organization is often determined by both the quality and the quantity of those volunteers.
Thankfully, they serve, in all political parties, for the benefit of the body politic; however, do they ask if and when the political organization members have anything to say about the core purposes of the political organization. Does it exist to serve the needs of the members, or do the members exist to serve the needs of the organization?
Clearly, the latter is the case almost exclusively.
Consider, for a brief moment, if the former were the case.
Think, for a moment, what it would be like for a political organization to consider itself a "learning organization" in which the members are encouraged to become informed, in detail, about specific public issues that might interest them, through research, through public lectures, reading, and conversations with others interested in the same issue. And think of the organization comprising several groups of growing "learners" in one or two of many issues that face the citizens within the city, province or nation.
Imagine, for a moment, a culture that held as its founding principle the notion that individual members have more to contribute than cash and phone calls or door knocking, or production of various publications on behalf of the organization.
Within each "issue group" (let's call it a workshop or seminar) various opinions would necessarily be both expressed and rebutted, thereby providing a working model of a learning where for that moment, the skill being practised is "debating" in the formal sense. Rules of debates could be applied, with the consent of the group members, and their findings would naturally be presented to the organization for its larger consideration. Perhaps this already happens, and I am merely recommending "formalizing" it.
Members all have learning goals, many of which they may not even be aware of, and all members have a need for some level of community, some association with others who share an interest in the political process, its content, the potential of engagement with it to enhance the lives of those members.
Leaders would inevitably emerge, and so would new ideas, in an operating "greenhouse" of a manageable size that merits consideration, especially for those sharing both membership and interest in the political issues, and the process by which they become enacted.
Let's put the citizen back in citizenship through the political organizations. Let's move the political process, at the manageable level, back to a focussed consideration of the issues and not let the political organization become the prisoner of the "process".
Let's help political organizations become "learning organizations" for the sake of the members, the organization and the city, province, and nation.
And that would mean less sycophancy meted out to the technology, and less sycophancy to the political professionals, the professional fundraisers, the media gurus, the party hierarchies, and the media. Issues would generate a body of both advocates and opponents, and those discussions could find their way into the local media, so that ordinary people would be known not merely as a name, but as someone actively participating in the life of the city, province and nation.
And that would make it very difficult for those whose individual "power needs" are the driving force for their engagement in the political organization.
And, perhaps the organaization's purpose would no longer be merely to "elect" candidate X or Y, but would be a place where the body politic actively concerned with the learning of members, would actively attempt to meet those needs and the organization would, in effect, become the servant of the members, and not the other way round, as it is now.

Definitions of "growth": externals and extrinsics vs community and intrinsics

By Mark Braud, Globe and Mail, March 1, 2012
Mark Braude is six feet tall. Having researched the tiny principality of Monaco for five years for his dissertation, he knows a few things about “small.” He is completing a PhD in European history at USC.

The English language derides smallness at every turn.

What could be less pleasant than a small-time, small-fry, petit-bourgeois hotelier in some one-horse Podunk town who is being short with you about some small-potatoes, small-beer issue? Are you supposed to get into the nitty-gritty about the price (specified in the small print) of that bite-sized chocolate bar you took from the mini-bar in your dinky (originally meaning neat and trim) room, barely big enough to be called a junior suite, with the tacky (which used to refer to a small and thus inferior horse) wallpaper? Who would want to make this kind of small talk with such a petty person
Mr. Braud proceeds to list many of the excellent "small" features of our world. Here, I would like to approach the subject a little differently.
First, we seem to be drowning in an insatiable appetite for "more" and "bigger" and "richer" and thereby more powerful. It is not only the English language that derides smallness 'at every turn'. It is our perceptions that turn a small businesss into a bigger business, as the only significant sign of success. If an entrepreneur has one outlet doing well, he must want or develop at least three other outlets to demonstrate his ambition, his commitment and his desire to "grow"...
A church must have 10,000 members in order to demonstrate its "success" as compared with a small mission church with merely 25 members each of whom knows and cares and takes responsibility for the other 24 in a way those 10,000 could not and would not do. And that dynamic of "caring" is known as "community," a place were those 25 are known, respected, spoken with, not at, and nurtured not merely counted, for their presence and their "dollars" in the plate.
The same thing matters in a political party, whose very existence depends on getting the largest number of votes, and therby the largest number of members in a government, and thereby gaining power.
For example, the Liberal Party of Canada is now at one of its lowest nadirs in its history. Membership has fallen and the push is on to "grow the numbers" and "grow the dollars." However, it is not rocket science to wonder out loud if the "goal" of growing the numbers of both members and contributions has to take a back seat to "developing relationships" with the smaller number of members who have remained loyal, who have sweated it out when the party was being decimated and who have started to wonder if they even matter, so important are those "new" associates who, because of a change in the rules, no longer have to become official "members" but who can merely say they are "associates" and that would give the party "bragging rights" to bigger numbers.
And therein lies the black hole. Bigger numbers of people who are merely associated with the party will not necessarily generate more phone calls (of the appropriate kind!), more knocks on more doors, more newsletters, and more letters to the editor, or more social events at the riding level. They will merely be "hanging around" as associates, much like the armies of associates many people have on Facebook, without any of those being "friends".
We need to examine how we nurture relationships, not just how we accumulate those relationships. We need to pause, to reflect and to make a deliberate attempt to "listen" to the wishes and the desires of those already "in the fold" and not merely tap them like a large tree for the sap they might produce in cheques, so that the party can move forward.
Churches across North America have witnessed a vacating of their numbers, their members, because no one listened to those people, no one got to know those people no one cared who those people really are, and what kinds of pain (physical, emotional, economic, psychic) those people were experiencing. And when any church leader attempted to guide, teach, mentor the development of relationships, those leaders were either rejected or "ejected" from their positions because they were too "pushy" or "too ____(fill in the blank) meaning "not one of us and how we do things here."
Relationships between people, and among people do not just happen. They have to be nurtured, and that takes time, and it takes listening and then responding to the "other" and political parties are much better at "talking" than listening, and at asking for money than at asking "who" the person is. And this is not an argument for political parties to replace the lost role of the churches.
If the Liberal Party is to "grow" into a vital, thinking, feeling, sentient organization where people bring their ideas, and where others listen to those ideas, REALLY LISTEN! and where people feel welcome and enthusiastic about their "belonging" then there has to be a culture shift, from the externals and the extrinsics, to the organic and the intrinsics and that is going to take, not a tsunami of numbers but a series of small waves of interest "in the other" which, after all, is the purpose of the political party in the first place....to listen to the needs, aspirations and hopes and fears of the people of the country....A great place to begin would be at the riding level, and the only time to begin is NOW!
One simple way of adopting this idea would be to develop both policies and practices that help every member to develop his or her leadership skills, in the most comfortable and most appropriate way, determined by the member. That is to say, not merely evoking the "skills" of the member, to serve the larger needs of the organization, but using the organization to facilitate the development of other skills for each individual, so there is some enthusiasm attached to belonging, because there is personal growth to the relationship.

A Decade of entente cordiale between unions and management, to restore labour reputation and more harmonious workplaces

A Civil Right to Unionize
By Richard D. Kahlenberg and Moshe Z. Marvit, New York Times, February 29, 2012
FROM the 1940s to the 1970s, organized labor helped build a middle-class democracy in the United States. The postwar period was as successful as it was because of unions, which helped enact progressive social legislation from the Civil Rights Act to Medicare. Since then, union representation of American workers has fallen, in tandem with the percentage of income going to the middle class. Broadly shared prosperity has been replaced by winner-take-all plutocracy.
Corporations will tell you that the American labor movement has declined so significantly — to around 7 percent of the private-sector work force today, from 35 percent of the private sector in the mid-1950s — because unions are obsolete in a global economy, where American workers have to compete against low-wage nonunion workers in other countries. But many vibrant industrial democracies, including Germany, have strong unions despite facing the same pressures from globalization.
Other skeptics suggest that because laws now exist providing for worker safety and overtime pay, American employees no longer feel the need to join unions. But polling has shown that a majority of nonunion workers would like to join a union if they could.
In fact, the greatest impediment to unions is weak and anachronistic labor laws. It’s time to add the right to organize a labor union, without employer discrimination, to Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, because that right is as fundamental as freedom from discrimination in employment and education. This would enshrine what the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. observed in 1961 at an A.F.L.-C.I.O. convention: “The two most dynamic and cohesive liberal forces in the country are the labor movement and the Negro freedom movement. Together, we can be architects of democracy.”
While embedding the right to unionize in the Civil Rights Act in the U.S. may well be needed, in Canada, the official right to strike is enshrined in law.
Our problem is that the public attitude to unions has suffered serious blows in the last two or three decades. This has resulted from many and various factors. Among them are a shift in the public consciousness towards favouring the private corporate capitalistic system, as demonstrated by our neighbour to the south, a shift of support away from public service unions where there are admittedly people taken advantage of the union security to do very little for much of the work day.
Another factor is the size of the public debt in most provinces, all of which pay substantial monies to unionized workers in education, health care, social service institutions like Children's Aid, transportation and of course, firefighters and police.
What we need in Canada is to include curricula in secondary schools about the contributions made by unions over the last century so that such subjects become part of the talk over the kitchen table; we also need for unions to be much more discriminating in their choice of strike targets, along with the timing of those choices. More public awareness of the need for a closer relationship between locals of various unions and the International Labour Organization would do some measure of repair of the reputation of unions in the public mind. Perhaps a decade in which both employers where workers are unionized and those same unions could declare a truce during which time the unions will not strike and the management will neither lock-out nor eliminate jobs.
That kind of mutual commitment, in the face of serious shifts in the global economy, would do much to restore confidence in the public mind that workers in unions and management in those workplaces can and will work together to solve their issues. That would mean a mutual commitment to grievances, to modest salary and benefit increases geared to both profit and revenues inside both the sector of the economy and the specific industry.
Both sides have much to gain from a decade of entente cordiale, during which time a generation of workers will graduate from post secondary education, and will take their place within those unions and inside those workplaces, benefiting from a more stable, secure and more compatible workplace culture generated by collaboration, co-operation and precedent-setting mutual respect, much of which has been lost and needs to be restored.

Propose negotiations with Iran, resist Israel's wish to strike, Mr. Harper.

By Campbell Clark, Globe and Mail, February 29, 2012
Stephen Harper is caught between two allies. As Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu travels to North America in a high-stakes gambit to find political support for a strike on Iran, Mr. Harper wants to back his Israeli ally without ticking off a bigger one in Washington.

The two prime ministers are planning to stand side by side at a press conference on Friday, where Mr. Netanyahu’s case for war to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons is likely to be the hot topic. Mr. Harper faces a decision about whether to endorse it, or urge restraint.
Clearly, the Obama administration is going to urge the Israel Prime Minister to let santions work, and resist attacking Iran's nuclear facilities in a pre-emptive strike that would be perceived as "supported" or "in league" with the U.S. This is, after all, an election year in the U.S. and Obama does not want another war, or the semblance of a war, while he campaigns for a second term.
However, some in the Israeli cabinet believe that they have a window of opportunity to strike between now and summer, after which it will be too late to take out the nuclear capability of Iran. Others, however, argue that such a strike would merely delay the final production of a nuclear weapon by that country. Far from endorsing the proposal to attack Iran, Mr. Harper would be well advised to endorse a proposal for full and immediate negotiations with Iran, especially considering the strength of the argument below that sanctions ultimately will not work, and the world cannot tolerate more violence in the Middle East.
Mr. Harper, a strong ally of Israel, and a man who enjoys centre stage among world leaders, would only enhance his global stature by taking the initiative in proposing a negotiating timetable, and a location possibly even in Canada, to include the U.S., his new "friend" China, and Russia, in an attempt to avert the Israeli strike, the implications and reverberations from which can only be guessed as catastrophic.
Such a bold and courageous step would have the added benefit, for Mr. Harper, of taking the "phone-gate" scandal off the front pages, in favour of a potentially historic initiative for which Harper could claim some "glory" something he receives merely in small packages inside Canada.
By Ali Vaez, from CNN website, February 29, 2012
Why Iran sanctions won't work
Editor's Note: Ali Vaez is the director of Iran Project at the Federation of American Scientists.
The Iranian nuclear crisis is nearing its tenth anniversary. All attempts to resolve the standoff during the past decade have come to naught. There are simply no easy solutions to this conundrum.
For some in the West, however, firm belief in the elixir of crippling sanctions has congealed into a doctrine. It is only a question of time, they argue, but Tehran will eventually give in to “overwhelming force.” The Obama administration’s mastery in marshaling international support for imposing a panoply of draconian sanctions on Iran is beyond doubt. Yet the fundamental premises of this policy are misguided at best, misleading at worst.The first presumption is that by pushing the Iranian theocracy to the brink of economic meltdown with unprecedented sanctions, the regime will capitulate and forfeit its nuclear program to secure its survival. Advocates of this coercive policy evoke historical precedent as a testament to propensity of the custodians of the Iranian revolution to surrender under pressure.
In 1988, the father of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Khomeini, drank the “poison chalice,” and ended the eight-year war with Iraq. His successor, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in 2003 after U.S. invasion of Iraq, gave his consent for suspending uranium enrichment and proposing a grand bargain with Washington.
But 2012 is neither 1988, nor 2003. Also, despite similar spellings of their names, Khamenei is no Khomeini. Khomeini of 1988 was impervious to the domestic backlash of compromising with the enemy due to his personal charisma, political authority and religious credentials. Khameini of 2012 lacks all of those qualities.
Khamenei struggled for more than two decades to adopt the mantle of leadership that was bequeathed to him. Now that he has finally consolidated his position at the pinnacle of power, calling off the storm would be political suicide. Even using scapegoats to shift the blame is no longer an option.
Since the 2009 disputed presidential election, he has increasingly and publicly appropriated all levers of power at his grip. His recent statement that, “pressures, sanctions and assassinations will bear no fruit. No obstacles can stop Iran's nuclear work,” is thus to be expected. Humiliation is not an option for Khamenei.
With Iranian pragmatists and reformists either sitting at their homes or writing their memoirs in exile, the corridors of power in Iran are barren of former dealmakers. Missed opportunities and Western disregard for the moderates’ past openings played into Khamenei’s hands and resulted in the reckless purge of the likes of former presidents Rafsanjani and Khatami. Today, the supreme leader is surrounded by servile sycophants who compete to demonstrate the depth of their animus towards the “Great Satan.”
The second assumption is that once economically weakened and internationally isolated, the Iranian regime will be vulnerable and could collapse by domestic uprising (preferably) or war (if need be).
Yet, regime change is unlikely to usher in a democratic, pro-Western and anti-nuclear government. The proponents of this scenario should ask themselves questions such as: Why did the 2009 uprising come to grief? Why was the Green Movement an ephemeral affair? Why has Iran remained immune to the wave of pro-democracy uprisings in the region?
The answer, in Victor Hugo’s words, is that the Iranian nation, “asks nothing but repose; it thirsts for but one thing, peace. Of great events, great hazards, great adventures, great men, thank God, they have seen enough.” In addition to revolutionary fatigue, absent a viable political alternative, for Iranians there is no obvious choice between anarchy and tyranny.
To make matters worse, the Iranian opposition is in shambles. Brutal repression inside the country has nipped any recalcitrant challengers of the regime in the bud. Lacking organization, planning and vision, the exiled opposition appears inauspiciously divided. Thus, from the ashes of a bloody revolution or a ruinous war ousting the ancien regime, a more formidable and less compromising order is likely to rise. The most probable scenario is that the existing militaristic theocracy will be replaced with an Islamic military regime.
History bears witness to vacuousness of claims that sanctions and war are conduits to Jeffersonian democracy. The Iraqi debacle should hold a mirror to those demanding a repeat of the same folly.
The current Western policy is counterproductive in many ways. It is pushing Khamenei in the wrong direction by increasingly cornering him. It might not be long before he will be compelled to repeat the infamous words of Pakistan's Prime Minister, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, pledging in 1965 to make a nuclear bomb, “even at the cost of eating grass.”
Khamenei’s hostility towards the U.S. might be irreconcilable, but it is not implacable. He has always sought to fine tune the regime’s level of anti-Americanism: Enough to serve as his regime’s ideological cement, but not too much to threaten his ultimate goal of self-preservation. The pendulum of animosity has now swung too far towards confrontation. He would welcome a return to equilibrium.
The West should now test Khamenei’s willingness to accept a face-saving compromise. Although his rhetoric remains bellicose, he might be more amenable to an agreement. The West should not let the perfect be the enemy of the good and take this chance to address, at least, its immediate proliferation concerns, such as capping the level of uranium enrichment and number of advanced centrifuges in Iran’s bunker nuclear facilities. The time is not yet ripe for democracy and better relations with the West. But under the shadow of peace, what seems inconceivable now could be inevitable over time.
The views expressed in this article are solely those of Ali Vaez.