Hedges: cheering the Quebec protesters

By Chris Hedges, from truthdig.com June 3, 2012
I gave a talk last week at Canada’s Wilfrid Laurier University to the Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences. Many in the audience had pinned small red squares of felt to their clothing. The carre rouge, or red square, has become the Canadian symbol of revolt. It comes from the French phrase carrement dans le rouge, or “squarely in the red,” referring to those crushed by debt.
The streets of Montreal are clogged nightly with as many as 100,000 protesters banging pots and pans and demanding that the old systems of power be replaced. The mass student strike in Quebec, the longest and largest student protest in Canadian history, began over the announcement of tuition hikes and has metamorphosed into what must swiftly build in the United States—a broad popular uprising. The debt obligation of Canadian university students, even with Quebec’s proposed 82 percent tuition hike over several years, is dwarfed by the huge university fees and the $1 trillion of debt faced by U.S. college students. The Canadian students have gathered widespread support because they linked their tuition protests to Quebec’s call for higher fees for health care, the firing of public sector employees, the closure of factories, the corporate exploitation of natural resources, new restrictions on union organizing, and an announced increase in the retirement age. Crowds in Montreal, now counting 110 days of protests, chant “On ne lâche pas”—“We’re not backing down.”
Perhaps this cautionary voice is too "purist," letting perfection be the enemy of the good; yet, the original issue, tuition fees, does not merit the kind of protest being mounted by the students.
On the other hand, perhaps the Quebec government is taking a far too narrow view of the reasons behind the protests...if they now think they can solve the issue simply by fixing the tuition issue, they are wrong.
The Quebec government has been struggling for months, if not years, with bungled dealings over the construction industry's cozy relationships with Quebec politicians, and has failed to show leadership on too many fronts, for the protests now to be considered "only about tuition".
On the other hand, social unrest, including thousands of students filling the streets of Montreal is having a chilling effect on the tourism industry for the summer of 2012, set to be the summer of white hot protests, that could easily and feasibly turn violent. Also hundreds of students will fail their year at university, preferring to march in protest of the government's decision to raise tuition.
However, in Quebec, as usual, there is a kind of frenzy, and level of passion and a history of protest against government, against the establishment, that is reflected in the current protests, as it was in the former sovereignist campaigns for separation.
If the protest morphs into another for separation, as it surely will, those advocating for the continuation and the deepening of its scale, will, in effect, be championing the break-up of Canada. And while there is a chorus of voices in the rest of Canada who sing the song, "Quebec, let her go!" there are also millions more who resist both that line and its political implications.
While there is profound and multi-varied reasons for a North American protest against the 1% who comprise the oligarchy, and tuition fee hikes could be the spark that ignites that wider protest, there is a real danger that the protests, and the protesters could and likely will lose control of their followers and their message, and, by default, become agents of forces beyond their control.
And while Mr. Hedges' motives for a sea change in the way the economy works, in both Canada and the U.S., are honourable, visionary and worthy, there is real danger in seeing Quebec as the locus for a North American movement to topple the 1% by the 99%.

Siddiqui: Bomb Assad; Landis: Stay out of Syria

By Haroon Siddiqui, Toronto Star, June 2, 2012 
The world is “outraged,” “appalled,” “shocked,” “horrified,” etc. at the three recent grisly massacres of Syrian civilians by the Bashar Assad regime. But the international community has struck such poses before in the aftermath of similar atrocities in the last 15 months, without doing much beyond hand-wringing and tossing some cash at the worsening crisis.
The murderous regime in Damascus calculated — rightly — that NATO was not going to mount another Libya-like intervention. France and Britain were mired in economic crises. Barack Obama was embroiled in his re-election campaign during which he was not going to risk another foreign adventure, having withdrawn from Iraq and announced a pullout from Afghanistan. And Israel was going to remain detached as long as Assad kept his border with Israel quiet, which he was cunning enough to do.
So the Syrians were not going to be rescued the way the Bosnians, Kosovars and Libyans had been.
Kofi Annan’s “peace plan” was a farce from the start. A mere 300 unarmed observers were not going to patrol a 185,180-square-kilometre country and stop its rampaging army and militias. Assad was not going to cease fire, let alone pave the way for “multiple-party democracy.” He had made many such promises before, only to break them.
Either he is a habitual liar, as the Turkish Prime Minister Tyyip Erdogan called him months ago, or he’s not his own man — or that he very much is, in the mould of his father Hafez Assad, who massacred up to 20,000 dissident Sunnis in Hama in 1982.
The Assads have been a breed apart, like Saddam Hussein, who gassed tens of thousands of his own rebelling citizens.
It has also long been clear that Syria was not Tunisia and Egypt where professional armies ushered unpopular presidents out. Assad and his minority Alawite clan were going to fight to the death, as had Moammar Gadhafi.
It was equally evident that Bashar Assad was no more of a “reformer” than the sons of other dictators — Said al-Islam and Saad Gadhafi, Gamal and Alaa Mubarak, Crown Prince Salman Khalifa of Bahrain, and others.
They had been marketed as westernized liberals, believers in democratic reforms (as long as they were not too rushed) and the glories of crony capitalism, privatization and philanthropy, from which our corporations and institutions, including universities, benefited — in return for lending a hand in the rebranding the young pashas. Hadn’t Hillary Clinton and several members of Congress called Assad “a reformer?”
Now even the Annan pretense of “doing something” is being abandoned.
Clinton conceded Monday that “we are nowhere near putting together any kind of coalition other than to alleviate the suffering. There’s all kinds of civilian and humanitarian and military planning going on but the factors are just not there,” the factors being the Russian and Chinese vetoes at the Security Council.
There are other excuses.
Syria is not isolated Libya. Its armed forces are bigger than Libya’s and its air defences stronger. Its crazy quilt of religions, sects and ethnicities — Sunnis, Shiites, Christians, Kurds, etc. — raises the spectre of civil war. Its opposition is badly divided.
But sanctions alone will not topple Assad any more than the sanctions on Iraq (1993-2003) toppled Saddam. Sanctions generally hurt not those in power but ordinary people, as in Iraq where 1 million died a slow death, half of them children, according to the UN.
The best way to avoid a civil war in Syria is to end the Assad regime.
Prolonged crises and the breakdown of law and order only empower individual thugs, criminal gangs and ultimately political militias that are often proxies for outside powers, leaving the citizenry no option but to retreat into the armed safety of tribe, sect and religion from which societies take years to emerge.
We have seen this in Lebanon (1975-90), Afghanistan (1989-2001) and Iraq (2003 onward).
After the cold-blooded murder of 12,000 Syrians and the maiming of tens of thousands more, it’s time to invoke the Canadian/United Nations principle of R2P, responsibility to protect civilians from being massacred by their own rulers.
Assad needs to be given a short deadline that he must leave with his family to a pre-arranged exile or face the bombing of his palaces and that of his cronies, as well as his air defences, and the barracks of his army and militias.
Haroon Siddiqui is the Star’s editorial page editor emeritus. His column appears on Thursday and Sunday. hsiddiqui@thestar.ca

Stay out of Syria
 By Josh Landis, from Syria Comment, June 2, 2012
The US, Europe and the Gulf states want regime change in Syria so they are starving the regime and feeding the opposition. They have sanctioned Syria to a fare-thee-well and are busy shoveling money and arms to the rebels. This will change the balance of power in favor of the revolution. Crudely put, the US is pursuing regime-change by civil-war. This is the most it can and should do.

President Obama does not want to intervene directly in Syria for obvious reasons. The US has failed at nation-building twice before in the Middle East. Some suggest that the “third time is a charm,” but Americans should not risk it. Voodoo policy analysis is not what the US needs today. Arguing that if only the US had done things differently in Iraq, Iraqis would not have radicalized or fallen into emulous factionalism is hokum. We must not allow ourselves to be talked into direct intervention in Syria today. Every student of the Middle East knows that Iraq had little sense of national political community to hold it together. The fact that it fell apart when the US Roto-Rootered Saddam’s regime should have been expected. The same thing is likely in Syria. Civil war and radicalization may not be avoidable. Syrians have many hard choices to make about their future. The chances that they will make them peacefully are small.
With America’s economy in the dumps, its military badly bruised, its reputation among Muslims in tatters, and its people fatigued by nation-building gone awry, this is no time to launch an intervention in Syria.
Military intervention would undoubtedly be expensive and dangerous. In all likelihood it would back-fire, leaving the US in possession of a broken Syria in desperate need of rebuilding. Syria is a nation the size of Iraq with insufficient sources of revenue. It produces little the world wants to buy. It hardly produces enough electricity for three hours of coverage a day. The school system is in a shambles. Government institutions will fall apart once the revolution wins. They are staffed by Baathists, recruited for loyalty to the regime and the Assad family. No revolutionary government will rehire them. They will purge them from top to bottom and employ the hundreds of thousands of jobless Syrians who have sacrificed for the revolution, lost family and struggled in the face of tyranny. Anyone who believes that Syria will avoid the excesses of Iraq, where the military, government ministries, and Baath Party were dissolved and criminalized is dreaming. If the US becomes militarily involved by destroying the presidential palace and military installations, it will own Syria.There will be no military to keep order and stop potential looting. If disorder and civil strife breaks out when the regime is destroyed, will the US feel obliged to step in? Will it discipline the 60 militias that now claim to represent the revolutionary forces? If the death toll rises after the regime falls, will the US surge its forces to stop the killing?
Already the Syrian opposition has asked for 12 billion dollars in start up money for the first six months when they come to power. This is chicken feed. Anyone who knows anything about Syria’s 24 million inhabitants, knows that they will need a lot more than 12 billion to stabilize and help rebuild Syria. The US spends 12 billion dollars every three months in Afghanistan. In 2010, the US was spending $6.7 billion in Afghanistan every month compared with $5.5 billion in Iraq. Few Americans believe this money was well spent. To believe that Syria would cost less is rash.
The US has been down the road of nation-building in the Middle East before. It is not good at it. The US wants regime-change without the responsibilities. Many pundits argue that the US must dive into Syria directly rather than build up the opposition slowly, but that would be a fool’s errand. If the US has learned anything, it is that it cannot sort out issues of power-sharing and national identity for Middle Eastern countries. The road to national unity cannot be paved in Washington. In the end, Syrians must find their own way and choose their own national leaders. Ahmad Chalabi and Hamid Karzai seemed like good choices when they were first held up. They had many winning qualities and looked better than the alternatives. But they turned out not to be the right leaders for Iraq and Afghanistan. There is no indication that the US could do a better job of picking winners in Syria. Burhan Ghalioun, the leader of the Syrian National Council, seemed to have all the qualities of a future Syrian president: he is Sunni, French educated, and has a long history of espousing liberalism, moderation, and democracy. But it only took months before leaders in his own party attacked him for treason, dictatorship and dishonesty and forced him to resign. Today, the Syrian opposition is leaderless. Over sixty militias are competing on the ground for cash and Kalashnikovs.
Already, we are being told that if we had only intervened earlier with our military, Syrians would have been unified, liberal and moderate. Only because we have delayed, they are becoming radical and and Islamized. This is not a convincing argument. Syrians are divided because they have no tradition of unity and the Baath has destroyed politics for 50 years. Nothing America can do will erase that legacy of political underdevelopment.
It seems heartless to stand by and do so little as massacres such as that carried out at Houla continue. More than 13 thousand Syrians have been killed in the last 14 months of revolution. All the same US intervention is not the solution. American troops killed over 10 thousand Iraqis in the first month of invasion in 2003. They killed a further 120,000 Iraqis in anger by the time the country was stabilized and safe to leave – and even then Iraq remains in turmoil and a new dictatorship seems to be taking shape. Car bombs are a daily occurrence in Baghdad.
In all likelihood, the Syrian revolution will be less bloody if Syrians carry it out for themselves. A new generation of national leaders will emerge from the struggle. They will not emerge with any legitimacy if America hands them Syria as a gift. How will they claim that they won the struggle for dignity, freedom and democracy? America cannot give these things. Syrians must take them. America can play a role with aid, arms and intelligence, but it cannot and should not try to decide Syria’s future, determine winners, and take charge of Syria. If Syrians want to own Syria in the future, they must own the revolution and find their own way to winning it. It is better for Syria and it is better for America.

Tabatha Southey: Ontario Archbishop chooses the wrong cause to play the martyr

By Tabatha Southey, Globe and Mail, June 2, 2012
This week, Cardinal Thomas Collins, the Archbishop of Toronto, issued a long statement protesting against the Liberal Ontario government’s announcement that its anti-bullying legislation, Bill 13, will include specific language protecting school groups supporting gay students. In an important reversal, the bill now states that the students must be allowed to call their clubs Gay-Straight Alliances (GSAs) or a similar name if they so choose.

No more euphemisms. If anyone’s interested, the names The Sensitive Youth Association, The Just-Haven’t-Met-the-Right-Girl-Yet Choristers and The Very Close-Knit Society of Right Girls are now up for grabs.

Sadly, Cardinal Collins seems to view this admirable move, born of long consultation with students, as tantamount to forcing the junior kindergarten to hold story time down in the catacombs. “When religious freedom becomes a second-class right, you also will eventually be affected,” he ominously warned members of other religious groups.
If there’s a God, and he happens to be on the side of the Catholics, I’m pretty sure he responded by saying something like “Nooooo!” and banging his head against a cloud. Clearly, if one had a vested interest in keeping the Catholic school system alive, one would seek to draw as few comparisons as possible between Catholics, who receive $7-billon annually in provincial funding for their schools, and other religions, whose schools receive none.
The Cardinal may not get as much sympathy as he is expecting from the general public on this matter: When it comes to religious freedom, most people draw a clear distinction between you going to whatever church picnic you choose and the rest of us being forced to cater it.
I imagine there are groups out there who would gladly call their school Our Lady of RuPaul to get a piece of the Catholic-school budget, so it might not go over well to all, but add yourself to the long list of Catholic martyrs because you’re being told that it’s impossible to create a welcoming, inclusive, safe environment for gay students if you won’t even let them use the word “gay.”
This might be the wrong fight to pick: Polls show that most people in Ontario support the existence of GSAs.
GSAs don’t make kids gay. No one says, “I don’t have anything after school on Tuesdays, and I can’t play chess. I think I’ll be gay!”
These clubs are being founded by students who have specifically identified the bullying of gay students as a distinct issue and who aim to offer peer support because most people, and ironically Catholics are very big on this one, are against suicide – which is too often the outcome of being gay, alone and bullied at school.
I’m skeptical of Cardinal Collins’s claim that Catholic schools can be “loving and welcoming places for everyone” when the Pastoral Guidelines distributed by bishops to aid Catholic schools in dealing with issues of sexuality state that “sexual activity which is outside marriage cannot be condoned, and is taught by the church to be immoral. This includes masturbation, fornication and adultery, and sexual activity with a person of the same sex.”
Catholic doctrine is – and once again, they have been very frank about this – entirely incompatible with the idea that gay sexuality is as valid as any other form of human sexuality. Therefore, the teachings of that church are incompatible with equality as defined by our laws. In a secular society, this conversation should have ended 15 years ago.
By fighting so hard against its own students’ compassionate impulses to help one another, the Catholic school board is hastening a battle it will inevitably lose.
I don’t believe for a second that the Cardinal, or most other Catholics, want gay kids to be tormented in their schools. The problem is that dealing with the issue “using methods that are in harmony with the faith we cherish,” as the Cardinal asks to be allowed to do, means that an exceptionally vulnerable minority will be told that it is a sin to act on or even fantasize about any attraction to a member of the same sex at any point in their lifetime.
Going to school every day under the weight of being a walking, breathing sin is bound to cause hopelessness. And when we invest in education, a state of hopelessness is the very opposite of what we hope to achieve.
These young people aren’t asking merely for tolerance of something church authorities deem to be a sin. They’re not asking for non-sinners’ prayers to be aimed at healing their most profound longings – in essence, at who they are. They’re asking to be safe, equal and gay, gay, gay.
Say it a few times. You’ll get used to it.

ELA research facility axed by environmentally challenged Harper gang

By Shawn McCarthy, Globe and Mail, June 1, 2012
For six years, Cynthia Gilmour, senior scientist at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, led a research team that annually poured a teaspoon of mercury isotope, diluted in water, into a small, remote lake in Northwestern Ontario.

The international project was being conducted in the federally funded Experimental Lakes Area (ELA), a unique outdoor laboratory for ecosystem research consisting of 58 lakes and their drainage areas.
Dr. Gilmour and her colleagues from the United States and Canada wanted to determine the environmental impacts of new deposits of mercury – a powerful brain toxin – into a lake that already had high background levels. The ELA was the one place in the world where they could do that.

The centre has hosted a number of groundbreaking research projects over its 55 years, including major advances in the understanding of lake acidification and eutrophication – the destruction of a body of water through the addition of nutrients such as phosphates and nitrates.
Now, as part of its spending restraint, the Harper government has announced that Fisheries and Oceans Canada will stop funding the Experimental Lakes Area and close the world-renowned research centre by next April if a new operator cannot be found.
Supporters from Canada and across the world are signing an online petition and writing letters urging the government to reverse that decision, arguing the centre is irreplaceable.
Former top researchers at the centre say the decision is emblematic of the government’s anti-science approach to environmental policy and its emphasis on resource development with little regard for impacts on the ecosystem unless they affect commercially important fish stocks.
“I think they are uninterested in the environment and scientific research into the environment,” said John Rudd, who served as chief scientist at ELA and now consults for private labs. “They don’t want to see things that might get in the way of promoting industry.”...
Its supporters say the research in real-world conditions actually saves money for governments and industry by avoiding costly mistakes that result from ineffectual policy and wrong-headed regulation.

David Schindler, the University of Alberta biologist who has made waves with his research into the impact of the oil sands, has also been affiliated with the ELA, doing work on eutrophication. After studying the effect of both phosphates and nitrates on algae production, he advised the City of Winnipeg not to undertake an expensive effort to remove nitrates from sewage because the benefit would be negligible.
In the mercury-related research, scientists found that newly introduced mercury enters the food chain far more quickly than existing sources and that lakes and aquatic life recover quickly when deposits stop.
Dr. Gilmour said the research – primarily funded by U.S. institutions – helped persuade American regulators to force utilities to remove the element from the emissions of coal-fired power plants, with the expectation the move would save tens of billions of dollars annually in health costs associated with mercury poisoning. Canadian regulators have yet to respond.
In a letter written last week, Dr. Gilmour asked Mr. Ashfield (Minister of Fisheries) to reconsider the decision to close the centre.

“By shutting ELA you remove a critical tool for finding the most reasonable and cost-effective solutions to national and international environmental issues,” she wrote. “The small federal investment in the research station has been returned thousands of times over in public and ecosystem health.”
Now that four former ministers of Fisheries, two from Progressive Conservative governments and two from former Liberal governments have publicly criticised the government for its budget cutting approach to the fisheries, we find that one of the specific research facilities that has provided outstanding and critical research, in co-operation with the United States, is being axed by the "environmentally challenged" if not completely "tone deaf" to science of any kind, Harper government.
Preferring to keep all doors to "industrial promotion" open, for this government, means closing the doors of such facilities that might provide empirical data directing future developments, for both the public and the private sectors. Once again, there is no "grey" area in the "mind" of this government. (And it may be a stretch to include the word, "mind" in the same sentence with this "government." That may be oxymoronic!)
We are learning that activists from a variety of perspectives are planning public protests to block, stall, or even reverse the passage of the "fruit-cake" budget bill. I call it that because the government seems to have decided that by including so many non-budget, or tangentially budget related at best, items in the budget, they could get away with many deeply divisive political moves that would, if debated on their own, in single issue bills, would cause so much political uproar, the government would still be reeling from the fall-out in three years when the election rolls around.
So, on its merits, the ELA deserves to be saved from this government's axe.
And on the methods being used to camouflage the various and nefarious cuts, in the ostensible name of "austerity" but really in the name of the neo-con ideology, this government must be opposed by all legitimate means available to all citizens and political parties alike.
An Open Letter to the Stephen Harper:
By TOM SIDDON, DAVID ANDERSON, JOHN FRASER AND HERB DHALIWAL
(all former ministers of the Fisheries)
From Globe and Mail, June 1, 2012
Dear Prime Minister Harper:

As privy councillors from British Columbia who have served as ministers of Fisheries and Oceans in past federal governments, we wish to inform you of our serious concern regarding the content of Bill C-38 and the process being used to bring it into force.
We have had lengthy and varied political experience and collectively have served in cabinet in Progressive Conservative and Liberal governments alike. We believe we have a fair understanding of the views of Canadians. Moreover, we believe there is genuine public concern over the perceived threat this legislation poses to the health of Canada’s environment and in particular to the well-being of its fisheries resources. We are especially alarmed about any possible diminution of the statutory protection of fish habitat, which we feel could result if the provisions of Bill C-38 are brought into force. Migratory salmon and steelhead are icons of our home province. Our experience convinces us that their continued survival would be endangered without adequate federal regulation and enforcement, particularly in the area of habitat protection.

Krugman: The Austerity Agenda...gut the social programs, and defeat Obama

By Paul Krugman, New York Times, May 31, 2012
The great American economist Irving Fisher explained it all the way back in 1933, summarizing what he called “debt deflation” with the pithy slogan “the more the debtors pay, the more they owe.” Recent events, above all the austerity death spiral in Europe, have dramatically illustrated the truth of Fisher’s insight.

And there’s a clear moral to this story: When the private sector is frantically trying to pay down debt, the public sector should do the opposite, spending when the private sector can’t or won’t. By all means, let’s balance our budget once the economy has recovered — but not now. The boom, not the slump, is the right time for austerity.
As I said, this isn’t a new insight. So why have so many politicians insisted on pursuing austerity in slump? And why won’t they change course even as experience confirms the lessons of theory and history?
Well, that’s where it gets interesting. For when you push “austerians” on the badness of their metaphor, they almost always retreat to assertions along the lines of: “But it’s essential that we shrink the size of the state.”
Now, these assertions often go along with claims that the economic crisis itself demonstrates the need to shrink government. But that’s manifestly not true. Look at the countries in Europe that have weathered the storm best, and near the top of the list you’ll find big-government nations like Sweden and Austria.
And if you look, on the other hand, at the nations conservatives admired before the crisis, you’ll find George Osborne, Britain’s chancellor of the Exchequer and the architect of the country’s current economic policy, describing Ireland as “a shining example of the art of the possible.” Meanwhile, the Cato Institute was praising Iceland’s low taxes and hoping that other industrial nations “will learn from Iceland’s success.”
So the austerity drive in Britain isn’t really about debt and deficits at all; it’s about using deficit panic as an excuse to dismantle social programs. And this is, of course, exactly the same thing that has been happening in America.
In fairness to Britain’s conservatives, they aren’t quite as crude as their American counterparts. They don’t rail against the evils of deficits in one breath, then demand huge tax cuts for the wealthy in the next (although the Cameron government has, in fact, significantly cut the top tax rate). And, in general, they seem less determined than America’s right to aid the rich and punish the poor. Still, the direction of policy is the same — and so is the fundamental insincerity of the calls for austerity.
The big question here is whether the evident failure of austerity to produce an economic recovery will lead to a “Plan B.” Maybe. But my guess is that even if such a plan is announced, it won’t amount to much. For economic recovery was never the point; the drive for austerity was about using the crisis, not solving it. And it still is.
Dismantling social programs, first, demonstrates an attitude, even a fixation, not about economics but about selfishness, and about a lack of compassion, sensitivity and empathy as values/virtues unworthy of the name.
In a world drowning in globalization/competition/profiteering where making the most money, in the most efficient way possible, regardless of the "human" cost, and where all measures of everything are about how the person, or the thing rates in comparison with the competition, those comparisons and those competitions, and all of their strengths and weaknesses, have become THE barometer by which to measure all things.
So reducing all variables to numbers, and preferably to dollars, in a cost/benefit analysis, stampedes the international public discourse leaving any discussion of how we might be killing ourselves, our environment, our children and our way of life to the "effetes" who really have no place at the "boardroom table"...those tables that have become the altar in this new religion.
Those "effetes" include the dangerous environmentalists, the pacifists, the labour unions, the public service workers like teachers, firefighters, police and utilities workers who keep the water flowing in and the sewers flowing out of our homes and into the recycling labs for re-use...all of those who, by the cost-benefit analysis of the glib public accounting, do not pay their way, but drain the public purse through their work.
Along with the marginalization of the "effetes" goes the elimination of the programs that were designed to level the playing field by providing access to quality, affordable universal health care, to pre-school programs, to food stamp programs, to pensions and employment insurance programs, all of these considered redundant by those who have no need for any of them, having inherited or invested their way to huge off-shore bank accounts.
The most devout christians, ironically, are the most "darwinian" in their silent but universal endorsement of the survival of the fittest, in social and political terms, as demonstrated by their commitment to the "Norquist" pledge of no new taxes, and the accompanying destruction of government as a legitimate player in the nations crisis.
In Wisconsin, on Tuesday, there is a recall vote, in a public attempt to remove the current governor who has become the poster-boy for the Tea Party, and the right wing in his dismantling of public service unions, their right to collective bargaining and the public pensions contracted by previous state legislatures in different economic and cultural times. Truckloads of cash have been flowing into the state in support of his attempt to retain his governor's mansion, by those seeking to make Wisconsin a "test case" for the rest of the United States, a battlefield for the dismantling of the social programs that, if they win, will be fought across the nation, right up to and including the November presidential election.
In Canada, we have already seen several examples of a federal government dismantling labour unions which strike, only to find themselves ordered back to work, in the "interest of the economy" because after all, the government believes that we are all here for a single purpose: to feed the monster of the national economy, as measured by their terms, terms which, not incidentally, do not include protection of the environment, protection of the national retirement age of 65 (they have already moved it to 67, although the program is demonstrably viable and sustainable for decades).
It was Rahm Emmanuel, then the President's Chief of Staff, who declared back in 2009, shortly after the inauguration of President Obama, "A crisis is a terrible thing to waste!"...
And his words have become a mantra for all the political operatives seeking to dismantle government by gutting the social programs that bring government services to the most vulnerable and the most needy, in a fallacious argument that only by eliminating government programs will we be able to afford to pay the bills, cut the debt and the deficit.
Already, the crisis in the U.S. has provided cover to the Republicans to obstruct all attempts at governing in the national interests, addicted as they are to the "one-term Obama presidency" bumper sticker.
Now, they are demonstrating their subservience to the dogma, "gut the social programs" as the route to demonstrating that government is the problem.
Both bumper stickers are lies, and they know that they are.
However, their need for personal power, through the achievement of their agenda, financed by their deep-pocketed, self-interested donors, is clearly trumping the national interest.

Reaching out to "touch" drop-outs brings 75% back to school in Toronto

By Kate Hammer, Globe and Mail, May 31, 2012
Hundreds of students who nearly didn’t complete high school are being fitted for graduation caps and gowns thanks to a simple solution: reaching out and talking to them.

Each school year, thousands of Canadian students quit school between September and June. They miss a few assignments, stop coming to class and don’t register for classes for the next fall. Last school year at the Toronto District School Board, there were 1,667 Grade 11 and 12 students who met this description.
Boosting graduation rates is a priority across Canada. The Canadian Council on Learning estimates that high-school dropouts cost taxpayers $1.3-billion in social assistance and criminal justice expenses each year.

Canada’s largest school board has come up with a new approach to bringing students back to the fold. Starting in mid-August last year, a team of four retired teachers and guidance counsellors worked the phones for two weeks, dialled every phone number they could find and refused to settle for answering machines or voice-mail.
They reached all but 15 students and convinced 864 to come back. Nearly 300 will graduate by the end of June, and hundreds more are back on track towards achieving their high-school diplomas.
“We were reaching out and saying basically, ‘We miss you, come back,’” said Christopher Usih, the TDSB’s superintendent of student success, who led the project. “We’re quite pleased with the result.”
Across Canada, slightly more than 70 per cent of all 19-year-olds had completed high school in 2008, according to Statistics Canada. Graduation rates have generally climbed since then, and Ontario’s sits at 82 per cent thanks in part to student re-engagement grants from the province, like the one that paid for the TDSB telephone campaign. (The TDSB sits slightly below the provincial average, with a 79-per-cent graduation rate that has climbed from 69 per cent in 2000.)
Educators often devote time in September to reaching out to students who registered but didn't show up for class. These initiatives are usually launched at the school level and often involve e-mails or robo-calls.
That’s what happens at the Winnipeg School Division, according to Doug Edmond, director of research, planning and systems management. Mr. Edmond said the smallest schools are most likely to reach out in person, but it’s ultimately up to principals.
The TDSB sought out every student district-wide, including those who hadn't registered for classes, but it's the personal touch to their approach that made all the difference, according to Bruce Ferguson, a professor at the University of Toronto and expert on why students drop out.
“It makes the kids believe they’re worthwhile, that’s why it works,” he said.
Ashley Saunders, 18, was among the first students the TDSB reached. She has a learning disability and a hearing impairment that made high school a struggle. She became frustrated with the school system when she failed her Grade 12 anthropology course, leaving her one credit shy of her diploma.
Ms. Saunders was shocked last August when she found a personal message from a retired teacher – a real human being – on her home answering machine asking her to come back to school.
“I’d been out of school for almost two months, so it made me feel taken aback,” she said. “I was like, ‘Someone cares.’”
Hats off to the TDSB and its leaders and thinkers!
It is not rocket science to learn about how fragile some students really are, nor about how little it takes to "touch them" with a simple invitation, an indication that someone cares.
It is also a scathing criticism of how detached and disinterested most people are about others, when this kind of phone campaign can have such a dramatic impact, with this group of drop-outs-turned-graduates.
Would such an approach work in all boards across the country? It's worth a try!
And, next let's make sure those kids already in the classroom are also being "touched" by caring, passionate and creative teachers who are getting to know and getting to recommend even the most subtle, and perhaps insignificant change in a student's attitude, beliefs and actions, that might make the difference between a graduate and another drop-out.
Let's also hope that those same teachers are inspiring other teachers, and not being labelled "too close to the students" or "too soft" or "too liberal"...by their colleagues.
There is a culture in the staff room of most schools that often seems to disdain the teacher who gets to know the students, as if such personal knowledge and contact are outside the professional limits of the teachers' purview.
I recall one grade twelve student asking to speak to me after class one Spring day. When we met, I listened to a true tale of tragedy, including facts about her father literally throwing her down the basement stairs in their home, and her question, "What can I do?"
We looked at some options, including sources of support already within her circle. A few tears were shed, and she departed peacefully after only fifteen minutes or so.
I, on the other hand, sat dumbfounded at the depth of her physical and emotional pain and also at my own innocence that such stories were part of the culture of the classroom in that town at that time. How could I either forget or ignore her story, a story that shaped much of my thinking and perception for the remaining decade-plus of my teaching career?
I couldn't. And didn't. And wont still, decades later.
We can all be grateful, as well as impressed that real people are having a positive influence on the lives of students even after they have "apparently" dropped out of the system. And who knows which of those returnees might someday be operating in a local Operating Room, or an Emergency Room, or a Courtroom in a small town, having graduated from both undergraduate studies and a professional program of their choice?

Mulcair treading "where angels fear to tred"...now let's hear from Rae!

By Josh Wingrove, Globe and Mail, May 31, 2012
Mr. Mulcair was more statesman than firebrand in his whirlwind tour of Edmonton and Fort McMurray, which began late Wednesday and concluded on Thursday afternoon. He’d visited Alberta before, but never the oil sands, and not as party leader.

He sidestepped attacks and toned down his language – in particular, referring to the “oil sands,” and not the “tar sands,” a term he had often used, but which carries a negative connotation in the West.
“They’re bitumen sands, because the chemicals are neither oil nor tar. But if removing that linguistic impediment can make the conversation easier, I’m not going to keep it in place intentionally,” Mr. Mulcair said.
He nonetheless stuck to his arguments, which he has repeated often but only this month erupted into a war of words with western premiers. Environmental oversight of the oil sands is subpar, he said, and the federal government should enforce its laws. “They’re not even interested in doing the right thing on the environment.”
Cracking down would force polluters to pay and clean up their act, rather than getting a “bit of a free ride in terms of using the air, the soil or the water,” he said. He repeated his calls for a cap-and-trade limit on carbon pollution.
Mr. Mulcair also repeated his belief that Canada suffers, in part, from a phenomenon known as Dutch disease – as the energy sector drives up the dollar, other industries suffer, including manufacturing. Two major reports have at least partly agreed with his contention; another, released this week, disputed it.
Finally, the NDP Leader said Canada should upgrade and refine oil sands bitumen rather than exporting it raw.
If Mr. Mulcair's visit has three public messages:

1. that requiring extractors to pay the costs of environmental recovery, protection and sustainability from the "bitumen sands" is not being done now and needs to be done
2. that we should refine that bitumen in Canada
3. that a petro-dollar is impacting the industrial sector with high prices on exports

then why such an outcry from western provincial leaders about his statements...The first two are indisputable, while the third is marginally applicable, if not the sole reason for loss of exports and manufacturing.
"Tarring" Mr. Mulcair as a wild socialist, which he has vowed not to be, and never was anyway, and as "threatening" and "harmful" to Alberta (as the Opposition Leader did) is childish, immature and narcissistically short-sighted.
Alberta does not, will not and must not, even with the Harper "endorsement," stride the national landscape like a colossus. We, in the rest of Canada, respect and honour their heritage of abundant, and currently saleable,  resources, without bowing systematically to all of the whims of the corporate leaders of that resource extraction industry.
And because we take a longer term view, and because we are interested in setting and enforcing standards of extraction and environmental protection, we are not betrayers of the national interest, as some would suggest.
In fact, the Mulcair visit and position is far more reasonable than we might have expected. He might have threatened to nationalize the extracting companies, and put them under the thumb of the federal government. That would certainly have been political suicide for him, and would have resulted in a public wailing not heard since Pierre Trudeau attempted his own national energy policy.
Let's get rid of the "east-versus-west" conflict that may make some puffy and huffy headlines but really does very little to contribute to the national policy debate or agenda.
And that requires national leadership, something the Harper government has shown itself quite short on.
At least in Mulcair, we have a leader who is treading "where angels fear to tred" in Canadian historic terms, and putting some risk in his steps, knowing that both reason and responsibility are on his side.
Now, let's hear from Mr. Rae, about the Liberal position on the need for both environmental protection and restoration of the oil sands, and Canadian refining of the extractions.