Are we watching the demise of professional writers?

By John Barber, Globe and Mail, July 24, 2012
Ewan Morrison is an established British writer with a credit-choked resume and a new book out, Tales from the Mall, that the literary editor of the venerable Guardian newspaper hailed as “a really important step towards a literature of the 21st century.”
By his own account, Morrison is also being driven out of business by the ominously feudal economics of 21st-century literature, “pushed into the position where I have to join the digital masses,” he says, the cash advances he once received from publishers slashed so deep he is virtually working for free.
“I’ve been making culture professionally for 20 years, and going back to working on spec again seems to be a very retrograde step,” Morrison says. “But it’s something a lot of established writers are having to do.”
And not only them: From the heights of the literary pantheon to the lowest trenches of hackery, where contributors to digital “content farms” are paid as little as 10 cents for every 1,000 times readers click on their submissions, writers of every stature are experiencing the same pressure. Authors are losing income as sales shift to heavily discounted, royalty-poor and easily pirated ebooks. Journalists are suffering pay cuts and job losses as advertising revenue withers. Floods of amateurs willing to work for nothing are chasing freelance writers out of the trade. And all are scrambling to salvage their livelihoods as the revolutionary doctrine of “free culture” obliterates old definitions of copyright.
The economic trajectory of writing today is “a classic race to the bottom,” according to Morrison, who has become a leading voice of the growing counter-revolution – writers fighting fiercely to preserve the traditional ways. “It looks like a lot of fun for the consumer. You get all this stuff for very, very cheap,” he says. But the result will be the destruction of vital institutions that have supported “the highest achievements in culture in the past 60 years.”
In short, he predicts, “There will be no more professional writers in the future.”
Many will cheer, Morrison admits, including the more than one million new authors who have outflanked traditional gatekeepers by “publishing” their work in Amazon’s online Kindle store. “All these people I’m sure are very happy to hear they’re demolishing the publishing business by creating a multiplicity of cheap choices for the reader,” Morrison says. “I beg to differ.”
So does bestselling novelist and lawyer Scott Turow, current president of the influential Author’s Guild. He has drawn heavy criticism from digital partisans for defending the diminishing rights of “legacy publishers” currently under U.S. Justice Department investigation for allegedly fixing ebook prices.
Predatory price wars initiated by market behemoth Amazon directly devalue the written word, according to Turow. So does the willingness of young writers to work for nothing in the hope of future rewards. “You can’t be a professional writer unless you get paid for it,” he says.
“The third peril,” Turow adds, “is the generalized assault on copyright from the book pirates on one hand and the [free content] people on the other.”
Digital self-publishing may work for already established authors, according to Turow, “but it’s one more instance of the winner-take-all economy. It doesn’t allow young writers to flourish and it is not in my judgment a good thing.”
Nor is self-publishing profitable for the majority of authors, according to a recent British survey. It found that half of the writers – many no doubt lured by well-publicized tales of spectacular success achieved by a handful of fellow novices – made less than $500 a year for their efforts.
To Authors Guild members who have embraced digital opportunities and resent the president’s defence of the status quo, Turow has a ready answer. “I say, ‘I’m really glad publishers are no longer barricading your way to a readership. But that doesn’t mean, if you were able to choose tomorrow, you wouldn’t rather get paid in advance.’ ”
The livelihoods of serious writers will continue to depend directly on the health of traditional publishers, “the venture capitalists of the intellectual world,” according to Turow.
As if to prove the point, self-publishing stars who have grown rich selling 99-cent novels online, including young-adult author Amanda Hocking and Fifty Shades creator E.L. James, all sign what Morrison calls “a proper publishing deal” as soon as they are able.
“It just goes to show you can’t have it both ways,” the British author adds. “You can’t on the one hand say, ‘This is a revolution that’s going to sweep away the hierarchies of the publishing houses,’ and at the same time say, ‘Hey, you big guys, give us a deal.’ ”
Writers’ Union of Canada chair Merilyn Simonds likewise challenges what she sees as the magical thinking of the free-content movement. “Younger generations are so steeped in consumerism I think sometimes they don’t understand where that’s taking them,” she says. “Who benefits from all this free content? Google. They’re making enormous profits from free content.”
So are entrepreneurs like Arianna Huffington, who built and sold a $315-million business by “aggregating” other writers’ work.
By contrast, the average annual income of a Writers’ Union member is $11,000, according to Simonds. And the union is currently facing “decades of litigation” over copyright law and collective licensing agreements in an effort to protect those paltry incomes from further erosion.
“Is this the Canada we want?” she asked after a recent Supreme Court decision that extended the rights of educators to photocopy books without compensating writers. “A Canada that has to import its literature because it forced its own creators to work for free until eventually they gave up?”
All the critics admit that the digital revolution has brought tremendous opportunities as well as challenges, and many are working assiduously to exploit those opportunities. Derek Finkle of the Canadian Writers Group, an agency that represents more than 100 non-fiction writers, touts the recent success his clients have achieved online. Paula Todd went straight to Kindle with her recent long article about Karla Homolka, while Russell Smith found online sales with Blindsided, an expanded version of a just-published magazine article.
But when it comes to negotiating typical deals to supply content to conventional media, Finkle adds, old rules apply. Top-tier writers can rarely command more than $1 a word – the same rate their predecessors enjoyed 30 years ago. The cost of housing in Toronto has increased 700 per cent over the same period, Finkle points out – and media executive salaries are hardly stagnating.
“If you’re good, how long do you want to go on being paid at rates that are really far beneath what people get paid to put their bum in an office at a media outlet?” he asks.
The answer is that you don’t, says Winnipeg writer Jake MacDonald, who has shifted much of his effort from the journalism that once supplied most of his income to writing corporate histories. “It’s quick money,” he says, and no more dispiriting than writing screenplays that never get produced due to network cutbacks. “But let’s face it,” he adds. “You’re not following in the footsteps of Isaac Bashevis Singer when you’re doing that kind of stuff.”
“My ecological model is the raccoon – a diversified survivor,” MacDonald adds. “I’m always writing, but the survival plan continues to evolve.”
“I’m surviving as well as I ever did,” MacDonald says, “but in completely different ways.”

Exposing "sissyphobia" for its simplistic immaturity, and cowardice...

"Not standing for anything" in a vain attempt to "please" everyone, of course, pleases no one. However, failing to take a stand on complex issues, is nothing compared with taking a stand that demonstrates overt bigotry, overt arrogance, overt complacency, and overt disdain for the voter.
That's just plain stupidity, ignorance and pig-headedness.
Driving while reading and talking on the cell phone, demonstrating disdain for the gay and lesbian community, insisting on transportation policy that has been rejected, as unsustainable economically by the rest of the world, scuffling with reporters....these are signs of an unbalanced and misguided missile as the chief executive of the City of Toronto.
Hating gay males, students with graduate degrees and ambiguity are signs of immaturity and adolescence, a quality that parades as "hockey knowledge" every Saturday evening on CBC's Hockey Night in Canada, spewing as it does out of the mouth of Don Cherry.
Celebrating the "honour code" of the "protector" of the star players, not genuflecting following the scoring of a goal, not 'hot-dogging' by putting the puck into the neck from behind the same net....these are just some of the pieces of dogmatic doggerel that passes for 'cherry-wisdom' but is really a rant on behalf of men whose only skill seems to be to beat the brains (and the teeth) out of opponents in skates, in the middle of what otherwise would be a hockey game.
Is Wayne Gretzky a sissy?
Is Mario Lemieux a sissy?
Is Sidney Crosby a sissy?
Was Matts Sundin a sissy?
What is being defended, by both Ford and Cherry, is the indefensible.
It is a definition of masculinity that demonstrates, by a veteran, to a rookie in a pulp and paper plant, who is attempting to implement his safety training in rolling a multi-ton roll of paper, "Here's how we do it here!" by affixing his shoulder to the roll...only to watch the rookie break his shoulder in the attempt to uphold the veteran's long-ago outdated method.
It is a definition of masculinity that insists on going into Iraq, 'because there are definitely weapons of mass destruction' only to learn that the whole world was misled.
It is a definition of masculinity that insists both on authorizing "waterboarding" and that it produces reliable evidence, when the law prohibits the authorization and the empirical evidence does not support the reliability argument.
It is a definition of masculinity that insists that "gay men" are not real men, a biological, social and anthropological insistence that is clearly unsupportable on any argument.
It is a definition of masculinity that insists on a military arsenal in the U.S. that is greater than all the other military installations of all other countries combined.
It is a definition of masculinity that insists that even men with formal educations, like doctors, lawyers, teachers, accountants, engineers and astronauts, poets, historians, scientists, judges and researchers are not real men, and that is just another demonstration of the vacuity of the position of those men who oppose, what they deem "sissies"...
It is their minds, incapable as they are of including in their definition of masculinity any evidence of diversity, difference or sensitivity and sensibility, that are the real "sissies" because they are so afraid that their own masculinity might not be "strong" enough to include such diversity, and they might appear to be what they really are....cowards!
Sissyphobia: a new political condition
By Mariana Valverde, Toronto Star, August 18, 2012
Mariana Valverde is a professor at the University of Toronto and a co-founder of the university’s Sexual Diversity Studies program.
(Toronto)Mayor (Rob) Ford, by contrast, has resisted all efforts by staffers and fellow politicians to tame his John Wayne wannabe tendencies. His brother, Councillor Doug Ford, who is equally conservative and equally masculine but has a little more PR sense, once tried to persuade the mayor to make a token gesture in support of Pride and diversity; but even he got nowhere. Now, a police officer’s plea for Mayor Ford to get a driver has fallen on deaf mayoral ears. Is there a connection between these two things?
When the mayor openly snubbed gay and lesbian communities, some Torontonians called him homophobic. But the recent series of incidents involving streetcar doors, cellphones in cars, and scuffles on the backyard fence — combined with Ford’s highly masculine style of coaching the most masculine of high-school sports, football — justifies a diagnosis not so much of homophobia but of “sissyphobia.”
A sissy is a guy like David Miller, who sat in the back of a hybrid car reading learned papers while the (red-blooded male) driver did the real work.
A sissy is a guy like our dear departed Jack Layton, who not only supported Pride but was not afraid of sporting a moustache that gave him a distinctly “gay” look.
Even Dalton McGuinty, a Catholic father of many children, comes across as somewhat sissy when insisting that he is the “education premier.” After all, who really cares about education except moms?
At the mayor’s inauguration Torontonians were told by the greatest Canadian authority on white male conservative masculinity (Don Cherry) that electing Rob Ford would reverse the growing tide of sissy-ism that has created throngs of weak-kneed, bicycle-riding, over-educated, middle-of-the-road, pussyfooting male politicians who wait to read expert studies before formulating a policy.
When the mayor openly snubbed gay and lesbian communities, some Torontonians called him homophobic. But the recent series of incidents involving streetcar doors, cellphones in cars, and scuffles on the backyard fence — combined with Ford’s highly masculine style of coaching the most masculine of high-school sports, football — justifies a diagnosis not so much of homophobia but of “sissyphobia.”
Sissyphobia, which is the clinical name for the Coaches’ Corner theory of life, would account for all the phenomena mentioned. Aggressively protecting your family home as if Etobicoke were the Wild West; refusing to be driven to work; thinking that traffic laws are for weak-kneed sissies; and imagining that Don Cherry is an appropriate symbolic leader for the “world’s most diverse city” are different behaviours, but what they have in common is a deep, overriding fear of looking like a sissy.
The good news is that there’s an easy cure for sissyphobia. It’s this: the mayor should take a deep breath, go to Church and Wellesley, and walk (not drive) down the street.
I bet that no matter how many sissies happen to be on the sidewalk when the mayor goes by, even Don Cherry wouldn’t think Ford is a sissy for walking among them.

R + R = B(3)....this is NOT Rocket Science!

Not only is Gail Collins' piece (below) a great "read" and a even greater "satire," the content is also somewhat tragic.
Romney-Ryan, like a couple of political Siamese twins (wannabees) are trying to knock off the president who inherited what amounts to the greatest mess in economic and in foreign affairs in the last century, from the firm of Dubya-"Cheeeney" (honouring Chris Matthews' pronunciation of the former VEEP), and then faced the most obstructionist Congress of Republican majority in the House and a strong minority in the Senate in memory, but nevertheless brought American troups home from Iraq, and has made some progress in bringing them home from Afghanistan, (if not quickly enough) and has put a professional, constructive, collaborative and somewhat realistic human face on U.S. relations with most foreign capitals, while also bailing out the auto industry, and, oh, by the way, passing the Affordable Health Care Act, extending health care coverage to millions who previously did without, because they either had a pre-existing condition for which the insurance companies could and did refuse coverage (they can't now!) or because they could not afford coverage. "Obamacare" removes $716 billion by insisting on efficiencies from the insurance companies, hospitals and the clinicians, without reducing a penny from care, as Romney-Ryan are dishonestly charging.
The country faces, still, an unemployment rate above 8%, and will likely until years following the election in November, so the Romney-Ryan promise to put people back to work pales in comparison with the Obama "jobs bills" currently languishing in the House, because Republicans refuse to debate it and adopt it.
What is really scary is that, under the guise of economic policy differences and size of government arguments, the right wing is literally pouring billions into the Romney-Ryan war chest, led by some guy named Adelson, a casino owner, who allegedly wants to control American foreign policy on the Israel file.
He apparently received a very early visit from Ryan, following his pick to the VEEP slot on the ticket, and is reported to be ready willing and able to write a check for up to $10 million, himself, personally, in support of the Romney-Ryan vaccuity.
How long do you think it will be, if Romney-Ryan win the White House, before the U.S. attacks Iran, with or without Israel having the join the fight? Weeks or days? Certainly not months!
For our money, R + R = B(3)* and that is a formula the world cannot tolerate.
(*Romney plus Ryan = Bush #3)
By Gail Collins, New York Times, August 17, 2012
Let's get a few things straight. 
First of all, Paul Ryan and Mitt Romney are not the same person. They aren’t even related! Stop spreading rumors! Although they do sort of look alike and enjoy spending time together. Perhaps Mitt regards Paul as the sixth son he never had.
Ryan is the one who lives on the same block where he grew up. Romney is the one who lives above the car elevator.
Ryan is the one who spent his youth cooking hamburgers at McDonald’s. Romney is the one who used to enjoy dressing up as a police officer and playing fun pranks on his prep school friends. Neither one of them worked as a Wienermobile driver. Really, I don’t know where you get this stuff.
Ryan is the one who likes to catch catfish by sticking his fist into their burrows and dragging them out by the throat. Romney is the one who drove to Canada with his dog strapped to the car roof.
When it comes to the issues, both men are on the same page. Although the page does keep turning and you have to wonder how average voters can cope with all of the confusion.
Fortunately, polls suggest average voters have already decided who they’re going to support and, therefore, have no need whatsoever to try to figure out which page the Romney-Ryan campaign is on.
Practically the only person in America who claims to have no idea who he’s going to vote for is Senator Joseph Lieberman, who recently declared himself absolutely and totally undecided. People, do you think it’s possible that the entire presidential campaign is now being waged just for the benefit of Joseph Lieberman? On the one hand, that’s a real waste of about $1 billion. On the other, it’s exactly what Joseph Lieberman has been waiting for all his life.
Anyhow, about the issues:
Ryan is the one who requested stimulus money for his district, but he is sorry. The stimulus was a terrible thing, and Ryan had no intention of trying to glom onto a chunk of it. He thought he was just forwarding a constituent request for some ... constituent thing. Or four.
Romney is the one who hired undocumented workers to mow his lawn. Totally by mistake.
Ryan is the one who voted for a massive prescription drug Medicare entitlement, the Bush tax cuts and two wars without paying for any of them. He is even sorrier about this than he is about the stimulus.
Romney is the one who passed Obamacare before Obama. But it wasn’t the same thing at all because it happened in a state.
Both men want to make more big tax cuts that will be paid for with the closing of tax loopholes. They are in total, complete concurrence that the identity of these loopholes is not an appropriate topic for a presidential campaign.
Ryan is supposed to be the Tea Party hero and Romney is the one they hated so much they were actually willing to contemplate a Newt Gingrich presidency to avoid him.
But I’m not entirely sure we can trust the hard right to know what it wants anymore. This week in Florida, a Republican primary uprising knocked out Cliff Stearns, a superconservative veteran congressman who had campaigned on his efforts to kill off federal funds for Planned Parenthood and embarrass the Obama administration with an investigation into the Solyndra loans. That sort of bragging enraged the faithful by reminding them that Stearns was a Washington insider, and he lost to a newcomer named Ted Yoho.
Maybe Tea Party voters now only want to send people to Washington who will lack the capacity to get anything done. Personally, I’m kind of O.K. with that. Also, I like the idea of having a congressman named Ted Yoho, as well as the fact that Yoho describes himself as a “large animal veterinarian.” We don’t have many veterinarians in Congress, and you never can tell when a visiting heifer will come down with a medical problem.
All right, a little more about the issues.
Romney has a plan to make Medicare solvent forever. We know this because he wrote “Solvent” on the board at a press conference the other day.
Ryan used to have a plan to make Medicare solvent forever by taking it away from everybody under age 55 and giving them health insurance vouchers instead. But that was so 2011.
Now, Ryan and Romney are on the same page when it comes to Medicare, which is that it must be saved from the $716 billion in cuts President Obama wants to make over the next 10 years. Although that same $716 billion was in the budget plan that Ryan got the House to pass this year. But it’s not like he expected it to happen. “We would never have done it,” he told campaign reporters, desperate wretches condemned to roam the earth with calculators, endlessly searching for the Ryan-Romney page.

Spending billions to defend our pride... Are we drowning in our own fear?

Watching CBC's The National, I saw a dozen or more South African Police open fire on some miners who allegedly had machetes and sticks some few yards away. The report was unable to clarify how many miners were killed in the massacre. The leader of South Africa, according to the report, was outraged by the attack.
Shortly after, I watched an off-duty policeman in Vancouver kick an underwear-clad man, sitting peacefully on the curb of a Vancouver street in the chest. The Canadian Civil Liberties Union is calling for an criminal investigation for assault on the off-duty officer, for kicking a peaceful, non-threatening, barely clad, seated man in the chest snapping his neck back.
Earlier in the day, I read a piece by Bill Maher in Reader's Digest calling for a National Day of NO Outrage, in the context of the thin-skinned responses to the slightest of barbs, expecting an apology for the slightest insult, and then Maher added, "I don't want to live in a country where no one ever says anything insulting to or about another person, that's what we have Canada for!"
And then, I watched as David Letterman lampooned Romney in a series of shots depicting Paul Ryan as game hunter, first with a deer, then an elk, and finally with the "turkey," Romney. Of course it got a great laugh from the audience.
Verbal violence, insults, lampoons, police bullets or feet kicking when not threatened....are these all part of a piece of public "discourse"?
And then, the Snickers ad prescribing a chocolate bar to fend off a friend's anger when hunger inserts itself into the news package, and we witness the 'other side' of making money on our anger.
What is it about anger that seems to cut so deep, in so many different directions?
School teachers and principals and vice-principals meet the impact of anger every day, from students who are "acting out" their own frustration mostly with their own inadequacies, projected unconsciously onto the teacher, another student, the "system" or a parent who is perceived to have defaulted on the kid.
"I must not be angry" has probably been written as a detention assignment more than most lines.
Often, at the root of such a display of anger is an empty container of options, in the mind and perception of the student who is acting out. Hemmed in, frightened, anxious, and often ashamed, he explodes. (Notice the pronoun, "he," as it is statistically much more likely to be a male student acting out!)
Clearly, those South African police firing on those miners either believed or feared they had no other options, and responded in self-defence. Unfortunately, several families tonight are missing a father, brother, uncle or grandfather.
In Florida, and many other states, there is now a law protecting citizens should they believe they are being threatened, if they fire a weapon and injure or kill the person(s) they believe are threatening them. Clearly, there is now legal "cover" for violence in America where personal possession of hand guns is considered normal, even necessary, as is their deployment upon the slightest provocation.
And then there is this piece from the Toronto Star, by Kenyon Wallace, on August 9, 2012:
A Michigan police officer vacationing in Calgary is at the centre of a social media storm after saying he wished he was allowed to carry a handgun to protect himself from people asking if he had been to the Stampede.
In a letter to the editor published in the Calgary Herald, Walt Wawra, a 20-year veteran of the Kalamazoo police service, laments the fact that he was not allowed to carry his off-duty handgun while walking through a Calgary park.
Wawra describes how he and his wife were recently taking a leisurely stroll through Nose Hill Park when they were approached by two young men “in broad daylight on a paved trail” who asked the couple if they had been to the Stampede yet.
“We ignored them,” Wawra writes in his letter. “The two moved closer, repeating: ‘Hey, you been to the Stampede yet?’ I quickly moved between these two and my wife, replying, ‘Gentlemen, I have no need to talk with you, goodbye.’ They looked bewildered, and we then walked past them.”
Wawra writes that he suspects the two men “did not have good intentions” when they approached the couple “in such an aggressive, disrespectful and menacing manner.”
“I thank the Lord Jesus Christ they did not pull a weapon of some sort, but rather concluded it was in their best interest to leave us alone.”
The shaken tourist then goes on to ask the newspaper — which insists the letter is not a hoax — why citizens are not allowed to protect themselves in “life-or-death” situations.
“Would we not expect a uniformed officer to pull his or her weapon to intercede in a life-or-death encounter to protect self, or another? Why then should the expectation be lower for a citizen of Canada or a visitor? Wait, I know — it’s because in Canada, only the criminals and the police carry handguns.”
"Thanking Jesus Christ that they did not pull a weapon," unfortunately, seems to demonstrate the level of anxiety this American policeman felt, or believed he was experiencing, while another letter to the editor "thanks Jesus Christ that the writer lives in Canada, where guns are not carried by everyone."
Both fear and anger are more and more stalking our streets, our schools, our headlines, our addiction to video games of violence and, not co-incidentally, our political rhetoric.
"If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen!" has been a long-standing rule of thumb for anyone considering entering the political arena, where tax records, criminal records, personal idiosyncrasies or even eccentricities, academic records, facebook, twitter and anything committed to the digital environment will be read, dissected and "deconstructed" by those seeking to find ammunition to destroy an "opponent" all in the name of political warfare. Some of this "research" is conducted by political opponents; some by professional journalists. Regardless of the source, the potential candidate is likely to have his/her private life spread like wall graffiti in formal ads, in gossip and innuendo campaigns, and all of this is conducted with the impunity of anonymity, and the cover of "everyone else is doing it."
Recently the United Church is reported to have taken a public stand to wipe out "gossip" from the pews of their churches, in a move that most regard as unenforceable, and therefore "unrealistic". Nevertheless, those who propose the move have struck on a deep, serious and long-embedded spiritual disease.
Recently, I listened to a forty-something male deconstruct his adoptive father, in front of his forty-something wife, and his older sister. His attacks included allegations of misrepresentations, distortions and senility against the octogenarian step-father. And from all reports, both step-son and his spouse have been engaged in this deconstruction of this man for decades. Almost a game, by this point, the compulsion to defame apparently feeds some need for revenge, power or even dominance in the step-son.
However, what is also clear is that the attacks come from a deep and profound insecurity in the life of the "launcher" who has adopted a "macho" stance, to preserve and elevate his self-image.
It is this need for the "macho" stance, in simple terms, and not psychiatric diagnostic terms, that is currently parading across our screens financed now by the largest bankroll in American presidential campaigning history, nearing $500 million in advertising dollars, to demonstrate that one candidate is more "macho" and thereby more "appropriate" to become president in November. With everyone feeling powerless, someone has to demonstrate "power" and "authority" and "leadership"and "trustworthiness" and "integrity"...in stark, dramatic and even romantic and traditional  garb often by pulling the clothes off his opponent.
At the same time, in the same country, facing an "over-the-cliff" near bankruptcy at the end of 2012, there is not a single word being heard about the possibility of cutting the Pentagon budget, the source and agent of the highest military spending in history, more than all other countries combined. "Keeping America strong in a very dangerous world" is the non-rational, immature, and addictive "reason" given by people like Romney, for sustaining and enhancing the American military capability, without a thought or bow being made to the irony that merely by arming both the civilian population and the military, America makes the world less safe and secure for all of us.  And that loss of safety and security can be seen on both the domestic and the international stages.
Fear, insecurity, anxiety and over-reaction to huge expenditures on "security" in hard-power terms, takes off the table a cultural education in negotiations, in diplomacy, in alternative dispute resolution measures at the official governmental level, and in the school yard, the corporate board room and on Wall Street.
Competition, street fighting, winning at all costs, militarization and the fear-based addiction to hard power are at the heart of both American capitalism and American militarism and they are fueled by American fear or both failure and success.
And, what is even more ironic is that in the U.S. there are no voices like those in the United Church in Canada, who cry out against this spiritual disease of powerlessness and fear. For it is the same vacuity and fear and insecurity of people in the pew who "gossip" with impunity and destroy the reputations and families of those they target that infects U.S. addiction to military power and corporate dominance.
And if and when the collective Shadow erupts in violence, as it inevitably must, the unleashing of the military response, whether in separate seemingly disconnected theatres, or in a congealed battle, it will engage everyone on the planet. And we will have no one but ourselves to 'thank' because we can all see the blind pride and arrogance and over-compensation of our destructive impulses.
It was Neil Diamond who sang, many years ago, in a tune he called Husbands and Wives, "It's my belief pride is the chief cause in the decline / In the number of husbands and wives".
It's my belief that pride is the chief cause in the decline in the number of healthy meals, healthy families, healthy debates, and healthy relationships....and that pride is fueled, as it has been for centuries, by the demon, "fear".
As Margaret Laurence writes in The Stone Angel, "Pride was my wilderness and the demon that led me there was fear!"
It may take another century or more of poets to crack the skins and skulls of those who drive our institutions, schools, corporations, governments, political parties, and military campaigns, as well as 'national security campaigns'...and to demonstrate the unmistakable truth that only by facing, naming, owning and wrestling with our fears together, and not with the kind of impunity that comes with a culture of winners and losers, a culture that rotates those categories only by changing the name plates on the office doors, that we will put away our guns, our kicking shoes, our defaming character assassinations, our gossip and our need to destroy whatever and whomever we believe to be a threat.
It is not a National Day of NO Outrage that we need, but a global campaign for civility, decency, honesty and authentic courage, that we all need. And of course, it must start with the poets, the playwrights, the novelists and the artists...the vanguard of both human compassion and human creativity, the two inseparables in our quest for overcoming the budget deficits and debts in both health care and military and national security spending. We do not seek to replicate a naive, innocent Canadian "niceness" on the world, but rather to strive toward, for and on behalf of a healthy respect for every individual human being, whether we agree or disagree with his political ideology, his specific faith expression or his ethnicity or economic status.
We need a school for leaders...and we need it now!

UK Study: In Economic Downturn, Male Suicides Up...significantly!

By Kate Kelland, Reuters, in Globe and Mail, August 15, 2012
A painful British economic recession, rising unemployment and biting austerity measures may have driven more than 1,000 people in England to take their own lives, according to a scientific study published on Wednesday.

The study, a so-called time-trend analysis which compared the actual number of suicides with those expected if pre-recession trends had continued, reflects findings elsewhere in Europe where suicides are also on the rise.
“This is a grim reminder after the euphoria of the Olympics of the challenges we face and those that lie ahead,” said David Stuckler, a sociologist at Cambridge University who co-led the study, published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ).

The analysis found that between 2008 and 2010 there were 846 more suicides among men in England than would have been expected if previous trends continued, and 155 more among women.
Between 2000 and 2010 each annual 10 per cent increase in the number of unemployed people was associated with a 1.4 per cent increase in the number of male suicides, the study found.
The analysis used data from the National Clinical and Health Outcomes Database and the Office of National Statistics.
Keith Hawton, a professor at the Centre for Suicide Research at Oxford University who was not involved in the study, said its findings were “of considerable interest and certainly raise concerns”, but that they must be interpreted carefully.
“It is also important that they are not over-dramatized in a way that might increase thoughts of suicide in those affected by the recession,” he said in an e-mailed comment.
Mr. Stuckler, who worked with researchers from Liverpool University and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, stressed while this kind of statistical study could not establish a causal link, the power of the associations was strong. Its conclusions were strengthened by other indicators of rising mental health problems, stress and anxiety, he added.
He also pointed out the study showed a small reduction in the number of suicides in 2010 which coincided with a slight recovery in male employment.
A survey of 300 family doctors published by the Insight Research Group on Tuesday found that 76 per cent of those questioned about the effects of the economic crisis said they thought it was making people unhealthier, leading to more anxiety, abortions and alcohol abuse.
Data this month from the government’s Health and Social Care Information Centre showed the number of prescriptions dispensed in England for antidepressants rose 9.1 per cent in 2010.
A study published last July, also by Mr. Stuckler, found that across Europe, suicide rates rose sharply from 2007 to 2009 as the financial crisis drove unemployment up and squeezed incomes.
The countries worst hit by severe economic downturns, such as Greece and Ireland, saw the most dramatic increases in suicides.
In Britain, there’s little doubt times have been getting harder. The economy has shrunk for the last nine months and now produces 4.5 per cent less than before the economic crisis.
Many Britons have had the worst squeeze in living standards for 40 years and the crisis has hit young people hard, with youth unemployment soaring above 20 per cent.
Mr. Stuckler’s BMJ study found that the number of unemployed men rose on average across Britain by 25.6 per cent each year from 2008 to 2010, a rise associated with a yearly increase in male suicides of 3.6 per cent.
“Much of men’s identity and sense of purpose is tied up with having a job. It brings income, status, importance...” Mr. Stuckler said in a telephone interview.
“And there’s also a pattern in the UK where men are three times more likely to commit suicide than women, while women are much more likely to report being depressed and seek help.”
Mr. Hawton noted that increases in suicides at times of economic recession had been reported before – for example in the Great Depression of the 1930s and in the economic downturn in Southeast Asia during the 1990s.
The World Health Organization estimates that every year, almost a million people die from suicide – a rate of 16 per 100,000, or one every 40 seconds. It also estimates that for every suicide, there are up to 20 attempted ones.

US becoming armed camp fueling Russian arms industry

By Andrew E. Kramer, New York Times, August 14, 2012
IZHEVSK, Russia — The nickname of this town, home of the factory that makes Kalashnikov rifles, is the “Armory of Russia.” Over the years, it has armed a good number of other countries, too, as the lathes and presses of the Izhevsk Machine Works clanged around the clock to forge AK-47s and similar guns for insurgents and armies around the world.
But these days, many of Izhevsk’s weapons are headed somewhere else: the United States.
Despite the gun’s violent history — or perhaps because of it — American hunters and gun enthusiasts are snapping up tens of thousands of Kalashnikov rifles and shotguns. Demand is so brisk that the factory has shifted its focus from military to civilian manufacture over the last two years. United States sales of the civilian versions, sold under the brand name Saiga, rose by 50 percent last year, according to officials at the factory, known as Izhmash.
Over all, the United States is the world’s biggest market for civilian guns. That is partly because of comparatively lenient gun ownership laws, which have become a topic of renewed debate after a rampage last month in which a masked gunman killed 12 people and wounded 58 in an Aurora, Colo., movie theater. Although no Kalashnikovs were involved, police say one weapon used by the man charged with the shootings, James Eagen Holmes, was a popular semiautomatic pistol made by the Austrian company Glock.
Russian weapons accounted for a tiny portion of the $4.3 billion American gun market last year, but Saiga sales rose far faster than the overall growth rate of 14 percent in 2011.
“I bought a Saiga because it was made in Russia, right beside its big brothers, the AKs,” Josh Laura, a garage door installer and former Marine in Maryville, Tenn., said in a telephone interview. “No rifle in the world has been as reliable as this one.”
Selling rifles to Americans and other civilians is fundamental to the efforts to save Izhmash, which has made Kalashnikovs since soon after their invention in 1947 but is now struggling.
Demand for new military guns in the Kalashnikov family has evaporated. Simple, durable and relatively cheap to manufacture, about 100 million have been produced over the decades, or about one for every 70 people on earth. Inventories are overflowing, used AK weapons have flooded the market, and cheap Chinese knockoffs are stealing many of the customers that remain.
For American gun enthusiasts, an authentic Russian-made Kalashnikov is appealing not only for its historical importance as the weapon of choice in so many global conflicts, but also because of its reliability.
“The quality and versatility far surpassed anything else on the market,” said Terry Sandlin, an electrician in Scottsburg, Ind., who has three Saigas — two shotguns and a rifle.
Although the civilian versions cannot fire bursts of bullets with a single trigger pull — a military feature known as fully automatic mode — it otherwise shares many features of military guns. Izhmash works with an importer who modifies weapons to add pistol grips or large-capacity magazines in states where those features are legal.
Maksim V. Kuzyuk, a board member of Izhmash and former chief executive, said that he studied the global market for small arms before deciding to focus on the United States.
“Typically, an American family will have five or six short- and long-barreled guns,” Mr. Kuzyuk, a former director of the Boston Consulting Group in Moscow, said in an interview. “Some collectors have more than 20 guns.”
And in the United States, Izhmash cannot be underpriced by Chinese competitors. The federal government has banned most imports of Chinese handguns and rifles since 1994.
Selling Saigas in the United States is integral to the enterprise’s evolving business model of making single-shot civilian guns to occupy workers and equipment in between government orders for fully automatic assault rifles. About 70 percent of the factory’s output is now civilian rifles, up from 50 percent two years ago. Of the civilian arms, about 40 percent are exported to the United States.
That means American consumers are now buying about the same number of Kalashnikov-style weapons from Izhmash as the Russian army and police.
This shift has been encouraged by the Kremlin, which wants to revive a range of military industries by improving their economies of scale and helping them blend military and civilian manufacturing.
a state holding company of which Izhmash is a part, is pursuing this policy across a range of industries, from aviation to truck manufacturing. The goal is to improve efficiency as Russia begins a $613 billion rearmament program, financed by oil money.

It was with this mandate, Mr. Kuzyuk said, that he came to Izhmash as chief executive in 2010 after working for another Russian Technologies enterprise, Avtovaz, the maker of Lada cars. (In May, he moved to yet another company in the group that makes helicopter parts.)
At Izhmash, as with other Russian military plants, he said, “the basic problem was the volume of production was significantly lower than what the factory had been designed for” — essentially a land war between superpowers.
Although AK pattern rifles are used every day in global conflicts, very few are bought from Izhmash because of the ready availability of used guns as well as licensed and bootleg copies. The Russian army isn’t planning many new orders until the AK-12, a new model to be introduced this year, is widely available.
The sales of civilian rifles in the United States are helping to pay for the factory’s retooling for the AK-12, ultimately making it cheaper for the Kremlin.
Owen Martin, owner of Snake Hound Machine, a gunsmith in Manchester, N.H., that specializes in Kalashnikov rifles, said that, by the same token, Russian military orders were helping keep down the price of AKs he and others buy in the United States. “It means our guns are cheaper,” he said. “Nobody perceives it as unpatriotic.”
American gun sales rose sharply in 2009, after President Obama’s election and the onset of economic recession. Sales of semiautomatic rifles, in particular, benefited from customer concern that Mr. Obama would seek to more tightly regulate rifles with features resembling military weapons, according to Lawrence Keane, senior vice president of the National Shooting Sports Foundation.
Izhmash benefits from American gun laws that are looser than in its home market. In Russia, consumers can buy a long-barreled firearm only with a police permit, which requires a clean criminal sheet, a diploma from a gun safety course and a medical certificate of sanity. In the United States, laws vary by state, but buyers often need to clear only an F.B.I. criminal background check.
However, gun control in Russia is less strict than in some other former Soviet countries. Estonia, for example, proscribes carrying a weapon while drunk. “If they did that here, well, nobody would hunt,” said Igor V. Anisimov, the Izhmash director of foreign sales.

Eugene Robinson: "We're all in this together" vs "I've got mine"

By Gwynn Morgan, Globe and Mail, August `12, 2012
That adage, “If the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail,” was demonstrated once again at the recent premiers’ discussion on health care in Halifax; where they decided to elevate the fixes to, in the words of PEI Premier Robert Ghiz, “the premier level.”

Thus, instead of unleashing the innovation potential of those working in the system, the smothering command and control structure is to be moved up yet another level. The conference press release gives the impression that one might soon see a premier wearing medical whites at your local hospital, working on: “reducing complications from foot ulcers, improving clinical guidelines for treating heart disease and diabetes, establishing more team-based models, sharing continuous improvement principles, reviewing the appropriateness of certain tests and procedures and improving communication about health human resources and labour markets.”
If all of this bureaucratese sounds familiar, you’re right. This is the 19th major examination of the Canadian health care system in the past 15 years. Once again, the “nail” each study has continued to hammer is stuck in the paradigm that Canada’s health-care system must remain a government-run monopoly. That paradigm was starkly enunciated by Health Council of Canada member and former Vancouver General Hospital President Charles Wright, who stated: “Administrators maintain waiting lists the way airlines overbook. As for urgent cases, the public system will decide when their pain requires care. The individual cannot decide rationally.”

Just days before the premiers gathered, in Halifax, the B.C. Medical Services Commission moved to stamp out the green shoots of patient care choice by ordering two private Vancouver clinics to stop collecting fees for providing treatment facilities to patients on waiting lists. In response, Dr. Brian Day, the clinics’ founder, served notice of a lawsuit against the Commission, the B.C. Attorney General and the provincial health minister.
Supporting Dr. Day’s lawsuit are four patients who received treatment at his clinics after suffering long waits in the public system. One of those patients is 36-year-old Mandy Martens, who was told she would have to wait nine months for a colonoscopy after blood was detected in her stool and an ultrasound detected three masses in her liver. After an expedited colonoscopy at Dr. Day’s clinic confirmed metastasizing colon cancer, she was finally able to access lifesaving treatment.
Dr. Day’s lawsuit is expected to go all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada. The facts are essentially the same as Quebec’s 2005 landmark case in which the Court held that patient Jacques Chaoulli’s rights were violated when he was prevented from seeking timely treatment. In their decision, the judges wrote: “The evidence shows that delays in the public health-care system are widespread and patients die as a result of waiting lists for public health care.”
It as politicians of a neo-con stripe that put the country in this hospital bed.
By cutting funds for operating rooms, and by closing thousands of hospital beds, by limiting the number of seats in medical schools and, in co-dependence with the Medical Colleges, restricting the admission of foreign-trained doctors to the "Canadian profession," the neo-con politicians, like Mike Harris, have to share a tractor-trailer load of both responsibility and guilt (of course they have no shame!) for the crisis that is Canadian Health Care.
There is a myopic, bureaucratic and parsimonious, even miserly, quality to the neo-con non-leadership that is plaguing this country, and others, that applies to many social issues such housing for the poor,  access to enough food, opportunities for both education and work with dignity, and, yes, access to affordable and high quality health care.
It is as if the human beings, including all of those whose histories cripple their spirits and/or their bodies and, as a consequence, also their minds, are not part of the body politic and therefore are excluded from the national equations that constitute provincial and federal budgets. Oh, there is a box somewhat on the balance sheet for their numbers, but their individual identities and their individual limps, or stutters, or hiccups, or Salvation Army threads, or their diets of KD and beer, or their broken families, or their truncated educations or employments are nothing more than their own "failures".
The public has no responsibility for their "spinelessness" when, in fact, without those very spines, many of them probably would not even be  alive.
No, this is not a plea for a 'nanny state'...far from it!
And this is not, either, an endorsement for the corporate-run state.
It was Eugene Robinson, Pulitzer columnist of the Washington Post who wrote recently, in depicting the U.S. presidential election as a struggle between two forces:

1. "We're all in this together" versus
2. "I've got mine."

Obvious, Obama represents the first choice, and Romney/Ryan the second.
In Canada, Harper is clearly on the side of number 2, and we're not sure if anyone really represents number 1. More and more provincial leaders, following the public opinion polls, are veering toward number 1, whereas the health care system in Canada would not exist without leaders who were committed to number 1. It is almost as if there has been an "ethnic cleansing" of those political actors who carried the convictions of Tommy Douglas and number 1. Nevertheless, there is a chorus of leading thinkers, some of them even economists, like Stiglitz, Sachs, Krugman, and Canadians like John Ralston Saul who are singing from the song-sheet dedicated to number 1. It may take a few months, or even a couple of years for the pendulum to swing back to the middle, or even a little to the other side, in the self-interest of both the rich and the poor, because the income disparity harms the long-term fortunes of both groups.
We, collectively, have to stop pandering to the rich and the policies and the vacuity of their social consciences. And that "we" includes both our politicians and the voters, the CEO's and the consumers, the scientists and the poets/philosophers, the pilots and the air crew, the teachers and the executives, the professors and the administrators, the clergy and the indigent.
We have to say, "NO!" to the Murdoch media machine, including Sun Media, which propagates this brain-washing subtly, seductively and insidiously, on behalf of the worship of corporate profits, of tax exemptions for the rich, of tax havens for the uber-wealthy, of tax-dodging by the international corporations, of eliminating benefits and pensions and environmental protections for workers in all countries, in order to chase the fast buck.
And one of the ways to fight back is to vote for moderate candidates, from whatever parties they call themselves.
It is not macho or 'manly' to lean to the right; in fact, it may well be self-destructive. How is it that many preach the virtues of caring, of giving to others and of compassion while voting to bear arms, to reduce taxes for the rich and to privatize health care, to pander to the insurance companies?
Who is it that stampedes for 'big' government when the Second Amendment is under scrutiny while remaining silent when a woman's right to choose is under attack, but the NRA?
Who stampedes to attack Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and even Lybia or Syria yet remains silent when the DNA proves unequivocally the innocence of a 25-year prisoner facing the death penalty? The neo-cons.
Who is it who stampedes through the House of Commons a bill increasing sentences and reducing judicial discretion, when all the evidence points to a falling crime rate, and the demonstrable success of rehabilitation programs for convicted felons? The Harper gang.
Let's put real people back into the health care debate. And those people, many of them, have no political voice, no social status, often very limited educations and prospects for secure employment, because we are really "all in this together".