The plight of young men on the brink links both the terrorists and their enemies

acorncentreblog written on August 7, 2013

Everyone talks about the closing of some two dozen American embassies last weekend, and many of those closings have been extended into this week in response to the intercept of terrorist messages from one AlQaeda leader to another in Yemen, the hotbed of recruitment, bomb construction, plot development and deployment for the radical Islamist affiliates currently plaguing much of North Africa and the Middle East. There are even reports that AlQaeda is claiming credit for what has become known as the Arab Spring, however exaggerated that claim might be.

Young men, many living in conditions in countries where food, health care, education and civil society are scarce if they are present at all, are fertile recruits for a purpose, especially a purpose as great as the cause of the Islamic God, Allah. In the inner core of many western cities, we know that gangs provide protection, affiliation or belonging as well as a purpose, however vaguely defined and criminally executed. It is not an accident that similar social, political and economic conditions spawn similar negative human results, no matter the credal culture, nor the skin colour of the young men.

In our inner cities, policy alternatives include getting closer to these young men, intervening inside these gangs through the deployment of all available social agencies, including child welfare, education, churches, non-profits, and even police in subtle and sensitive interventions where possible. Fear of these young men is not an option for those charged with designing and executing public policy, no matter how many illegal weapons and bullets are rampant in the streets, nor how many innocents are killed and maimed in the inevitable conflicts that overflow onto the frying ashphalt, many of them generated by the pursuit of profits from the sale of illicit drugs and contraband of whatever kind.

Just as fear is not an alternative for policy makers, neither are drones into the centre of our urban populations. The collateral damage that would result, if some “yahoo” policy nut were to issue such an order would cause  riots in the streets, as it should, at least in America.

Why then are drones the weapon of choice against men of a different religious persuasion, in faraway lands, where there is little sign of effective governance, including the hope and expectation of rising out of dire poverty, joblessness, the unlikely prospect of having and raising a family and, here is where there is a substantial difference, and where the religious and political ideology includes hatred of the west, Christianity as it is practiced or perceive to be practiced by the radical Islamists, and especially the United States.

So drones, at least a half-dozen this week, up substantially from the recent past, following Obama’s May speech in which he called for a public debate on the restrictions of their use, are the weapon of choice.

However, just as they would be in Philadelphia, drones bring about more enemies of those who are using them. And in the case of AlQaeda, that means that no matter how balkanized their organization has become following the death of their charismatic leader, and how many different cells are “free-lancing” in how many different countries, their efforts continue unabated, no matter how many heads are lopped off the snake. As a counter-terrorism expert, Brian Michael Jenkins, who works for the Rand Corporation put it on NPR’s On Point, with guest host John Harwood, this morning put it, however, “The terrorists are interested in process while we are interested in progress and they believe they are in a fight that could last for centuries, while we anticipate some form of victory.”

Process versus progress….a highly sophisticated distinction, yet certainly not a distinction without a difference. Signing up for AlQaeda, and the fight against the American imperialist heathens, or infidels as these radical Islamists think of Americans, is as much as signing up for a martyrdom complete with a nirvanic afterlife. Enrolling in an army of epic proportions, at least in the mind of those who are generating the propaganda for this fight, against an enemy of considerable size and import, at least in the mind of both its inhabitants and the Islamist terrorists, elevates both their enrolment and the potential for a heroic end, not mention a heroic participation in a holy process, in their minds.

 

Not only has the U.S.  not officially and unquestionably accepted the proposition that collateral damage from drones is doing  more harm to their cause than is tolerable, as they would be forced to acknowledge if they were dropping those death-machines into downtown Philadelphia, but they also have not accepted that they fear is generating much of the national response to the terrorists, and has done since 9/11. The Homeland Security department has grown like topsy; the military efforts to “annhiliate” AlQaeda,  (and that is the stated goal of both Republican and Democratic governments) continue to prove counter-intuitive as this little terrorist “David” prepares more “sling-shot”attacks against the giant “Goliath” whom this “David” considers nothing less than the Leviathan, and poor, uneducated men living in squalor, and in hopelessness, and in rice-paddies ripe for religious brain-washing, as they are in the inner cities, are increasingly being drawn into something they might consider their own “manhood” as pictured by their respective “communities”. In the terrorists’ case, that would be the radical interpretation of Islam, and in the inner cities that would be the gang culture.

There is something eerily similar to the plight of  American and western “lost young men” and the plight of those “lost young men” who are committing their lives to Allah, as his cause is presented to them by unscrupulous and venomous, yet charismatic, adult leaders who seek both their own place in “glory” and the overthrow of the U.S. Satan.

And while it is true that in most Islamic countries, young women have to fight for an education (and are heroically succeeding with outside help) too many young men, on both sides of this “global conflict” are feeding the monster of war, conflict, pirating, espionage, and finding purpose in their misguided efforts. Whether they do it with illicit weapons on the streets of Los Angeles, or in the deserts of Somalia, and whether they do it with hatred for democracy and capitalism or with contempt for the riches of others in comparison with their own life-defying poverty and hopelessness, they are nevertheless choosing the violent expression of their voices in opposition to forces beyond their control and influence, as they see it.

We can no more succeed in Mogadishu than we can in London or Madrid or even in Yemen unless and until we can find, acknowledge and ameliorate the roots to our fears and the wings, faith and promises to and for our best angels, through the conscious, deliberate and consistent and persistent provision of authentic and sustainable hope for those whose lives we would not wish on our worst enemy, even though many of them currently living those lives consider us their most hatred (but certainly not feared) enemy.

The Christian churches are squabbling over what it means to be a “man” and whether that includes gay men or not, as are both the Islamic faith and largely agnostic countries like Russia where all expression in support of gays is banned. Men, especially vulnerable men of all ethnicities, in all regions and of all faiths are being served a menu of conflicting messages of what it takes and means to be a healthy, respected and self-respecting man.

And yet, our knowledge of healthy young males, in families who consider the development of such babies to be a priority, has never been more extensive, and available. And that includes males of courage, sensitivity and imagination and wisdom, all of which qualities require armies of older, respected male role models for reinforcement.

And that need exists in all religious communities, who continue to put their limited and limiting interpretation of God’s will (as they perceive it) in front of the pursuit  of a global goal of engendering a culture that supports and propagates the next many generations of healthy male children, adolescents, and young men, no matter which God they worship.

And that is a cause to which all religious communities can legitimately commit, without fear of offending either their view of God or invoking the wrath of a God of a different faith community.

 

Egypt, Syria...and other stages of the AlQaeda terror based on process, not on progress

The Muslim Brotherhood, once excluded from power by then Egyptian president Mubarak, had a brief taste of political muscle and leverage under their elected candidate for president Mohammed Morsi, now ousted by the military, the primary force of government under both Mubarak and the current interim government, now without its highest profile vice-president, El-Baradei, the former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, and a former recipient of the Nobel Prize.
El-Baradei resigned earlier today in protest against the violence of the military in removing Morsi supporters from their sit-ins in the streets of Cairo. Some reports allege that up to 2000 Egyptians may have been killed in the bloodshed which is being condemned by leaders from many countries, as well as by the Secretary General of the United Nations.
Clearly, the Muslim Brotherhood is determined to continue to protest the removal of Morsi and to demand his return to the president's office, along with the Islam-slanted constitution which he and his advisers had written and imposed on Egypt following his election. Equally clear is the seemingly iron-clad position of the military to provide Egypt with a secular government, a new constitution and new elections. They have invited the Muslim Brotherhood to participate in discussions about both a new constitution and the proposed elections; the "Brotherhood" has refused to participate and, although reports from several sources indicate that the majority of the people of Egypt support the military, including the overthrow of Morsi, his supporters seem adamant about his return.
Stand-off? A coup? Or not a coup?
The United States prefers to cling to the illusion, at least diplomatically, that the ouster of Morsi was not a coup because if it were, the financial support that the United States provides to the Egyptian military must be discontinued. Having little if any influence in the turbulence that now confronts both the Egyptian interim government and their people, as well as the world community, the United States urgently seeks to continue to pour money on the fire, as a way to preserve its window of opportunity to shape events, no matter how slender that window is in fact.
While these events are transpiring in the streets of Cairo, as well as other Egyptian cities, in Syria we are being told that AlQaeda operatives, bearing their black flags, are now fully engaged in fighting the Syrian rebels who have been recently receiving military support from the United States. How long will it be before those AlQaeda operatives, and their kin join the Morsi supporters, in their potential civil war to establish an Islamic state in Egypt, similar to their desired and stated purpose in Syria, an Islamic state.
These chaotic states, sometimes seemingly ungovernable, are fertile incubators for the aims and methods of the AlQaeda terrorists, determined as they are to punch the United States first, as well as other western countries, in the eye and then to demonstrate their own power to drive the United States from the Middle East.
No one wants to envision the end game in either Syria or in Egypt, not only because trying to do so seems impossible but also all options, including those most feared and despised by the west including the United States, all now on the table in plain view of the whole world.
Michael Jenkins, a counter-terrorism expert from the Rand corporation, speaking recently on On Point with Tom Ashbroook, while  John Harwood was pinch-hitting for Ashbrook on vacation, made the point that, while the U.S. is interested in progress, and envisions an end game, a measureable result to the protracted conflict with the terrorists, those terrorists are focused on their process, and as far as they are concerned, the conflict could and likely will rage indefinitely, even to the end of time as we know it.
This may be another ironic and paradoxical case in which the possession of military might (a la Goliath) will not defeat the indomitable spirit and cunning and persistence of the terrorists (a la David) who have no money, no military establishment, no national state, no official weapons except those hand-crafted in some garage on a back street in some remote village in Yemen and no interest in a final victory, only in a centuries-long conflict that destabilizes the enemy, bringing her to her knees both literally and figuratively.
There is not a single person on the planet whose life is not and will not be impacted by the events playing out in so many countries where the terrorist tumor is growing, through recruitment and through the negative impact of the military (mostly drone) strikes meted out against their cells by the U.S. and her allies. Rhetoric that focuses on strength and retaliation and despises any thought of alternative approaches to this ever-metastasizing disease can and will only result in more and more violence, enobling the enemy and strivelling the attackers until only attrition and negotiation remain as potentially useful options. And that could take literally the rest of this century!

Climate activists speak with force and vigour...facing a mountain of resistance in Canada and the U.S.

Listening to a small group of twenty-something's, with one thirty-year-old, talk about climate activism this morning on NPR's On Point with Tom Ashbrook, I was struck by their depth of commitment, their intense optimism and their courage in the face of a political establishment that has effectively turned a deaf ear to their cause. At least two, if not three of their number, have served jail time for resisting law enforcement orders to vacate protest sites, including the interior of the Interior Department.
These young women, and if their statements about legions of others of similar view are valid, many others have begun a nation-de campaign of divestment by universities in stocks of the companies engaged in the fossil fuel industry. While some sexa-and septa-guinarian callers reminisced about Earth Days past, some even volunteered to close out their portfolios' oil, gas and coal investments in favour of more clean and sustainable energy companies such as wind and solar.
Some of the information that was new to me included the fact that the Sierra Club had not previously supported physical activism among the supporters of climate protests, yet recently it has. Additionally, these young women, while not blinded by their idealism, remain hopeful that President Obama will "kill" the Keystone pipeline, in spite of the State Department's recent report indicating it has no objections to the project on environmental grounds. They vow to fight every mile of the construction of the pipeline, with their bodies, should Obama approve the project.
One of the important, yet subtle, differences in their movement from previous environmental protests is that they consider their movement one of "climate activism" and not environmental protest. Their rationale is that previous protests were ineffectual and they see their generation as the one that brought Obama to the White House TWICE and they have charged themselves with sufficient motivation and grit to stop the denegration of the climate for their children and grandchildren!
There is a sense of both urgency and long-term vision and commitment among Ashbrook's guests this morning that would seem to defy recent comments from Ralph Nader that this generation lacks the fire in the belly that so fired Nader's career, beginning with "Unsafe at any Speed" and his successful expose that literally killed the Chevrolet Corvair, the little beast with the engine in the rear, back in the seventies.
I was honoured and privileged to interview Mr. Nader following a public lecture in North Bay at Canadore College in the late 70's and found him compellingly persuasive and passionate, not to mention highly articulate. It saddens me to think that his "time"on the front pages, and in the trenches of consumer protection, while it nurtured and developed other leading activists like Michael Moore who worked for and learned from Nader as did Ken Dryden when he was an undergrad at Cornell, has seemingly terminated, given that these most recent soldiers could benefit significantly from his tutelage.
There was, however, an audible note of apocalyptic extremism in the voices of these young women, a note that could and likely will be held against them and their idealism going forward. There are so many blockages to youthful idealism, and many of those blockages are backed by billions of private dollars from executives in the oil and gas and coal industries who either believe that a one-degree rise in global temperature will be "beneficial" (as one current PSA for their industry puts its) or that global warming is a hoax and does not merit the attention of the state, including the president and the Congress.
In Canada, the most disposable feature of the Harper government over the last half-dozen years has been the Ministers of the Environment, the latest being Peter Kent, yet each one has not found a "fit" inside a government that has married itself to the corporate interests of the tar sands in Northern Alberta, the fracking industry in the natural gas sector and the pipeline industry, specifically the Trans-Canada-sponsored Keystone as well as the Northern Pipeline proposal from Alberta to the British Columbian coast, for the purpose of exporting tar sands oil to the Far East. Harper's government makes some noises about "environmental protection" which everyone in Canada sees through as if it were mere gauze on a Hollywood lens masking their true philosophy of sponsorship of the corporate sector, no matter the harm being done to the environment...and that harm is considerable, more than we were told in the beginning and more than anyone living downstream from the project cares to contend with.
In Canada, however, there is a small and vocal band of climate activists; however, the issue has not garnered the kind of public support that will be necessary to reverse the damage done under Harper whose government has virtually turned the Canadian economy in what some observers would call a petro-economy, based on a petro-dollar. Neither the NDP, the Official Opposition which is attempting to position itself as a respectable and responsible alternative to the Harper Conservatives and promotes the balanced agenda of economic prosperity and environmental protection, nor the Liberals who are still smarting from the public indictment of the proposed carbon tax put forward by then leader Stephane Dion, three party leaders back.
In Canada, Harper is not worried about political climate activists like the three women who spoke with Ashbrook this morning, and that segment of the public who has concerns about the profligate greed among the fossil fuel sector linked to the co-dependency of the people writing the laws in both the U.S. and Canada, will have to find an army of young idealists who consider it their civic duty to enlist in the campaign that is certain to be fought over the transition from a fossil fuel-driven economy to one driven more by sustainable and clean energy. And in the meantime, there will continue to be millions of people, like the one caller from North Carolina who pleaded, "Give me a break!" to these young women, "We have people who need work to put food on the table and if that work involves fossil fuel, then so be it."
Obama too was cited by Ashbrook, in a quote from a speech in which he proudly declared "open season" on drilling for oil and gas, after his 2012 election victory, and not as part of his campaign for re-election. The lobby for the oil and gas industry may yet devour the president's best efforts to reverse the trend, as it certainly has devoured the political independence of too many political leaders on both sides of the 49th parallel, with the complicity of the electorate in both countries.
Can and will we wake up to our own threats to the survival of our children and grandchildren?

In defence of the "contextual" the intrinsic, and the intuitive...and the generalist

Empiricism is a philosophy based on observable data and a cornerstone of the scientific method of arriving at new truths. By definition, empiricism examines only what the human senses can and do observe, and thereby excludes impressions, insights, hunches and gut-feelings that have come to be known as intuition, imagination, assumption, prediction, and are considered extraneous to the question 'at hand'...in nearly all instances.
It was former New York Senator Patrick Moynahan who reminded us that we are entitled to our own opinions but not to our own "facts".... in his attempt to garner agreement, in his many opportunities for political debate, on the facts about which the argument was being raised.
All intellectual pursuits, all academic disciplines, have their unique and dispassionate processes, protocols and  accepted standards of behaviour, whether in the conduct of research or the conduct of a courtroom trial, or in the debate by academics on two opposing sides of a public issue. However, involved in all of these processes is the inclusion of a boundaried range of information (facts) and the exclusion, usually as irrelevant, of other information.
Included are those pieces of information gathered by the human senses, heard, seen, felt, smelt, and excluded are those pieces of information that are commonly considered "contextual" as opposed to being integral to the issue.
Someone, or some body is normally charged with the responsibility of declaring which information fits into which category.
For reasons of both simplicity and clarity, context is excluded because it is considered either to have no bearing on the issue or that its inclusion would so complicate the process at hand as to render it unmanageable, tangential, or worse, off-topic. Unmanageable processes can be too costly, too complicated for an ordinary audience (like a jury, or an audience in a debate hall, or even a judge, or perhaps an examining body of one's peers) or too time-consuming, given the constraints of all those charged with the task of making the decision about the outcome of the process.
Nevertheless, context, often including the history of the issue, the sociology, the anthopology, the literature (both fiction and non-fiction) and the biographies and contributions of others who have confronted the issue in previous time frames. And since all academic disciplines operate virtually, if not literally, in a self-contained silo, the import of these "extraneous" contextual matters is generally agreed to be insignificant, if not completely irrelevant.
Example: The judge in the Trayvon Martin/George Zimmerman murder trial ruled that race could not be used by either the prosecution or the defence, in the course of the trial. "Profiling" could be used but not "racial profiling"....for example. And yet, everyone on the North American continent knows full well that race was and is at the heart of the question of guilt or innocence.
Example: A former sex worker/teacher loses her job in the New York school system after she wrote about her experience as a former sex worker, while the former Governor of the State of New York is freely running for comptroller of the city of New York, five years after his forced resignation from the Governor's chair because he was involved with prostitutes. The double standard can only even partly be explained and understood in the context of a patriarchal society, in which men are given second chances, while women are denied similar opportunities. However, that  statement on the context would be ruled inadmissable in a courtroom, because it cannot be "proven"....and yet few would challenges its veracity and application to the comparison.
Christians surveyed in the United States recently by a considerable majority, considered the practice of their religion to be more an exercise in morality than an exerise in faith. So for them, doing the "right thing" means more, in the practice of their faith, than their spiritual growth and/or their development of a relationship with God. So their practice of their faith is primarily an extrinsic and an empirical exercise in behaviour, especially behaviour they consider acceptable to or unacceptable to God.
What is on the outside seriously trumps whatever complexities, attitudes, feelings and beliefs that might be churning on the inside of one's heart, mind, spirit and even body in the practice of their religious life.
Ramp that principle up a notch, and you find that the churches which these "christians" attend, measure their "health" by the size of the numbers in their pews and the numbers in their trust accounts. Once again, the empirical, and the extrinsic are given a sacred status in the analysis of how well the church organization is following the teachings of Jesus Christ, as recorded in the New Testament.
How different is this set of criteria of measurement of success from that of the corporate board of directors evaluating the health of their preferred corporation on the basis of its sales, revenues, investment dividends and relative profit and loss calculations, based on the most sophisticated and professional methods of such calculations?
"Not very!" you say.
"Not at all," I retort.
Susan Cain has recently written a book entitled, Quiet, (a celebration of introversion in a world that cannot stop talking). She posits the thesis that extroversion is so accepted as the most desired and most effective personality trait, that it nto only dwarfs introversion, but actually trumps all those who consider themselves introverts as "less than" and in some quarters (the Harvard Business School for one) only extroverts are socially accepted, and introverts have to overcome or subvert their introversion if they want to be accepted.
Once again, appearance, based on the empirical, and the extrinsic, is considered the only reality worthy of engagement. People are hired, fired, promoted, demoted, accepted and rejected in many cases, Cain argues, based on the perceptions of others of their relative extroversion/introversion quotient.
Behind this mirage of empirical data, Cain has uncovered equally intelligent, equally social, equally engaging and equally acceptable individuals who are, themselves, introvert, and are consequently living with a considerable social handicap.
So has the North American culture so denigrated the introvert, and the intuitive and the imaginative and the contextual in our headlong race to simplify and to manage and to control the variables (falsely, if we are honest with ourselves) that we have lost sight of the complexity of individual cases, and of the complexity of the many gestalts that confront us each day, each hour and each minute?
Have we sacrificed the life that is contained in the complexities and the ambiguities and the contextual for the "paint-by-numbers" lives that are lived inside the narrow boundaries of our definitional categories, letting in the empirical/extrinsic and excluding the intuitive and the contextual?
There is a case to be made that we have, and are continuing along that path, without being willing to take the time to examine our looking down the periscope and up the telescope the wrong way!
There is a middle-way to be found in this dichotomy and it will not easily be pursued or found if we continue to elevate the specialist and the expert, the empirical and the scientific over the intuitive, the poetic, the imaginative and the generalist.

Obama challenges Republicans to remove grid-lock...in hard-hitting speeches of leadership

It was Chris Matthews, host of Hardball on MSNBC, who yesterday used the four-letter word "hate" to name the attitude of the Republican right-wing to the President of the United States. Matthews courageously and defiantly, as well as accurately gave the appropriate interpretation to the virtual "hostage-taking" of the president, his agenda and the whole U.S. government apparatus in their narcissistic, and lethal, not to mention self-sabotaging efforts, to bring the United States economy to its knees.
Obama declared his intention to dedicated the remaining 1200+ days as president to improving the lot of the American middle class. He declared he will use every instrument available to him, as the chief executive of the formerly great American system of government, bypassing Congress if he has to, to bring his policies and programs into effect. He declared also that the grid-lock imposed on governance by the Republican opposition "has to stop".
In what is billed by the White House as a series of speeches to the American people, he challenged the Republicans to bring all ideas to improve the lot of American people to the table, pointing out that repealing Obama care and cutting spending is not an economic program.
He wants to create jobs, to re-build infrastructure, ensure every American can afford a home, an education, and a retirement with dignity.
Sounding optimistic, as always, and obviously setting the table for the forthcoming budget battles of the fall, with deficit ceilings and Republican obstructionism looming both again and still, Obama seems to have returned to "campaign fighting mode"....
Denouncing the speeches, both Senate Minority Leader McConnell and House Majority Leader Boehner, said there were no proposals put forward by Obama, and once again accused the President of 'not working with the Republicans'....a charge hollow in both fact and in rhetoric.
Republicans refuse to agree to a path to citizenship for the eleven million immigrants;
Republicans refuse to acknowlege the considerable benefits of Obamacare;
Republicans refuse to agree to generate jobs through rebuilding eroded and dangerous infrastructure;
Republicans refuse to permit the debt ceiling to rise, unless a corresponding number of dollars of government spending are cut, in a no-win spiral downward based on austerity alone, without investment in the future;
Republicans insist on raising the interest rates on student loans, as their way of championing fiscal "responsibility"....
And should the U.S. government either default on its debt, or in a worse case scenario, shut-down completely this fall, there is no doubt either or both of these events will seriously and negatively impact the struggling U.S. economy.
Rightly, Obama wants to be sure that it is the Republicans who must be tarred with the brush of responsibilty for either or both of these failures of governance.
Isn't it amazing how deeply embedded, and how profoundly denied is the racism that plagues too many Republican members of both houses...that they would let either of these two spectres trump their legitimate responsibility to provide leadership and good government, as they were elected to provide.

High Five to WAGEMARK...a brilliant challenge for corporate greed

New ‘Wagemark’ logo for fair-wage companies: Goar


Group of progressive Torontonians comes up with the Wagemark scheme to promote pay equity and challenge today’s top-heavy corporate pay structure.

By Carol Goar, Toronto Star, July 24, 2013

Very few businesses will make the cut. Most won’t even try.
To display the “Wagemark” insignia, a company must pay its chief executive no more than eight times the amount its lowest paid worker earns. At the moment, the chief executives of Canada’s top 100 corporations make 235 times the average worker’s pay.
Wagemark, a year in the planning, was introduced on July 17. Its founding director, Peter MacLeod, kept the fanfare to a minimum, aiming to build credibility before Wagemark’s international debut this fall. He notified organizations that had demonstrated an interest in social equity and contacted a handful of journalists who had written about the widening gap between rich and poor.
“The idea is simple,” he explained “In a world where consumers can purchase certified forest-friendly paper, dolphin-friendly tuna, fair trade coffee and register planet-friendly buildings; why not create a common standard for wage-responsible businesses?”
So far, 18 organizations have become Wagemark members. Most knew about the initiative in advance or were invited to apply. The vanguard includes Impact Mobile, a high-tech enterprise; Bellwoods Brewery , a beermaker, bar and restaurant; Oxibrite, a detergent manufacturer; Ninesides, a graphic design firm, and Urban Space Property Group, which remakes downtown heritage buildings into attractive, affordable workplaces.
Non-profit enterprises can also apply. The most prominent to achieve Wagemark status so far is Evergreen, creator of the Brickworks in Toronto’s Don Valley. The charity aims to bring nature back to the city.
This week, MacLeod is in Denmark, hoping to recruit the foundation’s first international members. “We’re not trying to solve the Fortune 500 problem,” he said, referring to the bloated pay packages of the ultra-rich corporate elite. “Wagemark is a simple straightforward rule of thumb that we hope can help arrest growing income disparities within organizations.”
He acknowledges that the 8:1 ratio is extremely stringent. Even a business such as Mountain Equipment Co-op, which prides itself on its fair wage policy, wouldn’t qualify. Its ratio is 9:1.
The pioneer of the movement, management guru Peter Drucker, who sounded the alarm about the expanding wage gap between workers and their bosses in the1970s, suggested a ratio of 15:1 for small and medium sized businesses and 25:1 for multinationals. More recently the Vancouver-based Shareholder Association for Research and Education (SHARE), a leader in the ethical investment field, set its bar at 30:1.
“We put a lot of thought into 8:1,” MacLeod said. He is confident that many startups, social enterprises and nonhierarchical companies “would fall close to that range.”
Even if Wagemark gets the public talking about the right pay ratio, that would be a victory, he said. At the moment, people feel powerless. No matter how hard they work, they can’t get ahead. They see inequality growing, the middle class shrinking and movements such as Occupy dying after a brief spurt of energy. “This gives them a voice.” MacLeod said. “It’s something tangible we can do.”
One of his hopes is that public agencies will incorporate Wagemark into their procurement policies, awarding points for responsible wage practices. “That would normalize the concept.”
Although Wagemark is a voluntary program, one requirement is mandatory. An organization must provide written proof from a chartered accountant or auditor that its pay structure meets the 8:1 standard. To settle for less — a verbal assurance or an honour system — would dilute the value of the label and the credibility of the registry.
MacLeod and his team do not require confidential corporate data or salary figures, provided an organization submits professional verification that it is in compliance. Nor they care how an applicant achieves the 8:1 ratio. It could pay new entrants the minimum wage ($10.25 per hour), for instance, as long as the chief executive made no more than $170,560. Conversely, it could pay its CEO $1 million (including salary, benefits, stock options and other perks) provided the lowest-paid employee earned at least $125,000.
In business circles, this initiative might seem laughably utopian. But to millions of Canadians whose living standard is falling while corporate profits rise, Wagemark doesn’t look so ridiculous. It shows there is a viable alternative to today’s top-heavy wage structure. It gives employers who pay their workers fairly a chance to take a proud stand.

Lac Megantic: never again! add your voice to protect commuities

from Leadnow.org. July 23, 2013
On July 5th, as most people in Lac-Mégantic slept, a runaway freight train hauling 72 tank cars of crude oil derailed in the middle of the small Québec town.1

Most of the old, dangerous tank cars split open. The oil burst into flames and explosions shook the town as burning oil flowed through the streets.
The fires blazed for two days, destroying half of the downtown, and leaving 38 confirmed dead, with a dozen still missing in a town of 6,000. This is the deadliest rail disaster in Canada in nearly 150 years.2,3 The human loss is almost beyond belief, and our hearts and prayers are with the people who are grieving and rebuilding in Lac-Mégantic.
Now, dozens of organizations across Canada, from Québec’s Équiterre to Public Interest Alberta, are coming together to make sure a disaster like this never happens again, and they are asking for your help to make sure the federal government listens.
Tell Prime Minister Harper and the new Minister of Transport, Lisa Raitt, that you demand an immediate ban on using dangerous 111A tank cars to transport oil, and join the call for a full review of how dangerous fuels like oil and gas are transported through our communities - by train, pipeline, and truck.
Background
Government and industry have known for years that it’s extremely dangerous to carry oil in the old “111A” tank cars that exploded in Lac-Mégantic.4 Yet, the government has removed common-sense safety regulations, and has failed to implement necessary oversight for shipping the dangerous fuel.5
Back in 1994 the Transportation Safety Board of Canada wrote that 111A tank cars have a flawed design and a "high incidence of tank integrity failure" during accidents. Since then, the government has ignored repeated warnings while companies have used more and more old rail cars to transport dangerous fuels through communities across the country.6,7
Despite the tragedy, the federal government is still denying the need for a full review and better safety regulations. On Friday, Larry Miller, the Conservative MP who chairs the government’s Transport committee, dismissed calls for a review of Transport Canada’s safety regulations.8
The tragedy in Lac-Mégantic shows us just how devastating it can be when governments put oil company interests before community safety. As our hearts go out to all those affected, we can work together to make sure this never happens again in any community from coast to coast to coast.
The quiet increase of oil and gas transportation in recent years - through pipelines, rail and trucks - is putting our communities, livelihoods and environment in harm’s way. More and more people are concerned about the risks of these dangerous fuels, and we deserve to have a say in decisions that affect all of our lives.
We need to act now before the media moves on and attention fades. If enough of us speak out now, we can force the new Minister of Transport, Lisa Raitt, to take the first steps necessary to protect our communities.
Sources:
1.The equation of a disaster: what went wrong in Lac-Mégantic (Globe and Mail)
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/the-equation-of-a-disaster-what-went-wrong-in-lac-megantic/article13214911/
2.Lac-Megantic death toll climbs to 37 (CBC)
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/story/2013/07/15/quebec-lac-megantic-rail-disaster.html
3.Quebec train crash’s missing all presumed dead, police say; attention focuses on CEO (The Washington Post)
http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2013-07-11/world/40499565_1_quebec-alberta-oil-sands-brakes
4.Rail cars like those in Lac-Mégantic disaster are prone to puncturing (Globe and Mail)
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/rail-cars-like-those-in-lac-megantic-disaster-are-prone-to-puncturing/article13080359/
5.Tories dismiss need for review of critical audit of Transport Canada following Lac-Megantic disaster (Vancouver Sun)
http://www.vancouversun.com/news/national/Tories+dismiss+need+review+critical+audit+Transport+Canada/8654008/story.html
6.Safety rules lag as oil transport by train rises (CBC)
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/story/2013/07/08/f-lac-megantic-oil-rail.html
7.Rail cars like those in Lac-Mégantic disaster are prone to puncturing (Globe and Mail)
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/rail-cars-like-those-in-lac-megantic-disaster-are-prone-to-puncturing/article13080359/
8.Tories dismiss need for review of critical audit of Transport Canada following Lac-Megantic disaster (Vancouver Sun)
http://www.vancouversun.com/news/national/Tories+dismiss+need+review+critical+audit+Transport+Canada/8654008/story.html
9.Railways have been lobbying against more stringent safety regulations (Montreal Gazette)
http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/Railways+have+been+lobbying+against+more+stringent/8654175/story.html