When will men be "good enough"?....in an extrinsic world, never!!

I just read a piece by Gint Aras, in The Good Men Project, April 16, 2014, entitled, "When's a guy good enough?" An English professor in a community college that serves a relatively poor neighbourhood in Chicago, Aras recounts in eloquent detail the narrative he heard from a Latino cab driver punctuated with the rhetorical question, "When's a guy good enough?"
The cab driver had enrolled in college, received an initial liberal arts associate degree and then, after enrolling in a four-year college, encountered many hurdles that blocked the completion of his program. Returning to Mexico to an ailing mother, where he was ostracized as the "rich" American, the subject of too many requests to proceed with his education, only to learn that his wife back in Chicago had left him for a tire salesman, the cabbie had also, after his mother's death made another attempt to finish a teaching degree only to be blocked by an arrogant "gate-keeper" of a professor whose course he seemed unable to pass. Here is how Aras describes the instructor:
the instructor with a strong sense of (completely arbitrary) ethics, values that must be present in the student before he is “released into the world”. -
See more at: http://goodmenproject.com/featured-content/when-is-a-guy-good-enough-gint-aras/?utm_source=Thursday+April+17%2C+2014&utm_campaign=Constant+Contact+Apr+17+2014&utm_medium=email#sthash.F5ldGkWn.dpuf
 It was, as the story was told, almost inevitable that, on one level the cabbie would consider his "incompleteness" a disadvantage compared with the tire salesman's "career" and the capture of his estranged wife. Here is another quote from the Aras retelling of Juan's (the Cabbie's) story:
He wished someone would respect him, but he knew no one would until he was truly wealthy and stable. “That’s what a guy’s good for. A man is a source, but he’s never good enough, and he’s never got enough, or whatever he has is the wrong thing.” A guy who sells tires today, Juan said, is more stable and wealthier than a guy who might be a teacher in the future. “That’s the danger of education for a guy,” said Juan. “People need you to give them something right now. They don’t care if you say, ‘I’ll get it to you when I’m done with my degree.’ That degree might never come. You’re stupid if you think it takes four years. They plug the thing up with hoops, or they steal classes from you, make you take the same thing twice.”
And then the blockbuster:
“How about this one?”
We were now approaching the college.
“If you get married they think you’re finished and if you are without a woman they think you’re incomplete. You know who that is, right?” “I don’t.” “Ha! It’s Charles Bukowski.* You don’t know Charles Bukowski?”
“Not by heart, no.”
“Well, he writes a lot of truth.”
Juan pulled up to the front of the college, right before the entrance to the theater. He said, “You can’t wish for it to go both ways. If you want everything your way, you end up lonely. And if you don’t want to be lonely, you must give up your way. No matter what, something’s got to suck. That’s just the way it is, I guess.”
Juan's attitude might sound like a "pity-party" to some, and perhaps it is. However, the question has hung over the foreheads of millions of men for centuries, without being addressed in nearly as articulate and compelling a manner as Juan, through Gint Aras, puts it.
Every time I left my home, as a young boy, I heard the words, "Be a good boy!" as if somehow my plan was to be something else. Most times when my mother talked about her husband, my father, the words "your father's no good" were included in the diatribe, although they stayed together in an uncomfortable truce for sixty-two years.
I have a theory, based on some seven decades of watching men "attempt to prove themselves" as if their identity had been replaced by their capacity to earn, or to provide, or to perform a skill, or to win friends, or to essentially turn themselves into a function, as if bring a human doing had replaced a human being, in their consciousness.
And despite his perception of himself as an incomplete man, "never good enough," Juan hits the nail on the head about my theory.
Most of the activities in which men are engaged start out as attempts to prove that these men are "acceptable" to someone...first their parents, then their teachers, then their employers, and then and most importantly their female partners, and then their children and grandchildren. Men (perhaps women too, but here we are talking about men) are "other-directed" to the point that the notion of "self-direction" seems almost meaningless. I once asked a high school principal what he would do if he could do whatever he wanted. He shrugged and replied, "I have no idea!" He was engaged, by his own words, in managing widgets on a board, providing coverage for absent teachers, scheduling meetings and the agendas for those meetings, writing reports for head office, listening to complaints from parents and teachers, and attempting to keep the lid on the school, so his reputation would pave the path toward a superintendent's job, with more of the same, including both more salary and more pension.
And the culture supports this concept of "proving oneself"...and if and when one decides, really decides, that one is more than or different from "a function for others" then one is, from my experience, completely ostracised as evil, dangerous, irresponsible, uncontrollable, deviant, and the target of slurs that say more about the person firing the verbal assault's own poverty of self than they do about the target of the slur. For men, existence is highly competitive, with siblings, with classmates, with co-workers, with supervisors, and with 'friends' or perhaps 'associates' who rarely get behind the mask of "good guy" or "funny guy" or "combative guy" or "wise guy" or "serious guy"....rarely is a man, (and this includes how other men see him as well as how he sees himself) a human being, somewhat full of gaps, and somewhat competent and seriously complex yet also extremely simple, and most important "comfortable in his own skin"....as the cliché has it.
We fight to win and depending on the prize of that winning, we will do almost anything to achieve it, including sacrificing our too often unknown identity in the process. And in the process of reducing both ourselves and the prize to some form of objectification, we inflict violence on ourselves, and on many others, including our partners, our children our co-workers, our bosses and our futures.
Wars have been and will continue to be fought because "some man or men were not good enough."
Divorces have been filed because someone, either the woman or the man believed, "the man was not good enough."
Heart attacks have occurred because someone pursued a goal at the expense of balancing health and wellness, a word that really did not exist even a couple of decades ago. Firings and dismissals have occurred too often because someone was found "not good enough" for the post.
And, to turn this around, first we have to tell our stories about how this "meme" has impacted our lives, who those people were who projected their own inadequacy onto us unconsciously and then remind both ourselves and others when appropriate, that projections are just that, projections and not reality. Just because my mother was neurotic and projected her need for perfection onto both my father and me (as well as onto my sister) does not, and need not define my identity. And just because the Christian church takes the position that we have all sinned and are all sinners falling short of the glory of God (I think the quote is from Paul's letter to the Philippians) does not mean that we are "no good" as creatures, although the imago dei portion of that Christian faith seems to have got lost in too many pulpits and pews on Sundays, and then carried home for the "leavening" of the home culture for the rest of the week.
Whenever and wherever one finds abuse, one can immediately look for the abuser who is invariably acting out of "scarcity" of some essential ingredient in his life. "Being no good" is at the heart of the worst crimes in human history, including the brutal murder of 6 million Jews in the Second World War. The pursuit of superiority, as a substitute for  inadequacy, inflicts so much brokenness, pain,  misery and death, not to mention the angst infesting the spirit of our cabbie Juan. And, of course, on the other side of this canvas are the "winners" who callously and contemptuously patronize  those of us who are "not good enough" in their eyes, and we let that perception dominate our culture.
And feminism, at least in its most virulent form, simply adopts the 'meme' of masculine competitiveness, proving, once again, that women are as competent, if not more so, than men, (as if there were any question about that in the first place!). And the cycle grows even more insidious, and encircling of both genders.
On Good Friday, 2014, one of the questions poking its head above the frozen ground remains, as always, "Will Death imprison us all, in one of its many forms, or will we be able to find our own path to a new and fully alive and fully authentic existence?
So long as the "extrinsic" dominates and obliterates the "intrinsic" in our culture, and in our faith, then we will all forever be "never good enough"....and there is no deity supporting that reduction.
*A quote from the writer Charles Bukowski:
“For those who believe in God, most of the big questions are answered. But for those of us who can't readily accept the God formula, the big answers don't remain stone-written. We adjust to new conditions and discoveries. We are pliable. Love need not be a command nor faith a dictum. I am my own god. We are here to unlearn the teachings of the church, state, and our educational system. We are here to drink beer. We are here to kill war. We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us.”
― Charles Bukowski

Questions to ponder about the future of our youth

Having spent nearly two and one half decades in Ontario classrooms, with adolescents, as one of their instructors, I am sensitive to stories about young people, especially stories that just might be indicative of something gone awry in their lives.
In the last several days, in the waters off South Korea, in Calgary, near Pittsburgh PA, and in Nigeria, stories involving trauma and young people have caught my eye.
While not all of these stories were perpetrated by youth, (South Korea witnessed a ferry capsize and the death of nearly 300*) others were incidents initiated by young people, one under the "guise" of an Islamic terrorist organization# while the other two were apparently the result of a young man's "snapping" and wreaking havoc among his peers, one in a high school in Pennsylvania** and the other at an end-of semester party in Calgary.##
Some scholars, including among then Carl Jung, have argued that events in human history are connected to other events; some scientists studying quantum physics have argued that when a butterfly dies in one part of the world, that death is 'recorded' in another part of the world. And there are already those, considered expert in the field of trauma intervention who posit that perpetrators of violent acts are more likely to be imitators than creators of those events.
However, whatever theorist's lens we choose through which to view these events (excepting one that declares them completely random and un-connected) one is prompted to wonder what is happening among the young people, and why?

• We are witnessing masked men, refusing to declare any state association in eastern Ukraine, while obviously unofficially representing the interests of Russia and its president Putin; we are also witnessing the recruitment of hundreds of young men for the purpose of joining quasi-military gangs to fight for a religious "manifesto" in several parts of the world;
• we listen to the echoes of 'sanctions' that have little if any impact in response to this latest Russian Machiavellian move; 
• we are witnessing the slaughter of thousands in a seemingly interminable and unstoppable civil war in Syria, with all sides receiving support from what have commonly be called "state" actors;
• we are experiencing the chasm of a deep divide between those who have and those who have not, with little if anything being done to stem that tide; we are also learning of serious reports about the imminent decline of the many eco-systems that provide food, clean air and water for human survival;
• we are listening to stories about university graduates clawing their way into employment following graduation, with minimal efforts at attempting to link further training to job vacancies;
• we see racial and ethnic skirmishes in many urban centres where technology makes "instant mobs" both easily achieved and frequently massed;
• we witness rhetorical gestures of hollow ideals by men and women whose capacity to initiate fundamental change seems capped by both their imagination and their courage to resist the 'status quo' that supports both the acquisition of wealth as the highest human achievement and, naturally, puts those who have wealth at the top of the "influence" totem-pole of our political systems
• we listen to and read stories that document a spike in heroin addiction deaths among the very wealthy in north-eastern United States, with the problem growing across the continent;
• we learn about "law enforcement officers" armed with tasers patrolling the corridors of high schools "to protect students" who, if engaged in a conflict, are then tasered and suffer life-changing injuries;

And yet, we all wonder what is going on in the lives of these young people that might make them less than sanguine about their future, including the potential of their lives to impact the needed changes that they (and we) can see begging for attention, around the world. With the exception of the Korean ferry incident, in which mostly adolescents were the victims of a disaster at sea, the other incidents beg our collective and concerted attention, through a maze of many cogent questions:
What kind of world are we leaving for those who follow?
What kind of world would we like to leave for those who follow?
What kind of price are we prepared to pay in order to demand better answers from our governments than those that preserve the 'sinecures' of those in power?
What kind of new societal and cultural forums do we need to address our issues, from a perspective that puts the "public good" ahead of personal, regional and national self-interest?
How can we move toward a definition of "the public good" that includes all citizens of the planet, not merely the tribal instincts of small ghettos of racially homogenized and ethnically pure groups?
What are the new and pragmatic definitions of "power" both hard and soft in a world that knows intimately and profoundly the futility of military conflict?
How are we going to curb the negative ambitions of those experiencing the greatest scarcity (of learning, of food, of responsibility, of empathy and support) from becoming a tidal wave of survival demands?
What are the new 'canaries in the coal mines that we have yet to identify, and then to monitor, in our path to the survival of our best and most creative institutions and individuals?

*Nearly 300 people were feared dead last night after a ferry carrying hundreds of secondary school students sank off South Korea’s southern coast as they were en route for the holiday island of Jeju.

The Yonhap news agency said at least four people, including one student, were dead, and about 290 were missing, in what is looking like the country’s worst ferry disaster in decades.

The ferry was carrying 459 people, of whom 164 have been rescued, coast guard officials said. They included 325 students from Danwon High School in Ansan, just south of the capital Seoul, when it sent out a distress signal at 8:58am in waters 20km off the island of Byeongpoong. (By Clifford Coonan, Irish Times, April 17, 2014)

 

##Calgary police say the son of one of their own is a suspect in the worst mass murder in the city's history, a bloody and baffling attack on a group of university students at a house party.

Five young people were celebrating the last day of classes at the University of Calgary when they were stabbed to death early Tuesday. A suspect was arrested a short time later after he was tracked down and bitten by a police dog. (By Bill Graveland, The Canadian Press, in HuffPost Alberta, April 15, 2014)

#Heavily armed Boko Haram Islamists kidnapped more than 100 girls from a school in northeast Nigeria.

The radical group, which has attacked schools in the area before as part of their anti-government rebellion, carried off the students from the school in Chibok in Borno state late on Monday.

Witnesses said they saw gunmen arrive in trucks and on motorcycles and overpowered soldiers that had been guarding the school ahead of their yearly exams.

Officials said the gunmen killed a soldier and police officer and took off with at least 100 students and as many as 200.

“Over 100 female students in our government secondary school at Chibok have been abducted,” said Audu Musa, who teaches in another public school in the area. (By Lucy Kinder and agencies, in The Telegraph, April 15, 2014)

**A 10th-grader suspected of committing a stabbing rampage at a Pennsylvania high school on Wednesday has been charged as an adult with four counts of attempted homicide and 21 other counts.
The suspect, identified as 16-year-old sophomore Alex Hribal, injured at least 22 people before being taken into custody, the Associated Press reports. The teenager reportedly had a “blank expression” on his face as he slashed at his victims. He was being held without bail Thursday in a juvenile detention center.
Many of the victims—at least 21 students and a security guard—were critically wounded and hospitalized, though there were conflicting reports about how many. (By Sam Frizell and Denver Nicks, Time, April 9, 2014)
 

Finally France takes evidence of crimes against humanity in Syria to Security Council and ICC

Sometimes the pace of events, especially those events in which hundreds of thousands of innocent people are murdered, maimed, starved, displaced, wounded and even gassed, is such that many of us grow impatient with the almost inverse pace of bringing those responsible to account. Today, amid stories of the kidnapping of some 100 women students by thugs in Nigeria:*
...we are finally seeing the results of a lengthy investigation into the massacre that has been sanitized in most reports in the western media as a "civil war" in Syria.
And once again, it has taken the courage, and the diligence and the creativity of a single defector to bring the evidence forward, supported by the funding of Qatar, a staunch supporter of the opposition.

France goes to ICC over Syria
from iafrica.com, April 16, 2014

France will table a proposal before the United Nations Security Council authorizing the International Criminal Court to investigate crimes against humanity in Syria, French ambassador to the UN Gerard Araud said on Tuesday.
Araud told reporters that France hoped to introduce the resolution in the next few weeks, following a presentation to council members of a gruesome dossier containing thousands of photos showing detainees who had been starved or tortured in prisons run by the Syrian regime.
"We are going to try to obtain authorization for the ICC to act," Araud said.
"We now have proof," he added, referring to the dossier of evidence compiled by "Caesar," the codename given to a defector who captured the images before fleeing Syria.
The "Caesar Report", sponsored and funded by Qatar, a staunch supporter of opposition forces in Syria's bloody civil war, states that 11 000 people died in regime jails between 2011 and 2013. The report contains some 55 000 images depicting abuse of victims.
Two of the experts who examined the photos and authenticated claims made by the defector say the dossier represents credible evidence to be put before the ICC.
"Our judgement is that all this evidence is credible," said David Crane, former chief prosecutor for the special tribunal on Sierra Leone that indicted Charles Taylor.

Of course, while the evidence may well be both credible and convincing, it will take another round of serious investigation to determine who actually committed the crimes detailed in the photographic evidence. And then, as in most of these cases, it will take another period of time to bring the world community to the place where adequate pressure is brought to bear on those who have to be charged, in order to bring them to the ICC.
And while the process may seem interminable, especially compared with what many have known and observed throughout the conflict, it is a never-ending process, provided there are individuals and people(countries or organizations) willing to support their clandestine efforts to bring the truth to the light of day, and to the appropriate authorities.
Just when the United Nations has announced that it is inappropriate for it to place Peacekeepers in Ukraine, after the new government in that country formally requested such forces, to help quell the civil conflict fomented under the aegis of the Kremlin, and some of us were losing faith, once again, in the international body, the presentation by the French to the Security Council could, provided there is no Russian veto, or perhaps even one from China, generate the initiative to bring this evidence to the ICC.
Every initiative, no matter how small individually, that can demonstrate the brutality and the eventual futility of violence as an instrument of political strategy, including the violence of the gangs and cells of terrorists currently encircling the world, and of those masked bullies in eastern Ukraine, formerly in Crimea, as mercenary agents of states willing to hind behind their paid masks, has to be deployed in another interminable effort to take both state-enacted and state supported military and quasi-military action from the arsenal of all states. And while we all know that such a prospect is not either likely or even feasible, it is nevertheless a goal worthy of being retained as a fantasy to which all civilized humans can aspire.
And from among those retaining such a fantasy can and will come others who, like the "Caesar" in the report on Syria, will help to shape history and bend it toward increased exposure and accountability of those determined to perpetuate violence, of all means, in all situations.

*More than 100 female students have been abducted by suspected Islamist insurgents in a raid on a secondary school in Nigeria’s northeast Borno state.
Gunmen thought to be members of Boko Haram carried off the teenage girls from the school in Chibok late in Monday night.
The raid took place on the same day as a bomb attack killed at least 75 people on the edge of the capital Abuja.
With elections due next February, President Goodluck Jonathan is under intense pressure to contain the five-year insurgency, which is posing a growing security risk to Africa’s top oil producer. (From euronews.com April 16, 2014)

Enough of Deception and Lies, Mr. Putin; we all need a body of facts on which to base our arguments

The first casualty in any conflict is the truth. Perhaps it was Aeschylus who first said this; evidence for the source seems conflicted.  However, it was Sun Tzu in his little book entitled, "The Art of War, who declared that all war is based on deception. So we can start with the premise that war requires deception and results in the anhiliation of the truth. Both cause and effect are dependent on deceit.  Reports that Russian called for last night's meeting of the Security Council over Ukraine, and then pointed the finger at the 'west' for the conflict, while having to listen as various ambassadors disclosed satellite images of thousands of will armed Russian troops on the Ukrainian border, including tanks, as well as various types of weapons, demonstrate both the brazen attitude of Putin and his envoys as well as the degree of deception to which they are willing to stoop.
Here is an excerpt from The Guardian's reporting on the back and forth from the Security Council meeting:
The United Nations security council held an emergency session on Sunday night to discuss the escalating crisis in Ukraine as the war of words between its western allies and Russia continued.
Just hours before a deadline by Ukraine for pro-Russian separatists in eastern cities to disarm by Monday morning or face all-out attack, the security council convened at Russia's request. Moscow called Kiev's plans to mobilise the army "criminal".
Russian ambassador to the UN, Vitaly Churkin, denied western and Ukrainian claims that Moscow was behind the violence, and told the meeting that Ukraine has been using radical neo-Nazi forces to destabilise its eastern region.
"It is the west that will determine the opportunity to avoid civil war in Ukraine. Some people, including in this chamber, do not want to see the real reasons for what is happening in Ukraine and are constantly seeing the hand of Moscow in what is going on," Churkin said. "Enough. That is enough."...
Churkin's comments were a direct rebuke to US and its allies which continued on Sunday to link the Kremlin to the unrest in eastern Ukraine.
His US counterpart Samantha Power told the meeting: "These armed units ... raised Russian and separatist flags over seized buildings and have called referendums and union with Russia. We know who is behind this."
Britain's UN ambassador said Russia had massed tens of thousands of well-equipped troops near the Ukrainian border in addition to the 25,000 troops it recently moved into Crimea, which Moscow effectively annexed last month.
"Satellite images show that there are between 35,000 and 40,000 Russian troops in the vicinity of the border with Ukraine equipped with combat aircraft, tanks, artillery and logistical support units," Mark Lyall Grant said. (From The Guardian, April 14, 2014)
Having fomented the 'Russian' people of the Crimea into a plebescite that demanded annexation with Russia, Putin is now attempting a similar strategy in the eastern cities of Ukraine, for the purpose of potentially annexing the eastern half of that country. He has already raised the price of gas to Ukraine, virtually calling the debt of some $2 billion for past energy purchased, in the hope of destabilizing that country into submission to the Russian bear's overture to re-enter the Russian Federation.
Ukraine, for its part, has vowed to confront the masked "militias" who have effectively invaded several eastern Ukrainian cities, and unfortunately declared a deadline which has come and gone, without a Russian 'blink-of-the-eye'. Will the west enable the Ukrainian government to make good on their threat to take on the Russian forces? Will the Russians forces simply continue their march into the Ukraine, while protesting that the west is deceiving the world about its actions and intentions?
As the temperature of this conflict rises, Thomas Friedman, New York Times columnist and author, appearing on Global Public Square with Fareed Zakaria, yesterday, almost pleaded with Mr. Putin to turn off the gas flowing into Ukraine, because, in Friedman's view, that would catalyze the west's commitment to renewable energy sources.
Of course, there are still those in the U.S. government like Senator John McCain who want a military response to Putin's military buildup, yet such a position is unlikely to find support from either the White House or the American people. NATO, while rattling its sabres, is also only lukewarm about a military confrontation with Russia, and so, almost by default, Putin is enabled and emboldened in his attempt to re-capture Russian stature and influence in his corner of the world.
And the Ukrainian people, for their part, are the pawns in his game.
The use of energy, including its price hike, is being termed "an act of terrorism" by Ukrainian leaders, and there is clearly legitimacy to that claim. If Putin succeeds in bringing Ukraine to its heels, because it cannot afford to heat its homes and run its factories, and brings the government down through suffocation of energy supplies through price hikes and supply valves turned off, without the west providing adequate support to prevent such action, then the world will know unequivocally that a kind of "wild west" of lawlessness, and the abrogation of international treaties and the peaceful "coup" will have become the latest arrow in the quiver of any dictator.
Since energy is a global commodity, and since the whole world is dependent on its access and affordability, and since Russia command a considerable reservoir of energy deposits supplying nearly 40% of EU energy needs, and since the U.S. is either unwilling or unable to export energy to Europe at this time, Russia is in a very powerful, for the moment, position.
Some observers say that this position is, however, short-lived, and that Putin will eventually have to pay a price for his actions. However, it is now that his actions require both confrontation and repeal, and there seems to be little appetite among the western nations to "take him on".
Has the west been lulled into a state of complacency, following the end of the cold war? Has the west fallen into a trap of excessive trust and/or war-weariness, or merely found the budgetary cupboard bare for any additional military exercises? Or has this crisis not reached the threshold at which it becomes sufficiently serious and so seismic in its potential to shift international norms away from respected and honoured boundaries and treaties that support those boundaries?
Clearly, Russia, nor any other country, cannot have it both ways: to make invasive moves to take over other countries, in whole or in part, and then claim that their "opponents" are responsible for the threats to the Russian people living in those regions, when there was no demonstrable or provable threat in the first place.
It reminds one of the voter repression campaign that is taking place in North America, based on the bogus and trumped-up claims of voter fraud. Former Senator Patrick Moynahan of New York, would be appalled to learn that "there is no agreed upon set of facts" on either side of the Atlantic with which all political combatants can agree, before attempting to establish one's opinion of those facts.
If truth-telling has suffered its final blow, there is no national or international security blanket or apparatus that can or will protect the Ukrainian people and government, or any other people and their government. When the lies of one side becomes its only truth, then, as Orwell predicted, we have entered the age of newspeak, when each word means precisely its opposite. And there is really no defence against such a transformation. We all live in what has become a dystopia.

We call on Brandeis Universitiy to re-instate their offer to Hirsi Ali of a Distinguished Professorship

Too often the headlines shout about the suicide bombers from the Islamic terrorists ranks, men and women ready and willing to sacrifice their lives for some "holy war on behalf of Allah" attacking infidels (Christians and Jews) merely because they are Christians and Jews. However, that phase, the bombing and maiming phase of this war, gets headlines simply because of the news editors' bias that violence sells newspapers, fosters advertising sales and enables the news outlets to generate an audience with which they would not exist.
Nevertheless, we must never forget that the Islamic terrorism against infidels (Christians and Jews) is also one of political activism, less noticed by the radar of the public media but clearly aimed at maintaining a "Teflon" perfection and resilience for the movement even when that movement is not actually killing people. And it would seem that Islamist radicals, whether they are members of the Muslim Brotherhood, or Al Qaeda, or Al Nusra, or Al Shabab, or ....(fill in the blanks of the many other names) including apparently the Council of American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) or the Muslim Students Association, part of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) are united in protecting Islam from criticism, from critics and from any kind of "inverted racism" that might be found in any action by any organization, government or institution through campaigns that literally job the head off that criticism before it can gain a public podium.
The recent story from Brandeis University, in which a distinguished professorship was originally offered to and then withdrawn from Hirsi Ali, an Islamic apostate, critic and champion of Muslim women's rights, demonstrates the level of danger of the co-ordinated, focused and effective tentacles of the Islamic revolution.
While our source for this story is The Jerusalem Post, we have no reason to doubt the truth of their reporting, nor the implications of the story. Here is an excerpt from the April 12, 2014 edition of the paper:
By now, we all know that Brandeis University was about to bestow an honor on the elegant and distinguished author and activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali, best known for her critique of Islam, her decision to leave Islam, and her championship of Muslim women’s rights.
One might understand why an apostate intellectual might be in danger in Somalia, the country of her birth, or in Saudi Arabia, where she once lived.
However, she has just been dishonored by Brandeis University, which withdrew its offer of a Distinguished Professorship because the Muslim Brotherhood in America, known to us as the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), and its national student group, the Muslim Students Association, which is also allied with the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), mounted a successful campaign against the award.
Both CAIR and ISNA are unindicted co-conspirators in the Holy Land Foundation terrorist financing case.
CAIR provided the Muslim Student Association (MSU) at Brandeis with outdated, out-of-context and highly inflammatory quotes from Hirsi Ali. They did not provide her thought-provoking, stirring, moving passages of which there are many.
Brandeis simply caved to the lynch mob.
This is a terrible moment for academic freedom and critical inquiry on the American campus.
Yale University drove the first nail into the coffin of academic freedom, freedom of thought, and critical inquiry, when Yale’s University Press refused to publish the Danish “Mohammed” cartoons to accompany Jytte Klausen’s 2009 book on the subject: The Cartoons That Shook The World.
Yale drove a second nail into that coffin when it ousted Dr.
Charles Small, who dared to focus on contemporary anti-Semitism, not merely on safely dead Jews. Dr. Small’s major international conference on this subject in 2010 had over 100 speakers and 600 in attendance.
The conference did not demonize the Jewish or American states and it did look at Jew-hatred and the persecution of Christians in Islamic countries today. However, official Palestinians and student Palestinians insisted this was an “Islamophobic” conference. A campaign was mounted and Yale administrators and professors dismissed Dr. Small’s Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism, although it was independently funded.
Brandeis University, the “Jewish” university, (in terms of liberal values), has driven the third nail into the coffin of academic freedom and intellectual diversity, when it bowed to student and faculty pressure and rescinded its offer to Hirsi Ali.
 (By Phyllis Chesler, The Jerusalem Post, April 12, 2014)

While pointing the finger at Brandeis for abandoning its "liberal values", we believe that this story has implications that go far beyond the campus of Brandeis. We believe that in their concerted and co-ordinated and highly effective campaign to fend off all criticism, with too much impunity from the "politically correct" establishment too eager to demonstrate that the U.S. is not at war with Islam, the Islamic conflation of their many organizational faces, including both violent and political activist arms, must not be permitted this kind of escape from criticism. We also would posit that if Islamic critics are not going to be given a podium from a liberal western university, then the Islamic movement will "run the table" to use a poker metaphor, without fear or worry about any legitimate opposition. And, while there will be no editor (or perhaps no university president or perhaps not even an elected official) accused of an anti-Islamic bias, the Islamic movement will spread without having to defend its atrocities even in the most liberal of institutions where every other movement, including the movement to defend and sustain the state of Israel, must and does accept legitimate criticism.
Let's stop playing the fool in the conflict with Islam.
While there are millions of non-violent members of Islam, and also we suspect many who would decry the withdrawal of the offer from Hirsi Ali, we can neither condone nor accept the decision by Brandeis University, and ask them to re-instate their original offer.
If we are not confident and strong enough to point our finger at Pakistan as a sponsor of state terrorism and also a supporter of the Taliban, that segment of Islam dedicated to the repression of women and the armed opposition to their even acquiring an education, and also not willing to take the risk of appointing Hirsi Ali to Brandeis, we will be, if we are not already there, on the receiving end of Islamic ridicule for our own default on our own principles and values. And their ridicule will also have a measure of validity for which we have to take responsibility.
Islam, and all of its many faces, voices and agents, like all other religions and faith groups, is not and must not be allowed to be, immune from criticism, or from critics whose experience is so virulent that it has to be repressed.
As Obama recently said of the Republican stance on voter repression, "that is not a sign of strength but a sign of weakness"....so too is our (and Brandeis') caving in this situation. Are we so weak and afraid that we do not have to courage, the conviction and the determination to withstand and even to push back against this political campaign to discredit Ms Ali?

When is a politician's unbridled rhetoric too much?....ask Robert Fulford

First Thomas Mulcair skewers Justin Trudeau "for never being able to empathize with the poor" and then Robert Fulford, writing in the National Post today skewers Mulcair  for his minimal knowledge of history and psychology, and more bitingly, for presuming to know how the future is going to unfold. Fulford points to leaders like FDR, born into wealth, who almost literally "owned" the word progressive throughout the twentieth century, and imposes a kind of intellectual rigour to which all politicians will inevitably be exposed, and through which all politicians will also be ridiculed.
Let's not find fault with the facts in Fulford's argument; they are indisputable. So is his premise that, although born into wealth, and having spent some of his youth living in 24 Sussex, Justin Trudeau, as is everyone else, is quite capable of developing political policies and strategies that could conceivably assist those living in poverty.
Let's not dispute, either, the biography of Mr. Mulcair, raised as one of ten siblings, each of whom learned very early to seek outcomes based on some "coalition" of the willing among those siblings just because of the level of scarcity that prevailed in their family of origin.
There is, however, a significant difference between the word "empathy" and the word "policy". One can easily, readily and indisputably engage in policy development that supports and sustains those living on the edge of poverty, scarcity and extreme need, with or without developing an empathy for those recipients of that policy. Mr. Trudeau, along with Mr. Mulcair, will, we can hope, announce policy alternatives that differ from those of the Conservatives in the upcoming election, in that they illustrate a perception of the role of government that seeks to enhance the lot of those most in need of a "hand-up". We have had too many years of a government that has sought openly, deliberately and vigorously to enhance to lot of those corporations whose executives pour wheel-barrels of cash into the coffers of the Conservative Party.
However, in an attempt to distinguish himself, and his party, from the Liberal Party, Mr. Mulcair, at least as seen through the Fulford lens, has used some inflated rhetoric when speaking to his party's national council, the insiders of the NDP, who would categorically and unequivocally grasp the difference between Trudeau's privileged upbringing and the poverty of Mulcair's. He ought to be faulted, if at all, not for his "failure to read history" (as he has, doubtless, acquired some modicum of historic precedence for his leader's role and expectations) but rather for the spectre that faced Mitt Romney, the last Republican candidate for the White House who disdained the 47% who "depended on government" and who "weren't going to vote Republican anyway", and thereby set up a class-warfare spectre in the society.
Poor people are, we can all agree, far too quick and ready to disdain the rich members of their community. The rich, in the eyes of too many poor people, have stepped on too many people while climbing up the ladder of wealth; if they inherited that wealth, then it was their ancestors who trampled on good people to achieve that status. Rarely, if ever, do poor people seek or grasp any counter-intuitive information that might add leaven to their perception of the rich, as philanthropists, as benefactors of many worthy causes whose work is often directed to the needs of those who could not afford that benefit but for the philanthropic work of the wealthy. Poor people generally send their children to school in less than "fashionable" clothes where they are too frequently ridiculed as "not fitting in" with the upper-class norms of fashion, hair design, tech devices and even general health.
And, let's not beat around this bush: rich kids are equally as disdainful of the poor as the poor kids as contemptuous of the wealthy. That is a fact of every school culture in the country, exacerbated in some locations more than in others.
From a political perspective, (and not to be wedged into the Fulford purist intellectual box of historic and psychological perfection), all political leaders use language to establish and maintain their leadership, and face the prospect of having, through language, to build  bridges that welcome both those of significant means and those of extreme scarcity into the "political tent" known as the political party that seeks to form a government. Of course, they will inevitably cross lines of historic accuracy, in their pursuit of growing a cadre of volunteers who can and will commit to spreading the "message" of the party's attitudes, policies and strategies as to how to achieve their vision of a "better life" for all Canadians, that is the heart-beat of all political parties. And of course, one cannot submit a rigid intellectual historically accurate, nor a psychologically global perspective into each and every sentence written in to a politically motivated discourse, however we might all aspire to leaders who do achieve such standards.
Empathy, that quality that "identifies" one with another, in a literal and literary sense, is something, most would agree, that attends to experiences similar to, if not actually identical with, those of a specific group to whom one aspires to appeal in an upcoming political campaign. Those who have suffered the loss of a child are, most likely, better able, generally, to identify, and empathize with others who have suffered a similar experience. That is not to say that those who have not experienced a loss of a child will be completely unable to empathize with suffering parents of such a tragedy, but that the experience does tend to make one more sensitive to the depth of the loss.
Similarly, growing up in a home with 10 children, of working class parents, would, in general, tend to make one more likely to be empathic to those in similar circumstances, and not to hold out that those who grew up in "privileged" circumstances, something to which Mr. Trudeau himself has said was his lot, are unable or unwilling to demonstrate empathy for the less advantaged.
Language, the scalpel of the political meeting, as well as the machine of the ivory tower, as well as the vernacular of the fast-food restaurant and the exclusive dining room, as well as the 'musical instrument' of the poet and the novelist....deserves to be used with the most careful attention to both accuracy and the spirit of its intent. We would never expect a poet to deploy language that merely orders a hamburg, without holding out the option of his being different in the words of his order, or the tone of his expression, nor would we eviscerate him for his uniqueness. And while integrity is still one of the more significant standards to which we hold our political leaders, we have, at the same time, to render some "grace" in our critique, in order to permit some flexibility in the use of language when speaking to an "inside" council of both advisors and team players. We would, for example never excoriate a coach of the Toronto Maple Leafs for using expletives in his attempt to engender better performance from his players, in a culture in which expletives are the norm.
This is not to excuse Mr. Mulcair for his exaggeration of the facts, but rather to pay witness to the situation in which those facts were distorted, in a larger attempt, not to "educate" his troops in the fine details of history or psychology, but to exhort them to enhanced and sustained efforts on behalf of the larger goal of winning the next federal election. If every cartoonist had to submit to the rigours of Mr. Fulford's argument, we would suffer a comedy deficit, which would make social discourse most dry and undigestible. If every courtroom lawyer were to have to submit every statement to Mr. Fulford for his editing, the courtroom would become antiseptic. And if every university lecturer were required to submit every statement to "professor Fulford's scrutiny" there would be no lectures in any discipline, and we would collectively suffer a brain-deficit. However, if we were together to reduce our dependence on the "ad hominum" attempt to make a point, in all venues and theatres, we would also grow some needed tolerance for both our careful use of language and our sensitivity to other human beings.
Paying homage to the intellect of Mr. Fulford, and his considerable and profound insights demonstrated over decades of highly influential and provocative writing in many venues is still a worthy exercise, provided one sprinkles a little "sloppy" realism into the recognition of the many differences between politics and a purely intellectual pursuit.
Mr. Mulcair, while imperfect, ought to be found wanting in his policy and leadership attributes, not whether or not he would pass an examination in either history or psychology, especially when the evidence selected to "convict" is based on "insider" trading.

Canada: Supreme Court restores custody time, former A.G. protests "fair" elections act, and Minister of Finance passes

Today Canada mourns the death of former Minister of Finance, Jim Flaherty, who died suddenly in his Ottawa condo yesterday of a massive heart attack. He had resigned from the Finance portfolio only three weeks ago, intending to retire from parliament and enter the private sector and spend more time with his wife and triplet sons. In a shockingly surprising abandonment of the vicious partisanship of this parliament, members of all parties expressed both shock and reverence and a large measure of respect and even admiration for Mr. Flaherty's dedication to public service, his pragmatism (in stark contrast to both political leaders for whom he worked, Mike Harris, then Premier of Ontario and Steven Harper, the current Prime Minister), and his considerable intellect and sense of Irish humour.

Even the meeting of the G-20 Finance Ministers in Washington today paused from its deliberations to pay respect to Mr. Flaherty, as a decent man who made a significant contribution to the lives of all Canadians through his policy initiatives in the Finance portfolio.

It was Kellie Leitch, the current Minister of Labour who spoke for the Conservatives in the House of Commons this morning, as a member who benefited from the mentorship of Mr. Flaherty, including in part his persistence in encouraging her to offer her name for the nomination for the Conservative Party for months prior to her finally agreeing. Speakers from all parties offered their condolences in the abbreviated House session this morning, without a hint of partisanship.

Earlier this week, Canadians heard from another respected public servant, the former Auditor General, Sheila Fraser, when she appeared before a House of Commons committed looking into the fine print of the government's proposed legislation, dubbed the Fair Elections Act, that, Ms Fraser deems to be a threat to democracy, given its stripping of the power of the Chief Elections Officer, and the requirement  that all Canadians present some form of official identification to be permitted to vote. Having checked with her adult student daughter, Ms Fraser learned that even she did not have the required official identification documents that would be required under the new act.

So while the government is absorbing the loss of Mr. Flaherty, and the effective and publicly embarrassing punches of the highly respected Ms Fraser, today we also learned of another of the government's initiatives being rejected by the Supreme Court of Canada.

In a unanimous 7-0 ruling, the (Supreme Court of Canada) high court has affirmed the amount of pre-trial credit that offenders can receive for time spent in custody before they are sentenced.

The Conservatives have implemented tougher pre-trial custody and sentencing provisions for repeat and violent youth offenders by removing the long-held provision of giving an offender credit for double the time served in pre-trail custody. (From Canadian Press, In National Post, April 11, 2014)

No one inside or outside of the Canadian government can or will challenge the ruling of the Supreme Court, and all Canadians can be very grateful for its continued monitoring of the letter and the spirit of the laws this government has enacted in the "law-and-order" agenda proposals; we can also be extremely thankful for the courage of people like Ms Fraser for coming out of retirement to blast a piece of legislation that she considers less than acceptable.

Even more, Canadians can be very grateful for the significant contributions of people like Mr. Flaherty for his compassion and his insertion of measures to help Canadians with severe life difficulties (including one of his own sons) into his budget measures, without public fanfare, including his abandoning of a "no-deficit" policy in the face of facts that demanded a spending stimulus in 2008 and 2009, when the world economies were reeling from the greatest financial crisis since the Great Depression.

Individuals, especially individuals who are prepared to bring "truth to power" even and especially when that truth disagrees with the people who hold the top offices are the mainstay of the Canadian political system. Mr. Flaherty disagreed with Mr. Harper on income splitting, given the fact that it would benefit only the top 1-2% of the population, and even said so publicly, contrary to a government promise to implement the proposal, that was designed to win favour with the top donors to the Conservative Party. Ms Fraser is famous for having brought to public light the facts behind the Liberal sponsorship scandal that felled the Paul Martin Liberals.

And now we owe a debt of both gratitude and perspective to the Supreme Court of Canada for intervening in the sentencing rules imposed by the Harper government, that were nothing more than a harsh form of vengeance, more than most offenders merit, especially if the judicial system were to once again take rehabilitation as its primary purpose, and not merely punishment.