Friday, July 18, 2014

We urge Obama to write an op-ed piece in Izvestia exposing Putin's lies

On September 12, 2013, Vladimir Putin wrote in the New York Times to the United States people and president, dissuading President Obama from launching a military strike against Syria, claiming that such action would do much to advance the cause of terrorists, and much to add to the devastation already extant in that country.
Today, it might seem to some of us, that it might be appropriate for President Obama to insert an op-ed piece in the equivalent news outlet in Moscow, addressing both Putin and the people of Russia.
All signs early in the investigation of MH17, the Malaysian commercial jet liner that was shot down over eastern Ukraine killing 298 people yesterday, indicate that the Buk missile that downed the plane came from the pro-Russian separations, under the tutelage of Putin, possibly having mistaken the commercial plane for a Ukrainian military aircraft.
The day before the tragedy, Washington had imposed sanctions on the same company that manufactures those missiles and their launchers in Russia. Immediately following the news of the plane crash, Putin first blamed the Ukrainians, then disavowed an responsibility for the incident, and then asked for an independent international investigation to determine where responsibility lies.
Who pulled the trigger, while a very complicated question in terms of determining the answer, remains open to speculation, and as the evidence mounts against pro-Russian separatists (really another form of non-state terrorist group with strong ties to Moscow and to Putin) it might behoove the United States president to take out that pen he so eagerly champions, along with his telephone, in his long-running Mexican stand-off with Congress, that make it possible for him to exercise some influence over American political actions, outside of the obstructionism from Boehner and his Republic cohorts in the House of Representatives.
In a public statement to the Russian people, Obama could unmask the details of his conversations with Putin, exposing the various forms and incidents of deception that are the stock and trade of Putin's diplomacy. Obama could also provide the kind of exculpatory evidence that would demonstrate the intimate enmeshment of Putin's government with the pro-Russian terrorists who serve as Putin's puppets in eastern Ukraine and the indisputable evidence that links both Putin and the terrorists to responsibility, both individually and collectively to the event.
Obama could also write in an op-ed in the Russian media, as outlined by the editor of The Interpreter on CNN just today, about the specific numbers and the balances held in the bank accounts held in western banks for, by or on behalf of Putin and his oligarchic cronies, and demonstrate the hypocrisy and the duplicity of the Russian leader who consistently argues in favour of bringing money into Russia, while simultaneously engaging in profiteering outside his own country. Trading activities of those accounts would also demonstrate Putin's hypocrisy and expose the chicanery with which he sells both his own political persona and his nation's strengths, both quite literally merely mists outlined in the imagination and the ego of the Russian president.
It is clearly an information war that is occurring before our eyes, in which Putin has demonstrated his capability to take the upper hand, while the White House, the Pentagon and the NSA and the FBI have so far preferred a more velvet or silk-like approach. Soft peddling on Putin's camouflaged truths, including his denial of any culpability in the downing of MH17, will only provide more time and space for the Russian propaganda machine to spread its disinformation whenever and wherever it chooses. Ramping up the muscle, the commitment and the determination of the United States government, under the leadership of President Obama can only enhance the reputation of the U.S. and the presidency, while at the same time limiting the strength and the resolve of the Russians to deceive and to obfuscate, and quite possibly generate an international theatre that represents a closer approximation to the truth than the one current being shown on global television screens.

Thursday, July 17, 2014

Iran blows horn on BRIC announcement of support for her nuclear power program

It was only this past Sunday that the Iranian Foreign Minister declared, on NBC's Meet the Press, that Iran did not need nor seek nuclear weapons, proudly declaring her strengths in the development of world class scientists and scholars, her increasing strength in the region of the Middle East, and the need 'for a new paradigm' that seeks to overturn the 'cold war' mindset of the importance and need for superior (nuclear) weapons. He pointed to 9/11 as an example of how the most militarily powerful nation on earth, the U.S., was nevertheless stricken in one of the most devastating attacks on her soil in history as another argument in favour of his 'new paradigm.'
Whether the Iranians, including their supreme Ayatollah, are preparing a public relations campaign that will attract nations outside the Group of Five + 1 with whom they are currently negotiating (with very limited success, demonstrating large "gaps" to use Secretary of State, John Kerry's word between the Iranian position and that of the other countries) or whether they are seeking even larger reach in their determination to become the dominant power in the Middle East, the public relationship campaign seems to be attracting interest from countries whose influence is only going to continue to rise over the next decade. And, of course, the Iranians are not restrained in their efforts to blow their own horn about any success to which they can point that might cause the U.S. especially, and the other negotiating partners some chagrin.
Today, from the Tehran Times, we find this piece of information that might generate a ripple of anxiety in the room where negotiations are being held:
The group of the five BRICS countries has thrown its support behind Iran’s nuclear energy program, saying the Islamic Republic has an inalienable right to the peaceful use of nuclear energy.
"We recognize Iran's inalienable right to the peaceful use of nuclear energy in a manner consistent with its international obligations," the leaders of the BRICS group said in a statement.
The BRICS group is an association of five major emerging national economies of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa.
In an official statement on Tuesday, the BRICS leaders who met in Fortaleza, Brazil, expressed hope that the ongoing negotiations between Iran and the world powers - Russia, U.S., China, Britain, France, and Germany – would achieve a long-lasting solution to the decade-old dispute over Tehran’s nuclear program.
"While reiterating our view that there is no alternative to a negotiated solution to the Iranian nuclear issue, we reaffirm our support to its resolution through political and diplomatic means and dialogue," the statement said. (Tehran Times, July 16, 2014)
As Chrystia Freedland reminded her colleagues from the United States, on GPS this past Sunday, the United States is going to have to become much more accustomed to a multilateral world in which her influence will  be less dominant and this announcement from Tehran is just another sign of the changing times in geopolitics. Notice, that both Russia and China are among the BRIC countries, something the United States will have to both ingest and digest as it continues to evolve foreign policy in a world in which the hard power of the Pentagon, long the insurance policy and the tranquillizing drug of American pride and security in being number one, no longer holds the same capacity or strength to cover the losses in U.S. confidence that have seen her manipulate, dominate and control (both for better and for worse) many of the geopolitical boiling pots of the last half century.
And in both recognition and acceptance of this new multilateral, multidimensional, evolving and potentially dangerous new world order, President Obama is almost too far out in front of the American people, especially those in the conservative flank of the Republican party, who continue to think and to talk as if solutions to major and minor conflicts can be imposed by the force of an AK47, or a U.S. drone strategically deployed, or an "air strike" on a delinquent regime like that of Assad in Syria, without having to both engage in and endure the seemingly interminable confusion, bloodshed and shifting allegiances of most of the parties, especially the terrorists, whose primary aim seems to be obfuscation, linked to the singular development and deployment of primitive weapons and sacrificial martyrs and the complexities of religious holy wars premised on radical and unholy interpretations of some holy book. And, of course, for his 'vision' of the complexity of the landscape that is both evolving and revolving faster than the exit door at Microsoft where some 18,000 jobs will be cut this year, Obama is pilloried as being too soft, too weak, too Carter-like, and too detached from the reality of too many situations.
Sanctions imposed on Iran, tougher than previous ones, seem to have brought Iran to the negotiating table at least, if they do not result in some agreement.
Sanctions imposed on Putin, and his cronies, are at least making the Russian 'bear' squirm and squeal about the "bully" Obama in one of the more memorable ironies of the pot calling the kettle black.
Obama's Secretary of State, however, seems to be whirling like some mad painter throwing a different colour of paint at each of the many canvases he is attempting to "cover" in too many capitals, almost simultaneously, without producing either 'art' or agreements, that would bring the temperature of international relations down a few degrees Celsius. And so, as the BRIC's rise, and the shadow grows on the military might of the United States, the world watches and crosses its fingers, legs, toes and arms, in what Bob Shieffer of CBS calls the "most dangerous moment in world affairs since the cold war"....an assessment that seems both reasonable and responsible.

Tuesday, July 15, 2014

In defence of collaboration, empathy, compassion and courageous and creative resolutions....for the whole people of the planet

Some commentators are referring to the Israel-Hamas "war" as a side-show, when compared to the Sunni-Shia fight that seems to be consuming the Middle East. However, we are provoked to ask, "Are the two not inextricably entwined?"
Is not Iran, a Shite state, supplying arms, intelligence and resources to both Hamas and to the Iraqi government in their push-back against ISIS?
Is not Russia supplying arms, intelligence and resources to both Assad in Syria as well as to the Iraqi government's resistance against ISIS?
Is America not futilely attempting to filter her billions of contributions of arms, intelligence and resources to the "good guys" among the some 1500 different terrorist/rebel groups in Syria while also attempting to shore up the Iraqi government against ISIS?
Has Saudi Arabia, if not her government officially, at least many of her wealthy individuals and organizations not been supplying cash and arms to AlQaeda and its many derivatives for years now?
Is there not as well as a Sunni-Shia conflict that provides excuses for Hamas, Hezbollah, Assad, Iran, Iraq, and even countries like Yemen, Tunisia and Egypt to keep their local "pot" boiling, as well as extending their unique and individual spheres of influence to the limit of its potential, regardless of the consequences not also a shared Islamic contempt, hatred and wish for annihilation of the state of Israel and the Jewish people?
Are Russia and the U.S. not on opposite sides in the negotiations over the development of Iran's nuclear weapons capability? Are Russia and the U.S. not also competing for influence in the Middle East, with Russia generally supporting both Iran and Assad, and America holding fast to her long-standing adopted nation, Israel? And is not the Iranian pursuit of nuclear weapons, regardless of the protests of her Foreign Minister on NBC's Meet the Press just this past Sunday that Iran does not need nuclear weapons given her many strengths, not directly comparable and relatable to the historic possession of such weapons by Israel, through the aegis of the United States?
With the breakdown of both the Iranian-Group of Five+1 negotiations over nuclear centrifruges and the breakdown of the recently Egyptian-proferred terms for a cease-fire between Hamas and Israel, the continuing human devastation in  Syria, the barely surviving Lybia, the pressure from millions of refugees into countries like Jordan, Turkey and the enhanced determination of ISIS to take control of at least the eastern and central sections of Iraq, including the oil fields in Tikrit, among the largest on the planet and the complicated and over-thought resistance of many western countries either to  know how to intervene effectively, or to collaborate with a single voice amid the turbulence of this cauldron of multiple political, historic and religious "chemicals"....the mixing of which under these conditions is an experiment completely foreign to world history...are we not witnessing a high-risk potential for a single spark, like the one that leapt from the  grass-mowing machine in the tinder-box that comprises the parched grass and forest in the British Columbia interior yesterday spawning an instant forest fire, adding to the dozens already out of control?
Simple aphorisms like, "we live in complex times" uttered from the mouths of political pundits like Chris Matthews, normally a reliable left-leaning voice of moderation, seem so out of touch with the reality of failed states, migrant children, abducted girls, cancerous terrorist cells frenetically pursuing the will of Allah, arms and intelligence shipments from major powers seeking to restore their former political hegemony in a world now torrentially blowing toward a multilateralism of shared and competing alliances, preparations for which have not even been contemplated, in the strategic sense. At least in the west, we seem to have been fixated on the development of tactics, new robotic donkeys, new unmanned drones, iron shield defence systems like the one current blocking many of Hamas rockets from killing Israeli civilians, and even cyber defences like the "underground" internet, while ignoring the shifting sands of time, ideology, religion, fanaticism and the impact of globalization and social media on the lives, aspirations and capacity of the poorest, the least educated and the formerly deaf and dumb underclass, the victims of the many preying mantis cells of a different form of alienation, revenge and erupting power grabs...from terrorists, from militias seducing children to join their "gangs" from state leaders (like Goodluck Jonathan in Nigeria) whose capacity to lead, through the recovery of some 200 abducted young girls is capped by his fear of Boko Haram.
The intellectual/academic history of the west is premised on the notion of the separation of files, economic matters are left to the economists, political matters to the political scientists, demographics to the demographers, nuclear power to the nuclear scientists, religion to the theology and ecclesial scholars, crime to the criminologists, medicine to the medical practitioners (divided many times into even more finely tuned specialties) legislation and law and order to the legal fraternity, climate to the climate scientists and sports to the physical education grads, while business is open to the entry of many intellectual disciplines all of them focused on the generation of profits....however, we do not have an academic discipline historically dedicated to the indentification, enhancement, and preservation of the voice of the public citizen, nor to the voice of the public good, nor to the voice of the common public interest.
And the more we witness the separation of the many files that overlap on all public issues, including the pursuit of illegitimate power, abusive power, based on human greed, avarice, and the need for control...all of them founded deeply in neurosis, whether of the individual, the organizational or the state variety, the more we will continue to witness the triumph of the forces that threaten the human race, at the same time as the we witness the demise of the voice of moderation, reason, humanity and compassion.
It is not only in our video games, nor only in our extreme sports, nor in our geopolitics, nor in our capitalistic pursuit of the greatest profit for the fewest insiders, that we are witnessing and also experiencing the fallout from these nefarious motives and behaviours; it is also in our complicit withdrawal from the "field of play" through refusing to vote, through efforts to bar access to the polling booth, through the atrophy of consumer power in the face of the mega-corporations, through the atrophy of the small local business enterprise resulting from the insatiable appetites of the largest and most powerful corporations, banks, financial services companies, linked in many cases to the power structures of too many struggling states, whose leaders depend on the rich and powerful to support their political campaigns....
We need a concerted rise of armies of informed and activist citizens even and especially in countries in which the public face bares signs of historic democracies, to confront the way power is being deployed on our behalf, by political forces with deep, special interest pockets, and the advisors who enable them to manipulate their "spin" over an unsuspecting, naïve and somnambulant body politic if we are to seek and to find our collective, collaborative way through the tangle of the amazon-like jungle of forces that are increasingly blocking out the light of hope, compassion, empathy and creativity, on the macro-scale. We admire those pin-point lights on individual creativity and imagination that pop up here and there among young and old, together seeking better ways of doing things, and propose that perhaps their micro-lights will gather enough energy to attract the divided and competitive political leadership that currently exhibits a fixation on its own retention of power, at the expense of the many serious and deeply entangled nerves, muscles, tendons and bones that constitute the anatomy of the body politic....and the result is a kind of dangerous paralysis that, if not untangled, could and likely will, sabotage all of humanity in one of many potential forms of hell, all of them having given clarion warning calls, and all of them preventable with a transformation of our perceptions of our indisputed interdependence.

Monday, July 14, 2014

Religious zealotry exposed on the Christian "right"....needs taming as does Radical Islam


There is never a day that goes by when the world is not greeted with another shameful act, statement, pontification, or report of another spurious inroad made by religious zealots into what is generally and conventionally known as secular society.

Yesterday, in Canada, from Edmonton, the capital city of Alberta, we learned of a courageous single mother and her teen-aged daughter  who began speaking out in opposition to a “sex education” program under the auspices of the public board of education for the city of Edmonton.
Contracted out to “Care.com” an evangelical, fundamentalist, pro-life corporation from the United States, the curriculum is premised on the teaching of abstinence as the “first response” for teens in relationships. Condoms are declared unreliable, and young women are made to feel shame while young men are depicted as unable to control their instincts. And these are just a few of the observations from the young co-ed who appeared with her mother on the CBC network with their complaint to the human rights commission about the content and the “values being presented in the course. Children of single parent, too, are portrayed as more likely to become involved with the law, more likely to drop out and generally less “equal” to what the curriculum considers society’s norm.

This single mother is asking for a “science-based” sexual education program that is not overlaid with “values” especially those values that are the foundation of the program currently being offered in Edmonton.

The scourge of religious fundamentalism, including a manual of do’s and dont’s for those eager and willing to drink the cool-aid of the cult, based on a literal reading and interpretation of some holy book, and too often following the leadership and guidance of some charismatic preacher, evangelist, imam, or priest or possibly even bishop, like a subjective tsunami is pouring over the hearts and minds of millions of desperate people, whose individual lives are fraught with fear, loneliness, some of the various faces of poverty, and a level of hopelessness that is ripe for the harvesting of the marauding armies of religious marketers, all determined to “carry out the will of God, Allah, or whatever name they attach to their spiritual icon.

Not only is the story from Edmonton a betrayal of the public trust that public dollars will not be used to prosletyze a particular religious and political ideology, (notwithstanding the policy statement of the Edmonton education establishment that declares its purpose to promote abstinence, thereby providing “cover” for the perpetrators of the scam) but more importantly, and also more insidiously,  the story demonstrates the deceptive, deceitful, and determined measures that the religious “right” will take in order to impose their point of view on an unsuspecting  body politic.  

Of course, anyone, like the courageous and determined single mother, defending the honour of her single parenthood as equal to other families with two parents, not to mention the honour of her innocent daughter as also equal to, if not superior to, that of children from two-parent families, who opposes this brain-washing under the banner of family values, and also under the business model of capitalistic profiteering, is and always will be considered a heretic by those engaged in this “war for the hearts and minds of the public,” no matter which side of the 49th parallel, and no matter which side of the Atlantic, Pacific or Indian Oceans.

“Onward Christian Soldiers” is a ‘chestnut’ hymn known to most who have been reared in one of the many denominations of Christendom. “Marching as to war” is one of its more exhortative lines, urging followers  of Jesus Christ Resurrected to “bring the gospel” to all corners of the earth. However, while the analogy to the training camps operating under the banner cry of Islamic jihad is exaggerated, there is a similarity to the fervor and the zealotry and the danger to one’s sanity, maturity and healthy spiritual development  that accompanies both kinds of extremism, Christian and Muslim.
Infidels, heretics, and the perfect purgation of the evils of those infidels and heretics are welcomed and accepted tenets of the ideology of those committed to the cause of their “religion”....and that cause, however perverted it may seem to those of us who despise its very existence and who speak out against the dangers of the infantilism their ideology imposes on the innocents and the vulnerable, is one for which they are prepared to surrender their “existence” whether in literal terms (as is the case of the Islamic martyrs) or metaphoric terms, as is the case in many of the lives of those engaged, for example in shooting and killing nurses and doctors who operate therapeutic abortion clinics.

In the case of Islamic radicals, Jews, Christians and even Muslims who are not compliant with and obedient to a particular strand of Islam are considered infidels, and thereby subject to “removal,” “elimination,” “purging” and  even in some cases death, as part of the responsibility of those perpetrating these acts of what could and would in any other context be considered “war crimes”. Similarly, in the case of radical, fundamentalist, evangelical Christians, those who are willing to question the beliefs, the practices and the scriptural underpinnings of the attitudes, perceptions, beliefs and actions of those “purists” are considered “heretics” and labelled as such within the ecclesial community in which all stripes of Christianity are expected to worship. In extreme cases, such as a Roman Catholic American presidential candidate who supports a woman’s right to choose is  publicly denied access to the mass, or eucharist, by the bishop of his home church, for failing to comply with church teaching on abortion. (John Kerry in 2004!)

Previously, and in some quarters still, former Roman Catholics who marry outside the church, to a ‘heretical’ prostestant or Jew, are also considered to have ‘left the fold’ and are subject to penalties should they wish to return. (Why would they?)

In my own journey into , through and out from the path of active ministry in the Anglican/Episcopal church in both Canada and the United States, I have encountered many of these same zealots who demanded my removal, broke into my residence, left messages of hate on my phone  answering machine, spawned libellous and untrue rumours about a phony and fallacious DUI, and made public accusations and attacks on my character that warranted legal action, including action against the hierarchy of the church for its failure to provide the basis of ‘due process’. When I removed the Sunday School Curriculum promoted by David C. Cook from one of the hotbeds of Christian fundamentalism, just south of Denver Colorado, Colorado Springs, the home of “family values,” and replaced it with something the Canadian church then called “The Whole People of God,” and when I  suggested that some might like to read writings like Original Blessing by Matthew Fox and “People of the Lie” by Scott Peck, I was labelled a heretic. A silent and secret campaign was mounted to remove me from my position, conducted by the insiders who provided much of the funding for the small parish to survive,  and a verbal “shoot-out” just as in the old west occurred between one of the wardens who firmly subscribed to this poppycock of faux religiosity and me in the sanctuary of the little church which failed to accommodate both of us.




As one who has fought against all forms of religious tyranny, including the abuse of Episcopal power both through overt commission and covert omission, *

·       through such failures as the blatant failure to orient new clergy to the full truth of the situation into which they were ‘sentencing’ an unsuspecting victim, and

·       such failures as not becoming familiar with the depth and the desperation of individual parishes that remained outside their  conscious awareness and conscience through a act of avoidance and denial of having to confront the realities of their responsibilities, and

·       through their conscious and willful or unconscious and irresponsible falling into the trap of putting the accounts and the fund-raising processes of the church ahead of the spiritual lives of their parishioners

·       through the conscious and blind membership in what could be called an old boys club of insiders, thereby imposing a gate-keeping exclusion on those who did and will not belong to the club

·       through a blind submission to the demands of a radical feminism that sought and continues to hold adult women as victims in relationships with male clergy, thereby infantilizing those very women and removing any responsibility for their complicity in relationships

·       through a failure to engage in their own spiritual growth and development, including their capacity to discern, accept responsibility for and heal their  brokenness, through the agency of the Holy Spirit, including a full conscious awareness and discernment of their emotional lives

·       through a failure to accept responsibility to provide spiritual, professional and psychological support for all clergy, including the responsibility to provide leadership in acquiring the necessary funding and resources for such support

And when one combines a desperate and overt and willful determination to “grow both numbers and dollars” as a way of defining the resume of the episcopate to the exclusion of all of the failures noted above, as well as the failure to integrate first different racial demographics, including different sexual orientations and even non-gay  females from the centrality of the life of the church, and even more insidiously to sanction the exclusion of the “underclass” of society from the pews of the ‘hallowed’ upper-class high church pews, it is not difficult to see how easy it might be for zealots to seize control of too many parishes, whose public face announced moderation and acceptance of all of God’s children., (created in the image of God, imago dei) yet whose psychic and spiritual reality exposed a growing cancer of hypocrisy, deception, the abuse of power and a growing divide between the insiders and the rogues, like me.

While there were no bullets fired at me, there were clearly political, verbal assaults that were neither acknowledged nor accounted for, nor even challenged by the ecclesial hierarchy, in my decade-plus attempt to survive in a hostile environment. I know intimately of the dangers of religious fundamentalism, religious zealotry and religious bigotry, from the inside, and I clearly identify with that courageous mother and teen-aged daughter who are speaking out against such insidious  religious fundamental instruction in sexual development. And the dangers of religious zealotry are growing exponentially as the variety and deviousness of the methods of delivery of the self-righteous indoctrination by the fanatic fringes of all faiths  increase.

And it will take a significant resistance movement by those willing to take the risk of estrangement, ostracism and outright slander  to counter this cancer in all our Christian religious encampments.
*Editor’s Note: This piece is not asserting that all bishops in the Anglican/Episcopal church are predisposed to the fundamentalist, literalist, evangelical point of view; it is however, recognizing that if this radical element is not and cannot be controlled or even negotiated with toward a common “yes” within the individual congregation or parish, (they are simply unable and unwilling to moderate or compromise on their rigid, righteous and purist positions), then how is the world to expect, anticipate or even hope for a peaceful truce between such diametrically opposed factions in the Islamic world as the radical Sunni faction(s) and the moderate Sunni, the Zealot Shia and the moderate Shia factions. So before Christians start demanding an end to violence from the Islamic radicals, they might give consideration to the need for some negotiated accommodations within the Christian church.

Thursday, July 10, 2014

Reflections on a small change as a considerable transformation...shared with a loving partner

Up-rooted, discombobulated, disoriented, dizzy and exhausted....these are just a few of the words that begin to describe a household move, involving the departure from and entry into three bedroom dwellings, after six years of gathering "stuff" that seemed important and worthy of its acquisition at the time, yet often on reflection, not so much!
Nearly one hundred boxes of books, those rectangular arrangements of paper, sometimes with hard covers, often the cheaper "paper-back", another half-century of "files" including university papers, reports, reviews, and sloppy piles of journalistic efforts of the mostly editorial kind....evoking memories of a world now gone, when the word digital was merely a "smile" in the incubator of a few tech companies, not ready for prime time, and clearly not ready for mass marketing....these formed dividing walls in a mover's van segregating furniture from wardrobes, china cabinets from fireplaces, and bedroom suites from book shelves and patio chairs from keyboards.
Months ago, a respectable professional real estate agent commented, "If it's about the money, sell first and then purchase without the condition of the sale of your residence. If its about the "falling in love" with the new place, then you have to purchase conditionally on the sale of your current property."
Impatient romantics that we are, both my wife and I, there really was no debate about which category we would fall into (perhaps accept some form of predestination would be more accurate!) We had been looking, intermittently, for a more restful, pastoral, and reflective piece of real estate, as compared with the city-centre townhouse we had inhabited comfortably for these past few years. In-town, out-of-town,  on water, in a forest, on a farm, a cabin, a cottage, a "reno" project of another's hands....always the discussion was urged along by a central question about how far we wanted to "commute" including naturally the rising cost of fuel, auto repairs, our calendar years, and inclement weather, especially following the marathon of snow and ice mother nature poured over south-eastern Ontario in the last twelve months.
And when we had almost given up on a search that seemed paralyzed between our champagne appetite and our lager fiscal resources, while ambling through some random listings on the internet, an address, with photos, crept onto the screen, late one night, after Michelle had retired after a long day in the office, and I was still snooping about what surprise might be lurking for an inverterate treasurer-hunter.
Some people haunt garage and sidewalk sales, antique shoppes and used furniture outlets, looking for their next "find" from a combination of perspectives including investment, conversation piece, the urge to restore a tired "artifact" into a once-again vibrant and nearly living element, for a shelf, a garage, a cabinet, or even a retirement residence. On the other hand, following directly and inexplicably in my mother's footsteps, (she who could literally not pass by a new housing development without venturing through the open walls and halls to inspect floor plans, and discover features of design she could and would later review critically, much to the fatigue of family listeners, and visitors who marvelled at the encyclopedic comparisons of architecture and interior design, I too have made something of a hobby of exploring residential opportunities, whenever and wherever they presented themselves. The one difference between mother and me is that whereas she was raised in a CNR boxcar in Brent, at the north end of Algonquin Park, her father serving as Roundhouse Manager and she and her mother as the only women in the "camp" of workers, I had the privilege of a home in a small town prior to university and following also lived in permanent residences, much more comfortable and accommodating than anything I could ever imagine from a boxcar.
So, when we learned that the latest "address" to crawl across the computer screen was hosting an open-house in an upcoming weekend, Michelle and I agreed to take another or our proverbial jaunts to discover its canvas, especially the impact its entry would have on each of us.
There were no other cars parked outside the property, late in the afternoon, when we rang the doorbell. To our surprise, a duo of agents greeted us, a mother and daughter, clearly present to help the afternoon go more quickly, and just in case one client required additional time and attention another could also be accommodated. Filled with furniture, including a substantial upright ebony piano, modest and eye-friendly appointments, the back-front-split opened up to two floors, one of bedrooms and bath, the other of a nearly 500 sq. ft. family room complete with gas fireplace. Shining hardwood floors, a contemporary colour-co-ordinated decorating scheme and a feeling of gentle and welcoming warmth and hospitality all left immediate and lasting impressions on both of us.
And then, to our surprise, because the information had not been included in the listing, a professionally designed patio and separate a private deck overlooked a small river viewed through the lens of four healthy and resonant pine trees standing tall along the rear fence.
We could hardly believe our eyes, and our shared reception of muted yet deep anticipation, still not expressed fully until we returned to the car and exhaled a joint "wow"!
Another perfunctory visit with our realtor, a visit with the banker to confirm eligibility, our prepared offer quickly accepted by the vendor, a listing of our townhome, and the process of beginning to envisage, however tentatively, the possibility of moving into this home on the river all ensued in a somewhat blizzard-like fashion.
A small number of offers on the townhome, conditional on the sale of other properties, an open house, and a small number of inspections by potential purchasers resulted in an accepted offer, conditional on the sale of another property, with a final date for the removal of that condition dotted our emotional and linear calendars for a few weeks, until three hours prior to the expiration of the offer.
And then, to our surprise, our realtor appeared with two pieces of information: first, another conditional offer ready for sign-back, and second, a text indicating that our purchasers had just that instant removed the condition of the sale of their property.
And just this week, the transforming move occurred that completed the process of changing our address and our perspective from the city to a small town, where greetings by friendly people, complete strangers, in the grocery store, the pharmacy, the hardware store, the flooring store, and the co-op have universally been welcoming, warm, friendly and generally relaxed. Neighbours too have been congenial and helpful in providing the necessary tutorials about recycling schedules and the like.
This little reflection is being tapped out on the same laptop, at the same desk with the same light, surrounded by many of the same books and furniture in which the nearly two thousand earlier pieces were generated, only in a room some twenty-five kms east of the earlier address, in a house on a dead-end street with only a half-dozen other homes, all of them adjacent to the river that flows through our new lives.
And, following some six weeks of wondering if this would be the way our little adventure unfolded, we can look back with thanks to the professional service from the realtor, the solicitor, the banker, the movers and the new neighbours. Of course, there was the occasional glitch when a document seemed to go missing temporarily; and naturally, there were the occasional moments when both Michelle and I wondered, silently and aloud, if our vision was to become our new home; and also very naturally, there have been hours of fatigue and some muscle strain, borne mainly by Michelle in the process of
underpinning the external developments with hard work of packing, marking boxes, directing movers and now the process of unpacking continues.
Each time we return to our new address, we are renewed in our conviction that we have made what is potentially a good decision for us and look forward to seeing the world from a slightly different perspective, one that includes trees, winds, water views and private spaces in almost complete silence...the kind of lens that becomes the autumn years of one's life....when the prominent sentiment, at least for me, after a rich, varied, often challenging and highly rewarding span of seventy-plus years can be and is only gratitude.

Wednesday, July 9, 2014

Radical Islam and human survival, two threats requiring joint international collaboration now!

While bombs and missiles rain down on Israel and Gaza, in what is being called a "revenge" war on both sides, resulting from the deaths of three Israeli young men and one young Palestinian, there is news this morning out of  Bagdhad, that ISIS has taken control of a chemical weapons facility several miles northeast of the capital. Stored there are about 1000 sarin-filled rockets plus some other chemicals, allegedly weakened by time from having being stored this past decade. Foreshadowing, in this case seems so facile as to be almost redundant, given that, should these specific weapons be even severely weakened, their deployment could nevertheless wreak havoc on any areas and people on which they are fired. Given the Iranian determination to acquire nuclear weapons, and Iran's determination to play a significant role in both Syria (supporting Assad) and more recently in attempting to assist the Iraqi push-back against ISIS, an initiative for which only President Maliki can be held responsible for his failure to assemble a coalition government of Sunnis, Shia and Kurds, how long can it be before either loose nuclear material, stored in regions like rural Russia, or more dangerously, specifically licensed and regulated nuclear weapons in Pakistan, where the Taliban are daily increasing their influence over the situation, apparently in collusion with the Pakistan military and perhaps even some elements of the Pakistan government, fall into, are seized by the hands of the Islamic terrorists and thereby become an active ingredient in the current conflicts that are being waged throughout Africa, the Middle East, and potentially in North America and Europe.
We are just recently learning that citizens of the European Union, who may have travelled to "training sites" in Yemen, or potentially in either Syria or Iraq, do not require visas to return home and to then bring their newly acquired skills in weaponry to America.
Downplaying the danger emitting from the discovery that ISIS has taken control (with apparently no resistance from Iraqi military or security forces "guarding" the chemical facility, and basing that "no alarm" approach on the age of those chemicals, as the United States government is currently doing, though both the Pentagon and the State department, will do nothing to assuage legitimate fears among ordinary Americans, ordinary Europeans, and even ordinary people in both North and South America, that the ISIS "hurricane" can and conceivably will blow ill winds into many countries whose people wonder about the capacity of their governments to act decisively, collaboratively and effectively to protect them.
We have already heard from such "insiders" to the current geopolitical machinations as former UK Prime Minister Blair, that radical Islam is the greatest threat facing the world community, including all nations. In their current "spats" over Ukraine, Syria, Iran and their competing assertiveness in Iraq (allegedly both on the same side, attempting to push ISIS back, Russia and America are demonstrating precious little evidence by way of a common front against what is clearly a common shared enemy, albeit with different implications for both countries. The major countries in the "west" including the UK, EU, France, and the United States, do now require active and committed participation from both Russia and China, as well as India and Southeast Asian countries, also considered by many to be hotbeds of radical Islam terrorists.
The worlds very faltering, at best, attempts to deal collectively with an agreed and proven enemy of all citizens of the planet, global warming and climate change, do not provide encouragement for ordinary people that the leaders of the world's most powerful and most populous and most economically independent and most educated and "sophisticated" countries, are willing or able to set aside their nationalistic ambitions and pettinesses, in favour of a strong, collective, international, sustainable approach to combat what most people agree is a monstrous threat to the future of humanity. And there is no single face or ideology or sacred text branding global warming as a specific culprit, cause or target. So it would seem, at least on the surface, that it could be more feasible to mount a conjoint campaign, without worrying about assigning blame, or enhanced responsibility, except perhaps by tonnes of toxic emissions. However, we do not have time for "the blame game" on the environment, just as we do not have time for a protracted intellectual analysis, including doctoral theses, think-tank discussion papers and diplomatic ruminations, to design a strategy with tactics, budgets, accountability and oversight through which to combat Islamic terrorism.
Never before, in the last decade have I found common ground with people like Senator Lindsay Graham of North Carolina, who has publicly stated his belief that if the world does not successfully confront and defeat ISIS, AlQaeda, AlShabab, Boko Haran, and all other derivatives of radical Islam, their attacks will inevitably be turned directly onto U.S. soil and people, not to mention the people of Europe, and too many other regions of the world to contemplate.
For those doomsday-fixated prognosticators, the world currently looks like a dangerous and unavoidable race between two vicious and unforgiving enemies, Islamic terrorism and rising temperatures, tides and climatic extremes, and all of the fall-out that each entails.
For those less steeped in the dark clouds of unforgiving nights of  interminable disaster, the world is still taking on the colours and the sounds of impending danger, militarily and from the perspective of human survival.
Never in the last half-century at least has there been a greater need for activism to demand positive action by elected leaders of democracies, and also from leaders of states whose governments are non elected, to take bold and effective and decisive and measured collective action to provide a safe place for all humans to live our lives without the anxiety and the fear of demons denied, avoided, rejected and medicated.
Nothing about either of these collosal threats is hidden, so mysterious as to be avoided or denied in good conscience, or insoluble, no matter how loud the cries of their complexity.
We each owe it to our children and grandchildren to step up to the plate, demand action from our leaders and pay the price of being "outrageous" in our actions and our demands, in order to penetrate the fog of denial that blocks the ears, the eyes and the consciences of those empowered, through our votes in many cases, to act "in the best interests" of those who cast ballots to put them in power. Political correctness is no longer an option, on either of these two fronts.
Inaction and "head-in-the-sand" ostrich avoidance is clearly not an option.
Budgetary debts and deficits are no longer any excuse for failing to take action.
Intellectual uncertainty, ambiguity and the fog of an unclear diagnosis must not impair our efforts.
Nationalism, political and religious ideologies, too, must be set aside in our efforts to preserve "life" including the lives of those currently living, and those generations about to be born to our children.
For those charged with governing, including the responsibility for forestalling panic, we are already hearing calls for restraint and calm, just as Nero did (fiddling) while Rome burned....today it is not only Rome that is in danger, but London, Washington, Berlin, Moscow, Bejing, Lahore, New Delhi, Athens, Paris, and even Kiev and Warsaw...
We are all, inevitably and hopefully, sharing the same planet, including its natural resources like air, water and land, and its legal protections....and increasingly the national "insurance" will have to surrender to the shared threats.
Are we up to the challenge?

Thursday, June 5, 2014

Getting back in the saddle...after a week's absence

It has been one week since I last scribbled notes in this space.
A combination of physical disturbances focused my energies elsewhere.
For those who have remained loyal readers, I am extremely grateful.
However, there are some really disturbing pots on "low boil" around the planet that, should somehow they coalesce into a larger pattern, could be quite disturbing.
The release of five Taliban "leaders" from Guantanamo, in exchange for an American soldier who allegedly wandered away from his outpost in Afghanistan some five years ago and was held captive by the Taliban, has aroused the fury of people like Arizona Senator John McCain against the president's decision, worried that those same men, after one year in Qatar, will redouble their efforts to sabotage American interests. Presidential decisions, by definitions, especially when they are focused on  the recovery of a single person, are inevitably subject to extreme public scrutiny.
Visiting Warsaw Poland and promising increased military aid to bolster Poland, should the Russian bear come calling, as it has in Crimea and Eastern Ukraine, however, is presidential decision making of a different sort, and while subject to public debate, and likely scorn from the Kremlin, and is likely to bolster NATO's efforts to take the Russian hubris more seriously than it previously has. Today, David Cameron meets Putin face to face, to ask him directly to get out of Ukraine and take his faux Russian troops with him. The outcome of that meeting, while few expect any dramatic developments, like Putin's agreement to change course, will also be watched with interest on both sides of the Atlantic.
The acceptance by the world community of the unity government of Palestine, while troubling to the Israeli leadership, has not prompted dramatic moves, although there are clear signs of increased "settlement" growth by Israel, as at least one of that country's moves to indicate their lack of compliance with the development.
In the U.S. there is a growing debate, finally, about the president's latest sortie into the only phase of governance left to him domestically, executive order, by which he, through the Environmental Protection Agency, has vowed to reduce emissions of both carbon dioxide and sulfur dioxide by 30%, based on 2005 levels, by 2030. The move prompted Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, from Kentucky, to call the move the single worst cut to the Kentucky economy in history, because of its potential threat to the coal industry. Rather than remaining frozen with his eyes firmly ensconced in the past, McConnell might better show some vision and leadership and get to work making application for federal support for new technologies in the energy sector for his state's people. Not only will the Obama initiative in environmental protection serve to benefit the health of individuals living in all U.S. states, including Kentucky by the way, but the moves will serve to put the U.S. back into the game of leading the world in this important aspect of governmental responsibility. For the first five years of his presidency, Obama has been blocked by a block-head congress, too many of whose members are, like McConnell, frozen in the desert of denial of the proven dangers of global warming and climate change. Obama has made good on his public promises to use all of his executive powers to do all he can to reduce the risks, and like China, another behemoth moving to reduce the choking air pollution in that country, is using the "health" argument to sell the proposals.
In it highly significant that both governments find it more "useful" to deploy the "health arguments" rather than the economic or national security or some other equally abstract argument to encourage the people to support their environmental initiatives. The spectre of sick and possibly dying children for generations is not one that people can either avoid or reject and without public support, these environmental proposals will not "fly".
Now, if the world's leaders could only convince the new Indian Prime Minister, Modi, to make similar moves to protect the environment in that country, increasingly dependent on dirty coal for its economic growth and the emissions that result from burning that fossil fuel, the people of the world would and could have some confidence that a 'world initiative' no matter how varied in each country, is finally taking shape.
The high profile visit and public address of the retired African Bishop Desmond Tutu, in Fort McMurray, Alberta, a guest of the First Nations people whose treaty rights are being threatened by the tar sands development of heavy crude, magnetized considerable media attention on the legal and environmental dangers of continued and even increased dependence on fossil fuel, a development Tutu blamed on human greed. His has to be one of the more strident and courageous statements linking profit to the oil sands production, as well as the threats the development poses to First Nations tribes adjacent.
In Ontario, sadly, in the midst of a provincial election, the debate around energy focuses on the Liberal government's closing of two gas-fired electricity plants in Mississauga, in order to protect Liberal members, at a considerable cost to the public treasury. Not a word has been heard about the larger issue to move the province off fossil fuels and into renewables, although there is debate around public funding of rapid transit, an slightly indirect initiative to reduce emissions. While polite, the public debate of issues has been restricted to "job creation," public service cuts and ethics of the current administration.
A focus on short-term management issues, and clearly not a long-term vision for the future of the province, restricts all of the leaders and their parties from engaging in something that would inspire public interest and confidence. Instead we have the making of a milk-toast election when there are some fundamental issues like the creeping "privatization" of public services, to which only a single ad from the labour movement has referred. Is that an issue that is too dangerous for the formerly "labour-supported" NDP who are attempting to position the party in the middle in order to garner enough votes to take power? If so, then public debate in this province has shifted so far to the right that the labour movement could be in danger of extinction, and that would be one of the most tragic developments of this century, in this province.
The interests of "public" needs and "public" services are too often and most dangerously being gobbled by private interests in their insatiable appetite for more opportunities to make profit from public dollars and the development can be seen in education, health care, public security, privatizing of freeways, and the list grows, without any attention being paid by the three leaders vying for the premiership of this province, and the public seems mute on the issue.
I apologize for the random wanderings of this piece, and promise a little more focus in future efforts.