Trudeau government, Year 1: the corruption of power?

                                                     Parliament, Ottawa
  
            There is a saying, attributed to various sources, "Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely" which seems to apply to the Trudeau government in these its early days. No nothing truly scandalous. President elect Donald Trump is more entertaining for the scandal seeking.

            But consider the practice of $1500 per place fundraisers for the Federal Liberal Party. The opposition is arguing that these gatherings provide the super-wealthy with privileged access to Trudeau cabinet ministers and to the Prime Minister himself. Aside from the PM, Finance Minister Bill Morneau and Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould have attended these exclusive fundraisers. Nothing illegal is taking place, of course, but what is legal is not necessarily moral.

fundraiser-with-chinese-billionaires-does-not-pass-the-smell-test

           In this case the government has failed to adhere to its own standards regarding transparency.

             On Nov. 27, 2015, the Trudeau government released an 87-page document called "Open and Accountable Government" which says ministers and parliamentary secretaries 

 "must ensure that political fundraising activities or considerations do not affect, or appear to affect, the exercise of their official duties or the access of individuals or organizations to government.. There should be no preferential access to government, or appearance of preferential access, accorded to individuals or organizations because they have made financial contributions to politicians and political parties,"  (emphasis added)

             The problem is that during the election Trudeau and his team promised "transparency" - as, interestingly, the Harper government before them! They were shaking down votes by appealing to the voters' rising sense that world society (and Canada) are adrift and heading toward some ill-defined future cataclysm. Witness the sentiments expressed in the BRexit referendum which took the UK out of the European Union or the "stunning" populist victory of Trump in the recent American elections. One need hardly mention the rise of the populist Right in France, Germany, Austria, Holland, Scandinavia,..

           Trudeau reached out to a skittish populace and offered them consolation and comfort: we are on your side, we will prove it by standing above vested interests who place themselves above national interest and the Common Good. Not only must transparency be achieved but the appearance of transparency must be achieved..

          Trudeau has failed on this one. We are back to government-as-usual. The "fix is in" as Trump like to argue during his campaign. Big Money talks Big (at least, this is the perception people are getting..) Worse, when confronted with disquieting facts, Trudeau dodges by turning and pointing a finger at the Conservatives' lousy record of blurring the line between partisan politics and governance. When the pot calls the kettle black..

Trudeau defends fundraisers by attacking Conservatives' record 

                          controversial Light Armored Vehicle sales to Saudi Arabia

              Before the last federal election which brought the Liberals to power, Harper's Conservatives contracted to sell Light Armored Vehicles (LAVs) to Saudi Arabia despite the fact that the Saudi government has used such vehicles against dissident elements of its own civilian population and abroad. Such usage contravenes Canada' own weapons export regulations:

"Attacks on civilians – or even serious, reasonable doubt that the Saudis would use LAVs only for their stated military purpose – would raise red flags under Canada’s weapons export rules, which forbid weapons shipments “unless it can be demonstrated there is no reasonable risk that the goods might be used against the civilian population” by the buyer."

Saudi LAV deal in a nutshell 

           One has to concede that the Feds were between a rock and a hard place on this one. If they refused to sign the deal the outgoing Harper Conservatives had negotiated, they would be held responsible for job losses in Ontario where the vehicles are constructed.

           One option that presented itself to the incoming Trudeau team: open the nature of the LAV deal to parliamentary (and public) debate along with the demonstrated Saudi record of human rights violations committed with such vehicles. This High Road moral approach would still probably lose them some votes in affected parts of Ontario but gain them votes elsewhere (in addition to confirming their commitment to probity and transparency).

            Unfortunately, the Trudeau government chose the Low (government as usual) Road and they did so in a particularly cheesy way. The Liberals claimed, falsely, that the Saudi LAV sale was a "done deal", put into motion by the defeated Harper government and their was nothing they could do about it. Nothing could have been further from the truth! In reality, Foreign Affairs Minister Stéphane Dion signed export permits allowing the vehicles to be shipped. Without his signature neither vehicles nor their "spare parts" would have left the country.

"Foreign Affairs Minister Stéphane Dion has quietly issued export permits for the bulk of the shipments tied to a controversial $15-billion sale of combat vehicles to Saudi Arabia, a crucial green light for the deal that many thought had already been granted.

Mr. Dion approved six export permits on Friday covering more than 70 per cent of the transaction, newly released documents show – a decision that represents the most vital step in the Canadian government’s arms-control process. The Liberals have long said they could not interfere with what they described as a “done deal” arranged by the Harper Conservatives."

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/liberals-quietly-approved-arms-sale-to-saudis-in-april-documents/article29612233/ 

           Once again, a smell test failed. This does not auger well for a government barely a year into its mandate. People were voting for change when they voted Trudeau..

           Speaking of voters seeking change. Voters in the US revealed the degree to which the chattering classes inhabit a parallel universe by voting the "impossible" Donald Trump as their next president. The Trump presidency could pose some interesting existential challenges for the Trudeau government!

            For openers, Environment Minister Catherine McKenna recently announced plans to accelerate the phase out of coal fired electricity. Meanwhile, south of the border, President elect Trump wants to phase coal back in again. The two leaders seem out of phase on this one (note 1).

 http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-coal-electricity-phase-out-1.3860131

              Yet once again, Trudeau seems the prey of indecisiveness. He has argued that Canada need infrastructure (this is true, bridges and buildings in Québec fall down and kill people..) In a Keynesian attempt to stimulate a flagging economy, Trudeau has promised increased Federally-driven infrastructure development, some of it the renewable energy sector. Yet he has not really bitten the bullet yet. He has not made the messy, the politically incorrect - yet necessary - choice: choose renewable energy infrastructure development over oil pipelines and other forms of fossil energy. He is still clinging to mealy-mouthed "please everyone" platitudes about using pipeline revenues to finance the conversion to a green energy economy. We have left those days far behind! Today is the time of choosing, we have run out of time..

trudeau-says-pipelines-will-pay-canadas-transition-green-economy  

             Then there are the social value issues and questions of "style". Women make up a whopping 50% of the Trudeau cabinet. So far President elect Trump has not announced any female members of his cabinet. 

             In a similar vein, Trump, during the election at least, promised to build a wall separating the US and Mexico - and make the Mexicans pay for it! As part of his campaign, Trudeau promised to "throw the doors open" to Syrian refugees, one promise he has kept (note 2). Once again, the two leaders appear to be out of step. At this stage of the game, one can only guess what the outcome will be.. 

 

notes:

1- Some pundits have argued that Trump won't get far with his zombie coal strategy. Depending upon where you live, renewable energies are already a bit cheaper, the same price or within striking difference of coal fired electricity rates. Economics, they argue, will trump Trump's populism. When the rubber hits the road..

http://solarcellcentral.com/cost_page.html

2- In a sense, Trudeau - like Trump - does not have much of a platform, few really new ideas, just government-as-usual with a few tweaks and some fancy spin. (This criticism applies to all, or most, governments and parties in the so-called "developed world", not just to Trudeau and Trump. The "System" is broke and too broke to fix. We need a new breed of popular - community based - leader to think outside all boxes and all existing political ideologies.) During their victorious campaigns, both Trudeau and Trump appealed to popular sentiment (emotions, public self images, nationalistic clichés..) Trump played the Angry White Man card (AKA: Hard Working Ordinary American card). Trudeau played the Compassionate, Tolerant Canadian card. Both lead to hasty ad hoc policy commitments which neither country is in a position to fufill. Just think of the economic impact of sudden massive tariffs on Mexican or Chinese imports on the standard of living of all those Angry White Men who voted for Trump! And here is a text that argues that Canada was not ready to accept the numbers of refugees Trudeau has attempted to resettle:

a-critique-of-the-trudeau-governments-immigration-policies

           Make haste, make waste!

history is myth?

Jacques Barzun and Henry F Graff: The Modern Researcher (Harcourt, Brace and World, NY, 1970), page 172, on the nature of causality:

          "The historical researcher is thus led to adopt a practical distinction about causality that has already commended itself to workers in physical science. They draw attention to the difference between causation that occurs in a long chain of events of various kinds and causation within a closed system. An example of the first is: the forming of a cloud, the  darkening of the sun to earth dwellers,  the lowering of temperature, people putting on coats, a thunderstorm bursting, a person taking refuge under a tree and being struck by lightning and killed. This chain of 'causes' is miscellaneous and each event in it unpredictable, not because it is not determined, but because it occurs outside any controlled or controllable limits. As against this, in the physics laboratory, an elastic body of known stresses and strains goes through a series of evolving states; at any moment a single definite distribution of measured stress and strains is the effect of the previous moment, which may therefore be regarded as its complete cause, as the cause.

         The distinctive feature of the first kind of causality is that there is no restriction on the events that may be related. It is open to the observer's insight to select, not causes in sense number two, but conditions that belong to the chain and have the merit of interesting him and his audience. It is for them to judge whether the resulting narrative is intelligible, consonant with the experience of the race, and useful in orienting the mind amid the welter of facts."

         During the heyday of scientific (or "scientistic") thinking, some thinkers believed that all knowledge of the world could be reduced to logic and mathematics. Some believed that the evolution of society was a deterministic, rule-driven process whose "Laws" could be derived through empirical study and logical analysis (Karl Marx). Today such ideas strike us as quaint or dangerous (note 1) It was even dreamed for a while that history would become a branch of science!

          The Modern Researcher is described as "the classic manual on all aspects of research and writing". It is that and more, one of those inspired "sui generis" - one of a kind, hard to characterize works. Not just a "how-to" manual on the use of index cards to keep notes, the authors also explore fascinating "philosophical" questions on the nature and goals of research and verification or on the nature of causality and truth.  

            In the above quote, what Bazrun and Graff are suggesting is, to my way of thinking, much more radical, than it first appears. It is instructive that they use the term "narrative" to describe what history is. The criteria used to evaluate history's story - "interesting", "intelligible", "consonant" with individual or collective experience, and "useful" (itself subjective, depending upon whose use) seem more "aesthetic" than "scientific" in nature. No longer is history seen as the description of something "objective", "out there" (which is how science views its work) but rather as an artistic endeavor of creating something new and vital from the raw, dead data that chronology provides. Thus, say the authors, each generation must create its own history anew. The work of the historian is never finished then..

           But more interestingly - more disturbing, too - if history is more akin to art, literature and myth than to science, math or logic, what are the criteria with which to judge history? What distinguishes good from bad history?

           The authors' words - originally penned sixty years ago - were perhaps a bit ahead of their time. Today, as dissatisfaction with science and its accomplishments grows, it is obvious that people are turning to "mythic representations" of the world. A crude form of the "Golden Age" - to which we must return to be saved - is echoed in Donald Trump's campaign slogan, "Make America Great Again!" The rising tide of ecological disasters taps into that potent Judeo-Christian Archetype, the End Days (Apocalypse). Sometimes, the Apocalypse is reduced to mere justification for the status quo. American fundamentalist "christians" claim that these disasters are "Signs" of the End Days. Environmentalist activists are then accused of doing Satan's work since God has planned for earth's near destruction. An interesting perversion and corruption of a religious myth if there ever was one! God made responsible for human stupidity and greed.. Blasphemy, I say!
 
http://transparencycanada.blogspot.ca/2016/07/book-review-toward-buddhist-ecology.html 

notes:

1- historical determinism / fatalism / fascism: studies by clinical psychologists of fascist and fascist sympathizers during and immediately after World War II revealed that "authoritarians" tend to see the world in black / white, stereotypic ways, often with a rejection of the idea of free will and self-determination. (Authoritarian thinkers are found, generally, at both extremes of the political spectrum: Stalinist communists were as "fascist" ans authoritarian as any nazis.) Part of the worldview of the fascist or authoritarian usually involves

-  Substitution and Stereotypy -- superstition, cliché, categorization and fatalistic determinism (for example, the Nazi ideology's cult of "racial determinism", one does what one does because one's ancestors came from a certain part of the world).

See, for example, http://www.cepsr.com/clanek.php?ID=328

          Such world views are dangerous because they lead to false - or, at best - oversimplified - causal connections between events between, for example, being a bad person and being Jewish (Nazis), Muslim (islamophobes) or Mexican (Donald Trump during the 2016 US Presidential Election).

 robbed of their childhood? Not much happiness there (probably not much curiosity or sense of wonder either..) Hitlerjugend (Hitler Youth League).

former Dept of Fisheries and Oceans scientist spills beans on suppression of science

          The Harper conservatives won on a platform promising governmental transparency.To date this commitment has not been honored. In fact, the Harperites are probably the most secretive, paranoid, control freaks this country has ever elected. Obviously, all such generalizations are, at best, approximate. Still, the general trends are there for all to see and, at this late date, have become unequivocal if not notorious.


Having eyes, see ye not? and having ears, hear ye not? and do ye not remember? Mark 8: 18

          Thus environmental science as it impacts the federal government's jurisdiction is, to varying degrees, "muzzled": research centers, libraries are closed, defunded. The excuse, of course, is provided by the neocon / Free Market idiotology: cut social services (education, aid to the poor or disempowered, the environment..) in order to "stimulate economic growth" which will then "trickle down" to lower socio-economic classes. The problem is that despite decades of following neocon economic gurus, the wealth she just ain't a trickled down no where, folks. In fact, the gap between rich and poor both within and between nations has, contrary to predictions, continually increased. Normally, when one tries a policy (or tests a hypothesis in science) and it produces results more or less contrary to those predicted, one scraps the policy (or hypothesis). This has not happened with the neocon / Free Market idiotology. Why?


http://www.cbc.ca/radio/thecurrent/the-current-for-may-20-2015-1.3080098/canadian-scientist-steve-campana-quits-over-government-muzzling-1.3080114 

           Check out the audio link - the "Listen" button. The interview with recently retired Dept of Fisheries and Oceans scientist Steve Campana begins at about minute 2 of the audioclip.  (Campana, be it noted, is not "retired" for reasons of age. In fact, he seems hale and hearty and is working in Iceland where the air, apparently, is a bit freer.)

internal blog links: keywords: censorship

This link gives numerous internal blog links to suppression of environmental science by the Harper government

http://transparencycanada.blogspot.ca/2013/04/the-imperial-prime-minister-wither.html

Sometimes the neocon government spending cut mania leads to tragedy, for example when deregulated industries - left to "self-regulate" - prove to be menaces to public health and safety.

http://transparencycanada.blogspot.ca/2013/09/regulations-violated-in-alberta-tarsands.html 

A series of 6 articles on Lac Mégantic train wreck of July 2013 is accessible using the keyword: accident. On that terrible night, 47 Friday night partiers were burned alive when a runaway, driverless train carrying shale oil careened into the town center, overturned and burst into a sea of burning oil. The deregulated rail industry (and the government who took part in that deregulation) are, in very large part to blame for this mass collective homicide (not intentional murder but literally "homi-cide" = "man killing"). Also to blame, more indirectly, our collective failure to develop green energy when we still had cheap energy to burn. Wind towers if they fail do not envelope people in seas of flame..

http://transparencycanada.blogspot.ca/2014/05/canada-new-face-of-authoritarianism.html 

http://transparencycanada.blogspot.ca/2013/03/blow-open-doors-and-let-real-world-in.html

This one goes back 3 years, so the policy of muzzling science that is inconvenient for a "business-as-usual" economic, social and technological agenda goes back quite a way!

http://transparencycanada.blogspot.ca/2012/04/decline-and-fall-of-canadian-science.html 

Deregulation blues: anatomy of an inferno

          Lac Mégantic, Québec, July 6, 2013: a driverless train carrying highly volatile crude oil from Bakken (N. Dakota) shale oil deposits, careens into the town center at high speed in the early morning hours. It derails, spilling oil. The oil ignites during the crash and 47 people are burned to death in the conflagration.

internal blog links: keyword - Lac Megantic (6 entries), the most pertinent being:

http://transparencycanada.blogspot.ca/2013/07/petro-transport-rail-or-pipeline.html 

http://transparencycanada.blogspot.ca/2013/07/in-praise-of-folly-you-get-what-you-pay.html 

http://transparencycanada.blogspot.ca/2013/08/beating-dead-horse-deregulation-why-it.html 

 http://transparencycanada.blogspot.ca/2013/10/lac-megantic-2-sequel.html


              The federal Transport Safety Board recently released a report with recommendations. Some improvements in rail security - affecting the entire integrated Canado-american rail system have already been implemented:

"Changes have already been enacted, including tougher standards for the DOT-111 tanker cars that were involved in the Lac-Mégantic crash. The DOT-111s are considered the workhorse of the North American railway system."

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/lac-m%C3%A9gantic-report-to-be-final-act-for-tsb-chair-wendy-tadros-1.2735158 

             However all is not as rosy as might appear at first blush. Attempts by journalists to obtain details about the circumstances leading up to the crash - records of inspections of the Montreal, Maine and Atlantic rail (MMA) in particular - through freedom of access to information legislation have met with bureaucratic stone walls. Accessed documentation is heavily redacted on the basis of "confidentiality of third party information" or a desire "not to interfere with ongoing judicial proceedings". What has been obtained, though, paints a picture of an industry suffering from a lack of adequate regulatory procedures. MMA was found to be in dereliction of various safety and maintenance codes on a number of occasions. Fine, OK, no one is perfect - but why the hell didn't the government take action against MMA's owners to enforce compliance? We are talking about regulations to assure public security, after all. Is this more blowback from the Harper government's neoconservative ideological stance of laissez-faire capitalism: any goddam thing industry wants is OK? Including - perhaps - burning 47 people to death.. (until the people have had enough, of course..)


 http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2014/08/15/transport_canada_keeping_secret_details_mma_safety_inspections.html

               An investigation by Radio-Canada (the French language arm of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) revealed what I personally consider to be shocking dereliction of duty on the federal officials charged with regulating rail safety. The investigation even raised the troubling question of who, exactly, does the government of Canada receive its marching orders from. "The two person rule" in the following quote refers to the traditional practice of having two engineers per train so that each can monitor the other's compliance with safety regulations. The idea is to reduce the probability of human error.

"A Radio-Canada investigation by Enquete has shed new light on the behind-the-scenes manoeuvring that gave MMA its exemption from the two-person crew rule.

MMA applied to Transport Canada in 2009 for permission to operate with one-person crews as it was doing across the border in Maine. Transport Canada officials opposed this request because of the company’s history of safety violations.

A year later, a Transport Canada audit of MMA revealed major deficiencies in its performance and procedures, including train inspections and brake tests.

Yet MMA returned with the same request in 2011. Transport Canada’s Montreal officials again opposed the request saying, 'We consider that this major change in its operations would expose the crew and surrounding communities to greater risk.'

At this point the CEO of MMA’s Canadian subsidiary wrote to the industry lobby, the Railway Association of Canada, complaining about Montreal office opposition. A senior RAC official promised to “make some calls.” This intervention apparently succeeded because MMA got permission in 2012 — over the objection of public servants and the union — to run its trains with one-person crews.

Who made this decision and on what grounds" (emphasis added)

http://www.thestar.com/opinion/commentary/2014/02/27/lacmgantic_time_for_an_independent_inquiry.html

           Sooo... If I get that correctly, Ed Burkhardt, the former owner of MMA, did not like the fact he was refused the privilege of running trains carrying dangerous cargoes on decrepit rail lines with only one engineer aboard. Ed called his buddies at the Railway Association of Canada - an industry lobby group - and these dudes "arranged things" with "some calls" - presumably to federal regulators (??) and Ed got his way. That's neat! And 47 people burned to death. Obviously, one cannot prove cause and effect, any more than one can "prove" that a given freak weather system is due to global warming. One can only assign probabilities..

           And that's where things get sticky. Generally speaking, post mortems of major accidents like the Lac Mégantic conflagration reveal that such accidents are the results of rare combinations of events occurring in a fortuitous chain ("bad luck"). Safety therefore should involve reducing the probability of error at each potential step of error. Thus two engineers versus one so that one can check on the work of the other. In some cases, safety involves pre-emptively removing entire links in the potential chain of error. The MMA train that crashed into the Lac Mégantic town center was left unintended and on a slight incline. It's brakes failed - after firefighters had put out a small fire aboard the engine and left the scene - causing it to roll downhill several miles, gathering speed.. One could have eliminated a link or two in the chain of errors by assuring, for example, that trains with dangerous loads are not left unintended overnight and that they are not parked on a gradient. But neoconservative "business-is-always-right" ideology cuts corners on safety measures to maximize profits in privatized industries (like the rail industry). But now we are beginning to discover the "hidden costs" - the "externalities" as the economists like to say - of neoconservative policies. 47 people died. 

"Why did Transport Canada — despite repeated Transportation Safety Board warnings that DOT-111 tank cars, which punctured and exploded at Lac-Mégantic, were unsafe for transporting crude oil — not take strong measures to mandate their replacement?"

               And be assured, things will only get worse, not better unless the public demands better of our elected officials:

"The recent federal budget contains no increase in regulatory resources.

To my knowledge, as of mid-September 2013 there were 35 transportation of dangerous goods inspectors for all modes of transport.

Meanwhile, crude oil shipments increased from 500 carloads in 2009 to 160,000 in 2013. They’re projected to double by the end of this year. 

This is the equivalent of one inspector for every 4,500 carloads of crude oil, up from one per 14 in 2009. By the end of this year, it will be one per 9,000 carloads." 

                 Deregulation blues: cuts in regulation cause errors to pile up on errors..

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/low-cost-repair-linked-to-engine-fire/article20091811/ 
  
                  When will the public decide that it has had enough of this madness..

Are we, well.., decadant?

           Speaking as a Canadian and a North American, it is probably safe to say that we are not immune to the political and racial fanaticism that are emerging as disquieting symptoms of social decadence in Europe. Witness the recent debate in Québec over banning the wearing of "ostentatious religious symbols" by employees of public institutions: hospitals, government offices, schools, day cares..

left-wing-populism-in-quebec  (internal blog link)

             Ultimately, one can begin to pose questions about the long term viability of democracy in radically inegalitarian, capitalist / corporatist economies. Already, one begins to see the beginings of this questioning among political scientists:

link - democracy bankrupt?

             One of the things that strikes one as a "sign of the times": the nastiness of political debate. Why such nastiness in supposedly affluent societies where everyone (supposedly) has enough to eat? This may have a rational explanation: empty barrels make the most noise. When political parties have nothing to offer, they go on the attack. This is a way of hiding their intellectual vacuousness and moral bankruptcy: their sole reason for existing is to prop up a dying Old Regime as long as possible. This is the core set of values of reactionary politics, very visible in North America today. Just think of election time "attack" or "negative" ads. Our political leaders, with few exceptions, cannot be positive exactly because they have no proposals, no program founded in a critical analysis of reality. One gets the impression that our democratic institutions are exhausted.

link: noam-chomsky,10-strategies-of-manipulation

              Everywhere a "devil may care" attitude flourishes. Witness the antics recently of Toronto's high living, crack smoking, "man of the people" mayor Rob Ford.

link: character assassination as politics

               Everything which is "virile" - mean spirited, vicious, violent - is lauded. Cynicism is the norm, especially among the young. Many are convinced that all politicians are crooks, something which the Charboneau Commission hearings into corruption in the construction industry in Québec tend to confirm. 

 internal blog links:

http://transparencycanada.blogspot.ca/2012/10/charbonneau-commission-when.html

http://transparencycanada.blogspot.ca/2012/11/the-right-hand-knows-not-what-left-hand.html

http://transparencycanada.blogspot.ca/2012/11/turning-over-rocks-things-you-find.html 

http://transparencycanada.blogspot.ca/2013/06/montreal-rock-n-roll.html 


                These are dangerous times. It is at such times that the disempowered and the disenfranchised finally opt out of the System and begin searching for Messiahs to save them. This has had terrible consequences in the 20th century. One need only think of the great dictators that century produced: Hitler, Stalin, Mao.. 

                Fascism caught the Left like a bolt out of the blue. Not only had they not predicted it's emergence in the first decades of the twentieth century but they did not really understand it. It is only with the 20 / 20 vision of retrospection, fifty years after its birth, could the Left say that it had some sort of an intellectual handle on fascism. And what we do know is not very encouraging..

                One definition of fascism: the control or seizure of the State by the corporate elite. That sounds like North America today. One need only compare, for example, the Harper government's environmental policies and the desires of the petrochemical industry to see much overlap there is. Harper's environmental policy could have been written in the Oil Patch (cynics say it was). Young people understand things like this viscerally and its corrupting influence both on them and on the political process itself.

                One of the strategies worked out by the fascists early on (program of the Italian fascist party, circa 1920), was what one can call "contemporary populism". Fascism / populism aims to bypass the logical, critical thinking circuits of the brain and tap directly into the reptilian brain.

              Dimetrodon: an early synapsid reptile (Permian era - 275 million years ago)
            Mammals are modern or surviving synapsids. Dimetrodon slumbers in the                    core of our mammalian brains..

           Since reptiles were the earliest terrestrial vertebrates from which the rest evolved, their brains are involved in computing the basic stuff: sex, aggression and flight, the stuff you need to survive but not much more. The rawest, most powerful emotional, instinctive stuff. This is what the fascists aim to tap into. Their males want our women: a traditional motivational ploy of the racist. They want to take over the world. They want to destroy our values and our way of life. Everything is simple, black and white - as befits a small, early model vertebrate brain.

             But the reptile slumbers in all of us (till awakened). The fascist wants to tweak Dimetrodon's tail, stomp on it. They want to connect the raw emotions stimulated and liberated to cues: racial, religious, gender-orientation or political epithets. The goal is to get a knee jerk - unthinking "conditioned" - reflex when the cues are presented. Thus, critical rational thinking - emerging in higher (non-reptilian) brain centers - is bypassed by raw, survival oriented emotion. This was all well spelled out in the first Fascist Party program (circa 1920, Rome). Contemporary North American reactionaries have refined the procedures (many are from advertising firms and corporate funded Right wing think tanks including university profs). More sophistication in programming and delivery but the basic principles are the same. In the third link from the top, Toronto's high-flyin' populist mayor smears - by insinuation - an adversarial journalist with the hate label, "pedophile". The connection is obvious: threat to children (our children!) has been linked to this man, his name and, of course, his future opinions expressed in his columns.

             The reassertion of populism, reactionary politics and even neo-nazi movements is a worrying sign, if the history of the 20th century is any judge...

Caught with your hand in the cookie jar, EH?

           Senate rules allow senators to claim up to $22,000 per annum to maintain a secondary residence near to parliament in the Ottawa area. Conservative senator Mike Duffy and two other senators (one a Liberal) are in hot water in claiming the allowance while actually residing in Ottawa (and not in their claimed primary residence in their home province). The Duffy saga has indeed taken some weird twists in the last few weeks. Senator Duffy offered to pay back the $90,000 he owes the taxpapers, claiming ignorance of the rules on his part. It now turns out that Nigel Wright, PM Steven Harper's chief of staff payed the re-imbursement out of his own pocket, raising some fundamental questions of ethics in high places.

          From the pen of our favorite conservative journalist, Andrew Coyne. When your own best people start crying foul, you know there's got to be a problem.

http://www.calgaryherald.com/opinion/columnists/Coyne+Judgement+lacking+Mike+Duffy+bailout/8392611/story.html

          Coyne, I think, rightly analyzes the ethical problems raised by the Duffy affair. Was the Duffy bailout by Nigel Wright a loan? Then it should have been registered as an asset by Mr Wright. Was it a gift? If so, then under Senate rules, Duffy should not have accepted it. Either way the action was, as Coyne argues, stunningly stupid. (Or, are the players so assured of the passive compliance - or stupidity - of the public, they feel themselves immune: "little gods of the earth"?)

          Once again, it seems we are faced with the essential truth of the old adage: power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. The Harperites were elected on a platform of Law and Order, responsible government and transparency. We've got Law and Order with the incessant tightening of regulations concerning immigrants, refugee claimants and unemployment benefits (most of these changes rendering the laws less accomodating or even mean-spirited). But where have the responsible government and transparency gone? Are the senators who claim expenses they are not entitled to behaving responsibly? Is the government being transparent in its release of information to the public? The very fact that Harper's right hand man, Mr Wright, bailed Senator Duffy out would have remained a state secret if it had not been leaked to the press. And who is responsible for this leak and why? 

          Under a government elected on a promise of transparent government, the atmosphere in Ottawa appears to some observers even murkier than it was under the Chrétien Liberals.

The hubris of economists

           A recent study by economists Reinhart and Rogoff concluded that large national debts inhibit economic growth (which in the neoconservative cosmology is the Moloch to which all goods of the earth must be sacrificed). Now, few papers submitted to peer review - as Reinhart and Rogoff's had been - are actually fully scrutinized under a magnifying lens: the researchers basic competence and honesty are assumed. In this case these assumptions appear to have been misplaced..

          University of Massachussetts (Amherst) doctoral student, Thomas Hendon, was assigned, as part of his course work, the task of "replicating" and critiquing a published paper written by professional economists. Hendon chose the Reinhart and Rogoff study. To his surprise he found numerous errors and - infinitely worse from the point of view of scientific objectivity - even "strategic" omissions: data that did not fit their theses were passed over in silence.

http://business.financialpost.com/2013/04/18/reinhart-rogoff-austerity-study/

           To read student Hendon's report and critique, click on the link, in blue, "read Thomas Hendon's 'A critique of Reinhart and Rogoff' here"

           We can only conclude that this is another case of the hubris of the neoconservative establishment, so assured of itself in its high places of power. Objectivity and caution are thrown to the winds. All that matters is the ideology: Moloch - economic growth - must be fed at all costs. The ancient Greek tragedian Sophocles spoke of this state of spirit when he wrote:

            "The gods blind those they would destroy"

             What is particularly galling here are not the (apparently rather elementary) spreadsheet computational errors. These are bad enough indicating unprofessional attitudes and work ethic (although not rising to moral derelection). Rather what galls is the omission or deletion of "non-conforming data", those which run contrary to one's ideological preconceptions. The odor of moral dereliction is now in the air: economists, after all, do have pretensions of practicing a "science" and science, the last time I checked, is suposed to be motivated by a comittment to discovering truth through the "open and public" analysis of replicable data. Suppressing non-conforming data violates the basic demand of science for intellectual honesty, objectivity and transparency. That is my reading anyway.

             Anna Maria Tremonti interviewed several guests - from both sides of the fence - recently on the CBC program, "The Current". The following link provides access to the podcast.

http://www.cbc.ca/thecurrent/episode/2013/05/09/is-the-case-for-austerity-crumbling/

You gets what you pays for..

                Lest we all forget, the Harper Conservative governement was elected on a platform of fiscal responsibility in the wake of the Chrétien Liberals' financing scandals: federal monies were diverted to support the anti-separatist "Non" campaign in Québec, some of that money got further diverted into Liberal election funds and gifts to Liberal supporters. 

              It is therefore a bit surprising - ? shocking ? - to note that the Conservatives have - temporarily at least - lost track of $3.1 Billion earmarked for the "war on terrorism". 

Dang! Now where did those three billion smackeroos go..

                 The synopsis boxes on the right hand side of the above article are interesting reading, too:

"The national search-and-rescue system run by the Canadian Forces and the Canadian Coast Guard is troubled by aging equipment and shortages of pilots and flight engineers. They are doing an adequate job now, but will face sustainability problems in the future."

              Part of the neoconservative ideology inspiring the Harper Conservatives is, of course, the "need" to constantly cut "government" and turn over everything to the private sector. The argument - ideologically, not factually, based - is that "government is inefficient". This argument, like all truisms, obviously has some validity but is overgeneralized to the point of absurdity by neoconservative ideologues to include even those functions and services which generate too low a profit margin when performed by the private sector. This is duh.. why they were put in the public sector in the first place! 

               Such services inevitably degrade in the hands of the private sector or, worse, end up excluding the very people who are most vulnerable and in need (poorer communities or segments of the population). The various attempts around the world to privitize potable water delivery are glaring examples of the failure of privitization to provide adequate essential public services. 

                Here, Canadian search and rescue services, is, perhaps, another example. Either society decides - hopefully democratically - that it wants adequate search and rescue services and then delivers the funding. Or isolated communities and governments are left to do as best they can. One can agree or disagree with either position but they are, at least, honest statements of alternative political positions. Anything "in between" is simply neocon hypocrisy and word-twisting. One the one hand, we praise "our boys and girls" in the military while providing them with inadequate - and therefore risky - equipment and manpower. This is not just hypocritical, it is immoral and criminal. Ideologues refuse to realize there are simply somethings governments do better. This lesson, learned during the 19th century, is now being unlearned by our contemporary "laissez-faire" ideologues. How long before the people wake up to the fact they are being short changed?

                The faulty logic in ideological overgeneralization of the "government is inefficient" argument is appalingly evident: yes, you may indeed save some money at the front end by privitizing a public function but the OVERALL costs to society as a whole, may actually rise exponentially. Programs to give welfare recipients SERIOUS occupational training cost the taxpayer money. But the ex-welfare recipicient who enters the workforce with qualifications is unlikely to fall back on the dole again. During their working life, they are likely to contribute several times, in taxes, the costs of the program that got them off welfare. They are also less likely to be a burden to the community in terms of health problems, substance or alcohol abuse, imprisionment or institutionalization for mental health problems. When one does full cost accounting, one often finds that a public service rendered by a public agent actually ends up costing society less than a privitized one. But such a position is not politically correct today..

North American Autumn

http://www.ecologicalhope.org/featured/long-lake-a-photo-essay/

"How will we say what this day means to us unless we enter it fully, consciously, and aware? How will we save what we love unless we are willing to be with our loved ones, to share their journeys and longings, their gifts and blessings? How will we come to know our world unless we go to it, our hearts open, ready always to receive and then to give back?

There are few things more important than to find a way to stop what we’re doing and look, look deeply, lovingly, fearlessly, unselfishly, without being anxious about what it might mean, how it might change us – and then to enter in."

              This is the primordial sense of "transparency": transparency, authenticity, openess towards oneself and the organic world around one (including the close circle of loved ones). If this primordial level of transparency is not attained, forget the rest: an inauthentic wo/man's judgement runs false at its source, the self..

               The existentialist philosophers of the last century understood this. They realized that one of the essential challenges of our time was to achieve the clarity of "authenticity":

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authenticity_%28philosophy%29

Transparency and the role of press freedom in a democracy

        Democracy is based on the rule of the People. The theory holds that, in order to make informed and intelligent choices, the populace must have access to the information required to make those choices. Traditionally, this information could come through a variety of chanals: word of mouth, public meeting including debate, theater, and street demonstration; the pulpit, the press and related printed or graphic materials (posters, artwork..)..

         The Canadian Journalism Project provides a litany of broken promises and bad faith on the part of the Harper government with regard to journalistic access to information, the very information - don't forget! - that democracy requires in order that the People make wise decisions in public matters.

http://www.j-source.ca/english_new/detail.php?id=3391

http://www.law.ualberta.ca/centres/ccs/issues/freedomofthepressandprimeministerharpersmediapolicy.php

          Thus we are left with the intriguing paradox that a goverment elected on a platform of "transparency" and "diversity of opinion" is guilty of seeking to control and direct the timing, spin and accessibility of information in the public domain. "One hand knoweth not what the other does"..

           One can even argue - I do - that even when the letter of the law (Charter of Rights) is respected, the spirit of the law - and of Democracy itself - is being violated. Justice must not just appear to be done, justice must be done.

Lies, lies, lies and more damned lies..

Populism once more rears its ugly head in Canada

      Maxime Bernier, conservative backbencher, has claimed that he received "thousands" of complaints from Canadian citizens concerning the intrusiveness of the long form census back in 2006 when he was industry minister.


     However, a CBC follow up has revealed that - untransparently - the truth may not have been well served by M. Bernier and his anti-long form Conservative supporters. The actually number of complaints generated by the 2006 census was not "thousands" but just under a thousand, of which an impressive twenty-two were complaints about census question "intrusiveness" - 22 ! And for twenty-two complaints we scrap the long form - at high cost to the taxpayer, while reducing the - internationally recognized - effectiveness of the government's data collection capacity. Incredible! - but why would any party - especially one so committed to "cutting fat" and waste - deliberately waste taxpayer money to reduce the effectiveness of a well-run government program??



Is that an ideological rat we smell?
       
        As is so often the case with this curiously untransparent government - which ran on a platform of transparency - one suspects that the truth lies deeper than appearences. The message conveyed by Conservative MPs is that Canadian citizens' "freedoms" are being trampled on and they didn't like it. 

       But whose freedoms exactly? The twenty two people who actually did complain about the long form census questions' intrusiveness? Or, perhaps more pertinently, those groups receiving funding and who depend upon accurate sociological data to determine funding levels? Little groups (linguistic minorities..), disenfranchised groups, municipalities (especially smaller and rural ones - ironically just the folk who tend to vote Conservative!)..? Politically expendable groups..? 

      One suspects that we have another case here of our neocon wanabe government playing the populist card to its hard core voter base. Whip up the angst and /or ire of the rednecks against convenient scapegoat groups to win the cheap vote..

      No policy, no program, no political vision, philosophy or thinking required but instead the easy recourse to the basest, lowest common demoninator; scapegoat bashing: "artists", "intellectuals", "elites" (unspecified), "peaceniks", "baby killers", "atheists", "tree huggers",..

      It's a low blow but, hey, politics is a dirty game.. even for those who promised us "transparency", "responsible government", "law and order", and even "justice" (apparently this does not include "social justice" since the long form census provided data required by government programs providing a measure of social justice and equity..)