Pandora's box: to open or not to open..

 conclusion of previous article: Left wing populism in Québec?

              Straw polls in the Province suggest strongly that the population at large supports the PQ charter of values. In playing the populist card the PQ may have played cleverly - but did it play wisely? Qui vivra verra - time will tell..

             Even though the charter is only a "proposed" piece of legislation, many voices are rising to claim that the cure is worse than the illness (and what, exactly, was the illness that needed treating anyway?) 

             PQ Minister for Democratic Institutions, Bernard Drainville, claims that a priority is to affirm the equality of men and women in Québécois society. Fine! but if the religious headgear is banned then many Muslim women working in day care centers will either lose their jobs or be forced to conform to a law which insults thir religion. How is equality of sexes being promoted when women will, most likely, be affected more than men?

              The PQ like wisely claims to favor integration of the immigrant into the host society and its values. Fine! but the Muslim women - and there are not a few - who work in day cares and risk losing their jobs are, at least partly, integrated already. How will firing them, forcing them into social isolation (and perhaps welfare) improve their degree of integration?

             The more one looks at the charter proposals, the flakier they seem - strengthening the hypothesis that this is an electoral ploy on the part of the PQ.

             Case in point. Jewish professionals in universities and hospitals are used to wearing the kippah. These upper middle class professionals aren't going take the headgear ban lightly. En passant, middle class professionals are one of the traditional target groups the PQ tries to appeal to and recruit from. What was Madame Marois and her team thinking? Did they think - before shooting themselves in the foot?

             Thus hijab wearing Muslim women, kippah wearing Jewish men and turban / kirpan wearing Sikhs are all antagonized by the proposed legislation. Cross bearing christians could be too - if the law were to be equitably applied. A ban on "ostentatious religious signs" in public institutions seems a simple enough proposition but the devil is always in the details. And there are lots of devils and details in this one to go around liberally..

             Case in point. Headgear is out but what about beards worn as a religious sign? How, exactly, do you tell if a guy wears a beard out of religious conviction? Do we start measuring beard lengths as well as crucifix width to determine if they are ostentatious or not? The link below examines some of the confusing potential ramifications of the proposed charter.

 religious symbol police?

              There is also a seeming hypocrisy in the ban: religious signs in public spaces are  out but not the crucifix in the Assemblée Nationale itself -!sic! - because of its "historical" value. Stooping to splitting hairs like this is not a good sign, definitely not good for social harmony. Sophistry is often a sign of intellectual or moral decadance.

             And it gets weirder: representatives in the Assemblée may end up being exempt from charter provisions and free to wear religious signs at work, yesss..

              In short, the charter promises to generate more problems than it solves (this is my personal issue with the legislation). It muddies the waters of social interaction and pits one social group against another. 

              Case in point. Some institutions are allowed to opt out of charter provisions - why? Such arbitrariness is a sure path to social strife and corruption. It is a generator of bureaucratic Red Tape, the same Red Tape our neo-con inspired leaders are so keen on cutting (when it comes to safety regulations or programs to assure social equity for the disadvantaged..) The proposed law says that wo/men are not all equal before it. This is in violation of our sacrosanct principle of Universal Justice. In the long run, stupid or arbitrary laws are unenforcable and breed contempt for the law: the best law is the simplest!

             In defense of the PQ. Their actions are understandable if one considers the situation of Québec in North America: a francophone island in an English speaking sea: no better way to cultivate a streak of latent pranoia in the collective psyche. Québec is by nature a defensive or guarded - some say inward looking - society. In practice, such traits do not make for a closed or hostile society; they merely favor closure and hostility but do not assure them. Coming to Québec from outside, I have found Québécois society (generally) a bit less xenophobe than the anglophone surround, more open on gay and gender issues. Being demographically challenged, though, does establish an increased need to defend boundaries, physical, linguistic, cultural. These "personality" traits will remain as long as Québec continues to exist.

            In addition, some "reasonable accomodations" have been abusive and require remediation: Sikhs refusing to wear a hard hat on construction sites (because of the turban). I contend that such an accomodation is not reasonable because of the (foreseeable) consequences: society will end up paying for the keep of brain damaged vegetables injured by refusal to wear legally required safety gear. Friction and conflict between groups is inevitable but is the charter of values a sensible way of addressing it? Is the cure worse than the illness it purportedly treats..

           As a sociological experiment, the PQ charter of values project is fascinating (if disquieting). It is turning out to be a stunningly divisive issue. One could not have predicted the variety or the intensity of divisiveness.

1- Everybody has a fairly elaborated opinion, rare enough in these politcally apathetic (or cynical) times  

2- Opinions are passionate and, interestingly, highly polarized. Nuancers exist: those who want stronger, more universal restrictions on those who are different or moderates who want weaker, more circumscribed restrictions. But even the nuancers are relatively passionate..

3- Most fascinating: one can be either for or against the charter, no matter where one stand on the politcal spectrum! This is quite an accomplishment - a sort of "uniting Left and Right in their disunity".. :-0    

              I fear, not so much the charter itself, as what it may be saying about our society. Have we engaged ourselves on a slippery slope to a very bad place?               

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/bloc-kicks-out-mp-who-spoke-against-quebec-religious-symbols-ban/article14273942/ 

internal blog link: 

left-wing-populism-in-quebec?

In praise of folly: you get what you pay for.

         There is an old category of wise saying: you get what you pay for. Or as the Romans put it: caveat emptor - let the buyer beware. Or again: don't look a gift horse in the mouth. Our contemporary dominant ideology refuses to admit this wisdom. By cutting "bureaucratic fat" - government services - neoconservative ideologues hope to stimulate the economy by making the rich richer while contributing even less to the common good. The (obviously) self-serving formula is that since "business is more efficient than government" (an unproven premise), real wealth will "trickle down" to the lower levels of society at a lesser cost than inefficient government bureaucracy could provide equivalent services. Also known as The Golden Shower..

          There are many unexamined presuppositions in this bit of neocon ideology: why, for example, how did government end up doing the things neocons want to privatize? Perhaps government ended up providing the service because it 1- was needed (health care, education, prisons, commercial and safety regulations, highways, defense, potable water,..) and 2- private enterprise was found either incapable or unwilling to provide it effectively. In other words, it got dumped on government exactly because the private sector could not do an adequate job. If this historical perspective is indeed still correct we should expect to find more and more private - public initiatives failing to meet the terms of their contracted engagements. Services will be deficient in terms of quality, cost, or availability. And this is exactly the pattern we have seen emerge..

          In some cases, such as education, health care, and safety regulations, we are discovering that the costs incurred after budget cutting are actually greater than the saving obtained by "cutting fat from the bureaucracy". We have become as our grannies used to say, "penny wise and pound foolish". Consider the tragic case of the Lac Mégantic train wreck, for evidence:

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

          In recent decades, both Liberal and Conservative governments have set their compasses by the dominant USA inspired Neoconservative or Free Market Ideology. Government deregulated and privatized the railroads, selling off national rail lines and cutting the number of federal rail inspectors. In addition, government began issuing safety "guidelines" to rail companies. In practice, this meant the rail companies were more or less free to implement these guidelines any way they liked. In the deregulated climate of the last three decades this also meant that corners got cut. Profit not service or safety became the number one priority. Meanwhile government, due to the Free Market ideology they embraced, grew compliant and even complacent about the corner cutting. The actual cost of this corner cutting, it now appears, will be a lot steeper than Free Market ideologues foresaw. 

          An early July morning, 2013, Lac Mégantic, Québec: an unmanned freight train carrying crude oil plows into the town center at 1 am in the morning, derailing and engulfing the town center in a river of burning crude oil. The fiery holocaust burned approximately 50 innocent people to death, inflicted hundreds of millions of dollars of economic damage, destroyed sites of historic value and caused immense environmental damage (we are only just starting to find out about that!). It also revealed the intrinsic flaws of an ecologically unsound and now (obviously) failing industrial system of production.

            In a backhanded admission that they got things terribly wrong we read that the feds have released six new rules based on "common sense" which, if they had been in place, would have made it very unlikely that the Lac Mégantic disaster would have happened. That's wonderful to know that 6 simple steps - that cost nothing or close to it - could indeed have prevented the loss of about fifty lives and hundreds of millions of dollars in economic loss. But why the hell weren't they in operation the night of terror? Penny wise, pound foolish..

http://o.canada.com/2013/07/24/new-train-safety-rules-common-sense-says-industry/

http://o.canada.com/2013/07/18/federal-officials-question-insurance-coverage-of-mma-railway-following-lac-megantic-disaster/

           Thus, we learn just how lax things have really become in Neocon Lalalotus Land. The government, if I understand correctly, does not actually know for sure (and had to ask!) if Montréal Maine Atlantic rail had insurance sufficient to cover such an event.

           As stated above, "penny wise, pound foolish" is a stupid philosophy to live by when viewed from a utilitarian perspective. It becomes positively immoral, and morally unacceptable, when lives are placed in danger. Once again, the death toll in the Lac Mégantic conflagration is nearly 50, an exceedingly heavy toll in a community of 6,000. What cost do you place on human life..

          According to a recent Montréal Gazette article, 5.7 million litres of crude are still missing and not accounted for: they are in the soil and water of Lac Mégantic and environs. If these figures turn out to be correct this may the biggest oil spill in North America outside of seafloor well blowouts. Decontamination will be a big job, a complex job and a long job which, of course, means a costly job - hence the importance of assuring that rail transporters and rail lines carry adequate insurance, duh..

http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/million+litres+spilled+M%C3%A9gantic/8693863/story.html

            Why did we elect these people? That is the question I imagine historians and thesis students in the future scratching their heads in wonderment over.. Why?.. Why, what were those people back then thinking, did they think, were they capable of thinking?..

Book Review: Arnold Pacey, The Culture of Techology (MIT Press)

Arnold Pacey: "The culture of technology" (MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1983), 179 pages, extensive chapter notes, index, select bibliography.

            Pacey's critique of technology's "culture" is witten by an insider. He is a proponent - and practictioner - of "appropriate" technology in 3rd world development programs. His basic thesis is simple. Technology consists of three components:

1- the technical aspect (equations, nuts and bolts),

2- an organizational aspect (administration, management, institutional support, government policy) and

3- a cultural aspect which includes the values and goals of the technologist on the one hand and the values and practices of the users of the technology on the other.

            Pacey identifies two major flaws in technological thinking and policy making which often render "development" projects problematical. First there is "technical viruosity": engineers naturally take pride in their work. This can definitely be a good thing. It generates enthusiasm, esprit de corps, a sense of mission. The downside comes from a fixation on the "sweet" or "sexy" technical fix when another, less expensive, organizational fix might be more appropriate to a given situation. Consider the use of nuclear reactors for power generation in equitorial third world countries where less energy is actually required - no winter heating bills! - and where solar energy is abundant. In such contexts, nukes are like using a pile driver to crack walnuts..

              Technical thinking is also, too often, affected by various forms of tunnel vision. The social context in which a technology is to be implemented is often ignored, for example. It is assumed that equivalent infrastructure suport will be available in the new operational setting as in the old. Sometimes this is an error: technologies may be put to new uses in new settings, uses for which the equipment was not designed. All of these situations can reduce the effectiveness of the new technology or simply render it inoperant in short order.
   
              To counter these problems, Pacey argues for maximized public participation in the conception of large scale projects such as dams, electrical generation stations or nuclear reactors. The idea is to mesh "user values" with "expert values" and, through dialogue or "dialectic" between the two  set of values, arrive at a truly optimized complementation. Today, "optimzation" is too often limited to bottom-line, purely economic considerations.

            One discussion I found particularly fruitful related to "linear" versus "innovative" perceptions of technical progress. Bureaucracies and large insitutions tend to view technical progress as an inevitable, inherently logical, quasi-mechanistic process. This is the "linear" perspective. Progress seems predictable, a machine-like unfolding of the possibliities laid bare by the scientific method. An alternative approach lays emphasis on the  startling innovations and quantum leaps technical progress so often shows in historical perspective. "Progress" is often not an up-sloping line as it is so often plotted on graphs but a series of steplike technical and organizational innovations. These "quantum leaps" or "paradigm shifts" sometimes interact to produce powerful and novel "emergents". Thus, the industrial revolution of the 1820s was, in reality, the outgrowth of an earlier reorganization of artinisal labor into the "factory system" based on fixed schedules of production. True, the Industrial Revolution increased the application of machinery to production but the machinery would have had no use had it not been for the previous reorganization of labor, the increasing urbanization of life and rising demand for industrial products. Several currents - labor organization, urbanization, machinery and novel energy sources- came together to create a Perfect Storm which we recognize as the Industrial Revolution of the 1820s.

"There is clearly no determinism about the experience of progress. A human, not a mechanistic process is at work, in which there is certainly an element of choice. But not the simple weighing of known options - it involves, rather, different ways of approaching the unknown. It is a decision between differents attitudes of mind. We may cultivate an exploaratory, open view of the world in which awareness can grow; or we can maintain a fixed, inflexible view in whcih new possibilities are not recognized.. The dominance more recently of linear views of progress which restrict expectations to narrow patterns of development, may be symptomatic of how that openess has been lost" (page 28-9).

             Indeed! Witness the contemporary shrinkage and castration of the word "freedom" to mean "freedom of choice" among consumer product brands! Or the neo-con idolatry of purportedly iron-clad "laws of the market" against which there can be no recourse. At several points in his text Pacey draws attention to the necessity of including humanistic values of caring, solidarity and participation in analyses of the impacts and benefits of proposed development projects.

             I suspect that one of the motivations behind this text was a desire to understand the negative blowback - unintended consequences - of technology. Thus, computers allow networking and decentralization but paradoxically also strengthen centralization and hierachcy in large organizations. Rather than a world of increased wealth spread more equitably, we see instead wider inequalities everywhere. Information flows faster and more freely but the internet also provides the opportunity for solopistic inbreeding of nihilistic ideologies. Witness internet communities promoting right wing or religious extremism such as jihadist terrorism or neonazi racism. Pacey seems to be pondering the question: why so MUCH blowback? What have we got wrong?

             Many, if not most, of the world's problems today either arose directly from poverty or are negatively impacted by poverty. Yet developers are obsessed with technical issues or measures of economic prerformance. I could even argue there is evidence of a positive correlation betwen economic performance and increased poverty since the opening of China to western trade. Over the last 40 years, relatively well paying American jobs have been shipped to overseas sweat shops to maximize corporate profits. While CEOs of internationals roll in money and "incentives packages", the actual wealth of the worker has declined. Witness the Great American Rust Belt..

              Pacey raises the point that in order to have good answers we need to ask the right qustions which, obviously, we are not doing or we would not be in the mess we are now (and which is worse than the mess Pacey was describing thirty years ago..) Thus our "experts" raise questions relating to maximizing bottom lines which in turn imply maximizing system "througput": production, consumption, and waste.

               But Pacey, as an extremely intelligent field worker in 3rd world appropriate technology development, soon observed that such an approach very often produces suboptimal results with much negative blowback in the social and environmental spheres. Often people benefit more from disease prevention programs and an improved capacity to maintain existing assets (such as ecosystem services) than they do from the introduction of gadgets (which they can't maintain due to lack of infrastructure) or high tech projects (which benefit only a few). Third world governements, though, are usually keen on showy, sexy projects which provide them photo ops, international prestige and increased access to foreign funds for still more high tech projects.

              We need to readjust our priorities to fit the real world. Such adjustment is not hopeless idealism, as shown by Kerala province, India and the island of Sri Lanka where substantial improvements in public health and social welfare did not depend upon high consumption rates or expensive foreign "aid" programs. In these cases, the secret seemed to lie in female literacy and the political empowerment of local populations. In Kerala, "sanitation is good because people are educated", even where modern hygienic facilities do not exist. In Kerala, life expectancy was 10 years longer than for the rest of India at the time of Pacey's writing.

             These improvements in living standard were not, however, the result of some neo-con inspired "trickle down" economic growth at the top. The improvements arose from and were driven from the grassroots of society, the little people, not the rich. If fact, the improvements in social standards of health sometimes impeded economic growth. Thus human wellbeing and economic growth may be decoupled, yet our "experts" still claim that wellbeing and growth are identical. We are defintely not asking the right questions yet; neither 30 years ago when Pacey wrote his book, nor today..

             Related examples of the conflict between economic and human needs are found in Africa where international organizations like the WMO and IMF encourage governments to promote cash crops for international sale. Subsistance farming, in the meanwhile, languishes and dies. The mantra, of course, is the always the same: enriching the bourgeoisie will trickle down to the masses. But the actual, concrete result: decling per capita food production - now, THAT's progress! Ideology over reality; mind over matter one might say..

             "The culture of technology" is a remarkable book for its intelligence and lateral thinking. It's always a pleasure to read a book by someone who can really think things out from their basic premises to their logical conclusions. The author quickly sketches out potential future lines of inquiry in the social sciences and development policy. One interesting suggestion is a possible linkage between contemporary Western anomie (lack of sense of meaning or purpose in life, existential emptiness) and the technician's exaggerated quest for "technical virtuosity" - for those "sweet", oh so "sexy" expensive technological fixes. Perhaps because the technician lacks any real social purpose, he seeks surrogate (and ultimately phony) satisfaction in displays of technical virtuosity. But, of course, the drive for virtuosity may, in part, be an innate urge, stronger in some, depending upon one's life experience or genetic factors..

              In sum, what we need, says Pacey, is a saner balance between competing values and value systems: user values versus expert values, basic human needs versus technical virtuosity and economic value.

              A number of approaches are suggested for achieving a better balance: more public participation in technological policy development, better public science education, broader - less specialized - education for scientists and engineers, more delgation of authority and managerial control to smaller administrative units (more autonomy at the regional / municipal level), promoting female literacy, more functional participatory democracy at the local level. Perhas his most realizable and immediately beneficial suggestion is encouraging "interactive innovation" over the "linear innovation" of large bureaucracies and industries which emphasizes continuity, inevitability, determinism, ideology and abstract / mathematically modelling. Interactive innovation could, and has, been utilized by NGO's in 3rd world settings with resounding success. Interactive innovation requires a continuing "dialectical" give and take between participating foreign experts and recipient communities with their local set of "user values" and (perhaps unrealistic) expectations. This dialectic needs to continue till a consensus is arrived at: WHAT really needs to be done and WHY and HOW.. Such mutual adaptation seems to result in projects with deeper roots. Locals become participants,  managers and fine tuners of a system which they helped design, understand and own. This results in better maintenance and may even lead to the creation of local interactive innovation circles to deal with a variety of problems.

                   With its virtuosity of thought, this is an appealing book. Untimately, though, Pacey recognizes that technology alone will not save us. Our problems arise mostly from human values and until these truly change we should expect no better from technology than what we get today.

                   Looking back over the last 30 years since "The culture of technology" was written, one could easily be discouraged, as I was at times reading it. What have we learned in 30 thirty years? Pacey, at the time of the writing, was an exceedingly bright young man. How much of what he understood then have we put into practice since?

                     Not much. If anything, we regress. Western nations provide aid from national producers rather than buying commodities in the aided community and environs. "Aid" is more driven by ideology and short term economic gain than human need or long term perspectives. Yes, one could easily be pessimistic. However, I prefer to see the Big Pic as Pacey himself recommends. Today, 30 years after the publication of "The culture of technology", the malfunctioning "System" he describes is breaking down from its own collpasing weight and internal contradictions. This imposes the need for change: necessity is the mother of invention! In this growing need - and its growing recognition - lies hope.

                    I like this book. It was intellectually challenging, fascinating in its insights at times, generally well written. A good book, a very good book even: it is the "System" Pacey describes that is depressing. Grudgingly, perhaps, I'll tip my hat and give a 9 on 10.

Montréal rock 'n roll

               In Québec the expression "rock 'n roll" signifies not just the musical style but also has judgemental values close to "badly raised", "delinquent", "of bad reputation"..
  

               For the past 18 months, the Charbonneau Commission has been investigating the linkages between organized crime and the awarding of municipal contracts to the Québec construction industry. The existence of construction company cartels with links to the Mafia and to the funding drives of municipal and provincial political parties has been revealed. Cartel members agree upon the price of municipal contracts and who is next on the "list" to get a contract. Prices are inflated and unnecessary cost overruns are incurred with the aid of colluding officials and bureaucrats. For example, the contract's "fair market" price will be inflated by 30%. Inflated costs will be ignored by city employees whose job is to scrutinize contracts - in return for a "cut" of several percent of the total worth of the contract, of course. In general, several layers of corruption may be involved, each peeling off a few percent of the contract's value. The contractors and the mafia roll in the big bucks. Minor players in city hall and consulting firms live a life of perks. 

              Question: if you have an extra 10 grand or so payed under the table per annum, what exactly are you going to do with it? It is, after all, "hot" money. From the responses I've heard from witnesses at the Charbonneau Commission, there is a strong pressure to burn hot money, presumably so it won't show up on ledgers anywhere. So it gets burned on high living for corrupt officials. In the case of ex-mayor Gilles Vaillancourt of Laval, who was a local godfather type figure - "the King of Laval", millions of dollars were allegedly spirited away to overseas tax havens.

King of Laval used mules to smuggle $ to Swiss banks

              Meanwhile the public overpays a neat 30% on city (and provincial) contracts. And then, we are told by the politicians, we need to cut government, education, social services, pensions, rehabilitation programs.. And of course gotta crack down hard on phony refugee claims, welfare bums and recidivist unemployment assurance claimants, all those who try to "game the system". Indeed.. And so Pincocchio's nose grows.. 

                  There is, of course, a price to payed for this silliness, a potentially very high price in social disruption. In the article cited above, a reader poll revealed some exceedingly disquieting statistics:

Do you think the police will ever get to the bottom of corruption in Quebec politics?

9% Yes 130 votes

84% No 1255 votes

6% I'm not sure 93 votes

                  This is scary! With my - apparently - Pollyannaish view of life, I voted unhesitatingly "yes" on the poll question. To me, there is a cyclic element in the life of corruption. The beast grows strong until its depradations become intolerable. Then some knights in shining armor go and kill it and establish a New World Order. Till the beast ressucitates.. In the meantime, one enjoys a period of transparent and progressive government. That's how it's supposed to work, anyway..

                 I was actually looking forward to a period of clean government, following this big house cleaning. With a bit of luck, I envisioned a forward looking, rejuvenated Québec that could actually become a model for other jurisdictions in North America - and elsewhere - to emulate in these early days of the new century..

                 I also took a bit of pride in being Québécois for another reason. I live in a society which has some expectations of governmental transparency, intellectual honesty and fair play. If we did not have this shared - mostly uncounscious - backdrop of assumed moral values, an exercise like the Charbonneau Commission would simply be unthinkable. If we didn't have a Charbonneau Commission, then we would really have a lot to worry about.. :-0

                 The undercurrent of cynicism revealed in the above poll is, to me, very disquieting. While the respondants of the poll do not necessarily reflect the views of the general public, 90% of the respondants believe that our political system is so corrupt it cannot be reformed. Is that not a formula for fascism? Powerless people will seek a superhero, a messiah, who will sweep away the evil Old World Order and institute a New Age of Peace and Plenty. The 20th century, we should recall was awash in blood shed by the neo-messianic movements of deperate peoples whether Marx's utopian Classless Society or the Nazis' (equally utopian!) "thousand year Reich" with its apocalyptic (post-)Christian overtones:

tausendjähriges reich 1 - thousand year Reich

                  Anyway, back to cheerier topics. "Montréal rock 'n roll". In the last few months, several mayors and lesser luminaries have been forced to resign including Montréal's ex-mayor, Gérald Tremblay. Tremblay was replaced by interim mayor Michael Appelbaum who now, himself, is under criminal investigation for fraud, breach of trust, corruption and God knows what else. Fourteen counts, at my last counting. What major American city can outfunk good ol' Montréal rock 'n roll?

Montréals' harried ex-mayor being led to court by provincial police.

                 We'll even give Toronta the Good a run for their money with their (allegedly) crack-smokin' mayor Rob Ford.. Yah, suck it up Toronta..

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/story/2013/06/17/montreal-michael-applebaum-taken-into-custody.html?cmp=rss

                   At last notice, the Province of Québec was still debating whether the city of Montréal should be placed under trusteeship. Interesting times!