Oh, me! Oh, my! Oh, Myanmar!

The blogosphere today is abuzz with talk of Myanmar, nee Burma, and the ongoing crackdown against the so-called dissidents there. I promised that I would add my voice to that growing buzz, but to be honest I am not sure what there is left to say. Here’s what I know about the situation:

Not much.

But this is not willful ignorance, just pure incredulity at the notion that the things I have been reading could possibly be true. The government of Myanmar, a military group that has managed to mainstream the word “junta” in the English press, governs - like so many of its neighboring counterparts (I’m looking at you, China) - without any apparent legitimate political authority. Except for that of force, of course. The country has been under military rule of some form or another since the early 1960s and under the current regime since 1989. This regime permitted democratic elections in 1990 but when voters failed to produce the results the military rulers sought - the opposition under Aung San Suu Kyi won in an overwhelming majority - the ruling junta ignored the result, reimposed martial law and arrested Suu Kyi. Along the way, they promised constitutional reform, they promised democracy.

Flash forward nearly twenty years. Still no constitutional reform. Still no democracy. Aung San Suu Kyi, having won a Nobel Peace Prize in the interim for her work toward democracy in Burma, has spent most of these years a political prisoner. And then, this summer in Burma, under the direction of the junta, the cost of fuel skyrocketed by 500%.

The people took to the streets in largely peaceful demonstrations, led by the nation’s Buddhist monks. The junta responded as China responded at Tianamen Square all those years ago. They responded the way the Soviets responded to similar uprisings in the old eastern Bloc of Europe. They responded as the American government responded to the Kent State protesters back in the sixties. They responded as those in power have all too often responded to overt challenges to their authority. Not all to the same scale, of course, but still the same in principle. In all of these cases, governments took it upon themselves to stifle dissent by opening fire on their own citizens. What price freedom?

But Burma took it further, is taking it further.

The ruling junta in Burma shut down the internet. They cut off phones. They removed the ability for Burmese citizens to communicate with the outside world, and so nobody knows for sure how many monks are missing, but many reports place it in the thousands. And nobody knows, for sure, where they are. Rumours have them imprisoned. Other rumours have them executed, their bodies already burned so that should the world ever come to intervene there will be no mass graves to find like those in Iraq, in Yugoslavia, in Darfur, in all the god-damned places all over this god-damned planet that stand as beacons to the true depths to which we will go as a species to display our utter inhumanity and complete contempt for life.

Sometimes I just want to shut down and cry. And cry, and cry, and cry.

Because what can the world do? China, Burma’s largest trading partner and effective guarantor of security, has expressed displeasure with the situation in Burma, calling for “restraint” on both sides (those monks are an unruly lot), but characterizing what’s happening there as an internal matter for the Burmese, posing no threat to the international community. India, another neighbouring state, influential partner in trade and allegedly the world’s most populous democracy, has taken a similar stance. The deaths and internment of a few thousand monks shouldn’t get in the way of trade prosperity, after all.

And what of the United Nations, that group of toothless old men? They have done what they always do, which is to express a collective outrage (but not so collective that China didn’t veto Security Council measures calling for punitive action against Burma), and then to send in an envoy to talk turkey with the evil-doers du jour. The rulers of Burma were encouraged by the UN to “to cease the repression of peaceful protest, release detainees, and move more credibly and inclusively in the direction of democratic reform, human rights and national reconciliation.” The envoy came away reporting litle cause for optimism.

Today, Burmese soldiers are reported to have been moving through city streets warning citizens that they have photographs of the protesters, that there will be consequences for the protesters. But we’ll never know, not for sure, what those consequences are.

So, that’s it. I promised today that I would write something about Burma, but I didn’t know how to do it. I didn’t know how to say something nobody else would. I didn’t know how to use words to express the horror and sadness that I feel as I read the stories, as I watch the news - not just at the shock of the inhumanity, but at my own helplessness and hopelessness that all I can do is watch the news. All I can do is write a blog, write my ambassador, go to a demonstration. It doesn’t seem like enough. It doesn’t seem like anything.

And that’s all I know, and most of it I don’t even know for sure. But at least one thing I said is true. Sometimes I really do just want to shut down and cry. And cry, and cry, and cry.

Burmese Days, and not the happy-go-lucky Orwellian kind

Tomorrow the world’s bloggers stand in solidarity for the people of Burma, or Myanmar, depending on which news station you watch. Thousand of us will be writing something about Burma tomorrow, and I encourage everybody to do the same. Click on this banner, register your blog, and tomorrow say a few words about the courageous people of Burma, their military rulers, or the world that failed to intervene. Oh me, oh my, oh Myanmar!

Candidate Fever: a brief follow-up

A couple of days ago, I jotted down some thoughts here on the provincial by-election happening in my riding.  As if to emphasize my claim that “there is nothing more attentive than a politician on the campaign trail and in the presence of a politically savvy voter who hasn’t yet made up his mind”, my phone was ringing off the hook yesterday from politicos who read my blog or had otherwise heard that my vote was still up for grabs.  The subject of interest for me was autism funding, in the schools and for the summer camp.  And in the hours after I published the blog, I heard twice from the office of the Minister of Health regarding the subject, and once from the Department of Education.  I received an encouraging comment (and subsequent) email from my former MLA - who isn’t even campaigning for anything, but who still takes an interest in his former constituents, and had a longish kind of conversation on the the phone with Darrell Dexter, likely the next Premier of the Province.

To those of you still listening:  My vote is still up for grabs.  The answers I got from the Department of Health regarding funding for the autism summer camp were insufficient.  There was a whole lot of gobbledygook about how the various departments in government are “siloed” and that it was unclear whose purview - Health, Education, Community Services - such funding might fall under, and that the various departments didn’t know what the others were doing and that anyway it was the Feds, not the Province, that dropped the ball on the funding.  The buck, in other words, was passed.  But I was still encouraged to vote Conservative.

The response from the New Democrat leader was far more satisfying.  Mr. Dexter told me that the broad implementation  of ABA for autistic children in Nova Scotian schools is, and has been, a part of the NDP agenda.  He lamented, as opposition members will, that his hands have been largely tied because he does not sit on the government side of the house. He pointed a finger or two to direct my scorn at the former Minister of Health, Jane Purvis, and the former Premier, John Hamm.  To be fair, he didn’t need to point those fingers.  I have heaped plenty of scorn on both those people in the past.  I have never had the impression, from our succession of Conservative governments, that autism funding is a particularly high priority, and I am delighted to have had Mr. Dexter explicitly tell me that this would not be the case with an NDP government.  He may well have won my vote for his party’s candidate.

He will almost certainly have done so if Beverley Woodfield, the Green candidate, does not show up at my door soon to talk autism.  As Kevin Deveaux put it in a comment to me, “the first step for any candidate is to call their members and supporters and confirm their support. Not sure what political organizing book the Greens are following, but you should have heard from her by now.”   I would certainly have thought so, too.

The Greens are out as a “bike gang” today, cycling around the riding and promising to knock on every door - if their own press release is to be believed.  It’s a nice day for a bike ride, Ms. Woodfield - sunny, with a cool ocean breeze.  I know you want my vote.  And I know you need my vote.  My house is the one by the sea, with the sign that says “HIPPIES USE BACK DOOR - NO EXCEPTIONS”.  I’m home all day and looking forward to your visit.

Oh, and please use the back door.

China, Inc.

The Canadian Dollar - which we affectionately call the Loonie - has been worth less than the US dollar for my whole conscious life. That is, until yesterday. For a brief moment yesterday, the Canadian dollar was worth more than its American counterpart. For a moment there, one Loonie could get you $1.0003 US. This morning, the dollars opened at par before the Canadian dollar slipped moderately.

In other, possibly significant economic turns of events yesterday, several Middle East governments acquired large blocks of stock in some very prime Western economic real estate. The government of Dubai, according to the Washington Post, acquired “a 19.9 percent stake in the Nasdaq Stock Market, becoming the first government in the Middle East to own a substantial interest in a U.S. exchange.” In ’separate’ incidents, the government of Qatar acquired 20% control of the London Stock Exchange while the powers-that-be in Abu Dhabi acquired 7.5% of the ultra powerful Washinton based Carlyle Group, the private equity financial playground in which both Bushes and bin Laden’s could play - in a pre-9/11 world, at least. And, oh, as part of the deal between Dubai and the Nasdaq, Dubai will assume control of just over 28% of the London Stock Exchange. So if you are keeping score, the governments of Dubai and Qatar collectively but ’separately’ acquired nearly 50% control of the London Stock Exchange. The United Arab Emirates are on the march.

That’s globalization for you. So is this: Back in May, the Chinese government spent $3 billion dollars for a stake in Carlyle competitor The Blackstone Group. Among this group’s diverse holdings are numerous theme parks, millions of square feet of prime real estate throughout the Northeastern United States, and the chain of Hilton Hotels. The $3 billion that China spent on its share of Blackstone is just chump change compared to the over trillion dollar surplus the Chinese government finds itself sitting on. You know all that crappy stuff you bought at MallWart? The stuff with the Made in China label that you got such a good deal on because it was poisoning your pets and your kids? That’s the stuff that made China rich, the stuff that will let them buy the companies that hired them to make all that garbage in the first place. Does that count as irony? It should. This is probably the largest cash reserve in history and China is out shopping.

Now I’m no big city economist, and I can’t draw the direct lines between the collapsing American dollar, the ballooning American debt, and this rampant surge of foreign investment coming directly from non-ideologically aligned states, states that some observers might even regard as enemies or potential enemies of the United States. According to Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY), the government of Dubai has “been cited as a nexus of terror financing, money laundering, and a potential crossroads for shipping and trading for Iran in their quest for nuclear materials and technology.” China has a permanent role on the Pentagon’s shit-list, because its powerhouse economy has a powerhouse military right behind it, and this combination is one reserved by God Himself for the United States alone.

Is this how the enemies of the West finally bring it down? At its own game? While the United States squanders its own money (money it borrowed from China, and whose repayment will be a thorn in the side of generations to come) in futile attempts at military conquest, its enemies and competitors play Capitalist, by Washington Consensus rules, and they play it well. These governments have acquired significant control of essential Western assets without firing a shot. And they will continue to get richer and richer and to acquire more and more, because Western dependence on oil and the corporatist dependence on outsourcing to maximize profits has led the West inexorably to this position.

Our culture is one of consumption, unsupported by comparable production, and consumers who don’t produce must be wholly dependent on others. I use to worry that someday Canada might be swallowed whole by the retarded giant at its doorstep. But now I wonder if it’s just a matter of time before we’re all absorbed by the real superpowers.

Welcome to North America, sir, a wholly owned subsidiary of China, Incorporated. We hope you enjoy your stay.

When they’re at your door and on your lawn, the politics is local

My little potential vote is getting me a lot of attention from the candidates in my riding. They or their representatives are knocking on my door or phoning me at least once a day it seems. I have signs on my lawn supporting two different candidates and have dangled the possibility of my vote in front of two others. I have to say I am enjoying this.

For six months or so, since the 1st of March, I have had no representation in the provincial government. That was the day Kevin Deveaux, the former member of the legislature for my riding, left Nova Scotian politics to go give parliamentary advice in Vietnam. Nova Scotian law allows six months in which to call a by-election after a seat has been vacated. That Little Boy Premier Rodney MacDonald waited the whole six months to make the call, leaving me and my neighbours unrepresented, may say something about how the Premier feels about me and my neighbours. Deveaux was a member of the New Democratic Party, which appears poised to take power in the next general election. It is probable that Premier MacDonald held off on making the call because his minority government finds the air inside Province House a little easier to breathe with fewer New Democrats in attendance. No matter what the reason, it is offensive to have left me and over twenty thousand of my neighbors for half a year with no voice in the legislature.

Kevin was a good representative, in touch with his community and his constituents, and popular here because of that. Except for a squeaker in the 1999 election, when Mr. Deveaux beat his Conservative rival by a mere 182 votes, Kevin’s position as MLA has been secure. He fended off all challengers in the last election, capturing an impressive 64.47% of the popular vote in the riding. Because he was so secure in his position, I voted for the Green Party in the last provincial election just for the sake of supporting them.

But that was then. This time around, I am in the unusual position of not knowing yet who will get my vote on October 2. The fledgling provincial Green Party is again fielding a candidate, and my gut instinct is to vote for her. I like a vigorous multi-party democracy, and the best means at my disposal to encourage this here is to keep voting Green, to help in the growth of that Party. I have one of their signs on my lawn. I am even officially a member of the Green Party, I have paid my membership dues. So you think it would be certain that I would vote for them. Yet it isn’t.

For one thing, the Greens are the only ‘major’ party in the field whose candidate, Beverly Woodfield, has not contacted me directly. I have had enthusiastic conversations with a couple of people in the party and on her campaign, but I have yet to hear directly from her. Each of the other candidates have spoken with me for as long as I cared to speak or listen. Each of them took notes when I addressed some of my concerns regarding autism funding in the schools and for the summer camp. It turns out that there is nothing more attentive than a politician on the campaign trail and in the presence of a politically savvy voter who hasn’t yet made up his mind.

I mean, these people really listened.

The Liberal candidate, a high school principal named Kelly Rambeau went so far as to have the leader of the Party call me so I could talk to him about autism as well. This, even after I told him I probably wouldn’t be voting for him, but still invited him to change my mind.

And today, the Conservative candidate, Mike Eddy, came traipsing through my yard with his wife Marsha a respectable three steps behind. She stood and took a large number of notes while her candidate husband listened to the things I had to say about autism in general, and about autism funding in particular.  I mentioned that a couple of years ago, the then-Premier John Hamm (also Conservative) dismissed the broad implementation of ABA in the schools as not “cost effective.”  ABA has been shown to be a wildly successful means of educating (although some might argue “conditioning”) autistic children, one that groups of parents across the country have fought long and expensive court battles in trying to get governments to pony up and cover the costs in schools.  “The leader of your party had the opportunity to have Nova Scotia step up and do the right thing by our kids,” I said to the candidate, “and when he dismissed the opportunity with a fiscal shrug, he pretty much sealed the deal that I wouldn’t be voting Conservative.  Ever.”  Mike Eddy listened intently.  I actually believed he was honestly interested.  In a democracy where voter turnout only hovers around the 60% mark in general elections and becomes truly atrocious in by-elections, I suppose it pays to listen to actual voters.  In any case, he promised to have the Minister of Education or (more likely) one of his underlings give me a call so I could take those concerns directly to the sitting government.  He promised to do so before October 2, election day.  I have no doubt that he will keep his word.

Which brings me round to the NDP candidate, Becky Kent, currently the city councillor for my district and seeking to fill Kevin Deveaux’ largish kind of shoes.  She was every bit as interested in my spiel on autism as the other candidates, and promised to have leader Darrell Dexter (likely our next Premier) call me about it just as the Liberal leader Stephen McNeil had done.  That was a week or so ago, and where McNeil phoned me the very next day after it was promised he would, I have yet to hear from Mr. Dexter.  This is forgivable, perhaps, because Dexter is a busy man leading a dynamic party and figuring out how best to craft his way into the premier’s chair and all, while McNeil barely seems to have much of a party to hold together.  (As an aside here, I’ll note that it was a couple of days after the election call that the Liberals finally got around getting some signs out.  When the writ was actually dropped, while the other three parties already had signs around my neighbourhood, the Liberal Party had yet to choose a candidate.  The first news story about the man they finally chose, Mr. Rambeau, was about a tax fraud conviction of his from 1994.  It was a minor offense, possibly the result of a paperwork mistake as Rambeau contends, but it got the Liberal campaign off to a questionable start.  Even as I first read the story, I said to Charlene, “What the hell is wrong with them?  The best person they could find was someone with a tax fraud conviction?  What, no pedophiles available?”)  I liked the representation Becky Kent’s predecessor gave this riding, and I would not be sad to see Ms. Kent continue that tradition in the Legislative Assembly.  If I could be certain that she could win against her Conservative rival without my vote, then I would almost certainly go with my beloved and beleaguered Greens.  But my crystal ball is fuzzy.

Politically speaking, the by-election on October 2 will be almost meaningless to those outside this riding.  Even to most people inside it, frankly.  It will not affect the balance  of power in the sitting minority government.  If the New Democrat wins, as I expect, then it may embolden Darrell Dexter to trigger the collapse of the government and face the province in a general election.  If the Conservative candidate wins - and it does appear to be a race - then the seat gain may embolden Premier MacDonald to trigger his own government’s collapse to face the electorate in pursuit of a majority government.  Rodney, if you’re listening: don’t do it, you don’t stand a chance.  You’re probably a nice enough guy, but you are too young, too green, too indecisive.  In short - you are no leader.  If the Liberal candidate wins the race, there will be a great deal of stunned and drunken celebration in the Party and will have virtually no consequence in provincial politics.

And if the Green candidate wins, there will be a wild and drunken celebration right here in my own house to be followed elsewhere by…well…by allegations of voter fraud, I expect.

If you meet the Buddha on the road, tell him I said thanks.

I might as well get this off my chest straightaway: I am a textbook depressive, diagnosed that way by friends, family and doctors alike, and medicated accordingly.  The medication works, more or less, in that my (so-far) inevitable crashes appear less intense and are of shorter duration.  This is the fourth or fifth drug that I have tried, having always found some problems with the others - they made me tired, they made me impotent, they gave me all the negative effects of an LSD trip, they didn’t work, I resented having to take them every day, and so on - or I’d stop once I started feeling ‘normal’ again because I was sure I was ‘cured’.  So this is the first med that I have taken continuously for a substantial period of time.  It is one year this month - a mental anniversary of a kind.

Since it is also roughly a year since I began blogging (first on MySpace, then WordPress), I discover I can look back through and see where my depressed periods were.  They are the times when there were no blogs.  The problem is two-fold.  First, the depressed states are partially marked by the plummeting of an already low self-confidence, with the consequence that I am convinced that nobody could really give a damn about anything I have to say.  Second, I am so wrapped up inside my own head that the only thing I could possibly produce would be some narcissistic, self-indulgent and self-pitying bit of drivel that nobody could really give a damn about.

At some point during the depression, there is almost always a moment of clarity, where something - some aspect of myself - suddenly is clear to me and the depression lifts from that point on.  That it is often some truth that has occurred to me in past depression-ending moments of clarity is a joke that is not lost on me.  It is the nature of my depressive periods that I forget great swaths of useful information.  Usually, when the mood is lifting, I start writing again.  Usually, some narcissistic, self-indulgent and self-pitying bit of drivel that nobody could really give a damn about.  But this time I do it under the guise that it’s therapeutic.

Which brings me here, to the moment of clarity I experienced that drew me out of this last bout.  This is going to sound a little LSD induced, a little flaky.  I’m frankly surprised to find myself saying it, and understand that I am now trying to recapture the essence of a realization that lasted perhaps a hundredth of a second but which seemed to leave me with an enormous amount of information to contemplate.  I’m trying to nutshell it here, folks,  and I don’t promise to do a good job

I recognized several distinct layers of myself, two of which drew my attention because they were out of sync with each other in every way that I could see, but most particularly in time.  The first of these I labeled the ego, though it is important to note here that this is just what I labeled it and that it may bear no relevance whatsoever to Freud’s or anybody else’s notion of ego.  This layer of myself was the analyzer, the one who took all the incoming data and allegedly made sense of it.  In ‘reality’ (a word I may never be able to use again without the quotation marks), the ego interprets and classifies the data according a slew  of preconceptions and misconceptions that I cannot even begin to make sense of, but which makes the CIA’s analysis of Iraqi intelligence before the war seem rational and flawless by comparison.  The ego exists out of sync with real time and with real life, but it is dominant and so the consequence is that I end up making real-world decisions based on its atrocious information, and that seems a terrifying consequence.  It certainly must be a source of the depression.

Another distinct layer was what I recognized as the experiencer.  This was the part of me that actually existed in real time, that had the opportunity to experience the world as it is, but which mostly squandered that opportunity by handing so much face time with the consciousness over to the ego.  It occurred to me that if I could let the experiencer take over for awhile, to give the ego a rest, so to speak, that this might be a better means than any to actually conquer the depressive tendencies.  It seemed so simple, that just actually living in the moment without trying to compartmentalize and categorize and analyze everything might free me from the perpetual torment of doing just those things.  Doctor, doctor, It hurts when I do this!  Then don’t do that, son.

Which brings me to both psychiatry and religion, the institutions of which I have always mistrusted.   I depend on the psychiatric institutions and the pharmaceutical companies  for now, at least for the drug that makes my crashes less severe.  But I am seeking other, non medical means, and a dash of Buddhism might be just what the doctor ordered.

It turns out, according to a Buddhist friend of mine, who was actually on hand for my moment of clarity and so heard the whole thing fresh, that this was a Buddhist kind of realization and that one of the purposes of meditation is to enhance the role of the experiencer.  I am paraphrasing here, and translating it to my own jargon because when it was explained to me it was peppered with words like samsara and skandhas, with dharma and kharma.  It was all Sanskrit to me.  It turns out that dharma means the law, or isness, of things.

I won’t be visiting any temples or trekking to Tibet any time soon, but I guess I could do worse than explore some teachings around that philosophy.  It was, after all, the recognition of a basic isness, of a “me” that could be better described as a verb than a noun that was at the core of that moment of realization.

In any case, just for those of you who asked and for those of you who wondered: I’m feeling much better now.

Atlantica Redux

Keep in mind I haven’t thought this through too clearly. I’m just winging it here. With ten provinces, Canada has at least three too many. East of Quebec – yes, rest of Canada, there is an east of Quebec – there are four provinces who, collectively, administer less than 6% of the total Canadian land mass and have just over 7% of its total population. Their combined populations and annual budgets don’t even approach that of the city of Toronto, and yet four separate provincial governments, and the associated bureaucracies, are required for their administration.

While I am normally an advocate of greater decentralization of power, believing that political power best resides with the people whose lives are most influenced by it, in the case of Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and Labrador, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island, I increasingly believe that bigger actually is better. The Atlantic provinces are the have-not poster children of Canada, and no small part of that is due to the enormous costs, both in terms of finances and efficiency, of four duplicated administrations where one would suffice.

These divisions also serve to fracture the political clout that the region might hold with the central government. When Ottawa is negotiating with Atlantic premiers, as it has been heatedly doing these days over the fractured Atlantic Accord, itself the result of such negotiations, the adage of divide and conquer applies. This is not true when Ontario, Quebec or Alberta are at the bargaining table, because, despite their significantly larger populations when compared to Atlantic Canada as a whole, they come to the table with a single political voice: they cannot be divided from themselves. Where federalism is concerned, the Atlantic provinces have the same concerns, the same interests. What’s good for one is almost certainly good for the others: we are a common people. A unified voice would serve to strengthen their collective starting position in federalist matters.

It is time for a political movement to be born in these provinces that is dedicated to their unification. Let’s call it Atlantica, although that is already the moniker of a corporatist political/economic movement that seeks a different (evil) kind of collective behaviour between the Atlantic provinces and their New England counterparts. But I like the principle of Atlantica, if not its corporatist agenda and motivation, so I am keen to co-opt the term from their soul stealing clutches for a more folksy agenda of my own. Political parties advocating this sort of unification should begin organizing in all of these provinces immediately. The success of regionalist parties in Canada has been clearly demonstrated by the Parti and Bloc Quebecois’, and the new Atlantica party could draw some inspiration there.  Or maybe the Green Party in the individual provinces could take on this cause.  I believe the people of the provinces would support such a movement, but the political structures at the helms of the individual provinces would not. Nobody advocates change that threatens his own comfortable position.

But it’s like I said – I’m just winging it, here.

When is a Republican not a Republican?

I use to think John McCain was the Republican with integrity. Then he started showing his true colours, which were an unflattering blend of red, white, blue, and hypocritical warmongering power-mad douchebag. With Rudolph Giuliani’s chief qualification for the role of president being that he looked good on TV after a terrible thing happened to America and with Mitt Romney being, well, Mitt Romney, the Republican field was looking very same-old, same-old.

I had, of course, encountered the name Ron Paul before, but I’d never paid attention. His was just another name from that enormous field of people running for the top office who rightly believe they could do a better job than the current Criminal-in-Chief. So I didn’t pay him any attention. What with the Rosie-Trump feud, Anna Nicole Smith’s death, Anna Nicole Smith’s baby, Brangelina’s foreign baby brigade, and Paris Hilton being sent to jail, released from jail and sent to jail again, it was all the energy I could muster to keep track of the top two or three contenders from each party. And Ron Paul, polling a whopping 1% according to CNN, was barely even invited to the party.

Then I got an email from an American friend asking me what I thought of this Ron Paul guy.

“I don’t think anything about him,” I said out loud, “I don’t know anything about him. “

I googled him to find out what I thought, because perspectives abound on the internet and it is far less time consuming to find one to adopt than it is to filter through the infonoise and rationally deduce my own opinion. Because I am conditioned to be surprised when I agree with Republicans on almost any issue, I was floored to find the majority of my opinion was in favour of this ancient Congressman from Texas.

He sounds more Libertarian than Republican, and indeed I discover that he once ran for President under that banner. I have heard him describe himself as a “constitutionalist”, which is a noble thing to be in a country with so lovely a constitution as the US possesses. I take this to mean that he would not, as President, sign into law anything inconsistent with the liberties that the constitution guarantees. In that spirit, he was one of only three Republicans in the House who voted against the Patriot Act, when that freedom crushing bill was rushed through Congress before a fearful America in the heady days immediately following the attacks in 2001. Likewise, he opposed the war in Iraq and likewise put his politics where his mouth is, breaking with his fellow Republicans on the Congressional vote authorizing the war.

Ron Paul exudes integrity to me, and for that reason, he is alone among the list of Republican candidates and, also for that reason, he will never get the nomination. I saw him on the Colbert Report the other night, and Stephen Colbert asked him to put up his hand and take it down once he (Colbert) mentioned a government agency that Paul as Pres wouldn’t dismantle. Colbert then ran through a list of federal agencies as Ron Paul left his arm waving in the air - FEMA, Homeland Security, the Department of Education. At the mention of the IRS, Paul raised his arm still further. I take it he really hates the IRS.

My (so-far) sole reservation about Ron Paul has been what appears to me to be fierce “free market” advocacy. But then Charlene told me that she heard him explicitly draw attention to the critical distinction between true free market principles and the existing ideology of corporatism, which (if I can quote myself from a previous blog) is the “nefarious collusion between governments and corporations toward maximizing corporate profits.” Anybody who describes the existing system as corporatist instead of capitalist is a political breath of fresh mountain air.

He sounds a firm believer in the political hypothesis truth that governments govern best that govern least. He has this perspective in common with the framers of the constitution: he sounds Jeffersonian to me, whatever that might mean. When Thomas Jefferson ran for President in 1800, it was under the Democratic-Republican name, and his administration was comprised of political friends and foes alike.

Because he is the only candidate advocating the back-to-basics whole system overhaul the US so desperately needs, Ron Paul should run for President. But he’ll never be able to do so on the Republican dime. He’ll have to go independent or seek some other route if he wants his name on the ballot on election day. If Unity 08 can get and keep its act together, it might be just the ticket Paul is looking for. Unity 08 wants a ticket in 08 that is comprised of both a Republican and a Democrat. It is a political organization that seeks to combat the trend in divisive party politics by bringing US political discourse back toward the middle where, after all, most Americans actually are. And if that was good enough for Jefferson…

Anti-Atlantica

The last few days saw an Atlantica conference here in my home city of Halifax. For those of you disinclined to follow links, Atlantica is a theoretical “International Northeast Economic Region”, proposed to more closely link the economies of the northeastern States with those of the eastern provinces of Canada. The theory is that New England and New Englanders have more in common with their Atlantic Canadian brethren than either do with other parts or populations of their own countries. This is suggested because the regions share a long and intertwined history, a common geography and a tradition of being neglected by the central powers in their respective countries because their relatively marginal populations grant them relatively marginal political significance.

Predictably, as with any gathering where high ranking politicians are mingling with high ranking CEOs from high profile companies, there has been some public backlash against the conference and against the concept of Atlantica itself. Halifax has hosted some good protests in the past, and though I don’t ultimately see the point of a bunch of people gathering together to belt out some poorly constructed rendition of some overly cliched picketing rant, I have still taken part in a few of them myself. When I was younger, environmental and war protests were an excellent means of meeting free-spirited hippie chicks with hand drums, so I took activism more seriously in those days. In my old age, though, I was on hand to object to George Bush’s presence in my city* and I once went to an anti-Iraq war protest, but that was more to take pictures than anything. They were large gatherings, and peaceful without exception. During the Bush protest - the largest protest I can recall on the streets of Halifax - there was friendly, even jovial, cooperation between the police and the crowd. There were a few dissenters, there always are, and some speakers who seemed to be deliberately trying to agitate the crowd into action instead of peaceful assembly, but the crowd didn’t follow those voices. We have protests to be proud of, here in Halifax. Like similar protests, they don’t actually accomplish anything, but at least nobody gets hurt along the way and a bunch of people get a smug sense of civic satisfaction. So it’s win-win.

The Atlantica protest wasn’t like that. Some wretched group of assholes calling themselves members of the Black Bloc split off from the main group and decided to cause some trouble. They threw light bulbs and balloons full of paint. One report had them throwing light bulbs full of paint. All reports have them throwing these things at police, wounding two officers in the process. It’s people like these that give anarchists a bad name. Police, of course, very famously don’t like having foreign objects hurled at them by balaclava wearing dissidents and so, because they had no paint filled balloons or light bulbs of their own to fling, Halifax’s finest went the taser and pepper spray route. It’s a shame that protests sometimes go this way - I do not like the fact that police respond with violence, but I cannot decry it because if you throw glass at a police officer (or, more stupidly, at a crowd of them), then you should expect to have a taser shoved pretty far up your ass. It’s an unwise action with predictable consequences, is what I’m saying.

Twenty people were arrested in all, some of them are still being held because they will not give their identities. Probably not one in those twenty could name any specific reason why he was against Atlantica.** But it gave the media what they came for, the images of unnecessary but isolated violence, actually apart from the main protest movement, and this is what they flew with. This presentation of the isolated violence to the exclusion of the message conveyed to the rest of Canada an almost entirely false impression of the overall general peacefulness of the protest. The uselessness of it, however, we were left with no doubt about.

*I object to George Bush on principle, of course, but I felt his being in Halifax introduced a threat to the city that was both unwarranted and unwelcome, and I wanted him to know. His car, of course, didn’t come anywhere close to the large crowd of protesters, and he thanked the Haligonians (seriously, that’s what people from Halifax are called) who came out to wave at him “with all five fingers,” which I begrudgingly admit was a pretty funny joke.

**I am also against Atlantica, as it is proposed by the current corporatist institutions whose brainchild it is. I am, however, in favour of a more ‘organic’ Atlantica developing, whereby the people of the region strive to work together in the economic and political spheres independent and in spite of the nefarious collusion between governments and corporations toward maximizing corporate profits.

The Atlantic (Dis)Accord

A thing to keep in mind about the Canadian union is that it generates a kind of class based system in Canada, or at least a perceived one, that is based on nothing more than geography. We are a country with ten provinces, individually identified at an institutional (if unofficial) level as “have” or “have-not” provinces. Ontario – the largest of the provinces, with a thriving industrial sector and an enormous tax base – is a “have” province. Nova Scotia – my home province, still in the process of rebuilding an economy after the collapse of the fisheries in the early 90s – is a “have-not” province. Alberta – oil, cash and population rich – is the havingest “have” province of them all. Newfoundland, whose economy was virtually entirely dependent on that collapsed fisheries, is the “have-not” champion of the union.

In order to try to equal things out, have-wise, some former federal government adopted the policy of “transfer payments”, whereby the “have” provinces (notably Alberta, Ontario and British Columbia) send money to the “have-not” provinces (notably everybody else) . One of the problems with this scheme is that the money is sent via the federal government who, like middlemen everywhere, skim off the top. The other problem this creates is a deep sense of resentment in the “have” provinces at having to pick up the slack for the lazy good-for-nothing pinko alcoholic Welfare bums, or – in the Canadian vernacular - Maritimers. Atlantic Canadians are not, of course, the sole recipients of transfer payments. Saskatchewan receives a good chunk, for example, as does Quebec. But Canadians have scores of other reasons they have contrived to look scornfully down upon Quebec, and nobody anywhere looks too far down on people in Saskatchewan because, having chosen to live in that festering hellhole of a plain, it is broadly accepted that Saskatchewaners (or whatever ridiculous moniker they use there) have simply suffered enough. So Maritimers thus became the stereotype to which those who decry the Welfare State might point.

Transfer payments have thus often been a thorny political issue, especially in the West where the demand for reform is the loudest. It is their money after all. This issue was to be partially addressed in the current federal budget which, as I write these words, is undergoing its third, and final, vote in the House of Commons. The ruling Conservative minority has amended the transfer payment (“equalization”) formula in such a way that, according to a chorus of loud and agitated political voices, unilaterally rescinds an agreement made between the Federal government and the provinces of Nova Scotia and Newfoundland.

This agreement – The Atlantic Accord – basically exempted the cash earned from off-shore oil reserves from the equalization formula. Here is highlighted another problem in Canadian inter-provincial and provincial-federal relations: resource management. Under Canadian law, a province’s natural resources are almost wholly its own to do with as it will, just so long as Ottawa gets its share of the realized booty. This law makes sense because regions should have total control over their own resources. A fundamental inequality results, though, because the law only applies to land based resources, whereas the oceans and everything in them is administered through Ottawa, with the federal government retaining the rights to sea based resources. This arrangement works out well for large, land-locked and oil rich provinces like Alberta but is kind of a kick in the provincial nutsack for smaller provinces with largely sea-based economies. The Atlantic Accord was reached in an attempt to somewhat lessen the pain from that kick.

And the new budget undoes it, claim some. The premier of Newfoundland – a feisty firebrand called Danny Williams who was an instrumental negotiator for the Atlantic Accord and doesn’t take a kick to the nutsack with good humour – has been the most vocal opponent of the federal Conservative budget since its details were announced a few months ago. Though he is of the same party as the current Feds, he has promised to aggressively campaign against them in the next election for what he regards as a betrayal. Nova Scotia premier Rodney MacDonald, an incompetent child with no leadership qualities and fewer political instincts, has recently jumped on board the anti-budget train as well, and he, too, is of the Conservative Party. The Premiers of both provinces are accusing Prime Minister Harper of breaking the “contract”, to which the Prime Minister responded that the contract has not been broken, and if they think it has been broken than they should prove it legally, and that anyway, Atlantic Canada doesn’t actually matter much in federal elections so would they kindly please go fuck themselves. Or words to that effect, you know, I wasn’t actually in the room. I was never a fan of Harper’s and have looked forward to his defeat since election night, but I adopted the attitude that with just a minority government, he can really do no harm. But with his media secrecy, his sycophantic relationship to the Bush White House and his heavy handed approach to federal-provincial relations, I am truly beginning to dislike this squirrelly little wonk of a man.

Nova Scotia’s Little Boy Premier found the voice to take a stand because of a hitherto largely unknown Nova Scotian member of Parliament named Bill Casey who recently took the unusual position of declaring his constituents’ concerns as paramount to those of his party. He said the budget betrayed Nova Scotia. He said that he could vote for the budget, like the Prime Minister and the party demanded, but that if he did so he could never look his constituents in the eye again. Accordingly, he voted against the budget on a previous reading and was promptly booted out of the Conservative Caucus. There is a long-standing Parliamentary tradition of being ousted from the Party if you vote against the budget. In the case of a minority government, where defeat in a budget vote means defeat as a government, party conformity is more important than ever. Bill Casey, the longest sitting member from the Conservatives, now sits in the House as one of four Independents.

He is also probably now the most popular politician in Nova Scotia, which is what gave Rodney-Come-Lately the wherewithal to hitch his wagon to Casey’s cause. The Nova Scotian premier is not suffering from an abundance of popularity of his own, and he likely sees this as an opportunity for a decent bit of political theater wherein he can play the underdog, fighting the good fight against The Man for the good of his province. Never mind that he didn’t take such a position when the budget details were released on March 19. Mysteriously, he didn’t adopt this aggressive position until Bill Casey took his stand and received such broad and glowing support from both the Nova Scotian people and the media alike. He got there cynically, but still he got there. A united front is emerging in Atlantic Canada. With the provincial wings of the party in open revolt against them and an expelled member the poster child for integrity in representative democracy, there can be no question that the federal Conservatives will face an arduous battle in Atlantic Canada in the next election.