Best Little Town in the World

Not, alas, Point Roberts.  But I also live half the time if not in, at least next door to/a mile down the road from, the best little town in the world.  Really.  Last month, while we were up on the Sunshine Coast, it was announced that the town of Gibsons, B.C. had been named ‘The Most Liveable Town in the World’ in the 'Communities Under 20,000' category.  The Mayor and a pair of Most Liveable Town Officials went to the Czech Republic to get what appeared in the photo of the event as one of those medieval necklaces of heavy golden chain that European City Mayors used to sport (like Dick Whittington, who if I recall correctly was ‘twice Lord Mayor of London Town’).

There is, however, something faintly suspicious about this whole drama.  The award, it is said, is a United Nations-Recognized International Award for Liveable Communities.  What does that ‘recognized’ mean?  (And why does 'liveable' have that first e?)  Further, according to the Coast Reporter, the local newspaper, the award was received largely because Gibsons has developed a neighborhood plan with a ‘geoexchange system’ (got me), which system will ‘be used to heat local homes and businesses with minimal carbon emissions and provide a source of revenue for the town.’  Now exactly how that makes Gibsons the ‘most liveable town in the world’ is pretty mysterious, I’d think.  The plan and the geoexchange, whatever it is, do not yet exist other than on paper. 

Much of the credit for the award should go to the Parks and Culture Director, said the Mayor, because it was her idea to apply for the award.  Next year, perhaps, she could nominate the town to receive a Nobel Award of some sort.  Then they could all go to Sweden to receive it.  It all seems a little goofy and a little risky.  This is an area which only a few years ago unelected pretty much all the Regional District Directors who thought it was a cool idea to have the District pay for them all to go to Central America to visit the District’s sister city. 

Nevertheless, the hard-working, dutifully-traveling Gibson’s Planning Director reported that the experience was ‘very rewarding,’ and concluded, ‘ I think it’s validation of everything that we’ve done and we’re on the right track in terms of the work that we’re doing.’

This story was on the top half of the front page of the weekly paper.  On the bottom half of the front page, the story was about the immediate resignation of a Gibsons (‘Most Liveable Town under 20,000 in the World’) Council Member (who didn’t go on the trip to the Czech Republic).  He’s leaving because  of his ‘frustration with how the current Council works.’  Apparently everyone doesn’t agree about the award and what it’s validating.  Maybe an award for most entertaining small town politics in a town under 20,000?

Some Friendly, Some Unfriendly Canadians

Today, in Calgary (which is in Alberta, where the Canadians keep their oil patch and their most conservative politicians), George Bush showed up to eat his first foreign lunch while giving a paid-for speech. The attendees (the previously-mentioned oil patchers) paid US$315 to listen to George tell about his struggles saving the free market during the recent and waning days of his reign. A couple of days ago, I read that George was charging $150,000/speech. So, to cover costs (and assuming George paid for his own airfare), there must have been about 500 people there for lunch. (Actually, there were 1,500, so maybe the Calgarians paid for his hotel room and airfare as well. Who would have thought God had undone so many, even in Calgary?)

Outside, according to the Calgary Herald, four hundred protesters threw shoes at the former would-be-monarch of the U.S. One lady brought a hand-made 'shoe cannon,' but the police refused to let her use it. Alas, four people were arrested during the demonstration/protest. It's quite clear that as long as Bush stalks the land--ours and theirs--there will be plentiful use for all those shoes we've been keeping in our closets: too good to send to the thrift shop, not good enough to wear, but absolutely perfect for throwing.

The Herald also mentioned that the costs for Bush's security during his visit would be paid for by the RCMP. Maybe the hosts could have charged a little extra to the oil patchers. After all, it was their party.

Canada Looks at Obama

And apparently Canadians are very pleased with what they saw, although they seemed to be just as pleased before they even saw him. When I talk with Canadians, it appears to me that Obama, unlike the former holder of the U.S. presidency, is highly regarded, but largely because he isn’t the former holder, etc. It’s more that they like him for who he isn’t rather than for who he is. From my American perspective, who he is remains to be seen. Nevertheless, on the CBC yesterday, people were talking about him as if he were a visiting rock star, with one person pointing out that Canada’s leaders don’t have ‘that kind of appeal,’ whatever ‘that kind of appeal’ might be. The Vancouver Sun proclaimed that “excitement in Ottawa around the presidential visit could not have been greater had the guest of honour been Mick Jagger, the Queen or Santa Claus.” Gee whiz! I am thinking that all three of those are pretty old people. How would he compare with the Pope? (Another old guy. Are there no younger famous people to whom he can be compared?)

He met alone with Stephen Harper, the Canadian Prime Minister, for about a half hour, a fact much remarked upon by U.S. news. But he also met, alone, with Michael Ignatieff, the leader of the opposition and possibly the next Prime Minister, for about a half hour. My guess was that neither of them thought he was much of a rock star, but then I found this quote from Ignatieff: “I've been lucky in my life to meet famous people and some people seem smaller when you meet them. [Obama] was just as big as you think he is. He is a very, very big presence.” Harper, sort of by contrast, said in a CBC interview that “Mr. Obama is an easy guy to like and an easy guy to get to know." (I wish I shared that feeling.) The CBC also reported that Harper and Obama got to talk about their hopes for their families and their countries. The news reader made it sound as if Harper was just a tad short of looking into Obama’s eyes and seeing his soul. So I guess he’s pretty rockstar to Canadian leaders, too.

The Globe and Mail (NYTimes equivalent in Canada) reported that there was considerable discussion between Harper and Obama about the border and its openness, or lack thereof. The Canadians think it’s a mess. Obama noted that bottlenecks need to be cleared up. But The G&M also reported that “Mr. Obama's Homeland Security Secretary, Janet Napolitano, has ordered a review of security at the Canada-U.S. border – heightening Canadian concerns that U.S. security measures are clogging the flow of goods across the border.” (Globe and Mail, 2/21) I don’t know why that would heighten Canadian concerns. My hope is that Mr. Obama, on behalf of the U.S., shares those Canadian concerns. But we will see. We are busy writing our own letters to Ms. Napolitano on this subject.

Some Canadians were not happy that the border concerns arose solely in terms of economic issues. Lloyd Axworthy (former Liberal Minister of Foreign Affairs and current President of the U. of Winnipeg) commented: ”What concerned me was the talk of the border solely in economic terms. Granted, it is important. But we have had too many examples of how the security preoccupations have trumped the issue of civil liberties and rights. Under secret agreements signed after 9/11, there has been an abuse of fundamental rights and an erosion of Charter protections vis the Arar and Khadr cases, among many.” Happy that someone in politics is looking out for our civil rights! Wish it were someone in the U.S.

Canadians are also concerned about Afghanistan and global warming, but they didn’t get much from Obama on either. However, Harper and friends are going to DC next week to see if they can make more headway on Afghanistan with that new sun/star, rising and reigning to the south.

Ice in the Heart

My sister wrote me the other day to wish me an early ‘Happy Birthday,’ and inquired, in passing, ‘What do you guys do up there in the winter?’ Good question. She lives in southern California so she doesn’t have recent first-hand experience of what anyone would do anywhere in the winter, I guess. Seventy degrees there, today; stories of record-setting high temperatures for this time of year.

Up here, in rural Washington/B.C.: afraid not. Well, some records set, but in the opposite direction of course. People often ask me what we do up here in the off-seasons. I guess that is because, if you are a city-dweller, and most of the outside people I know are, it’s not entirely clear how anyone would live a daily life that would appear to have so few extracurricular options, as city people know them. Even discounting Vancouver’s nearby presence, there are some options. When I lived in Yap in the mid-70’s, that was a life without options. An island in the South Pacific without beaches and virtually no food of interest. There was the option of taking a shower in the outdoor shower with the water--warmed by the air--coming down from the water drum on the roof or taking a shower in the outdoor shower when it was raining hard, which it did every day. That’s a limited option.

By contrast, winter life here has lots of options. You can’t garden, really; that’s an option for the other seasons. Also, you might have a job. But if you don't, you can go out for walks; you can go visit friends; you can read; you can quilt; you can while away endless time at the computer; you can bake bread and cookies and make jam and soup; you can watch DVD’s and listen to music; you can build and make things. And you can play a musical instrument if you know how to. And I do all of these things—except for the musical instrument--but mostly I read and quilt.

Right now, I’m reading about torture. A few years ago, I decided I would spend a year or so reading about the Middle East on the grounds that if I was paying taxes to kill people, the least I could do is learn something about them. That was a worthwhile year of reading, although not always cheerful or encouraging. I really resent those tax dollars going to that goal. Now, I’ve moved on to reading about torture, pretty much for the same reasons. If we’re going to be a country that does it, you ought to know exactly what it is that you are helping to pay for. Otherwise, you just end up being like people in countries (which ones we shall not here name) who said, ‘I had no idea what was going on.’

I need to know what it is I’m helping to pay for. I started down this road after watching a DVD called ‘Taxi to the Dark Side.’ Then I moved on to Lawrence Weschler’s book, ‘A Universe, A Miracle,’ which is about the torture regimes in Brazil (1965-75) and in Uruguay (1975-85), and how people tried to find a way to a public accounting. Now I am at Jane Mayer’s ‘The Dark Side’ about our own adventures in this activity over the past seven years. Needless to say, it’s not a pretty picture. And of course that’s not the end of the reading list, either, because that’s not the end of the histories of those who have tried to figure out how to do it or to get over having done it. (South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commissions are surely another source of information.)

However, this reading is definitely winter-time work. The bleakness of the outer world, as well as the starkness and even elemental quality that winter can bring fit the subject. In the summer, it would be hard to believe that what I am reading is true. In winter, when the snow sits for weeks because it barely gets above freezing day after day and the sky stays gray and the sun seems barely to rise on the horizon, not so hard.

On Tuesday, my granddaughter wrote to me that it had been the happiest day of her entire life. It took me a few minutes to realize that she meant because of the Obama inauguration. She is filled with the hope of the young about what will come next. When I look at these years of torture and loss of habeas and permanent prisoners and vast killing of Iraquis and Afghanis whose lives were more like mine than they weren’t, I think of them against the backdrop of eight hard public decades; she doesn’t even have two. Of course, she would--indeed should--be hopeful. As with the torture books, it is important to remember the spring and summer, the times of possibility, and the seasons of good and compassionate work done by and in the name of the U.S. It is not all winter.

But what are we to do about the ice in our hearts that arises from the knowledge of this torture regime? Acts carried out by our agents, with the urging and knowledge of the highest people in the government, acting in our name and on our behalf? What are we to do about that? Too late just to refuse to know. And ending it, as Obama may have done today, doesn't end the knowing about what has been done.

'Goodbye, George'

George didn’t mention Point Roberts when he was giving his farewell address tonight (is he under the delusion that he is someone like, say, George Washington with this putting-on-airs farewell address?) ,but maybe he knows we never voted for him anyway and would have been just as happy if he’d gone away a long time ago. He has been traipsing around for the past month saying, ‘Goodbye! Farewell! Adieu! Auf Wiedersehn! Addio!’ (or would have used those words if only he spoke any language), as if he thought that somewhere, someone might say, ‘Oh, stay a little longer.’ One of those party guests who should never have been invited and now that he’s at the party apparently will never leave.

And then, of course, there’s the long and tiresome list of his achievements that exist only in his imagination. The fact of the matter is that every good AND bad thing he ever tried to do remains undone. He might more honorably just slink off in the night and at most send us a postcard from his wearisome ranch, saying, ‘Having a wonderful time, wish I were there.”

And tomorrow, I am told via the news, Ms. Rice will pack her purse and cape and leave the State Department for the last time. Here’s your hat, what’s your hurry? And probably Mr. Cheney is just moving into his file cabinet so that he can continue to be the eminence gris he takes himself to be. No more grises, no more eminences, Mr. Cheney. The back side of all of them is what I want to see, and I want to keep seeing it for the rest of my life.

If you don’t have a blog, you just say this kind of thing to your spouse or your kids. I have a blog, so I get to say it to the readers. My apologies, but thanks for staying with it. And now, I’m finished with that topic: I am saying ‘Goodbye, George,’ for the very last time. It’s over.

Picking Principles

A neighbor called today to invite us to Christmas dinner; another called to invite us up for a drink, thinking that I might be feeling a little stir-crazy in the snow. Happy to oblige on both counts. I am always struck by how genuinely kind and thoughtful our Canadian neighbors are. Maybe it is not Canadian kindness but simply the kindness of people living in small towns, but in either case, I am grateful.

When we went up for the glass of wine, we found that household’s son, daughter-in-law, and grandson were also up for the evening and I got to have a new lesson in Canadian politics. This past week, there had been much to do, again, about the (maybe) temporary Prime Minister (we’re waiting for the end of January when Parliament comes back in session to see what happens to him). Prime Minister Harper appointed 18 new Senators to the Senate. Well, I thought from my U.S. brain, surely he couldn’t appoint 18 senators if he didn’t have the authority to do it, but what a strange thing that he had to appoint so many of them. Was this like Roosevelt trying to pack the Supreme Court? But, I let the news go by me without pursuing the questions further.

But now I had real Canadians with lively political interests to explain it to me. This much I knew: Canada has a Parliament and a Senate, but the Senate never seemed to me to amount to much. The members of the Senate are appointed, and these appointments seem to go to political actors, fund raisers, business people, do-gooders. I had previously considered these appointees as comparable to the kind of people, in the U.S., who get ambassadorial appointments to mid-level countries as a kind of legal payoff for services rendered. You send these people to places where you don’t need to know much to be able to preside successfully over ceremonial occasions for a few years.

Not quite, though. Turns out that, at least on paper, the Senate is in some way equal to the Parliament but has never been treated as such because the members are appointed and not elected, and therefore are understood to have no real legitimacy. So far, so good, but kind of odd. Over the years, I’ve heard many Canadians express nothing but contempt for Senate appointees…a good-paying gig (until they are 75) with not much of anything to do but think of how and why they’re being rewarded with this office. It turns out that Prime Minister Harper, has been one of those people critical of the Senate’s dubious nature. And the reason he had 18 appointments to make was not because he was trying to pack the Senate, but because over the past two years, he had refused to make any new appointments because he thought the Senators should be elected.

All of a sudden, though, he’s a fan of making Senate appointments. And this is because if he loses out as Prime Minister when the end of January comes and Parliament has the Confidence vote, then the new Liberal leader, Michael Ignatieff, will become Prime Minister, presumably, and the Liberals will get to appoint those 18 Senators.

Well, that’s the problem with principles—they’re easier to take seriously when you are in control of events. And that’s the trouble with losing control—your principles may turn out to be a tad inconvenient. I am reminded of Groucho Marx saying “Those are my principles. If you don’t like them, I have others.” The brouhaha over Harper’s Senate appointments demonstrates that Harper, too, has others.

She's Canadian, You Know

Not enough that Michael Ignatieff turns out to be Canadian. Now Naomi Klein also turns out to be Canadian. Maybe Canada should take over the U.S. instead of the other way round? How come Canada is producing public intellectuals at such a pace? This past week’s New Yorker has a feature article on Naomi Klein and her role as the voice of the New, New Left in the U.S., and beyond, which provides some answers.

I don’t know a lot about her writing, other than a section of The Shock Doctrine (which I suspect was published in Harper’s) that I read several months ago, and which was very interesting in a provocative way. As a former member of the old new left, and a current member of the old old left, I’m very interested in the new new left, but I am somewhat surprised (and pleased) to find that Canada is producing its leaders and that its main voice is female. Take that, Hillary Clinton--next time try the left instead of the center.

But then the second part of being surprised about all this is to find that Ms. Klein’s parents live here nearby us in Roberts Creek, B.C. (at least they do while we are in residence here; when we’re in Point Roberts, they have to live here without us). I met the mom once, some years ago, but just in passing. She is also political in her orientation but currently as a disability activist, subsequent to a stroke which rendered her seriously disabled. So, assuming she and her daughter are on good enough terms, I will be looking to see not only Joni Mitchell but also Naomi Klein in the local grocery store. It’s getting to be like Beverly Hills up here. Except for the fact that this week the roads are covered with ice and the not-roads are covered with snow, which makes it more like Minnesota with hills, where the temperature is, day after day, about 20 degrees F., although, in B.C., it’s actually more like –5.5 degrees C.

No Singing, No Dancing: Oh! Canada!

Well, they’re not singing and they’re not dancing in Canada’s parliament, I suspect. Nervously looking back over their shoulders, instead, maybe, trying to figure out what happens next. Only a week ago, it looked like the Liberal leader, Dion, was about to emerge as Prime Minister in a coalition government, once the current Prime Minister, Harper, was forced out by a ‘loss of confidence’ vote.

Harper postponed what everybody accepted would be a losing vote for the Conservatives and then worked out a plan that looked very unlikely to work (for about two days), until it worked. He asked the Governor General to simply send the Parliament home until the end of January. (I think it’s called proroguing. If we could do that in the U.S., of course, the Congress might be sent to its room, as it were, on a near continual basis except for when a budget bill was needed.)

So, the Parliament has gone home, Harper is still the Prime Minister, and Stephane Dion who looked to be about to become the new Prime Minister only a week ago, has now resigned his leadership position and has been replaced by Michael Ignatieff.

Long before I moved up to the border and long before we bought a house in Canada, I knew about Michael Ignatieff. He first came to my attention back in the early 80’s, I’d guess, when he published an essay in The New Republic about Americans’ difficulties with health care. He was writing, at the time—as all of us in bioethics were—about end-of-life treatment decisions. Now, that stuff seems pretty old hat (not that we’ve got it straightened out, but still, it’s no longer ‘new stuff’), but back then, it was pretty interesting to read the views of someone outside the field of bioethics, someone who brought an entirely different way of looking at things. We were all focused on patient autonomy and patient consent, and he was talking about how to understand health care in the larger scale of the meaning and purpose of a whole life that inevitably had to end. He was, in particular, urging a more stoical view with respect to what old age and the deteriorating physical condition of the aged meant for a whole life, not just a view that saw only that particular moment in a hospital ICU.

It was heady stuff, and I was really impressed by it. As a result, I kept my eye out for things he was publishing, mostly essays. At the time, he was teaching at Cambridge or Oxford, as I recall, and I thought he was British. Next thing, he shows up at Harvard, directing the Center for Human Rights. People who first knew his work from that period often thought he was an American. It was only after I moved up to the Northwest that I discovered he was, in fact, a Canadian. He parachuted into the political scene up here only 2+ years ago, after a long absence from the country.

The thing is, he’s a real public intellectual; the real thing, just as Isaiah Berlin (whose biography Ignatieff wrote) was. And he is close to leading an entire country. Much of the political left in the U.S. would think that might be a very good thing, but not a thing we would ever get to see. So, I’m happy to think that Canada will be at least considering taking that step. To my eyes, Harper looks way too much like Bush, so the choice would be an easy one. But Canadian eyes may see things differently.

Anyway, Ignatieff writes not only philosophical essays, but novels, memoirs, biography, whatever form is on offer, I suspect. I particularly liked his novel, Charlie Johnson in the Flames, which is about a journalist and the ways in which journalists/writers get caught up in warfare. (It’s kind of a companion piece, in my mind, to Chris Hedges’ War Is the Force that Gives Us Meaning). But I also was very impressed by The Warrior’s Honor. He’s written a couple dozen books, so there’s some subject that would interest most anyone, I think. Ignatieff supported Bush’s decision to go after Saddam Hussein, and I’m sure there are other places where he and I would part company about moral and political values. But I would never NOT take his ideas very seriously before I thought about disagreeing with them. Lucky Canada to have him in a place of influence. That’s my view, anyway.

Canadian Do-Over?

My son reminded me the other day that his Canadian relatives used to joke (even if not quite correctly) that Canada could have had English law, American know-how, and French culture, but instead, it got French law, English know-how, and American culture. And now it looks like it gets Italian politics, what with its too-many political parties. Although there was a federal Canadian election only six weeks ago (one in which the Conservatives won slightly less than half the seats in Parliament), that ‘minority government’ is on the verge of losing a ‘vote of confidence’ and if it does, then there could be another federal election in only a few more weeks. Or, the other parties in the Parliament could try to create a coalition to run the government.

Four things there worth explaining to the Americans:
1. No party won a majority of seats in the October election. There are five parties. They are/are called (neo?)conservatives/Conservatives; centrists/Liberals; separationists/P.Q.; environmentalists/Green; and progressives/NDP. The conservatives almost got a majority, but the other four parties, all of which are more center-ish, together have an actual majority of the votes/seats. To get to that majority, however, the Liberals, NDP, and PQ would all have to join forces. No other combination works.
2. The party who gets the most seats in an election is asked by the Governor General (whose office is largely ceremonial) to form a government. If that party (currently the conservatives) can get its bills passed, it holds the government and its leader is the Prime Minister. If it can’t, then the government falls.
3. When the government falls, the Governor General is informed and she can either call for another election (a ‘snap election’) or can invite the other minority parties to form a coalition government; a non-ceremonial function.
4. The four parties not currently in the government are to the left of the conservatives so there is potential for a coalition grouping, but the PQ’s raison d’etre is to have Quebec separate from Canada, which may make them an awkward partner in a national coalition government, but they could 'support' it without being an actual member of the coalition.

The conservative government bill that produced all this was, of course, the legislation that addressed the global financial collapse, which is clearly affecting Canada despite the contrary claims of Sunny Steve Harper. The problem with the bill, from the perspective of the other parties, is that it didn’t deal with the collapse. All it did was eliminate any financial subsidies for the political parties (a relative small dollar amount). The conservative response was to advise the opposition not to worry their pretty little heads about economic collapse because they’d get a real bill out to address the financial thing in the spring.

So, now Canadians await the next shoe fall. Harper has already withdrawn the subsidy-elimination legislation and has insisted that a comprehensive financial bill will be produced very shortly. It is always difficult to remember that Harper is, in fact, an economist, since he doesn’t talk as if he has any expertise in the area. It could be a few days, it could be a week, but some kind of do-over looks to be in the works.

Wouldn’t the GOP die to have that kind of opportunity, only six weeks after an election that they didn’t win by enough or at all?

Note: this post has been corrected from its original form in response to reader comments about several factual issues.

Something Entirely Different

This morning, I was reading an article by Henry Paulson in Foreign Affairs, and was so irritated by it that I sat down to write some kind of reply, if only to myself. Then I decided I'd post it as a diary on Daily Kos, the left-political group blog. So today's blog is over there, if you are interested in reading what I think of Henry Paulson, Sec'y. of the Treasury, as a writer. You can find it here.

Back tomorrow with the wind and weather from the Sunshine Coast.

Pardon Whom?

We’re down to the last six weeks before the changing of the guard and now facing one of the last awful parts of all presidencies: the pardons. The blogs and the political droners all have lots to say about who needs a pardon and who is likely to get one. There are said to be 2,300 applicants already for this honor (or dishonor, as the case may be). The Washington Post, last night, had a poll up where we brainless readers could provide our opinion as to whether Bush would in fact pardon those on their list of the top six: Edwin Edwards, Randy ‘Duke’ Cunningham, Michael Milken, Marion Jones, Ted Stevens, and Scooter Libby. I made up an opinion so that I could see what my fellow Americans had to think on this topic about which they have no information and it turns out that Scooter Libby is very high on the list of those whom we expect to get a pardon. A potential two-time winner: not only a commutation of sentence but also a pardon. What a guy.

Over at Slate, Dafna Linzer has a longer list of potential pardonees, as well as an estimate of their probable success in winning Bush’s heart. Her list is long enough that it needs to be divided into six categories including Sports Felons, Texas Felons, Bush Team Felons, Congressional Felons, Team Abramoff Felons, and White Collar Felons (including Martha Stewart). (Regardless of category, there are an awful lot of Republicans on this list.)

With respect to the success of all these requests, my position is largely that of Luke 12:48: For to whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required: and to whom men have committed much, of him they will ask the more. And I don’t think that includes asking for a pardon when one has been convicted of a crime. The idea that Michael Milken will be pardoned (considered a very good possibility by Linzer) is a drag upon my spirit. To err is human; to forgive, divine; to forget, impossible. I don’t want Milken forgetting what he did or being able to pretend it never happened, and I’d just as soon nobody else forgot or pretended either.

However, with all this talk of political felons and potential felons (such as all the torture planners and law debasers in this administration) being pardoned, there is one felon not much discussed in the U.S. but of great interest to Canadians. Google ‘Conrad Black’ ‘presidential pardon,’ and you get the usual billion links, the first page of which is all Canadian sources. And that is because U.S. residents and citizens would mostly be saying, ‘Conrad who?’ Canadians, would not. They know Conrad well. He’s a former Canadian business mogul from Winnipeg, the CEO of Hollinger International which controlled newspapers in Canada and all over the world (including many U.S. community newspapers).

What the Canadians have against Conrad (and why they are interested in his pardon request) is not that he was rich and powerful, nor that he was found guilty in the U.S. in 2007 of using very large amounts of the company’s funds for his personal use, but rather that, in 1992, he gave up his Canadian citizenship in order to get a seat/title in the U.K.’s House of Lords. (Canadian citizens may not hold titles in another country.) And insulted Canada and Canadians on his way out. Eric Reguly wrote in The Times, "The great man fled his native Canada for Britain. He couldn’t wait to leave, he said, because Canada was turning into a Third World dump run by raving socialists." He is Conrad Black in Canada, but in England, he is Baron Black of Crossharbour. Nevertheless, he is currently residing in a U.S. prison (in Florida) serving a 7-year sentence that was accompanied by a $6 million fine. My sense of talking to Canadians is that they are okay with him being in the U.S., but prefer it to be without the pardon.

So here’s another difference between Canadians and Americans that I wouldn’t know about if I didn’t live here. The Canadians couldn’t care less about Scooter Libby; by contrast, the Americans couldn’t care less about Conrad Black. Caught in between, my advice is pardon none of them, none of the rich and famous and well-placed: God will recognize his own.

Canadian Cut-Ups

The Montreal comedy team pranksters who lured Sarah Palin into thinking she was on the receiving end of a phone call from French President Nicholas Sarkozy are operating in an honorable Canadian tradition, although when it happened in the 2000 election, it didn’t get any U.S. coverage that I ever saw. What could account for that?

In 2000, Rick Mercer (of the Canadian equivalent of Saturday Night Live) tracked down George W. Bush at a campaign event in Michigan and managed to get close enough (with a camera team) to tell him that ‘Prime Minister Poutine’ of Canada had endorsed him. Bush got an ‘oh, shucks!’ look on his face, and allowed as to how, as I recall, he was ‘very flattered.’ Of course, Prime Minister Poutine would most accurately be translated as the Prime Minister of french-fried potatoes with cheese curds and gravy, but we could scarcely expect Bush to have known that. Although we might have thought he would know that the Canadian Prime Minister was Jean Chretien and that he might even conceivably know that the probability of a Canadian Prime Minister endorsing anyone in a U.S. Presidential campaign, let alone him, had a probability of somewhat less than Absolute Zero. But there Bush was, looking dumb as a stick to the few Americans who saw the clip.

Ms. Palin did not look quite so wretched in today’s prank but one certainly is struck by her apparent view that the President of France might call her up to discuss hunting, his fondness for killing live animals, and his wife’s sexual temperature in bed. Palin responded with a comment about Sarkozy’s ‘lovely family,’ which--given that his wife divorced him about an hour after he was elected and he very quickly married a model—leaves one wondering exactly which family she had in mind. Well, she’s not part of that crowd, so it is possible that she was just sitting there thinking, ‘What kind of people call you up and talk like this?’ Her mother taught her to be polite, and she was, and the McCain campaign taught her to get her talking points out, which she did.

But, what have we wrought? A Republican V.P. candidate who declares with apparent sincerity how much she admires the President of France: none of those ‘Freedom Fries’ for Sarah, I guess. I don’t know how the right wing of the Grand Old Party will take that.

Discussion or Shouting Match?

When the B.C. Ferry Corporation changes its schedules and policies, ferry riders usually feel that something is being done against them not for them. They frequently protest, although the effects of those protests have not been particularly noticeable. The Ferry Corporation is busy appointing citizen advisory panels and the like, but they pretty much seem like window dressing. Nevertheless, after the most recent cuts in the schedule, 300 or so people up here turned out to object strenuously not only to the reduced number of sailings but also to the ever-rising prices and surcharges.

And then B.C. Premier Gordon Campbell went on the TV and announced that there will be a one-time $20 million increase to the ferry budget in order to restore those ferry sailings that were being removed and to reduce the cost of ferry crossings by a considerable amount. Well, that is pretty amazing, no? Of course, the fine print is that these awesome changes will be in effect for December and January, periods when there is massive vacation travel on the ferry. Well, maybe not so much response to local outcry. Maybe more of a response to an as-yet unannounced upcoming election?

That’s what the local newspaper editor suggests. He also suggests that everybody ought to be grateful for Campbell’s gift, even if it is motivated by political calculations. I’m struck by my reflexive resistance to his argument. Since it’s reflexive, of course, it’s suspect. Have we become so weary of political action that we can’t imagine there is anything coming out of politicians’ mouths that is oriented toward the public good? Always working to their own interests, not ours? Can we imagine that an action could simultaneously serve their interests and ours, or that it could just serve the public’s?

I don’t have any answer to that. And that is part of the anti-government tendency of our times. We riders can, of course, enjoy reduced ferry costs. But what if they are held low just long enough to get these people re-elected, at which point the costs are increased from what they previously were? Or, alternatively, what if there really isn’t any reasonable way to reduce the costs of ferry transport and this $20 million gift is just a way of postponing some other day of reckoning, a day they don’t want to talk about because the public is too uninformed to accept it?

I am inclined to this last thought because I have been reading historian Andrew Bacevich’s new book, The Limits of American Power. Bacevich argues that the U.S. has come to the end of its economic, military, and political influence in the world (and he is writing a year or more before the current economic free-fall) because it has refused to accept that there are limits. A big part of his argument is that the U.S. has for decades put off the day of reckoning with respect to our dependency on foreign oil because those governing didn’t believe citizens would accept the bad news that they might have to do without some things or pay more for some things, if the country was to prosper in the future. No, we wanted cheap oil and we wanted it now and forever.

So, I’m thinking: what if there is no way to maintain cheap ferry traffic in B.C., at least not without giving up something else that is also important? Should the public and the government be talking about those tradeoffs and exactly what they are? Or should they just be talking about how the interest group identified as ferry riders is always trying to get something for itself and the interest group called politicians is always trying to get something for itself? Well, the ferry riders certainly can’t talk about tradeoffs if they don’t know what they are. And the government? Well, if they know, they’re not mentioning it. Maybe a folie a deux: those never end well.

Canadian Minority

It’s been over a week since Canada’s largely disappointing election concluded. The Conservative Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, called an election because, presumably, he thought he could win enough seats in Parliament to become a majority P.M. rather than a minority P.M. Alas, he now has the dubious distinction of being only the second minority P.M. to be elected twice. Didn’t like him that much two years ago, don’t like him much better now. Nevertheless, he is more or less on top of a pretty flat hill with about 40% of the vote and about 40% of the seats in Parliament. The voter turnout was low, around 60%.

The Liberals got about half as many seats as the Conservatives, and the Bloc Quebecois, the NDP, and the Greens have the rest. What it means is that the Conservatives don’t have enough support to do what they want (be more like George W. Bush, unfortunately: apparently Conservatives up here haven’t heard that the rest of the world has thoroughly disabused themselves of the notion that George W. Bush has any mojo). This moderate passion for the Conservatives is puzzling because 77% of Canadians have developed a negative view of the U.S. since Bush was elected. It’s hard for me to understand exactly how it is that they don’t see the Bush in Harper, but I guess they don’t.

So nothing much will happen in Canadian politics for a few more years until another election is called. The Liberal leader has promised to quit in May, so that party can spend the next half year fighting about who is to replace Dion. Small potatoes, I suspect.

It’s a little difficult to understand how Canadian politics works because the parties are not all that clearly delineated to me in terms of philosophy. While poking around on the net trying to find somebody who would explain this more fully, I came upon an excellent site, Political Compass, that not only showed me where Canadian parties are philosophically, but showed me where I am. And you can take a little test (about 50 questions) to find out where you are, too.

The test involves about 50 questions which are not entirely easy to answer because, sometimes, they pose either/or questions when you might be more likely to answer both/and. But on the whole, they are interesting questions because they push you to clarify your philosophical orientation in order to answer them. You answer them on a 4-point scale (strong agree, agree, disagree, strong disagree). The object is to clarify your position on two distinct scales, one economic, the other social. Authoritarian-Libertarian tracks the social dimension, while Left/Right (with communism at the extreme left and neo-liberalism/libertarianism on the extreme right) tracks the economic dimension. So your answers place you somewhere within four boxes described by those two axes. I ended up close to Ghandi, which is nice, although I have been much less effective in my political life than he was, but on the other hand I am currently much more alive.

In addition, the site shows how various countries’ political parties and election candidates rank on this scale. They do this by determining how the parties’ or the candidates’ statements suggest they would answer the questions. When I looked at the Canadian parties’ scale, I was surprised to see that mostly they are in the upper right box: Authoritarian/Right. By contrast, the U.S. election primary campaign candidates were even more all in the upper right hand box, suggesting not so much contrast as I would have thought Well, there Ghandi and I are down in the Left/Libertarian, lower left box, with Canada’s NDP and Bloc Quebecois as well as Ralph Nader and Dennis Kucinich barely in there with us. No wonder I feel so isolated from the U.S. process so much of the time.

So, my advice is go to the site, take the test, look at your results and see whether you might feel more at home in New Zealand or the E.U. or are nicely in line with wherever you are.

Time After Time

Still in crisis mode, Americans are needing to expand their vocabulary yet once more. The word for today is tick-tock. Obviously, the sound of a clock, but in the world of political journalism, a much bigger concept. While reading various blogs and reports here and there on the net on Wednesday, I ran into the word three times, and then on Thursday, Kevin Drum sent me to Joe Nocera’s tick-tock at the New York Times.

A tick-tock, it appears, is a minute by minute account of events. By analyzing the tick-tock, one can derive some greater meaning from or about the outcomes of those events. Now, it’s not entirely clear to me from jargon dictionary definitions whether the ‘tick-tock’ is the chronicling, the analysis, or the combination of the two, or whether anyone cares. It’s American journalism jargon, so those folks may have not carefully worked out a definition, but we can see how it works.

Thursday tick-tock.
7:45. My brain awakens and notes that a bird is calling, meaning that it is past 7:30, which is the time the computer randomly chooses a bird call to awaken me every morning. In theory, I would learn to identify the calls of birds from this, but ten years of experience has shown otherwise. I do not learn because the bird refuses to say its name.
8:00. My eyes open and see in the overhead skylight that the sky is gray and I consider changing my plans for the day not to include gardening because it is probably going to rain again.
8:15. I get to the computer to read the news headlines and the morning blogs, mostly political. I find myself reading the same analysis over and over, just written by different people.
9:00. With coffee, I settle down to read the most recent New Yorker. It is providing me with a long analysis of Lionel Trilling’s work by Louis Menand. I think about how, in 1960 when I was in graduate school, I read Trilling’s work and talked endlessly with my colleagues about the meaning of literary criticism, and now it is 48 years later and I am reading about it again, although I no longer have colleagues. Louis Menand is not my colleague.
9:45. I am finished with Lionel Trilling and move on to an article that questions the wisdom of pets inheriting millions of dollars. I think about how, also in the 1960’s, I audited many law school classes instead of writing my English Literature dissertation, and finally quit going to the law classes after I spent two hours listening to arguments about whether the law should allow people to leave millions of dollars in trust to their pet. In the particular case at hand, the pet was a turtle. And now, 45 years later, I am reading about it again.
10:30. Took a walk to the beach and found that the tide was in again. Very reliable, the tide.
12:00. Lunch, day after day.

Well, you get the idea. Reading the Thursday tick-tock suggests that the outcome of Thursday, for me, was largely influenced by repetitive events. Much like the failure of the financial system: deregulation leads to financial crisis; belief that there is a free lunch, leads to no lunch. I am reading about it again.

Are You Amused?

Several people have written to me asking whether I plan to write about Sarah Palin. It seems to me unlikely that I would have anything to offer on that topic that others have not already written. Nevertheless, a couple of things that have been written have come to my mind in recent days and roiled around there. The first, a book written over two decades ago; the second, an essay published in the L.A. Times this past week.

Neil Postman was a NYU professor, a media theorist, and a cultural critic. In 1985, he published a book called Amusing Ourselves to Death. It was about the way in which the pervasiveness of television was altering the culture. Wikipedia describes it thus: “Postman argues that television confounds serious issues with entertainment, demeaning and undermining political discourse by making it less about ideas and more about image.” I read the book in 1985, sensed that what he was saying sounded right, and kept it in mind. Part of the reason that I thought he was onto something was that I was teaching bioethics/’legal and ethical issues in healthcare’ to undergraduates at UCLA at the time and was comparing them to the undergraduate students I had first taught at UCLA twenty-five years earlier, in 1960, when I was teaching rhetoric/English composition to students of the same age.

The students of 1960 didn’t know how to write any better than the students of 1985, but no worse, either. What seemed to me to be different was the students’ understanding of the context they and I found ourselves inhabiting. In 1960, we saw it pretty much the same: I was the instructor and they expected me to teach them something. They assumed that I had something to teach them and, though they might not like learning it or might not entirely see what was the value of learning it, they expected to try to learn it. I, similarly, thought I had something to teach them and expected them to try to learn it. By 1985, I was still in the 1960’s context, but these 1985 students had moved on, for the most part, to a different context. And it was something like ‘education as a television program.’ Their question was not, ‘What have you got for me?’, as the 1960’s students’ question might be understood. It was more like, ‘Do I like this? Am I enjoying this? Is this class any fun?’ During those intervening 25 years, the students had transmogrified from students to audience, I had been moved in their view from teacher to performer, and the entire operation had been reconceived of as entertainment not education. Just as Postman said.

Now I didn’t think I was an entertainer nor that what we were doing was entertainment. But that didn’t really matter because a context is created by all parties to the activity. If I was to make any headway with my idea of what we were doing, I had somehow to incorporate their idea of what we were doing and lead them through it to my idea. I tried to be more entertaining and slip the education through where I could. I wasn’t unhappy some years later when I moved on to other worlds and no longer had to entertain people who wouldn’t mind being educated but only if it came through an entertainment context.

So, I now look at this campaign process and feel some sympathy for the people who thought they were going to be journalists but have ended up being performers in an entertainment endeavor. And I feel some sympathy for politicians who thought that they were going to explain their political views and policy goals but are instead expected to be star performers in an entertainment world. The American public appears, largely, to be interested in being entertained first, last and foremost, although it’s possible that the right person would still be able to slip in a little enlightenment here and there. But I don’t feel much sympathy for the audience that eagerly seeks out this entertainment extravaganza, pretending that it’s a political campaign or that it has any enlightenment or education at all, even as I understand how they got into audience mode. If we weren’t watching, obsessing about, writing about, and generally enjoying it as an entertainment spectacle, the politicians and the journalists wouldn’t be doing what they are doing. It takes two to engage in this. And it is here, alas, where I see Postman’s book title as prescient: We do, indeed seem to be amusing ourselves to death.

Which brings me to the second piece of writing, an op-ed by Sam Harris, in which he says, with respect to the press’ and public’s enthusiasm for Gov. Palin (and President Bush) as a 'regular guy’ (or gal), not some fancy-pants educated twit, but someone just like them (but with more money and political pull), someone who makes them cheer and hiss and boo as if they were at a wrestling match: ‘This is one of the many points at which narcissism becomes indistinguishable from masochism. Let me put it plainly: If you want someone just like you to be president of the United States, or even vice president, you deserve whatever dysfunctional society you get.’

Amusing ourselves to death. I am surely seeing the death part, but I’m personally having a little difficulty experiencing the amusing part. But then, I’m an educated twit, I suppose, even if I’m just a girl who grew up in the potato fields of Idaho. Forgot to learn to shoot large quadrupeds, however.

Political Steroids

Up here in Canada, the Liberals and the Progressive Conservatives (or whatever they’re currently called) are both threatening to make an election happen. So strange to have it not be a regular kind of thing. On the other hand, so wonderful to have it occur of a sudden with only a relatively few weeks allowed for the campaign. So unlike the current and dreadful election in the U.S, which seems to have been going on for most of my adult life.

This week is really one of the times I’m particularly grateful to have broken the TV habit. I actually do have a TV set in the Canada house, but I never think to turn it on to TV: it’s just there as a way to watch DVD’s. So, I am managing to miss both the Olympics and the Democratic Party Convention. Two of a kind: Did the U.S. win? Did the Chinese win? Do I care? I’m actually pretty enthusiastic when some Somali or Jamaican runner wipes everyone out. Just what the big nations deserve, I’d say. Bob Barr is looking interesting; even Ralph Nader is beginning to come in for some sympathy.

The Olympics, I guess is actually over now, but the Democrats are just beginning so I could give it a try yet. But, but, but…I imagine turning on, say, NBC (our basic cable does not offer CNN), and I can know only too well what I’d be seeing and it wouldn’t be Adlai Stevenson giving a smart, funny, and informative speech that made you understand what politics was about and why you ought to be paying attention to it. Instead, whoever is giving whatever speech will (on Monday afternoon) be far away in the background while some brag of pundits maunder on about the kinds of things that the rest of us quit thinking and talking about when we got out of high school.

Pundits! Did we used to have that word? Let alone have those tiresome people with their repetitive thought syndrome? Do they ever appear alone, or are they always in groups? What is their attraction and why do they breed so rapidly without having attraction? It will only be minutes before they start discussing what Hillary is wearing and whether it means Too Much Hillary or Not Enough Hillary. Or, I guess, because it’s Monday, they will be discussing what Michelle is wearing and what it really truly tells us about just how angry she is. I, myself, appear almost always in black slacks, black turtle neck, and red silk shirt, and if that tells you just how angry I am, then my message is getting across. I hope Michelle will be wearing black and red. She deserves to be angry for the way in which she is being trivialized by this process.

It seems to me that the political class (which includes the politicians, their managers, their hangers-on, the sycophantic press, the pollsters, the pundits, and lobbyists) has finally achieved what I would have thought impossible. They have turned me off politics. They can have it all to themselves, as far as I am concerned. Maybe that’s what they always wanted, of course. So, I’ll keep watching them if only from a greater and greater distance. Surely I won’t be watching their faux competitions, but I will be wondering why anyone else is.

Modern politics in the U.S. is a true rival for the Disneyland pageantry of the Olympics: if only there were rules about the use of steroids or the political equivalent thereof, we could have regular truth tests, or even brain cell testing, and thought specimens would be collected after every race. And then there would be hearings in Congress where last week’s winner could swear he only played by the rules, never took those political steroids. But we’d know better. They’re all on political steroids.

How's Canada Doing?

Back in British Columbia this weekend to find that the Canadian government is engaged in the kind of fear-mongering, swift-boating, character assassinating, or whatever adjective best describes the scurrilous mode of speech that typifies U.S. political communication nowadays.

In our mailbox, we received a one-page flyer, ‘Compliments of Stephen Harper, MP’ (as well as Prime Minister of Canada and the leader of the Conservative Party), providing us with what we jokingly might refer to as information; information that doesn't even rise to the level of truthiness. Like the U.S., Canada has experienced imported goods that are not manufactured under Canadian safety standards. Dangerous chemicals, dangerous toys, UNSAFE things. Last fall, in the ‘Throne Speech,’ the Conservatives pointed out that in the past, almost everything on a Canadian store’s shelf was made in Canada, but now, 65% of those same items are made somewhere else. Somewhere, I imagine, where manufacturers don’t have as their very top priority a concise knowledge of Canadian safety standards. That’s how global trade works, I’m afraid. Foreign manufacturers don’t necessarily have either of our safety, labor, or environmental standards. In part, that’s why they are not us; they are different, have different priorities, concerns, agendas, values, economics, problems, and laws/regulations. They are from different countries.

So, what’s a country like Canada or the U.S. to do? Well, the policy questions are doubtless complex and I am no expert on them. But one thing that a person like Steven Harper can do is send out a flyer assuring the citizens of Canada that he and his party are “protecting children from unsafe products.’ We are entitled then to return his flier, after having answered Mr. Harper’s multiple-choice question, “Who is on the right track on protecting children?’ Our choices are Mr. Harper and, respectively the leaders of the Liberal, New Democratic, and Green parties. We have no information at our finger tips in this flier about any particular legislation or any particular views that the other parties hold. We are given only Mr. Harper's assurance that the correct answer to his question is The Conservative Party. Once we choose, we mail this flier back to Mr. Harper. And exactly what is he going to do with it? I ask myself.

The implication, of course, is that those nefarious other parties (i.e., #’s 2,3, and 4) are not interested in ‘protecting children from unsafe products.’ I suppose the further implication is that they don’t even care whether children are protected from unsafe products. Perhaps they are engaged in foisting unsafe products upon the country. Perhaps the Green Party, an earnest, sincere and seriously peripheral party is about to require people to use unsafe products? I don’t think so. Well, Mr. Harper didn’t say that, so maybe he doesn’t think so either. All in all, though, my impression of this flier is that it is very low-down stuff. The kind of thing that Lee Atwater wouldn’t have done, but that Lee Atwater would have admired others doing. Lee Atwater, of course, was engaged in much more egregious stuff. This would have been small time for him.

But Lee Atwater gave us the politics we now have in the U.S. It’s sad to see Canada, whose citizens so often insist to me that Canada is very different from the U.S., going right down that U.S. road. It’s enough to give the phrase ‘political speech’ a very bad name: something like, ‘liar, liar, pants on fire…’

Trash, Again

Here it is Bastille Day, that terrific holiday in which everybody locked up in a Parisian jail was set free in a mad frenzy of liberty, equality, and fraternity. Something about that image really captured my imagination as a schoolgirl so that the date is firmly fixed in mind. Presented some other way, it could appear to a kid as some kind of scary jail break, I guess. Well, perspective is everything: perspective, in the sense of from what angle you are viewing this picture, which is very probably not ‘the whole picture,’ for example. In fact, it’s really hard, in the short run anyway, to get anything like the whole picture, the title of this blog notwithstanding.

More about the trash in that respect. The full email box that I mentioned yesterday was obviously not about an abandoned roadside stove but instead about the issue of how garbage and recycling will be conducted in Point Roberts. When we moved here, some fourteen years ago, nobody was collecting trash. The County has some legal responsibility to do something, but my recollection of what it did was this: it operated a transfer station which was open a couple of days a week and you were free to take your garbage there on those days and pay a fee directly. I don’t remember that they had recycling, but that was a long time ago, too long to remember what is usually a minor issue in my life.

Nine years ago, a guy came to town and set up a regular garbage and recycling collection business, licensed by whoever in the state does that kind of licensing. He’s a nice guy in my experience and easy to do business with, at least if your business is household business. His business seemed to work, although there were obviously inherent problems because the government would not mandate that everyone participate in and pay for garbage collection service. Since only about a quarter of the homes here belong to full-time residents (those who were likely to subscribe to the trash collection service), he had a very small customer base. The Canadian cottage owners, for the most part, didn’t want to pay for service that they weren’t using most of the time and they could always take their trash to the transfer station and pay a single fee for whatever amount they brought, or take it home with them to Canada, or bury it in their backyards, for all I know. But refuse/recycling collection equipment is expensive, and needs to be spread over a bigger customer base than the trash business has.

This spring, the company stopped picking up recycling when its recycling truck reached its final hours, but we could still take it ourselves to the transfer station. For most of us, not a problem. But a big problem for some parts of local government and for some locals who think that a contract is a contract and since he said the business would provide curbside recycling he must do that or go out of business.

In addition, I hear, there is an issue about how the business was charging for collecting containers of building debris. Some people, especially those who had building debris that needed to be disposed of, found his attitude hostile and his prices too high, and a couple of them went into business in competition, sort of. That is, they aren’t collecting building debris, but are collecting and recycling building debris, though how that stuff gets recycled is not entirely clear to me, and apparently not to some others.

My part in this brouhaha was to forward to a dozen or so friends and acquaintances a letter explaining why one couple favored the County helping the current guy to continue in operation. Forwarding this email turned out to be one of those good deeds that does not go unpunished. Two people—friends--immediately wrote back, outraged that I had forwarded this letter to them, even astonished that I had engaged in ‘politics,’ and insisted that I immediately remove their names from my email list.

The response seemed way out of proportion to the “affront.’ Just politics in a small town, is what another friend told me today. But all the emotion and energy involved in this topic suggests something bigger at play. Is the trash collecting monopoly license for Point Roberts really a treasured asset? Are there big bucks involved? (Follow the money is never a bad strategy for understanding les choses Americaine.) Loose talk tells me that there are people lined up to take over the refuse/recycling collection monopoly license here on the Point, despite the fact that it doesn’t seem to be a paying proposition. New efficiencies? Higher rates? Outside forces? Secret deals? Who knows? As the war in Iraq (possibly) tapers down, are the private war companies looking for other income streams? If that’s what it is, I’m thinking Halliburton or Kellog, Brown, Root will soon be providing our trash service. Ed, though, says his money is on Blackwater.

Patriotism Week, On and On!

Today, July 1, is Canada Day in Canada; but last week, on June 24, it was also Canada Day in Canada. That’s the day that Quebecers and perhaps Francophones more generally celebrate Canada Day by celebrating Saint-Jean-Baptiste Day (John the Baptist), and also for those of a mind, by celebrating the summer solstice a few days earlier, just to be genuinely ecumenical, I guess, according to the Canadian Heritage homepage .

The Globe and Mail is celebrating Canada Day today on its front pages by noting that the the B.C. government has increased gas taxes by 2.34 cents as of today, bringing the local prices to $1.52/liter (which is to say over $6 for four liters which is a little more than a U.S. gallon). It is also pointing out that Prime Minister Steven Harper once again apologized to the First Nations people for having forced all their children to go to residential schools, where they were very badly treated, in the early 20th century. The idea was that by separating them from their parents and putting them in government-run and religious-run residential schools, it would be possible to integrate them into Canadian society more effectively. I suppose it might have worked but there was a substantial amount of physical and sexual abuse, which is bound to ruin a lot of hopes. So, this past month, Prime Minister Harper issued a formal apology, and today he did a little more of it.

I’m not sure this is what is meant by Canadian patriotism, but it is consistent with the country’s sense of responsibility about taxing gas to make the price of gas reflect its real costs to the society, and about trying to do right—albeit often ineffectively or downright badly--by the people they displaced when the Canadians decided it was their own country and not that of the First Nations, and about accommodating its multicultural realities, even if it means including the Wiccans.

By Friday, of course, we will be moving on to U.S. patriotism. Although actually we seem to have our heads full of it already with General Wesley Clark’s scandalous suggestion that having been shot down in a plane and becoming a prisoner of war was not a particular qualification for being president. Was he talking about John McCain? Well I guess so. And did anybody ever think that having been a prisoner of war meant you’d be a good U.S. president? These days, it’s hard to imagine what would qualify you to be president, other than being related to some other president. I wonder what Amy Carter is doing? Somebody ought to stuff a sock in cable TV if this nonsense about John McCain’s patriotism being questioned by Wesley Clark is going to keep being repeated.

I hope that by Friday, we might be able to remember that of all the freedoms that we are celebrating on July 4th, the first of them is Freedom of Speech. Wes Clark can say what he wants, but if he is to be criticized for it, then it ought to be for what he actually did say, rather than for what the Fox and CNN hysterics would like him to have said in order to justify their ‘oh my god, the sky is falling’ performances. Maybe Fox people think that being a prisoner of war is a TERRIFIC qualification for being the president of the U.S. They are surely free to say so, but, of course, we would all laugh at them if they did. That idea is just silly. On the other hand, being a prisoner of war who endured torture might be the perfect qualification for a presidential candidate.