Attack ads, again.
April 15, 2013
It’s no secret that I hate attack ads. From this page I have raged at Harper’s minions and at the culture which rewards such rot with political success. I even turned on Michael Ignatieff when he went negative in response to the ad blitz designed to destroy his reputation and standing among Canadians.
And now Harper has started again. This time it may be defensive: it’s beat Trudeau down or resign, if one is to believe the polls.
But this time I won’t bother to rant.
In response to the first Conservative attack ad I have just sent the Liberal Party of Canada a donation of $20. I’ll do the same for every new ad brought to my attention, up to my legal maximum donation.
I invite others who hate attack ads to join me in this attempt to clean up this rot in our culture.
Update:
Just saw a second attack ad. Away goes another $20 to the Trudeau War Chest.
Update April 16, 2013:
The response of the Trudeau team was an interesting one. Justin strolled out and held an informal scrum with reporters in the corridor of the House of Commons. He answered questions about the attack ads with good humour and wit, taking his time to turn the tables on his attackers (You don’t support The Liver Foundation?), and made the news on You-Tube, if not nationwide, with his 8 1/2 minute, cost-free rebuttal.
All eyes had been on Question Period this day, but it turned into a non-event. The major fail of the day was when the Conservatives gave Justin an excuse to go face-to-face with Canadians at supper hour. The overnight poll shot the Liberals to 43%.
Not bad for someone who is in over his head, eh?
UNICEF rates Canadian teens #1 at smoking weed.
April 15, 2013
This headline on MSN this morning reminded me of what an old fogey I am.
As a retired educator I have seen what marijuana use does to the minds of highly intelligent boys with ADHD. It wrecks them. A brilliant kid in September of grade nine was an empty shell by the time he turned up again in my class in the spring of his grade ten year.
Activists may claim cannabis is harmless, but I’ve also seen quite a few senior boys of average intelligence bounce around for several years before quitting dope and getting their lives together. At the very least marijuana costs the secondary school system a great deal of wasted time.
As I reflect back, my loneliest hour as a vice-principal had to be the time I spent trying to keep a cannabis-addicted, paranoid 15 year-old girl out of the school on a lunch hour during which she showed every intention of pulling the fire alarms. Parents eventually showed up, but it was a long hour.
So I believe the statistic, but we should take no pride in it.
The Next One: we can all hope*
March 6, 2013
William Watson ran a column in the Ottawa Citizen this morning on Tom Flanagan and George Orwell. He rattled eruditely along on the various Nineteen Eighty-four aspects of Flanagan’s self destruction until he ran out of space. Watson is a smart man and a good writer, so why is he wasting everyone’s time on such a puerile topic?
The thing I like the least about the Harper era is how rational thought in Canada has degenerated to an interminable discussion of a novel which appears on most grade 11 English courses. Without doubt Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-four is a fine read, but Harper’s crew seem content to have mastered the propaganda lessons of an out-of-date dystopian novel, rather like the way Stormin’ Norman Schwarzkopf congratulated himself on successfully re-fighting World War II in the first Persian Gulf war.
When other challenges present themselves, an economic downturn, for example, the Harper machine leaped into action with stimulus spending targetted at propaganda gains. The signs came first.
A foreign adventure in Libya seemed designed to glorify our air force prior to more F-35 posturing which ended up owing no more to fact than did the exploits of Winston Smith’s fictitious Comrade Ogilvie.
I hope we’ll need to look to a more sophisticated book to explain The Next One.
*Sorry about the format of this rant. I’ve tried to repair it all day, and it keeps falling apart in memory. Six times at least I have put clever touches into the piece, only to have it revert to the original draft. And of course I can’t underline a title without catastrophe in this buggy program.
Sophie vs Baba
February 27, 2013
As a teacher I long ago learned that one of the best measures of a person is his or her immediate family.
As I grew to know their kids I usually had a pretty good idea of what to expect on parents’ nights. Given access to an empty classroom a surprising number of parents will gravitate towards the seat their kid normally occupies.
When one of my students particularly impressed me I automatically projected this respect upon his or her parents as well, as this kid was at least partially their creation.
Much of what we know about a political leader comes from the foils: staff and family members who show how they feel about their leader. Would we have admired Josiah Bartlet for seven years without his West Wing crew and family? Where would Barrack Obama be without the three beautiful women who share his stage? Justin Trudeau may be an enigma to many of his opponents who can’t see the substance in the man, but look at the woman who chose to marry him.
Sophie Gregoire is an impressive and loveable T.V. presence. When Justin trounced Senator Patrick Brazeau last spring, Sophie barged into the ring and none-too-gently embraced her man. I predicted in a column that the photograph showing the kiss marked the first step on a path which would lead the couple to 24 Sussex Drive.
But upon reflection I think the path goes back further to where the newlyweds joined their host for a zip-line adventure on The Mercer Report. The musical sound of her laughter stayed in my head. I remember thinking: “If Justin Trudeau can nab a great wife like Sophie Gregoire, he must be far more than a pretty face.”
In the 2015 election campaign Stephen Harper must expect to face the Justin-Sophie team and he will be hard put to compete with their sex appeal and warmth.
By the same standard I must raise my opinion of Liberal leadership contender Joyce Murray. Cued by a local newspaper article on National Newswatch this morning, I tracked down Baba Brinkman, a rapper who has made a video in a B.C. classroom in support of his mother’s campaign. That video is waaay better than it should be.
As his day job Brinkman raps about Darwin and Chaucer to theatre audiences. Rolling Stone has written about him. Graduate students love him. I watched his talk on TED to a group of teenagers, and he was very, very good. He has turned a Master’s degree in medieval literature into a successful career in hip hop. The Darwin Society organizers hired him as entertainment, but first had his lyrics peer-reviewed for scientific accuracy. In his videos Brinkman’s intelligence and wit shine through a basic decency which I can respect. He likes and admires his mother, so Joyce Murray’s stock goes up.
Of course Murray’s the proponent of co-operation with the Green Party and the NDP to get rid of Harper and bring in proportional representation. A financial article rates her the richest of the Liberal candidates from wealth earned through the family tree planting business. If Joyce planted trees to fund her university education she is one tough, determined lady.
Baba Brinkman’s momma’s-boy rap has elevated dark horse Joyce Murray into second place on my list.
Stephen Maher. Deadline. 2013: A first look
February 11, 2013
I’ve followed Stephen Maher’s career since I discovered his columns and news stories from the Halifax Chronicle-Herald online at National Newswatch four or five years ago. He has since moved to Ottawa as a columnist for Postmedia News and become half of the team who broke the Robocalls scandal. This morning when Newswatch carried a teaser about Deadline, his new novel, I downloaded it to Kindle and had a look.
………………..
The initial buzz will undoubtedly come from Parliament Hill, CBC, CTV, Signals Intelligence and Ottawa Police types looking to see how they are portrayed in the book. I’m most impressed by his bang-on impersonation of Peter Mansbridge. Stephen Harper is played without affect. Another character might reflect a grudge on former CBC broadcaster Krista Erickson. But there is a large cast of others and the game of the week will no doubt be the jotting of well-known names above the generic monikers Maher uses in the novel.
That’s the inside baseball interest. For general readers, the tome is an interesting and amusing spy novel set in Ottawa. I’ve read straight through the Kindle edition today. Most mysteries don’t carry me past the first chapter.
First chapters are important to me. My rule of thumb is that as soon as I come upon a dead body, I return the book to the pile. Very few mysteries pass this hurdle. But Maher’s jogging nurse makes an early-morning leap into the shallow water of a drained lock to rescue a drowned man. This impressed me as one of the best initial chapters I have read.
The plot advances with the usual intrigue surrounding the retirement of the prime minister and the subsequent leadership race. Maher is in his element in recounting misinformation schemes of the staffs of competing cabinet ministers. His hard-boiled main character, journalist Jack Macdonald, nurses a hangover through the back alleys, bars and bedrooms of downtown Ottawa.
Macdonald follows a lead to Fort McMurray where he encounters a subculture of fellow Newfoundlanders. Maher describes what the massive oil sands project looks and smells like before he returns to the narrative and a city of lonely men from the Rock with too much money in their pockets while Chinese oil interests lurk.
One of my objections to most of the mysteries my wife brings home from the library is that the characters are cutouts and the resolution of the plot is as predictable as the body in the first chapter. Not so with Maher. In fact, the most memorable Maher catch phrase is the unique: “A transition period is the period between two transition periods.”
Perhaps the only truly corny part of the novel is the gratuitous chase scene on the frozen canal, but what Ottawa writer can resist its appeal?
No, Maher’s plot doesn’t follow the expected arc, and I’ll leave it at that. Suffice it that if you have kept up with Canadian newspapers for the last four or five years, you’ll enjoy quite a few AHAH! moments in the dark irony of the last quarter of the book. Maher is clearly not a fan of the Senate.
Radio Canada International ran an interview in which Stephen Maher spoke about the writing of Deadline:
http://www.rcinet.ca/english/daily/interviews-2012/11-58_2013-02-08-ottawa-political-investigative-journalist-stephen-maher-writes-a-seamy-political-thriller-called-deadline/
A lesson from the Storm
October 31, 2012
Some of U.S. presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s ads ridicule Barack Obama for never holding a job apart from the low-status role of community organizer.
But when New Jersey floods and catches fire, the New York subways are flooded, the Stock Market shuts down because it’s under 3′ of water and electrical transformers explode all over Manhattan as salt water corrups the power grid, the path to recovery runs through the office of the American President.
This week Americans face the question: whom do you want in a disaster, a highfalutin venture capitalist or a lowly community organizer?
Look at the steady hand Obama has shown in the early stages of the emergency. He looks as though he was born to do this.
CNN has painted Romney as increasingly irrelevant to the immediate needs of Americans. His negative comment about FEMA in early days of the campaign has come back to haunt the Republican candidate. George Bush bungled Katerina relief and deeply damaged FEMA’s reputation. We’ll see how Obama handles the storm’s aftermath.
New Jersey Governor Chris Christie may have tilted the election with his outright approval of Obama’s support for the people of New Jersey, but if ever there was a time for pragmatism in America, the time is now.
It took World War II to restore the North American economy after the Great Depression. Hurricane Sandy has provided the consumption of a major war, only without the loss of life. There will be reconstruction jobs for Americans over the next year.
Where’s Canada?
October 23, 2012
Last night I watched the third American presidential debate on foreign policy which pitted President Barrack Obama against his challenger, Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney. Lacking a genuine context for the viewing, I opted for an American sit-com approach to the show and started a drinking game. I would listen for the key word “Canada.” It was a long, scoreless night.
It’s easy with a steady diet of CBC and National Newswatch feeds to inflate Canada’s importance on the world stage. Hell, we own a lot of land, a huge chunk of the Arctic, food, energy and minerals galore, and perhaps the only weather in the world which is improving with climate change.
But does Canada count? To judge from the foreign policy debate last night, the answer is a profound “no.” So why are Canadians so caught up in the political and economic struggles of the elephant to the south? We don’t want to get rolled on in our sleep, or blown away by a sneeze? Because it’s a great show?
I gravitate to Obama because I agree with his point of view, but like many who would vote their aspirations against their interests, I realize that he doesn’t give a damn about anything except his own country.
So what’s it going to take to change the position of the restless, sleeping elephant? A Canadian leader who is not a doormat? Prime Minister Stephen Harper gave Obama the finger when the President coyly winked to the north and blocked the Enbridge pipeline until after the election. But no one south of the border bothered to notice Harper’s grand gesture. A pipeline through the Rockies would just wreck B.C.’s salmon rivers out of spite. With some of its of surplus cash China would like to colonize Canada. But where would we be then?
Mitt Romney’s a lifelong summer cottager in Southern Ontario, but he’s also a big coal man. Oil sands acids are bad enough, but at least they flow north and they’re a long way away. Coal-fired Rust Belt industries blow their smog right over my woodlot in Eastern Ontario. Obama pays lip service to the concerns of the Sierra Club and Hollywood because there’s a lot of soft money along the coastlines of the United States, but I suspect he would cheerfully drain Lake Michigan down the Mississippi if it meant a block of electoral votes in Arkansas.
My favourite’s Martin Sheen for American president. He’s highly idealistic, appears well grounded in the classics, and on the many back episodes of The West Wing he is surrounded by a staff who genuinely care about striking a balance between power and the desire to do good. And they have that Total Crackpot Day once a month when all of the staffers have to listen to people who would otherwise be ignored by government. Canada would have a real chance to be heard on Crackpot Day.
Jason Kenney’s Creepy Email
September 24, 2012
OTTAWA — An email extolling the Conservative government’s record on gay rights has some recipients wondering how Citizenship and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney knows their sexual orientation.
The email from Kenney’s MP’s office sent Friday trumpets the Conservative government’s initiative to help and gay and lesbian refugees, particularly in Iran.
The message was titled “LGBT Refugees from Iran” and was addressed “Dear Friend.” It referred to efforts by Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird “to promote basic freedoms around the word, to take a stand against the persecution of gays and lesbians.” It also provided links to media reporting on the Conservatives’ efforts to protect LGBT refugees.
The email appears to have been targeted to the addresses of people who are openly gay.
Ottawa Citizen writer Glen McGregor suggested in his story that he would like to know how Kenney’s office got the list.
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Yep, it would be really interesting to get an answer from the PMO or Kenney’s office on how they made the selections for this mailing list.
Let’s see:
-Signals Intelligence monitoring Internet and cell phone traffic? Possible, but highly illegal and lacking deniability. Potential trouble with the Cousins (Britain and U.S.) over security breach.
-Police and other officials jumping the gun on Vic’s surveillance legislation? Probable, but so unconstitutional as to get the courts in an uproar. Serious demonstrations fodder.
-Mailing list purchased from vendors serving the LGBT community? Legal, but embarrassing for the victim and a sure vote-loser.
-RCMP files of university students who attended demonstrations? Very ’70s and illegal even then, but the Mounties aren’t known for their strict adherence to the straight and narrow path.
-Photos of Gay Pride parades coupled with facial recognition software?
-Trojan horse question on polls identifying LGBT sympathies, sold to PMO.
And the answer likely is:
-Census data: same-sex adults occupying a dwelling.
And the real question is how much money extracted from the tithes of social conservative Canadians has been spent to cozy up to the LGBT community?
Any others?
Glen McGregor posted an update. The names and email addresses were “plucked” from an online petition.
Richmond had never directly emailed Kenney’s office, she was one of nearly 10,000 people who electronically signed a 2011 online petition supporting a gay artist from Nicaragua, who was then facing deportation.
The War of 1812-14 is much in the public mind this year. A unique addition to the canon is Consequences of the Battle at Sandy Creek. Neil Thomas tells the story of a young Lieutenant given a commission in the British army by a prominent Kingston merchant, sent on a spying mission by him, then captured and returned to Kingston in an American gun boat under a flag of truce, along with a packet of evidence for his court martial.
But the main narrative frame details the slow recovery of a Canadian journalist from the massacre of his interview subjects on a Peruvian farm at the hands of the guerrilla group Shining Path in 1989. Torn by survivor’s guilt and the shock of a savage beating at the hands of the killers, Alastair MacNeil returns to his grandmother’s home in Kingston, Ontario, where he comes upon a series of documents pertaining to the trial for treason of his ancestor, Lieutenant Cameron MacNeil.
The War of 1812 frame recounts the expedition of Cameron and his men to northern New York State at the request of Kingston merchant Richard Cartwright to collect commercial intelligence. Trade must go on regardless of the presence of armies and gunboats on Lake Ontario, and as Cartwright tells MacNeil, for a trader information is everything.
As Alastair makes his way through his great, great, great, great grandfather’s documents he discovers levels of deceit incomprehensible to his embattled ancestor who carried his belief in the King and Mr. Cartwright all of the way to the gallows.
Through flashbacks to his trauma in Peru, Alastair increasingly leads the reader to conclude that the forces arrayed against Cameron were not unlike those faced by the Peruvian peasants he had encountered: corrupt leaders and insurgents played their games, businessmen made their money, and peasants died grizzly deaths at the hands of the armed men of all three factions.
Author Neil Thomas obviously knows rural Peru. He offers a vivid account of a meal in a peasant’s stone dwelling, explaining how Peruvians freeze and dry potatoes for use as a staple food throughout the year. Another account of a half-day tilling a stony field with a hand tool carries the authority of a writer who has worked the land by hand on several continents. Thomas’s anger toward the Shining Path is evident as well in the dedication where he blames the terrorist group for the death of his environmental journalist friend Barbara d’Achille on May 31, 1989.
So what does the torment of Peruvian peasants in a nameless civil war in the 1980’s have to do with the War of 1812? Thomas infers that both wars were fought largely through the use of terror. It’s a historical fact that Fort Detroit fell to General Brock because its commander was terrified of Tecumseh’s warriors. Tecumseh sided with General Brock and the British because U.S. General Harrison massacred the residents of his home village while the great Indian leader was elsewhere with his men. Harrison later took this proclivity to genocide to Washington as the ninth U.S. President.
Thomas takes the terrors of war and intrigue to another level in the murders of Canadian and American farmers, killed and maimed by partisans in a manner to suggest Indian savagery.
But behind the intrigues and injustices of both story frames lay economic motives and a numbing lack of concern for the rural dwellers and aboriginals who worked, struggled, died, and were easily replaced by their political and economic leaders.
Thomas’s novel is more than a simple work of historical fiction. It is a durable, detailed, and at times comfortable construction, rather like a fine wing chair that invites to you to sit in it.
Available at Amazon.com Books, $14.95 ISBN 978-0-9865914-1-9
The most dangerous man in Canada
May 2, 2012
This week, quite possibly today, Ontario Superior Court Justice Thomas Lederer will hear final arguments and then render a judgement on the disputed vote in last year’s federal election in Etobicoke Centre which went to the Conservative candidate by 26 votes. Well documented voting irregularities, particularly the decision by returning officers to allow voters to cast ballots without showing proper identification, leave it to the judge to decide whether or not to invalidate the election result.
A by-election called because of electoral fraud would uncork the logjam of popular opposition to the Harper regime which has built up over the last six years. As the one who has the potential to release the flood, Judge Lederer is in my estimation the most dangerous man in Canada, though I am eager for the frenzy to begin.
the Walnut Diary 