Rupert's Canadian Cat Rants

What a piece of work are Obama supporters

2008-03-08T12:40:00.000-08:00

Barack Obama may be a nice guy with a hopeful message. But his supporters sure are a piece of work, aren't they?

I knew there was something about the candidate that disturbed me, but I couldn't put my finger on it until I started reading the pro-Obama (or rabidly anti-Hillary) comments on a New York Times site the other day. The comments were attached to an op-ed piece discussing Samantha Power's "Hillary is a monster" remark to The Scotsman. Actually the writer was using the monster incident as a launching pad to reiterate what a low-life Hillary is for angering Obama supporters by suggesting Obama might be a bit of a hypocrite about NAFTA.

Here's the comment that really opened my eyes:

"The way politics is played offends me as a voter. The Clinton’s are saying that perhaps those who voted for Obama are having buyers remorse and somehow Obama put a spell over us.I find it amusing that her voters are blue collar and women over 60,and Obama’s are young and educated.Hello! The future belongs to Obama’s voters! If Obama has more earned delegates and the popular vote and its taken from him behind closed doors and arm twisting,I assure you the people backing him will be outraged! There goes the hope and inspiration of our nation! This would a travesty!"

Yikes! Can we get more ageist and elitist, folks? Not to mention misogynistic. And it's pretty characteristic of the nastiness you get from a lot of Obama's youthful supporters.

Bring on the ice floes for the women over 60! And let's have a few more work houses for those rude, crude working people who don't know how to kiss the boots of their betters! How dare Hillary, that uppidy old woman, stand in the way of history!

They're young, beautiful and exquisitely educated, are they? Well, dress them in leather and give a straight-arm salute.

Obama may be okay. I really don't know. But the surly young bullies buzzing around him give me the willies.

What a piss-off

2008-02-27T19:14:00.000-08:00

Boy!

It's really a piss-off, isn't it, when you write your little heart out...and nobody cares?

Wonder how you keep going.

But you do.

Because it's what you do.

But it's a piss-off nonetheless.

Excluded from My Culture

2007-12-04T19:32:00.000-08:00

Norval Morriseau died today in Toronto at the age of 75.

Morriseau, an Ojibwa from north of Lake Superior in Northern Ontario, was arguably the best artist this country has produced in the past half century, perhaps ever. He was insightful, original and entirely fresh, in a way so few of our artists have been.

As a northerner, I want to exalt in his talent and feel a kinship with his creativity.

Unfortunately, because Morrisseau was an Aboriginal person, my wishes are not to be. I am not a First Nations person. Definitely not Ojibwa. And therefore, not eligible to share in the celebration of Morrisseau's life.

It is an unfortunate fact of this time and place that First Nations people have become exclusionary to the point that even those who love and cherish them and our history together cannot ever partake in their triumphs.

I am not Aboriginal. Therefore, sadly, Norval Morrisseau is nothing to me.

Although we share a history, a great history that speaks of the founding of this country, we do not share a present. They don't want me. Or acknowledge me. I am forever excluded from their life.

So, as far as I'm concerned, Norval Morrisseau might have been Finnish. Or Czech. Or Japanese.

Pity.

I might have liked his work. If I had been allowed to.

It's a Free Country, Isn't It?

2007-10-06T17:31:00.001-07:00

Remember when you were a kid and one of your pals would give you heck for something or other? And you'd say, Well, it's a free country, isn't it?

Well, maybe it used to be, but it sure as hell isn't now.

We've given some unelected, unaccountable, self-righteous busybodies way, way too much power over individuals who can't fight back.

Consider the case of the Whitby mental institution, which has decided to outlaw smoking anywhere on its vast grounds. Under a ban that was put in place last June, the residents have to walk five minutes or so to get off the property so they can stand on a public roadway -- bothering everyone around them -- to have a smoke. They have to hide their cigarettes off-site because they aren't even allowed to have smoking materials at the hospital.

The ban, imposed on the hospital's 330 in-patients, 1,000 staff members, outpatients and visitors, is part of their mission to help patients become healthy and reintegrate into the community, says president and CEO Glenna Raymond. She adds statistics are "staggering" for smoking-related illnesses in the mental health sector.

"We knew it wasn't going to be easy," Raymond says of the no-smoking policy, put in place after months of study.

"But it was the right move to make."

Now, we don't know, but Ms. Raymond may smoke like a chimney when she gets off the hospital grounds and goes home to her family. We don't know, and we don't much care. That's her right. To smoke or to not smoke in the privacy of her own home. She's a free person in a free society and is quite free to make decisions about her health for herself.

So when she says, quite brazenly, that "we knew it wasn't going to be easy," we know she wasn't thinking about herself. What she knew was that it wasn't going to be easy for the poor slobs who live at her facility.

The Whitby facility may have done months of study. It may have the best interests of its patients at heart. The day may come when those same residents may look back and thank Ms. Raymond for making their lives miserable for a few months do that they could go on to reintegrate into the community as clean and god-fearing people. From a health and public policy standpoint, she may, in fact, be one hundred per cent right.

But unless she lives in the old Soviet Union or Mao's China, she is one hundred per cent wrong in forcing her superior wisdom on such vulnerable individuals. In a free society, the rights of adult citizens to act as they judge appropriate within the confines of the law is paramount. It is fundamental to our concept of free society. It is part and parcel of being a citizen.

When the right to be a free adult is taken away, as it sometimes has to be, there has to be a powerful justification and a compelling reason. Compromises must be sought, and the least intrusive route selected. There is no evidence that the Whitby facility tried to mitigate, in any way, the iron fist of its decision. In fact, by banning smoking on its entire, vast property, it is evident that Ms. Raymond and her colleagues tried to make the situation as humiliating as possible for the adults whose behaviour they had decided to change.

Whatever her motive, Ms. Raymond is demonstrating to her patients that she has total power over them -- and that they have none. They are mere children, in need of guidance and direction from their betters. They are certainly not free adults in a free society.

This is wrong. Individual rights are important. They should be respected and defended. Stripping citizens of their dignity and humiliating them in front of their neighbours can never be right. No matter what the studies say.

The Myth of Public Opinion

2007-09-16T09:47:00.000-07:00

One suspects that people who engage in public discourse in Ontario are part of a small, inbred and disconnected group. In fact, on a good day, what passes for public discourse may involve only 20 per cent of the population. And that's on a good day.

And that leaves a big question. What are the rest of us thinking?

The people who engage in public discourse tend to dismiss the rest of us. Who cares what we think? We're probably not thinking anything. At least nothing of importance. If we have thoughts at all, they must mirror the thinking of the 20 per cent who engage in public discourse. It just stands to reason, doesn't it? I mean, they are the makers of opinion and the purveyors of influence. They lead and others follow. That's the way it is, isn't it?

Maybe. Maybe not. There's no way to tell.

Here's the problem.

The people who engage in public discourse are predominately of two groups. The first is a core group composed of white, middle class, urban folk whose ideas, generally speaking, trickle down from dominant international media (New York Times, Wall Street Journal, New Republic, The Economist, Manchester Guardian and so on). This inner group is augmented by an outer ring composed of executive directors or paid flacks for a variety of special interest groups, whose ideas trickle down from international lobby groups (World Wildlife Fund, Greenpeace, the Vatican, the Soviet Union circa 1958, the Chicago group and so forth). Their conversation is essentially international, in the sense that it focuses on the values and misdeeds of the United States of America.

The dialogue takes many twists and turns. It may, at times, pretend to centre on Canadian issues and concerns. It may veer off into interesting lane ways -- are Muslims always victims; should Canada support Israel; is NATO occupying Afghanistan or supporting it; are Europeans racist pigs; should Canadian Muslim women be allowed to wear veils when they vote; should native young people be seen as violent when they move into a guy's house and beat him senseless for objecting? But the Canadian context is just camouflage and the conversation's endgame is always the same -- the moral superiority or bankruptcy of the United States of America.

The conversation is so noisy that it drowns out the voices of the average Joes and Jennys who make up Ontario.

It is extreme, representing the hardline, Cold War positions of those who raise funds or tap government treasuries to advance their causes.

And it is arrogantly contemptuous of those who don't dance on the hard-relief edge of sanity.

So Joe and Jenny, being gentle souls consumed with the daily task of putting food on the table, learn to keep their own counsel, lest they be demonized as rednecks or leftwing loonies or baby killers or worse. They go about their business, hold their tongues and watch the world unfold.

And they think their thoughts. Whatever they may be.

Since no one wants to talk to them, we may never know the thoughts of these Joes and Jennys -- until some event occurs that calls them to the surface.

Remember Meech Lake? That was a stunner for the 20-per-centers, wasn't it?

The people who engage in public discourse should take care. There may be other Meech Lakes lurking out there. Joe and Jenny have opinions, which they may or may not reveal to pollsters. They may not even talk about their real opinions to each other, for fear of embarrassing themselves. With the racket spewing from the yakkety-yak class, individual Joes and Jennys may believe they're completely out of synch with the world around them. So they keep quiet.

But the thoughts are there. You can bet on it.

And those thoughts may not reflect the opinion we see reflected every day in the media of the province.

The Day Law and Order Died

2007-08-27T19:02:00.000-07:00

No one likes to be branded a Cassandra, but....

Maybe it's time to start thinking about how we plan to deal with a province where the old concepts of law and order have broken down.

It's nothing really serious yet, mind. Just little nigglings that give pause to the inquiring mind.

First, Caledonia. A court issues an injunction, the police try but fail to enforce it, the police back down and the court decides to go silent. Do the transgressors win? Good question, eh? Wonder what that says?

Well, fast forward to an empty piece of ground in the wilds of Frontenac County where a group of people have decided to stop a property rights owner from getting access to his property. Nothing special about that these days. Except when the court says they have to remove their protest paraphernalia, they tell the court, respectfully, to screw off. They no longer wish to participate in this thing called the Canadian legal system. The police look the other way. And the court goes silent. Do the transgressors prevail again?

Hmmm.

What next?

Wait for it.

In a world ruled by entropy, the next thing can only be more unpredictability, more uncertainty, less order.

How will we go forward in this risky world created by the overly sensitive courts?

It will be fun to watch, but don't bet on coming out of it in better shape. Disorder always favours the strong and kicks the shit out of the weak.

Public Opinion in Wacko-land

2007-07-10T07:01:00.000-07:00

Just a passing comment, and don't read too much into it, but it's a strange thing that passes for public opinion in some of our sister countries.

The Toronto Star carried a story today about the storming of the Red Mosque in Pakistan. The story itself was depressing enough, but what about this little nugget buried about halfway down the column:

"But a major loss of life at the Red Mosque could further turn public opinion against the president, who already faces mounting opposition for his bungled attempts to fire the country’s chief justice."

Hmmmm. One wonders what it would take to turn public opinion against the extremist group causing the problem. I mean, they've armed themselves to the teeth; fortified their holy place; run about the streets abducting women; held citizens hostage and subjected them to torture; used children as shields; fired on the police; and generally behaved in a lawless, violent and dispicable manner.

Yet all this, apparently, is not enough to turn public opinion against them.

Guess "the public" just figures, Well, yes, they're behaving a bit badly, but at least they're not smokers.

Wacko-land.

Toronto - An Anomaly in War

2007-07-05T19:53:00.000-07:00

Lt. William Turner is an anomaly.

Lt. Turner was killed in Afghanistan, in the service of his county, in April 2006. It seems he was a bit of an odd duck. A former postal worker and marathon runner, he didn't volunteer for duty in Afghanistan until he was in his mid-40s. He was 45 when he died.

Even more unusual in this dirty little pacification exercise, Lt. Turner was from Toronto. Wow! What an oddball!

Of the 66 Canadian servicemen and women who have given their lives so far, it appears Lt. Turner was the only Afghanistan fatality to call Toronto his home town. At least, according to the official records. And perhaps they're wrong. Soldiers move around. It's sometimes hard to know where they came from originally. Maybe several other fallen soldiers came from Toronto, but they got misplaced somehow, in burgs like Lincoln, New Brunswick, or Pilot Mound, Manitoba.

But it's odd, isn't it, that Lt. Turner seems to be the only Torontonian to have made the supreme sacrifice in this current war? With 2.5 million people, a vibrant youth demographic and about 20 per cent of the province's population, you would have expected at least four Torontonians to have lost their lives. At least. Statistically speaking.

But no. Northern Ontario, with a mere seven per cent of the province's population, has donated five lives -- 20 per cent of Ontario's dead. Thunder Bay, a small city with few enough young men to give, has contributed two. Others among the dead have come from places like Port Lambton, Sarnia, London, Bowmanville, Orangeville, Gananoque, Kingston, Hamilton, Owen Sound and Ottawa. Even Richmond Hill, a close neighbour of the Engine of Growth, has given up one of its own.

All kinds of cities and towns across the province -- indeed, across the country -- have send their young men and women to fight and die in Afghanistan.

But Toronto? Not so much.

Maybe that's the way it always is and always has been: That the unassuming young people from quiet places step up to do society's heavy lifting, while their glittering cohorts from the big city go to school, yak their heads off, make contacts and get on with their careers; that poor folks from the periphery, like the Highland Scots of Britain's empire, die in foreign wars, while their urban betters go on with their busy metropolitan lives.

Or maybe Toronto just isn't all that engaged with the country.

Who knows?

But Lt. William Turner was certainly an odd man, bless his 45-year-old heart.

An Ugly Face Unveiled

2007-07-05T17:48:00.000-07:00

Here's something.

According to The Toronto Star, the new Pope is allowing priests to use an old Latin liturgy that prays to the God of Abraham to wipe the veil from the eyes of Jews to let them see the godliness of Jesus.

VATICAN CITY – A prayer for the conversion of the Jews sidelined from Roman Catholic liturgy in the 1960s may stage a surprise comeback on Saturday, when Pope Benedict is expected to allow broader use of the old Latin Mass.

Well, here's something else.

Any religion that badmouths Jews, or seeks to convert them to some new world flakiness -- particularly when that so-called religion feeds off the Jews like blow flies at a dungfest -- is garbage.

It's about time that we fixed a gimlet eye on this kind of anti-Semitism.

What, exactly, is going on here?

A bunch of Johnny-come-lately slackers swoops down to scoop up someone else's religion, gussy it up with some Messiah jazz, then call upon their newfound God to wreak holy hell on the original holders of the religion, who are, in blissful ignorance, just going about their business of being good Jews according to their books as they understand them.

Pu-leese.

Why don't you go get your own religion? Is it too much trouble to think for yourselves? Does it hurt your little Roman heads to puzzle out a Jesus who isn't a Jew? Or a Mohammad who isn't sucking away at the Jewish faith as fast as his little lungs can suck?

People of the Book, be damned. There is but one book, and it belongs to the Jews. And that just chews your socks off, doesn't it?

Both of you derivative religions -- and you know exactly who I mean -- should know this. You can browbeat, denigrate, humiliate and try to eliminate all the Jews on earth, but that won't change the fact that you stole and soiled their religion because you were too damned stupid to think up your own and too damn arrogant to acknowledge the truth of theirs.

The bottom line is that God spoke to them. He did not speak to you.

Kill them or convert them. It will do no good. The fact remains that Abraham was Jewish, and the Book is Jewish.

So get over it and move on. And maybe have another look at that stupid prayer of yours. The truth probably goes the other way, you know. Maybe you should ask the God of Abraham for the insight to understand his people.

And while you're talking to their God, maybe you should ask for forgiveness. While you have the chance.

There is Hope for Canada

2007-07-03T12:41:00.000-07:00

There is hope for Canada.

At least, on the world's sports stage. At least, on one very important corner of the world's sports stage.

I'm talking soccer, the beautiful game, in which we have always been on the outside looking in, with out envious noses pressed against the glass. Well, folks, the times they be a-changing, and our time might be upon us. Our salvation could come from an unlikely, but when you think of it, wholly predictable source.

Seems there's an Aboriginal community, the Sechelt First Nation, on the coast of British Columbia, with an unusual enthusiasm for soccer. And, according to Chief Stan Dixon, the band is "very successful" in soccer. The 700 people who live on the reserve have produced seven teams with players who do very well, says the chief.

This delightful Canadian resource only came to light because a celebrating team of 13 year olds ran into trouble with a few newby RCMP officers. The come-from-away officers apparently ended up macing the youngsters and their coaches because they didn't understand the band's rituals for celebrating their frequent soccer victories.

Never mind! It will all be worked out.

In the meantime, let us rejoice. We've been waiting a long time for Canada's first peoples to find their footing. Now they're finally starting to put it together in sports. And in soccer, thank goodness, where we really need their physical prowess and mental stamina to take us to the next level of international play. Let's face it. More and more of us live in urban comfort. Our urban children are not the tough, resourceful, uncomplaining children we remember from the past. They have a lot of other fish to fry; and many more fries to fish.

But the peoples of the First Nations! Ah! A different story entirely. If the Sechelt are coming forward, can a Maradona or a Pele be far behind?

Wait and watch.

What's wrong with us?

2007-06-28T19:17:00.000-07:00

Years ago, long before most of us were born, people built a railway from one side of the continent to the other. They built it through forests, mountains and deserts, using hand tools. And it ran. And it was successful.

Today, we cannot get it together long enough to build a small park on the edge of the lake.

What's wrong with us?

Years ago, people spent their days inventing things and making them real. They built things, with less money and fewer resources than we would use on a normal day before lunch.

Today, we spend our days goggling celebrities on the internet and playing games. The hottest tickets in the economy are the useless stuff that, in years past, would have absorbed the time of wastrels. Games, gossip, gambling.

What happened to us?

We're like Louis the Fourteenth's uglier siblings. Useless, flighty, self-absorbed parasites. Fops and fusspots. Useless tits, who titter among ourselves about those rude, crude oafs who work for a living with their hands. People who go mano-a-mano with life and sometimes lose. Ridiculous people who make things and build things and turn ideas into useful objects. How declasse of them.

What the hell is wrong with us?

Politics has become truly boring

2006-11-15T19:34:00.001-08:00

Boy. I never thought I'd say this, but I've become profounding bored with politics.

Left...right...centre. They really are all the same. Talking head after talking head, all parotting messages that were written in cubicles by young people who all went to the same school.

You can almost see them scanning the polls, tweaking their positions to fit the party line and spinning out sound bites that will give them a bit of a smart-aleck one-up on the guys on the other side of the legislative chamber.

It's all niche marketing schlock.

Wedge issues, audience fragmentation, focus groups and Boston Group matrices for analyzing the potential reaction of the same old stakeholders. Here's a news flash, folks. Those same old stakeholders will react the same old way they have reacted to every issue for the past decade. They will push their tired old agendas.

And everyone uses the same hacknied language.

For instance, have you noticed that governments don't talk to Canadians or Ontarians or citizens anymore? Everything is aimed at hard-working families. Right, left and centre, those warm, cozy families are everywhere. I guess if you don't define yourself -- every minute of every day -- as part of a family, you're just out of luck aren't you? You don't belong in any party's target audience.

Not to obsess about it, but it seems so...well...tribal and regressive. And there's something Trumanesque about it. Kind of like a looping TV car ad, with statistically average families romping about their SUVs under the blue suburban skies. Perhaps I'm overly sensitive, but isn't there also a whiff of the old patriarchial father-knows-best jive underlying this chatter about hard-working families?

Leaving me to ask, Where did all the adult voters go?

Anyhow, politics has become puerile, over-controlled, uninspired and feckless -- a strange brew of talk radio, the Home Shopping Network and a 1950s sitcom.

Very boring. Yet disturbingly so.

It makes me itch.

Bad Month for the Greenies

2006-10-06T18:35:00.000-07:00

Well, that was a bad month for the greenies, wasn't it?

Spinach, that dark green leafy substance that's supposed to make us healthy, suddenly turned lethal and sickened hundreds of innocent folk with its noxious E. coli germs. An elderly woman and a toddler have been killed by it -- killed by spinach! -- so far. The toddler when he was fed, of all things, a SMOOTHIE made from spinach. A smoothie, for chrissakes. How screamingly correct can you get. And the poor wee thing died from it.

Just an aside -- Who in god's name would feed a spinach smoothie to a two year old? What were those parents thinking?

We had barely assimilated the shock of the toxic spinach when we learned from the venerable David Suzuki foundation that Canadian fruit and vegetables COULD BE laden with pesticides. Could be. Might be. The official stats are pretty suspect. Looks like, anyhow, that there's a distinct possibility that the levels of pesticides on fruits and vegetables are high enough to cause concern. Could very well accumulate in your body and mess with your cell structure. Make you and your progency very, very sick.

Very, very disconcerting.

Then we found out that carrot juice -- 100% organic carrot juice, no less -- is making people sick with botulism. Something about not washing the carrots enough before processing them. Comes from California -- same American state as the spinach.

Add to that the horribly upsetting news that lettuce (also from California, by the way) could also be laden with E. coli. This on top of the usual salmonella that somehow finds its way onto California iceberg. How in hell do you get salmonella on lettuce anyway? What the hell is going on in our field of vegetarian dreams these days?

Maybe it's time to step back from those easy, self-righteous assumptions about the good life and the flaxen goodness of vegetable eating.

Ain't no guarantees in life, it seems, and there ain't no easy path to salvation.

Bad news for the morally superior, eh?

Excuse me for smirking.

Maybe all those little kids with their instinctive dislike for leafy greens, and all those adult males who hankered after meat and potatoes, were on to something. Maybe they were right -- leafy greens DO taste like schleck and they're bad for you too. Rabbit food. With a toxic kick.

So, my green friends, the ball is in your court. What do you say?

I say a little humility goes a long, long way. Maybe you haven't got life all figured out yet.

The day of reckoning...yawn...approaches

2006-08-11T18:39:00.000-07:00

I had hoped I wouldn't be doing this, but I just can't help myself. The truth must be spoken, and it must be spoken quickly, before we all die...of boredom.

It's been a hard task -- incredible really -- who would have thought it possible? -- but the Islamist hordes have managed to pull it off. Against all odds, these sweetly demented men of bile have somehow contrived to make terrorism boring. Tedious even.

Their madness, mayhem, death and screaming-meenie hatred has become about as electrifying as leftover mashed potatoes. Stunningly predictable. Eye-glazingly trite. Devoid of any entertainment value. So derivative and petty it makes your teeth ache.

Stop me if you've heard this one....

Trains, planes and restaurants. Full of people. Blow them up. Hee hee. Body parts flying. Blood everywhere. Parents crying. Wives widowed. Children orphaned. Panic everywhere. Oh the humanity! Oh the terror! Ain't we something! Yahoo! Look at us -- uber alles!

To me, it looks more like a bunch of scruffy misfits. Bent over their workbenches mixing chemicals. Strutting in front of drooling crowds. Muttering malarky to the press. Huddling in dreary rooms, plotting the mass deaths of people who wouldn't know them from a hole in the fabric of the universe.

Day after day. The same whines. The same self-serving drivel. The same old putrid rants.

Call me reactionary, but I find the whole thing boring and empty and stupid. And I really, really wonder about the people who listen to these bearded bozos.

In any event, I've tired of it. Let's turn the page and get on with real life.

The Writer's Burden

2006-08-01T18:43:00.000-07:00

Writers have a very difficult role in Canadian society and, truth be told, they're not doing a very good job at it these days.

The first task of writers is to define the national persona.

Seen one around the Canadian landscape lately?

Exactly.

So who will take up the challenge? Everyone? Anyone?

Margaret Atwood, bless her heart, has already shot her bolt on the Canada of the '60s, '70s and maybe the beginning of the '80s. We thank her. But we really cannot rely on her to define us to ourselves in the new millennium. She has more or less earned a nice retirement from our angst in which she can focus on writing the kind of stuff she wants to write. In other words, this is her shot to go global, in a big way, to earn a place in the literary hierarchy of the English language.

So it's now up to the young, the ballsy, the up-and-comers to take up the challenge and tell us who we are.

Anyone up to it? Please step forward quickly, because we've got very little time to play with here.

Life in a Strange Country

2006-07-06T11:19:00.000-07:00

Canada is a strange country.

As we've been told a million times, it's a country of immigrants. Except for aboriginal peoples , every man jack and jill of us originated from other climes. Even the so-called First Nations came from somewhere else a long time ago. We're still arguing about their place of origin, and God knows what or whom they found when they got here -- they ain't talkin' -- but the truth is that we're all of immigrant stock.

Which is why, I suppose, we are highly tolerant of immigrants (although we weren't, strangely, in years gone by). And why we're so gosh-darn proud of our multicultural approach to life.

Like everything else, being a poster child for the global village has its upside and its downside.

On the upside, it makes the country an interesting and cost-effective place to visit. It allows tourists to travel the globe at bargain-basement prices. Since we love the money we get from tourists, that's a very good thing for us. It also gives us much better restaurants and interesting places to walk on Sunday afternoons.

On the downside, our global village status makes us wonder who we are. If new people keep arriving from different parts of the world, how are we to know what Canada is today? Is it merely the sum of its disparate parts? Or do the parts have to be absorbed somehow into a distinct whole?

There are no easy answers to this moving-target question, leaving us doomed to spend the 21st century trying to decide if Canada is a fancy hotel, as some complain, or a real country with a core identity that may be worth preserving.

You've got to feel sorry for the people who arrived early in the last century, or whose ancestors got here before that. They thought the question of Canada's identity had been settled on the Plains of Abraham. They honestly believed they represented the heart and soul of the Canadian way. For them, Canada had everything to do with their food, their songs, their clothes, their memories and their experiences. It had nothing to do with mosques or butter chicken or tsunamis. They thought they had forged a country out of prairie dirt, and created a new nation at Ypres, the Somme and Dieppe.

Well, they were wrong. But you can't blame them for feeling a little bit ticked to discover that they are nothing but a few more faces in an ever-changing crowd.

This reality of Canada is certainly very uncomfortable for those of us who have nowhere else to go, but it's not an uncommon situation. Remember the Picts? They had a culture -- now they have nothing. The Angles? The Jutes? Wither their national identities?

Or perhaps we could talk to the aboriginal peoples about how it feels to be over-run by people from across the ocean and subsumed into an alien culture. They might have some useful advice for us.

Seems like Canada is not finished yet, that it's still a work in progress. And none of us has a clue what this country will be when it's finally done cooking.

Strange place, though. Strange place.

The Self-righteousness of Garbage

2006-06-15T19:13:00.000-07:00

My local municipality is getting into garbage recycling in a big way.

After months of preparation -- or preconditioning as we call it in the public manipulation business -- they sent around our new green bins. Whoopee!

The green bins, I find, take little more than I usually throw into my backyard composter. A few chicken bones maybe, and some soiled paper products. But otherwise it's the same stuff I put in the big black recepticle behind the potato patch. I compost food and garden waste because I want the humus, not because I'm some kind of morally superior being. There's no way I'm giving my good stuff to the town.

Imagine my disappointment, then, when I received my green bin kit. All this build up about these great new green bins, all for nothing. Now I'm stuck with a couple of plastic recepticles I don't need and a one-inch-thick pile of documents extolling the virtues of recycling.

At the end of the day, all I get out of this over-hyped exercise is half my usual garbage collection. Because, in conjunction with the green bin foofarah, my town has cut real garbage collection down to once every two weeks to encourage us to compost. Instead of four bags a week, which I never use anyway, I can now put out four bags every two weeks. If I go over that limit, I can buy (surprise, surprise -- there's a price attached to these changes!) garbage tags at a very reasonable price.

So...I've got useless bins that I've got to store someplace, reduced services and new charges for services that used to be free. Did I mention that my taxes went up some godawful percentage again this year...yet another godawful increase in a string that goes on and on and on?

There's a survey that goes with the green-bin handouts, too, asking me what I think should be the future of garbage disposal in my prissy little burg. Well...how about you pick up the garbage on time and take it away? And how about you stop bugging me about garbage -- telling me what to put out, how to arrange it, when to put it out and how to process it so that your lazy supplier will lower himself to actually pick it up?

Bad enough that we have to put up this thinly disguised money-grab, but must we also listen to the cheek-puffing moralistic jive that comes with it? To hear them tell it, town fathers have embarked on a crusade to save the world from the evils of indiscriminate garbage disposal. Actually, they've embarked on a crusade to raise revenue, cut costs, reduce service and avoid dealing with any real problems that might cost them votes. Plus ca change, eh?

Municipalities have very few jobs to do, and garbage collection is one of them. So why in God's name do they insist in making such a big freaking deal out of it?

The answer is that garbage has become a big problem because a) it costs money to get rid of it and b) no one can figure out how to impose a new landfill site or incinerator on an unwilling neighbourhood.

Politicians have learned to deflect the problem by simply making e a big moral issue out of it. Garbage is BAD. BAD people make garbage. BAD people should be punished. They guilt honest taxpayers into spending hours processing their own garbage, and they charge taxpayers for the privilege of doing so. As a side benefit, politicians and officals also avoid the cost and effort of finding ways to dispose of garbage.

Sweet!

Well, I'm sick of it. I have too few free hours in the day as it is and I don't want to spend them washing cans and cutting up cardboard boxes. I dislike town councillors who think they can dictate how and when I should set out my garbage, in what quantity and in which containers. I detest the officious, obnoxious tone in their voices, and their Maoist attitude to the whole garbage issue.

For heaven's sake! This is a town. It's not the Queen of England. I pay this town good bucks to deliver a few critical services and I damn well expect to get those services. I don't expect to get haranged and insulted and treated like the second cousin of trailer trash.

So, folks, stop bugging me with your green bins and your garbage tags. Give me something I need. Something that meets my needs instead of yours and actually makes my life better. Or build an incinerator, burn the damn garbage and shut up about it. Do your job. Enough, already.

Wake-up Call to What?

2006-06-08T18:44:00.000-07:00

What can you say about Islamist terrorist groups?

Canadian security has arrested 17 people who, they say, were planning to blow up some stuff in Toronto and, maybe, do some harm to prominent figures. It's unnerving in a way, but not very surprising. Most Canadians have been expecting something along these lines for a few years.

The reactions of the chattering class are worthy of note.

Of course, you have your Islamic apologists.

Professional Muslims are predictably lecturing us on the need to be fair and re-re-re-itering about the beauty of Islam and you can't tar...blah, blah, blah...racist Canadians trying to...blah, blah, blah...how can you charge these people simply because they are devote Muslims and it will unleash yet another racism, discrimination, bias, shallow, not-understanding, stupid non-muslim reaction...blah, blah.

They can be dismissed as people who are lost in their own angst.

And then we have the usual rightwinger suspects with their usual screed about wake up calls, and this shows that Canada is not immune to international blah, blah, blah.

The professional Muslims we can take or leave. Most of us can recite their exposition by heart. Yes, yes. Nicely put. Please take a seat.

But the wake-up-callers are of particular interest. They keep flinging out this cliche. It's a wake-up call. A wake-up call. What the hell are they talking about?

It's time they were called on it.

A wake-up call. As in...a plot to blow up a bunch of places in downtown Toronto is a wake-up call.

Okay. I'm awake. What do I do now?

What precisely do you want me to do?

When you say, Oh, that's a wake-up call, do you actually expect me to rouse myself from my presumed slumber to actually, like, do something? And what pray tell would that be?

Should I now wake up enough to run up and down my street attacking people who look Muslim? Is that what you're saying? Should I throw over-ripe tomatoes at the lads from the Durham Islamic Centre? Is that what you're proposing?

Come out and say it, dervish. Wake-up call, indeed.

Wake up and what?

Smell the coffee?

Attack the Muslims?

Bomb the suk?

Wake up how, exactly?

What are you trying to say?

Fact is, nobody needs waking up and nobody needs your coded call to arms.

Wake-up call, indeed!

Toronto Sportswriters are Sick

2006-05-16T19:20:00.000-07:00

I've long suspected there was something punky about Toronto's sportswriters, but today my suspicions were more than confirmed. Boomer Wells was right about these guys. With a few notable exceptions, they are nothing but nasty hot air balloons filled with crap.

Dave Feschuk, a guy who's never seen a great player he didn't want to trade away, revealed himself as a shallow, spiteful, smarmy bag of dirt today. In a Toronto Star rant entitled NHL and the Yawn Factor, tough-talkin' Dave compared the ho-hum quality of the Leafless NHL playoffs to other yawn-inducing sports. Oddly, all his examples of yawn-inducing sports involved women and girls.

"You'd like to think," Dave smirked, "hockey is bigger than, if not women's gymnastics, than women's basketball."

He goes on to spew his ideological stomach contents on our shoes:

"Watching women run layups is considerably less exciting than watching someone walk dogs."

Ho! Hoo! Excuse me?

I haven't heard such gonad-sucking crap since the '80s, when I had to share space with a knuckle-dragging Sudbury Star sports editor who refused to run ringette or figure skating news because "they aren't real sports."

So, does Dave think the NHL is boring because there are women's sports on TV? Or because women play basketball? Or is he pissed with Americans because they're such whoosies that they let the little women distract them from important things -- like watching real men play a real sport? What particular hate is he trying to monger here?

When I was a kid, I loved hockey. I watched it. I played it. I actually played on a team that won the Canadian Senior Women's Championship. But, at some point in the past decades, I stopped watching hockey or caring about it. I now prefer baseball, basketball, soccer, even rugby. I used to wonder why. Why do I no longer care about a game that used to play such a big part of my life?

I wonder no more.

NHL hockey in Toronto, as represented by guys like Dave Feschuk, is a game played by white male jerks for other white male jerks. They smirk a lot. They like to belch and fart and make jokes about the rest of us. They probably make rude sounds with their armpits. They are extremely unattractive to people who live in this century.

They sicken everything they drip on, and they're infecting other professional sports in Toronto.

Sit in the bleachers at a Jays game and you'll make an unpleasant acquaintance with some of their friends. Frat boys filled with too much beer, too little respect for the game and way too good an opinion of themselves. They'd like to turn the Jays into a good old boy team with no place for talented black or Latino players. They've sucked the life out of the Raptors by riding talent out of town. They are racist, sexist, ignorant and ugly.

If Dave and his pals are not dragged out into the streets and flogged, they will eventually destroy professional sports in Toronto. Talented black and Latino players will feel uncomfortable here. No one with self-respect will want to play here.

A Little Muscular Optimism Please

2006-05-11T03:03:00.000-07:00

Life is good.

We have food on the table, the sun in the sky, birds in the trees and an infinite array of possibilities stretching out before us.

There is much to do, folks, to make the world better.

And we are just the folks to do it.

We are healthy, well-educated, motivated and creative. We should be brimming with piss and vinegar. With a little bit of effort, we can have some exciting ideas. With a bit more effort, we can begin to implement them.

Banish the neuroses. Chase away the angst. Kick aside the moral paralysis. Trust in whatever god you follow and have a little faith in the future of this tough, resilient home planet of ours.

All we need is a dollop of confidence and a smack of muscular optimism.

So let's roll up the sleeves and dig in.

Fixing the Fiscal Imbalance

2006-04-06T18:43:00.000-07:00

In Canada, we have this thing called a fiscal imbalance between the federal government and the provinces. The feds are rolling in money. Some of the provinces -- the more vocal among them -- are pinching pennies to keep the home fires burning.

It's driving us to distraction. We don't know what to do about it.

Well, I have an idea.

Let's stick a fork in the provinces and draw up something more appropriate for the modern age.

Look at them. They're all over the map.

You have your Prince Edward Island, which is approximately the size of a postage stamp with the population of a small city. Then you have your Ontario, which has the population of a mid-size nation and the geography of Asia Minor.

It is no longer fair, equitable or even close to workable.

This may have worked back in colonial days, when the overseers from England ran the joint out of their fancy homes in Toronto.

Who cared what the provinces looked like on a map? Nobody lived "out there" but Indians, French-speaking half-breeds, Ukranian farmers and a few outlaw prospectors. You could easily sit in downtown Toronto, sipping tea and eating biscuits, while you enacted laws that regulated the beaver harvest by Cree trappers at the edges of the known universe. It was good fun and excellent training for upper-crust lads who would go on to rule Britannia in more interesting climes.

But these times are not those times.

The provinces, as they were constituted by the founding elites, are now dysfunctional. It's time they were erased, the boundaries redrawn and the whole thing rethought.

Canada would do quite nicely with one strong central government and a bunch of empowered muncipal governments. Perhaps we could look at some kind of regional administrative units, but they should certainly make geographical and political sense. People should be able to travel from one side of them to the other without having to book the dog into the kennel and redirect their mail.

Today, in the 21st century, the provinces do nothing but sop up limited resources, generate blowhard politicians and get up everyone's nose. They govern nothing but empty spaces, then contrive to lord it over the "lower tier" towns and cities that look after the real issues where real people live and work.

Apart from oddballs in Quebec, no sane person ever went to war for a province. No one ever died under a provincial flag or served in a provincial army. No one stands for their anthems or gets dewy eyed about their triumphs at the Olympics. They are nothing but colonial-era administrative districts. They cost us an arm and a leg. They spend their days doing mischief. And they hold back the development of our country.

The fiscal imbalance -- if it exists -- can be easily fixed. Just put a fork in these anachronistic provinces and let's get on with building a country.

Can We Get A Piece of This?

2006-03-08T18:32:00.000-08:00

I see that the U.S. state of South Dakota has decided to plunge into national politics and take a run at Roe vs Wade. (You can read the Washington Post article if you don't believe me.) In other words, some folks in this flyblown state have decided to unravel the rights of more than 150 million of their fellow citizens and impose their Talibanic views on the greater society.

South Dakota -- as represented by its state legislature and illustrious governor -- has decided to outlaw abortion except in cases where the woman's life is in danger. Legislators did so in full knowledge that their decision tweaks the nose of a Supreme Court decision from the 1970s. They adamently reject that decision, and with it the concept that a woman could have some jurisdiction over her own body.

South Dakotans, bless their hearts, are willing to fight the Supreme Court all the way to the Supreme Court. And they feel chuffed about their chances because the U.S. president has just stacked the Supreme Court with a couple of "conservative" justices who might be expected to support the jewel of the American middling west in its puritanical frenzy.

If everything goes according to plan, South Dakota may realize its dream of dictating its wet-dream morals to the huddled masses of New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Seattle, Miami and Phoenix.

What on earth is South Dakota anyway? It is a rough collection of about 760,000 people. Seven hundred and sixty thousand. About the size as a respectable city in more civilized climes.

It's also about the same population as Northern Ontario which, if you're following my rambling rants, has exactly no -- zero, nada, rien, jamais -- expression of its popular will. No legislature to launch neo-con adventures. No regional body to challenge anyone's court. Not even an appointed governor. Not even an appointed overseer with a panel of local advisors, something that was generally granted by oldtime colonial rulers.

According to opinion polls, the people of South Dakota are evenly split on the their anti-abortion legislation. At best, counting all the babes in arms and drooling seniors, fewer than 400,000 residents of South Dakota actually support the drive to strike down an American woman's right to choose.

Amazing!

Contrast that with Northern Ontario.

Even in its wildest hallucinations, Northern Ontario couldn't impose its will on Fenelon Falls, let alone dictate the morality of the nation. It can't even impose a dog licence bylaw on its own citizens. Technically speaking, it doesn't even have citizens. It just sits there like a big, mute, ineffectual moron, waiting for a kind voice from its provincial master, while the feisty citizens of South Dakota wallow in their democracy like pigs in a mudhole.

I'm beginning to wonder when the Americans will start exporting their brand of democracy up here.

Just think what the people of Northern Ontario could do with an ittybitty slice of good old American-style democracy. We wouldn't have to rewrite the morality of the nation or force women to don burkas. Maybe just a little control over land-use planning...or economic development...or dog licensing bylaws.

Global Migration

2006-03-04T11:31:00.000-08:00

I was reading the New York Times today and I saw that Vermont is experiencing an exodus of young people.

The state is worried because a) it's bad for your image if you're losing population and b) there are fewer working people to pay for the services so beloved by the old folks at home.

Vermont, of course, is not alone. Lots of places at the periphery (you are so not at the centre of the universe, baby) have the same problem. Russia, Britain, the U.S., Africa, China -- all over the world, there's a perceptible shift in population from the rural hinterland to the urban centres.

It made me think of my beloved Northern Ontario, which has been wracked by youth out-migration for the last two decades.

Here's the difference, though. And it's an interesting one.

Vermont can take action to try to stem the tide of its young people. It can apply its ingenuity. It can call upon its people to rally 'round the cause. It can try its damnedness to stem the outflow. It may fail. But at least it can try.

Northern Ontario can do nothing but watch the lifeblood of its future slip away.

Vermont, you see, is a state. It has a governor. And a state legislature. And a voice in federal Congress and Senate. It has State Power.

With a population of 620,000 people. Count 'em. Six hundred and twenty thousand.

Northern Ontario, with a population of close to 800,000, has nothing. Even though it has way more people than little Vermont, it has no government to look out for it. Not even close to a state legislature. It has nothing. It has no counties. Even though it has districts, it has no district governments. It has no regional governments beyond municipalities. It has nothing but municipalities and the provincial government.

It is a big (800,000 square kilometres), sorry, democratic wasteland. No voice, no power, no nothing.

It can only sit, watch and hope that the provincial legislature in far-off Toronto -- which has problems of too many people in too small an area -- puts aside some time one day to consider the problems of the distant north.

About as likely as the wealthy West doing more than lip-service about the problems of Africa.

Lucky Vermont.

Poor Northern Ontario.

How sad.

Another democratic deficit.

Gum-Flapping About Democracy

2006-02-25T18:36:00.000-08:00

I'm on a democracy jag - I guess because there is so much gum-flapping about democracy in the news these days. Maybe it's the cartoon fiasco that's brought it to top of mind. Or the recent federal election here that allowed us peons to flex our democratic muscles a bit.

Whatever the reason, democracy is on my mind. And I must say I'm not happy with the state of it. Not happy at all. In fact, I am disgruntled.

Here in Canada, a succession of governments has come to office pledging to reduce the "democratic deficit" in our political institutions. So far, they've done nothing but undermine the little bit of democracy we have. Oh, they've fiddled with election dates and talked about looking at new voting systems. Sounds good. In the meantime, however, they've cut down on the actually elections we can vote in, chopped the positions we can vote for and created a slew of new appointed positions. Less voting, fewer positions to vote for and more political appointees running our lives. How does that reduce the democratic deficit?

You want some examples?

This week, the Ontario government decided our municipal politicians should get four-year terms instead of three. The reason is specious. I won't dignify it by repeating it here. But just a few years ago, municipal politicians served two-year terms. Now they will only face the voters every four years. Hooray! We have just cut local democracy in half.

This same provincial government has established local health networks to oversee the financing and distribution of regional health care. Are these new health care ubermeisters elected? You've got to be kidding. They are, of course, appointed. By the provincial government. How's that for renewing democracy?

Something closer to home?

Here in Durham Region, we pay megabucks to the guy who runs the region. He not elected. He's selected by the mayors and uber-councillors who make up regional council. I don't even know who he is. Well, some of the mayors thought it might be nice to let people vote for the top political position for a change. Make them feel like grown-up citizens and all. I mean, it's not the 1970s anymore is it? Surely we've grown past a time when a paternalistic province had to appoint our leaders for us. Forget about it. Heck, we can't even hold a referendum to ask voters if they would like the chance to elect the overpaid regional boss. Apparently you can vote for a dogcatcher and a hydro commissioner, but never, ever for the head honcho.

And on it goes.

Appointees. Smaller councils with bigger jurisdictions. Fewer elections. Nothing but a lot of gum-flapping about renewed democracy, while the real thing recedes into distant memory. The people who run things are talking the talk of democracy as they walk smartly in the opposite direction.

Jeesh! Will the Family Compact ever leave this building?

A cat's view of democracy

2006-02-11T12:52:00.000-08:00

As you know, cats are, by nature, extreme democrats. If you share your home with a cat, you will know what I mean.

So I can look at the world (or at least the Canadian part of it) from a unique perspective. And here's what I see.

Politicians love democracy when they are in opposition, running for office or talking about some other country. When they get into power, they detest democracy. They detest democracy because it is messy and impossible.

It is messy because it shoots off in all directions, all the time, on all issues.

It is impossible because it leaves politicians with no one to deal with.

That's why we have what might be called "stakeholder" democracy -- or democracy that is conducted by making deals with representatives of various interest groups. You may call these stakeholder groups by other names -- special interests, lobby groups, whatever. But the fact is that politicians need these groups, seek them out, even set them up, in order to balance the messy, contradictory wishes of a factious populace.

This approach has worked moderately well for the past few decades, although voter participation has dropped off the charts. But it is reaching the end of its shelf life. Everyone knows it, but no one knows what to do about it.

The problem is this. Back in the day after the Last Great War, people could easily be lumped into identifiable groups. If you wanted to know what moderate Christians thought of anything, you talked to officials in the United, Anglican or soft-line Catholic churches. These people had big flocks. Together they covered most of the "interest" groups you cared about. And the people who belonged to these groups basically toed the line as far as thinking went. Same with average families -- most of them belonged to a small world of organizations, participated in similar activities and listened to the same influence peddlers. So you could easily gauge the feelings of, say, small-town merchants or parents with boys in Little League.

In more recent times, politicians could count on their identified stakeholder groups. Environmental groups spoke for people who cared about the environment. The Catholic Youth League reflected the opinions of young Catholics. The Nurses Association spoke for nurses; and the Teachers Union for teachers.

As marketing people now understand, that well-ordered world is vanishing. And it will be even longer goner in the years ahead.

So how do you practice stakeholder democracy in a 500-channel universe? In a world where most young people don't join officially recognized groups? In an environment where the moderator of the United Church hasn't got a clue what his or her flock thinks about anything? Where, in fact, most of the populace isn't part of anyone's "flock"? Where interest groups are beginning to represent a smaller and ever-shifting piece of the populace pie?

In Canada, David Emerson has just demonstrated that even political labels are more or less meaningless as indicators of people's beliefs. There may be an ideological foundation to Mr. Emerson's behaviour, but it has little to do with democracy or representative government or giving voice to the people.

Where do we go from here? The chaos of every voice for itself? Or the imposed order of "managed" governance, similar to shareholder-diddling practices we see in the corporate world? The first may produce greater vitality, a lively body politic and higher turnouts at the polls, but it will most certainly lead to messy government. The second would mean slow death for our democratic dreams.

I have no faith in Canadian leaders to make the democratic choice. This land of "peace, order and good government" has always chosen order over vitality; a civil face over a bawdy voice. Entrenched interests will always prevail. And the people, schooled as they are in their role, always defer to their betters.

A shame that. People should be more like cats.

Clash of Civilizations Ignited by...Cartoons?

2006-02-08T19:23:00.000-08:00

At one point in my life, I thought I might be a cartoonist. No more. It's too dangerous.

Maybe I'll be a writer instead.

Oh, wait a minute. That seems to be pretty dangerous too. Remember that poor guy? What was his name? Salmon Rashday or something? Bunch of people wanted to cut his head off, as I recall. Well, maybe being a writer is a bit dangerous.

Maybe a film-maker. That would be cool.

But wait. What about that guy who was related to the artist who cut his own ear off? Theo something? Van Gogh or something? Oh, yeah. Pretty dangerous stuff that.

Guess I'll go work in a factory. That should be okay. If it's okay with you, Mr. Imam.

Sure glad I live in a free country.

Enough Already

2006-02-04T11:08:00.000-08:00

Wow! It's a tough slog trying to have deep thoughts these days.

I don't know about you folks, but I'm finding the world rather underwhelming and boring. Same old, same old just about everywhere you look. Sports? Politics? The news? Nothing but disappointment, reruns and crazy behaviour by really odd people. What's a young cat to do for fun and excitement? Does anyone out there have anything interesting and fresh to say about anything?

No?

Oh, well.

In a negative vein then, here's a few things I don't want to hear any more about for a while:

The Middle East, including Palestine and its residents, Israel, Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan. Enough already. You have occupied the centre of the news universe for far too long.
Various ethnic groups and their longstanding grievances against all and sundry. The Middle Ages were tough on all of us. Get over it.
Toronto's economic woes. Spring must be coming...Toronto is facing yet another fiscal crisis and must be bailed out immediately by senior governments. Guess that's what happens when you don't raise property taxes for years, but you keep adding top-drawer services that other municipalities only dream about. Ya kinda run a deficit.
Education. Yes, yes. Blah, blah.
Health care. One of the healthiest populations the world has ever seen is obsessed with illness, disease, waiting lists and grumpy doctors. What's that about?
Hard-working families. Is this political code for a new kind of tribal unit or something? Can we give it a rest and speak to people as individual adults who have value in themselves?
More negative bilge from Toronto's inept sports reporters. These guys report on sports as if they were working the floor at the TSX. Trade this; trade that. I hate to admit it, but Boomer was bang on. Every once in a while, can we talk about the game, guys?

I was going comment on the current controversy over Danish cartoons and the world of Islam, but I thought better of it. Not to suggest there's any intimidation or bullying out there, but I'm just not up for death threats and hate mail right now. So those who are out trolling for targets can take their putrid bag of "justice, brotherhood and love" somewhere else.

Have a good day!

New Year, New Thoughts

2006-01-07T18:42:00.000-08:00

Whew! Where have I been for the past month and a half? Cooking turkeys, I guess. Or eating them.

In any event, it's a new year and a good time for a new outlook. Enough of that heavy, grumpy stuff. Let's get light and frothy. You only live once, you know. (I'm another story.)

Say...have you been following all that stuff about people disappearing from cruise ships lately? Weird, eh? What's that about?

According to a reporter from a Florida publication, there have been at least a dozen mysterious disappearances from reputable cruise ships over the past six years. By that, of course, we mean a dozen Americans or reasonable facsimiles (there are a few Canadians among the missing - they get on the list, I think, because they left from U.S. ports). Check it out at http://www.cadenhead.org/workbench/news/2824/congress-studies-cruise-ship-disappearances

Imagine how many missing people there would be if we counted the non-Americans/reasonable facsimiles.

So what's happening here? Are they falling? Jumping? Being pushed? Participating in an unusually creative insurance scam? Trying to divert the attention of Congress from messy scandals involving sleazy lobbyists? All of the above and more? Speaking of Congress, some subcommittees are delving into the spat of disappearances http://travel2.nytimes.com/2006/01/05/nyregion/05cruise.html in the hopes of discovering what has gone amiss.

Whatever the answer, it's a fascinating situation. Small potatoes, maybe, in a general landscape of death and destruction, but still an engaging puzzle. And it's guaranteed to cast a bit of a pall over the booming cruise business.

Can't wait to see how it comes out.

So It Goes

2005-11-21T19:36:00.000-08:00

Well, I haven't written a new post for a good long while, and I'll tell you why.

I'm distraught.

Nice word that. Distraught.

Goes well with disgruntled, distempered and discombobulated.

Dis. Dis. Dat. Dat.

It's like Morse code for piss off.

Don't get me wrong...or, as we say in this age of George Bush and his cronies, Make No Mistake About It...I still have great faith in my own opinions.

It's just that I've lost faith in yours.

See - I don't think you have anything to say that's worth listening to. If you could even goose yourselves to put your so-called opinions into writing. Too much trouble, eh? Too much of that hard thinking stuff. We much prefer the old knee-jerk quote of the latest rag-mag trash right-wing fulmigator, eh?

Of course, you could prove me wrong. But I don't think that will happen.

Do you?

Time passes

2005-10-30T09:29:00.000-08:00

Ah, me. Time passes, and no one hears.

I wonder if other bloggers feel this pain.

I write novels no one reads; pen blogs no one looks at.

So much of my time on this earth is, and has been, absorbed by what must be accounted as useless endeavour.

Do I waste my life?

Has my time here been without significance?

What is happening here? How can I understand the dynamic?

Is there anybody out there?

Or am I, at last, reduced to Descartes' formula. I think, therefore I am. But I have no idea about you.

Did I make you up? Is this discourse in an echo chamber? Did you all die several light years ago? Am I alone in this universe?

Fall is such a difficult season for cats, isn't it? Too much rain, too much gloomy weather and too few mice.

Ah, me.

Thanks Linda Johnson

2005-09-14T18:19:00.000-07:00

Linda Johnson is a spammer.

In my last post, I told you how a poor baby squirrel had fallen out of the tree in my front yard. I asked for advice on how to save the little critter. Linda suggested he or she should take advantage of a great music swapping site. She gave instructions.

Such is life in the American 21st century.

I'm glad to report that the baby squirrel survived without benefit of Linda's advice. Thanks, Linda. Next time I get an ingrown toenail, I'll know where to go.

Did you notice that Linda and her ilk were out in the thousands a couple of weeks ago, oozing their deaf-mute, self-serving messages all over those poor people begging for help on the U.S. Gulf coast? It was certainly something to see. America in all its glory, naked and splayed for all of us non-mericans to gaze upon and wonder at.

Shock and awe, baby. Shock and awe.

Anyhow, my little squirrel survived without need of Linda's macabre American perkiness.

What in hell do they teach their children in school?

Linda Johnson. Good one.

Help a baby squirrel

2005-09-10T21:36:00.000-07:00

I have a baby squirrel in a shoebox on my front porch, and I don't know what to do about it.

The poor critter fell out of the tree on my front yard. It's the second one that has come down in the past week. The first died. I would like that not to happen to this one.

Any ideas?

Suggestions are most welcome.

Communications people, please take note

2005-09-10T11:24:00.000-07:00

One thing becomes perfectly clear from the recent bad experience in New Orleans. U.S. governments can no longer communicate their way out of a paper bag.

What's the problem?

Well, here's my top-of-mind thought about it.

For the past few years, communications professionals have focused their energies on spinning and weaving and strategizing and manipulating public opinion. They've absorbed the lessons of marketing to such a point that all they talk about these days is messaging and positioning. They craft endless communications plans and strategies in which they worry about key stakeholders, and how these stakeholders will react to their messages. How will the media play the story? What will be the picture of the day? What will the few influential people think, and how will they respond to the event or announcement?

It's all highly political.

How will we look? What will people say? How can we get their attention off the downside and focused on the positive?

There is very little thought put into effective communication of substantive content. There is absolutely no thought given to increasing citizens' understanding and awareness of subjects that are important to them.

In fact, citizens barely exist at all, except as sort of a dimly perceived Greek chorus in their shrivelled roles as voters and taxpayers.

An informed electorate? Surely you jest. A manipulated, spun and strategically positioned electorate would be more like it.

Call me naive if you wish, but I believe this is inappropriate behaviour from a supposedly impartial civil service that receives its paycheques from the public - not from whatever political party that may be in power at this particular time.

My prescription for the problems that assailed the New Orleans experience? Fire all those government communications people -- the old whores -- who have forgotten they serve the public. Hire talented folks who are focused on providing accurate, relevant information to the public, in a form the public can understand and act upon. Constantly remind them that it is the public who pays their salaries, not the gang of politicos who happen to be in office that day.

And for God's sake, let's recall that effective communications is a fundamental duty of government. It has nothing to do with making the government look good. And it's sure as hell not another form of marketing.

2005-08-20T12:41:00.000-07:00

This is my good friend Rusty, hunting frogs at her cottage.

Some Companies Aren't Fit to Work For

2005-08-14T09:44:00.000-07:00

A job-search column in a big city daily recently threw some light on an unpleasant aspect of corporate behaviour.

The column quoted a man who has been searching for work for the past five years. After countless applications, interviews and follow-up meetings, his impression of modern corporate Canada could be summed up in a few words -- bad manners, arrogance and lack of respect for job applicants.

This man, a professional who had been downsized out of a middle management position, was not impressed with the professionalism of today's employer.

Sour grapes? Maybe. But this one man's story can be, and has been, repeated hundreds of times by job seekers who have been shocked to see the ugly underbelly of corporate culture.

The truth is that these business bullies have had it their own way for far too long.

When they advertise a job vacancy, they fully expect half the population to apply. They ask for the moon, pay next to nothing and fine-tune their expectations to the point of absurdity. They have the pick of the crop. They demand the right to cull the herd, snap up the prime beef and throw the stragglers to the wolves. Tough luck for stragglers.

Sure you've got a PhD in astrophysics; you're perfectly bilingual; you were widget salesman of the year for five years running; and you're willing to work around the clock for peanuts. But your computer skills are confined to MSWord, Excel and PageMaker. We want someone with WordPerfect, Lotus and Quark Express.

Sorry. Drop dead. Next.

Should you be lucky enough to get hired by one of these bozo firms, you'll be treated like an escapee from Devil's Island. You'll be monitored, corrected, humiliated and distrusted. You will never, ever be invited to use the skills for which you were hired. You will lanquish and shrivel.

That's if you're fortunate enough to stick with the company. Chances are you'll be thrown out on your ear during the next corporate bloodletting.

Respect for job applicants and employees? You've got to be kidding. Welcome to the global marketplace.

There's only one answer to these steroid-sucking bosses -- refuse to work for them. In fact, it's debatable whether anyone over the age of 35 should even consider taking a job with one of these mad dogs in suits. If we have to become a nation of shopkeepers to gain respect as human beings, then so be it. A nation of self-employed shopkeepers we should become. Our self-esteem requires it. Democracy demands it.

Our parents and grandparents invested a lot of sweat and blood so that we could be a generation of well-educated, self-reliant, independent people. They endured prairie winters in sod houses, gambled with fate in the stinking holds of trans-Atlantic ships, fought vicious wars to show that each human life has dignity and meaning.

That is the heart and soul of the democracy they bequeathed to us.

As human beings and as workers we deserve better than corporate Canada has been giving us. As talented, resourceful people, we can do better.

All we have to do is suck up our courage and take a chance on ourselves. Start your own business; do what you do best; make use of the skills and talents God gave you. Don't spend your life trembling in fear, wondering whether you'll get an interivew, will he/she like you, will you still have a job next week.

Just say no to the business bully-boys.

Of Age and Negativity and Moving Forward to the Future

2005-07-03T10:17:00.000-07:00

There's a bad side to getting older.

Well, there are a lot of bad sides. But there is one particular bad side that we should concern ourselves with as a matter of public policy. And that is the unfortunate fact that people become more negative and pessimistic as they age.

And why not? As you reach your fifth, six, seventh, eighth decades, your options begin to narrow down. Looking ahead starts to get a bit frightening, doesn't it? I mean, really, how can you be an optimist when all you've got to look forward to is declining strength, receding powers and endless evenings of cribbage in the nursing home rec room? And that's the good news. The bad news doesn't bear thinking about. But it lurks in the the back of the minds of most people who are, as we say, getting up there in age. So it's really hard to be a sunny optimist.

So what, you ask. What's that got to do with the price of tea in China? How does that have anything to do with public policy?

It has this. We have to recognize the fact that we, as a nation, are getting older. Our leaders are older. Our peers are older. We are older. The boomers, who have for so long have annoyed the rest of the country with our overbearing thoughts and styles and wishes, are getting older. We are losing our blush of optimism. We risk drifting into the negativity and naysaying of the aged.

As a country, we have to understand that much of the carping and whining that goes on around here has a great deal to do with the fact that a lot of us are getting older. We carp and whine for the same reason that babies cry. It is natural and normal for people our age. We are becoming grumpy old men and women.

So - recognizing that we're dealing with an aging population that is given to carping and whining and wanting to live in the past -- we have to make allowance for the aging of boomers and build that understanding into the way we formulate our public policy.

Somehow, in the face of massive negativity and naysaying, we have to find a way to be publicly optimistic. We have to find a way to believe in a future that many of our citizens find unacceptable -- simply because they find all futures unacceptable. We must acknowledge that there is no way to please a large number of our people. They want time to stop, to run backwards. We cannot do that.

We must go forward or die. We must be optimistic. We must want to take chances, to change things, to risk all. We cannot go backward to a better time or stay frozen in this moment forever.

This is not easy. Boomers are by nature busy and active people. They are used to setting the tone, pushing the agenda and occupying the high ground. They have dominated the landscape for so long, that they will have difficulty looking themselves in the eye and admitting that some of the things they're feeling right now are nothing more than the natural fears of aging human beings.

No, Chicken Little. The sky is not falling. We have not gone to Hell in a handbasket. There are no boogiemen under the bed or Commies in the closet. We are neither awash in garbage nor choking on smog. Our children are not all crack-crazed layabouts. Eating an all-fruit diet will not make us immortal, nor will drinking eight glasses of water a day make us into gods.

Life goes on. Time passes. We will get old and die.

This is hard thing for boomers, to admit that there will be a world when we are gone -- a world that does not have us as its centre. And to recognize that perhaps, heresy of heresies, the world that follows us might be a better world that the one we, in our infinite wisdom, have created.

Somehow, as a society, we must reach down beneath the scum of age to rediscover ourselves as an optimic, forward-looking and adventurous people. We must try new things, think new thoughts, stop being afraid of our shadows.

From a public policy perspective, we have to understand that our population is getting old, and that old people have, by nature, certain concerns - security of person, good health care, preservation of wealth, social stability, peace and quiet, low interest rates, affordable property taxes, cheap gasoline and reliable mail delivery. All good things in themselves, but stifling if they are the only things a society cares about.

That may have been the big lesson of the Live 8 concerts on Saturday. Young people had a great time complaining about the prevalence of geezers - lord knows the Toronto Star was full enough of snippy little comments from the kids - but the geezers showed us something of value.

They were out there with their optimism on their sleeves and their commitment to the future flying high. Geezers all (or most of them), they found a way to tap into a sense of purpose and optimism that can brush aside the gripy, self-absorbed concerns of the old.

As an aging country, we have to do the same.

In our public policies, we need to recapture a sense of adventure and optimism. We need to move forward, to try new things, to be willing to risk all for a greater prize.

Acknowledging that we are getting older is half the battle.

Now we have to find a way to stop sounding and acting like a bunch grumpy old men and women.

Happy Canada Day to you too.

Self-interest? What self-interest?

2005-06-30T08:20:00.000-07:00

We've got an organization here in Canada that other nations would die for. These good folks are an endless source of amusement and fun. They make us laugh. They make us cry. And this time, they've got us rolling in the aisles in helpless glee.

Omigod, send in the clowns!

Spiffily named "The Canadian Council of Chief Executives" (shouldn't they have gone for something more descriptive, like Really Pompous Rich Guys?), this group unfailingly advances the most bizarre and astounding ideas. They're like the Blue Men of Business.

Get this!

The Chiefs' latest too-public project is castigating the governing party for "trying to cling to power" by carrying through on some promises it made during the last election campaign. You have to remember this is a minority government that remains in office by forming alliances with other parties. When the Conservatives pulled their support for the government's proposed budget last spring, the ruling Liberals, of necessity, went hunting for new friends and found them in the ranks of the soft-socialist New Democratic Party. They made a deal, which is how things work in a minority parliament. It just happens that the deal echoes the things they promised in the last election. So they're really making a deal to do some of the things they promised to do.

Big deal, eh?

Well, the Chiefs don't like it. In fact, they're in a holy snit. They can't understand why the revamped Liberal budget doesn't reflect their Conservative values. Apparently they've never heard of no tickee, no washee. But the Chiefs like Conservatives. They want Conservative policies. They like rigid fiscal responsibility that includes tax cuts for their 150 stinkingly rich members and diddlysquat for the rest of us. That is the One Best Way for this country, isn't it? Why aren't we doing what they want? It's not right! It's not fair!

Don't get them wrong. They are men of the world. They know you've got to SAY things so people will vote for you and make you the government. But doesn't mean you should actually DO those things. You should do what the Chiefs want, because they are very rich and very powerful, and they know best.

Like this.

The Chiefs know that the very best thing for this second-rate country is something called Deep Integration with the U.S. economy. It is the very best thing. A continental economy is just the ticket for us. Never mind that the Americans don't want it, aren't pursuing it and wouldn't honour it if we got it. We'll just go ahead and do it anyway, shall we? Look how well it worked in softwood lumber. Oops. Well, what about our beautiful continental economy in beef? Oh, oops again. Wheat? Potatoes? The film industry? Wanna go for another? Wanna see how the Americans react to a downturn in their auto industry? Think they'll go after the Koreans and Japanese, who will actually bite back if attacked? Think again. These are people who have never seen an Evil Empire they couldn't back away from. But they've done a hell of a lot of damage to sleepy backwaters like Vietnam, Grenada, Afghanistan and Iraq. Fair fight? Level playing field? Surely you jest!

Canada - the sleepy backwater of North America. Be warned, folks. The Hollywood North retaliation is just a warm-up. Softwood lumber, a flexing of the muscles. The beef ban, a mere exercise to get the blood flowing. GM is making deep cuts to its States-side workforces and we just won a shiny new Toyota plant. The bombs are in the bays, boys, and the jet engines are gunning! Wait for it!

Deep Integration. Ha-ha! Deep Doo-doo is more like it.

Anyhow, these Chiefs are pretty funny guys. In the world of gratuitous, self-serving advice, they kinda take the cake.

These clowns are pretty free with their advice to Canadians, but here's what I'd like to see from them. I would like to see them do something tangible for this country for a change. I want big-time philanthropy. I want funding for inner city kids, museums, art galleries, bright scientists, research labs and gardens, and a payback for all those hard-scrabble northern and rural towns that gave rise to the fortunes that sustain so many of these "leading" corporations.

I would like NOT to be suspicious of the Chiefs' motives. I'd like to have some confidence that they are NOT pushing schemes devised to fill their own pockets or win promotions to Atlanta. I would like them to halt the University of Chicago syncophanteries and put a lid on the sucking up to Washington and New York. In short, I would like them to stop advancing the interests of foreign nationals, gussied up as the considered advice of "concerned" Canadians.

Stop making me laugh, guys. There's a word for you and your half-baked schemes. We will not speak it here.

We don't have to.

Here's a role model for you!

2005-06-28T12:40:00.000-07:00

I wish I had met Charles Rathgeb earlier. Unfortunately, I met him only this morning in the Toronto Star's obituary section.

Chuck, as he was known to friends and family, died this week at the age of 83. He didn't leave a big family behind. Just a wife of 58 years, a nephew and two nieces. But he bequeathed a story that cries out for a novel, a movie or at least a television series.

Listen to what this man managed to cram into his 83 years.

When he left Upper Canada College, he joined the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and served out west. Then he transferred to the Royal Canadian Navy and saw action in the North Atlantic, Norwegian Sea, the Bay of Biscayne and the invasion of Europe. Back from the war, he joined his dad as co-boss of a big construction firm and travelled all over the world on major projects. Apparently, it wasn't enough to keep him busy because he found time to join a number of international corporate boards and various charities.

And that was just his day job.

In his spare time, Chuck was a member of the Commonwealth Cricket Team, manager of the 1964 Gold Medal Canadian bobsled team, mountain climber, power boat racer, championship tuna and marlin fisherman and operator of a racing car team. Oh, yes. He also ran a thorough-bed racing horse stable. Want something more high-flying? Well, Chuck was an accomplished balloonist apparently. Both gas and hot air. Both North America and Europe. Also a glider pilot. Also...wait for it...a jet pilot. Seems he had a World record Atlantic crossing. More amazing, these weren't even his favourite sports. What he really liked was golf, which he played, I guess, between bouts of ballooning over the Alps, scaling the Rockies and jetting over the Atlantic.

Chuck wasn't just about business and sports. He also valued culture. He produced a play, Staircase, on Broadway, the movie Fahrenheit 451 and a Doors concert. Think about that. Produced a Doors concert. That means he must have met the Doors.

He sounds like Forrest Gump's older, better brother.

Reading between the lines, his last years must have been difficult ones. There are thanks, in the obit, to a palliative care unit, several health care givers and some dedicated support staff, suggesting a long illness and waning strength. I hope Chuck and his friends and his family were not defeated by the circumstances of his last days. I hope they all found comfort in his accomplishments and peace of mind to celebrate his extraordinary life. Because it was extraordinary and worthy of celebration.

Congratulations, Charles Irwin Rathgeb.

You were a renaissance man with a life fully lived. I am sorry I missed you.

What does this say about Canadians?

2005-06-25T13:43:00.000-07:00

I was in my favourite video store today, getting a few flicks for my vacation, when I noticed something really odd. I don't know what to make of it.

There I was browsing through the Foreign section when I noticed a recent release by a well-known Quebec film-maker. Okay, it was in French, so maybe that qualified it as "foreign" to the young staff of the local outlet. No big deal.

But wait! A shelf away there's another Canadian film. This one is in English, and it's by one of the leading lights of the Canadian movie industry. Good lord, you would have to have missed the entire broohaha around this year's Cannes awards to be ignorant of the fact that this guy, and this film, is definitely a home brew.

Move another shelf and...my goodness, there's another one. Perhaps less notorious, but still...I mean, it stars Sarah Polley! I've watched it. It's so Canadian, it makes your teeth ache. What is it doing in the "We're Foreign!" section?

And then, omigosh, there's another one. Okay, this one is about Afghanistan, but the film-maker is very definitely from Toronto. I confess I haven't seen the movie yet, but I believe it's about the impressions of an ex-pat returning to her homeland after years abroad in Canada. That's Canada, folks. Not foreign.

So what the heck is going on here?

I could understand if my local video store was one of those gargantuan American chains that thinks anything made outside Hollywood is foreign, but that's not the case here. The store is run by the same guys who probably pipe the cable into your house, if you live in the Greater Toronto Area. The name on the store is an icon of Canadian broadcasting. It's just not possible to get more Canadian, or at least more Toronto, that the people who run my local video store.

So why are they classifying home-grown films as foreign? Why do they share the thinking of those big Texas outfits that anything not American is obviously foreign? Why are they relegating our best and our brightest to an itsy-bitsy foreign section in the corner of the store mixed in with flyblown offerings from Mexico and Portugal?

What does this say about us?

I really don't know what to think about this. Pretty sad, though. Pretty sad.

Taxes Schmaxes

2005-06-19T12:03:00.000-07:00

This is the time of year when my thoughts inevitably turn to income taxes - and my thoughts are inevitably homicidal.

Tell me, was it the intention of legislators, when they first introduced the income tax at the early days of the last century, that it would become a tool to punish and impoverish their citizens? Surely not. Yet that is what has happened.

There was a recent story out of Vancouver about a group of current and former JDS Uniphase employees who are now facing ruin because they were "gifted" by their employer with a cheap stock deal. They got something like a 15% reduction in the price of a stock that was then, in the middle of the dot.com boom, flying high. With the passage of time, the dot.com boom went bust and their holdings became a pale shadow of the price they had paid for them.

End of story? Not quite. The federal income tax agency, in its wisdom, has decided these people must pay tax on the 15% benefit they gained, valued at the time of when the stock was actually worth buying. For some, that represents a hefty piece of change. Two, three, even four times their annual salaries in some cases. Of course they can't pay. Some will lose their homes. One woman will lose both her home and her business.

Tough luck, eh?

It reminds me of another scam the income tax people tried a few years ago. Some genius came up with the idea that artists should pay taxes on their "inventories." Those are the works that they have completed, but have not yet sold. As you might expect, Canada's novelists, painters and composers freaked out. These poor people make ridiculously low incomes. About 90% of everything they create rots in their basements. It NEVER sells. Now the income tax people were talking about taxing them on money they would, in all likelihood, never, ever see.

Sanity somehow intervened, and that perversion bit the dust. But there's plenty more where that idea came from.

Like this one. A friend of mine invested his life savings - along with a bunch of other wrongheaded savers - with a highly touted financial advisor who turned out to be a crook. All of them in this sadly familiar story lost their nest eggs. That would have been hard enough to take, but just as they were absorbing that blow, Revenue Canada stepped up with a bag of salt to rub in their wounds. Seems the crook had misinformed them about their investments being tax sheltered. Not true. Seems they owed megabucks in back taxes.

Several went bankrupt. Others had to postpone retirement. Everyone was impoverished.

What's next? Taxing babies on the money they MIGHT, in theory, earn in their lifetimes? Screwing widows and orphans out of their pensions? Kicking welfare recipients in the teeth because they THOUGHT about winning the lottery one day?

Call me a hopeless romantic, but I think people should pay taxes on income they actually make. They should be able to see and taste the money, take it to the store and buy groceries with it. They should not be asked to pay tax on money that disappeared long before it reached their bank accounts.

Apparently this is an unsophisticated and naive approach to modern taxation methods.

In any event, there's a moral in these stories. Don't ever trust the government. Do not ever regard the government as your friend and protector. Do not save. Do not invest. If you must save and invest, do not tell your friend, the government. Better still, leave the country.

Work only if you must, and never work for yourself in an activity that might actually contribute to the cultural life of the nation.

For God's sake, don't be one of those honest, salt-of-the-earth people who worry about doing their part and pulling their share of the load.

The government will make mincemeat out of you.

I Want to be a Corporation

2005-01-29T09:51:00.000-08:00

I'm fine with the current legal fiction that says corporations are persons. Hey, if Mickey Mouse and the Easter Bunny can be persons, why not IBM and Shell Oil?

All I ask is equal rights.

I mean, if corporations are persons, they sure live in a peculiar state of grace.

For instance, I read the other day of a company that was fined for failing to file a closure plan under Ontario's Mining Act. The firm's CEO was original charged too, but the charges were withdrawn. The corporation pleaded guilty and was fined a peanut amount.

I guess I'm supposed to believe that this legal phantom, this illusion, failed to type up the papers and deliver them on time to the appropriate government office. Really? I think I'll try that one with my next income tax submission. How would that work?

Well, it wouldn't. It only works for corporations. You see, these fanciful entities are regarded as special persons because they create jobs -- unlike the rest of us poor slob consumer persons. The fact that I keep my grocer afloat and finance his army of teenaged employees is, I suppose, just so much chopped liver.

Are we delusional? Consider the facts.

First, corporations don't pay taxes like the rest of us. There's this bizarre conceit that the corporation's owners -- its shareholders -- pay taxes on their dividends, so the "person" who produces the dividends should go tax free. Sweet! With that bit of sophistry, we justify cute little goodies -- tax holidays, tax credits, reduced tax rates and a myriad of subsidies -- for mining companies, cartoon-makers and other hobgoblins.

Then there's the self-serving concept that everything spent on the care and feeding of a corporation should be a tax-deductible business expense. Meanwhile, back here in the real world, anything I spend on the care and feeding of my living person is fully taxable, both at source and through "value added" sales taxes that ding me every time I spend one of my pre-shrunk post-tax dollars.

If that doesn't frost you, look at the twisted relationship between these corporate sweethearts and the world's real persons.

Like medieval barons, corporations are allowed to do pretty much as they wish with their serfs. I mean truly nasty things like evicting thousands of employees when it pleases them, or raiding retirement nesteggs when they need spare change for some corporate adventure. Shades of the Highland Clearances, eh?

I won't even get into the plethora of international treaties that allow corporate beings to go where they like, do as they please and ignore the laws of elected governments while they're screwing the citizens.

Folks, it just doesn't get any better.

Being a corporation gives you untrammelled freedom to treat real people like dirt, rob, cheat and steal, then walk away from the legal mess when your misdeeds catch up with you. Rules? Who cares? Debts? What are those? Criminal charges? Go stuff them.

It's a paradise on earth. And I want a piece of it.

As Marx might have said: Citizens of the world, incorporate! You have nothing to lose but your inferior status as real human beings.

It's Time to Move the U.N. to Toronto

2005-01-11T18:56:00.000-08:00

The United Nations turns 60 this week with several nasty clouds hovering overhead. The most threatening may be the growing animosity of its host country and creator, the United States.

It's no secret that the forces now triumphant in the U.S. are ideologically and politically opposed to the U.N. They see the U.N. as ineffectual, corrupt and obstructionist. Some believe the U.N. undermines the very sovereignty of the American nation. While these forces have long existed, they have gained currency and power in recent years to the point where they now jeopardize the very existence of the international organization.

It's also no secret that the U.N. has few better friends in the world than Canada. Thanks in large part to the legacy of Lester Pearson, Canadians generally support and advance the work, philosophy and principles of the world body. We have done so since the beginning. We will continue to do so into the future.

Here then is a modest suggestion aimed at restoring and ensuring the vitality of the U.N. for the next 60 years.

The U.N.'s General Assembly should immediately consider fleeing the barren ground of New York, where it is beset by enemies on every side, and relocating to a place where it will be valued and loved. There is no better place on earth for this hopeful body than Canada. And there may be no better place in Canada than Toronto. Other Canadian cities will have their own good cases to put forward, but Toronto has assets that would make it a nuturing home for the United Nations.

Toronto is one of the most multi-cultural cities in the world. Over the years, it has learned to value and respect cultural diversity, and to hear the aspirations of other nations. It understands the psychological struggle against colonialism, and it is sensitive to the challenges of living in the shadows of more powerful neighbours. Above all, its institutions are outward-looking, internationalist and global-minded.

For all its warts -- and it does have them -- Toronto is polite, respectful and worldly. It is a safe city and an animated city, despite recent concerns over gang violence and senseless shootings. And although it sometimes jails people in dubious circumstances, it has the good grace to anguish about it. Eventually, it always finds its moral compass and does the right thing.

Most important for the future of the U.N., civil debate on serious issues is still encouraged in Toronto. Its news media and political commentators may be accused of dullness, but, apart from a few of the sporting fraternity, there are precious few of those screaming, ranting, knee-jerk bigots who clog the airwaves south of the border. And its political leaders generally don't make a vote-trolling meal out of trashing the citizens of other countries. (I know what you're going to say, but let's be honest here. Next to CNN, Fox, Pat Buchanan and Rush Limbaugh, Carolyn Parrish is a model of discretion.)

So there's my suggestion. The United Nations should celebrate its first 60 years by re-establishing itself in Toronto, a move that would help secure and strengthen its next 60 years. International co-operation would be reinvigorated, and the world's future would look much brighter than it does today.

Toronto's Garbage Nightmare

2005-01-06T17:55:00.000-08:00

I see a public health nightmare for Toronto.

The capital of Ontario, Canada, has taken a turn down a path that I fear will lead to extinction. Toronto has decided, with much self-righteous huffing and puffing, that garbage is a moral issue. That's very progressive. It must make all Toronto's environmentalists feel very good about themselves. But it is wrong, dangerously wrong.

Truth is that garbage is not a moral issue. It is a public health issue. And it seems that societies that forget that truth tend to suffer plague and disease. They become ugly, inbred and nasty. Evenually, they perish.

Right now, Toronto is a wonderful city. Sure, it's less clean and safe than it was in its prime, but it's still a pleasant enough place to live and visit. It still has a lively downtown, attractive streets, a jiggy nightlife, pretty neighbourhoods, good restaurants and a few great theatres.

But it's no secret hereabouts that Toronto's leaders are obsessed with garbage. They don't have anywhere to put it, so they've been trucking it down the highway to a site in Michigan. The Americans aren't all happy with the arrangement. We had a few anxious moments last fall when presidential candidate John Kerry yakked about stopping the flow of Canadian garbage over the border but he lost, thank goodness. Now the city has won some sort of a certificate for the purity of its garbage, so the heat's off for the moment. But no one thinks the Michigan solution will last.

Oh, yeah, there was a glimmer of hope the other day when a poor rural township north of the city thought it could make some bucks off a landfill site. Hope was dashed when the local and professional environmentalists were able to intimidate the rural politicians out of their idea. No one can stand up to the naysayers of the environmental brigade.

So Toronto is toying with a plan to charge people money to dispose of their "surplus" garbage. Punishing them, in effect, for having more than two bags a week. What is essentially a political and economic challenge has been dolled up as a medieval morality play. Good people recycle and compost all their garbage. Bad people put out more than two bags of garbage every two weeks.

It's all so simple for these simple-minded folk, and it's all so sadly predictable.

The fundamental job of a city is to keep its streets and alleys clean and free of garbage. In the final analysis, there is nothing more important it can do. In fact, to fail at that task is to invite an apocalypse of vermin, typhoid, diphtheria, consumption and plague.

Toronto has lost its way in its obsession with garbage. It demands that its harried citizens spend hours sorting and processing their garbage. It witholds garbage collection (at some monetary saving to the city, I might add) to encourage offially sanctioned consumption, sorting and composting. It punishes poor souls who can't toe the garbage line. It has reached the abysmal point where it employs people to sort through trash bags so that it might identify, from discarded envelopes or bills, the miscreants who have failed to comply with the garbage rules.

Poor sad Toronto is already overrun with raccoons. God knows how many rats are pigging out on leaky backyard compost piles and illegal dumps in the alleys. And this is just the beginning.

Can there be anything but disaster ahead? I don't think so, but maybe I'm too pessimistic. Maybe it will all work out. Maybe Toronto will succeed in creating a new Ontario man and woman who eat their own garbage for breakfast. Maybe Toronto will have better luck than the Soviets. Wanna bet?

Pity the poor cows

2005-01-03T09:29:00.000-08:00

I read a most disturbing article in The Scotsman the other day. Scotland has banned fox hunting, which is a good thing, right? Or so it seems. But the ban also resulted in unemployment for hundreds of foxhounds. When the ban came into effect, the dogs no longer had a useful purpose. No one wanted them. As a consequence of this act of kindness to foxes, more than 400 dogs have been put to death. And hundreds of horses are facing a similar fate.

Now I have the utmost respect for animal welfare and rights organizations like PETA and others who work tirelessly to better the lot of animals around the world. But I question their lack of foresight when they urge others to become vegans and stop wearing clothes made of leather, wool, silk and down. What do they think will happen to all those cows, pigs, chickens, geese and lambs who are now grazing peacefully in pastures and barnyards around the world?

Do they imagine we live in a world where farmers will continue to care for Bossie and Cluck when they can no longer sell the milk or the meat or the eggs? Are they dreaming? Or is this the reason there is a very big article on euthanasia on the PETA website?

Check it out for yourself. That cute little pig with the picket sign? What will happen to him when the world no longer eats bacon or pork chops? Figure it out.

Maybe that's their game. I hate to think it, but maybe they don't like animals at all. Unless someone can tell me PETA's plans for all the unemployed cows, pigs, sheep and chickens they want to create, I'm going to keep questioning their lack of concern for these poor creatures. And I'm going to keep eating beef and chicken and pork chops, and wearing my down parka in really cold weather. Because I like animals. I am grateful to them for the things they give me. And I want them to continue living their useful lives in peace and dignity until they turn up on my plate.

And that's my rant.