Five predictions of the “obvious to anyone awake” variety.

1) The Olympics will wind up costing more than anyone is prepared to admit.  My guess is the true bottom line will be about a billion more than we’ve been told. (UPDATE: Wow, that was fast.)  VANOC fans will continue to say “The Skytrain and Sea to Sky upgrades aren’t really Olympic expenses” at the same time that they continue to say “You wouldn’t have the The Skytrain and Sea to Sky upgrades if we didn’t have the Olympics.”

2) Stephen Harper will continue to run this country. Probably into the ground.  This is 50% because people will keep voting for him, and 50% because the Liberals and NDP are too cowardly to actually bring down his government.  Besides, Harper doesn’t even respect the Supreme Court of Canada, so even if they pulled off a non-confidence vote he’d just refuse to leave.

3) The Economy will continue to get worse, not better, at least for anyone who actually works for a living.  Too many countries are on the edge of economic collapse.  Too many people are two paycheques away from defaulting on mortgages that are predicated on really low variable rates.  In BC there will be a homegrown post-Olympic slump that will be amplified by the HST and spending cuts.

4) China will get mean and say “Excuse me, but we hold most of your national debt, and we produce damned near everything that you need to keep your economy going.  It’s payback time.”

5) All of the above will make it less than great time to be visible minority or immigrant in Canada.  Quebec’s treatment of Muslim women is just the beginning. Can Alberta be far behind?  Suddenly we’ll hear a lot less of how generous Canadians are, and a lot more about what makes a “real” Canadian.

Look at the world around you.  Look in corners.  Look at the stuff that you’re supposed to miss.

A while back we were in Vancouver for The Eastside Culture Crawl, a great and large open studio event that stretches from the Downtown Eastside all the way to Commercial drive.

Although there honestly wasn’t a lot that really thrilled us, I was delighted to find the “installation” pictured.

These fantastic clear plastic platform shoes were situated half way across a set of railway tracks on an overhead pedestrian walkway between Raymur Street and the end of Keefer Street.

I have no idea whether this was an intentional installation, or whether the graffiti was related to it, or whether somewhere in Strathcona a drag queen is crying her eyes out at having lost her shoes, but it was lovely.

Ever wonder how those big numbers get onto the grass at football games?

It’s really pretty simple: they’re spray-painted on using big honkin’ stencils.

It’s all pretty low-tech, involving one guy who drives the paint sprayer on a golf cart, one who sprays the paint, and two that pick up the stencils and move them to the next location.

The real challenge is that the CFL guys want the lines and number placed within inches – on a 110 yard long football field.   Trust me, there’s nothing more annoying than trying to remove and repaint lines a half hour before game time.

That, and realizing that one of the arrows points the wrong way.

I have accepted that all government advertising is actually pre-election bumph for the party in power, but really the Conservatives have taken things a large step further than anyone before them.

This time of the year one of the fixtures of Canadian life are boxes of income tax returns at the post office. Always in the corner, always on the floor, but always there.  (I’ll ignore pointing out that there are in fact damn few actual Post Offices left in Canada. Instead your mail services and delivery are handled by minimum wage clerks at corner stores and drug stores in what are euphemistically called “Retail Outlets.”)

In the past these boxes had exciting labels like “Your 2008 Tax Returns are here!”

This year though the Tory economic mantras have taken over, with each box stamped in Green “Real Tax Cuts at Your Fingertips.”

My first reading of that was actually ”Real Paper Cuts on your Fingertips.”

When that made no sense I looked closer, and realized that Harper’s people had slapped Tory election advertising on the boxes!

Needless to say, the last people who will benefit from any of Harper’s “Tax Cuts” are those who are likely to be preparing their own tax returns.

Olympics are coming!  To celebrate, and to demonstrate to the hordes of tourists that BCers are indeed a totally illiterate bunch, VANOC has removed ALL newspaper boxes from the Seabus terminal, but HAS installed these informative signs!    A total of about twelve boxes have been removed – probably due to anti-terror paranoia – and these new info boards have been empty for two weeks.

I’m honestly expecting gun-toting commandos to appear outside the terminal, just as the army suddenly became a presence at every airport after 9/11.

From the page containing to Soo Star’s story of Harper’s “off the record” speech last week.  Don’t try to tell me that the ad placement was accidental!  Can the Borg be far behind?

I didn’t pick this photo, nor did I place it next to the headline on the CBC.ca web site.

Just tell me – shouldn’t Steve-o be going down the stairs from the plane?

I’m not.   I saw it coming at least a few years ago.  I mean God, the signs were there for anyone who was watching.

I guess that we live in a time when far, far too many people have learned how to believe whatever they’re told by those in authority, no matter how unlikely.   Or are too busy soaking up advertising and cheap comedy to examine the world around them.  Or have simply ceased to believe anything that they’re told.  Which may be the safest route.

And now, as I write, Barack Obama stands in front of the elected representatives of the American people to try and put a brave face on what I call an economic collapse.

And now governments around the world  struggle to find a way to put the genie back in the bottle, to bring order to the house of cards that is falling around them.  ”How,” they must be asking, “Could this happen when  we did just as were told? When we gave business leaders and financiers and speculators carte blanche, removed so much regulation, let then move capital and jobs to whatever backwater would maximize their profit.”

Well guess what guys – the “invisible hand of the market” may not be just what you were told.   Or may be more so than you imagined.

Did it really not occur to anyone that The Market is not altruistic, is defined in every way by self interest and self-perpetuation?   And that as it, and the men who run it, gain more and more power their self-interest would find less and less reason to moderate their behaviour or to balance the good of a nation or people against the drive for profit?

How could any thinking person look at the growing number of people living and begging on our streets in the past two decades, and the rocketing prices of everything from housing to coffee to toys and gewgaws and not be conscious of the gulf that was being created between Rich and Poor?  Could anyone be so blinkered not to see that the massive cuts to healthcare and other social programs reflected a dedication on the part of governments to hand more and more money and advantage to those who were already comfortably endowed?

Did no-one else understand that when governments abdicate their responsibilities with things like P3 contracts and deregulation they create a vacuum into which someone else will step, will claim power over that realm, and use it to their own advantage? That a profit making business will never, ever act in ways that put clients and citizens ahead of profit?

And of course, why did so few in the Media challenge  the claims of these people or question the assumptions that guided our government’s actions?   I could see that problems on the horizon. I could see why some things are just very bad ideas. I could see that there are roles that have to be filled by a responsible government, not by Aspers or Trumps or Buffets.

We have laws that abridge our lives in so many areas – crime, medicine, parking, dog poop – why on earth shouldn’t we also have laws that constrain business?  Why shouldn’t our government step up and say “No, that is too much power, too much debt, too little responsibiliy, and is not in the best interest of the people of this country.”

How many of of the individuals who led us to this economic collapse will be sent to jail? Any?

How many of them will wind up living on the streets, begging for handouts? Any?

And how many will admit their culpability, will avert their eyes, and will try to make amends?

I actually penned the following in response to a commentary at the Tyee, which I saw via Bill Doskoch’s blog. If I may summarize, the author, Terry Glavin, seems to have his shorts in a knot because the Canadian Islamic Congress was “allowed” to file a  human rights complaint against Macleans magazine. This, apparently, threatens journalism as we know it.

I wrote:

Glavin’s comments seem to be less about journalism than they are about a dislike for human rights tribunals.

I can see no reason why human rights tribunals shouldn’t examine claims of prejudice on the part of newspapers or broadcasters. Actually the latter have lived with clearly defined limits on what they say and do for several decades. Some time spent looking at complaints filed with either the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council or the CRTC would have told Glavin that Canada already has established that there are some types of content that are deemed inappropriate for broadcast.

Really Glavin is mixing up two or three seperate questions.

Should there be any limitations of free speech? Some would say yes, some no. The Canadian model has always been that there are limits, with “hate speech” being specifically limited. Our American nieghbours will tolerate hate, but in broadcasting especially lean heavily towards prohibiting sexual content.

Should we have bodies that are empowered to investigate human rights complaints? Most of us would say yes. For these groups to be effective the same rules need to apply to everyone.

Should journalistic publications also respect the rights of individuals and groups as outlined in the Charter of Rights?  That, I think is really the question that is being raised.

The Maclean’s case is somewhat of a red herring, and again Glavin mixes two separate questions.

Of course the Canadian Islamic Congress is welcome to file a complaint, as is Glavin or anyone else who feels that they have a legitimate grievance.

The human rights tribunal then has the option of listening, or can dismiss the complaint as groundless.

The problem is not that the CIC is “allowed” to complain, and until a decision comes down we don’t know if the human rights tribunal is doing valuable work or “overstepping” their bounds.

I would prefer that Glavin stop masking his complaints in finger pointing at the all to easy to criticize CIC. If he wants absolute free speech he should just say so. Or if he thinks that newspapers shouldn’t be governed by the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, well he should say that. Or if he just doesn’t like human rights tribunals, well he should step up and make the case for that opinion.

It’s Election Day in Ontario, and honestly I think that most people are thinking the same thing as I.

What in the Hell did I do to deserve this?

For any thinking person this is a real dilemma. For the first time in my life I am seriously considering not bothering to vote, not because it isn’t somehow important – my mother made sure that I understood that – but because I don’t know that I can hold my nose long enough to mark an X beside even the least offensive option.

The frontrunners are the Liberals, led by sad sack Dalton MGuinty. Despite running on a platform of Change, they basically sat on their asses for four years and did nothing to undo the damage wrought by the Mike Harris Tories. They certainly promised to help the poor and the sick and the underprivileged, but those promises turned out to be completely hollow. Now Dalton has spent several months traveling the province, promising everything short of a new car for each voter. Apparently a large number of people actually believe him once again.

I’m not alone in my disgust at this chicanery. Back in September the Globe and Mail made note of an Environics poll that found that a staggering 67% of people do not expect politicians to keep their promises. SIXTY-SEVEN PERCENT. Why in hell was that not a campaign issue?

Second in the standings are the Conservatives, led by John Tory. Frankly I just assume that Tory is Mike Harris in a better suit, although Tory has steadfastly refused to wear a necktie so that we can understand that he’s just a regular working Joe. After the bitter, spiteful, pain inflicted on ordinary people by the Harris government I just couldn’t ever vote for the Conservatives. I see them as selfish, greedy, and share none of their pro-globalization, feed the rich beliefs.

Traditionally this is where I fall in line with the New Democrats, a party which at one time could claim lineage that stretched back to the CCF and even the Wobblies, but which now seems more like Liberal Lite. I honestly have no idea what, if anything, the NDP stands for any more, and I don’t think that they do either. Their leader, Howard Hampton, is the latest in a rather goofy string of consensus choices whose main attribute seems to be that no-one in the party disliked him too much. Vision? Leadership? The slightest hope of electing a majority government? You dream. Sadly I can no longer support a party that begins each campaign by assuming that they’ll lose. I mean, what’s the point?

The goal of any party during an election is to win, and win a majority. That is how you get power, and how you control government and make laws. There is no second place in a Parliamentary democracy. There is no runner up prize. Either you win, or you have lost. “We gained three more seats in this election.” is still losing.

New kid on the block, and one of the reasons why NDP support is dead in the water, is the Green party. The Greens would be happy to elect even one member to any legislature in the country. The problem is that they have a bizarre platform that mixes left wing environmental concerns with sort of right wing economic policy. Silly me, I thought that it was the tax cutting, anti poor people, pro business Conservatives that got us into this environmental mess. You just can’t separate the two things. Plus their web site is down this morning, which in itself tells us something.

So once again, like the vast majority of people, I am sitting here asking myself which if any of these people I could vote for, and for the first time I have to say “None of the Above.”

Something is seriously wrong with this country and this province, when four frontrunner parties can’t come up with one viable platform that both supports ordinary working people and has a realistic chance of winning an election. I think that honestly most people have ignored this campaign because they know that it was a waste of their time. If you don’t believe that politicians will keep their promises, why bother listening?

Today the people in this province are also being asked to vote for a change to how governments are elected, possibly endorsing something called MMP, a watered down form of Proportional representation which would allow the party bosses to appoint unelected MPPs to the legislature based on popular vote. Even the Liberals and Tories endorse this because the front running parties would get to appoint more party hacks under this new system. The Greens and NDP love it because it creates a chance that they might actually find themselves with more than zero or five people in the Legislature.

MMP won’t though change the basic problem that elections are driven by money, and greed, and by unfulfilled promises. It won’t change the likelihood that when you walk into the voting booth you’re voting against someone, not for a party that you support.

No, if you really want to change politics you need to give people the option of “None of The Above.” And if the majority choose that option, toss out all of the candidates and start over. Now that’s an idea I can endorse.

As pointed out by Indymedia and others, the problem is not voting, it’s that the choices that we’re given are so utterly dismal.

If you haven’t been following this news, I recommend the ongoing discussion at Canadian Cynic. In a nutshell, it appears that the RCMP planted three of their people in the crowd of protesters at Montebello last week, with the intent they get people to move in a violent direction.

Those of us with long memories will not be surprised, since we fondly remember revelations about the Horsemen burning down barns among other insane things.

And lest you think that our own police are the ne plus ultra at such things, take a few minutes to enjoy this three part video report from the New York Times.

How about the NYPD using police helicopters to secretly videotape innocent citizens – people who actually support(ed?) police surveillance – making out on their rooftop? Or the NYPD who routinely infiltrate crowds of cyclists during Critical Mass rides in NYC!

Seriously though, twenty-five years ago in Vancouver it was assumed that cops (and even the CIA) were infiltrating activist groups, and that you would be videotaped and photographed if you took part in any march. Nothing has really changed, except that we can now record the people recording us.

The thought for the day is this: when we have lost all expectation of privacy, what are our expectations with respect to our own behaviour?

It’s Canada Day. Appropriately that has me thinking about the nature of this country. Or, more specifically, where it went astray.

Yesterday I was talking with a friend who came to Canada about twenty years ago – the mid-eighties. During that conversation I realized that the Canada that she knows is not the one that I hold in my memory and imagination.

My Canada is the Canada of Pierre Trudeau, a country of hope, optimism, and which saw itself finally as an equal on the world stage. It is the Canada which repatriated its Constitution, drafted its own Bill of Rights, and which believed that it held the moral high ground.

That moral high ground was perhaps defined during the Vietnam war, when tens of thousands of young Americans came here to avoid the military draft, to desert the military, or to accompany their (male) boyfriends and husbands.

Penney Kome wrote about this a couple of years ago.

“Although this wave of immigration is often called “draft-dodgers and deserters”, in fact a slight majority of the immigrants were never eligible for the US Selective Service. They were women.

Using statistics available on the Citizenship and Immigration website, a little number crunching shows that, from 1967 to 1976, a total of 222,746 Americans immigrated to Canada (see link at bottom of page). According to the gender breakout, 7000 more women arrived (114,788) than men (107,958). More men than women returned during the 1977 Carter amnesty. Most of the Americans who remain in Canada from that era were neither draft-dodgers or deserters. “

That mass exodus happened because the government of the day saw our country as a place of refuge, saw that these thoughtful young people added to Canada.

And add they did. The kids who came north at that time were intelligent, educated, thoughtful, and perhaps most importantly wanted to make the world a better place for everyone who lived in it.

If you chart the course of arts, music, government, higher education and the social structure of Canada since 1970, you’ll find those immigrants in most places where policy was being made, or involved in most actions that brought with them shifts in the fabric of this country.

These were among the best and the brightest of a generation, and they came here.

There are still many people in the U.S. who tell me that they would move to Canada, who still see it as a more compassionate and caring society.

While I appreciate the praise, and understand that from their vantage point we still seem a kinder and gentler place, I can’t help but be sad that Canada has abandoned so many of those Trudeau era beliefs.

I do believe that individual Canadians still share many of those beliefs – that we should help those less fortunate, that we should be peacemakers, not aggressors, that there is always room for people who need to escape their native land.

Our leaders though have embraced the corporate, globalized agenda, or have been consumed by a desire to play with the cool kids from the American table in the global cafeteria.

Deserters from the Iraq war face deportion, not a welcome. Fundamentalists try to sway the Conservative government of the day to claw back basic human rights in our country.

(SHIT! Stephen Harper is on TV saying that Canada Day is “catching on.” By which he means people are being more “expressive” like the Americans. Yes, we are to embrace the overt jingoism found down south.)

Successive governments for the last 25 years have embraced the ideology of “Free Trade”, and have stood by while our jobs were shipped offshore, our factories closed, and our businesses bought up by foreigners.

If I were to look those “leaders” in the eye today, I would ask them “What exactly is left that is distinctly Canadian?”

We are now at a point where Canadians need to step up and tell our politicians that yes we are an independent nation state, not a satellite of whatever corporate interests have the biggest bank roll.

We need to tell them that the ideals of Pierre Trudeau still move us and still define what we believe – that we are peacemakers, that the government has no place in the bedrooms of the Nation, that we offer refuge to those who need it. That we help the least fortunate in our country, instead of punishing and shaming them.

Most importantly we need to learn once again how to chart our own course in the world, one that reflects our aspirations and goals as a nation, and as a people.

Honestly I see no-one in politics today who could could show that kind of leadership, who could rise above petty electioneering to fulfill the role of the Statesman. Our current generation of politicians are concerned with re-election, not nation building.

(Although I did just see a kid in the crowd on TV wearing a Che Guevera t-shirt.)

So, where so we begin to find the next generation of leaders? We aren’t likely to see another influx of young visionaries like happened in the seventies, so we will need to look within.

The young people who could grow to become Statesmen are not to be found in the youth wings of the established political parties – those seem to attract hacks in training.

So how do we find and support those who have the potential to restore our national integrity, to restore our national pride, and restore our sense of direction?

(Four sentences into his Canada Day speech Harper is already blathering on about business, and economy, since the almighty dollar is only way he can see us as successful. Oh yes, and Junior hockey. And natural resources, since we seem to be sliding back to being little more than hewers of wood and drawers of water.)

Perhaps those of us who come from the Trudeau era need to look at how we can spot the twenty or even thirty year olds who share our beliefs, and begin grooming them and supporting them as they move into local activism, and local politics, on their way to the provincial and national stage.

Instead of holding our nose and trying elect the existing candidates who offend us least, we need to start creating the next generation of leaders, and need to find ways to keep them from being drawn into the established cycle of compromise and cynical deal making.

That’s the deal: if you’re prepared to stand for something, and to stand for those things no matter what, then I’m prepared to support you in ways that I would never support the politicians that I see today.

(Quote from one of the hosts in Ottawa, surely I misheard this? “..to help those less fortunate, especially those in the Canadian Armed Forces..”)

A blistering attack by CBC writer Heather Mallick on the tyranny of endless school fundraising. And even better, she places the blame squarely on the neo-con agenda.

Parents are now being pressured to the point where they yearly raise more than half a billion dollars for Ontario schools. …
The money pays for playgrounds, team uniforms, textbooks, computers, library books and field trips. One school region even accepts money for buildings and swimming pools.

When schools take money from parents, it means schools in rich neighbourhoods get swim teams and terrible schools in poor areas get chalk. The money is no longer being spent on frills like recorder lessons and sports uniforms. It now pays for basics.

… All this is part of the world view dreamed up by the neo-cons. I call it a world view because it never seems to have a human view of the world as it is actually lived in by humans. The neo-cons’ chief weapon, apart from fear, is the demonization of taxes.

Parents will nod their heads knowingly, understanding that each kid in elementary school costs you about ten to twenty dollars a week in extra charges.

For extra fun, chceck out how one California school tries to dress up the bake sale game. It’s not fundraising on the backs on parents, its a Tradition!:

It is a tradition for the graduating class to leave money to the school. In order to accomplish this, the fifth grade holds several bake sales throughout the school year. To learn responsibility, the class makes the posters, bakes goods and sells them. They are also responsible for counting the money. The class discusses and votes on how the money should be used. In the past, fifth grade bake sales have raised money for school assemblies, books desks, and other educational enrichment, which all classes can enjoy.

Raise the Hammer has an article looking at mandatory voting, as they have in Australia. Frankly I don’t like that idea.

The late great Robert Heinlein once proposed that that potential voters should have to answer an intelligence testing question before being allowed to vote. Something like solving a simple quadratic equation, a high school level test.

He also suggested that as a condition of voting you should make a cash deposit, take the test question, and get your money refunded only if you passed and were allowed to vote.

More and more I like his idea. My sense is that our problem is not with the people who don’t vote, it’s with the people who DO vote, but who accept whatever the politicians and media tell them without question.

Anyone who has worked a poll on election day can tell you stories about voters who walk in and who cannot name even one candidate, much less discuss their platforms.

Why are these people voting? What damage does that do to our system of government?

I’m looking at Stephen Harper, and honestly I assume that he’ll come out of the next election with majority government.

He’ll do that by flat out pandering to whatever group he thinks can give him votes, even if he has no intention to follow through on any of those promises.

He knows that most of the media won’t challenge what he says, and that most voters are too lazy to bother exploring the veracity of what’s being said or the likelihood that it will actually happen.

The question becomes: How do you ensure that voters are making informed and thoughtful choices, and not just picking names based on TV ads or on their greedy need for whatever the politician of the day has promised them.

Following up on an earlier post here. Today Wonkette reports on an Al-Jazeera article, referring to a Democracy Now interview with Raed Jarrar, an Iraqi blogger and architect, who said he has obtained a copy of the new Iraqi oil law.

As Wonkette so politely puts it,

“The draft law regulating Iraq’s liberated oil industry was kindly written by the Bush Administration working with the major U.S. and European oil companies. A leaked and translated version shows that long-suffering corporations like Exxon-Mobil will keep as much as 75% of the oil revenues.”

(graphic stolen from courtesy Wonkette)

Lordy, you just can’t make these things up… The US government shipped planeloads of cash to Iraq, and now can’t account for much of it.

By “cash” I mean honest to God US Mint paper currency – the kind with dead Presidents on it.

How much? According to CNN “a total of 363 tons (of cash) were loaded onto military aircraft.”

It is perhaps no surprise that “The special inspector general for Iraqi reconstruction, Stuart Bowen, said … that $8.8 billion was unaccounted for after being given to the Iraqi ministries.”

UPDATE: Maybe this will help.

“The Royal Canadian Mint: Canada’s official money-maker wants to stamp out a $1-million coin. Coin experts say it would likely be made of gold, be the size of a pizza and be extremely heavy.”

Via Wonkette we learn that “Western energy giants such as Exxon and Shell will control Iraqi oil exploration for the next 30 years while keeping 75% of the profits.”

The Independent, which features the original story, tells us:

The US government has been involved in drawing up the law, a draft of which has been seen by The Independent on Sunday. It would give big oil companies such as BP, Shell and Exxon 30-year contracts to extract Iraqi crude and allow the first large-scale operation of foreign oil interests in the country since the industry was nationalised in 1972. …

Oil industry executives and analysts say the law, which would permit Western companies to pocket up to three-quarters of profits in the early years, is the only way to get Iraq’s oil industry back on its feet …

Opponents say Iraq, where oil accounts for 95 per cent of the economy, is being forced to surrender an unacceptable degree of sovereignty.

Oh yeah… Osama bin Laden is still not dead or captured…