Free Speech Hysteria: Does Anyone Smell a Rat?

Studied outrage over the tribulations of Mark Steyn and Maclean’s before various human rights commissions continued this last week, with editorials appearing in both the National Post and Maclean’s.  Granted, the complaints were an abuse of process, and means need to be found to prevent the frivolous and vexatious from reaching the tribunals.  Freedom of speech ought to be absolute, no matter how odious the subject.  But at the same time, I find myself unmoved by the suppression of free speech the complaints supposedly produced.  In point of fact no one’s speech was actually curtailed.  As much as some might have wished,  the authorities have not sequestered and burnt the original Maclean’s article in any figurative or literal public square.  Mark Steyn continues to issue his screeds from his New Hampshire redoubt, unmolested.  No agents in the name of state security have hauled him to a nameless gulag.  A cursory glance at the magazine rack indicates Maclean’s still publishes openly, its reduction to the status of samizdat postponed to the indefinite future.  At the end of the fuss, it’s rather unclear as to whether Maclean’s et al. are outraged over attempts to limit their speech by a few law students, or whether someone had the audacity to challenge the received wisdom on Islam and the West.

To be sure, the importance of freedom of speech cannot be underestimated, and the complaints, where they have been adjudicated, have been rightly tossed out.  My sourness at this triumph of freedom of expression resides in the generally parlous state of civil liberties in general: the subtle contempt for notions of human rights and due process by the present government, the replacement of open and fair trials by arbitrary justice, accusation treated as evidence for determining guilt or innocence, the implicit endorsement of torture as state policy, even if we do not condone it on our own soil, the endless intrusions on individual privacy by a government already bloated with information, “no-fly” lists, and the gaping void of secrecy which obscures all of these activities  — all in the name of national security against a nebulous enemy whose strength the public cannot begin to gauge, because that too is secret.  While Maclean’s, The National Post and other organs of the free press fret away countless pails of ink on the real and imagined dangers to free speech, the erosion continues, unchecked and unremarked upon by the right-wing press (and the media in general), in this country and abroad. 

Examples of undereporting are numerous. If you believe this is because civil liberties in Canada are intact, think again.  For example, in April 2007 The International Commission of Jurists held public hearings in Toronto and Ottawa to investigate the impact of counter terrorism legislation on civil liberties. I quote part of its report at length:

The definition of terrorism and related offences under the Anti-Terrorism Act (ATA)

• Concerns were expressed about the speed with which ATA was enacted and in particular about the broad definition of “terrorist activity” contained in the Act and the risk that the clause requiring that the act be committed “in whole or in part for a political, religious or ideological purpose, objective or cause” leads to discrimination against the Muslim and Arab communities. Many witnesses, including representatives of Arab and Muslim communities drew attention to a widespread belief within these communities that the implementation of the Act is directed against Muslims and Arabs resulting in their stigmatization and a sense of insecurity. In this context, some participants welcomed the October 2006 ruling of the Superior Court of Ontario in the Khawaja case striking down the motivation requirement provision for being a violation of the rights to freedom of religion, expression and association while others expressed concern that the decision in fact broadens the definition. The Government representatives informed the Panel that they were aware of the concerns of the Muslim community and that positive action is taken to create a climate in which these concerns can be addressed and resolved. 
• Concerns were raised about the breadth and imprecision of terminology used in the ATA, in particular the offence of “facilitating terrorist activities” and its potential implications for charities and persons.

Privacy

Concerns were raised about warrantless electronic surveillance of international communications introduced under ATA and the lack of adequate safeguards over collection, storage and sharing of the data. Participants expressed the view that an erosion of privacy within a free and democratic society could, in the long run, make the Canadian population less secure.

Secrecy

Growing secrecy surrounding national security measures was raised as a major issue of concern, in particular, the increasing reliance on untested intelligence information that becomes a substitute for evidence. In addition, concerns were expressed about cross-border sharing of intelligence information and about action taken on the basis of that intelligence that may have been obtained through torture and has often proven to be inaccurate. These actions are a matter of great concern when liberty is at stake as documented by the Maher Arar Commission of Inquiry. In light of these concerns, the introduction of a provision in Canada’s domestic legislation to clearly prohibit the use in all legal and administrative proceedings of evidence obtained by torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment was proposed by some participants.

• Concerns were raised also about the use of security certificates under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (IRPA) as a form of administrative detention against non-citizens suspected of being a security threat and that, in practice, has led to the detention for years without charge or trial of those subject to the certificates with very limited judicial review.
• Concerns were expressed about the secrecy of the proceedings (ex parte and in camera) in security certificate cases where evidence is presented only to the judge in the absence of the suspect and his or her counsel who only receive an unclassified summary of those proceedings. 
• Although almost all individuals subject to security certificates have been released as a result of the Charkaoui decision, strict conditions and limitations have been imposed on them affecting their freedom of movement and their right to privacy. These measures constitute a severe form of punishment for persons who have not been accused or convicted of any crime. Several participants have expressed scepticism about the possible resort to special advocates as used in the United Kingdom as this system also falls short of guaranteeing due process rights.

 Deportation on the basis of diplomatic assurances against torture

• Serious concerns were raised about increasing reliance upon diplomatic assurances against torture to deport non-citizens suspected of involvement in terrorist activities. It was stressed that such deportation constitutes a major departure from the absolute prohibition in international law to send persons to countries where they face a risk of torture or ill-treatment.

This collection of particulars, from government invasion of privacy, to effectively imposing punishment on suspected terrorists without trial, to the use of immigration law as a tool to detain suspected security risks — an abuse of process if there ever was one — garnered exactly two references in the Canadian media, a Canadian Press story subsequently picked up by a Montreal radio station. In contrast, a quick Google News search on the Steyn complaint yields 398 returns. Bloggers in this case did a bit better: three posts referred to it.  The outrage was palpable, except it wasn’t.

Or we can talk about the larger international scandal of detainees in United States custody.  Sami al-Hajj, an Al Jazeera journalist was released from prison four days ago. If you haven’t heard of him, don’t be surprised: the likes of Maclean’s and Mark Steyn –or CBC, CTV, or CanWest Global– aren’t particularly interested in his plight.  He was one of the 275 faceless prisoners still remaining in American custody at Guantanamo Bay.  He was arrested in Pakistan after the Afghan invasion, despite being accredited with Al Jazeera, apparently for the crime of being Muslim, Sudanese, and a journalist all at once. He had obtained an interview with Osama bin Laden and between 1996 and 2000 he transferred money at the behest of his then employer to Islamic charities linked to terrorist activity.  He spent 78 months at Guantanamo as an “enemy combatant.”  No charges were ever laid. He was never tried.  His lawyer was prevented by law from seeing the evidence against him.  He went on a hunger strike, and for the last sixteen months he was force-fed by means of a naso-gastric tube twice daily, a procedure when administered against an unwilling person, is the very definition of torture. When finally released, one imagines a few hushed words of regret, a token offer of compensation, a handshake and the equivalent of a second-hand suit and a bus ticket.  There was none of that. Instead, he was blindfolded, handcuffed and chained to his seat on his flight home.  “In Guantanamo,” he says, “rats are treated with more humanity.” One can believe it.

Sami al Hajj’s treatment at the hands of U.S. authoities is not unusual.  The 275-odd prisoners still confined at Guantanamo are just the beginning.  Reprieve, one of the few organizations which will advocate for “enemy combatants” estimates that 14,000 men are imprisoned in secret American jails, caught in a Kafkaesque nightmare of bureaucratic doublespeak, without legal recourse or even simple hope, and in far worse conditions than Guantanamo. 

Which brings me back to Maclean’s, The National Post and other media organizations which tilt rightward.  How many column inches did the magazine, or any other media outlet in Canada devote to the story of Sami al-Hajj, or to any of the thousands languishing in secret prisons, or even on the concerted attack on civil rights in this country in the past year?  Instead we receive lengthly sermons on the supposed threat to individual liberty posed by those firebrand, authoritarian-minded human rights commissioners  — a danger that in any reasonable analysis is negligable and in any case easily fixed, at least compared to the hysterical morass of anti-terrorist measures. Free speech is integral to civil liberties.  But does anyone seriously think Mark Steyn’s right to free speech and Maclean’s right to publish this speech was ever in jeopardy?  There is a certain gap in credibility, where the rightwing press can mouth pieties about free speech while wilfully ignoring more egregious violations of human rights.  Apparently the rights of well-connected pundits and the corporate media are sacrosanct.  Everyone else can go rot.

One suspects under different circumstances the hue and cry might be different and–let’s say it softly–another agenda might be at work. Fulminations against the imposition of the War Measures Act in 1970 and the civil rights iniquities of Pierre Trudeau are still regular fodder for pundits even now, twenty-four years after Trudeau left office.  Under the present government, not to mention the Bush Administration, similar abuses of power, and worse, are given a pass.  It should not be forgotten either that human rights commissions have been intensely disliked by conservatives since their inception.  They interfered with property rights, said conservatives, or religious or personal belief , and  they even proposed the hackneyed arguments that more appropriate remedies were to be found in the market place or the civil courts. (Let pass that not so long ago racial and religious discrimination was justifed by Holy Writ, and that the poor and marginalized haven’t the money to buy their way out of discrimination or launch a lawsuit.)  However unjustified the proceedings against Steyn and Maclean’s, their cause has become a vehicle to attack the HRCs in general as inquisitional bodies hellbent on destroying individual liberty, whether the facts bear this interpretation or not. Lastly, can it be that the conservative media has bought the government’s position that the threat of Islamic terrorism is so overwhelming that the safety of all is worth the sacrifice of a few civil liberties and the notion of due process?  Subtext: the story is already done (though the abuses continue,) the debate is over, and who really cares if a few grubby Muslims are caught up in the net.

Complicity with the authoritarian’s eternal cry of safety trumping freedom or even silence becuase one has common cause with the ruling party’s ideology, is a dangerous game for the conservative press.  At best it exposes the rhetoric around freedom of speech for what it is — rubbishy cant.  In the long view, secrecy, arbitrary proceedings, extraordinary renditions and the rest of it are the antithesis of democratic society, for ultimately all of these are the root of corruption of power and the seeds of tyranny, where no accountibility is possible: a no man’s land where predators roam freely.  The contrast with the much-maligned human rights commissions, with their insistance on due process and open proceedings, accompanied by a vigourous debate on their purpose and relevance, could not be greater.  It is a contrast worth pondering.

Our Sally Fields Moment

A month ago, a band of down-on-their-luck grifters and layabouts started a little blog called The Stray Dog Cafe.  Nineteen posts and 339 gallons of strong coffee later we have had 962 page views.  We are immensely gratified and excited about this. . . in fact. . .

Like Sally Fields, just more so

We are verklempt. We are emotionally floored. You like us. You really, really do. 

I have to get a tissue now, and daub my eyes before the mascara runs.

A Fungus Among Us

For the apocalyptically-minded, another sign the end is near.  According to an article in the New Scientist, forget about cropland being diverted to feed SUVs (anyone want to talk about the morality of that?) Forget about droughts and export bans and food riots, forget about the new middle classes in China and India driving demand.  What we should be worrying about is fungus, black stem wheat rust, Puccinia graminis:

It can reduce a field of ripening grain to a dead, tangled mass, and vast outbreaks regularly used to rip through wheat regions. The last to hit the North American breadbasket, in 1954, wiped out 40 per cent of the crop. In the cold war both the US and the Soviet Union stockpiled stem rust spores as a biological weapon

Wheat rust has been around since humans decided brioche was preferable to grubs as the breakfast food of choice. The problem now: a new variant strain of wheat rust called Ug99 has emerged.  The strain was first identified in Uganda in 1999, and has spread into east Africa.  Fungicides are effective against rust, but are generally unavailable to poor farmers in the developing world, and are even limited in the first world.  Resistant varieties of wheat are being developed, but it may take as long as eight years to be produced in sufficient quantities for seed.  Ironically, agricultural techniques and high yield seed lines developed during the Green Revolution of the 1960s are contributing to the problem: wheat is grown far more densely than in the past, so fungus has a chance to get a foothold in damp, warm conditions.  The potential for an exacerbating food shortage is alarming, especially if it affects large wheat producing countries or places where life depends on a good crop.

The great fear, according to the article, is that wheat rust spores will be blown into central Asia, where wheat varietals are generally not resistant to the disease, and where its alternate host, the barberry (Berberis vulgaris) is native. This last is important, because it is on B. vulgaris and related plants that wheat rust swaps genetic information, producing new variants.  B. vulgaris, it should be added, is widely naturalized in North America.  A crop scientist (unintentionally engaging in humour) comments: “As if it wasn’t challenging enough breeding varieties that resist this thing. All I know is that what blows into Iran will not be the same as what blows out.”  True of many things, not just wheat rust.

Except the wheat rust has in fact been detected in Iran:

A new and virulent wheat fungus, previously found in East Africa and Yemen, has moved to major wheat growing areas in Iran, FAO reported today. The fungus is capable of wreaking havoc to wheat production by destroying entire fields.

Countries east of Iran, like Afghanistan, India, Pakistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, all major wheat producers, are most threatened by the fungus and should be on high alert, FAO said.

It is estimated that as much as 80 percent of all wheat varieties planted in Asia and Africa are susceptible to the wheat stem rust (Puccinia graminis). The spores of wheat rust are mostly carried by wind over long distances and across continents.

“The detection of the wheat rust fungus in Iran is very worrisome,” said Shivaji Pandey, Director of FAO’s Plant Production and Protection Division.

“The fungus is spreading rapidly and could seriously lower wheat production in countries at direct risk. Affected countries and the international community have to ensure that the spread of the disease gets under control in order to reduce the risk to countries that are already hit by high food prices.”

A glass for Robigus, please

I was only being half-facetious in referring to the apocalypse.  The links between wheat rust and religion go back to the dawn of agriculture, when crop disease spelled starvation and pestilence and wheat mysteriously and suddenly withering in the field was a sure indication of divine wrath. Robigus (meaning “mildew” or “wheat rust”) was a Roman god whose propitiation — by tipping a cup of red wine to ground, perhaps, in a conceit of colour or affinity — was necessary to prevent the blight. And long before Mars became a god of war, he concerned himself with fertility and crops, fields and boundary lines. “Neve lue rue, Marmar, sins incorrere in pleores,” cried the ancient Romans, when Rome was a collection of mudbrick huts encircled by a wooden palisade.  Let not blight or ruin attack, O Mars!  It is not a coincidence that March, the time of wheat sowing, was named for Mars. Or think of the dreams of Pharaoh, as interpreted by that likely mensch Joseph: seven heads of thin scorched wheat swallowing up seven full heads.

Maybe a sacrifice to Mars or Robigus might be in order.  Or maybe we should heed Joseph’s advice to Pharaoh, and stockpile for seven years.

A Christian, Persecuted

Several deep threads of irony lace the recent decision of the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal against Christian Horizons, a provider of services to people with developmental disorders.  The case involved a Christian lesbian named Connie Heintz, who left her job with this agency, and indeed was harassed out of it. Heintz found herself unable to comply with the agency’s employment contract — containing an explicitly evangelical Christian moral and religious agreement —  which essentially forbade her from engaging in homosexual activity.  Christian Horizons, which views itself as deeply evangelical Christian agency, and its work as an extension of Christian values, attempted to argue that as a religious organization it is exempt from the provisions of the Ontario Human Rights Code. This is despite the fact the agency receives some $75 million in financial aid from the provincial government to operate 180 group homes for 1,500 clients, none of whom (or their families), it might be added, are subjected to a similar moral or religious test. The Tribunal ruled Christian Horizons violated the complainant’s rights and ordered the agency to pay substantial damages as well as implement anti-discrimination policies and procedures. Bottom line: if you’re going to take public money and offer a public service, you need to abide by the Ontario Human Rights Code and the Charter of Rights.  The decision, despite claims of violation of religious freedom, is correct.

Way back in the dark ages, that is, the early ’90s, I knew an extremely personably and bright young Christian woman who worked for Christian Horizons, and who lived in some unholy terror that her employer would discover her lesbian relationship.  Her fear was palpable, and I can imagine the emotional torment the complainant went through.  Like my friend, Connie Heintz grew up in a serious, devout Mennonite household; only after a long struggle could she come to terms with being a lesbian.  She began a relationship.  She was confronted at work, and offered “restorative” therapy to make her “normal”.  And when she refused that a sadly familiar chain of events began, of work evaluations declining from exemplary to poor, and of highly suspect, circumstantial accusations of abusing clients and harassing another employee, before she finally left her employment.  

Reading though the 288 paragraphs (plus addendum) of the Tribunal’s decision one gets the sense of the conflicting rights and values involved, and the care by which the facts are weighed and adjudicated.  Irony seeps out.  Standard — if potentially illegal — human resources techniques of forcing an employee from a job by creating a poisoned work environment and setting up “conditions” for eventual dismissal hardly strike one as Christian, and it is perhaps surprising an organization that so aggressively bills itself as upholding Christian morality would countenance such behaviour, which is essentially deceitful and fraudulent.  There is then the larger inconguity of an organization like Christian Horizons, which according to its own mission statement is run with the admirable view to helping the marginalized, would so persecute a member of another marginalized group, in the name of Christian love.  Heintz’s own professed Christian belief and her ability to reconcile her faith and sexual orientation adds yet another layer of irony. This case boils down a Christian agency harassing a Christian out of her job — for being “insufficiently” Christian.  So much for religious freedom.  True religious liberty requires not only the freedom to practice one’s faith (or not), but toleration for dissent within an individual’s faith tradition.  Evangelical Christians do not speak for all Christians, nor do they hold the lockbox for doctrinal or moral purity.

(Note to Christian Horizons and others wanting to attack the Tribunal for this decision on the basis of religious freedom: the optics really suck on this one.) 

 

Obama, Hawking and the Search for Intelligent Life in the Universe

So I spent the week pissing around with a post.  I used up hours marshalling facts, arguments and raw data, pondering over whether this phrase or that represented le mot juste, and generally parsing nothing at all.  My opus major was to be on the topic of Islam and Europe, and the hysteria contained therein, and about how various right-wing writers aren’t so much concerned about Islam in Europe as finding another stick to beat the Left with (and being misongynist and xenophobic along the way.)  It’s a topic I find deeply interesting, and yet. . . the mojo wasn’t working on this one.  Maybe next week.

In the meantime the latest meme (or idiocy, take your pick) surfacing in the U.S. presidential campaign is that Barack Obama is the anti-christ.  Yeah, the real deal, with the name of the beast tattoed on his scalp and a strange, almost devilish, ability to lure superdelegates away from Hillary Clinton.   The proof is clear. It’s in the Bible, for all to see who can  — and people gone wacko over Revelations always somehow skip over all those inconvenient bits about loving your neighbour, giving your money to the poor, visiting the imprisoned, etc.  (Google Obama anti-christ and you will see myriad semi-literate examples. It’s pathological.)

In a related story, Stephen Hawking says, “Primitive life [in the Universe] is very common and intelligent life is fairly rare. Some would say it has yet to occur on Earth.”  Ha ha.  

Prof. Hawking was actually speaking on the need for humanity to get off the planet at a conderence in Washington.  It’s a fairly common theme, incidentally, of hard science fiction writers, like Stephen Baxter.  The argument being, it’s probably stupid of us to put all our eggs in one basket, i.e. the Earth, and the solar system could provide virtually unlimited resources for humanity.  Says Hawking:

People might well have argued it was a waste of money to send Columbus on a wild goose chase. Yet the discovery of the new world made profound difference to the old. Spreading out into space will have an even greater effect. It will completely change the future of the human race and maybe determine whether we have any future at all.

 

The Slow Science of Phenology

More incontrovertible signs of spring arrived this week: spring peepers and chorus frogs began their eons-old ritual of calling, mating and reproducing, road construction crews are similarly multiplying, and Peterborough County is choking under its first smog alert of the year.

I’m most interested in the frogs.  For a number of years, I’ve been informally recording in my journal the date of their annual appearance.  Last year, they first gave song the evening of 28 March; the year before it was 3 April.  This year, mostly owing to the depth of the snow cover, it was 14 April. This relates to a fascinating subset of climate change science, a small revival of phenology, an old methodology describing the rhythms and changes of the seasons and their recurring effects on the natural environment, including plant and animal life. It’s an approach which draws on natural history methods of drawing inferences from simple observation over a number of years, and involves looking at selected indicators.  So, for example, an observer might record the dates of ice breakup on her local stream, or the first flowering of the red maple on her front lawn.  Observations over time provide evidence of the effect of climate change on the environment as a whole.

Canadian records, alas, are scarce, though there is an effort to begin such recordkeeping on a mass scale through the Plantwatch program. A similar project is ongoing in the United States. In Britain, where observations have been kept for much longer — indeed, the science of phenology was a sort of national pastime in the 19th Century — some disturbing changes in the seasonal cycle have been noted.  In southern England budding oak leaves are bursting some 26 days earlier than in 1950, and several butterflies which normally make an appearance in April are being spotted as early as January.  The impact of this change on the ecosystem, combined with a dramatic loss of natural habitat in Great Britain since the Second World War, is anybody’s guess.  The data is highly suggestive: climate change, it would seem,  has being going on for far longer than what is conventually imagined, marked by the minute, subtle changes in plant growth and animal behaviour.

Harbinger of the future

The cool thing about phenology is that it’s climate change science anyone can do, armed only with pen and and a stout notebook (or for moderately computer literate, a simple spreadsheet).   You can think of it as a scientific version of the Slow Food movement.  Patience and consistency are necessary.  But even the simplest observations, over a number of years, are invaluable. You can collect data for Plantwatch, or you can create your own list of indicators. 

My own list looks like this below.  You will notice it’s short and simple, and is based on what I can easily observe given my own time constraints.  (Serious phenologists have lists numbering in the hundreds.) It’s probably appropriate for rural areas of eastern Canada and northeastern U.S.  In urban areas, the list would contain, I think, more ornamental plants. I will set up a page on this weblog containing my own observations.

Ice off pond (Normal early April)
Spring peeper song (Normal mid-April)
Trout Lily (Erythronium americanum) bloom (Normal late April)
Sugar maple (Acer saccharum) bloom (Normal early May)
Trillium (Trillium grandiflorum) bloom (Normal mid-May)
Last Spring Frost (Normal 3rd week May)
Lilac (Syringa vulgaris) bloom (Normal late May)
Crabapple (Malus sp.) bloom (Normal late May)
First sighting of Monarch Butterfly (Normal mid-June)
New England Aster (Aster nova-angliae) bloom (Normal late August)
First killing frost (Normal mid/late September)

I’m Joining the Tin Foil Hat Brigade

My friends say I’m taking a holiday from reality. But I had an inspiration. I decided the Conservative Party and the right in general are out to destroy the country. This is how it happened: I was outside last night, looking at the stars.  There was a slight wind, from the northeast, and just the hint of cloudiness on the southern horizon.  A dog was barking in the lonely distance.  Suddenly and without warning,  this feeling came over me,  like someone was watching.  Then a big booming voice said, “Crap! Goddamn it all to hell.”  This was actually my neighbour, who was trying to load a recalcitrant 500 lb. sow onto his truck.  It was then I knew the Conservatives were up to no good.

Further evidence came this morning.  I was on my laptop writing this very post, when the cat we used to call the Evil Kitty walked across the keyboard. (He was called the Evil Kitty because he was evil and would bite and howl, sometimes even without provocation.  He is actually a lot better and significantly less evil. Now we call him Stockwell.) When the Kitty-Formerly-Known-as-Evil was distracting me, the dog simultaneously began to drink my coffee right out of my cup! This is not a coincidence. Obviously, they are Conservative Party operatives. I shall have to keep my eye on these two.

Prophylaxis

Also, I do not want to alarm you but Ottawa, our beloved capital, has been infiltrated by Conservatives. I have suspected this for a long time, but finally got evidence today. Furthermore, it is a well-known fact that Parliament, our most sacred institution, is filled to the rafters with Conservatives.  This has been documented by bloggers, etc. Alarmingly, there are so many of them they have taken over the government!

What is worse, they are plotting against us even as I write. And why won’t the mainstream media cover this important scandal?  There is obvious conservative media bias.  Studies have shown the media have a 99% bias against the left 39.3 times out of 80.  When will the Canadian people wake up?

I have started a massive research project to expose this dastardly conspiracy.  After the experience of the stars, the wind, the pig and so on I stayed up all night working on it.  I will publish the fruits of my labours shortly, in a series of thirty-nine posts. In the meantime, I can perhaps share the first line or two of my exposé: “To begin my life with the beginning of my life, I record that I was born.  Sometime later I realized the Conservative Party in association with the National Hockey League and Celine Dion was out to destroy Canada.”  I think this line of inquiry holds promise.

I am thinking too of changing the name of this blog to “Dispatches from the Conservative Police State.”  This is a more accurate representation of life in this intern camp we call Canada, labouring under right-wing rule. I have also resolved to examine every aspect of my existence, using the premise “the Conservative Party is out to get me” as my watchword and guide.  My revelation suddenly makes everything clear.  There is conspiracy everywhere.  This includes politics, religion, VIA Rail, the rain, the snow, the wind, intestinal complaints, teabags — especially teabags, the letter J, foot fungus, the National Post, and the House of Windsor.  I call it Metero-myco-politico-religio-ferro-monarcho-camillio-gastro-alphabetico-canwestglobalism. It’s all of a piece, you see.

I have to go now to the dentist.  They are using my fillings to monitor my movements and thoughts.  They have to come out.

Contemporary Spanish Corruption part 1

Perhaps I will bore you with some of the intricacies of ‘who’s who’ in Spanish politics after all. Or rather, how an unknown political force can go from virtually nowhere to somewhere in a matter of months and leap not only to the #2 position on PSOE Andalusian election list, but go directly to hold a ministry in Zapatero’s second government might seem strange. Indeed, it might even be seen as coming from a higher, magical force where the rules of politics don’t apply. For thirty-one year old Bibiana Aído, who teleported into the vague and mysterious Ministry of Equality (which apparently seeks to strike out evil remnants of machismo from Spanish society), such elevations are part of her daily life. Nonetheless, back here among mortals, mumblings of enchufismo abound, particularly her father’s influence in the PSOE as well as paybacks for under the table deals during Spain’s recent building boom. 

Minister of Hogwarts Equality

As a side note, Bibiana’s fellow Andalusian,  Juan Antonio Roca, the former godfather of Marbella who embezelled billions a few years ago, was released from prison today on a million euro bail and on the condition that he doesn’t go witin 500m of an airport. I am sure his giraffes will be happy to see him back.  

Our personal note to Mr. Roca: How in the the hell did you get a cool million? Who the hell cares? Welcome back Rocky! Marbella hasn’t been the same without ‘ya!

When the Pope Comes Calling

Some etiquette tips in case you meet the Bishop of Rome in the flesh.

• Dress: Semi-formal. “For men, that means a jacket and tie and polished shoes. For women, a nice dress or suit works best — preferably one that covers the arms and has a hemline below the knees.” Baseball caps are okay at papal masses. Tube tops, sadly, no.
• Honours: Lavish.  “In a small room, people often clap quietly, as if they were at a golf tournament. But in a big venue, such as a stadium, the crowd frequently greets the pope with loud cheers and a thunderous ovation.”
• Face-to-face: Genuflect, genuflect, genuflect.

Kowtowing is optional

• Address: “Your Holiness or Holy Father.”  Terms such as Popey, Benny, The Rat Rocker, 16, Hey You, and so on, while endearing, are actively discouraged.
• Kissing the Ring:  Yes, “If  you are Catholic and the pope offers his hand. If you’re not Catholic, you can opt to shake his hand.”  Also, don’t slobber. Air kisses are optimal.
• When he leaves: “When the pope gets up to leave, you should also stand up. Wait for him to leave the room before turning your attention to anything else.”  I.e. no rushing the door, no heading for the buffet, cellphones and Blackberrys off.

We thought you’d like to know.

 

The Death of Us

Amnesty International yesterday released a report on the number of executions last year: at least 1,200 people were hung, decapitated, shot, electrocuted or lethally injected last year in twenty-four countries, and 3,347 more went to death row.  Eighty-eight per cent of executions took place in the usual suspects: China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and the United States.  At a minimum, 540 people were executed in China, and AI estimates this figure is lowballed, because the number of executions in China is a state secret.  Apparently the actual number might prove embarrassing to the Chinese government in the run up to the Olympics is a political and social matter internal to China.

The full report is here.