Posts filed under 'Politics'
Matt Good ranted today about a refusal to take sides in the Georgia conflict because all sides are taking lives–and that is not something that can be justified.
He pointed out that this is not a conflict that began last month–that for a decade separatists have been inciting violence that has been killing innocents. And that’s just not okay anymore.
Yesterday was the anniversary of Martin Luther King’s I have a Dream speech. MLK was a man who stood up, with Ghandi as his hero to claim that it was in the courageous that you found the ability to turn away from violence. To peacefully demand your rights. …and he, and Ghandi proved that it was doable. If you refuse to fight, and you protest, and you argue for your rights and your needs as a human you will overthrow your oppressors. And why hasn’t that lesson been learned?
It breaks my heart to know that my own people failed at that task. When I read Irish history, and I learn about the otrocious and violent and vile behaviour of the British I can understand the anger and desperation that the Irish of the early 20th century felt…but that does not excuse, in my mind, their decision to take up arms.
I have been reading Edward Said’s “After Oslo: The End of the Peace Process”, and I recommend it. It is an interesting look at the years between 1995 and 2001 in Palestine and Israel, but moreover it is plea to humanity.
Said is very consistently critical of the Palestinian intellectuals and leaders. …He is critical because he sees them as being a people unable to mobilize their population culturally and ideologically–and he argues that since they leave their population unable to affect political change they drive them toward religious fundamentalism since people need some sense of meaning, or some sense that their actions will have purpose.
He argues that in today’s day and age we know that the way to win a struggle is with ideas, through propoganda and communication. And so he points out the spending money on security and arms is a waste for Palestine–they will never outfight Israel. Instead, he argues, they must begin to appeal to the world population regarding the violation of their human rights. And moreover, they must stop violating the human rights of one another. …they must begin peaceful protests that will cause embarrasment for those who perpetuate and exacerbate the circumstances in which they live.
It is unacceptable that we are willing to abide by the senseless taking of other lives. It is unacceptable that we are okay with hundreds and thousands and millions of people dying as long as it’s not in our country–as long as it’s not our people.
It is unacceptable that we frame the world according to countries and consider that a relevant way to divide human lives.
I attended a panel earlier this week of five Afghani youth visiting Canada to speak about their experiences growing up and working in Afghanistan. One of them touched my heart so powerfully he kept almost bringing me to tears with his assertive demands for hope. Many people in the room had questions to do with Canada’s presence in Afghanistan, particularly considering that there may well be an election coming up in the fall, in which Afghanistan would be a major issue. All five Afghanis firmly argued that Canada’s presence was postive, and that the developments and growth in Afghanistan could not be overestimated in the last 6 years. This one particular young man pointed out, furthermore, that it was the vaccuum of power once the Russia finally left Afghanistan and the West ceased to provide any more support (i.e. failed to provide any support to help Afghanistan rebuild as a democracy following the end of the Russian occupation) that allowed the Taliban to get power in the first place. All five young men seemed quite confident that if the international community left Afghanistan again now the same thing (or at least a similar thing) would happen again.
This one young man pointed out that Afghanistan is a very important and volatile location, and that it is important to the world community that such a thing not happen again. Moreover, however, he pleaded to the notion that no matter where Afghanistan was located–the higher point was that we are all in this together, as citizens of this planet…and that insofar as we care about democracy and human rights and peace for all people we ought to stay in Afghanistan and help our brothers their achieve those ideals.
And I was touched. Because so rarely do we look at it that way and genuinely mean it.
August 29th, 2008
About a year ago I expressed apprehension at the fact that I felt my views toward America were beginning to apply more and more to Canada as well, and I have to say in the interim it’s only gotten worse.
I’ve not been impressed with Canada’s current government. I’ve not been impressed with the almost covert ways in which they cut funding and execute deregulations which put more and more power into the hands of corporations… Frankly, it’s frightened me. And it’s depressed me that despite Harper’s current pandering about a government that can’t get things done, the fact of the matter is he’s had an almost free-ride since Liberals have been afraid to challenge him to firmly on anything for fear of causing an election they weren’t ready to win.
Anyway, for some thoughts on this …check out Heather Mallick’s editorial for the week.
August 25th, 2008
Tonight I am studying for a test in my course on the Psychology of Language, and I’m not convinced it will go well, but what can ya do.
The text book is really bad. It contains information about studies that demonstrate the types of sentences that are most difficult for people to read (convoluted with usage of the passive voice), and uses them everywhere. It’s also full of false claims, bad assumptions, and has the odd spelling error.
I also have complaints about Chomsky. Which is odd, cause generally when I interact with him it’s in books on American policy etc., and I love him. But from time to time I have to deal with his linguistics and I just get all irritated and frustrated and ranty. Yes you beat Skinner and the behaviourists–and for that I love you…but goddamn, what’s the use of a linguistic model with no basis in psychological reality? How can you not even aspire to have your model be tested, potentially falsified and built on? Are you really content just building big towers of hypothetical linguistic theories that depend on everyone going “shhhhhh…don’t listen to the psychologists….they just don’t understand..”???? ARGH! I would love linguistics to be a science, I would. But it’s not anywhere close right now.
My textbook juxtaposes linguistics and psychology by saying that linguistics comes from the tradition of rationalism, while psychology is rooted in the tradition of empiricism and that this is at the root of their disagreements. …as if psychology could really get by without philosophical frameworks (not that it doesn’t try sometimes), and as if anything (including linguistics) can aspire to being a science if it doesn’t function empirically.
Other things that are atrocious:
1. This whole thing about waterboarding…It’s everywhere I look right now. Protesters in the states. Matt Good is writing about it. Jon Stewart is talking about it. The CBC is reporting on it. Seriously people (read: certain American politicians) there’s nothing to debate. There’s no semantic ambiguity. Waterboarding is torture and you are actively using it. That is disgusting. Seriously, it makes me feel rotten and disgusting in the pit of my stomach. Liberty? Human Rights? …fucking hell. BESIDES WHICH, it has been proven that torture does not yeild accurate information. It just yeilds whatever it takes to get the torture to stop. So do you just do it for the kicks? My god we can be sick, sick animals.
2. Canada now allows Drug companies to advertise. Lovely eh? Isn’t that just what you want? We don’t have enough commercialization as it stands, I think it would be fantastic to have drugs advertising directly to people. Cause really you want people to choose their own drugs. Med school doesn’t really make you any more aware of how the body works and how illnesses ought to be remedied. Besides it’s important that a large portion of the income drug companies have get directed into marketing and advertising (over 50% for some companies in the US), because, after all–you wouldn’t want them to redirect that money into research and development….
So, while I’m linguistically ticked off at him, in the spirit of my last two complaints I’d like to direct you to Chomsky’s new book: Failed States. It’s really brilliant. The main premise is that using the standards that America uses to assess states to declare them “failed” and thus justify their involvement in their administration, America itself is a failed state. Well written. Lots of interesting information–like did you know that of all the countries which sent doctors to the region affected by the Tsunami Cuba sent the most government sponsered ones? And that of those something like 47.9% were female? …anyway. I think it’s his strength.
November 7th, 2007
I’m starting to hear rumours that this Ontario referendum hasn’t been well publicized and that a lot of people don’t know what it’s about. Personally I think it’s an important step toward a more representitive government, so I hope people are made aware and vote!
Right now we have the “first past the post” system which means that the representitive with the most votes in a riding gets a seat in government and noone else from that riding does. In theory this makes sense, but imagine the following. Three ridings near one another are each very competitive. One between the Liberals and the Conservatives, and two others between the Liberals and the NDPs. Now imagine that the Liberals win a seat in each riding by a margin of 1%. Hypothetically the first riding votes 51% Liberal and 49% Conservative and the other two ridings are the same proportion except with NDPs. Overall there is a great deal of support for all three parties, and yet only the Liberals would be represented in this system.
The idea with MPP (mixed party proportional?) is that representitives would still be elected from ridings, but there would also be seats designated to parties who did not get enough representitives elected to correspond to their proportion of the popular vote. Result? The percentage of votes a party gets will actually correspond to the percentage of seats they have in government. Cool much?
Anyway, look into it further. Decide what you think, and make sure you vote in the referendum!!
For more information:
The Referendum Website
An article from city news
The Vote for MMP website
September 30th, 2007
I’m not one to stress about privacy really. In fact my philosophy on the matter is that no privacy for anyone (including governments and corporations) would serve us all extremely well. For us little guys it wouldn’t make a difference in the world, and it would screw the big guys over big time.
However, I still thought this was important, and interesting. Especially considering transparency into the agencies after this information (or their American counterparts for that matter) is far from ever being a reality. According to CBC:
Government agencies are moving to gain access to telephone and internet customers’ personal information without first getting a court order, according to a document obtained by CBCNews.ca that is raising privacy issues…
The information would include names, addresses, land and cellphone numbers, as well as additional mobile phone identification, such as a device serial number and a subscriber identity module (SIM) card number. The consultation also seeks input on access to e-mail addresses and IP addresses.
Personally I say: go for it if you want. But in exchange let us see your budgets, your names, your addresses, your cellphone numbers and your IP addresses. Tit for Tat. I bet yours is more interesting…
September 13th, 2007
Has anyone else started to become increasingly afraid of the turns for American our country is taking? Years ago (let’s say 7) like many Canadians I had a completely neutral-leaning-toward-favourable view of America. Then gradually leading up to about 3 years ago I became rather fervantly disgusted by America. And now the last year or so, I am afraid. Because I am Canadian and my country is leaning closer and closer in the direction of all that which disgusts me about America.
There was a big summit up here recently. I don’t know a lot about what it was about, to be completely honest. I know it involved Bush, Harper, and the President of Mexico, and I know that the storms in Mexico were threatening to cut it short. And I know that it involved economics and that the public was not allowed to witness it.
What I have been learning more about is the protests that took place, and the shockingly uncanadian results. According to CBC thousands of protestors were present. Harper, however, was quoted as claiming it was more like 500, and said it was “sad”. Belittling democratic action much?
Now according to Matt Good’s site there are allegations that the police actually infiltrated the protesters to incite violence. Brilliant. Proud to be Canadian on a day like today.
August 22nd, 2007
So I went to the movies the other night and guess what my reciept read?
Admission Price: $10.30
GST: $0.62
Amusement Tax: $1.03
Total: $11.95
Does everyone see it? Number three. Second from the bottom. Amusement tax?! What the heck is that?
I was with a group of four and not one of us had heard of this before. We asked three people working at the cinema, and not one of them had heard of it before…so I went home, looked it up, and guess what? The Province of Ontario charges an “amusement tax” on admission to, you guessed it, places of amusement! In fairness, I feel that the price of my entire ticket is somewhat of an amusement tax, but nevermind that.
So here it is, according to Wilfred Laurier University admission to places of amusement is a taxable service at 10%. According to this article on the history of film in Ontario the tax was instated in 1916 as a war tax. …sticking around a bit like the old income tax isn’t it?
Who knew?
July 22nd, 2007
For the first (and perhaps only) time, I am currently on the side of the Conservative government in Canada. The Economist’s article on the new Canadian plan for lowering emissions is a good summary of what is going on.
David Suzuki isn’t happy. Al Gore, who is in Toronto this week, is very disappointed. The liberal government is calling it a fraud.
And I’m thinking - liberal government, shuttup. For 13 years after signing the Kyoto Protocol you took no steps toward meeting our targets. The current government has inherited from you a difficult situation of an unreachable signed agreement, plus emissions which have been increasing steadly for 13 years.
Environmentalists…I know, I know. It isn’t good enough. It won’t meet the Kyoto protocol. It is putting the economy first. I am with you on being annoyed by these things. HOWEVER–it is actually putting the environment on the priority list, and that is new. It is a commitment to change, and that is new. It is a step in the right direction and you should be grateful that the population actually cares a bit now.
This government’s support comes out of oil-based Alberta, Canada’s little Texas. I can’t believe anyone was expecting anything more than what they got with this deal. A minority government cannot risk cutting out it’s only support base by alienating them on an issue its opposition is pushing for. This is a brilliant compromise.
April 29th, 2007
This, right here, is your biggest problem. If you want to stop abortions then make students aware of how NOT to get pregnant. Sure some students will wait until they are married. Sure it may be a good idea and one worth teaching. But if that’s all you give people then some of them are going to have unprotected sex and they are going to get pregnant. …and social conservatives, unwanted pregnancies cause situations you really don’t like.
A $166 million US INCREASE in money used to teach abstinance to students. Brilliant.
I am not pro-choice in the sense that I think abortion is a woman’s right. But women and men should be educated about making smart choices. And “unwanted children” is a phrase I would love to see irradicated from our terminology altogether. Just teach, people. That will solve your problem.
I have been taking classes over at the Catholic College, St. Michael’s, this year. The anti-abortion propoganda there has been blowing my mind. One sign says “Countries which allow abortion are not promoting love, but the idea that you can get what you want through violence. That is why abortion is the single greatest destroyer of love and peace.” Like I said I am not fundamentally pro-choice. The idea of abortion makes me queasy in a lot of ways. But THE GREATEST DESTROYER OF LOVE AND PEACE? …you have GOT to be kidding me. Try world hunger? no. War Children? nah. Lack of international literacy? nope. The AIDS epidemic? No silly. …abortion.
Ridiculous people. Get some perpsective.
April 14th, 2007
In class today we were talking about the suffrigest movement in the UK. My prof was saying that her grandmother always used to say she would never forget the first day she went out to vote, refusing to allow her husband’s opinion to sway her.
“Before she died, she was around 100, she wasn’t going to mass anymore on Sundays, but by God she was out to vote in every election.”
Oh, the days of commitment to democratic responsibility.
Also Professor Ann Dooley rocks.
April 4th, 2007
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