Politics, Re-Spun

No More Strategic Voting: Thanks STV!

This election will see the last strategic vote you will ever need to cast in a provincial election in BC.

STV is polling quite high and I expect it to pass. This means that you no longer have to plug your nose voting for someone to keep someone else from running the place. And it also means you don’t have to waste your vote in a protest by voting for a candidate who won’t win, all to avoid abstaining.

STV means the proportion of votes going to parties will come very close to being translated into seats in the legislature by making sure that someone you rank will use your vote to win a seat.

So if you can’t handle Gordon Campbell anymore, and would prefer not to vote for the NDP for whatever reason, but you feel you need to do it now, here’s how you can put a smile on your face.

When you cast your ballot, vote for STV as well to make sure that the next election will mean that your ranking of candidates won’t be wasted as one of them will almost certainly use your vote to become elected.

The most frustrating thing for me leading up to any election is listening to smart, passionate, concerned friends voting for parties they hate to keep from wasting their vote. Or else they don’t vote and I can understand why. If the system is this broken, it needs to be fixed.

I think for a place with only two political parties our current system is awesome since the winner will have to get more than 50% of the votes. 19th century Canada was such a place, but even then the parties didn’t need to represent women or other politically undesirables.

But in a place like Vancouver, BC and Canada, there are no two parties that effectively reflect everyone’s identities and passions. This is why we get vote splitting, unearned majority governments, wasted votes, apathy, anger and cynicism.

It’s astonishing that we can fix all these things just by changing the system.  STV here we come!

Politics, Re-Spun Meets Coop Radio, a Vista Video Podcast

On Monday, April 20, 2009, Politics, Re-Spun met Coop Radio on “The Rational”, a Monday evening issues program.

We talked about the myth of journalistic objectivity, the provincial election, the crappy media coverage, how the polls show likely increased voter turnout is bad, bad news for the neoLiberal party, as well as our 5-year anniversary party last Friday night. But we never got around to Billy Bob Thorton. Too bad.

The video podcast of the conversation lives at Vista Video. 

You can watch it in Miro, the best new open source multimedia viewing software: http://www.miroguide.com/feeds/8832

or…

You can watch it in iTunes: itpc://dgivista.org/pod/Vista_Podcasts.xml

or…

The podcast file is at http://dgivista.org/pod/COOP.Radio.4.20.09.mov

Enjoy!

WE WON!!! Democracy 1, Gordon Campbell 0

Gag law ruled unconstitutional

March 27, 2009

The B.C. Liberal government’s controversial election “gag” law has been ruled unconstitutional by the B.C. Supreme Court.

Justice Frank Cole found that Bill 42’s restriction on third-party election advertising before the official 28-day election period is unconstitutional. He’s expected to issue written reasons for his judgement early next week.

via Hospital Employees’ Union – Home.

No One Is Illegal – Ignite resistance ~ Canadian multiculturalism is not enough!

No One Is Illegal – Vancouver » Blog Archive » Ignite resistance ~ Canadian multiculturalism is not enough!.

In a world where the deregulated global market capitalist regime is imploding, there is wide open space to re-frame the local, national and global economy in a socially and economically just way.

An off-shoot of this progressive agenda is the celebration of authentic community where people/consumers/citizens can get out of their cocooned homes and participate in the cultures of community.

What better way to do it than in this event?

Details:

SATURDAY MARCH 21. rhizome cafe, 317 e. broadway

* 6:30 – 7:30 pm: artists of colour showcase. please bring $ and support their creations! (tshirts, crafts, prints, posters, art and more) Free food served during artists showcase (on us and Rhizome)
* WITH: Louis Cruz, Tania Willard, Afuwa Granger, Riadh Hashim, Angela Sterritt, Gord Hill, Kat Norris, People’s History of Kanada posters, Café Ramona and products made by Zapatista Mayan women, and more.

* 7:30 – 9:30 pm: wicked performances and inspiring words includes spoken word, storytelling, children’s songs, hip hop, comedy, musical performances, and talks! Enjoy dinner and drinks from Rhizome’s delicious menu
* WITH: George Ciccariello-Maher from OAKLAND!, Kat Norris, Aysha and Sahara, Carnegie Community Action Project Choir, Hari Alluri, Reem Alnuweiri, Ros Salvador, Sinag Bayan Filipino Cultural Collective, Priscillia Mays, Gupreet Kambo, Alaaeldin Abdalla, and Lindsay Bomberry.

Keep Reading Your Community Newspapers, Or Else

Despite the sexiness of the internet, print is not dead. If you are not spending more time reading your community newspaper, you are on the wrong road, for yourself and for the health of our society.

Granted, decades ago television supplanted newspapers as the dominant source of news and information for the majority of North Americans. And now the internet has passed newspapers.

The Pew Research Center in the United States is one of the most respected research organizations because of the balance of their approach to tracking political, social, economic and cultural trends and patterns.

Late in 2008 they reported that 40% of Americans get their news mostly from the internet, up from 24% just 2.5 years ago. Newspapers have slipped to 35%. Canadian trends usually follow the Americans.

There are many reasons for this shift, largely obvious, but they don’t reflect the whole story.

Certainly internet media sites have improved their capacity to deliver information with far more appeal and better organizational tools for users. The Air America radio network, Alternet.org, Rabble.ca, BC’s TheTyee.ca and other progressive online media have been well served by new technologies like podcasting and people’s need to look outside corporate media to find critical information and analysis on this decade’s radically right wing governments in BC, Canada and the United States.

At the same time, increasingly concentrated corporate media ownership, with increasing ownership by foreign corporations, has led to cost cutting through centralizing reporting and firing breathing journalists. Corporate media often prefers to often just be the de facto communications department of right wing governments by reporting as “news” often verbatim press releases.

This has led to the dilution of meaningful content in newspapers, declining paid subscriptions, and full-page ads on the front page of newspapers. People notice the decline. Even daily newspapers have been dumping papers for free in public spaces to be able to claim their circulation is high despite decreasing subscriptions and actual paying consumers. Declining circulation leads to declining ad revenue: a debilitating revenue feedback loop. Large North American cities are losing their status as two-newspaper towns as large dailies close.

But the other side of the story is about the necessity of a free press in a healthy, functioning democratic society: an increasing rarity with such corporate concentration of ownership.

While the internet has risen in prominence, television is responding with enhancing relevance. On the progressive side, MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow have drawn more viewers. Even CNN’s reporters have become more critical than soon after 9/11. Farid Zacharia would never have been able to get a show on CNN 6 years ago.

Sadly, the same kind of improvement in critical capacity has not emerged in Canadian television. CBC TV’s high profile pundit panel consists of centre, centre-right and right wing commentators, with no progressive voices.

But community papers are a vibrant resistance front against ignorance, apathy and right wing governments preferring to elude the spotlight.

During our global economic crisis and increasing oil prices, globalization of goods and services will decline. People will be buying local more, supporting bioregional agriculture and production.

In a world of global corporate media ownership, people still long for news, commentary and analysis that affects them and not just some nebulous World Economic Forum policy from Davos, Switzerland.

Indeed, in the global economic, environmental and energy crises we are entering, it is the community itself that will be the our way out. People of all political stripes on the prairies, and where Gordon Campbell cynically calls BC’s heartlands, have known this for generations.

Community papers have breathing journalists who see what happens on their streets, in their closing mills and in spin-off sectors throughout their regions. They see how people live and breathe and how suffering shows up. There is far less centralization and homogeneity of reporting.

And as long as community papers are financially viable it is their publishers’ and editors’ duty to enhance their content since global corporate media owners and the internet’s capacity to inform people about life outside their communities provide just one scope of information.

Community papers do recognize the role they play in reflecting and influencing the fabric of local society. They have to make sure what they publish is worthy of reading.

Similarly, people need to realize they have a part to play in ensuring a free press can exist. They can do this by reading their local papers, demanding quality analysis, engaging in community discussion about issues in the paper and supporting local advertisers.

There are a handful of community papers in the province that excel in quality journalism and commentary. There are many more that sometimes rise to a significant level, but there are many more that are not reaching that standard. This needs to change.

It is the public’s job to demand more from their local media. The public must complain about press releases from city hall or the health authority showing up as news without analysis and contextualization. We must be vigilant in writing letters to editors. We must contact journalists and editors directly to tell them when what they publish is good, and when and how it can be better.

The effectiveness of a free press in a democratic society is eroding, and that is not accidental. But it doesn’t have to decline. And while it is very hard to force the CRTC to break up concentrated corporate media ownership across the country, it is far easier to walk into the office of your local paper with some Timbits for the staff and your opinions about your community, what is working and what needs improvement.

Directors of right wing think tanks can always get meetings with the editorial boards of large corporate media. But on a community level, the leaders of community groups, activists, all citizens need to realize that they deserve to have the ears of their local media.

After all, community media is about us, the community. And the more we insist that it reflects our lives, the more robust our media will be.

And if we let our community newspapers become Pablum or die, that will be our fault. Our society deserves a freer, more vibrant press. We need to do our part in ensuring that.

Vista Video Arrives!

Politics, Re-Spun is intricately connected to the dgiVista.org nexus of expression. As much as my audio podcasts have been terribly fulfilling and well received [with hundreds of hits/month since mid-2006], it’s time to move into video.

My audio podcasts have been audio versions of my editorials as well as interesting chats with people I know being/doing/thinking/feeling interesting things.

And now that bandwidth restrictions are virtually passe, video podcasts are just so simple now. All my audio and video podcast conversations have extensive indexes of topics. See below for the first two video podcast chats to watch.

You can review past audio podcasts through searching here: http://politicsrespun.org/?s=podcast

You can also access past and current audio and video podcasts at the following sites. Even though iTunes isn’t terribly oppressive, I’m prefering Miro lately, as it’s open source:

iTunes

Pick it up straight in your iTunes at itpc://dgivista.org/pod/Vista_Podcasts.xml.

Miro

Click subscribe below to keep up in Miro, the new wave of open source bliss:

The first video podcast chat is with Colin Mills and Ameena Mayer, followed by Rachel Marcuse.

June 2008 conversation with Colin Mills and Ameena Mayer, topics:

Introductions: Colin Mills, Ameena Mayer, Stephen Elliott-Buckley

Colin on…

- the process on his photography
- perfect versus meaningful art and paralysis
- accepting failure
- learning curves
- the problem with money in art
- 1 of 1 versus mass “production” and paralysis
- Stephen on the new Karsh self-portrait stamp
- truth is bullshit
- Princess Sophie as a beautiful person or a focus of security guards, and what is true
- painters’ freedom versus photographers’
- photography is not about truth
- impressionist photography
- Flickr mode
- Stephen on the Classical Joint in Gastown 20 years ago and watching/listening to jazz without glasses on and seeing a different colour aura over each musician’s musical contribution…and how it’s like Colin’s impressionist photography
- truth as crispy and blurry
- deciding how to photograph concerts in the moments and anonymity
- on Utah Phillips dying at 180

A critique of the absolute lack of community in North American culture by Ameena…

- GM popcorn sucks, organic popcorn is good
- disconnecting social networks
- let’s blame capitalism, the internet and our lack of valuing relationships [excepting romantic ones]
- and it’s not just her, it’s endemic
- addictions, social alienation undermining our tribal nature
- the growth of capitalism and globalization, the isolation of the individual consumer, workaholism, hyper-individualism, less selflessness
- Colin suggests we may be creating capitalism because we want to live this way: greedy; with some manipulation from Madison Avenue
- Colin on the 1972 40-ish hour documentary “The World at War”: fewer material possessions with depression followed by war
- friendship as less reciprocal
- younger adults are more workaholic than in earlier times
- we are busy because we have a hole in our lives
- Colin asks whether economic anxiety may be a social reality, not a choice
- technology and the internet are replacing more “traditional” human interaction, like the phone or having coffee with something
- we don’t make the luxury of time by choosing to forego distraction
- a tangent is vetoed
- it returns
- Colin on the self-consciousness of believing he grew up under a microscope
- difficult figuring out how to reconcile my relationship with the rest of the world versus self-obsession
- college students live in a fishbowl too, or is it just our trained narcism?
- the iPod generation is symbolic: I, I, I
- why don’t we have a sociologist in the room tying all this together

- beer break

Lack of community, continued…

- self-absorbtion is against our intrinsic human nature
- the nuclear family is bad
- we need ways of seeing the world beyond our solipsism
- our elders are also noticing less mutual human consideration
- Colin on CHiPs, Disney and Hymn Sing: how choice contributes to narcism and narrowing of awareness
- Stephen on why my.yahoo.com is bad, ultimately the celebrated entrenchment of ignorance
- freedom = ignorance
- hyper-specialization of interests leads to social dislocation
- wearing headphones in public
- how we actually talk to our neighbours on snow days
- socially, we are now less interdependent
- romantic relationships might be economic arrangements
- or is it avoiding alone-ness
- our absence of extended family cripples us as a spouse can’t fill all the needs that an extended family could
- yard sales as community building
- intentionally spending time with friends
- [drifting into the next topic, the Follies of Technology]
- female body mutilation, extreme makeovers, etc.
- all the flavours of feminism [many of which are mutually exclusive]
- What Not to Wear: fashion and sincere self-concept counselling, but is it feminist or anti-feminism?
- the Lululemon world
- how women’s poor clothing choices sadly can hamper their career success
- recognizing we can’t control other people’s impressions of us
- Ameena asks the boys how much sexual attraction motivates the desire to have a relationship

Ameena ties it all together: feminism, social isolation, community, marriage, different values, loneliness…

- the challenges to meaningful relationships create a desperation to be noticed [Letty agreed]
- communities of ideas have replaced communities of propinquity
- why arranged marriages can work, unlike how much we need to try so hard
- LavaLife: the solution to arranged marriages?
- folk versus popular cultures and how they affect us as individuals
- reflections on cyberpaths: socio/psychopaths stalking women in dating websites
- why Colin argues that we should be focussing blame more on individualism than societal features
- the cats show up: aren’t they precious

Technology, Facebook and video podcasting

- Ameena argues that video podcasting is kinda pathetic
- Colin argues that we don’t lament the absence of writers in our rooms when we read
- then we try to define what video podcasting IS in our culture, and what it is supposed to be
- we get a bit judgemental, I’m afraid
- what do Facebook “friends” mean to human connections?
- Facebook friends versus networking usefulness

December 2008 conversation with Rachel Marcuse, topics:

Rachel Marcuse, December 28, 2008, Foundation restaurant on Main Street at 7th Avenue in Vancouver.

- Coalition of Progressive Electors, a Vancouver municipal party

- youth engagement and facilitation

- grassroots community and political organization and development

- the whole Obama thing: top down versus people-centred; concern about overblown expectations and lack of populist follow-through; being a blank slate of “change”; participatory democracy and accountability; packaging over substance;

- reforming the political process in Vancouver, BC and Canada: ideas instead of personalities; re-framing citizens’ views of what politics is; apathy versus irrelevant effort; apathy versus electoral disengagement and indifference; apathy in middle aged people as opposed to the youth; why proroguing is not well understood

- break: the arrival of chocolate fondue

- beat boxers are so talented, Thundering Word Heard, Montmartre Cafe, Cafe Deux Soleils, the poetry slam, George Bowering versus T.Paul Ste. Marie

- democracy’s arrival in Canada with the end of majority governments: how this isn’t a constitutional crisis but a constitutional flowering, Stephen Harper’s lies about how the parliamentary system works in order to scare citizens enough so he can keep his job, anti-Quebec racism in western Canada, the Bloc Quebecois helps Quebec flourish as a culture without needing to focus on separation, the ease of stereotypes

- political populism, hope and progressive growth in Canada, Vision Vancouver, COPE, BC NDP, Venezuela: people deciding to lead; Jack Layton’s outside chance of becoming prime minister last month; Dion and Ignatieff; the Liberal ruling birthright/arrogance; electoral reform in Vancouver [ward system] and BC [proportional representation, BC-STV]; decentralizing politics to communities; electoral reform needing to happen at the right time; Social Credit in BC; Obama at the 2004 Democratic Convention and timing

- social change through speaking to people’s self-interest in improving society: livable communities; improving society can’t happen with sound bites but by engaging people and introducing a new paradigm; Gordon Campbell pulling a Shock Doctrine response to the meltdown as if he used Naomi Klein’s formula; shopping to save the economy is unsustainable; re-education people out of blind obedience to Milton Friedman

- how do we mobilize and catalyze people to becoming more socially engaged: building relationships and visions; mobilizing youth and adults; Disney sweatshops; working with young people as a way to confront cynicism; youth who care about social change and resent previous generations’ mistakes they must live with; Craig Kielburger; how young people are disempowered, doubly so when they work for social change; losing builds resilience; David Chudnovsky; social change requires celebration to keep us going; work-life balance in activism and saying no; hope, common sense, pacing and self-knowledge; Greenpeace, protests, martyrdom; CCPA and Check Your Head and mentorship; Fraser Institute indoctrination programs

- the future: indulging imagining a functioning utopia and what we want our communities to look like; capitalism is not eternal, particularly because of finite resources; spanning communities to synchronize work for social, political and economic change; focussing on change that really matters right now while keeping a long-term plan; the value of being interdisciplinary; there is no real failure when groups engage with each other; the Open Space workshop model, its advantages and frustrations; Open Space as a metaphor for empowering citizens’ involvement in politics; Don Davies, Jack Layton and a community meeting at Collingwood Community Centre on politics and the economy;

- how the Foundation restaurant’s expansion is a good sign for culture and community on Main Street in Vancouver.

Ignatieff Will Be Content as Opposition Leader

As much as it pains me to write this, I believe at 8am Vancouver time this morning, the federal Liberal leader will claim that Harper has shown enough conciliatory, cooperative gestures in yesterday’s budget to enjoy the right to govern for a while more.

I hope so much to be wrong, but the budget wasn’t as heinous as I expected it to be. While it did little of substance to make a real difference for the most vulnerable Canadians or women or first nations or working parents or or or or…you get the message, it had enough tidbits to make the Liberals look like whiners if they crash the government and form the coalition, since an election would cause massive political vomit from across the land.

Here are a few issues:

1. The Liberals, as Conservative-Lite, could easily have come up with many of the stimulus package elements that Flaherty spewed out. After all, don’t forget that the Liberals brought us the MacDonald Commission which led to free trade with the USA, NAFTA, the GST, Paul Martin’s anti-social budgets, the Kandahar escapade and a host of other annoyances.
2. Ignatieff didn’t enter politics in Canada to become a prime minister of a coalition government. His ego is all about the Liberal ruling birthright. He will get far more political capital for the bankrupt and desperate party he leads by slamming Harper as opposition leader than by suffering as a coalition prime minister. Harper’s budget wasn’t sufficiently anti-human for him to reject it and lead a coalition [which he would have to do since rejecting the budget and the coalition and causing an election would be blamed on him].
3. Jim Flaherty demonstrated today that Conservative cluelessness will continue unabated: open season on how out of touch they are. During the last election campaign, Harper described the beginnings of the global economic crash as a good time to buy stocks: truly heartless and obvlivious to the reality of millions of Canadians’ fears. Today Flaherty put on his grinning smirk in announcing the tax credit for home renovations: “The home renovation tax credit is available for renovations to the house or the cottage, for everything from a new furnace to energy efficient windows to a new deck.” And his compatriots were grinning and giggling along with Flaherty’s nod to elites that love/control them so much. Hands up all Canadians who don’t have a cottage!

It all adds up to the Liberals biding their time, unless I’m wrong and we get a coalition government. So here’s hoping that I’m wrong!

Earn $50 by Threatening to Cancel your Credit Card: Not a Joke

Here is a follow-up, of sorts, to an earlier post about the arbitrary and substantial power that random customer service agents have to appease complaining customers.

It goes like this.

Call your credit card company to cancel your card and watch them dance. I did that tonight, calling CIBC to cancel a card I don’t use anymore. Buddy asked why. I said I don’t want to do business with banks anymore. Maybe he thought I prefered under my mattress, but I’m such a credit union guy, but I didn’t elaborate. As if he actually cared.

He asked if I would reconsider. I said no. He offered me a $50 credit, on the spot. So I said yes, I’ll keep the card. Which I never use. And that has no annual fee. And that never had a balance carry over.

After I spend the $50, I’ll call to cancel the card again. I wonder how many times I can do this before they just say fine, go.

I remember a few months ago word going around that if you phone up your friendly neighbourhood [ok, global corporation] credit card usurer and ask to have your interest rate dropped from 19% or 24% or whatever to 11% that they’d almost certainly do it, or almost meet the rate you ask for.

Maybe it’s the global recession, but I’ve NEVER been offered free money to not cancel a credit card.

So that was the easiest $1500/hour I’ve ever earned. Give it a try.

Welcome Back to Civilization, America!

Please Stop It!…by Knepomuk

What kind of scheme is needed to deliver the line “Please buy it” with a straight face? See here…

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9L6cD3CSO2w]

Now that’s balls.

Lungs…by Knepomuk

Mt. Baker is a large volcano in Washington State that looms over the eastern horizon of Vancouver BC. Yesterday I took advantage of a clear day and set out to see if I could photograph the sun rising from directly behind it. I went to the parking lot atop Queen Elizabeth Park and waited in the crisp morning air. Although a thick fog blanketed the city, QE Park was elevated enough to provide an unobscured view of the mountain.

As the sun climbed up the back of the volcano a patch of birches emerged from the shadows to my left. The trees were soon cast in silhouette against stunning hues created from the meeting of fog and the day’s first light. But, as the light intensified so too did mechanical rumble of a city coming to life. I became aware that a crisp view of Mount Baker was a fleeting thing. In a few hours the mountain would be obscured behind the brown haze of civilized society.

I was reminded that this small stand of trees which might normally have been invisible, or at least easily forgotten, were engaged in the process of cleansing the air I was breathing. In this image I can see them as our collective lungs.

Coca-Cola: The Happy-time Beverage Made from Blood…by Ameena Mayer

Coca-Cola: The Happy-time Beverage Made from Blood

It is a hot summer day, the kind in which the sunlight splatters upon you like thick slabs of golden lava, running over your face and arms that long for a splash in a sapphire lake. However, you are drowned in the cityscape, the only respite being one of the hundreds of iced beverages available in stores and restaurants. So instead of a lake, you leap into a 7-11 and grab a Coke, salivating at the prospect of the fizzy, sweet liquid gliding in cool, bronze sheets down your throat. Only this time, you notice something a little peculiar about the taste, something sour and rank, like blood. And you think to yourself subconsciously, “It tastes like murder.”

Coca-Cola is on a war path against the world’s workers and underprivileged . For decades, it has been exploiting resources and people in countries such as Columbia and India, all for profit and corporate control. Columbians, for instance, have been struggling for years to boycott Coke due in part to the company’s responsibility for right-wing criminals who kidnap, torture and even murder trade unionists and activists fighting for labour rights. 4000 unionists have lost their lives in recent decades because they were seen as blocking development and investment in Columbia. However, they were fighting for something far more valuable than dollars and cents; over the years, working conditions at bottling plants have been detiorating at accelerating rates, with only 4% of jobs being permanent and full-time compared with 96% twelve years ago. So while Coke advocates casual, temporary labour, lower wages and poorer working conditions, it also squeezes the blood from those challenging the loss of basic human rights.
The horror story is no less grim in India, where people in over 50 villages are trying to extricate the fangs of the vampire-company from workers’ blood and the nation’s water. In India, the issue is not so much unionists’ rights at bottling plants, but the depletion of a resource already scarce. Coke has been draining villages’ water supplies and polluting ground water, so that farmers are unable to produce an adequate crop-yield in the summer months. As in Columbia, right-wing capitalists in India’s parliament are suppressing villagers’ pleas, allowing a foreign company to lay seige upon its own people for the sake of global militarism. In a nation ridden with poverty and class-division, many are terrified of corporate control of a life-support resource. They envision a future in which Coca-Cola buys India’s rivers and lakes, so that indeed, there will be no water for bathing and drinking to relieve one from the discomfort of a scorching summer day.

As bleak as this situation seems, concerned individuals around the world have been taking measures to eradicate Coke’s war on the the planet and its people. After Coke missed a deadlione to assess it practices in India and Columbia, 21 North American universities bannned Coke products from their campuses. Moreover, over 6000 Coca-Cola workers are behind the company adopting a human rights policy. And more and more, North Americans, for which the majority of Coke products are created, are realizing that bottled water from Coke-owned companies such as Dasani is hardly any better in quality than tap water and leads to devastating amounts of pollution due to the plastic and fossil fuels needed to package and deliver it. Indeed, they are realizing that a sugar high and a splash of cold fizziness are merely sensory propaganda for a blood-letting war against the innocent.

So on the next smouldering summer day with no lake in sight, or on your next work break when you want a high and nothing less than a sinful pleasure will do, think about boycotting the happy-time beverage that kills, and feel the cool, sweet rush of empowerment and compassion sweep through your veins. Realize you are facilitating the end of not only this war, but others waged by companies who wish to end their persuit for profit only when there is nothing left to fight for.

The Corporation Revisited

The Corporation Revisited

-Ameena Mayer

“A man who is in love declares that ‘I’ and ‘you’ are one, and is prepared to behave as if it were a fact” (Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents).

As I watched The Corporation for the third time, the key to humankind’s destructive path toward complete annihilation became apparent to me, bright as steel gleaming beneath the rays of our overly smouldering sun. Essentially, we are facing an identity crisis involving a heinous misunderstanding of what being human means. Embracing the illusory notion that we are all self-contained units for whom the world is a mining field for our adolescent desires, and that we are not a species that thrives on community, love-bonds and communion with nature, we have grown to abhor and shun our true essence. In other words, we are in a sick condition of self-hatred, leading to hatred for our fellow human and to infantile schemes for self-aggrandizement that stem from plain old low self-esteem.

The Corporation very enticingly defines corporate person hoods as psychotics. In today’s era of global militarism, the corporation has become the dominant ‘personality’ to which we look for succor. Our every transient desire is fulfilled by it, and it has catalyzed our quest to replace warm, soft human bonds and true emotional fulfillment with the obtrusive hardness of objects. The film provides much evidence in favor of corporations’ psychotic tendencies: the inability to sustain lasting relationships, lack of guilt or concern for others’ suffering, and the inability to look beyond their own inflated interests.

In essence, however, the corporation is a fiction, our own Frankenstein-like mirage, a mere manifestation of our subconscious negative impulses. Just as we can read our sicknesses and psychoses from dream analysis, so we can by regarding the corporation. As Theodore Roszak states, “the planet has become like that blank psychiatric screen on which the neurotic unconscious projects its fantasies” (Ecopsychology, 1995, p. 5). But at the same time that we watch this villain on the screen, munching Monsanto popcorn, slurping on Coca-cola and dawning Nike running shoes in glee, the monster reinforces and legitimizes these negative impulses that should have remained slumbering within the fat tissues of our sloping brains, so that our society is becoming more and more psychotic. One only has to regard the disassociation between driving a car and the little boy’s amputated leg to observe this, or at the way we use and discard each other in interpersonal relationships.

The destruction of our natural environment was perhaps the pioneering activity leading to our demise. By boxing ourselves off from the trees and grasses and bears in concrete wastelands, we have pushed away an integral part of ourselves. To say we are separate from nature and its inhabitants is to deny our true identity. And if we can clear-cut an ancient forest without wincing, we can just as easily eat Nestle chocolate while the African boy suffers, and, perhaps most easily, we can kill our own selves. Indeed, if we were to truly love ourselves, the corporation would disintegrate, leaving behind nothing but the wild wind and a thin silver glimmer of hope that we would find a path back to who we truly are.

Predictable foolishness over the Holocaust…by Daniel Peters

The typical responses to the Holocaust conference in Iran, while predictable, are inappropriate and counterproductive.

Absurdity is not a moral category. It is natural, and inevitable, that people will believe crazy things. Live with it. If I believe something that is wrong – even something that is obviously wrong (according to you) – that does not make me a bad person. And if my crazy belief happens to focus on a topic of great importance to a particular group of people, it does not follow that I have any special hatred toward that group.

Let me point out something so obvious, so self-evident, that it should not have to be said at all: Denial of the Holocaust, in itself, is not an expression of hatred against Jews. It is not an expression of intolerance, or of racism. It is merely (at worst) a stupid, and incorrect, assertion about history.

You may want to retort that the Holocaust deniers can be shown, on other grounds, to be haters of Jews. That is true of some of them, no doubt. But that observation is irrelevant to the question of whether Holocaust denial itself should be treated as intolerable. The rules of logic reject arguments of the form “so-and-so is a bad person, hence what he says is false”, and it is equally illogical to argue “so-and-so is a bad person, hence what he says is evil”. We can legitimately be outraged at hatred, but we ought to save such outrage for the times when that hatred is actually expressed.

Moreover – to repeat what I said in a previous article here – political opposition to an opinion about history conveys a dangerous message: If the opinion must be suppressed politically, then perhaps it cannot be refuted rationally. This is surely not the message we should be sending to any tender minds that may be in danger of being swayed by the Holocaust deniers! Holocaust denial feeds on such political opposition.

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There’s a wrinkle here, of course: The conference in Iran is not merely about history. It includes an anti-Israeli political agenda, clearly by design. But “anti-Israeli” does not equal “anti-Jewish” (let alone “anti-Semitic”). Moreover, there is nothing particularly sacred about the state of Israel. No modern nation-state is above criticism, and none should be immune to having the legitimacy of its existence questioned. (As a side comment, for what it’s worth: I consider Israel to have exactly the same right to exist that any other nation-state has.)

I am not, in any sense, a supporter of Mahmud Ahmadinejad. But I cannot help noticing that his opinions seem to be twisted relentlessly by his opponents. For example, people often say that he has “vowed” to destroy Israel, yet I’ve never seen such a vow in any direct quotation. (Can someone point me to one? I’d be interested in seeing it.) Ahmadinejad has, I think, stated that Israel “ought” to be destroyed; but there is a world of difference between saying that something ought to happen and a vow to take violent action to make it happen. Even George W. Bush understands that difference!

What exactly does Ahmadinejad mean when he speaks of the destruction of Israel? His comments at the Holocaust conference are illuminating. He has described the destruction of Israel as “inevitable”. Notice, first, that this is not the language of a call to arms. (When a politician is trying to motivate people to take action toward a given goal, it is more typical to stress the possibility that the goal will not be reached if his audience fails to take action.) Moreover, he has said that Israel will be destroyed in the same way that the Soviet Union was. Now the way I recall it, the USSR did not fall to foreign invasion, nor to terrorism. Rather, there was a change of heart, a practical and sensible submission to the inevitable. That (very nearly) bloodless change of regime (along with its accompanying cartographic change) is the explicit model for the vision that Ahmadinejad offers.

It may be that Ahmadinejad’s real beliefs and real intentions are far more sinister. I do not know. But that is a different topic. I argue here only that his explicit statements – at least, the ones I know of – are far less offensive than is indicated by the responses of most Western politicians and editorialists, in their eagerness to display political piety.

Legislating Opinions…by Daniel Peters

This week, the French parliament adopted a bill to make it illegal to deny the Armenian genocide. The bill needs approval from the Senate and the President before it passes into law. Let us hope that the Senate or the President has more sense.

No good can come of legislation that removes the right to express an academic opinion. If academic debate can settle the matter, there is no need for legislation to prop up the winning side of the debate. This French bill amounts to a tacit admission that there is reasonable doubt. It is as if to say: The deniers of genocide cannot be beaten in fair debate, so instead we will beat them legally.

If I were convinced of the truth of the Armenian genocide story, and convinced that there was no room for reasonable doubt, and convinced that it was important for people to recognize it, then I would be appalled by the underlying message of this bill. Why are Armenians celebrating? They ought to be as offended as the Turks are.