Terry Milne

Surely the Apocalypse is at Hand?

2011-11-09T06:17:00.001-05:00

So Italian bonds have crossed the sustainability line of 7%. Europe has lurched another step closer to the abyss. Our own finance minister is is provisioning the bunker and boarding over the windows to wait out the storm. If this doesn't look like 2008 it surely smells like it.

It appears that the Bank of Canada is getting ready to once again buy sketchy debt from our perhaps not quite so fortress-like banks. Policy initiatives are being postponed. Our deficit hawks have all too belatedly become deficit skeptics.

Stay tuned . . .

Today's Reading

2011-11-08T22:03:00.002-05:00

I have spent today working through two books. The first is Matt Taibbi's wonderfully entertaining Griftopia: Bubble Machines, Vampire Squibbs and the Long Con that is Breaking America. Taibbi's often raunchy and over the top analysis of the 2008 meltdown trades elegant analysis for a kind of "let's cut the bullshit" honesty. His chapter on Allan Greenspan, "the biggest asshole in the universe" is alone worth the price of admission. There is little new except the raw emotional reality of what really happened. And it is about to happen all over again.

The second is Michael Perino's gripping story of the 1932 Pecora hearings, The Hellhound of Wall Street. More than just a story, however, it is a reminder of how little has changed over the past eighty years. The story of "Sunshine Charlie" Mitchell and National City Bank, of obscene wealth and greed juxtaposed with a flagrant disregard for the consequences visited on innocent victims shows how little has changed and how little we have learned.

Clearly we are headed back into trouble, and it is good to remind ourselves that it was not just institutional failure but truly evil behaviour by those in positions of trust in privilege both eighty years ago and more recently.

Time to Return to Writing

2011-11-08T21:35:00.000-05:00

After a hiatus of about two and a half years, it is time to start commenting again. Much has happened in that time, but in a sense the world seems to have come full circle, as the financial catastrophe that I was writing about then seems to have returned.

This time, ground zero is not Wall Street but southern Europe. Greece is bankrupt and Italy, with its staggering public debt, now appears to be headed for the abyss. The potential costs are staggering and this time the capacity of state and quasi-state institutions to actually deal with these frightening eventualities is even more in doubt.

But perhaps most worrisome of all is the seeming inability of those in power to even acknowledge the reality that they face. The appearance is one of folly.

Obama's Roosevelt Moment?

2011-09-04T12:17:00.000-04:00

I have felt for some time that Obama would come to a point where he would give up on consensus governance and strike out in a bold and unilateral direction. It could be that Friday's post-closing announcement of suits against mortgage lenders is the opening salvo in just such a new economic plan of battle.

Today's call in The Atlantic for a new "grand bargain" between business and labour is just the type of bold and aggressive action that served both parties so well for a half century from the 1930s to 1980s. It could well be that two and a half years of conciliatory efforts may be the foundation for much bolder action such as this now. Obama's opponents can no longer claim that he is unwilling to compromise -- he has greatly damaged relations with his base and endangered his re-election prospects through just such efforts. And it has demonstrably garnered him very little.

Perhaps it is only wishful thinking on my part, but in the run-up to 2012, we may yet see the Obama we all hoped for. Roosevelt did not enter office with radical ideas, but grasped them, albeit much more quickly than this administration, out of necessity.

Our Friends Until They Are Our Enemies

2011-09-03T12:23:00.000-04:00

So it seems that we were a little cozier with the good Colonel than recent events would lead us to believe. As today's Globe & Mail describes it

The intelligence documents found in Tripoli, meanwhile, provided new details on the ties between Western countries and Col. Gadhafi's regime. Many of those same countries backed the NATO attacks that helped Libya's rebels force Col. Gadhafi from power.
One notable case is that of Abdel-Hakim Belhaj, commander of the anti-Gadhafi rebel force that now controls Tripoli. Mr. Belhaj is the former leader of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, a now-dissolved militant group with links to al-Qaeda. Mr. Belhaj says he was tortured by CIA agents at a secret prison, then returned to Libya.
Two documents from March 2004 appear to be American correspondence to Libyan officials to arrange Mr. Belhaj's rendition.
Referring to him by his nom de guerre, Abdullah al-Sadiq, the documents say he will be flown from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to Libya and asks for Libyan government agents to accompany him.
It also requests American “access to al-Sadiq for debriefing purposes once he is in your custody.”
“Please be advised that we must be assured that al-Sadiq will be treated humanely and that his human rights will be respected,” the document says.

Of course, if we wanted him treated humanely, why the F*&% did we send him to Libya?

Just asking.

The Harper Government and the Supremacy of Parliament

2011-09-03T11:08:00.000-04:00

We pay Fearless Leader's salary, but who is he working for? From today's Toronto Star, news that legislation is apparently vetted by our American cousins prior to presentation to Parliament. This is a government with little if any regard for the institutions of democracy in Canada.

So when we wind up with copyright legislation that looks much like that south of the border, we will know why:

U.S. cables describe a December 2006 meeting between Bernier, industry minister at the time, and then U.S. ambassador David Wilkins.
“Bernier also stated that the final copyright legislation ‘would be in line' with US (government) priorities, but was not specific,” says the U.S. Embassy cable.
“Bernier promised to keep the Ambassador informed on the copyright bill's progress, and indicated that US (government) officials might see the legislation after it is approved by Cabinet, but before it is introduced in Parliament,”

Who Won and Who Lost

2011-09-03T10:55:00.000-04:00

As we head into the sequel of the great recession, we get this timely reminder from Joe Stiglitz on the appalling cost of our responses to terrorism.

Though the financial cost has been staggering, and will undoubtedly stay with us for years to come, it is the human cost that truly beggars the imagination. As he notes:

In Afghanistan and Iraq, the U.S. and its allies knew that long-term victory required winning hearts and minds. But mistakes in the early years of those wars complicated that already-difficult battle. The wars' collateral damage has been massive: By some accounts, more than 1 million Iraqis have died, directly or indirectly, because of the war. According to some studies, at least 137,000 civilians have died violently in Afghanistan and Iraq in the last 10 years. Among Iraqis alone, there are 1.8 million refugees and 1.7 million internally displaced people.

And when we are gone, we will be trillions of dollars in debt and both will remain failed states. So who won?

Another Socialist Fund Manager

2011-09-02T10:05:00.000-04:00

Bill Gross, from the Peoples Republic of Pimco, has the following to say about the dim prospects for global capitalism:

Come the revolution, Bill can be the Commissar of Treasuries!

Further from Peter Russell

2011-04-30T13:40:00.000-04:00

This is just an incredible commentary on the state of our democracy by one of our truly great scholars:

Finally a Voice of Sanity

2011-04-30T13:36:00.000-04:00

From constitutional expert Peter Russell. I cannot improve on or add to this:

When the House does meet and no party has a majority, there are basically three ways of forming a government. First, the Conservatives can simply carry on as a minority government hoping to win support, issue by issue, from opposition MPs. Second, either the Conservatives or the party that finishes second in seat numbers can form a legislative alliance with one or more other parties that would agree to support them on the basis of a shared legislative program. Such an agreement between David Peterson’s Liberals (who finished second to Frank Miller’s Conservatives) and Bob Rae’s NDP gave Ontario a stable minority after the 1985 provincial election. In this option, the parties supporting a Liberal or NDP government would not have cabinet positions. The third option is a coalition government in which two or more parties form a government and share cabinet posts.
All three options are constitutionally legitimate. Indeed, in the dozens of parliamentary democracies around the world, it’s highly unusual for any party to have a parliamentary majority. Governments in most of these countries are either coalitions or single-party minorities supported through alliances with opposition parties.
If the Conservatives don’t win a majority on Monday, Mr. Harper isn’t likely to try to form a coalition government or make a legislative alliance with any opposition party. So what would happen if his government fails to win the support of any opposition party when the House meets in late May or early June and is defeated on the Speech from the Throne?
At this point, constitutionally, Mr. Harper has two options. He could resign and advise the Governor-General to invite the leader of the party with the second-largest number of seats, either Michael Ignatieff or Jack Layton, to form a government. Or he could advise the Governor-General to dissolve Parliament and call another election.
It’s the second case that lands us in a “constitutional crisis” similar to the Byng-King affair of 1926. The principal that the Governor-General must be guided by in considering Mr. Harper’s request is that a prime minister’s advice (even if the prime minister has lost a confidence vote in the House) should be rejected only if doing so is necessary to protect the integrity of our parliamentary system. Calling an election, the fifth in seven years, just a few weeks after the last election when there’s a plausible alternative government that can command the confidence of the new Parliament may well be such a situation.
Of course, it all depends on whether Mr. Ignatieff or Mr. Layton can make a plausible case that a government one of them heads will be supported by a majority in the House. The Governor-General will need more than their good intentions to have the compelling case he needs to justify rejecting the Prime Minister’s advice.
If Monday’s election produces a House in which no party has a majority, let’s hope our political leaders have the good sense to work together to avoid a Byng-King constitutional crisis.

Into the Bunker

2011-04-30T13:15:00.000-04:00

As the red hordes roll on toward Ottawa, bizarre speculation and a retreat to bunker mentality are beginning to become apparent. So this from our national paper of record:

Stephen Harper is refusing to say whether he would accept a decision by the Governor General to hand power to the opposition parties in wake of the May 2 election.

Mr. Harper is warning voters the next government will either be a Tory majority or a coalition government led by the New Democrats. He warns a Conservative minority would be short lived, defeated by a coalition.

But he declines to say whether he’d accept a decision by the Queen’s representative in Canada to give an opposition party the chance to govern - rather than, say, demanding the Governor General call another election instead.

With just days before a ballot, he says it’s a hypothetical question.
Mr. Harper however has spent the entire race since March 26 campaigning on a hypothesis: that his rivals would oust him from power should he fail to win a majority and instead form a coalition to take office.

The fall of the regime is never pretty.

There is neither inflation nor the risk of inflation

2011-04-30T09:17:00.000-04:00

For two years now we have been bombarded with dire warnings about the risk of inflation. Never actual inflation, but the risk. The sky might fall. This is ideological rhetoric. The wealthy, having been bailed out by the state, now want to stick us with the bill. Sort of financial "dine and dash." This is particularly true of our neighbors, who are contemplating choking off the recovery in order to lavish more wealth on the rich. Here is a look at inflation in the U.S.:

This is much ado about nothing by people with an agenda.

From the Horse's Mouth

2011-04-29T17:23:00.000-04:00

This from one time Harper chief of staff and academic mentor Tom Flanagan on Harper's anti-democratic instincts:

The Conservative campaigning approach has been built around two realities: a low ceiling on the popularity of right-of-centre viewpoints in Canada, and a low-engagement political environment. That's governed pretty much everything this government does, in and out of campaigns.
Mr. Harper's proposed solution to this political conundrum was best seen in 2008. In that campaign, he parlayed to a near-majority by creating conditions where three quarters of a million Liberals stayed at home, rather than vote for the caricature that had been made of Mr. Dion. Mr. Harper made the Conservatives big by making the Liberal vote small. This year's campaign has sought a reprise of that success. But seeking to work around the low conservative-minded ceiling by working a low-engagement environment hasn't just pervaded the 2011 campaign. It's been the basic story of Mr. Harper's government, something I've argued in other posts (Ringside: March 29) and elsewhere.
The core strategy, using low engagement politics to equalize a low support ceiling, is mirrored not only in campaigns, but also in the government's public policy strategy. Lacking sufficient public support for a conservative shrinking of the federal government, Mr. Harper's administration has ducked debate on such matters, and instead has simply gone about quietly withdrawing Ottawa from several areas of national life. It has avoided a debate where the majority would prevail against it. Generally, the quiet deconstruction has worked. People, we've been told, just don't care. Well, sometimes. Other times, many of the government's most awkward moments have come when quiet burials -- prorogation, long-form census, Kairos funding -- suddenly drew unwelcome attention.
This brings me to the final pillar of the Harper Conservative strategy: populist centralism, which is my neologism for Mr. Harper's frequent nudges of our Westminster parliamentary system towards some de facto species of direct election of the prime minister. This populist centralism has not only accelerated the long-term, multi-party subordination of cabinet to the PMO; it has arguably resulted in the wholesale sidelining of the Legislature in favour of the Executive. That's something new.

The favoured tactics of Latin American autocrats. This government cannot go soon enough!

Canadian Complicity in Afghan Torture

2011-04-27T16:49:00.000-04:00

From Truthdig, outlining Canada's complicity in the torture of Afghan detainees. Key passage:

For the European members of NATO - especially the British and Dutch - the political driver was the need to distance themselves from a U.S. detainee policy already tainted by accounts of U.S. torture.
The U.S. and Canada supported such transfers, however, in the belief that NDS interrogators could get better intelligence from the detainees.
The transfers to the NDS were a direct violation of the United Nations Convention against Torture, which forbids the transfer of any person by a State Party to "another State where there are substantial grounds for believing that he would be in danger of being subjected to torture."

Perhaps Prime Minister Layton will have a Parliamentary committee look into this, as both Ignatieff and Harper have made their agreement with such policies quite clear.

Our Very Own Facebook/Twitter Revolution

2011-04-27T13:45:00.000-04:00

The NDP is closing in on first. And the push is coming from the young. In an election that was timed to discourage university students who would be in the process of heading home at the end of the term, it would appear that they simply voted in advance polls.

With four days of campaigning left, support could soften. But it would seem plausible that there will soon be two members of Parliament living in Stornoway, and perhaps soon after, at 24 Sussex.

If a majority of Canadians are seen next Tuesday to have voted for a progressive alternative to the Harperites, there is no reason why such a government should not be formed after a proforma defeat of the Conservative budget.

The Fearmongering Begins

2011-04-27T08:18:00.000-04:00

With the socialist hordes just days away from capturing Stornoway and perhaps even forming a minority government following a second defeat of the Harper budget, the horror stories are beginning.

This morning, we learn from Adam Radwonski in the Globe and Mail that Layton's (and the NDP's) pandering to soft Quebec nationalism will bring on the separatist apocalypse. Yesterday, we were told that market jitters were the result of fears of NDP advances. I wonder if anyone has saved the billboard that was on Bay Street during the Rae years showing Rae with donkey ears and talking about the dangers of a hard left government.

So transfer your life savings to the Caymans and stock the basement with canned foods.

The Church in the Service of Power is Not the Church

2011-04-26T10:28:00.000-04:00

From my friends at Jesus Radicals, this reminder of what Easter is and what the Church, as the presence of Christ in the world and not as an institution in service of power, is:

Jesus’ life was one of resistance to the civilized, religious world. Jesus’ life demonstrated a completely alternate way of living called “the Kingdom of Heaven” in which the poor, the oppressed, the forgotten, the neglected, the widow, the orphan, the child, the prostitute, the sick, the lame, the blind, and the dead were treated as kings, and the kings were treated as outcasts. The poor fisherman is royalty in this Kingdom, yet the rich man cannot get there any more than a camel can pass through the eye of a needle. This Kingdom mockingly tells us to “give to Caesar what is Caesar’s”, simultaneously rejecting the imperial currency system and reminding us all that “the Earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it” – what is left for Caesar anyway? This Kingdom lays claim to those who have been possessed by demons, who have been blind from birth, who have been spat on and walked over by the most pious religious leaders, and restores them to abundant life. This Kingdom preaches repentance and the forgiveness of sins, not by works or by following rules, but by the grace of the King. Jesus embodied and inaugurated this Kingdom; He preached this Kingdom; He brought disciples in to further this Kingdom.

What do you think the existing kingdom (the Roman empire, including its subservient rulers and citizens in Judea) thought of this alternate Kingdom? They thought of it as a threat. They thought of it as an affront to their “King”, their “Savior”, the man they called “the Son of God”. And they were right! Jesus’ Kingdom stands proudly and boldly in direct opposition to the kingdoms of this world.

When in Doubt Screw the Workers

2011-04-26T09:19:00.002-04:00

While waiting for markets to open this morning I came across this news from the U.S. Fed. Janet Yellen, one of Obama's oh so progressive Fed appointments, is assuring markets that inflation isn't much of a threat. Though commodity prices are rising and corporate profits are at all time highs, declining wages (and of course this means the lowest paid workers) will keep inflation in check.

Those workers at Walmart and McDonalds sure are wonderful. Not only do they work for next to nothing. But by giving up healthcare and education for their children they will help pay for all the money given to Wall Street billionaires. And now they are going to keep the world safe for expensive oil and middle-east adventurism. Oh, and of course it is their children who do the fighting and dying.

I sure hope that in all their pain, they remember to just say no to drugs. Because we wouldn't want the expense of putting them in jail in these inflationary times.

Prime Minister Jack Layton

2011-04-26T08:23:00.000-04:00

The latest EKOS poll is showing the NDP as the official opposition in waiting. Though it almost certainly won't happen, and though it may give the odious Conservatives their coveted majority, a message has been sent.

If we are often cattle, sometimes we are not. When the banks screw the economy, stick us with the bill and then lecture us on financial probity because we went into debt paying it, we might get pissed. When our political masters would rather send the children of the poor to prison than university then we might ask about putting them in prisons for their very real crimes and vote for those who, at least in the misty past, described themselves as socialists.

Way to go, Jack!

Apparently the Truth is Whatever Rich People Want and are Willing to Pay For

2011-04-23T07:47:00.000-04:00

Right-wing childrens' author and Sun TV's new Glen Beck wannabe, Theo Caldwell, has a new mantra for a new network:

In the marketplace of ideas, you need buyers and sellers – that’s how you find the price of the truth.

How catchy. And as we are constantly reminded, Caldwell the Younger, with his British graduate credentials, is to be taken very seriously. So let's think about what this means.

It certainly sounds deep. The first clause suggests that ideas are things bought and sold in a market. That would seem to suggest that those ideas that prosper are those that people are willing to spend the most on. So far, so good. And of course it follows (Theo clearly completed his logic and reasoning course) that the interaction of buyers and sellers will arrive at a price for these ideas -- what he refers to as a price for truth.

Truth, therefore, does not have intrinsic value, but rather a price. And since Mr. Caldwell is obviously a purveyor of such ideas (and hence a negotiable conception of truth) it follows that he is selling to a buyer. Presumably, this would be Sun Media, and of course, their advertisers. So Caldwell is willing to provide a negotiable truth to a buyer with sufficiently deep pockets, and vigorously defend that truth, for a price.

One can only conclude that when Theo tells you something is true, unless you are Sun Media or one of its advertisers, you may want to be somewhat sceptical. And even if you are Sun Media or one of its entourage, you might suspect that your public nakedness is being described as serious wardrobe savvy for purely commercial reasons.

Linking Insane Extremes

2011-04-22T09:48:00.000-04:00

This telling comment from Andrew Sullivan this morning on post-modern insanity and identity politics on the left and the right and the complicity of the academy in this:

I, for one, do not find it odd that a party that can debate the idea that the earth is 6,000 years' old is also capable of believing that a birth certificate is not a birth certificate. The criterion is not empirical evidence but dogged, reactionary hostility to anything libruls believe. We have left the realm of reality and entered the world, previousy exclusively occupied by the pomo-left, of identity as truth. "We are right because we are white" is no different in logic than "we are right because we are black" which is perilously close to where the academic left went in the 1990s.

What if the Election Results in a Better Government?

2011-04-21T17:52:00.000-04:00

No doubt much will change in the next week and a half. But as things stand, the Liberals and NDP would have more seats together than the Conservatives. One can envision a Liberal government, following a Conservative defeat in the House, dependent on NDP support and thus tethered to a progressive agenda, recapturing the Pearsonian approach that saw the greatest period of progressive legislation in Canadian history.

What started out as a boring, predictable and unpopular election is quickly becoming something very different.

A Thundering Irrelevancy?

2011-04-21T16:07:00.000-04:00

A new study by the Pew Center shows just how much trouble the U.S. (and more generally, western) Church is in. Former Catholics are now the 3rd largest denomination in the U.S.. Much more problematic, people are not leaving over doctrinal issues, either left or right, but because the Church no longer feels like home and no longer connects with them spiritually. As the National Catholic Reporter notes

There are many lessons that we can learn from the Pew data, but I will focus on only three.
First, those who are leaving the church for Protestant churches are more interested in spiritual nourishment than doctrinal issues. Tinkering with the wording of the creed at Mass is not going to help. No one except the Vatican and the bishops cares whether Jesus is “one in being” with the Father or “consubstantial” with the Father. That the hierarchy thinks this is important shows how out of it they are.
While the hierarchy worries about literal translations of the Latin text, people are longing for liturgies that touch the heart and emotions. More creativity with the liturgy is needed, and that means more flexibility must be allowed. If you build it, they will come; if you do not, they will find it elsewhere. The changes that will go into effect this Advent will make matters worse, not better.
Second, thanks to Pope Pius XII, Catholic scripture scholars have had decades to produce the best thinking on scripture in the world. That Catholics are leaving to join evangelical churches because of the church teaching on the Bible is a disgrace. Too few homilists explain the scriptures to their people. Few Catholics read the Bible.
The church needs a massive Bible education program. The church needs to acknowledge that understanding the Bible is more important than memorizing the catechism. If we could get Catholics to read the Sunday scripture readings each week before they come to Mass, it would be revolutionary. If you do not read and pray the scriptures, you are not an adult Christian. Catholics who become evangelicals understand this.
Finally, the Pew data shows that two-thirds of Catholics who become Protestants do so before they reach the age of 24. The church must make a preferential option for teenagers and young adults or it will continue to bleed. Programs and liturgies that cater to their needs must take precedence over the complaints of fuddy-duddies and rubrical purists.

What is most striking for the NCR is that the hierarchy just doesn't much seem to notice or care. They carry on as if losing a third of their membership is not a problem.

People Need to Go to Jail for This

2011-04-21T15:03:00.000-04:00

The United States Senate's Permanent Investigation Committee has released a damning report documenting abuses and probably crimes by hedge fund manager Magnetar. ProPublic has the story today, it is a disturbing read. It is yet more evidence that vast amounts of toxic CDOs were created specifically to sell to unwary investors and then bet against. Much more than conflict of interest, this is surely fraud.

Long after they knew that the housing market was in trouble and that mortgages being written would never be repaid, this and other investment brokers continued to put together these deals. And I find it difficult to believe that the same wasn't happening here in Canada.

Do We Trust Markets or Ourselves?

2011-04-21T12:08:00.000-04:00

Keynes biographer and economist Robert Skidelsky makes a convincing case that we do not have to follow the dictates of financial institutions in devastating the lives of the vulnerable in order to appease markets. Thus he notes

The tension between democracy and finance is at the root of today’s rising discontent in Europe. Popular anger at budget cuts imposed at the behest of speculators and bankers has toppled leaders in Ireland and Portugal, and is forcing the Spanish prime minister into retirement.

And I would suggest it is at the root of a resurgent NDP. People are fed up with a disgustingly wealthy financial sector telling us we must tighten our belts and toadying politicians working for them instead of us.

If we want our world back, we need to take it back.

Well Said

2011-04-21T11:30:00.000-04:00

Living in Interesting Times

2011-04-21T08:31:00.000-04:00

Who would have thought. With eleven days to go, this election is suddenly unlike any of the recent Tory dominated snorefests. Though their support seems soft as usual, the NDP is closing in on the Liberals. This could simply split the progressive vote and pave the way for a Tory majority. Or it could provide the "winning conditions" (who said that?) for a viable coalition following an early defeat of a lame Harper minority.

Far more important, claims of the death of the progressive left in Canada were somewhat exaggerated. And if the federal and provincial parties and their trade union and social movement allies can build on this (never a sure thing) then this could be a sign of a shift in Canadian politics.

The gun-toting, warmongering anti-everything including the poor lunacy south of the border looked to be making inroads here. We can only hope that it has been stopped in its tracks.

For I was Hungry and You Fed Me

2011-04-19T09:11:00.001-04:00

Buried beneath all of the election news yesterday was the British medical journal The Lancet's publication of findings on Vancouver's Insite safe injection site's success. Drug overdose deaths in one of Canada's most troubled neighborhoods have been reduced by more than a third by a single program.

For anyone who has worked in this field or who has experienced the pain of addiction, this is simply phenomenal. And yet the Harper government has been unstinting in its efforts to close this program. It is apparently better that addicts die than that they not conform to a Tory/Christian fundamentalist ideal.

As the Globe & Mail notes this morning, the opposition is once again disturbingly silent on this. This is scarcely surprising for the hopelessly opportunistic liberals. But I have always been shocked by NDP's seeming belief that by the worst sort of pandering, they might make inroads into the Conservative base. Hence the capacity to overlook corporate tax cuts, gifts to banks and now attempts to undercut a program to serve some of our most vulnerable fellows.

We can do better than this.

Chris Hedges on the Gods of Finance

2011-04-18T19:20:00.000-04:00

I cannot add anything to this

Why Aren't Afghan Allegations an Election Issue?

2011-04-18T10:59:00.001-04:00

With the Harper Government actively trying to bury a report on Afghan prisoner abuses, one wonders why this isn't an election issue. Until one remembers that Prof. Ignatieff is in favor of torture. Oh, not the mean, nasty and messy kind. Only the nice kind. Maybe sort of like what was done to our citizens in Syria?

Some Wind in the Left's Sails?

2011-04-18T10:44:00.000-04:00

While I still think der Fuhrer will win, likely with a slim majority, I am also seeing encouraging signs of a resurgent left. An Angus Reid poll from the past few days shows the NDP tied with the hapless Liberals at 25%. The bad news of course is that this could simply mean a more comfortable Tory majority, but at least it shows a left that is not completely dead.

Perhaps even more encouraging is the whole vote mob thing. The Tory strategy hinges on low voter turnout, especially among young and disaffected voters. If students show up in much greater numbers than normal, this could radically (pun intended) swing results.

Those Crazy Ratings Agencies

2011-04-18T10:03:00.000-04:00

From Moody's and Standard and Poors come threats this morning to downgrade the U.S. Government's AAA bond rating. These, readers will recall, are the same agencies who gave the same AAA ratings to CDOs comprised of garbage mortgages that where a primary reason the U.S. government is in such sad shape now.

I am sure there is nothing political here. Aren't you? After all, we know these agencies never fudge their ratings.

If Corporations are Persons, Can We Put Them in Jail?

2011-04-18T09:31:00.000-04:00

While school teachers and firefighters are under attack for their looting of the public treasury, Bernie Sanders, the only social United States senator (wish we had one of those!) brings us this news of unprosecuted corporate theft:

Come April 15, everybody ponies up their fair share, right? Not so much. Thanks to corporate tax cuts and loopholes, these big companies will be rollin’ in the green instead of paying Uncle Sam. Read Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-VT) corporate freeloaders list now:Spread the word. Share this on Facebook today.

Tough on crime indeed!

some election fun (and needed perspective)

2011-04-17T14:25:00.000-04:00

Shit Harper Did (no, really)

Stiglitz and Winner Take All Economics

2011-04-17T10:30:00.000-04:00

Last week's Vanity Fair article by Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz reminds us that while most of the world struggles to rebuild in the wake of the financial meltdown two years ago, things have never been better for the folks who brought us this clusterfuck. Channelling Paul Pierson and Jacob Hacker's Winner Take All Politics, he reminds us that the top .1% of U.S. households now command almost a quarter of all income, a staggering maldistribution of wealth not seen since the late 1920s.

And in case you thought this was just another uniquely American disaster, things are much the same in our peaceable kingdom, where almost all of the income growth of the past decades has accrued to the same .1% of the population. And as Stiglitz notes, this warps far more than economic outcomes, as

America’s inequality distorts our society in every conceivable way. There is, for one thing, a well-documented lifestyle effect—people outside the top 1 percent increasingly live beyond their means. Trickle-down economics may be a chimera, but trickle-down behaviorism is very real.

More important, in this Darwinian struggle where only those at the top prosper, our sense of solidarity forged in the the economic catastrophe of eighty years ago is utterly lost. We have a bit more materially, but we are so much less.

Bacevich on Libya and Futility

2011-04-17T09:56:00.000-04:00

Once again, historian and former senior officer Andrew Bacevich grasps the obvious on the use of military power in the middle east, this time in Libya.

As with Iraq, he argues, the why of this misadventure will never be known, and in any coherent sense, probably does not exist. The important point is therefore how and the how that we keep grasping at is the use of force. As he argues

Perhaps Barack Obama found his political soul mate in Samantha Power, making her determination to alleviate evil around the world his own. Or perhaps he is just another calculating politician who speaks the language of ideals while pursuing less exalted purposes. In either case, the immediate relevance of the question is limited. The how rather than the why is determinant.
Whatever his motives, by conforming to a pre-existing American penchant for using force in the Greater Middle East, this president has chosen the wrong tool. In doing so, he condemns himself and the country to persisting in the folly of his predecessors. The failure is one of imagination, but also of courage. He promised, and we deserve something better.

Ten years on, Afghanistan is a sinkhole -- a kleptocracy whose only virtue is that it is our kleptocracy, though not so much and likely not for long. Iraq has, almost inconceivably, been left worse off than we found it. And Libya looks to be emerging as more of the same.

When do we start bombing Harare?

2011-03-21T09:06:00.001-04:00

I have just been listening to Romeo Dallaire on CBC's The Current this morning. This is someone I have great respect and admiration for, so I find it very difficult to disagree with him, though in this instance, I do.

He was talking about Libya and a duty to protect. Given his experience in Rwanda, and our staggering failure to intervene in genocide, this is understandable. We had troops on the ground there and could have acted at minimal cost to prevent great evil.

If, however, we are to apply this doctrine broadly, then we will be compelled to intervene in places where leaders are routinely abusive. Zimbabwe comes to mind. So when do we start bombing Harare? Of course, we are not going to.

We have now involved ourselves in a civil war in Libya -- an inter-tribal civil war. We have taken sides against the regime and so will be compelled to do all we can to defeat that regime. Our erstwhile brave, brave middle eastern allies have abandoned us, though they should be doing the heavy lifting here. They have the means.

By all means ground the Libyan air force and encourage, leverage or whatever Arab neighbors to take responsible action. Given this approach, though, if Ghaddafi does not go quickly, and it does not look like he will, then we will begin to see mission creep as more and more resources are applied to achieving a feel good objective that looked good when it looked quickly doable. This is a dumb, dumb, dumb war.

Getting Out of Hand

2011-02-22T11:50:00.000-05:00

MSNBC is currently reporting on their mobile site (no link, sorry) that eastern Libya has effectively broken away, and a civil war seems a distinct possibility. The regime in Tripoli appears to be using tanks and aircraft indiscriminately against civilians.

Nick Kristoff mentioned in one of his tweets on the weekend that there is a U.N. sanctioned "right to protect" that would allow for member intervention in situations such as this. But of course Egypt, the regional military hegemon, is enmeshed in troubles of its own, and anyone who thinks that western nations will do anything productive is dreaming. Unless, of course, oil truly does become a factor.

A Recipe for Despair

2011-02-13T00:39:00.000-05:00

From Paul Krugman's blog, a disheartening picture of the world facing our brightest and most ambitious young people:

Here’s the question: of college graduates with a bachelor’s degree who aren’t enrolled in further schooling, how many have full-time jobs?

In December 2007, on the eve of recession, the answer was 90 percent

By December 2009, it was down to 72 percent

As of December 2010, it had recovered only slightly, to 74 percent

To me, that’s a tale of young lives blighted, not just in the short run but perhaps permanently: failing to get a job when you get out of school colors your whole career. And it’s still happening.

This is a society eating its young.

Might this be something truly new?

2011-02-11T13:52:00.000-05:00

While I am not a fan of Tom Friedman style breathless hyperbole, his appearance on Charlie Rose yesterday suggests at least the possibility that what is happening in Egypt is truly historical, not just for Egypt but for the Arab middle east.

It appears that the crazies have been shut out of this revolution -- this is middle class, secular and democratic. Even those photogenic thugs, the Hashemites, are terrified. Bashar Assad must be crapping his pants. Maybe the real estate market in Dubai will recover when all of these odious creeps are looking for a new and safe address.

We can hope

When moderation is no virtue

2010-11-23T18:51:00.000-05:00

On a posting on Jesus Radicals, this quote from Albert Camus about the Church speaking out clearly:

In 1948 the philosopher Albert Camus was asked by a group of Catholic scholars to address the question, why did not the Church speak more clearly and forcefully against the crimes of the Nazis? “Why shall I not say this here?” Camus asked. “For a long time I waited during those terrible years, for a strong voice to be lifted up in Rome. I, an unbeliever? Exactly. For I knew that spirit would be lost if it did not raise the cry of condemnation in the presence of force. It appears that this voice was raised. But I swear to you that millions of people, myself included, never heard it; and that there was in the hearts of believers and unbelievers a solitude which did not cease to grow as the days went by and the executioners multiplied. It was later explained to me that the condemnation had indeed been uttered, but in the language of encyclicals, which is not clear. The condemnation had been pronounced but it had not been understood. Who cannot see that this is where the real condemnation lies? Who does not see that this example contains within it one of the elements of the answer, perhaps the whole answer to the question you have asked me? What the world expects of Christians is that Christians speak out and utter their condemnation in such a way that never a doubt, never a single doubt can arise in the heart of even the simplest person. That Christians get out of their abstractions and stand face to face with the bloody mess that is our history today. The gathering we need today is the gathering together of people who are resolved to speak out clearly and to pay with their own person.”

Is the triumphant church any church at all?

2010-11-23T18:47:00.000-05:00

Via Andrew Sullivan, these comments by Greg Boyd on Church, state and triumphalism.

This is What Standing Up to the Powers Looks Like

2010-11-06T22:49:00.000-04:00

In 2004, I had the chance to meet Elbon Kilpatrick, a minister, former prison chaplain and antiwar activist and someone who had made tremendous personal sacrifices in order to conform his actions to his beliefs.

This week, he had a brief piece on the new Jesus Radicals site talking about his practice of protesting war outside of churches in the American south. I will let Elbon tell the story

I protest in front of small rural churches and large city churches. The church responses to the protests – no matter the size or denomination – are usually the same:

“You couldn’t stand there if Christians didn’t fight to protect your/our freedom of speech.”
“God commanded the killing of enemies in the Old Testament and calls us to obey the civil authorities which includes going to war against this country’s enemies.”
“We are required to defend ourselves. Do you think we should allow the Muslims to invade and conquer us? Would allow someone to break into your home and kill your wife and children?
“Jesus taught us to love personal enemies – not national enemies.”
Physical responses: shouting profanities, church members surrounding me so others cannot see the sign, and extending a closed fist with an extended middle finger.
Call the police. This happens at most of the protests. No arrest is made because the protests are a protected citizen right. However, a municipality may require the obtaining of a permit prior to the protest so police may maintain order by planning for supervision of the protest. If this is the case, the police will provide the information on how the permit may be obtained when they respond to the call.

My response to these arguments or actions is the following:

Jesus commanded the love of enemies. He gave a new commandment to love one another as he loved us (John 15:12). By giving us this new commandment he made himself the model of love – an unconditional love for not only friends but also enemies. When Jesus told his followers to take up their crosses and follow him he showed them/us how to bear their/our crosses by bearing his cross. Jesus prayed mercy and forgiveness for his enemies while they murdered him. Therefore, Jesus does not teach an ethics of survival by defending ourselves and others against personal or national enemies.

I was deeply moved by Elbon when I met him and I continue to be now. And I am humbled. We all talk about the Gospel, but this is what it looks like to live it.

Some Disturbing Thoughts about Humanitarian Aid

2010-11-06T22:39:00.000-04:00

Philip Gourevitch of the New Yorker has raised some disturbing questions both about the outcomes of humanitarian aid and the moral complicity of providers, particularly Christian aid groups, in horrific crimes by recipients.

Whether or not this has some basis in fact needs to be investigated. Particularly as these groups hold themselves, and are generally held, above reproach. Or as Gourevitch describes it

Aid organizations and their workers are entirely self-policing, which means that when it comes to the political consequences of their actions they are simply not policed. When a mission ends in catastrophe, they write their own evaluations. And if there are investigations of the crimes that follow on their aid, the humanitarians get airbrushed out of the story. Polman’s suggestion that it should not be so is particularly timely just now, as a new U.N. report on atrocities in the Congo between 1993 and 2003 has revived the question of responsibility for the bloody aftermath of the camps. There can be no proper accounting of such a history as long as humanitarians continue to enjoy total impunity.

And surely the Church has a role here as well. Not only do we put our imprimatur on these more often than not faith based groups but we funnel vast resources to them as well. Yet in my experience, we do little to hold them to account. Given what is done in our name, surely it is time to start.

Andrew Bacevich and the Futility of the Afghan War

2010-11-06T22:20:00.000-04:00

As I write this, I am watching an interview with Andrew Bacevich on Bill Moyer's Journal. To my mind, Bacevich, a retired colonel and historian has about as much credibility as anyone talking about this today.

In the interview, he said two remarkable things. First, he asserted that General Stanley McChrystal is not fully in charge of the war effort, especially the activities of special forces under his command. The second is that this war is being waged with the full knowledge that its objectives will not be accomplished.

And of course, here in Canada, where the entire debate focuses on our support of the troops fighting the war rather than whether we want to have them killed, wounded and psychologically scarred in a completely pointless military effort.

Words to Live By

2010-09-24T10:07:00.000-04:00

From Kung Fu Monkey via Paul Krugman:

There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.

One Love

2010-07-14T21:32:00.000-04:00

Some Fusion

2010-07-14T21:19:00.001-04:00

An Attack on One . . . .

2010-06-01T08:03:00.000-04:00

From Andrew Sullivan, this intriguing question: is an attack on a Turkish (NATO member) ship an attack on NATO requiring an allied response? The irony of the brutal Israeli response to this replay of the heroic post-war blockade running by, yes, pre-state Zionists is just incredibly compelling.

The Euro Crisis Explained

2010-05-25T08:32:00.001-04:00

Via BoingBoing, Australian comedians Clarke and Dawe explain the Euro mess:

Inflation is Not a Threat

2010-05-24T07:11:00.000-04:00

Despite all the ideological finger-wagging, inflation, which never was much of a threat, is now not one at all. Further evidence of the rush to government debt (non-European government debt) from today;s Bloomberg:

The 18-month slump in Treasury zero- coupon bonds is giving way to rising demand as the rate of inflation falls to a 40-year low, turning so-called Strips into the best performers in the U.S. government debt market.

Investment banks increased the securities -- created by separating the interest and principal payments of a bond and selling them at a discount -- by 4.4 percent to $179.4 billion from December through April, according to Treasury Department data. It’s the first time that the market expanded for five straight months since 2006.

The call for Strips, which started in 1985 after former Federal Reserve ChairmanPaul Volcker broke the back of inflation, suggests growing bullishness toward the bond market after the Bank of America Merrill Lynch U.S. Treasury Master Index fell 3.7 percent in 2009. Yields on Treasury Inflation- Protected Securities show money managers expect the consumer price index to increase an average 1.96 percent annually over the next decade, down from 2.43 percent as recently as April 29.

It is worth remembering that 2% inflation is a target for most central banks -- it is not a threat.

There is No Substitute for Fear

2010-05-23T13:52:00.000-04:00

The Onion-like Department of Fear has a wonderful story today on the Taliban invasion of Thailand. I should let them tell it

Supposedly on account of civil unrest, many buildings in Bangkok burned to the ground on May 19. It was a scary situation for everyone in Thailand. But for Americans, it was very nearly just another day.

Fortunately, MSNBC made the most of the images. Raw Story, a blog, reports:

People watching MSNBC Wednesday morning could be forgiven for believing that the Taliban had invaded Bangkok. As NBC's Ian Williams reported on violent protests in the capital city of Thailand, a graphic on the lower third of MSNBC's screen read: "New Taliban Attacks, Bangkok Burns."DoF has nothing but praise for the way MSNBC handled this story.

MSNBC drew upon the depth of the news organization's ignorance about Thailand and conceived a terrifying hypothesis: Bangkok is falling to our enemies. The Taliban are on the move. At home, terrified MSNBC viewers would have been asking themselves: Will Honolulu be next? Or will the Taliban head straight for LA?

There is a lesson here. Whenever there is serious violence overseas, the US media should not hesitate to project whatever scenario evokes Americans' worst fears. Discussion about what actually happened can be left to the following day's newspapers.

This is analysis the Harper crowd can truly believe in.

Do The Math

2010-05-14T13:51:00.000-04:00

From today's Greater Fool

The average American home sells for $170,000. The average family income is $65,300. So the average USA home costs 2.6 times what the average household makes. US homeowners can get a mortgage rate of 4.2%, guaranteed for 30 years. And the interest is tax-deductible.
The average Canadian home costs $341,000. The average family income is $71,000. So the average home costs 4.8 times what a household makes in a year. Fixed-rate mortgages here are available for an average of 4.2%, which must be renewed at market rates every five years. Sorry, no writing interest off your taxable income.
Clearly the burden of home ownership is staggering in Canada compared to our neighbour. We pay almost exactly double for a roof, even though our incomes are similar. We’re thrown into interest rate roulette every few years, while they get a lifetime mortgage rates. We pay inflated loans in after-tax dollars while they write them off.

This means that the average homeowner as a single, highly leveraged, completely undiversified asset. No savings, no hedges, no nothing. And a 10% swing in price could put tens of thousands of these "investors" under water.

Could It Happen Here?

2010-05-11T22:36:00.000-04:00

From Calculated Risk, underwater homes in the U.S. by state:

From Tom Swift to Cory Doctorow

2010-05-11T06:14:00.000-04:00

As I shy, nerdy and insular adolescent, I absorbed science fiction: Heinlein, Bradbury, Anderson, etc.. But Tom Swift was always my favorite. It is surely unfair to compare such pulp fiction with Cory Doctorow's infinitely more thoughtful work, but the emotional anticipation is the same. Little Brother spoke to me and I am anticipating For the Win will do the same.

So I am taking a sick day (I had minor dental surgery yesterday), have downloaded a mobipocket edition to install to an old Tungsten (my current ereader) and will take the day to immerse myself in some good science fiction, as a no-longer adolescent 58 year old.

The Big Linux Breakthrough: Brought to You by Google

2010-05-11T05:28:00.000-04:00

While Ubuntu continues to improve an already impressive product, it appears that the real breakthrough for linux may come from Android. There is news today that Android phones have passed iPhones in total sales and are quickly closing in on RIM's Blackberry, which is increasingly yesterday's news.

This, combined with the anticipated arrival of ultra-cheap Android netbooks could mean that the two sectors where there is real potential for growth, smartphones and netbooks, may be dominated by the open source, linux based OS. Can tablets be far behind?

Monty Python's take on Existentialism

2010-05-09T08:55:00.000-04:00

Of Banks and Tooth Fairies

2010-05-09T08:15:00.000-04:00

This morning's Sunday NYT has a column by Thomas Friedman that represents the kind of lie that if told often enough becomes truth. Friedman argues that the riots in Athens and the British election are examples of the profligacy of the baby-boom generation coming home to roost. Thus

After 65 years in which politics in the West was, mostly, about giving things away to voters, it’s now going to be, mostly, about taking things away. Goodbye Tooth Fairy politics, hello Root Canal politics.

What he fails to mention is that it was left of center governments, particularly in Britain and the U.S., that had left public sectors in pretty good shape. It was giveaways to the rich, particularly in the U.S., followed by historic generosity to a criminally negligent financial sector over the past couple of years, that put, and will continue to put, governments in impossible positions. In short, we gave away trillions to the already wealthy while children starved, and now we would like the poor, who derived no benefit from this, to pay for it.

The Least of These

2010-05-09T08:02:00.000-04:00

While we break our arms patting ourselves on the back for being the decent and tolerant people we think ourselves to be, this is how we treat those we deem to be lesser or inferior:

The head of the Yukon RCMP says five members of his force will be investigated for their role in an in-custody death. Raymond Silverfox died at the Whitehorse RCMP detachment in December 2008, where officers laughed at him as he vomited 26 times during his 13 hours in custody. When staff finally called an ambulance for Mr. Silverfox, he no longer had a pulse.

He was, after all, only a drunk, only a native, only a poor, middle-aged man. Obviously a loser. We reduce our fellows -- our brothers and sisters in Christ -- to objects or things or categories, and then we are shocked when this leads to oppression, abuse and even death. Thus:

A coroner's inquest last month revealed gruesome details of Mr. Silverfox's final hours.

The inquest heard that Mr. Silverfox couldn't find a hotel room after arriving in Whitehorse from his hometown of Carmacks, Yukon, and opted to stay at a Salvation Army shelter. It's there that he first began throwing up.

Mr. Silverfox refused to go to the hospital when Salvation Army staff called an ambulance, and decided to instead spend the night inside the drunk tank. That's where he would die, lying in his own feces.

The inquest heard that Mr. Silverfox was left in a cell while an infection, likely caused by the repeated vomiting, raged through his body.

Mr. Silverfox was described as a hard-working and respected member of his community, but the inquest heard that for some reason the 43-year-old began binge drinking in the months before his death.

While it is gratifying to know of Mr. Silverfox's qualities, they are irrelevant in this case. He was entitled to our care simply by the fact of his humanity.

What Our Money is For

2010-05-08T14:56:00.000-04:00

The Shrewd Manager from The Work Of The People on Vimeo.

Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove on God's Economy

2010-05-06T16:44:00.000-04:00

Tactical Imagination from The Work Of The People on Vimeo.

Gabor Mate on Compassion

2010-05-02T12:52:00.000-04:00

I had a chance yesterday to sit in on one of the Globe and Mails Open House sessions at the Toronto Reference Library. The topic was Citizenship and Compassion and the participants were Pico Iyer, Barbara Colorosa, Mark Kingwell and Gabor Mate. It was moderated (with real grace) by Paula Todd.

I will comment on some of the other material later, but for now would like to focus on Dr. Mate's remarks. He first took Kingwell to task for an all too sunny view of the possibilities and benefits of Canadian citizenship, noting the tragedy of the lives of native Canadians. And he spoke passionately and compellingly on his early childhood experience as a holocaust survivor and the sad reality of oppressed become oppressor in Palestine.

But for me his most telling remarks concerned love. When one of the usual suspects stood up to make a case for tough love, especially in the case of addiction, the response was visceral. There is no such thing, Dr. Mate insisted, as tough love. One can be tough and one can love. But tough love is a misnomer. What he did not say, but what was clearly implied, was that tough love is all too often an excuse for emotional and spiritual thuggery, particularly when applied to our most vulnerable fellows.

What My Day Has Been Like

2010-04-22T19:26:00.000-04:00

This Is What War Is

2010-04-05T16:36:00.000-04:00

From Wikileaks, via BoingBoing

and this . . .

Xeni Jardin provides the following commentary:

Wikileaks claims to have obtained and decrypted video that shows US occupying forces in an Apache helicopter intentionally firing on a dozen civilians in Baghdad, including journalists working for the Reuters news organization: 22-year-old Reuters photographer, Namir Noor-Eldeen, and his driver, Saeed Chmagh, 40.

The video is accompanied by audio of the pilots' radio dialogue. No Pentagon response yet. Reuters has been attempting to obtain the video under Freedom of Information Act requests since the incident occurred in July, 2007, but the Pentagon blocked all requests. Reuters news editor-in-chief David Schlesinger says the video is "graphic evidence of the dangers involved in war journalism and the tragedies that can result". Wikileaks director Julian Assange said Wikileaks had to break military encryption on the file to view it, and will not reveal how or from whom the file was obtained.

From the pilot's radio dialogue, it sounds as if they mistook the cameraman's SLR lenses for rocket launchers.

King, Harper and Prisons

2010-04-03T14:46:00.000-04:00

Reading through on op-ed piece in the NYT, I came across this quote from Martin Luther King:

A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.

Given that our own government has just chosen to increase prison budgets by a whopping 27% when other far more pressing social needs are left with crumbs, could the same be said for Canada?

An Easter Theme -- Hope and Renewal in Defeat

2010-04-03T07:41:00.000-04:00

Amid all of the noise about the seemingly endless abuse scandal in the Catholic Church, John Bentley Mays gives a message of the hope of the Gospel and the promise of the Kingdom despite our very human failings

Nothing that has happened in the past 10 days, or in the past 10 years, has made me regret my decision. But the current controversy over Benedict has made certain things about the sex scandals in the church perfectly clear to me.

One is that the time of face-saving, image management and avoidance in the Catholic Church – I mean everyone, including the Pope, the bishops and the rest of us – is well and truly over.

Another is that a new time is dawning for all Catholics, one full of danger for the tired, self-protective, bureaucratic culture of the church, and thus full of hope. It is a time of listening, with renewed rigour, to all victims of clerical abuse, and a time of affording love and justice to each of them.

It is a time of the Kingdom of God, opening into history, as it always does, in the voices of the oppressed, the excluded and sick and weak, those crucified by violence, exploitation and lies. Woe to any church or any Christian that ignores, because of fear for the weary structures of this dying world, the always radical appearing of God's Kingdom.

Greater Internet Dickwad Theory

2010-04-02T19:08:00.003-04:00

What can I say?

Greg Boyd on |Evangelicals and Judgement

2010-04-02T13:09:00.000-04:00

This is a message that both those within and outside the Church so much need to hear. This is Greg Boyd speaking about his very mixed reception at Rhode Island University

Well, it turns out that not everyone on campus is excited to have me come. In fact, some faculty may boycott the inauguration because of me. The controversy has led to several interesting interviews from local newspapers as well as an interview with theChronicle of Higher Education. Expressing the concerns of some on campus, several reporters have asked me how I felt about the objection that having an “evangelical” pastor give an inauguration address on a secular campus blurred the lines between church and state. As I shared with these reporters, the charge is a bit ironic in that the controversy I’m usually associated with revolves around my emphatic insistence onthe separation of church and state! At the same time, it seems to me that it enhances the message of diversity and open-mindedness for a secular university like RIU to invite contributions from people of faith, so long as they can trust that these people won’t abuse their platform by promoting their particular faith. I assured them that the message I will deliver will be predicated on our shared humanity, not my particular theology.

I was also asked to respond to the concern of some that I might use this platform to speak against homosexuality. “Why on earth would I ever do that?” I emphatically responded to one reporter. The fact that this concern could even arise is a sad commentary on the damage done to the evangelical movement by the self-serving public judgmentalism of certain evangelical spokespeople. It’s one of the reasons I no longer identify myself as an “evangelical” until I know what the word means to a particular audience. Much of what is often associated with this label — including the self-righteous judgmentalism of gays — is stuff I’m adamantly against. As I told this reporter, my conviction is that Jesus calls his followers to consider their own shortcomings to be massive tree trunks sticking out of their eyes compared to the tiny dust particle imperfections they think they see in others (Mt 7:1-3).

“So how would you respond to gays and advocates for gays at Rhode Island University who are concerned about you coming?” one reporter asked. “I’d tell them that, however grieved they are by evangelicals who campaign against homosexuals, I am probably more so. And I’d confess, along with the apostle Paul, that I am the worst of sinners” (1 Tim. 1:16-16).

A wonderful message for Good Friday.

Pandering . . . again

2010-04-01T08:44:00.000-04:00

When economic times are tough, people are afraid. And when they are afraid, they are sadly usually willing to lash out at those who have less. Thus it is a time-honored political strategy to ride this populist resentment to electoral success. The last century is littered with examples of this.

Never afraid to stoop lower, the Harper Conservatives have made much use of this. And today comes news that they are going to strike out at that favorite target of demagogues: immigrants.

Because we won't let refugee claimants work, they are dependent on social assistance. Now this government wants provincial governments to tighten the screws on people who are already backed into a corner. And this from a government that claims a foundation in |Christian faith.

Way to be, guys!

Techno-Slavery?

2010-03-30T20:06:00.000-04:00

An interesting take on programming from Douglas Rushkoff

Never Let the Facts Stand in the Way of a Good Argument

2010-03-29T14:57:00.000-04:00

In the face of historic deficits and looming and intractable problems in healthcare and pensions, the Harper government has once again done what it does best, pander to the basest instincts of an angry, and in this case ill-informed electorate. It has announced that it is increasing the budget for corrections by 27% or more than $3 billion at a time when not only are other pressures looming, but when violent crime is less and less of a problem.

Make no mistake: this sells. There is always a quick advantage on beating up on society's most despised. Yet everything that we know about criminal justice says this will only make things worse. If prisons and harsh, punitive justice made a society safe, the United States, Russia and China would be the safest places on earth.

But it sure does mobilize the base and draw in votes.

Looking back through recent Canadian history, I cannot think of a Prime Minister more cynical and calculating than this one.

Et Tu Ross?

2010-03-29T14:46:00.000-04:00

If I had any doubts about the depth of the troubles facing the Catholic Church, they were erased this morning by Ross Douthat's NYT column.

Not that it was particularly excoriating. Like most of his work, whether you agree with it or not (and I often don't) it was thoughtful and balanced.

But it was unflinching in its placing the responsibility for this issue at the feet of the Pope. His conclusion?

I am beginning to wonder if the Church can survive in its present form as anything but an empty shell. I believe that what must come out of this is the type of revolutionary rebirth for which Vatican II was but a precursor. God turns evil to good, but the result may be something we can scarcely envision.
. . the crisis of authority endures. There has been some accountability for the abusers, but not nearly enough for the bishops who enabled them. And now the shadow of past sins threatens to engulf this papacy.

Popes do not resign. But a pope can clean house. And a pope can show contrition, on his own behalf and on behalf of an entire generation of bishops, for what was done and left undone in one of Catholicism’s darkest eras.

This is Holy Week, when the first pope, Peter, broke faith with Christ and wept for shame. There is no better time for repentance.

This Never Works

2010-03-26T13:38:00.000-04:00

My first exposure to institutions that persist in denial as the ship goes down was the two years of revelations that culminated in Richard Nixon's resignation in the summer of 1974. I was perplexed then, and remain perplexed as to why when institutions and/or individuals are faced with this kind of cataclysm, they do not get out in front of it, own all of their mistakes and at least prevent further damage.

When they do, they almost invariably survive. And even prosper. Openness and reconciliation are wonderful restoratives.

Yet here we are watching the Catholic Church following this same well-worn path to almost certain catastrophe. Few if any believe the denials any longer. Today, National Catholic Reporter concluded a statement on this issue as follows

The focus now is on Benedict. What did he know? When did he know it? How did he act once he knew?

The questions arise not only about his conduct in Munich, but also, based also as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. A March 25 Times story, citing information from bishops in the United States, reported that the Vatican had failed to take action against a priest accused of molesting as many as 200 deaf children while working at a school from 1950 to 1974. Correspondence reportedly obtained by the paper showed requests for the defrocking of the priest, Fr. Lawrence Murphy, going directly from U.S. bishops to Ratzinger, then head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith, and Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, now the Vatican secretary of state. No action was taken against Murphy.

Like it or not, this new focus on the pope and his actions as an archbishop and Vatican official fits the distressing logic of this scandal. For those who have followed this tragedy over the years, the whole episode seems familiar: accusation, revelation, denial and obfuscation, with no bishop held accountable for actions taken on their watch. Yes, there is a depressing madness to this story. Time after time, this is a story of institutional failure of the deepest kind, a failure to defend the Gospel of Jesus Christ, a failure to put compassion ahead of institutional decisions aimed at short-term benefits and avoiding public scandal.

The strategies employed so far -- taking the legal path, obscuring the truth, and doing everything possible to protect perpetrators as well as the church's reputation and treasury -- have failed miserably.

We now face the largest institutional crisis in centuries, possibly in church history. How this crisis is handled by Benedict, what he says and does, how he responds and what remedies he seeks, will likely determine the future health of our church for decades, if not centuries, to come.

It is time, past time really, for direct answers to difficult questions. It is time to tell the truth.

To engage on this issue -- to insist on the truth -- is to love the Church, not to despise it. Yes there are those who hate the Church, but for those of us who love it, now is the time to step up.

Another Easy Essay

2010-03-25T19:11:00.001-04:00

Why Not Be A Beggar?
Peter Maurin

1. People who are in need
and are not afraid to beg
give to people not in need
the occasion to do good
for goodness' sake.

2. Modern society
calls the beggar
bum and panhandler
and gives him the bum's rush.

3. The Greeks used to say
that people in need
are the ambassadors of the gods.

4. We read in the Gospel:
"As long as you did it
to one of the least
of My brothers
you did it to Me."

5. While modern society
calls the beggars
bums and panhandlers,
they are in fact
the Ambassadors of God.

6. To be God's Ambassador
is something
to be proud of.

Planning

2010-03-25T17:14:00.001-04:00

What Kind of Church are We?

2010-03-25T11:31:00.000-04:00

On the anniversary of Oscar Romero's death, this reflection on what we, the Church, are called to be

Earlier this month in his regular NCR column, John Allen described Archbishop Charles Chaput as a “twenty-first century” bishop, not so much for his ideas and viewpoints but for the way he “compete[s] in [the] secular marketplace of ideas.”

Today in NCR’s story on the sainthood cause of Archbishop Oscar Romero, whose anniversary of martyrdom we celebrate today, Fr. Dean Brackley SJ notes that the hesitancy with which the church seems to be moving toward “Saint Oscar” is in part due to the fact that, by canonizing Romero, the church would hold him up not only as a model Christian but as a model archbishop. As Brackley says, “not everyone in the Catholic hierarchy is comfortable with presenting him as a bishop to be imitated.”

What kind of bishops does the church need in the twenty-first century? Bishops known for their (sometimes loud) participation in the “marketplace of ideas,” or pastors known for their continual conversion and for their humble walk with the oppressed even unto death? Indeed, what kind of church shall we be in the twenty-first century? A church that competes for political leverage or a treasonous church of solidarity, a church of the poor?

Today’s anniversary is a good opportunity to reflect on these questions, not only for bishops, but for all of God’s people.

Amen

South Park and Our Insane Concepts of Addiction and Treatment

2010-03-23T13:30:00.000-04:00

I could not say it better than this.

Yes, But Will He Sign the Test Ban Treaty?

2010-03-23T13:02:00.000-04:00

So not only is Microsoft more wealthy than many nations. From Slashdot, comes news that they are vying to become a nuclear power. Can we really be sure that this is for peaceful purposes? Or does the evil Mr. Bill have designs on non-nuclear Google and Apple.

The search for WMDs is on. Can the Marines be far behind?

Easy Essays

2010-03-19T22:18:00.000-04:00

From time to time I am going to post some of Catholic Worker co-founder Peter Maurin's Easy Essays -- small bits of free verse that he used as teaching tools. Here is today's

Feeding the Poor – At a Sacrifice

In the first centuries
of Christianity
the hungry were fed
at a personal sacrifice,
the naked were clothed
at a personal sacrifice,
the homeless were sheltered
at a personal sacrifice.
And because the poor
were fed, clothed and sheltered
at a personal sacrifice,
the pagans used to say
about the Christians
“See how they love each other.”
In our own day
the poor are no longer
fed, clothed, and sheltered
at a personal sacrifice,but at the expense
of the taxpayers.
And because the poor
are no longer
fed, clothed and sheltered
at a personal sacrifice,
the pagans say about the
Christians
“See how they pass the buck.”

The Harper Government and Petty Harassment of Palestinians

2010-03-19T18:53:00.000-04:00

This is the kind of bullshit that keeps the conflict alive!

Dr. Mustafa Barghouti, Palestinian leader and activist, and one of the real, credible hopes for peace in the region was to speak in Toronto tomorrow night. I received this notice a few minutes ago:

CJPME regrets to announce that its Canadian tour this weekend with Palestinian leader Dr. Mustafa Barghouti is cancelled. The Canadian government delayed the issuance of Barghouti's visa to the point where Barghouti missed two key flights, resulting in a cancellation of his tour in Canada. All individuals who purchased on-line tickets for the Barghouti events will be automatically reimbursed. You will receive a separate email from TicketWeb to confirm the reimbursement to your credit care. Please address any other questions and concerns to CJPME's main email at info@cjpme.org The delays with Dr. Barghouti's visa were brought to the attention of Foreign Affairs and Citizenship and Immigration as early as Wednesday March 17th, with Minister Cannon being directly advised of the situation. On Thursday, March 18th, the Deputy Minister of Citizenship and Immigration advised the Bloc Quebecois critic that officials were aware of the urgency of the matter, but were still doing checks. When the visa was finally issued after business hours on Friday, Dr. Barghouti had already, by default, missed half his tour, with no guarantee that space on flights would allow him to make the final two days of his visit. In the past, Dr. Barghouti has received a visa to Canada within 24 hours after applying. CJPME and Dr. Barghouti are committed to doing the tour later this Spring, once the obstacles put in place by the Harper government are cleared. Please watch CJPME's email announcements to know when the tour is rescheduled. Sorry for this unfortunate news. Nevertheless, this simply forces us to redouble our efforts to bring Dr. Barghouti's important message to Canada.

This met no security needs and was done with the full knowledge of the Minister and undoubtedly the Prime Minister. This is one more example of the petty and vindictive treatment that is a day to day reality for Palestinians. Shame on this government.

Do We Really Want Leadership?

2010-03-16T14:27:00.000-04:00

Via Senator Elaine McCoy's Hullabaloos blog, this note on leadership

The Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR) is running another of its speakers series called “What is the next Big Question?”. The series first caught my eye when I received an email asking “Can we build a brain?” Much to my disappointment, not yet! This year, however, the series is being launched by asking “What makes a great leader?” As CIFAR says in its preamble,

“The truth is ... that the most effective leaders draw on a “we-based” collective identity – followers see their leader as “one of us.” It is group identity, not a single person, that makes or breaks the leader. In fact, to really understand what makes an effective leader, we also have to understand what makes a dedicated follower…

…better understanding of leadership is key to dealing with every major political, environmental and economic crisis in the world today.”

When I first read these words, I immediately took them to mean a leader who builds consensus. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized they could also mean a leader who conjures up enemies ... thereby creating an "us against them" culture ... to maintain cohesion in his or her group. So now I'm truly intrigued. Which is the better model, I wonder? Dr. Alex Haslam will no doubt provide further insights.

Does this mean that white supremacist groups and various nationalist/fascist political parties are exemplars of leadership? There is strong group identity and fanatically motivated followers, after all. Perhaps we need to learn to think and take responsibility rather than play follow the leader.

Gary Wills on Torture and Faith

2010-03-15T12:09:00.000-04:00

Gary Wills has a brief meditation on torture and faith in the NYRB, posted today:

I say the rosary every day according to the church season, choosing one of the four sets of gospel “mysteries” (joyful, luminous, sorrowful, glorious) to reflect on the life of Jesus. Since it is now Lent, I am saying the sorrowful mysteries, those that deal with the Passion and Death of Jesus. This year, two of the five mysteries have special meaning for me—the second and the third.

The second mystery is the scourging of Jesus. This was a prescribed part of Roman execution by crucifixion. The convict was stripped naked and beaten with rods. This was done to break his spirit, so there would be no undignified scuffle when the man was led to the execution site and affixed to the cross. It was to demean him ahead of time, to degrade his manhood, so he would be cowed and submissive when taken to his death.

The third mystery is the crowning of Jesus. This was not a prescribed part of the process. The Roman soldiers improvised a special humiliation for their prisoner, wrapping him with a mock-regal purple robe, giving him a fake scepter, and putting an “imperial” wreath of acanthus leaves on this head, to scoff at the idea of a “King of the Jews.” It was like the medieval installation of a buffoon as “Lord of Misrule.” Again, the aim was to take away any last scrap of dignity that might be left to Jesus.

Sound familiar? Our recent torture techniques seem directly linked to the treatment Jesus received. Our prisoners were stripped, subjected to head bangings and face slappings. This was not torture, according to torturologist John Yoo. It may have been painful but it did not inflict permanent damage—except to human dignity. And making prisoners wear women’s underwear on their faces, or smearing them with what they were told was menstrual blood, was breaking down their deepest ideas of worth in their own culture and their own pride. It was a derisive “crowning.”

I do not know what went through the minds of secular or non-Christian torturers. But Christian torturers might have reason to have tortured consciences themselves when or if they remember what Jesus said in the gospel of Matthew (25.31ff). Asked who will enter the Kingdom of Heaven, he says those who comforted him in prison. Asked who will be excluded from the Kingdom of Heaven, he says those who would not comfort him in prison. His listeners ask, “When were you in prison, that we came to you or did not?” He answers: “Whatever you did to any of my brothers, even the lowliest (elackistoi), you did to me.” Christians should face this sobering fact: in their treatment of the lowliest of men, they were torturing Jesus, renewing what the Roman soldiers did to him.

Fun With Toxic Assets

2010-03-13T15:33:00.002-05:00

Welfare Queens Indeed

2010-03-12T16:21:00.000-05:00

In 1980, Ronald Reagan rode into office in large part on the strength of the image of a cadillac driving, lavishly dressed and spendthrift welfare recipients. Yet collecting an extra cheque or two or living large in the ghetto are small potatoes indeed compared to the crowd that took down the economy a year and a half ago.

Yesterday's report on the Lehman bankruptcy is resonating around the internet today. The Economist's take on this is as perhaps as good as any:

The report’s juiciest finding relates to Lehman’s use of an accounting device called Repo 105, which allowed the bank to bring down its quarter-end leverage temporarily. Repurchase (“repo”) agreements, whereby borrowers swap collateral for cash and agree to buy the collateral back later at a small premium, are a very common form of short-term financing. They normally have no effect on a firm’s overall leverage: the borrowed cash and the obligation to repurchase the collateral balance each other out.

But Repo 105 took advantage of an accounting rule called SFAS 140, which enabled Lehman to reclassify such borrowing as a sale. Lehman would give collateral to its counterparty and receive cash in return. Because the deal was being recorded as a sale, the collateral disappeared from Lehman’s balance-sheet and the bank used the cash it generated to pay down debt. To outsiders, it looked as though Lehman had reduced its leverage. In fact, the obligation to buy back the collateral remained. Once the quarter-end had come and gone, Lehman borrowed money to repay the cash and buy back the collateral, and its leverage spiked back up again.

Mr Valukas marshals plenty of evidence to back up his claim that “Lehman painted a misleading picture of its financial condition”. The effect of Repo 105 was material: the firm temporarily removed around $50 billion-worth of assets at the end of the first and second quarters of 2008, a time when market jitters about its leverage were pervasive (see table below). Mr Valukas can see no legitimate business reason to undertake the transaction, which was more expensive than a normal repo financing and had to be done through its London-based arm because Lehman was unable to get an American lawyer to agree that Repo 105 involved a true sale of assets.

And further . . .

As well as his findings on Repo 105, Mr Valukas describes how Lehman’s liquidity pool, which was designed to allow the bank to survive in stressed financial conditions for 12 months, contained cash and securities that had been assigned as collateral to its clearing banks, which grew increasingly nervous about doing business with Lehman. On September 10th 2008, just five days before it filed for bankruptcy, Ian Lowitt, the bank’s chief financial officer at the time, told investors that its liquidity pool remained strong at $42 billion. Yet an internal document from September 9th showed that it had a “low ability to monetise” almost 40% of the assets involved. The liquidity pool was not that liquid, after all.

I cannot fathom why ambitious prosecutors are not lining up for a shot at this.

Being Biblical?

2010-03-12T15:23:00.000-05:00

I just finished listening to a piece on NPR (sorry, no link) on Israeli interference with expatriate Palestinians trying to return to the West Bank to help build a viable Palestinian economy. It is the usual story of double-dealing and bureaucratic foot dragging. As in all other areas, dealing with the Israeli state is a nightmare for Palestinians.

So it is especially interesting that as I was listening to this, the daily biblical reading from Sojourners arrived in my mailbox. Here it is in full:

When an alien resides with you in your land, you shall not oppress the alien. The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.

- Leviticus 19:33-34

To break one part of the law is to break it all.

There Will Not Be a Two State Solution

2010-03-11T13:47:00.000-05:00

From Andrew Sullivan -- this map that shows why a two state solution will never be possible, and was never meant to be possible. The best that can now be hoped for is that what happened in South Africa might happen here -- that an apartheid system characterized by tribal bantustans might someday become a binational state such as that envisioned by many early zionists.

Playing for Change

2010-03-08T21:36:00.000-05:00

There is hope.

A Whole Lot More Than They Can Handle

2010-03-07T07:51:00.000-05:00

Debra Dean Murphey, whose writing I discovered on The Ekklesia Project, has a reminder on her blog this week of how our casual assurances might inflict real pain. As she puts it

Some people, lots of people, millions of people have more than they can handle.

They are overwhelmed, undone by sudden catastrophe; buried under crushing burdens related to debt, disease, death; drowning in a sea of unstoppable pain or white-hot grief. Some, miraculously, find a way out of the staggering misery (more on that in a minute). Others don’t.

Some people, it is clear, have more than they can handle.

Yet it’s important to note that Christian theology does not hold that it is God who sends the more-than-we-can-handle difficulties our way. God is not the invisible personal trainer, sadistically adding more weight to the bench to see how much we can press before we collapse–our own “no pain, no gain” life coach.

And neither does God visit suffering upon us as punishment. Jesus addresses this in Sunday’s appointed gospel lesson (Luke 13:1-9). Two ripped-from-the-headlines events are used to make his point. The first is the massacre of a group of Galileans in Jerusalem. On Pilate’s orders, these Jews had been murdered for offering sacrifices in the temple, and their own blood had been mingled with the priestly oblation.

Jesus insists that such a tragedy is not punishment from God: “Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans? No, I tell you . . . “

His second example–again from the front page of the newspaper–was a construction accident in which eighteen people had been killed when a tower fell. Jesus repeats the question: “Do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others living in Jerusalem? No, I tell you . . . “

God does not visit evil on us, for any reason. We visit it on ourselves. And real people suffer terribly and often cannot cope. To tell them this is God's will -- a sort of divine tutorial -- demeans both them and God.

Here is the Problem

2010-03-07T07:40:00.001-05:00

A picture that tells a devastating story

This is the U.S., but it is almost surely indicative of most advanced economies. People ran up debt because they saw no other way of advancing their living standards. They don't need sermons from the rich and their acolytes. They need justice.

Things Likely to End Badly

2010-03-05T18:02:00.000-05:00

Some More Sanity on Deficits

2010-03-05T09:34:00.000-05:00

Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz is also weighing in this morning on the hyperventilating over deficits:

Most economists also agree that it is a mistake to look at only one side of a balance sheet (whether for the public or private sector). One has to look not only at what a country or firm owes, but also at its assets. This should help answer those financial sector hawks who are raising alarms about government spending. After all, even deficit hawks acknowledge that we should be focusing not on today’s deficit, but on the long-term national debt. Spending, especially on investments in education, technology, and infrastructure, can actually lead to lower long-term deficits. Banks’ short-sightedness helped create the crisis; we cannot let government short-sightedness – prodded by the financial sector – prolong it.

Faster growth and returns on public investment yield higher tax revenues, and a 5 to 6% return is more than enough to offset temporary increases in the national debt. A social cost-benefit analysis (taking into account impacts other than on the budget) makes such expenditures, even when debt-financed, even more attractive.

Finally, most economists agree that, apart from these considerations, the appropriate size of a deficit depends in part on the state of the economy. A weaker economy calls for a larger deficit, and the appropriate size of the deficit in the face of a recession depends on the precise circumstances.

There is much of politics and little of economics in current hysteria about deficits. This is not 1995. We are not at the end of two decades of structural deficits. Our economic house is in order. We need to take a valium and calm down.

Roll Up the Rim, Eh!

2010-03-05T09:04:00.001-05:00

The touching spot by Tim Horton's during the olympics, critiqued in today's Globe, seems to overlook a fact that is obvious to anyone who spends time at Timmie's.

The ad depicts a new arrival in Canada welcomed with that quintessential Canadian experience, a Tim Horton's coffee. Yet if you visit any Timmie's it will be immediately apparent that while there are usually quite a few immigrants present, they are almost always serving and not enjoying the coffee. The customers are overwhelmingly middle-aged, white, lower middle-class Canadians.

These are the low-wage, insecure jobs that we ask immigrants to do, regardless of their qualifications. Perhaps the woman arriving in Canada depicted in the commercial should have been handed an apron. This would more closely reflect reality.

You're Gonna Owe Somebody

2010-03-05T08:53:00.000-05:00

So why do banks care so much about government deficits?

Writing in The Nation, Jamie Galbraith puts it succinctly:

To put things crudely, there are two ways to get the increase in total spending that we call "economic growth." One way is for government to spend. The other is for banks to lend. Leaving aside short-term adjustments like increased net exports or financial innovation, that's basically all there is. Governments and banks are the two entities with the power to create something from nothing. If total spending power is to grow, one or the other of these two great financial motors--public deficits or private loans--has to be in action.

For ordinary people, public budget deficits, despite their bad reputation, are much better than private loans. Deficits put money in private pockets. Private households get more cash. They own that cash free and clear, and they can spend it as they like. If they wish, they can also convert it into interest-earning government bonds or they can repay their debts. This is called an increase in "net financial wealth." Ordinary people benefit, but there is nothing in it for banks.

And this, in the simplest terms, explains the deficit phobia of Wall Street, the corporate media and the right-wing economists. Bankers don't like budget deficits because they compete with bank loans as a source of growth. When a bank makes a loan, cash balances in private hands also go up. But now the cash is not owned free and clear. There is a contractual obligation to pay interest and to repay principal. If the enterprise defaults, there may be an asset left over--a house or factory or company--that will then become the property of the bank. It's easy to see why bankers love private credit but hate public deficits.

Like Dorothy and her friends, we are supposed to respond with awe to the smoke and mirrors and pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. Toto knew better and so should we.

Karl Schroeder on Writing

2010-03-04T09:48:00.003-05:00

SF writer Karl Schroeder has some interesting ideas on writing at the TPL site. For all of us who struggle:

Writing is not one activity. It is many. Knowing this can be key to your growth as a literary artist. There are a lot of myths about the writing process. One of the worst is the myth of talent--which is a catch-all word that seems designed to stop any further questioning. Talent, you see, is self-contained, impenetrable: opaque. "Well, he's talented." With that statement, we dismiss the possibility of looking inside the box, of finding out what it is that a writer does that makes him or her look talented.
Talent, like the words skill and experience, is useless when you want to learn how someone does something. Each of these terms takes something complex, multi-faceted and ultimately visible--if you know where to look--and makes it mysterious and opaque. So if I used any of these words in conversation or on this blog while I'm writer in residence here, please feel free to call me on it.
Underlying the apparent seamlessness of talent and skill are many different activities, all coordinated. Writing is not one activity but many, and each of us is not just 'a writer' but many different kinds of writer.
We are all a mixture of many different kinds of writer; but some of us start out being more one or two of these:
has a whole universe in his head, but can’t get that first scene written.

The draft horse has nine different versions of chapter 1, but no chapter 2.

The academic has lots of file folders crammed with notes, but hasn’t started the story yet.

The editor never finishes because the story “just isn’t quite right yet.”

The biographer has two hundred pages of dialog and character development, but nothing has actually happened yet.

The plotter has a lot of action going on, but there are no people in this story.

The essayist uses the story to make a point, and woe to any character or drama that gets in the way.

Recognize any of these traits? Chances are you have some of them. In my next post, I'll talk about how it is enthusiasm, and not some mythical trait like 'talent' that blends these personae in us; and I'll discuss how to dampen down the traits that you are over-emphasizing, and turn up the volume on the ones you tend to neglect. A good writer knows when to switch between these roles, and is willing to do it. We'll explore how that works, and how it can improve your writing.

Schroeder is the writer-in-residence at the Toronto Public Library.

Why Local and Informal is Often Better

2010-03-04T08:49:00.002-05:00

From Cory Doctorow, a story about why small, local and informal often succeeds when big and expensive fails:

Volunteers in Afghanistan -- both locals and foreigners from the MIT Bits and Atoms lab -- have been building out a wireless network made largely from locally scrounged junk. They call it "FabFi" and it's kicking ass, especially when compared with the World Bank-funded alternative, which has spent seven years and hundreds of millions of dollars and only managed its first international link last summer.

Locals and volunteers are doing what big foreign aid cannot. This is what Ivan Illich talked about for more than four decades.

Tired Tropes from Tired People

2010-03-03T07:13:00.002-05:00

Now that our PM has let us have our democracy back for a bit, if we promise to play nice, it is budget time. For the occasion, our national paper has trotted out the usual suspects to give the usual advice. Preston Manning tells us we need new institutions for a new century, a message we have been hearing from him for decades. He was fearless leader's mentor,maybe a phone call would be more appropriate.

Jeffrey Simpson suggests we need to raise taxes and cut spending. Herbert Hoover would be proud. With persistent unemployment and a manufacturing sector that will be reeling for years and deflation a real threat, let's torpedo the recovery. There is no threat from government borrowing -- interest on government debt is declining as investors like me look for a safe haven and except for a deranged housing market, there is plenty of slack in the economy. But hey, why think when a tried and true bromide will do.

Finally, Tory retread Reginald Stackhouse thinks we should get a kinder, gentler Steven Harper. No, Reginald, what we need is a new government. Of course this would require an opposition with cojones instead of polsters.

It seems increasingly clear that what is needed here is a generational changing of the guard. The boomers haven't had an original thought in a long time. And yet there seems to be a reluctance, to put it kindly, to bring along young dynamic leadership in any of the parties (or in the press, for that matter). Presumably, there is a crop of bright and ambitious thirty- and forty-somethings somewhere.

It's time.

A Timmies Tax?

2010-03-02T15:24:00.002-05:00

Via Mark Bittman's blog, an idea for taxing junk food.

If you want to see where your health care dollars are going, stand and watch a drive through line at Tim Horton's. These are people who cannot walk for their double/double and donut. One of the saddest sights is a belly tucked under a tilt wheel at the drive-thru.

Of course, this is just one aspect of a huge problem in our eating habits and food chain. But if the numbers bear it out, surely it is worth considering.

Yoder on Non-Violence and the Problem of Just War

2010-03-02T08:37:00.002-05:00

Jesus Radicals has a review of a posthumous work by John Howard Yoder on non-violence. Their review is worth quoting at length:

John Howard Yoder’s newest posthumously published book, Nonviolence: A Brief History, is comprised of lectures that he gave in Warsaw Poland in 1983. At that time the Solidarity Movement had became a powerful nonviolent force trying to affect change in Communist Poland. Pope John Paul the II was to visit Poland just a month after Yoder delivered his lectures. So the time for Yoder to urge nonviolent resistance was ripe, though Yoder did not reference contemporary events in Poland during the lectures. First Yoder urged his hearers to consider the lessons that heave been learned by nonviolent movements in the twentieth century. He then refutes objections that just war theorists might raise to the effectiveness and legitimacy of a nonviolent movement, moving from there to ground nonviolence resistance in the Judeo-Christian heritage. Finally he addresses the Roman Catholic Church in the final three lectures, agreeing with liberation theologian Adolfo Pérez Esquivel that “It is love, not violence or hatred, that will have the last word in history.”

. . . Yoder narrates the “cosmological conversions” that Tolstoy, Gandhi and King underwent that pushed them to see reality anew. Speaking of Tolstoy’s insight that influenced Gandhi and King Yoder states:
The key to the good news is that we are freed from prolonging the chain of evil cause engendering evil effects by action and reaction in kind. By refusing to extend the chain of vengeance, we break into the world with good news. This one key opened the door to a restructuring of the entire universe of Christian life and thought. There developed from it a critique of economic exploitation, of military and imperial domination, and of westernization.

Yoder invites the reader to have their own “cosmological conversion” has he explains the New Testament’s cosmology (thus overcoming some weaknesses in Tolstoy’s viewpoint). The “powers and principalities,” which help create order but also dominate and oppress people in forms such as the state, have been disarmed and defeated in Jesus’ life, death and resurrection. They were put on public display and shown for what they truly are: emperors with no clothes. Jesus now wages a cosmological war against these defeated powers, and invites us to be part of the march toward history’s christological. Christians are a sign of Jesus victory and the eschatological kingdom. As such we take part in an alternate politics that sees that the “grain of the universe” is not with the powerful, but the oppressed and downtrodden, not with violence but with suffering as Christ suffered. As such, Jesus’ church will inevitably run headlong into the empire’s of this world as they resist Jesus, and the church will have to witness publicly, and sometimes at great cost.

This cosmological conversion to which we are invited is to a new way of living in and viewing the world, not merely to feelings and beliefs. It is to see that Jesus is more determinative of history than anybody in the White House, the Kremlin or some country’s Parliament. He goes on to show how in the past few decades the Holy Spirit has moved within the Catholic Church to help many people to this conversion, most importantly people in the Catholic Worker movement, but there have also been stirrings in the bishops themselves. Jesus is lord and has altered the course of humanity’s sinful, violent rebellion. The question for us is whether we care to take the medicine that will make us well enough to see again, to see not merely shadows, but the reality that casts them.

The Church has become far too comfortable with violence and with war. We glorify past wars and rationalize present ones. We trot out the logical pretzel of just war theory when we know very well it bears no relation to the gospel. The Church is not just another political actor. It is the presence of Christ in the world.

Budget Blues: Its the Deflation, Stupid!

2010-03-02T08:19:00.005-05:00

With budget day upon us, and the Tories crowing about an economy on the mend, it is worth pondering the state of our neighbor to the south, where our economic fate is determined.

For months, we have heard about the inflationary cataclysm to come. With fundamentalist zeal, the financial sector in particular, already in receipt of their multi-billion bag of slag, have been telling of the horrors to come if government largess is not reined in. Economist Tim Duy, by way of Mark Thoma's blog this morning, has some somewhat different news:

My attention this morning was drawn to the inflation numbers in the January Personal Income and Spending release, specifically the recent downward trend in core PCE inflation:
Coupled with a sizable output gap that yields very high human cost in the form of high rates of labor underutilization - and forecasts that such underutilization will persist for years - would lead one to believe that policymakers still have work left ahead of them. Policymakers, however, do not appear to agree, and instead focus on the fact that output is growing again, even if the 5.9% pace in the final quarter of last year was inflated by inventory correction. Indeed, with the recovery taking hold, there is no imperative for more action. Fiscal policy looks hamstrung by deficit concerns, while monetary policy is poised to turn contractionary as asset purchase programs are wound down.

For the time being, it would appear that fiscal tightening will not be followed by similar monetary policy. At least the BofC understands that there is no inflationary risk. Output is well below capacity and will remain so for years to come. Rates on government debt continue at historically low levels, falling sharply over the past week.

This is not about economics. It is about old time religion.

Thank You StumbleUpon

2010-02-26T20:57:00.002-05:00

In our something for nothing world, some needed wisdom --"Seven Blunders of the World" by Mahatma Gandhi.

1. Wealth without work

2. Pleasure without conscience

3. Knowledge without character

4. Commerce without morality

5. Science without humanity

6. Worship without sacrifice

7. Politics without principle

—Mahatma Gandhi