Stephen Taylor Thinks Blue Berets Are Ludircrous

Adam Goldenberg (A Liberal) and Stephen Taylor (a Conservative) are presently duking it out over the war in Israel.  You can find the threat pretty easily.

Goldenberg is suggestion that Israel bears some responsibility for civilian deaths.  Taylor was doing what political folk do - defending one side and demonizing the other, period.

I'm not the kind of guy who relishes conflict, particularly martial conflict - not because I'm squeamish, but because I hate waste.  Wasted lives, wasted resources, lost time, damaged generations.

So, as is my tendency, I spoke up.

1. Stephen Taylor ‏@stephen_taylor  1h

   @adamgoldenberg every time we tut-tut, wring our hands, or call Israel to answer for Hamas' barbarism, we extend Hamas' campaign.

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2. Craig Carter-Edwards ‏@CCEChirps  29m

   Remember the days Canada innovated problems to such crises rather than choosing sides? Anyone? @stephen_taylor @adamgoldenberg #Peacekeeping

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3. Stephen Taylor ‏@stephen_taylor  27m

   @CCEChirps @adamgoldenberg going to guess that Adam thinks this statement is as ludicrous as I do. I side with the democracy, not terror.

   4:59 PM - 13 Aug 2014 · Details

I'm not entirely sure what Taylor means with the ludicrous suggestion - perhaps he didn't get the fact that I was referring to Peacekeeping, as in blue berets, the UN, Lester B Pearson's Nobel prize, etc.

Or, it could be he knew, and doesn't see the connection, or that he knew and thinks the notion of Peacekeeping was ludicrous from the beginning.

I won't judge him either way - I don't know him well enough to know his motivations.  Beating him, you see, isn't mine, nor is building my narrative by picking a fight with him.

Hamas is bad - cheap politics and Alpha male aggression taken to extremes.  Israel is necessary, for countless reasons.  I don't disagree with him that Hamas consists of terrorists, nor that democracy is good.  

Perhaps he would agree with me that the dead recognize no borders, nor intentions; a dead Israeli and a dead Palestinian are both equally dead.

I don't want to see anyone dead, especially if the death of a guilty few can only be achieved through the deaths of countless innocents.  That's baby, bathwater stuff.  

Surely we are more sophisticated than that?

The first step to any conflict resolution is a cessation of hostilities.  That requires the participation of both sides.  If those sides have allies that are validating the violence and encouraging more of it, backing down becomes much harder to do.

There was a time, as referenced above, when Canada was really good at being a broker; condemning violence, not people; seeking resolution, not one-sided victories.  We didn't feel the need to define ourselves by picking sides; we were world-renowned for our ability to find common ground and catalyze solutions.

Is that ludicrous?  Maybe, though history would suggest otherwise.  Either way, I'd be very interested to know how Taylor defines common sense.

Why Should We Care What The World Thinks About Canada?

In my recent travels and discussions with seasoned foreign policy experts and politicians in the U.S. and Europe, I haven't met one who took Canada seriously anymore, expect as a posturer, a poseur, a political game player.  And these are people who remember a different kind of Canada, and a better approach to diplomacy and politics.

Nobody does trade with North Korea.  No political leader anywhere in the world, even China, takes the successive Kims seriously.  The only reason people give in to North Korea's insistence on not taking "no" for an answer is because they have actual weapons of mass destruction.

But Kim Jong-Un himself is a joke, a cartoon villain parodied by media all over the world.  And because of his tight control of information, that's the end of the story.  The millions who suffer daily in North Korea under his information-starved, authoritarian rule are pretty much ignored.  But hey, inside their borders, they know it doesn't matter what the rest of the world thinks, anyway - their leader has told them as much.

I know there are people who like Stephen Harper's approach to unions, "special interest groups" and Opposition Parties; he's the boss, they're the problem, good for him for putting those who would undermine our country in their place through whatever means necessary.  There are equally those who relish the soundbites they get of their PM, talking tough to Barack Obama or sternly reproaching European leaders for their economic policies.  Take that, former colonial powers!

Alas, those aren't the people who decide whether to sign trade deals with Canada, whether to relocated businesses to Canada or to listen to Canada on issues ranging from security to poverty reduction.  

Schoolyard politics makes for good fundraising letter fodder, but poor international relations.  People don't trust Harper; a man so willing to put his partisan interests first that he'll snub his own country for the benefit of an ally can't be counted on to act responsible in trade negotiations.

There was a time when Canada knew what it stood for and the world knew why we mattered.  Canada's best destiny was and still is as the adult on the world stage, always reliable and always trusted to build bridges and find solutions.

We can lead again - but not until the petulant approach to foreign policy favoured by Harper is discarded.

Until then, we're not punching above our weight - instead, we've become the punchline.

Peter Russell: Be Grateful For Our Diversity

Largely by accident, Canada has become the world's leader in getting along.  Some folk see this as a weakness - to them, only military strength and aggressive capacity have value.  I think they're wrong, and Peter Russell seems to agree:


A Constitutional Thanksgiving

 

It is true that we, in Canada and Ontario, may not have the bounty of the new world and the hospitality of its native people that Americans celebrate on their Thanksgiving weekend.

But we do have some remarkable constitutional roots for which to be deeply thankful. Indeed these founding constitutional circumstance are the source of what makes our country such an exceptional political community.

 

We can begin with the fact that Great Britain, after defeating the French on the Plains of Abraham in 1759, did not to try to complete the conquest by driving the Roman Catholic Canadians into exile, which is exactly what they had done to the Acadiens in Nova Scotia just a few years earlier.

Of course, the British really didn’t have much choice. Les Canadiens outnumbered them by 75,000 to 5,000, and most of the British were soldiers anxious to return home.

 

Even though Britain’s decision was based more on prudence than principle, it planted the seed of diversity and ethnic accommodation that would become a hallmark of Canada.

 

Fifteen years later the incompleteness of the “conquest” was consolidated in the Quebec Act passed by the United Kingdom Parliament in 1774. The Canadians could remain French and Catholic, hold public office in Canada and enjoy their system of civil law. Though this fell short of recognizing Quebec as a nation, it enabled les Canadiens to survive and flourish as a distinct people within Canada.

 

For that we should be thankful.

 

After the fall of New France, Indian nations to the west of Quebec were uneasy about Britain succeeding France as the dominant European power in North America.

 

In 1763, an alliance of western nations led by the Ottawa chief Pontiac, fearing a flood of British settlers into their territories, burnt eight of the forts the British had taken over from the French, put Detroit under siege and attacked English settlements in the Ohio country.

 

In July 1764, representatives of these nations met with British emissary Sir William Johnson at Fort Niagara.

 

At Niagara, Johnson presented George III’s Royal Proclamation to the “Nations with which we are connected.”

 

The Crown promised that there would be no settlement on Indian lands without proper treaties.

On the basis of this commitment, the Indian nations made peace with the Crown. The rights and freedoms of Aboriginal peoples contained in the 1763 Royal Proclamation are now recognized in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

 

For this too we should be thankful – and not forgetful.

 

A few years later when American rebels arrived in Quebec, we should be thankful that the Canadians were grateful enough for the freedoms they enjoyed under British rule, to not fall for Ben Franklin’s offer to be “conquered into freedom”.

 

And we should be equally thankful, that when the Americans invaded our country again in the War of 1812, that His Majesty’s Indian Allies provided military support that was crucial in repulsing the American attack. Although our gratitude should be tempered with shame for the Crown’s failure to honour its promise to protect the western Indian nations from American invasion of their country.

We should also be thankful for the Loyalists, arriving here with a liberal understanding of parliamentary government.

 

They were indeed “liberty’s exiles.” Their government in Upper Canada was the first in North America to abolish slavery.

 

And we should be thankful that when their theory of parliamentary government as a balance between the Crown, the propertied class and the people, became in practice too hierarchical, William Lyon Mackenzie found support for resistance among the people. Not enough support to overthrow the government by force, but enough to convince the mother country that democratic reform was needed.

Finally, we should be thankful for colonial leaders like Robert Baldwin and Louis-Hippolyte La Fontaine, who convinced Great Britain that in Canada the representative of the Crown, in whom the executive power of government is formally vested, must act on the advice of politicians who command the confidence of the elected house of parliament.

 

This gave us responsible democratic government as early as 1848 - at the very time the flickering flames of democratic reform were being doused in Europe.

 

None of these developments were carefully planned. But when we add them up they are what gave us our legacy of liberal and democratic constitutionalism.

 

We should be thankful for that legacy and ever mindful of the principles it embodies.

Peter Russell is one of Canada's leading constitutional experts, advisor to Governors-General and Professor-Emeritus in Political Science at the University of Toronto

Posted date : October 09, 2012

 

 

CFN - You Can’t Take the Risk Out of War

War isn’t a game, video or otherwise. When a person gets shot, stabbed or blown up, it’s not “hearts” they risk losing – it’s their limbs, lives and ongoing quality of life. Winning is no tonic against injury, either; soldiers who come home still bear the physical and psychological scars of combat. If the war happens on a soldier’s home turf, there’s every risk that they won’t have a physical home to return to, either. I will never forget walking around a bombed-out downtown Sarajevo still littered in rubble and “beware of landmines” signs in 2001, six years after the Bosnian War was supposed to be over. The spoils may go to the victor, but when the spoils are in ruins, what has really been won? 

 

This is why military strategists from Sun-tzu on keep developing new ways to mitigate personnel and infrastructure risks at the same time as increasing chances of meaningful victory. The evolution of warfare has seen the development of increasingly complex offensive and defensive technology and tactics, but it has also included the nurturing of warrior codes of conduct like bushido, chivalry or the Geneva conventions. At its core, diplomacy is really a military strategy designed to mitigate the risk of destructive combat and avoid losses on both sides.

 

Of course, we wouldn’t fight in the first place if there weren’t rewards to be had. Land and resources are of definitive value to expanding populations, which is why so many wars are fought over them. A balance of power might encourage a military code of conduct, but when the balance shifts, we can always find wiggle room. Hawaiian Chief Kamehameha seized on the arrival of European weapons and tactics as an opportunity to tip the balance in his favour and conquer all the Hawaiian islands; Spanish conquistadors might have honestly thought they were doing God’s work in bringing Christianity to native heathens, but this noble quest didn’t stop them from slaughtering innocents and stealing their land and gold.

American Yin, Chinese Yang - and Canada's Tao

"Lots of people in China imagine that the United States is determined to keep their country down and to deny it the role and influence in its region to which its history, size and achievements entitle it."

"There are not a few Americans who apply the same techniques of selective listening and conspiracy theorizing to China. Their suspicions are inflamed by a small army of pundits and polemicists determined to unearth the ghost of Fu Manchu in today's China."

This is so true, yet so counter-intuitive to progress:

"Self-fulfilling paranoia is not a sound basis for cooperative relations between nations. In our own respective national interests, China and America need to cooperate with each other. Despite the problems in our mutual perceptions, the prospects for our doing so are not bad at all."

It's invariable that the big powers will see each other as competitors; it was by being competitors to previous big dogs that they attained their own supremacy in the first place.  When everyone is waving around national pride through sticks, flags and rhetoric, though, it becomes increasingly hard to back down gracefully - unless there is an intermediary to facilitate that process.

This has always been Canada's best, most natural role.  We are a nation that represents all others - as such, we are the world's pre-eminent negotiators, peacekeepers and solution-finders.  Prime Minister Harper has perhaps tried to side-track us from this true calling, but frankly, now is when the world needs Canada as an international Centre more than ever.

"This is because the possible causes of conflict between us are receding, the need to cooperate is increasingly compelling, and the opportunities to accomplish things together are ever more obvious."

After all, doesn't history teach us that the only way forward is together?

The Politics of Indifference: Are We Repeating History?

Tightening The Screw

An article in today’s Toronto Sun boasts the headline “Bogus Refugee Claims on the Rise.”  The article asks us this question: “with all the hostility and turmoil in the world, why would more than 20% of all refugee claimants to Canada last year be coming from the European Union?  Is Hitler back? Tito? Mussolini?” 

The article goes on to say that nearly “half of last year’s bogus European refugee claimants were from Hungary."  The suggestion is that these are economic migrants, seeking better job opportunities or, perhaps, are hoping to milk the Canadian system.  A disproportionate number of these claimants are Sinti-Roma, often referred to as “Gypsies.”  Canada’s Federal Immigration Minister Jason Kenney has singled out Sinti-Roma, suggesting they, as a social group, are actively attempting to abuse the system. 

Reading headlines like these, it all seems so much an over there problem.  We’re here in Canada, worried about jobs for our youth, the viability of our pensions and whether there will be a doctor available when we need one.  With debt crises and unemployment challenges, we’re already worried; we don’t need to add anyone else’s woes to our mix.  In short – we are anxious enough to be receptive to messages that validate our fears.

This is a big part of why Canada has recently elected a majority government whose key campaign theme was protecting Canada against “troubles lapping at our shores.”  In Ontario, the Conservative Party’s recent election campaign focused on pointing accusing fingers at “foreign workers” for stealing local jobs and “foreign students” for taking opportunity away from local students.

Does this sound familiar?  It should. 

What Has Happened Before…

During the lead-up to and beginning of World War II, Canada embraced a closed-door immigration policy that stigmatized foreigners and “special interest” groups specifically.  Canada’s Director of Immigration (Equivalent to today’s Immigration Minister) of the time, Frederick Charles Blair, focused in particular on Jews.  Between 1933-1939, while anti-Semitism and hate-crimes were on the rise, Blair allowed less than 5,000 Jews, mostly European, into Canada.  A shameful example of his blatant refusal to assist a persecuted people was the turning away of the MS St. Louis and its 907 Jewish emigrants.  Apparently, Blair once asked a prominent Jewish Torontonian "Why don't you people learn to live with your neighbours wherever you are?  Why are you hated?"

Canada confabulated justification for ignoring people in need with essentially the line that it wasn’t our problem; we had enough concerns of our own to worry about.  In fact, we did even worse – fearful of the enemy without, we started to look for enemies within.  Nazi Germany had its Concentration Camps and Soviet Russia had its Gulags, but Canada had Internment Camps of its own.

I can only assume that the Frederick Blairs of the world actually believed that external firewalls and internal containment were in the country’s best interests.  I would certainly question who from our populace they saw as true Canadians.  That was a different time, though, when we had less understanding of genetics and largely viewed “ethnic groups” as Others posing built-in threats because they were different.  Surely we’ve learned since then? 

… Will Happen Again

It doesn’t seem like it.  We have Kenney’s railing against Roma-Sinti immigrants, giving plenty of generalizations and half-truths to justify his position.  Internally, he’s finding palatable ways to put constraints on minorities.  His colleague Vic Toews is pursuing a new anti-terrorism strategy that will target any group of “vulnerable individuals” with issues “based on grievances – real or perceived.”  Prime Minister Stephen Harper questions the patriotism of any group or individual who disagrees with his positions.  This all sounds familiar, too.

I’m not trying to invoke Godwin’s Law, here.  My goal is never to point fingers, but to identify concerns and present solutions.  Here’s the problem I want to raise today.  Canada is cycling back to political divisiveness.  As economic uncertainty fosters social anxiety and as competing media (both old and new) fight for dramatic headlines to attract an overwhelmed audience, we are putting on blinders to what’s happening beyond our shores.  As our politicians attempt to outdo each other with feats of policy muscularity, our vision is becoming clouded with fear and anger.

What’s happening as a result of existing anxieties and political jockeying is that we are falling into a predictable, unfortunate political cycle of contracting tension and explosive release.  As we become more insular in our focus, we are confabulating reasons not to look at and address the challenges that surround us.

Hungary

The Sun asks us, has dictatorship returned to Europe?  While it poses the question sarcastically, what if that is actually the case?  There are real concerns being expressed not just by Hungarians, but by the EU and the US that Hungary, under the reign of the Fidesz Party, is on the slippery slope towards dictatorship.  Power is being increasingly consolidated in the hands of a few; the voices and opportunities for expression of opposition are being suppressed.  A noose is slowly closing around the neck of dissent.  At the same time, there are questions of state-facilitated racism, labour camps, etc.  Beyond Hungary, racism and anti-democratic sentiment is on the rise in Europe, fueled by the Eurozone crisis.  The Roma-Sinti are being targeted now just as they have been before.   

The Canadian government is not demonstrating any interest in raising concerns over the democratic processes of a foreign government.    Doing so doesn’t fit into the theme of “trouble lapping at our shores” as well as Islamic terrorists or the threat of war with Iran do.  More to the point – if Stephen Harper were to denounce the slide from democracy in Hungary, how much credibility would he have?  He has repeatedly dismissed Canada’s democratic laws and tradition to further his own ideology – he has given Canada a glass roof when it comes to commenting on respect for democracy.

 Feeding the Beast

This is where I part company from many detractors of the Harper regime.  I’ve no interest in calling Harper a dictator, nor branding his Ministers as racist.  Labels like that brand and isolate the problem without doing anything to provide a solution.  To me, the Harper team is victim of the same structural flaws that people around the world have twigged on to.  That's where our focus needs to be.

Our political system is a zero-sum game; one player’s success can only come at another’s expense.  This makes it a survival of the fittest contest.  To the victor go the spoils – therefore, the ends justify the means; all else is collateral damage.  Under this banner, I have seen Parties of all political stripes embrace wedge-issues they knew were detrimental to the interests of their constituents, eat their own young to strengthen or save the people at the top and ignore the issues that mattered in deference to the issues that had traction.

It’s an exact repetition of what’s happening on the national scale.  I don’t see this as coincidence – I believe that the polarization of politics is informing the polarization of the populace in general.  Seeking shocking headlines, the media is simply feeding the beast.  So long as the worst of the problems are “over there”, we feel we can get away with this.  In doing so, we are abdicating our social responsibility to make the world a better place than it was as we found it.

My grandfather is a Holocaust Survivor.  Through a tragic twist of fate, he was one of 168 Allied Airmen that ended up in Buchenwald Concentration Camp.  Having signed up to fight for a cause he believed in – stopping the Nazis – he ended up witnessing first-hand just what mankind is capable of when we make the choice to either ignore or give in to fear and hatred.  Another survivor of Buchenwald, Elie Wiesel, drew this lesson from his experience of the Holocaust:

“The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference.  The opposite of art is not ugliness, it’s indifference.  The opposite of faith is not heresy, it’s indifference.”

“There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest.”

I have been to Buchenwald.  I have talked to Jewish survivors of the Camp, to political prisoners who survived the Camp and to Sinti-Roma survivors of the Camp.  I don’t believe I’ve spoken to homosexual survivors of the Camp – there weren't many gay survivors.  I have also talked to the children and grandchildren of these survivors and asked them this question – “what’s it like today?”

The answer is disheartening.  Racism is on the rise.  Disenfranchisement is on the rise.  Suppression is on the rise.  There are political challenges happening not just in Hungary, but elsewhere in Europe, too.  Of course, the Eurozone is in crisis and more than a few nations (and nationalists) are pointing fingers of blame at each other.

It is wrong for us to willfully ignore the problems of our neighbours, be they across the street or across an ocean.  All the justification in the world cannot undo the damage that is done when we turn away from the suffering of others.  Sticking our heads in the sand doesn’t isolate us from the problem – instead, it brings it that much closer to home.

We have to care about the state of democracy, here and abroad.  We have to speak out with our votes and our words and our dollars against any system or group that would tell us security trumps diversity or that success comes only at the expense of others.  It’s our responsibility to let our politicians know we do care – about our political processes here in Canada and about the problems of friends, relatives and even complete strangers abroad in places like Hungary.  It means telling the world that Canada wants to be part of the solution, not a contributor to the problem.

This isn’t about tackling insurmountable problems.  It’s not about pandering to the weak or interfering in the lives of others.  Simply put, it’s about learning from past mistakes so that we don’t relive them.  My grandfather, like so many grandfathers and grandmothers, was victimized by the Holocaust, which happened because people around the world - including Canadians - decided what was happening in Nazi Germany was not our problem.  People to this very day are being slaughtered, beaten, starved and oppressed – because our inaction lets it happen.

Don’t let our grandfathers’ sacrifices be in vein; don’t force our sons and daughters to relive them.

Fear is Never the Answer - Hope Is

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/worldview/assassinate-obama-if-he-wont-attack-iran-for-israel-jewish-monthly-suggests/article2310783/

A man wracked by anxiety is calling for violence against a threat.  He’s so determined to see the elimination of said threat that he has become a threat himself.

Sadly, I don't find this shocking.  Complacency at the highest levels of society has bred dissatisfaction and resentment among, as one label depicts them, the 99%.  The renewed rise of anger as a political tool is fostering fear and undirected resentment among the general public.  Fear leads to anger; anger leads to hate; hate leads to oppression, crime, murder and war.

It doesn't have to be this way.  We don't have to kill or be killed - "obliterate our enemies" is not a precondition for survival.  In fact the opposite is true.

Israel is a great, global symbol of this.  The threat of weapons might have helped keep opponents at bay, but it's the conversation that keeps the relationship between Israel and its neighbours going.

Warren Kinsella puts it well: "There are others like me, who see Israel's continued existence as a precondition to a safer, saner world."

It's the Libyas and Iraqs of the world that demonstrate where force of strength leads you; Israel's story has always been more than that.  Its power lies in diplomacy.

What we need from our leaders is not fear mongering or despair; that comes to us naturally when there is a leadership deficit.  Leaders don’t have the luxury of doubt; to be bold, to be inspiring, to be effective, our leaders must embody courage and embrace the audacity of hope.