There’s a bar near my place that wants to expand. Their expansion plans have caused some controversy, with some residents opposed to the idea because they are worried about increased noise (the plan includes a patio where none exists currently), drunken patrons, and associated problems like, presumably, vomit on the sidewalk and cigarrette butts in gardens.

I decided to write an article about the issue for Raise the Hammer, and I started by interviewing the owner of the bar. To get the opinions of residents, I decided to attend the local neighbourhood association meeting, which was this past Monday.

It turned out to be the annual meeting of the Kirkendall Neighbourhood Association (KNA), and the board of directors – which was just one woman – was resigning. A new board needed to be elected.

My fellow meeting attendees, who were on average 20 or 30 years my senior, had a number of pressing concerns: graffiti on mail boxes, the expansion of the bar mentioned above, speeding traffic, and young people.

Apparently, “swarms” and “gangs” of youth are a real problem in Kirkendall. They are prone to walking through parks on their way to unknown destinations, which really irritates some people.

I was compelled to remark, as one woman pressed the cop in attendance about what they could do about this “problem”, that walking places with a group of friends is not a crime. “This was at 2:30 am!” she barked at me. The elderly woman next to me leaned over and loudly whispered, “they were probably just trying to have a good time!”

To sum it all up, when it came time to elect the new board, I decided to stand for election. I nudged the woman next to me and asked her to nominate me, it was seconded, I accepted, and it passed.

If you want change, we’re often told, you need to get involved. As I’m learning here in Hamilton, it’s a lot easier to change the course of your city than the course of the province, let alone the country. And now I have the opportunity to have a little bit of influence on the course of the neighbourhood I share with all the wonderful citizens here.

If you’re frustrated with how things are right now, I have to ask: are you aware of your neighbourhood association? Maybe they need a new board member.

[tags]Kirkendall Neighbourhood Association, grassroots democracy, community involvement[/tags]

Just how stupid are Canadian terrorists?

Imagine you’re one of them, just for a minute. You’re squirreled away in your lair, making nefarious plans. They involve explosives, so it’s a good thing that you’ve got some coming.

You hear a truck rumble into the driveway. The front doorbell chimes.

“Honey, could you get that?” you yell. “I think it’s the explosives delivery!”

———

I was thinking about how absurd it is to order in your explosives, and how bizarre it is that they were delivered by the RCMP, and I decided to get the story straight. I typed incompetent Canadian terrorists into Google and got the goods.

They had a “training camp” in [tag]Washago[/tag], which is north of Orillia. The Washago web site describes the town as a “picturesque village” that is “rich with history and local talent and offers quaint gift shops and a quality clothing store”, where, presumably, a budding young terrorist can shop after a hard days work of…paintball.

Star columnist Thomas Walkom describes what what happened when they showed up there:

[T]heir activities — shooting off firearms and playing paintball — were so obvious and so irritating that local residents immediately called police. […] [The men] apparently didn’t realize, or perhaps didn’t care, that large groups of brown-skinned urbanites dressed in camouflage are not a common sight in rural central Ontario.

So when local resident Mike Côté came upon a group of just such men near his Ramara Township farm last December, he immediately informed police.

As he told the Star this week, the group appeared cold, wet and bedraggled. Some had fallen though the thin ice into a marsh. The leader of these alleged terrorists was so disgusted with his young charges that he complained to Côté about their incompetence.

In T.O. Terror Cell’s Disorganized Crime, Maisonneuve’s Phillippe Gohier points out news items “that suggest that the threat may have been unfairly amplified”, like Margaret Wente in the Globe and Mail:

How dangerous is crazy talk? When does crazy talk cross the line into incitement, and to what extent is that a crime? At what point does a gang of hotheads morph into a terrorist cell, and revenge fantasies into a plot? When does the plot become credible? Are we dealing with terrorist masterminds, or are they just a bunch of stupid goofs?

Stupid goofs shouldn’t be taken too lightly, of course. One need only look south to see the harm that electing one can cause. I’m glad these fools were arrested before they hurt somebody, probably by accidentally blowing themselves up.

But I’m more glad that these wannabe jihadists share that same blissful Canadian incompetence we look for in our government. After the Air India trial debacle, where our justice system firmly established itself in the tradition of Inspector Clouseau, it’s a real relief.

[tags]terrorism, Toronto terror cell[/tags]

Progressive ideas and substantive debate are no longer Ottawa’s business

One of my favorite dinner conversations revolves around the current state of public school reading requirements. If there is an educator at my table, I can’t help but ask the question: how do you keep young people engaged and reading?

Technological forces conspire against the allure of the written word. A torrent of customizable digital media is at our fingertips – the Me generation has evolved into the Me Now generation – and there is little room left for required-reading in anyone’s crowded attention span. Furthermore, there is little patience left for unsolicited entertainment forced on you by high school. Simply put, required reading as a concept doesn’t excite today’s young people, and the pre-selected reading currently on offer insults them.

The mandatory reading in high school is boring. It is cleansed of controversy. It is repetitive. And it’s compiled on the assumption that most of the readers will need help digesting the content. Never mind a classroom that provides copies of Miriam Toews’ acclaimed novel on youthful derision, A Complicated Kindness; instead, our grade nines still read the 1898 J. Meade Faulkner swashbuckler, Moonfleet. The teacher stands by as an intellectual lifesaver.

I have had the opportunity to discuss literature, life and politics with many of these brave teachers. One told me that there is, in fact, no way to keep young people engaged in reading. He told me that as a teacher you do your best, teach what you know, and use the material you’re given. It was a fair assessment, pragmatic, and not at all insightful. It was the kind of response that made me feel like my line of questioning was ridiculous.

I reflected on that conversation today while I was reading a review of Politics Lost: How American Democracy was Trivialized by People Who Think You’re Stupid by [tag]Joe Klein[/tag]. The book was described by the reviewer as “a tart and anguished lament over the banalisation of U.S. politics.” As I read further I found there were a number of parallels with my own diatribe on high school reading lists. I think that school boards are doing a disservice to their students with puerile reading lists. Klein feels the same way about the political discourse in America.

I empathize with Klein’s point of view. We are undergoing a similar transition in Canadian politics. It is imperceptible to some, but to me (I’m a political junkie) the shift away from substantive politics, debate and dialogue couldn’t be more obvious than it is under the new Prime Minister. Politics are getting dumbed down in Ottawa. Stephen Harper is leading the way.

I have said it before: Harper ran a masterful campaign to get elected. It was simple and Canadians easily digested his messages. Stephen Harper stood in contrast to Paul Martin. He was labeled as a man who would rather mean something to only a few people than mean nothing to everyone. Here’s the irony: he did that to get elected.

And with that in mind, politics hasn’t changed much in the last hundred years. The thrust and parry of an election still relies on a glad hand and a smile. Remember that Harper’s Achilles heel throughout the election was his cold personality. The difference, the thing that allowed him to win, was that Stephen Harper was willing to dumb it down for everyone and Paul Martin wouldn’t.

I’m not implying that Mr. Harper is dumb himself, or that Mr. Martin is brilliant. What I am saying is that the social marketing behind Mr. Harper’s brand of politics was uncomplicated. In fact, and Klein would agree, it was so uncomplicated that it almost ceased to be human. According to the reviewer of Klein’s book, that is one of that author’s key points: politics and politicians have undergone a requisite abandonment of humanity and spontaneity.

The language of public discourse has been bleached of originality, and a candidates true impulse, bad or good, is sacrificed to electoral expedience. Klein blames marketing professionals, consultants and pollsters, who, “with the flaccid acquiescence of the politicians, have robbed public life of much of its romance and vigor.” To this list of culprits, we must add a scandal-addicted media with scant tolerance for unconventional views.

So instead of poetry and provocative ideas, we get: “all my life I have stood up for people who do the right thing and play by the rules.” That is a direct quote from Michael Howard, former British Conservative leader. But it could as easily have come from Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who casts himself as a champion of those who “work hard, pay their taxes and play by the rules.” Klein’s point is that these overused mantras could be uttered by anyone. They have become “hilariously banal” because they smack of the synthetic, market-tested language pedaled by two generations of political consultants.

So, has politics been robbed of anything, or is it being purged from within? Klein suggests that it may be the ‘political consultant’ who is to blame in America. I’m not sure the same applies as easily in Canada. Harper is largely considered to be the only true decision-maker in the Prime Minister’s Office. Certainly other influences apply. There is a Conservative of every stripe in Harper’s midst – red Atlantic, blue Ontario, western reform, Alberta bible belt, Alliance fall-outs, and even Mulroney rainmakers. It would be hard to argue that Prime Minister Harper lacks advice.

Still, with all of that political ideology floating around the war room, the 2006 Conservative election platform was decidedly sparse and straightforward. It wasn’t a confusing platform. It wasn’t a dumb platform. It was, however, like a high school reading list, designed to be very, very, user-friendly.

The five up front promises included: a hospital wait times guarantee, mandatory minimum sentencing for violent crimes, an immediate GST cut, a national child care allowance, and an accountability act for federal politics. This tightly scripted five-point plan had some popular appeal to be sure, but more importantly, the Harper Conservatives created a platform with expectations that were easy to manage and little left to uncertainty. The party described these priorities as: “clear and measurable so Canadians will know that a Conservative government has kept its word.”

The five points were honest window dressing. Voters didn’t seem to mind that the ideas were widely panned by Ottawa pundits and academics as poor policy. They didn’t mind that this was perhaps a myopic way to run a country. The platform’s marketing ensured that this platform appeared user-friendly and innocuous. Voters in general didn’t have a desire to dig deeper. The platform’s core message was uncomplicated and that was enough.

This platform was the first indication that the Harper government was not concerned with issues that it couldn’t directly control. The fledgling Conservative minority caucus was given strict orders: the Prime Minister’s Office wanted power over all of the government’s messages and activities. Unsolicited comments from Ministers and MPs were verboten. The PMO vetted all media releases. Some insiders speculated that the government would become paralyzed by its own cautiousness, and that Harper was too concerned with managing expectations and not concerned enough with governing the country. This criticism persists.

It has been argued that Harper’s governing style will not make government better, only less complicated. In a sense, he is telling Canadians that the best we can hope for is a simple and honest government. Progressive ideas and substantive debate are no longer Ottawa’s business. In Harper’s own words:

Instead of making phoney promises of huge benefits that never happen, we will deliver genuine, practical benefits that people experience. I believe it’s better to light one candle than to promise a million light bulbs.

Harper’s message is steeped in a nostalgic evocation of a bygone era, a simpler time. He abandons the complexity and uncertainty of modern reality.

Much like a high school English curriculum, this government is not concerned with debates and ideas that would be difficult to service intellectually. Harper won’t pursue any policy that he can’t control from introduction to implementation. In other words, he won’t sell you a car he can’t fix.

As Joe Klein describes it, there is little room for unconventional views or ideas under this approach to governing. It does not service other brands. This is not a humanistic approach to government, it is not designed to challenge people, and it is not visionary.

Prime Minister Harper is content to be an anachronism of mythical 1950’s values. He manages citizens like the Maytag man. They are his customers.

———
This article was written by alevo

[tags]Canadian politics, Stephen Harper, education, literature[/tags]

I’m sure you’ve all aware by now of the raid that disrupted – and hopefully halted – the plot to bomb locations in Ontario, including the CN Tower and Ottawa’s Peace Tower, with home-made fertilizer bombs.

The seventeen men arrested are all Canadian citizens, and most were born in Canada. CSIS assistant operations director Luc Portelance calls them “homegrown”. More arrests are expected.

This is an open thread on this event, and more broadly, terrorism in Canada. How do you feel about this? What’s your take?

The story of the Haditha Massacre has been developing for months now, but exactly what happened after a roadside bomb killed a US Marine in the Iraqi town of Haditha now seems clear: Marines went on a vengeful rampage, killing two dozen Iraqi civilians including women, children and babies.

In Memories of a Massacre, Ellen Knickmeyer from the Washington Post relies on witness accounts for the story of the killings:

[O]ne of the Marines took charge and began shouting, said Fahmi, who was watching from his roof. Fahmi said he saw the Marine direct other Marines into the house closest to the blast, about 50 yards away.

It was the home of 76-year-old Abdul Hamid Hassan Ali. Although he had used a wheelchair since diabetes forced a leg amputation years ago, Ali was always one of the first on his block to go out every morning, scattering scraps for his chickens and hosing the dust of the arid western town from his driveway, neighbors said.

In the house with Ali and his 66-year-old wife, Khamisa Tuma Ali, were three of the middle-aged male members of their family, at least one daughter-in-law and four children — 4-year-old Abdullah, 8-year-old Iman, 5-year-old Abdul Rahman and 2-month-old Asia.

Marines entered shooting, witnesses recalled. Most of the shots — in Ali’s house and two others — were fired at such close range that they went through the bodies of the family members and plowed into walls or the floor, physicians at Haditha’s hospital said.

A daughter-in-law, identified as Hibbah, escaped with Asia, survivors and neighbors said. Iman and Abdul Rahman were shot but survived. Four-year-old Abdullah, Ali and the rest died.

When reports first appeared about the massacre, the US military denied them, accusing one reporter of buying into enemy propaganda.

Although this incident is remarkable for its ferocity and its death toll, it is far from isolated. In fact, indiscriminate killings by occupation forces in Iraq are commonplace. The Iraqi ambassador to the US said yesterday that US forces in Iraq killed his cousin in an interview with Wolf Blitzer:

BLITZER: […] you lost a cousin at Haditha in a separate battle involving United States Marines.

[IRAQI AMBASSADOR TO US] SUMAIDAIE: Well, that was not a battle at all. Marines were doing house-to-house searches, and they went into the house of my cousin. He opened the door for them.

His mother, his siblings were there. He led them into the bedroom of his father. And there he was shot.

BLITZER: Who shot him?

SUMAIDAIE: A member of the Marines.

BLITZER: Why did they shoot him?

SUMAIDAIE: Well, they said that they shot him in self-defense. I find that hard to believe because, A, he is not at all a violent — I mean, I know the boy. He was [in] a second-year engineering course in the university. Nothing to do with violence. All his life has been studies and intellectual work.

Totally unbelievable. And, in fact, they had no weapon in the house. They had one weapon which belonged to the school where his father was a headmaster. And it had no ammunition in it. And he led them into the room to show it to them.

BLITZER: So what you’re suggesting, your cousin was killed in cold blood, is that what you’re saying, by United States Marines?

SUMAIDAIE: I believe he was killed intentionally. I believe that he was killed unnecessarily. […]

In Afghanistan, less than two weeks after American warplanes bombed an Afghan village, killing at least 16 civilians among the Taliban, riots have claimed the lives of 20 people in Kabul.

The riots started after a deadly crash where a US truck smashed into a row of cars, killing up to 5 Afghans. Fifteen people died after US troops opened fire, a remarkable death toll given the US military’s first claims that the firing was over the heads of the protestors.

The US is now investigating what happened, with military spokesperson Col. Tom Collins saying it is possible US troops fired to “defend themselves” against people throwing rocks:

Though no U.S. soldiers were hurt in the riot, [Collins] said this did not mean they were not in danger. “Deadly intent on the part of the aggressors can be a rock caving in the side of your head. Our soldiers felt threatened,” he said.

These are our allies.

[tags]Haditha massacre, war in Iraq, war in Afghanistan, Kabul riots, US war crimes[/tags]