Those Cana­di­ans who imag­ine that Canada’s role in glob­al pol­i­tics is both impor­tant and suc­cess­ful need to have some of their bal­loons punctured.

Our politi­cians are con­stant­ly repeat­ing to us how much the world admires us for our “peace keep­ing tra­di­tion”, and how impor­tant our inter­na­tion­al com­mit­ments are. The truth is that almost nobody out­side of Cana­da has heard about them, and even few­er care. I once checked out a pub­lished his­to­ry of U.N. peace­keep­ing. It con­tained no ref­er­ence to the activ­i­ties of any Cana­di­an forces at all. Out­side of Cana­da, I have nev­er encoun­tered any press or per­son­al dis­cus­sion by any­one about Canada’s sup­pos­ed­ly famous peace-keep­ing activ­i­ties, or of any Cana­di­an mil­i­tary actions or com­mit­ments. Even in coun­tries where we are, in fact, doing peace­keep­ing work, only the blue U.N. uni­forms are rec­og­nized by the local bel­liger­ents, and they don’t care whether we are Cana­di­ans or Mar­tians. Far from car­ing about what Cana­da does on the glob­al mil­i­tary scene, few peo­ple out­side of Cana­da know that we have an army at all. If we are fight­ing any­where near Amer­i­cans, it is tak­en for grant­ed that we are Amer­i­cans, or that, if we are not, the dis­tinc­tion is of no impor­tance. I hate to break it to misty-eyed fans of our glo­ri­ous mil­i­tary, but this is espe­cial­ly true in Afghanistan, where we are engaged in our largest mil­i­tary project since the Kore­an War. Read more »

There is a con­sis­tent pat­tern, among those who describe soci­eties and economies, past and present, to reverse cause and effect in sig­nif­i­cant events. I would like to dub this the Emper­or Josef Wrote Don Gio­van­ni Syn­drome. This is the ten­den­cy to shift atten­tion from those who cre­ate to those who rule, some­times blunt­ly, some­times sub­tly, until one has the vague impres­sion that those who rule are the ones who create.

This, of course, begins at the crud­est lev­el when his­to­ri­ans casu­al­ly assert that some­thing that hap­pened to come into exis­tence dur­ing the reign of a king, or an emper­or, or a pharaoh was “made” by them or “built” by them. The his­to­ri­an may retreat to the excuse that this is a con­ven­tion­al form, under­stood by all to mean its oppo­site, but this leaves unex­plained why there should be any need to have a for­mu­la­ic phras­ing so mis­lead­ing and per­verse. In fact, it is usu­al­ly easy enough to tell from the con­text that the author does not real­ly con­tra­dict or qual­i­fy, in his mind, the con­ven­tion­al phrase, and real­ly does believe that a ruler is the cre­ative force, in every sense, behind what­ev­er admirable achieve­ments hap­pen to be known from his reign. The more dis­tant the events are in time, the more this pre­vails. No his­to­ri­an can get away with claim­ing that the Emper­or Joseph II was the com­pos­er of Don Gio­van­ni, but that is because the events are recent, and approach­ing the time when com­posers were begin­ning to be be per­ceived as impor­tant peo­ple. How­ev­er, those who know Mozart know that it was a close call. He was a celebri­ty as a child, because of his pre­coc­i­ty, but any­one who under­stands the era knows that the aris­toc­ra­cy of the Aus­tro-Hun­gar­i­an empire thought of him as noth­ing more impor­tant than a ser­vant, and when he left their brief atten­tion span, he died in pover­ty. His body van­ished into an anony­mous pauper’s grave. If his rep­u­ta­tion had not been relent­less­ly cham­pi­oned by musi­cians who knew him, his named would have been for­got­ten. Read more »

It has been won­der­ful to see the pub­lic protests against the 1936 Berlin Olympics soon to be held in Bei­jing. For once, an instinc­tive revul­sion against total­i­tar­i­an­ism is dri­ving a glob­al move­ment of protest. But every legit­i­mate protest move­ment attracts slimy ele­ments, who seek to cash in on a human rights issue to cov­er up their anti-human-rights agen­da. Both the Civ­il Rights move­ment and the Anti-War move­ments in the 1950s and 1960s were infil­trat­ed by total­i­tar­i­ans, seek­ing to exploit a just cause for their own nefar­i­ous pur­pos­es. Read more »

A friend of mine has been com­plain­ing about a much-pub­li­cized legal case, where a Sikh employ­ee at a lum­ber yard is demand­ing that he be exempt­ed from new safe­ty laws, which require a hard hel­met when work­ing with lum­ber. There is no ques­tion of the employ­er using the law to fur­ther prej­u­dice or racism. Sikhs are high­ly respect­ed in the com­mu­ni­ty. The employ­ee has been there for years, and the com­pa­ny want­ed to solve the prob­lem by shift­ing him to an indoor posi­tion, where there would be no con­flict. In the dis­tant past, there have been sev­er­al legal squab­bles where it was obvi­ous that reg­u­la­tions were being used to fur­ther intol­er­ant agen­das. How­ev­er, there have been none of those kind of things, to my knowl­edge, for decades, and this cer­tain­ly is not one. Is this a “human rights” issue, as many claim? No, it is not. Read more »

I just saw an old movie from the ear­ly 1980’s called Tes­ta­ment. It was an attempt to show the lives of the peo­ple of a small Amer­i­can town after a nuclear war. It’s a very sim­ple film. In it, the nuclear war hap­pens off-stage. It por­trays a Cal­i­for­nia town, far from tar­gets. As it grad­u­al­ly los­es con­tact with the rest of the world, its cit­i­zens do the best they can to main­tain their fam­i­lies and com­mu­ni­ty, while radi­a­tion sucks away their lives. The film was made with respect for its audi­ence. The peo­ple in it seem to come from anoth­er Amer­i­ca, one where you would expect that peo­ple would do their best, even in the most hope­less con­ceiv­able sit­u­a­tion. A few exploiters, a few look-out-for-num­ber-one ass­holes turn up, to be sure, but most peo­ple are ready and will­ing to behave like free and civ­i­lized men and women, even when faced with this ulti­mate test.

I rec­og­nized the film’s basic truth, because I knew those peo­ple. Decent, hard-work­ing Amer­i­cans, who gen­er­al­ly treat­ed each oth­er with mutu­al respect. There were mil­lions of them, across the coun­try. The film was set in North­ern Cal­i­for­nia, a place I had lived, and knew well. A few years lat­er, there was a dev­as­tat­ing earth­quake, there. Those same kind of peo­ple were every­where, behav­ing with both com­pe­tence and decen­cy. Read more »

There is an inter­est­ing tele­vi­sion con­test here in Cana­da. It’s called Canada’s Next Great Prime Min­is­ter. Peo­ple between the ages of 18 and 25 are asked to sub­mit a five-minute Youtube pre­sen­ta­tion in which they address one cur­rent polit­i­cal issue. Ten final­ists are cho­sen, and brought to a “polit­i­cal boot camp”. From these, four are select­ed to be vot­ed on by the audi­ence. They not only present their views, but are sub­ject­ed to an intense grilling from a pan­el of three for­mer Cana­di­an Prime Min­is­ters and one Provin­cial Pre­mier (yes, in Cana­da, Prime Min­is­ters appear on game shows, and even on com­e­dy skit shows). There is a $50,000 prize. Read more »