op-eds of the year

I'm a big fan of the New York Times' editorial page. The articles are often written by experts in their respective fields. They are usually insightful and the pieces are consistently well-written.

Here are some of the notable op-eds according to the ny times.

children of war

Can people become accustomed to their surroundings so well that even conflict zones become livable, exacting little to no punishment on their psychological state? I admit I once entertained the thought. I felt that if you grew up in a war-torn region, regularly witnessing violence and unanounced disruptions of even great scale, you would eventually view them as minor inconveniences with no major costs. Well, I was wrong. It turns out Palestinian children in the West Bank (and I'm sure this would apply to those in the Gaza strip as well) and Jewish children in settlements are more susceptible to various anxiety disorders because of the constant state of war they have found themselves in. Read this archived article for more.

The article hints at the effect this would have on future societies. I mean, widespread mental illness is nothing to base a community on.

the eyes of God are not unlike the State's

In China, the Communist Party allows the practice of Christianity as long as it's under their very careful watch. It's an example of extrememly organized religion, you might say. Here's some news on the underground houses of worship littered throughout China and the trouble they've encountered.

peace in the valley

I spent some time today reading about religion, God, and faith. Although I'm not religious, I yearn for the comfort held in religion's promise of attainable redemption and salvation. I want to experience the "oceanic feeling": what Sigmund Frued described as "a sensation of ‘eternity’, a feeling as of something limitless, unbounded", but that he also dismissed as just in our heads. I fear he may have been right, but I'm still open to the possibility.

Here are some pieces (one of which is a poem by William Blake) I came across earlier:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/leading_article/article3090488.ece

http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/story.html?id=d256048a-cbef-4752-a7b2-58d7a68e836a&k=18488

http://www.economist.com/specialreports/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10015255

http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/reviewofbooks_article/4204/

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070625/aronson

http://www.bartleby.com/236/58.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/richard-dawkins/why-there-almost-certainl_b_32164.html

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=searching-for-god-in-the-brain

http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=191304

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/the_tls/article2778493.ece

http://www.city-journal.org/html/17_4_oh_to_be.html

Sunny D, come back to me

Published at Schema Magazine

Non-white Canadians have insufficient amounts of Vitamin D, putting them at greater risk for rickets, cancer, osteoporosis, tuberculosis, and influenza, among other nasty things.

“The research, which is awaiting publication in a medical journal, found that 100 per cent of those of African origin were short of vitamin D, as were 93 per cent of South Asians (those of Indian or Pakistani origin), and 85 per cent of East Asians (those of Chinese, Indochinese or Filipino origin, among other countries).”

This was the grave finding reported in The Globe and Mail’s December 19 cover story: Are you getting enough Vitamin D? Although higher levels of melanin, our natural pigmentation-producing sunscreen, help protect tanned people from being sunburned in hot climates, they impede the production of Vitamin D in colder and darker locales (ie. Canada).

Read the article to find out just why. And then drink some milk or something.

Notes on Mill and multiculturalism

I apologize beforehand for this unorganized post. I wrote this fairly quickly, and I’m sure I’ve sacrificed clarity. Please forgive me Clarity. I didn’t mean nothin’ by it.

In 1859, John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty was published. It presented arguments for the very intuitive conclusion that people should be unrestrained in their pursuit of activities that cause no one but themselves (if even that) harm. But this ideal was met by opposition. There were two sources of needless curtailment of freedom, according to Mill. The first had since lost its power: the unlimited rule of the state over its subjects. With rapid political reform, citizens had greater control over the civil rights being legislated. Political democracy had more or less trumped authoritarianism. But the second source still reigned in Mill’s time. This was the oppressive nature of “collective opinion”. The mores and sentiment’s of a public’s majority has a great effect on dissenting individuals. Minority groups not in line with the traditions of the majority can experience a sense of alienation and seclusion; which is not a great thing for Mill, because they are being punished for opinions that, presumably, cause harm to no one. They are compelled to accept a worldview not their own, or pay for it with scorn and derision. Mill’s On Liberty, is therefore very applicable 150 years on considering the very heated debate over “reasonable accommodation” in Canada and the so-called “muslim problem” in the UK. Take a look, for example, at the almost absurd argument over the right of female school children to wear the Jilbab. Now, considering the very obvious relevance of Mill’s work, whether or not you agree with his conclusion that minority groups should be free to do what they like as long as it causes no harm, I was mystified by a review of a new biography on Mill. Here is what the author of the review had to say near the end, ultimately denying the relevance of Mill's work to today's context:

“When Mill wrote, there was a lot to be said for this focus. The mid-Victorian state was one of the least oppressive in the world - at any rate for the respectable classes to which Mill belonged. On the other hand, mid-Victorian society was complacent, conformist and intolerant of deviant opinions and lifestyles. The wheel has come full circle 150 years later. The multicultural, multi-ethnic society of the 21st century is not in the least like an eiderdown; it is a ragged patchwork with huge holes between the pieces. Particular ethnic or cultural enclaves sometimes oppress their own members, but if they go too far, the law can step in; and, in any case, they do not endanger diversity or individuality in the wider society. In a sense, there are no longer any deviant opinions or lifestyles to be intolerant about: there are no fixed standards to deviate from. There is only a cacophony of divergent voices.”

There are in fact fixed standards against which minority groups are judged: negatively, to be sure. They are habitually judged as not-really-Canadian, or not-really-American, because the description of a Canadian and American is based on an unchanging concept. And the evidence seems to disprove the claim that no cultural group (even the majority) endangers “diversity or individuality.”

fly me to the moon

I found an article at LiveScience titled "Is Attractiveness Hereditary?". Is it me or was this question answered a long time ago? Maybe it was just one of those assumptions science had yet to prove definitely.

This, on the other hand, was a bit of new information for me. Apparently attractive people have very "average" faces. That is, if you take a number of faces and then create a composite of them, an average, the result will be quite beautiful. Read the article to see exactly why. It has something to do with the brain's ability to take in information. The more recognizable the shape and features of a face, the easier it is on the brain - and hence, the brain is happier.

What's eating Canada's multiculturalism?

Robert Putnam takes on the issue of multiculturalism in his most recent book, E Pluribus Unum. The sobering conclusion is that with greater ethnic and cultural diversity comes more conflict, less social trust, a decreased willingness to volunteer and engage in cooperative ventures with fellow citizens. But, Putnam is an American scholar and his analysis is based on the research of American cities: 41 to be exact. Would the same conclusion fit Canada?

It turns out it might. Maclean's recently published an article titled: Canada: A nation of bigots?. The article points out that to an increasing number of Canadians (mostly Quebers), "reasonable accomodation" for foreign-born people should be limited as much as possible. The general sentiment seems to be: "if you want to live in our country, you must forget your old practices and assimilate". This feeling expresses itself, in part, in the ways Putnam describes in his book: conflict, decreased social trust, etc. It also alienates ethnic groups, making them feel as if they were trespasers. They consequently sequester themselves, worsening the threat to social trust.

Here are two more articles, from another Canadian magazine, that discuss the same phenomenon: 1, 2

stereotyping

This is a very important article. I was convinced of this aspect of stereotyping before, but now I'm fortunate enough to have some evidence to point to, as support.

prejudice

Many people assume that prejudice of any kind is a conscious belief about one group or another. You are aware of your dislike for “people from country X” or your fear of “people Y”. And more than that, you endorse these beliefs. But this isn’t always so. Although the above is definitely an example of prejudice, it doesn’t exhaust the ways in which people express bias. Most of the time, prejudice is an unconscious state. You may not be aware of your prejudice against “people from country X” or your fear of “people Y”.

Now, this poses a problem for how they can possible be discovered – our prejudices, that is. If these thoughts are unconscious, hidden even from ourselves, the most prejudiced among us can feign neutrality, confident he or she will not be disproved. Well, fear no longer. There are now tests to uncover our hidden thoughts. The Implicit Association Test (IAT) is one. The IAT is actually a series of tests, determining your degree of prejudice towards a number of different groups. There is a “skin-tone”; a religion; a disability; an Arab-Muslim; and a race (black-white) test. These tests depend on rapid associations between various words. There is no time, for example, between the presentation of a traditionally Arab name, like “Akbar”, and the options of “good” and “bad”. The reasoning goes: with no time to tease out the “politically correct” answer, an individual experiencing a bias towards Arabs will characterize “Akbar” as “bad” more than someone that doesn’t have that bias.

I took most of the tests. With great regret, I have to say I revealed a prejudice on a few of them. I won’t tell you which tests, but, in my defense, the prejudice revealed was usually small, sometimes negligible. I’m not that bad! Also, no one, I think, can go through life in a prejudiced world without soaking some of it in. But this doesn’t mean we’re all doomed. This is not the secular version of original sin. We are still capable of being good people. We would just need a more attainable, more human, standard of what it is to be good. Perhaps a good person – one who’s realistic in this kind of world - is not someone that’s perfect, unblemished by prejudice and moral blind-spots. He or she is simply willing to be self-reflective and to constantly examine their flaws. Even to the point of masochism. Their goal is not to be perfect, untarnished. Maybe they just want to consistently improve; to constantly be a little better than they were before. So, I’ll acknowledge my prejudices and try to work them out.

Akbar Ganji

In 2003, the Iranian-Canadian photographer, Zahra Kazemi, was killed during her stay at the infamous Evin prison in Iran. She was in Iran to take photos of a demonstration for students jailed in Evin, with the permission of government officials. But, she was accused of taking pics of the prison and apparently this is a crime. During her prison stay she was beaten to death. The two Iranian intelligence agents charged with her death were cleared and aquitted. But recently a retrial has been called because of "some procedural faults". Perhaps soon Kazemi will finally have justice served on her behalf.

This is one of the more famous violations of human rights in Iran. But it really is just a drop in the bucket.

On November 30th, the Iranian journalist Akbar Ganji, will be giving a talk titled "The Challenges of Journalism in Iran" at Simon Fraser University and he will certainly discuss human rights in Iran.

"Mr. Ganji, a well-known journalist and author and former Revolutionary Guard turned activist, will share his insights about the relationship between human rights & civil liberties, and the challenges against free expression and investigative journalism in Iran."

"Akbar Ganji spent six years in Tehran's infamous Evin prison on charges stemming from a series of investigative articles exposing the complicity of then-President Rafsanjani and other leading members of the conservative clergy in the murders of political dissidents and intellectuals in 1998."

"During his time in prison, Mr. Ganji undertook a hunger strike that lasted from May to August 2005. He also produced a series of influential political manifestos and open letters calling for Iran's secularization and the establishment of democracy through mass civil disobedience. The works were smuggled out of prison and published on the Internet."

I'm really looking forward to this talk.

human development report

The United Nations published their 2007/2008 Human Development Report. Not much in it is new. The report reiterates the urgency of environmental regulations (reduction of greenhouse gas emissions through various methods) and the early signs of the breakdown of our common environment due to global warming (floods, droughts, hurricanes...etc.)

But one point is highlighted in this reported, and it's one that has unfortunately not been emphasized enough, let alone mentioned. In the first paragraph of the summary: "The poorest countries and most vulnerable citizens will suffer the earliest and most damaging setbacks, even though they have contributed least to the problem." This is a major violation of human rights. The poor are being punished for a negligence they didn't practice; and taxed for goods they didn't purchase. How unfair.

Read the report to learn more about how unstable environmental conditions affect countries with inadequete infrastructure. We have to remember that most developing countries don't have their own Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). And we all know how great a job they did with Katrina.

16 days

Read here to learn more about the 16 days of activism against gender violence, running between November 25th and December 10th.

I'm a polar bear. Give me shelter.

In the world of psychiatry, there's an overdependence on pharmaceutical drugs. People who go to their doctors with mood disorders, anxiety disorders, and many other "imperfections" are given pills just a little too readily. This is a great tragedy considering that many of these people may just need some personal counselling, or some classes on ways to get a handle on things.

Anyways, here's an article reviewing a few books on the topic of "big pharma".

justice vs. peace

Civil wars are common. A great number of states have gone through them at some point in their history. My parents, in fact, fought in one. They were members of the Eritrean Liberation Front, seeking independence from Ethiopia. A 30 year war raged as a result.

Yet this pales in comparison to the astonishing facts of Sierra Leone’s war. Although it was over in almost a third the time – 11 years – this war distinguishes itself as an extremely gruesome and macabre case of inhumanity. Fought between pro-government soldiers and the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), Sierra Leone’s civil war included extensive use of child soldiers by both sides. These gun-wielding children were fed drugs and made into little killing monsters without consciences. This war left limbs severed, felled to the ground, as rebels practiced systematic amputation of civilians: woman, children, the old, whomever. And to make matters worse, the rebels funded their indiscriminate attack in part by the fruits of Sierra Leone’s land: diamonds. This fact is a great tragedy considering the wealth those diamonds could have provided its people.

The rebels’ first attacks hung on lofty principles and ideals. Some of these ideals were definitely justifiable. But, sadly, a principled battle gave way to mayhem and atrocity.

Like many African post-colonial states, Sierra Leone was rife with political corruption. This was most obvious during the tenure of military leader Joseph Momoh beginning in 1985. One group opposed to Momoh’s rule included the future leader of the RUF, Foday Sankoh. Although many members of this opposition group fell by the wayside, Sankoh maintained his revolutionary spirit. Sankoh and others eventually received an education at Libyan leader Moammar Qaddafi’s military training facility, and developed contact with future Liberian President and war-crimes suspect, Charles Taylor.

In addition to their justifiable concern that Sierra Leone was succumbing to ever-increasing corruption, Sankoh and his cohorts were intent on gaining greater control over the diamonds populating the country. This second interest soon became consuming: unfortunately at the cost of many innocent lives.

The war lasted between 1991 and 2002. In 1999 the government of Sierra Leone and the RUF signed the Lome Peace Accord in Lome, Togo. The agreement gave amnesty to members of the RUF and control over the diamond mines initially in dispute. It also established the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, a body that would collect the stories of victims and fighters while foregoing punishment. Forgiveness and reconciliation would be the guiding principles.

However, because of external pressure, the government of Sierra Leone set the Special Court of Sierra Leone up, with the help of the United Nations. It is a judicial body intent on trying “those who bear greatest responsibility” for the crimes against humanity committed during Sierra Leone’s civil war.

Of course, there is a contradiction in having both the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the Special Court. While one gives amnesty to the perpetrators of grave crimes against humanity, the other seeks to prosecute and punish them. Now, although it turns out the Special Court has jurisdiction over the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, it is still open for discussion whether or not this is a good thing.

The problem of accountability is great in Africa. Many African leaders have wrecked havoc without punishment. They have either been ignored, fortunately for them, by the international community, or they have been given sanctuary by neighboring heads of state. This is of course a grave situation and one that should end. And the Special Court is one body with the intention of doing just that.

The primary perpetrators of the civil war, Charles Taylor and Foday Sankoh, were indicted by the cour. Some decidedly controversial charges were made as well. Members of the Civil Defense Forces (CDF), a group that fought alongside the government’s army against the rebels, were indicted as well. The arrest of one of these members, the leader Samuel Hinga Norman, was particularly stinging to the people of Sierra Leone, who saw him as a hero. But for the most part, the charges made by the Special Court were defensible. Those who bore greatest responsibility for the atrocities in Sierra Leone were tried and many have been convicted.

And yet a lot of criticism has been directed towards the Special Court. Before the Special Court gained control, Sierra Leone’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission gave a level of amnesty to many rebel soldiers and generals with the assurance they would become fellow citizens again and not enemy combatants. But by prosecuting their leaders, this very fragile peace is threatened. Some, including Peter Penfold, the former British High Commissioner to Freetown, think this is enough to justify the Special Court’s eradication. In their view the law should be a pragmatic and flexible tool, adjusted to changing circumstances. If following through on some prosecutions leads to destabilization, then perhaps the process should be scrapped.

There is also the fact that some common practices in Sierra Leone are fundamentally opposed to the prosecutorial tradition. Reconciliation, for many in Sierra Leone is more than just an abstract ideal. It includes actually bringing former-rebel soldiers into government. It is a full, and very concrete, reconciliation. And it’s one that cannot exist alongside the Special Court’s prosecutorial methods.

Speaking with Gibril Koroma, editor of the Sierra Leoneon publication The Patriotic Vanguard, and Afri-Can Magazine, he had this to say: “Each country has their way of doing things. When you look at the international justice system, it’s Western. I’m not saying it’s bad, but it might not work in all situations. It doesn’t fit.”

The local practices should at the very least be considered. And if they are overridden by an interest in meting out “justice”, at the cost of peace and stability, this should be done with great regret. But it appears this hasn’t happened in Sierra Leone. It appears one system has been imposed on a people without much regard for their opinion.

Perhaps the future can learn from Sierra Leone. A more case-by-case system of international law may one day prevail. It will be ad hoc, in the best sense possible. Its method will be dependent on the surrounding circumstances. And it will respect the wishes of the people it claims to serve.

villanelle

Have something nice to say
Tell the truth for once
It won’t put you back a day

If that dude can play
With other goods as well
Have something nice to say

I’m green too, ok
More than most, you know
It won’t put you back a day

Like Maggie May
Wake up, the road is paved
Have something nice to say

Above, the sun’s collective ray
Within, possibility
It won’t put you back a day

Wash that face today
The specs aren’t so small
Have something nice to say
It won’t put you back a day

global warming and war

Here is further research showing the connection between global climate change and war. I discussed this in a previous entry, and in reference to the Darfur conflict. But it applies just as much to any other place, needless to say.

Perhaps international bodies dedicated to conflict resolution will focus not only on traditional causes of armed conflicts, but this new threat as well. Global warming will lead to scarce resources and battles over what's left.

fooled

I discovered that two of the most entrenched holiday assumption are really myths. First, turkeys, in and of themselves, don't make people sleepy. And second, there isn't a greater rate of suicide during the Christmas holiday. What's next? Santa Clause isn't real?

notes on personal profiles

Philip Bennett notices a trend in journalism. At one time it was common for major publications to present "profiles" of individual victims of natural disasters; wars; and armed attacks. These pieces would relate the experiences of the people that were on-the-ground at the time of the news-worthy story, and would therefore give the reader a sense that the victims were not abstractions, or statistics. They were real people with real lives that were torn by the surrounding events. But, in Bennett’s eyes things have changed. And for the worse. With the current focus on the war on terror and the various conflicts in the middle east (Iraq; Iran; the Lebanon war; Israel and the Palestinians; Turkey) personal profiles have decreased and civilian victims have become, as Bennett puts it in the mouth of terrorists, “ciphers” (which, incidentally, originated as an Arabic word for “zero”). These civilian victim ciphers have become invisible people: a pretty good example of insult to injury.

Bennett suggests some reasons for this drop in personal profiles in middle east coverage. One reason is quite defensible: It’s simply too dangerous in certain places, especially Iraq, for journalists to go in any depth. With regulations on their length of stay in certain hot spots, they barely have enough time to relay the facts of any one conflict, let alone to sit down with civilians to draw out some sort of personal profile. He also includes the “fatigue of readers, the overpowering urge to avert the eyes, the numbness caused by repetitive exposure to violence”. This sounds a lot like what some people call “compassion fatigue”. It’s a genuine, and justifiable, feeling that there is simply way too many people dying, that the numbers of dead and injured are just way too big, for us to do anything, and so it’s best to just ignore it all. “Forget the personal profiles.” Another reason is much less defensible. As Bennett puts it: “The general lack of deep understanding in the United States and the US media of Islam, or Arab cultures, can lead to a shallow level of identification with civilian victims.” This leads editors of publications to believe personal profiles simply won’t sell because most American readers don’t care enough about the stories of these civilian victims. They just can’t put themselves in their shoes.

But this is perhaps where personal profiles are most relevant, paradoxically. If the western public is bombarded by personal stories, if they are told the names, the backgrounds, the daily activities, and the personal relationships of far-away victims, they may eventually develop some affinity with them. People who at first seemed so alien may soon become understandable. The western reader may for once see an analogy between themselves and these civilian victims. And, perhaps, a more gentle foreign policy towards the people of the middle east, and of Africa (let’s not forget them), would be the product.

My assumption is that sympathy for a people need not come before their personal profiles are effective. The reverse may be true. If enough personal profiles are published regularly, perhaps new found sympathy will come about.

she's got a lucky face

Let us look at your face
Turn about, let that cigarette drop
You got an expensive face, I suppose
But that's enough, I'm tired.
Turn round that head
You got a lucky face, so please let it shiiiine

corruption news

Read here about the recent revelations of corruption in Sierra Leone. And here about a film, called Corruptababble, that discusses the assumptions attending the numerous examples of it in Africa.

Potato

Get a Cash Advance

Originally Published:
Afri-Can Magazine
November, 2007
and The Patriotic Vanguard

What should we make of skin whitening: the deliberate attempt to make one’s skin fairer? How much of this practice is fueled by racism, and problems of self-image? How much of it is completely innocent – an innocuous preference for lighter skin? For many, these questions have not crossed their minds enough to bring an answer. Same goes for me, to tell the truth. However, new award-winning technology may startle us into considered thought of this problem.

Pratik Lodha and Eman Ahmed-Muhsin, two graduate students at Carleton University, developed a skin-lightening cream called Gloriel. The product was a finalist in the 2007 Student Technology Venture Challenge, and won a $5,000 prize. Previous lightening products essentially wiped away pigment using harmful chemicals that often had very nasty side-effects. Not Gloriel. As written in the CBC, “Gloriel uses a reversible gene-silencing method called RNA interference to reduce the production of skin pigments called melanin.” This is a much safer way. It’s a bit like keeping a persistent house painter a few meters from your home - rather than scraping the paint off afterwards, damaging your walls.

Efficient and safe, definitely. But is it ethical? And right? The creators of Gloriel have insisted it is. They point out that Gloriel is not only capable of lightening skin, but of also darkening it. They also avoid responsibility, in the event that Gloriel is objectionable, by saying that “The market exists and we're not going to increase or decrease that market. We're just offering a safer and more effective method.”

These points are interesting and good. There’s no way to know which option a creator prefers when the product has multiple, and sometimes opposite, purposes. And because there’s no way to know this, we should usually be rest assured neither option is being forced on its customers. So, I guess, Gloriel doesn’t make it’s buyers lighten their skin. And even if the creators preferred their products to be used a skin-lightener, we may have to take the responsibility and blame off their shoulders. They are merely providing a product people seem to want. Nothing more and nothing less.

But sadly it’s not that simple. The reasons behind darkening one’s skin and lightening it are very different. People darken themselves because tanned skin, if even just a little, represents health and vitality. But lightened skin represents something else. The belief that light-skinned people are in many ways superior to their darker counterparts still fills many of us. It may be a remnant of the imperial age, when Europeans colonized Africans, South Americans, and Asians, convincing them of the idea that colonialism was good because only whites can effectively govern darker people. Even with post-colonialism, the belief that the most obvious characteristic of our previous governors, light skin, is preferable, still lingers like a bad smell. So even though Gloriel can be used to both lighten and darken skin, human history suggests one will be preferred. Wrongly, in my opinion.

Of course, I don’t mean to suggest Gloriel and other similar products should be banned. We should rather take it as a source of discussion. Perhaps with enough debate we can acknowledge the subtle prejudice that remains, and purge ourselves of it.

the mob

These are some of D.H. Lawrence's words from Studies in Classic American Literature:

Freedom...? The land of the free! This the land of the free! Why, If I say anything that displeases them, the free mob will lynch me, and that's my freedom. Free? Why, I have never been in any country where the individual has such an abject fear of his fellow countrymen. Because, as I say, they are free to lynch him the moment he shows he is not one of them.

I haven't actually read his book. I found this quote in a short piece by Joyce Carol Oates in the Atlantic Monthly. But it looks promising.

the bad writing contest

Strawberry

Bush

SFF

I don't believe in the goodness of man; the wickedness of man. I don't believe in the necessary brotherhood of man; the divisions of man. I don't believe Hegel when he says history is law-governed, propelling and compelling us towards a certain future. I don't believe in Fukuyama. I don't believe in the essence of man. I don't believe we are naturally this or naturally that. I believe in our capacity to imagine new ways of being. To hope for what has not come before. I believe we can remain tough-minded - avoiding naivete - while working towards a paradise on earth. So look up. "The clouds are lifting - the sun is breaking through. We are coming out of the darkness into the light. We are coming into a new world. A kind new world where men will rise above their hate and brutality. The soul of man has been given wings - and at last he is beginning to fly. He is flying into the rainbow - into the light of hope - into the future, that glorious future that belongs to you, to me and to all of us. Look up. Look up."

Sudan's embargo

The United Nations set an arms embargo on Sudan in order to mitigate the murder of Darfurians. Yet, it seems Sudan has decided to ignore it. Read here, and here. What's worse is that the arms, and the helicopters transporting the arms, are being supplied by Russia and China. These states are members of the United Nations Security Council, a coaltion that is supposed to act as the world's police-force. They should know better. And they should start acting accordingly.

Kennedy's speech

On June 10 1963, John F. Kennedy spoke at the American University. At the time, the States were experiencing ever-increasing tensions with the Soviet Union, and it hadn't been a year since the Cuban Missile Crisis. Kennedy's hopes rested on a nuclear test ban treaty that would be signed by the Soviets and this speech was his clarion call.

Here is an excerpt - the most moving and evocative bit, in my opinion.

"Let us examine our attitude toward peace itself. Too many of us think it is impossible. Too many think it unreal. But that is a dangerous, defeatist belief. It leads to the conclusion that war is inevitable -- that mankind is doomed -- that we are gripped by forces we cannot control.

We need not accept that view. Our problems are manmade -- therefore, they can be solved by man. And man can be as big as he wants.* No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings. Man's reason and spirit have often solved the seemingly unsolvable -- and we believe they can do it again.

I am not referring to the absolute, infinite concept of universal peace and good will of which some fantasies and fanatics dream. I do not deny the value of hopes and dreams, but we merely invite discouragement and incredulity by making that our only and immediate goal.

Let us focus instead on a more practical, more attainable peace -- based not on a sudden revolution in human nature but on a gradual evolution in human institutions -- on a series of concrete actions and effective agreements which are in the interest of all concerned. There is no single, simple key to this peace -- no grand or magic formula to be adopted by one or two powers. Genuine peace must be the product of many nations, the sum of many acts. It must be dynamic, not static, changing to meet the challenge of each new generation. For peace is a process -- a way of solving problems."

*My italics

underneath it all

Here's an interesting article discussing new experiments on the subconscious.

Personality test?

One part of me hates personality tests. The other partakes in them and posts the conclusions on his blog.

You Are An INTP

The Thinker You are analytical and logical - and on a quest to learn everything you can. Smart and complex, you always love a new intellectual challenge. Your biggest pet peeve is people who slow you down with trivial chit chat. A quiet maverick, you tend to ignore rules and authority whenever you feel like it. In love, you are an easy person to fall for. But not an easy person to stay in love with. Although you are quite flexible, you often come off as aloof or argumentative. At work, you are both a logical and creative thinker. You are great at solving problems. You would make an excellent mathematician, programmer, or professor. How you see yourself: Creative, fair, and tough-minded When other people don't get you, they see you as: arrogant, cold, and robotic

What's Your Personality Type?

notes on terrorists

In an article from the Chronicle Review, Carlin Romano discusses terrorists and moral judgment. He points out that many people, especially our political leaders, refrain from attaching morally loaded terms to terrorists. Terrorists are never called "bastards, lowlife, cowards, scum", etc.

In response to a call for a better way to detect and discourage terrorists, Romano asks: "Why does such a better way not include a call for sterner moral judgment, forcefully expressed?" Why, that is, don't we call these terrorists names.

Well, I may have an answer. Morally loaded terms are not only means to describe people. When we call someone a lowlife we are not merely representing that person with a word. We are also trying to affect their behaviour. We are implicitly saying: "A lowlife is a bad thing to be. You are a lowlife. So make a change." But, in the minds of most people, the actions of terrorists are of a certain kind - one unlike the actions of "normal" people. They are so abominable that, perhaps, they are the work of individuals incapable of improvement and reform. Terrorists, it seems, are beyond reproach, deaf to our moral judgment. So why waste words on them if it will not alter their behaviour in the least?

If this line of reasoning is held by people in general, it may explain the phenomenon Romano discusses.

Eritrean journalists

This isn't news to most Eritreans. We know the dismal record of suppression in our state. Free speech is a platitude. And freedom of the press is actively curbed.

What a sad situation.

FOX

Fox pundits and correspondents must be paid-off by the worst greenhouse-gas-emitting companies, because no one can be this ignorant otherwise.

more notes

From an article in the Walrus: "Zamenhof felt that the anti-Semitism and ethnic strife he witnessed were exacerbated by communication problems. His scheme for a planned international language was, in its optimism and scientific rationalism, quintessentially nineteenth century, but Zamenhof was also working within a larger tradition, one in which language is a bridge to a utopian dream of perfect understanding, of absolute harmony among what is meant, what is said, and what is heard. In this sense, Esperanto isn’t meant to be merely a convenient way to order a cup of coffee in a distant land; it is a way of imagining the future."

I'm not sure that ethnic strife is inflamed by a lack of communication. Rarely do ethnic differences erupt into spewing conflicts because of ignorance, a misunderstanding of the other group's beliefs and hopes. The Nazis, for instance, spoke the same language as many of the German Jews. The Nazis, however, simply didn't care about them and were unmoved at the sight of their suffering.

Having the whole world speak the same language, using the same sounds to signify the same things, will not change a thing.

Of course, at the individual level, learning another person's language will make you more sympathetic to their worldview and perhaps lead to something resembling harmony.

Live Earth

Many are criticizing Live Earth for producing a lot of carbon emissions. They call it hypocritical. My question is this: might we gladly accept the relatively minimal harm Al Gore, David Suzuki, and others, wreck on our environment? Their work in advocating for greenhouse gas reductions, and environmentally friendly products, will change the habits of quite a few people. And so, in the long-run, these high-profile figureheads will probably effect more good than bad.

Nevertheless, I am not suggesting we leave them unaccountable. Let's just give them a bit of a break.

metablog

I told myself I would have very few, if any, meta-entries. No entries about blogs (although I have one featuring a New York Times diagram of a blog's life-span). No entries about my own entries. And, on a similar note, no entries about what I'm up to. My blog is supposed to be a mirror of nature! Apologies to our recently departed Richard Rorty.

But I do make exceptions now and then. And here's one them:

Within seconds of visiting this site, a quick scan was made of my blog, and out spat a rating. I guess it's alright.

Just some notes on religion and war

I am not a religious person. There may or may not be a God. And if there is, I'm not sure the supernatural law and order that springs from Him can be translated into a certain way of behaving here on earth, for humans. Nevertheless, I think religions need a little defending right now because they're being blamed for much more than they deserve. There are a number of high-profile atheists these days, like Richard Dawkins, that attack religion and claim religious people are morons for believing in such superstition. Evolution is patently correct, they argue, and anyone that doesn't see that is beyond approach. Now, this is bad enough. Religious people are not morons: it's very natural to believe in a higher power (in fact, some evolutionary psychologists now say there may be evolutionary explanations for religious belief). But there is another very important claim.

Some of these atheists believe that if religions were to disappear, so would many of our conflicts and wars. They cite examples like the Crusade, religious fundamentalists-turned-terroists, and others. The explicit justifications for fighting for these groups is often religious. These groups say that God expects certain things from people, and their enemies are not living up to these expectations. Therefore they should be overcome, and possibly destroyed. It seems so clear then that if religion were out of the picture, so would the justification for many of our wars.

But this is to take an overly literal approach to the reasons for fighting. At times religious arguments are employed to mask more worldly reasons for war. War may be undertaken to address poor economic conditions; to consolidate lands; to get back at an aggressor; or to simply conquer another people. And the only way to ensure public support is to argue that God is on your side. But it's only rhetoric. The leaders of violent movements are not necessarily religious when making religious claims. Getting rid of religion will therefore solve nothing.

Of course, there are other cases in which movements are genuinely backed by religious conviction. About those I would admit the uncompromising certainty of religious belief is at fault. And yet, I can't help but believe there would be a balancing out if religion were to disappear - in the form of more conflicts and wars. We would get rid of one reason for war, but find that human beings are increadibly adept at dreaming up new ways to oppress one another. In this respect, I've been influenced by Sigmund Freud's book, Civilization and its Discontents. In it he argues that war and conflict is an unavoidable feature of humanity. We might develop communities of good will and cooperation, but only in relation to an opposing group. A group we conceive of as the Other, in relation to which we define ourselves. So, if war and conflict is unavoidable, perhaps religion is ultimately excused.

Malcolm Gladwell

I'm a great fan of Malcolm Gladwell's. He's increadibly adept at distilling academic work into simple, and, at times, beautiful prose. But there is a downside. He tends to pare people down into mere statistics. For example, in one blog entry - following the ides of his book, Blink - he says that when you are speaking to a stranger, it is alright to bring up topics that person's race, sex, etc. are commonly associated with. So, when speaking with white-southern-business men, Gladwell regularly brings up college football. The reasoning is that if he acts according to the average interests of a demographic, things will work out for him, and his conversation partner, more often than not. Alright. But what about the effect of this strategy on the individual? It is increadibly disheartening being confronted by someone that sees you as a mere statistical average. Yes, it will work on average. But when it doesn't , the individual is left very wounded. He or she is left feeling like a jelly fish: transparent to all, an unwitting open book. And perhaps that outweighs the benefits. Perhaps that suggests we should not employ such a strategem.

Gladwell approaches the question of racism, and one's degree of racism, in much the same way here. I think he would be a little harder (justifiably) on Michael Richards, if he wasn't so confined by definitions and categories.

Name: Malcolm Gladwell
Age: 43
Ethnicity: Mixed (mother is Jamaican)
Profession: Staff writer for The New Yorker

Report on the Humanities

This is the draft of an article published in Planet S Magazine: May 24 - June 6, 2007 Volume 5: Issue 16

Many Canadian Universities are currently experiencing changes. At one time, members of the Sciences and the Fine Arts, the Humanities and the Applied Sciences, worked comfortably alongside one another. They each felt their field was being respected and given its due. Members of the “less practical” fields felt their work would be valued and accommodated because of an inherent worth – one not dependent on how much money they could bring the University. And it was. But now things are different. An anxious feeling has spread over a large and important part of our Universities.

The seeds of this overgrowth of insecurity in the humanities departments have been around for a while. For a long time now, English and Philosophy students, among others, could expect a certain response upon stating their majors: “So, what kind of job will that degree get you?” But rather than getting better over time, things have gotten worse.

The state of the humanities in Canadian Universities, to put it simply, is not good. Planet S spoke to Len Findlay, an English professor and director of the Humanities Research Unit, about the cluster of fields comprising the Humanities and its condition within the Canadian University system. Exactly what the humanities are and how their importance has been underestimated was a central point of the discussion.

“The humanities are a grouping of academic disciplines with strong historical ties to the liberal arts in the ancient world, to the rise of humanism in reaction against a pervasive and oppressive theology in early modern Europe, and to the development of the modern university over the course of the last four centuries or more. The humanities are usually thought of today as comprising philosophy, history, ancient and modern languages and literatures, and the secularized study of religions. The humanities are strongly text-based and multi-lingual,” Findlay describes.

Of course, most people seem to have an idea of what the humanities are. The problem, though, is that the common view of the humanities is not accurate enough to make it clear how relevant it is to society.

Answering this call for clarity, Findlay plows on. “They focus on the questions and capacities that make us fully and distinctively human: how we reflect, how we express ourselves to ourselves and others, and how we have performed these activities over time and in very different geographical and cultural settings. The humanities are an important part of the human story because they represent continuity with the past and also creative departure from it, to claim new freedoms--as with renaissance humanism—or to assist with understanding new realities. Women’s and Gender Studies, for instance, is often counted as one of the New Humanities which deals with the historical and contemporary consequences of patriarchy and misogyny; and Cultural Studies deals with popular cultural forms often disdained by cultural and intellectual elites resistant to the democratization of knowledge and the expanding access to culture supported by new technologies. The Digital Humanities are another emergent example of rigorous innovation.”

The importance of the humanities lies also in the example it sets. It acts as something that is good in itself, regardless of the kind of monetary rewards, among other external rewards, it may bring. It’s an example we would probably do good to follow in other aspects of our lives.

“The Humanities are important above all because they value enduring questions as well as topical answers, and because they refuse to reduce inquiry to the flavour of the moment, or to reduce value to money. Oscar Wilde was making a quintessentially humanist point when he defined a cynic as someone who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing,” says Findlay.

Sadly though, Canadian Universities don’t seem to see things the same way. What those in the humanities see as one of its positive features – the fact it doesn’t aim at, or need, much monetary compensation to be valuable – is understood to be a negative one outside.

“The result of this is that in many universities in Canada, the Humanities have been shrunk in terms of tenured faculty, and travestied by academic managers as teaching basic skills with a pinch of cultural luster—the sort of thing that produces a grammatically sound agronomist or a chocolate dipped MBA off to interact with Asia or Africa.”

This trend will decrease the number of humanities students. And as Findlay suggested in pointing out the important role of the humanities in developing our abilities to reflect on ourselves and our ways of being, this would be a great tragedy for us all. And to make matters worse, the fewer number of students that decide to stick around will be confronted with a weakened educational program. Yet, despite this bleak situation, we should not see the humanities as a lost cause. There is, in fact, a lot that can be done to reverse this unfavorable trend.

“Within Canadian universities today, where corporatization, casualization of Humanities labour, and the commodification of all knowledge are rampant, the Humanities need to refuse the reduction of academic value to the ability to attract external funding.” This is where the Humanities Research Unit, of which Findlay is the director, comes in.

Some coordinated effort to disseminate information on the importance of the humanities is needed and the Research Unit continually does just that.

“The Humanities Research Unit gives scholars and graduate students on our campus support in their own individual and group endeavours, both within and across disciplines, while insisting on independence and diversity at a time when integrated planning threatens to produce and reward uniformity of attitude and attribute: integration as species loss, if you will, and planning as picking winners rather than supporting outcomes that must remain for now unclear and indeterminate.”

“The Unit is a very little engine, but it could, can, and will continue to raise questions in order to raise consciousness and enhance understanding of who we are, and why we are how we are,” says Findlay.

The Social Economy

This is the draft of an article published in Planet S Magazine: May 24 - June 6, 2007 Volume 5: Issue 16

There are two kinds of problems, to put it simplistically. One set can be approached with more research and advances in the sciences, or related fields. The spread of infectious disease, for example, is remedied by better treatment and prevention methods. If we need to discover a renewable energy resource, well, that just takes time and research. Some problems are technological and nothing more. The second set of problems is quite different. These problems do not depend on scientific failings, but on the failure of people to cooperate in long-term and sustainable ways. They are, essentially, social problems.

In 1968, Garrett Hardin published an influential paper called “The Tragedy of the Commons” in the journal Science. He described a sequence of events: There are a group of herders that own a large pasture in common. If any one herder gains an extra animal, his profits increase. But with every additional animal, the pasture is degraded for everyone and they all lose – at least in the long-run. So what is the herder to do? Well, if there is no coordination and everyone is left to act in their own individual interest, they will all get additional animals and eventually ruin the pasture for the rest as well as for themselves. Tragic, indeed.

This is a sort of parable on how the free market fails us when the goods are public. A public good like street lighting, for instance, just wouldn’t get produced if all we had was the free market. The reasoning goes: If everyone pays their share of the lighting costs, I won’t have to. The lights will be on at night and I can walk safely, a content free rider. But, of course, if everyone thought this way, the project would never get off the ground. So, the free market, or private sector, is just incapable of producing these kinds of goods. But don’t worry. There is another, growing, sector capable of doing so. And it has done so according to Nancy Neamtan, CEO of the Chantier de l’economie sociale (Task Force on the Social Economy). The Chantier is a network overseeing the work of various projects in the Social Economy, the alternative to the private sector, as well as to the public sector of government-produced goods.

“Social economy refers to enterprises that produce goods and services like any other business but that are run on the basis of very different principles. Social economy enterprises are collectively owned (coops, or non-profits, or mutuals), are democratically controlled and respond to collective needs rather than generating profit for outside investors,” Neamtan says.

Outside investors are much like the herders. They just can’t help but ruin the pastures of cooperative enterprises with their narrow self-interest.

“For all these reasons, Social Economy enterprises can do things that neither the private sector nor the public sector can or will do. In rural communities in the 30's agricultural cooperatives helped save agriculture in communities in many parts of Canada. Today in rural communities Social Economy enterprises are responding to a variety of needs - maintaining local services (food coops., funeral coops, daycare, homecare for the elderly, etc.) and are being used by local communities to develop their economy and maintain control over local resources (eg ecotourism, cultural initiatives, alternative agriculture etc).” This approach would fit well in Saskatchewan. We have a number of rural communities facing an extinction of sorts, and leaving it up to the free market, in the form of private investors and businesses, would only speed the process up. Neamtan suggests the methods of Social Economy enterprises would work here as well as they have elsewhere.

We should remember that the Social Economy is not only critical of the private sector. The public sector, led by government, is also lacking in some places. Although government-led projects generally avoid the tragedy of the commons, by legislating taxes on everyone for the common good, they nevertheless continually miss spots. Some projects need to be led by the people on the ground – a grassroots endeavor – because they, better than a distant government, know how resources should be allocated.

“In other cases rural communities choose collective enterprises because they want to maintain control over their environment. For example, a big debate in Quebec presently is who should be developing renewable energy and, particularly, wind energy: the private sector that gives token returns to farmers to be able to use their land; the public sector through Hydro-Quebec; or the Social Economy through locally owned and managed wind energy coops that would reinvest profits back into the community? The jury is still out on that one.”

Continuing on the theme that the Social Economy solves certain problems even the public sector can’t, Neamtan says: “In the field of daycare, the majority of the Quebec daycare system which is universal and accessible (7$ a day) is delivered through parent-controlled non-profits. International studies show that the quality is better - quality is guaranteed when parents are in control, as it is their kids that benefit from the service. And government gets a better return on its investment because all dollars are invested in assuring quality care and none is skimmed off the top for private profit. Plus these daycares are able to adapt to local realities and local needs.”

Our environment is a shared good, and an obvious one at that. It is our metaphorical pasture, with literal pastures here and there. And, of course, the private sector cannot help but degrade it. What incentive does a company have to be environmentally-friendly when it gains all the profit of negligent waste disposal and shares the costs of a depleted environment with everyone else?

“Social economy enterprises are more able to integrate environmental concerns because they are not profit-driven. The social economy movement has worked closely with the environmental movement to try to assure that environmental concerns are integrated into all aspects of what we do. Many social economy enterprises have emerged in the environmental sector, particularly in the field of recycling, but more and more innovation is going on - for example, the new trend in eco-design where young designers are working with social economy enterprises to produce high fashion from recycled materials. Ecotourism which respects the environment is another field in which the social economy is beginning to flourish.”

The Social Economy also helps integrate people that have been, for various reasons, excluded from the workforce. The idea is that they are resources neglected by the free market just as much as the environment and public day cares.

“Many social economy enterprises have been created to integrate marginalized groups into the labour force, be they youth in difficulty, the handicapped, etc. Though these people are not considered 'productive' in a profit-driven labour market, they have a potential to be active participants in the economy and, through a non-profit structure, we have been able to allow thousands to become productive individuals.”

There are countless movements falling in the category of the Social Economy. They are not affiliated with the public sector, because they are democratic structures composed of regular people with specific concerns. And they are not with the private sector because the goals are emphatically non-profit. But despite the nobility of these various projects, there is a need for some organization to coordinate them all for maximum effect. This is the mandate of the organization Chantier that Neamtan heads.

“The Chantier de l'économie sociale is a network of networks whose mission is to promote and develop the social economy. Our membership and Board of Directors is made up of networks of collective enterprises (recycling businesses, daycare, housing coops. community radio etc); networks of community economic development or local development organizations from rural and urban communities and social movements that share our vision of the need to build a more democratic and equitable economy; the union movement; environmental movement; women's movement; community movement etc. By bringing together these various networks, we have been able to show the important role that the social economy plays in our communities, to build new collective tools such as investment funds dedicated to social economy, to gain strength as a movement and to become an important actor in debates over social and economic development in Quebec.”

We should hope as Canadians that this ethic of cooperation towards goals without a dollar sign continues to spread. We should also hope that more faith – the kind normally given to the private and the public sector – would be given the third route of the Social Economy. It seems very clear now that if many of our social goals are to be realized, we'll have to practice the kind of cooperation the Social Economy advocates.

Global warming and Darfur

Somewhere in The Treatise of Human Nature, David Hume writes about the conditions that make the rules of justice necessary. If human beings were preternaturally kind and generous towards one another - if we treated others like they were one of our relations – we wouldn’t need any principles of justice. Our natural instincts would do the work of justice. Also, if we remained greedy, avaricious, and competitive, but happened to live in a world of plenty, where every one of our needs would be satisfied without much delay and without fear of depletion, justice would once again prove useless. In such an ideal world, we simply wouldn’t need principles of justice to allocate goods and defend property rights.

I was reminded of this when I read an article by Stephan Faris in the April edition of the Atlantic Monthly called “The Real Roots of Darfur”. His argument is that the conflict between the African farmers and the Arab herders in the western region of Sudan, the Darfur, is the result of a depletion of resources due to global warming rather than a difference in race and the belief that one is superior to the other.

According to Faris, in the not-to-distant past the farmers and herders coexisted without tension.

“Until the rains began to fail, the sheik’s people lived amicably with the settled farmers. The nomads were welcome passers-through, grazing their camels on the rocky hillsides that separated the fertile plots. The farmers would share their wells, and the herders would feed their stock on the leavings from the harvest.”

But our factories, power plants, and automobiles, have altered this balance.

“Farmers who had once hosted his tribe and his camels were now blocking their migration; the land could no longer support both herder and farmer…with the drought, the farmers began to fence off their land – even fallow land – for fear it would be ruined by passing herds...In the late 1980s, landless and increasingly desperate Arabs began banding together to wrest their own [tribal lands] from the black farmers.”

These developments began a series of of events leading to the killing of over 200,000, and the displacement of over 3 million, non-Arab Africans.

No Rain on Iran!

If I were a protestor, those would be my words. I would scream them and speak them; write them on placards and at the bottom of sticky note memos during work. I would mutter them in a whisper to myself; doodle them on loose-leaf to be left for strangers to find; and send mass emails with those words as the subject line.

They appeal to my economical side. You see, each one of the letters in the first two words was used in the construction of the second two. Recycling is very important to me – what with global warming and all.

But what does it mean? Rain, Iran? Is their a connection? Of course!

One day, the United States may defend an attack on Iran with a certain pretense. “The Iranians,” they say, “are suffering a stifling system and need our help. We are compelled, for their own good, to attack their leaders, their nuclear reactors, and, unfortunately, their cities.” It’s a pretense, of course, because the goal is not really the good of Iranians. But that’s another issue.

For now I’m concerned with the belief – whether genuinely held or not – that an invasion of Iran would help Iranians. It wouldn’t. They don’t need this leadership from above. Your missiles (your rain) will only drown out the voices of dissent they have developed for themselves. You can bring nothing but chaos. So refrain. Go away, for now at least. Come back another day.

Haleh Esfandiari

On a recent visit to Iran, Haleh Esfandiari, the Iranian-American Director of the Middle East Program at the Smithsonian Museum's Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, was unjustifiably arrested. She has been sent to Evin prison where the Montreal photagrapher, Zahra Kazemi, was raped and beated to death in July of 2003.

A Washington Post article says this may be a reaction to the Bush administration's $75 million program to promote democracy in Iran. Perhaps Iran sees this as a prelude to regime-change (specifically in favour of a pro-democracy and pro-America regime).

A CLASSIC case of caring

Originally Published:
Planet S Magazine
April 26- May 9, 2007 Volume 5: Issue 18
Page 14

It’s a simple fact that all professions are beset with stereotypes: computer scientists are caricatured as nerdy, professors as absentminded, accountants are obsessively methodical and timid, while actors are short on discipline and long on self-importance. Journalists? Well, put another double scotch on my tab and gimme the receipt so I can write it off.

Still, no one has it as bad as lawyers.

There are probably more lawyer-jokes than jokes about all other professions combined, and we all know a few. But that’s not the worst of it, because quantity isn’t the only thing that sets lawyer jokes apart: so does cruelty. Most of these jokes depend on the assumption that lawyers are basically bad people, interested only in money and willing to screw others over for more of it. One joke goes: “It was so cold last winter that I saw a lawyer with his hands in his own pockets.” Another: “A man walked into a lawyer's office and inquired about the lawyer's rates. ‘$50.00 for three questions,’ replied the lawyer. ‘Isn't that kinda steep?’ asked the man while doling out the $50.00. ‘Yes,’ answered the lawyer, ‘what's your third question?’” Pretty funny, right?

But are all lawyers really this evil, corrupt, and manipulative? Of course not.

Pro bono publico is a Latin phrase that means “for the public good.” And no other phrase does a better job of describing the free legal representation and advice lawyers and law students provide the economically underprivileged. But let’s make things very clear: these activities are not simply isolated acts of kindness and generosity. The Canadian legal system expects a great commitment to pro bono work from its members, and lawyers—as well as young law students—have answered this call with great conviction and determination.

Luckily, we don’t have to go far to find such individuals. Planet S spoke with Judy Busch about the workers for the public good in Saskatoon—at least in the form of the legal clinic she co-founded, Community Legal Assistance Services for Saskatoon’s Inner City Inc. (CLASSIC).

“It’s a non-profit corporation that [myself] and three other students started about two years ago, and what we do is provide free legal services, like legal representation and legal advice, to low-income people in Saskatoon and basically anywhere in the province as long as they can get to us.”

This sort of organisation is sorely needed, considering the costs of legal services—costs that are often far out of reach for economically underprivileged citizens, says Busch.

“A lawyer can cost you $5,000 for one case, and some people just can’t do that—so there’s a huge need for this sort of thing. There are just so many people that can’t afford this, so we have tons of clients—[which] brings me to why we started this project in the first place. There’s something called the Saskatoon Free Legal Clinic which students, as well as myself, were involved in, but it was all volunteer lawyers.

“Volunteer lawyers, unfortunately, cannot commit a whole lot of time to pro bono work. We just found that there was a greater demand for their services than there were lawyers with the time to help, so the clinic was booked too far in advance sometimes. And when a client was helped, it still wasn’t enough because the kind of service they needed [often] couldn’t be done within the limited time-frame of a volunteer lawyer, who could normally only give about half an hour. So we thought it would be better if students did most of the work, with a little help from a supervising lawyer.”

Of course, the Canadian legal system does provide some aid to low-income people in need of legal services—they’re not completely left to fend for themselves. But as Busch explains, there are still major cracks in the Canadian legal aid program, and it’s the goal of CLASSIC, and other like-minded legal clinics, to fill them in.

“Legal aid covers family law and criminal law. We cover anything that legal aid doesn’t cover. So we cover what the lawyers would call administrative law: labour disputes; all the government services stuff like SGI, EI, etc.; and police complaints,” she says.

Low-income people in need of legal services aren’t the only ones facing high costs, however—so is the organisation looking to help them, says Busch.

“Our biggest expense is a [supervising] lawyer—we have a part-time lawyer, but now that our funding has come through we’re looking for a full-time lawyer. We also need someone to run the office, and we also hire two student-managers to work part-time, to coordinate student volunteers over the school year. Luckily, White Buffalo Youth Lodge allows us to use their space rent-free.”

In addition to the generosity of the White Buffalo Youth Lodge, Busch says that the provincial government and various community organisations are also lending a hand with CLASSIC’s financial load.

“We got funding from the provincial government [of] $50,000, and the Law Foundation of Saskatchewan has given us a commitment of $75,000 per year. And from the University we got about $100,000, [while] the Urban Aboriginal Strategy also paid for some of our start-up costs.”

There is a sense among many members of the legal profession—and certainly those that have worked so hard to get CLASSIC off the ground—that it is their moral obligation to volunteer at least some of their time to helping those with legal needs and without the resources to meet them. And Busch, along with her colleagues, agrees with Canada’s Law Societies, which view pro bono work as an obligation. So, let’s see: members of society’s most maligned profession, along with the organising bodies that govern them, working to provide all the representation and advice an educated and privileged class can give to those that can’t otherwise afford it? I guess maybe those lawyer jokes aren’t so funny after all.

bombs and smog

The UN Security Council, as the name suggests, is supposed to address international threats to security. But for quite a while, one of the greatest - if not the greatest - threat to our collective security has been ignored by the Security Council and relegated to minor and less powerful UN bodies. I'm talking of course about the threat of global climate change.

Fortunately, the Security Council changed their ways for the better by holding a conference on climate change and its role in the weakening of international security. Here are a few articles on the development. 1 , 2 , 3

So it goes. Again.

Saturnine on Saturday
Morning next, a sunny day
In six days
Saturday
So it goes. Again, no gain.

So it goes.

Kurt Vonnegut died wednesday. Here's an nytimes article on him and here's an extract from his memoir, A Man Without a Country. Here's another article, and another extract from the memoir.


In the first extract, Vonnegut says "War is now a form of TV entertainment". A recent contribution to the Darfur crisis from Google Earth seems to fit that statement just right.

Engineering the Environment

Originally Published:
Planet S Magazine
April 12 - April 25, 2007 Volume 5: Issue 17
Page 7

In 1994, Carl Sagan, the famed astronomer and popular science author, wrote a book called Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space. In it, Sagan gently persuades the reader that we, the inhabitants of planet Earth, are not the centre of the universe—although we were once entirely convinced that this was the case. Our planet, instead, is a mere pale blue dot in the cold expanse of space. But rather than beating ourselves up about it, and falling into despair, he hopes we can learn to live with the knowledge that we are specs floating around in a large and impersonal universe.

Currently on YouTube is a video titled “Pale Blue Dot.” The video is composed of spectacular satellite images of Earth and our solar system while Sagan narrates overtop, condensing his book into about three minutes of inspired and poetic language. In addition to his insistence that we see ourselves as just a small part of a bigger whole, Sagan reminds us that Earth is the only place we know of capable of housing life. At least for the foreseeable future, we don’t have the option of moving and settling elsewhere.

So—if the Earth is all we have, at least for now and as far as we know, we are responsible for the shape it’s in. This means we must take a stand in improving our environment—and we must do it before it’s too late.

Luckily, there are people committed to this project, both across the globe and in our own backyard. Helping fill the second role is a group of students, mainly from the College of Engineering, at the University of Saskatchewan. Their organisation, Footprint Design, was founded by Chris Richards in September of 2004, and they’ve done great work designing and producing environmentally-friendly products ever since.

According to Footprint’s Jon Henderson, a 4th year Engineering student, the goal of the group is to use their knowledge to promote sustainability—both environmental and economic.

“Footprint Design is based on the idea of the ecological footprint, which is the amount of land-mass and resources required to sustain your way of life. So we have incorporated that concept: minimizing your ecological footprint through sustainable ways of life, like conserving and composting. We’ve just tried to incorporate ‘ecological footprint’ into design.”

That’s right—pro-environment engineers. Now, engineers have been saddled with plenty of stereotypes throughout the years, but rarely have any of them had much to do with environmental sustainability. But for Henderson and Footprint, engineers are in fact the perfect people to deal with a problem like reducing damage to the environment.

“An engineer is just a problem solver. Historically, the problems that they’ve been given to solve have been the ones that are most economically viable, like pumping oil from the ground and processing it into fossil fuel,” says Henderson.

“Now, I think the environmental movement is becoming more economically viable—like [the fact that] wind-power has found a market. That’s sort of opening up the avenue for more design, and engineering work can be focused on environmental areas—and more of an environmental focus that’s economically feasible, so you can make a career out of it.”

But more than just the current economics of environmental technologies, Henderson notes that, just like everyone else, engineers have a moral responsibility to tread as lightly on the earth as possible.

“An engineer definitely has the obligation to make the environmental impact of their work as small as possible. Of course, the nature of the profession or the work they do might not allow them to do so. But, within their means, they have a responsibility—they are obligated to protect the safety, health, and well-being of the public.”

The engineers of Footprint Design have already taken on a few ambitious projects, including that of producing biodiesel fuel. They even have a biodiesel processor stored in the Engineering department.

“Biodiesel is a carbon-neutral fuel—it’s a diesel alternative made with canola oil, [and] it’s a fairly simple process to make it. There are a few benefits to it. Because the original source for any carbon you’re releasing is from the plant you’re harvesting, [when] you assume that you’re re-planting another crop of canola that’s going to take the CO2 you have emitted, it’s a closed-carbon cycle—you emit CO2 and then the canola plant is going to take it back in. And it’s good for the diesel engine because there is no sulfur dioxide emission.”

In Europe, many gas stations are already making biodiesel fuel available. The hope, of course, is that this will spread to other places—like Canada. Henderson is optimistic.

“You’re already starting to see it. [Some] gas stations have a 5 percent biodiesel blend. The City of Saskatoon has a bus that’s running on biodiesel. I think the infrastructure is there, so it’s just a matter of whether or not companies are willing to start blending biodiesel with their fuel—so it’s definitely in the near future.”

Another project of Footprint Design is the development of a wind turbine, which they intend to construct on University Land—something that has required a lot of planning and effort on the part of the group, explains Henderson.

“University land is quite valuable. They want to be pretty careful they’re not wasting anything—especially with a student-run project, they need some guarantee that what we’re putting up is going to work [and] not cause them any problems.”

Still, Henderson is confident the U of S will see the benefits of the project.

“It should produce about one kilowatt every hour, which is about 8,760 kilowatts per year. And for every one kilowatt of electricity produced by the wind turbine we’re saving 4.58 kilograms of greenhouse gasses, produced otherwise by coal in Saskatchewan.”

Along with ambitious projects like bio-diesel and wind power, Henderson notes that a major mandate for Footprint Design is to educate the public on promoting sustainability in day-to-day life.

“Something not too many people talk about, but that’s really important, is conservation. Do you need to be driving around in an SUV by yourself to get to the grocery store that’s five minutes away? There are also things [in terms of] diverting waste, like recycling or composting. [And] you can make sure that the house you’re living in is efficient by sealing up cracks, for instance,” says Henderson.

Life of a blog...

From the New York Times, a diagram of a blog from conception 'till, um, later-on

Dadaism and the post-modern conceit of despair

I am not a nihilist. I will not protest against Society because of its imperfection and I'll certainly not look to its destruction. I have not lost hope in humanity. I am no Dadaist.

Flush 'em on down, those Dadaists.

To your left: Marcel Duchamp's Fountain

South Africa's moral obligation

The human rights project is meant to obligate each member of the United Nations. If one faces an abuse of human rights, and it is within their power to end it, it is their moral obligation to do so. Of course, ideals are meant to be betrayed.

Plenty of member states have allowed human rights abuses to continue. Some have done so because they are actively antagonistic to those abused; others because it is not in their political or economic interest to intervene. China for instance will not agree to harsh sanctions against Sudan for their actions in the Darfur because they are partners in trade; and because sanctions against Sudan may lead to the scrutinizing of its own practices and human rights abuses. See, for instance, the organ harvesting of the Falun Gong.

Similarly, South Africa is not using its position of influence over Zimbabwe in the best way. Thabo Mbeki, president of South Africa, has suggested that his refusal to support sanctions and strong measures against Robert Mugabe’s oppressive regime is to show fraternity with a fellow African state. Sadly, by supporting Mugabe he is only harming the people of Zimbabwe hurt by Mugabe’s policies: the overwhelming majority.

Orwell, motivation, politics, and art

George Orwell once wrote that what he most wanted to do was “make political writing into an art.” I think he had the right goal.

There are obvious social problems. The Palestinians are living as second-class citizens, enjoying fewer basic rights and economic opportunities as the Israelis. The Chechens, as well, are living an apartheid nightmare, with constant fear of sudden, and unjustified, imprisonment. Others, like the people of the Darfur, are subject to systematic genocide. And the people of North Korea are essentially locked away in a dark-room of a country, where, because they don't know how the people of other states are doing, their leaders can continue the lie that they're well and fine. Many are aware of these problems. But they differ on how to solve them.

Some think we need to be logical. We need to appeal to reason and law to get people more involved. If we let people know how rational it is to be interested in the oppressed and mistreated of the world, they will be moved to act. Cold hard reason can move mountains, they tell us. I don’t think so.

People are not moved by reason. People are moved by their sentiments, their passions. You can’t give me a rational argument to prove why I should save my mother from drowning, resting assured I'll be compelled to act accordingly. But if put in that situation, my adrenaline, my instincts, my memories of being taken care of as a child, or whatever it is, will push me to save her in spite of myself. I’ll be moved by something wordless and not subject to rational analysis.

So people are moved more by their feelings or sentiments, than their rationality (that faculty which makes us think coherently and logically). If you want people to become more involved in the work of helping the mistreated - those who deserve but are denied what most people in North America and Europe, and isolated parts of other continents, take for granted and take as natural– you need to speak to their sentiments. Abstract principles are empty and won’t get anyone off the couch. Images, descriptions, representations in evocative and emotionally charged mediums, though, can reach our gut, our sentiments. I’m thinking of documentaries, photographs, literature, paintings, poems, and music. Artists with an eye on social issues are much better at improving things than people realize.

I think this is what Orwell had in mind. He did the right thing criticizing totalitarianism and state repression by creating a work of fiction with a main character the reader could identify with. He gave no arguments for why totalitarianism is wrong. He just showed us what that system was doing to the main character of his novel. We had someone to sympathize with, and his suffering became ours, in a way.

This is how the artist moves us to do good things. The artist makes us identify with people we initially saw as too different and too far away, by letting us hear, see, and smell their horrible conditions. And once you’ve really imagined yourself in their shoes, with a little help from a good piece of social art, it’s hard to ignore them any longer.

Google it, Bush

I used to think governments are absolute sources of truth and fact. They are aware of things the people aren't. The political knowledge people gain from reading newspapers, magazines, and academic journals, is inferior to the first-hand, direct, and accurate, knowledge of governments. Nothing gets by them, and if it does it’s getting by everyone else as well. How wrong I was. Check out this blog entry from The Nation.

Nuclear Proliferation and Democratic Deficit

This is the draft of an article published in Planet S Magazine: March 29 – April 11, 2007 Volume 5: Issue 16

Sometime after the mushroom clouds settled in Japan at the close of the Second World War, a move was made against the spread and use of nuclear weapons. For one, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) was established, setting its sights on preventing another Hiroshima or Nagasaki. In 1968 the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) was established, and signed by numerous states, as an agreement to reduce the spread of nuclear weapons. And yet, despite the existence of the agency and the treaty, both very popular, at least in word, we are facing a nuclear weapons crisis.

The world remains inundated with these bombs and, only worse, more are being developed. The reason this is such a bad situation is that most people, especially in Western countries, are opposed to the nuclear weapons industry. Nevertheless, their opposition usually falls on deaf ears. While the United States accuses Iran of having a secret nuclear weapons program, and condemns North Korea for having the bomb, it continues to fund the design and production of nuclear weapons.

So the time is ripe for a documentary film about the nuclear weapons industry. And this is just what Danny Bradbury, a journalist and filmmaker, has done with Epicentre, a film whose grand topic arose from something much smaller.

“It started off being a film primarily about the downwinders: a group of people in the U.S. who were dusted by radioactive fallout from the atmospheric tests in the 50s and 60s. I arranged to go and interview some of these people and as I went down there and talked to them I realized that actually the bomb had a much bigger effect in many different ways in terms of the effect on the land and the environment from the testing and the nuclear reactors it used to produce the weapons, the fuel for the weapons, and on the people that lived on that land and what had happened to them. So, essentially, it turned into a much bigger story. The film sort of developed organically as I went along and it went from being one movie to being three or four different movies that I resolved to try and squeeze down into one broad look on the issue.”

“And actually one of the things I found out was that the U.S. nuclear weapons complex is revitalizing, they’re re-developing the complex in a sort of multi-decade plan. And they’ve made decisions to re-design essentially the entire nuclear arsenal – begin making new nuclear weapons. Not only has the issue not gone away since the Cold War but actually we are in a crucial period and it’s coming to the foreground again in terms of foreign policy and world politics.”

Bradbury suggests that the West is not living up to its image as a moral authority. Considering the evidence, he’s definitely on the right lines.

“We really should be leading the way in terms of trying to lead the world to a non-nuclear stage – to the point where we are able to get rid of all nuclear weapons. But in fact the U.S. is moving in the opposite direction. They’re essentially giving a message to the world that ‘not only are we keeping our bombs,’ which we actually did commit to trying to get rid of under the non-proliferation treaty, ‘but also we’re developing new ones.’”

And to make matters worse, the effect of the nuclear weapons industry is not confined to the relations between states. It has had a corroding effect on our internal political system, and our most beloved of institutions: democracy.

“Everyone talks about the effect of nuclear weapons on the world in terms of national boundaries. They think about it in terms of nations. To me, it seems much more productive to think about this in terms of a division between a government and its people. So when you look at the effect of the bomb, and when you look at the stake holds that’s involved in producing a bomb, and who controls it, it very much divides the people from the government. So the government says ‘we need to pile all this tax-money into developing nuclear weapons.’ And the people, generally I think, don’t appreciate the idea of being incinerated within half an hour’s notice.”

Nevertheless, we should not see ourselves as just passive, resigned to merely wishing the nuclear weapons industry away. We, specifically the people of Saskatchewan, are partly responsible for the spread of nuclear weapons. And so we have a role, if we wish to take it, in ending nuclear proliferation.

“The nuclear energy industry arose because the nuclear weapons industry existed. And there’s always been an extremely strong tie between the two. Some of the uranium that was used in the original Japanese bombs came from Saskatchewan. We’ll always have to live with that fact. We have a responsibility for what happened. Of course we are all responsible in some way or another. If you support, in any way, what happens within the nuclear weapons complex then ultimately you’ve helped to make the world a worse place.”

Burmese Ways

After becoming independent in 1948 it was called the Union of Burma. In 1974 it became the Socialist Republic of the Union of Burma. It went back to the Union of Burma in 1988. Since 1989 it's been the Union of Myanmar. One constant has been the capital: Rangoon. Very recently, though, they've changed that as well. Naypyidaw is the Union of Myanmar's capital city as of this moment.

I'm spent.