Are Americans Ready to Make History

John Edwards departure from the Democratic Party race means that Americans will have to make history and elect the first black man or the first white woman as President if a Democrat is to become President. Are they ready for that.

The other question is whether the front runners, now even more focussed on each other, are going to fight the Republican Party's campaign for them. Certainly if I was running the Republican election machine I would already be preparing to use the losing Democrat's words against the winning one. I foresee a whole series of Republican Party ads featuring Clinton or Obama telling the American people why the other Democrat is not fit to be President.

It's the American system and after studying Political Science and working for the House of Commons for over thirty years I still do not really understand it, though I do enjoy watching it from a distance.

The Cult of Personality Without The Personality

A cult of personality or personality cult arises when a country's leader uses mass media to create a larger-than-life public image through unquestioning flattery and praise. Cults of personality are often found in dictatorships but can be found in some democracies as well.

A cult of personality is similar to general hero worship except that it is specifically built around political leaders. However, the term may be applied by analogy to refer to adulation of non-political leaders.

I have been in the government and opposition lobbies of the House of Commons a few times, all prior to the Harper government, and while I do recall seeing portraits and photographs of politicians, including the party leaders of the time as well as former Prime Ministers, they were all of a more formal or historical nature and did not dominate the walls. It was certainly nothing like the description provided by Elizabeth May, which strike me as being campaign type photos.

What may have been the most fascinating part of the afternoon was my time in the Government Lobby. Behind the curtains that run along the last row of benches on both sides of the House, are doors to long skinny living room areas. One is called the Opposition Lobby; the other the Government Lobby. In my pre-Green Party leader life, I have spent a lot of time in both. The Government Lobby was a frequent work space when I was Senior Policy Advisor to the federal Minister of Environment back in the mid-1980s. And I frequented both lobbies when I was with Sierra Club of Canada from 1987-2006. It did not strike me until I walked into the Government Lobby to await my turn as Speaker that I had not been in there since Stephen Harper became Prime Minister.

It used to have some paintings on the wall. Past prime ministers, certainly a formal portrait of the Queen. Landscapes. I know there was the occasional photo of current Prime Ministers, but when I walked in this time, I felt chilled to the bone. Every available wall space had a large colour photo of Stephen Harper. Stephen Harper at Alert. Stephen Harper in fire fighter gear. Stephen Harper at his desk. Stephen Harper meeting the Dalai Lama. Even the photo of the Queen showed her in the company of Stephen Harper. None were great photos. None were more than enlarged snapshots in colour. They didn’t feel like art.

This is, of course, “Canada’s New Government” led by the new Conservative Party without a past.

This is the government that decided using Canada’s official colours of red and white on the government websites just had to go because red is also the colour of the Liberal Party. So now we have blue dominated government websites, because blue is the colour of the Conservative Party. If only it was just a symbolic change, but we see so many examples off the new Conservative government’s attempt to politicize the Public Service, as well as independent public agencies.

This is also the government that wants to control how the press does it’s job covering the government and its actions and in particular Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

This is a party without a past, or at least with a past that it does not want to remind people of. It certainly does not want people to be reminded of it’s extreme right wing roots in the Reform Party and Canadian Alliance, and at the same time it does not want to be associated with those “progressive” elements in the old Progressive Conservative Party. In fact better not to have people think about party at all, but rather about a strong charismatic leader.

Stephen Harper is no Pierre Trudeau, and neither is he a John Diefenbaker. So what to do when you do not have a strong charismatic leader. How do you build a cult of personality without a personality. Images. But why the government lobby of the House of Commons when only insiders will see the images. The press of, course, also gets to see them but they apparently did not notice until it was drawn to their attention by Elizabeth May. Is support for Stephen Harper so wishy washy within his own party that they need to inundate Conservative Members of Parliament with photos of “The Leader”.

Perhaps it is all innocent and they are simply using caucus members as a “focus group” for the next election’s campaign images.

Sick and Comfortable

Do you ever have one of those days you feel so sick and miserable you just call in sick, spend the day in your warm bed in your nice warm house and just wait till you feel better. Whenever I feel like that I feel so thankful that I can do that. Most people in the world do not live in modern industrialized countries with so very comfortable living conditions and the ability to take time off work when they are sick. Most people live in much harsher living conditions than we do and have to continue with the drudgery of life no matter how sick they feel, unless of course their illness makes them physically unable to continue to function, in which case they usually end up in even worse poverty than their normal poor living conditions. Sometimes I am just thankful that I can be "sick and comfortable".

Global Warming and Common Sense

At a time when the climate is changing, in large part because of excessive and wasteful use of energy, why would anyone want to do this, when they could use this.

My Scanning Project Progresses

My scanning project is progressing. I have scanned over 500 slides so far. These photos, taken with my Konica Autoreflex T3, are also from the Gatineau Park. They were taken in September 1978, almost exactly a year later than the last posted images.

Click on the photos to see larger images.

The Contradictions of Religion and Religious Tolerance

One can understand the birth of religion at a time before the age of reason and science, when people were looking for simple explanations of the world around them. The biggest contradiction of religion is why it has remained so dominant in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries when we actually understand the origin of the universe and how man evolved.

Of course the answer is simple. Religious belief defies logic because it excludes logic. Religion does not try to convince you that god exists based on science or logic. In fact religion suspends logic and science and asks you to believe on the basis of faith - to just decide to believe.

So how do people choose a religion. In most cases they do not actually choose, they inherit their religion from their parents or the cultural community they live in. And how do they decide what to believe. Again they do not decide, they are told what to believe by religious leaders, who follow teachings developed thousands of years ago and passed on or modified dependent on the intricacies of the politics of their particular religion. In the cases of some newer religions the “theology” is simply the figment of the imagination of a charismatic leader.

The next big contradiction of religion is it’s responsibility for good and evil. I do not need to go through the history of religion to point out the evil done in it’s name by believers, except to point out that most genocides are justified by religious beliefs, as interpreted by the religious leaders of the time.

But, on the other hand, much good has been done by religious people, from the abolitionists movement and the underground railroad to Canadian medicare, made possible by a Baptist minister from Saskatchewan. And indeed many good people credit their “goodness” to their religious beliefs.

But reason tells us that one can be a good person without religion. What religion enables, is good people to do evil things because they have been convinced, usually by charismatic leaders, that it is the will of god. There is no greater evil than good people doing evil things because god told them to.

The latest contradiction with religion is the development of the concept of religious tolerance. Religious tolerance teaches that other people are not unworthy or evil because they belong to the wrong religion. Religious tolerance removes the justification for evil, such as genocides, perpetrated in the name of god.

But religion is supposedly based on the true word of god. How can there be more than one true word of god. There cannot. And the acceptance of religious tolerance is an unstated acceptance that religion is man-made, not god-made.

I have no problem with religions as communities of fellowship with sets of rules to life by and rituals that celebrates the stages of ones life. Just do not try and tell me it is all based on the word of a non-existent god.

I am all for religious tolerance because it can help to end the evil done in the name of religion as well as make the true nature of religion as something man-made not god-made, finally evident to all “true believers” everywhere.

Phasing Out Tobacco

A United States Senator has an interesting idea.

U.S. Senator Mike Enzi, R-Wyo., has proposed a tobacco-control plan that cuts to the chase and simply orders companies to get fewer people to smoke. With roots in the regulation of power plant emissions and the educational reform act known as No Child Left Behind, Enzi's idea is that government would set performance goals for tobacco companies to meet. Instead of conventional "command and control" regulation -- in which government regulators tell people what to do -- under "outcome-based regulation," government tells them what to achieve.

How would tobacco firms comply? They could raise prices, promote cessation aids, sell nontobacco competitive products or innovate in ways we can't imagine. What to do and how to do it is their decision to make.

Under the senator's plan, tobacco companies would be required to reduce their U.S. customer base by approximately 90 percent over two decades. At the end of that period, our country could be down to an incredibly low smoking rate of about 2 percent, an ambitious target. Companies that failed to meet performance goals would face whopping financial penalties, making it fiscally more attractive for them to lose smokers than to gain new ones.

So is this feasible and how would it be done.

The tobacco industry is very much like the oil and gas industry - it is a dying industry with an addicted customer base that will pay almost anything for the product. In both cases, one for environmental and the other for health reasons, they know they have to phase themselves out. The oil and gas industry also knows it has a limited supply of resources. Virtually every oil and gas company has established an alternative and renewable energy component to eventually replace it’s fossil fuel production, in large part from the revenues from higher gasoline prices that they know their automobile dependant customer base will pay no matter what..

The tobacco industry should do what the oil and gas industry has done - not react to it’s decline but be “pro-active” and plan for it.

The tobacco industry could use additional profits from higher prices that it knows it’s addicted customers will pay to move into moral alternatives to tobacco production and sales. Higher prices will deter new customers which will help it achieve its mandated goal, not to mention the fact that enticing people to become addicted to tobacco is about as immoral as you can get.

Governments should immediately remove tobacco taxation from the general revenue stream (Consolidated Revenue Fund) so as not to be dependent on a tax base that it is attempting to phase out. The funds could be dedicated to a fund to pay for tobacco related health costs that will eventually decline over time. Some of it could also go into incentive payments to tobacco companies that lower their sales faster than the mandated targets.

This would all be in addition to government regulations prohibiting cigarette advertising, sales to minors and smoking in public.

Multiculturalism and Reasonable Accommodation - It’s as Canadian as a Kilt or a Hijab

When you invite friends over do you ever serve food that their religion forbids them to eat. If you go to a wedding of someone of another faith do suggest they should be married in a “Canadian” church. If neighbours invite you to a cultural celebration do you complain about their foreign customs. Of course not, because that would be impolite and certainly not the Canadian way. That is essentially the spirit of “reasonable accommodation” practiced at the personal level.

So why does something that is so natural on a personal level become so controversial on a societal level.

Recent census results indicate that currently there are just over one million aboriginal people in this country. The rest of us are immigrants, or descendants of immigrants. We come from all over the world and we are what makes Canada the wonderful country that it is.

Certainly, due to history, certain groups have become more dominant and certain customs more ingrained in our way of life than others. For example we have a government based on the British Parliamentary system and Christian religious holidays enshrined in statute law. But we are also strengthened by adding the customs of newer Canadian to our way of life.

Canada is a multicultural country that is only strengthened by the many customs and cultures of the people that immigrated to this country to become Canadians. Multiculturalism means that not only do we allow immigrant groups to maintain their customs but also share them with them.

So what is “reasonable accommodation”. Leonard Stern, writing in The Ottawa Citizen, said it best:

Ode to a sales clerk

Celebrity Success Stories

Well I have been skimming through my wife's People Magazine for the latest news, The big success story seems to be about how a celebrity couple has been able to stay together for so long - "How They Make It Work", a whole year. Another sucess story is of celebrity married couple expecting their first child. File under celebrity oddities for having the marriage before the baby. And the last story is the big news that a certain celebrity wants to lose a whopping five pounds, yes count them, 1,2,3,4,5 pounds. Since when is losing 5 pounds, nevermind wanting to lose 5 pounds, news - only in Celebrityland. Or maybe it was just a slow news week - not enough people checking into, or running away from, rehab this week.

The Two Issues in the Chalk River Nuclear Safety/Radioisotopes Affair

Stephen Harper is starting to remind me of Larry O’Brien. They both seem to have no concept of the role of government and public policy beyond the Do What I Say I’m the Boss School of Leadership.

There are two issues involved in the Chalk River nuclear safety/radioisotopes affair.

The second issue is whether Parliament should have passed legislation requiring restarting of the reactor. What Parliament essentially said was that the shortage of radioisotopes justified lowering the normal safety standards for the reactor. It is Parliament’s role to balance competing interests. While many of us disagreed with the legislation, it was within Parliaments role.

The first issue is whether the government should have attempted to influence and intimidate Linda Keen and the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission into not doing their job and then fire her for doing her job.

The government claims she was fired for lack of leadership. If Linda Keen has demonstrated anything it is leadership. The government may not have like the leadership she provided but it is ludicrous to suggest she did not provide leadership.

It is the role of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission to set and enforce safety standards in the nuclear industry. That is what they did in the case of the Chalk River reactor. When Atomic Energy of Canada Limited failed to do required safety upgrades the Commission it did it’s job and ordered the reactor shut down. It is not the role of the Commission to let outside factors or interests influence it’s decisions. Indeed it would be derelict in it’s duty if it let outside interests, or political intimidation, influence it’s decision-making.

If anyone lacks leadership it is Stephen Harper who does not understand the difference between leadership and intimidation.