Fearful Symmetry

(and dangerous too).
Up, Down, Appendices, Postscript.

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The point's gonna be up-front this week:

Bing-ing & Google-ing around to see what David Suzuki is up to, and found this. It was purely by chance. No thanks are due to any of: Greenspiration or Climate Action Network Canada or 350.org; none whatsoever. Have to watch and see if they pick it up later on sometime. No word on it from the Green Party of Canada either of course; the only time I hear from them is when they want (another) donation.

But never-m-m-m-mind the 'social media' quibbles. Eventually I did get to this invitation to a non-violent protest and demonstration in Washinton D.C. in August-September - possibly involving (wait for it) ... civil disobedience.

The focus of 'Tar Sands Action' is specific: the Keystone XL pipeline (XL somehow stands for 'expansion' - the dashed lines on the map). The initial Keystone pipeline only completed in June of 2010 is already leaking here and there - 11 times as reported in the Wall Street Journal. There have been adequate demonstrations of pipeline fallibility in recent memory - the latest being ExxonMobil's dump into the Yellowstone river just yesterday - but pipeline failure is secondary to the need to stop development of the Alberta tar sands and begin toilet-training (as Ralph Nader so eloquently put it some years ago) both Canada and the United States of America before it is too late.

So, making a long story short - it feels like the Last Chance Saloon - if it comes together and if I can get across the border on a bus and find a place to stay down there I will go, gouty feet and all. Some largeish 'ifs' in there eh? If the demonstration itself gets stopped or dropped ... dunno - weep and wail and gnash my teeth like the whoremongers of yore I guess. If I get stopped somehow, then I can still show solidarity on Parliament Hill in Otttawa, or at Queen's Park right here in Toronto.

BE THERE or BE SQUARE.Dig it.

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Was there free will during evolution?
Stay, it could be dangerous down here.   (from humor do Seri)

At the risk of conjuring up a misogynist nightmare (the thought police are surely after me by now anyway), here is a statue by Jens Galschiøt, The Survival of the Fattest aka Justice. He slipped it into the Copenhagen harbour during the 2009 climate conference - right beside The (iconic) Little Mermaid. And a comparable cartoon from the cover of Gilmar's book OCRE - Quadrinhos não recomendáveis para pessoas românticas available at Loja Zarabatana.

'The Little Mermaid' in Danish is den lille havfrue. 'Havfrue' looks to be 'half-woman' - scope for another rumination out around Iemanjá & Oxum, through Le Livre de Marie (by Anne-Marie Miéville) and Je vous salue, Marie (by Godard) and back again. Or have a (longish) look at Femmes Damnées (Delphine et Hippolyte), a poem by Charles Beaudelaire quoted in Le Livre de Marie - look at the differences between the four English translations of the 12th stanza, which goes:

Je sens fondre sur moi de lourdes épouvantes
Et de noirs bataillons de fantômes épars,
Qui veulent me conduire en des routes mouvantes
Qu'un horizon sanglant ferme de toutes parts.

... I digress ...

So. Who is receiving the bulk of those pension payments and dividend coupons then? (Don't ask.) In the end that is. Something about demographics? A five (or so) year differential in average age at death? Is that it?

("Don’t ask me nothin’ about nothin’, I just might tell you the truth." from Bob's Outlaw Blues, not the man himself but it goes ... something like this ... oh, here we go, here is the man himself after all.)

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I started out (innocently enough) watching a few films about the massacre at Nanking in 1937-38 (City of Life and Death (2009), and Nanking (2007), both can be found on IsoHunt & Demonoid). And the next thing, I was wondering again (Uh oh.) ... and making up this little time-line:

1914: start of WWI.
1917: 'America enters the war.'
1918: end of WWI.

1933: Hitler sworn in as Chancellor of Germany.
1937: Nanking (wake up call).
1938: Munich Agreement - "Peace for our time."
1938: Kristallnacht (wake up call).
1939: WW II begins.
1941: Pearl Harbour.
1945: end of WWII.

1956: M. King Hubbert, Nuclear Energy and the Fossil Fuels.
1962: Rachel Carson, Silent Spring.
1968: Paul & Anne Ehrlich, The Population Bomb.
1972: Club of Rome, The Limits to Growth.

----: any number of wake-up calls in the mean time.

1992: Rio Summit.
1997: Kyoto Protocol.
2009: UNFCCC fails in Copenhagen.
2010: UNFCCC Cancún fiasco.

----: any number of additional wake-up calls in-between time.

Which, if you think about it, brings us round again to Washington D.C. in August & September. When is Barack Obama gunna get his thumb out? And if not, it doesn't probably matter much.

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I got fooled again:

A few weeks ago, looking for the Wiphala flag (despite it's been hijacked by everyone under the sun and then some) to poke in here, I came upon a picture of a green-eyed girl with a regular-old Bolivian flag painted on her face.

I thought it was somehow 'real' - that there had been such a girl some where some when. Not so. Probably not a girl either.

Goes to show: I don't know a damned thing. ... so ... I've decided that my flag will be Sumac leaves stuck on with the gooey white sap that runs out when you break 'em off.

Change from the top down? Change from the bottom up? Change from the grassroots? Change by correctitude?

Here's one: a controversy around false comparisons between circumcision & genital mutilation. Symmetry gone amok.

Or the two schoolgirls on my street last week selling gender respect on the installment plan - so I said, "What about Agathe Habyarimana & Catherine McLeod-Seltzer & Paris Hilton?" They know who Paris Hilton is at least. I asked if the people who put them there selling bullshit at minimum wage maybe have any respect? I could tell they were glad to cut their teeth (that is, their impermeable smiles) on a harmless old guy (with a smile too, though not rain-proof) ... all good.

Idealization (is it deification yet I wonder?) of women (this is not a perfect example, but it is in the zone - by Doug Saunders); idealization of First Nations' sensibilities around nature (see Endgame just below, but it's not hard to find); idealization of homosexuals - if you are not for us you are against us and so forth - poor old Rob Ford eh? Is 10% of the population gay? Or is it 1.5% adjusted to 3% if you count curiosity? Symmetry gone awol with correctitude & official nonsense abounding.

It cuts both ways. There is the daemonization of Israel f'rinstance, or the flip side - deification of Palestine, depending. Twenty photographs by Jim Rankin of the Toronto Star (here's the link for as long as it lasts). The caption on the first one (right) says, "Lyn Adamson, co-chair of Canadian Voice of Women of Peace, prepares to board a flight for Greece as members of the Jewish Defence League denounced an effort by Canadian activists to join an aid flotilla to Gaza. Adamson, one of the five delegates, is seen here gathered at Terminal 3 on Sunday, June 19, 2011 before the delegates left for Greece." At least five flights to Greece, return. A 'training exercise' as they prepare for violence from the Israel Defence Force. Why do all these people look like deer in the headlights to me?

Reminds me of Desmond Parsons who once said to me, "I met the Hamas mayor of the town and he was a nice man." (You can start here and follow the United Church thread if you are interested, Blogger had a different CSS in those days, but CTRL ++ makes it vaguely readable.)

Then there is this approximately dangerous nonsense from Derrick Jensen: Endgame (2006). Dangerous nonsense? Not fair eh? Well, that's what it looks like. The book is coming from the library and maybe I'll spend some more words on it here once I've read it.

In the meantime you can watch him talking about it - sort of a latter-day Richard Alpert aka Baba Ram Dass. He does seem to confuse premises with conclusions, idealizes the Stone Age, bashes Mahatma Ghandi & Martin Luther King ... blah blah blah ... and gets a few central perceptions right along the way too.

So this year his buddy Franklin López makes a 'feature length' documentary out of it all: END:CIV Resist or Die. There are too many 'visual leveraging techniques' for me - a mullet masquerading as a curly California perm (as it were). A devotee of Mikey Moore maybe? More info here.

It seems like quagmire mental territory to me. What would I know? Something about the perfunctory way he throws out some of it bends the needle on my correctitude virus detector. Still and all and even so, it was mildly appealing to an old fart with at least one foot on the desperate & hopeless & despairing side. Appealing enough that I did watch both films all the way through. I have some of the same questions. So for now let's say he's got the questions right.

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I like the way that this whole entire nation mourns with Newfoundland on July 1 every year and remembers what happened at Beaumont-Hamel on July 1 1916 - the best part of a whole entire generation of Newfoundland men shot to pieces for nothing. Free fireworks in the evening and everything(!)

And our Sir Henry de Beauvoir De Lisle, career soldier, played polo in South Africa during the Boer War, started out young and got old and died. They say he was confused when he ordered them forward - hell, who wouldn't be confused in the circumstances?

And they obeyed the order - but then, at that point they didn't have much choice did they? That's what those hand guns the officers carry are for. They were confused too no doubt - for all of about 30 minutes according to reports.

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At the end of the preface to Fearful Symmetry (which he wrote during WWII though he wrote the preface in 1969), Northrop Frye says:

Today, now that reactionary and radical forces alike are once more in the grip of the nihilistic psychosis that Blake described so powerfully in Jerusalem, one of the most hopeful signs is the immensely increased sense of the urgency and immediacy of what Blake had to say.

It seems a strange place to find hope? He wrote it in 1969, springtime, and he thought Blake's urgency and immediacy was somehow hopeful? He doesn't say but ... 1969 in Toronto ... Rochdale College in full swing was it? There must have been rumours of glory going around eh? (Yes, I know there were - I was there - though I was too stupid to go looking for Northrop Frye when he was merely alive.)

Anyway, one out of two ain't bad - he got the 'nihilistic psychosis' part right on.

When things get particularly difficult I sometimes re-read his Double Vision; because it is short, because it was the last thing he published ... whatever.

In Chapter 2 he talks about Pynchon, and says:

The Bible is emphatic that nothing numinous exists in nature, that there may be devils there but no gods, and that nature is to be thought of as a fellow-creature of man. However, the paranoid attitude to nature that Pynchon describes survives in the manic-depressive psychosis of the twentieth century. In the manic phase, we are told that the age of Aquarius is coming, and that soon the world will be turned back to the state of innocence. In the depressive phase, news analysts explain that pollution has come to a point at which any sensible nature would simply wipe us out and start experimenting with a new species. In interviews I am almost invariably asked at some point whether I feel optimistic or pessimistic about some contemporary situation. The answer is that these imbecile words are euphemisms for manic-depressive highs and lows, and that anyone who struggles for sanity avoids both.

I'm not sure he had Pynchon quite as pegged as he thought ... but it does follow on from talk of psychotic nihilism eh?

I have never understood why my friend Keith disliked Frye so much? Some kind of competition or fear? Or maybe it was an ideological thing? Can't say. His wife used to brag that he would write a book that would knock Anatomy of Criticism right off the shelves - but he never wrote it.

Interesting that it is very difficult here to say that Frye's faith, if he had any, and the central position of the Bible in his work are ... irrelevant to me. Treading very close to issues that have no issue (as it were).

There's them sumac sprouts again: Raise the flag boys and girls! Bit of sun first thing in the morning like that is about what they get - though as the days grow shorter again and as the sun moves southwards it lasts a little longer each day.

The days grow shorter and the sun lasts longer - how can that be?

Sumac is dioecious (enough vowels in that one for ya?) - separate male and female plants. And sure enough, two kinds of sprouts emerged. Sadly the first two up, and quite obviously different from the ones that remain, withered and shriveled up and died. No idea if they were male or female (you can still see one of them in the photo) - with luck what is left will grow large enough to know for certain. Then there will have to be another sprouting program to bring balance and harmony to this little Sumac realm - years of work ahead, imagine!

Also by chance came this update of the life of the hummingbird from last week. Lookin' good.

How is it that the longest day has passed but the hottest weather is yet to come?

William Blake's Jerusalem is now coming from the library too. The public library system here is one thing that works. ... Had to go up to emerg at St. Michael's to renew a prescription yesterday afternoon - and discovered that (at least that part of) the Ontario health system works too. The delightful young Chinese doctor laughed when I (indirectly) called her a quack. Making a woman laugh, laughing with a woman, you can't beat that (!)

Be well gentle reader.

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Postscript:

A few more images from Seri, and a few others that seemed too apt not to include.

Don't you have Facebook or Twitter, E-mail?

Don't you have anything in the virtual world?

Aren't you real?






And a series of articles from the Guardian about the political support given to nuclear energy following Fukushima:

British government's plan to play down Fukushima, June 30: Internal emails seen by Guardian show PR campaign was launched to protect UK nuclear plans after tsunami in Japan.

UK government and nuclear industry email correspondence after the Fukushima accident, June 30: Emails released under the Freedom of Information Act reveal the level of coordination between government departments and the nuclear industry during the Fukushima crisis.

Call for Chris Huhne to resign over Fukushima emails, July 1: Former party chief executive in Scotland says Huhne must go over 'conspiracy' to protect nuclear industry.

Scottish government signals end to nuclear power opposition, July 1: Energy minister says SNP is 'perfectly open' to extending the life of existing nuclear power stations.

Fukushima spin was Orwellian, July 1: Emails detailing how the UK government played down Fukushima show just how cosy it is with the nuclear industry.

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Appendices:

1. Circumcision and bigotry, Dow Marmur, June 26 2011.

 

2. EPA Urges More Scrutiny of Pipeline Expansion, Ben Lefebvre (Wall Street Journal), June 7 2011.

 

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Circumcision and bigotry, Dow Marmur, June 26 2011.

In our time, a growing number of responsible exponents of Christianity are going out of their way to either reinterpret or distance themselves from the many anti-Jewish references in the New Testament. For in addition to the age-old malicious accusation that Jews are responsible for the death of Jesus, Christian scriptures have condemned many fundamental Jewish practices.

Circumcision is one of them. Though Paul — like Jesus, John the Baptist and the early Christians — was circumcised, he “spiritualized” it in ways that legitimize the rejection of the rite that goes back to the biblical Abraham.

The implication is, of course, that what was important for Jews — adherents of “the religion of law” — is irrelevant to Christians, who live by “the religion of love.” Paul’s later followers often openly attacked circumcision.

Contemporary exponents of Christianity, on the other hand, have been accepting of the practice. In fact, many Christians, including the Royal Family, circumcise their male offspring.

Christian anti-Judaism has in modern times been hijacked by secular enemies of religion. It’s manifest as anti-Semitism, often in the guise of pseudo-science or out of feigned commitment to human rights. Male circumcision is usually maligned as “genital mutilation.”

Soon the citizens of San Francisco may be urged to ban the procedure, even though many American men are circumcised.

Significantly, among the strongest contemporary opponents of the call to ban circumcision are Christians. Prominent among them, apart from California evangelicals, is the Catholic archbishop of San Francisco, George Niederauer. He has written:

“Although the issue does not concern Christians directly, as a religious leader I can only view with alarm the prospect that this misguided initiative would make it illegal for Jews and Muslims who practise their religion to live in San Francisco — for that is what the passage of such a law would mean.”

Not only have Jews — for whom circumcision has been one of the foremost expressions of identity — reacted strongly against the proposal and its sinister implications, so have Muslims, who also circumcise their sons.

The media have mostly recognized the attack on circumcision for what it is: anti-Semitism in the guise of ostensibly humanitarian declarations laced with hypocrisy and misleading medical references. Thoughtful analyses in defence of the practice have appeared in editorials in quality newspapers in Canada, the United States and elsewhere.

The overwhelming majority of medical opinion isn’t opposed to male circumcision. The procedure is considered to be particularly beneficial in the fight against the spread of AIDS. Canada’s Stephen Lewis, who has been in the forefront on this fight, is an enthusiastic advocate.

To compare it to the terrible custom of female circumcision is a ludicrous and malicious attempt to misrepresent gender equality. Circumcision in women is very harmful and Judaism, too, forbids it.

While condemning female circumcision for the untold harm it does, including making child-bearing so risky that it can even lead to infant death, the World Health Organization has declared that “male circumcision has significant health benefits that outweigh the very low risk of complications.” The report strongly supports it in the fight against HIV/AIDS.

You don’t have to be paranoid to discern naked prejudice against Muslims and Jews in the opposition to ritual male circumcision. Sadly, perhaps reflecting their own neuroses, a small number of Jews have integrated the calumny and don’t want their sons to be subjected to the rite. Instead, they’d like to distort the practice by inventing artificial ceremonies that seek to eliminate the hallowed custom.

Anti-Semitism not only endangers the lives of faithful Jews but also has the insidious potential to poison the minds of its victims.

Dow Marmur is rabbi emeritus at Toronto’s Holy Blossom Temple.

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EPA Urges More Scrutiny of Pipeline Expansion, Ben Lefebvre (Wall Street Journal), June 7 2011.

HOUSTON — The Environmental Protection Agency called on the State Department to increase its scrutiny of TransCanada Corp.'s plan to extend its Keystone pipeline system, saying leaks along the line present an environmental challenge.

The 1,300-mile line has sprung 11 leaks overall during its one-year lifespan, raising concerns about the company's plans to nearly double the system's capacity as part of its so-called Keystone XL project, the EPA said in a letter to the State Department. TransCanada restarted the 591,000 barrel-a-day line Sunday after a May 29 leak of 10 barrels of oil in Kansas. The line also spilled 400 barrels of oil on May 7 in North Dakota.

"These events...underscore the comments about the need to carefully consider both the route of the proposed Keystone XL Pipeline and the appropriate measure to prevent and detect a spill," Cynthia Giles, EPA's assistant administrator for enforcement and compliance assurance, said in the letter, dated June 6 and released publicly Tuesday. "EPA believes additional analysis is necessary to fully respond...to ensure a full evaluation of the potential impacts of the proposed project."

The State Department is expected to issue a decision whether to approve TransCanada's expansion project by the end of this year. The department on Monday said it would add six additional public meetings to its permit-review process.

Advocates of the Keystone expansion have said the system would supply the U.S. with more oil from a politically stable ally. TransCanada's ability to detect and clean up the leaks has also been a point in the company's favor, petroleum trade association American Petroleum Institute said.

"This shows that the process works," said Marty Durbin, the API's executive vice president of government affairs.

Despite the number of leaks, the line's structural integrity isn't a problem, TransCanada spokesman James Millar has said.

"The majority (of leaks) have been small and manageable," Mr. Millar said in an email. "All were cleaned up quickly and we moved forward."

Environmentalists have criticized the expansion plan, saying that a new pipeline would run across environmentally sensitive aquifers. They have also raised concerns about the type of oil the line transports, a heavy crude mined from oil sands in western Canada. Environmental groups have said production of the oil-sands crude greatly increases greenhouse-gas emissions.

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Down

complacent k-k-Canadian changes on k-k-Canada Day (eh?) ...

Up, Down.

Update Wednesday P.M.: nine hundred and some odd sax's playing O Canada with the Shuffle Demons in front of Toronto City Hall, and they played well and with spirit and without an ounce of complacency that I could see (a momentary lapse no doubt), and I tell you what - it brought a tear to my eye, did so ... nonetheless, k-k-Canada continues as a smug self-righteous sinkhole of complacency, or even the smug-est self-right-issimo & complacent-est on the planet; good on Jeffrey Simpson for speaking it out loud and clear: Yes, we love our country, but ‘best in the world'? Get real.


Wednesday A.M.: sometimes I get complacent too eh? think I know things, occupational hazard of living anywhere withing cutural reach of this stodgy country of k-k-Canada ... but God is good to me and has ways of reminding me, big and small ... today it is that Edward Greenspon is gone from the Globe, I had no idea, last I heard of him he was comforting his son who had been (merely) injured when a nut-case pushed him off the Subway platform in front of a train, lucky son, and helped by his friend apparently, doubly lucky

actually He is giving a double whack to my complacent pee-pee today - I was sure I had already posted about Adenir Oliveira and Jacob Greenspon with pictures yet! but damned if I or the Google search tools can find it ... doesn't mean it is not there mind you, just some kind of 'chance' some kind of cultural equivalent to quantum mechanical dice games ...

and I might not have bothered today either, except some pundit over at Rabble.ca used a quote from our Bob in relation to Greenspon's firing (it was "the times they are a changin'") ... so it stuck, and here I am, you have to laugh ...

anyway, here's some of the news from back in February:



I remember reading later that our Adenir DeOliveira got put away without benefit of any grace because he was unhinged ... and I can't tell ...

and here is the article at Rabble.ca about our Eddie getting fired from the Globe ... ho hum ...

today's adventure will be to see if the Shuffle Demons manage to pull it off down at City Hall in the absence of garbage 'workers' (?) no way of telling ahead of time ... oops, something must have changed in the meantime, when I did that search early this morning it was all I could do to find what time the thing was happening, AND I came up with 4:30 pm, which turns out to be wrong (e-ven!) it is 4:00 pm and best to get there by 3 I would hazard ...

a-and no fireworks I saw on the TV news in a small bar somewhere ... what is to celebrate exactly? to me the nostalgic and sentimental outweighs that pride I used to feel at times growing up here, even so-called 'Canada Day' which is really the anniversary of Beaumont Hamel, and a day of grief (if not shame) for Newfoundlanders, so ... I don't feel it any more, mostly I feel shame, and ... boredom ... whatever ...

BUT the Globe today had four (4! count 'em!) cartoons that gave me a chuckle, the first one (Dilbert) being a too-accurate look at what I imagine the inside of the Globe's IT department/IT contractor looks like :-)



a-and the last one, Bizarro's look at obesity, reminds me of something else ...

Toilets! categorical proof that the current Standard was invented by women! please don't pardon the pun and any disrespect to the company of that name is intentional, and why is it 'American' standard anyway? are American men smaller? is that it? Bizarro is showing his American bias for sure

a long story of course, I have no idea if there was a time when men's parts did not drag against the inside of these damned porcelain toilet fixtures, certainly they did not drag against outhouse holes, I am old enough to know that one, not to mention that outhouses are far better for the environment - and I have to go back in my memory here to a biology class in the sixties when the lecturer was going at the Potassium cycle which has an open ended drain into the deep ocean thanks to our public utilities, I know a smart kid with a degree in biology but I never got an answer to my email asking about this, oh well ...

there are two fundamental issues (and here I mean fundamental in the anatomical sense), One: that WHEN you lift the lid and IF the lid is fitted with a fuzzy cover THEN the lid likely falls down again, and depending how drunk you are it may whack your pee-pee, or you may try to catch it with your free hand and miss the bowl entirely, spraying all over the place with subsequent penalties etc. and Two: if it is #2 (symmetry is everywhere!) your male part drags aginst the inside of the bowl which is an entirely disagreeable sensation nevermind that it is probably a way of transmitting some unspeakably awful disease ...

now, maybe this doesn't happen to everyone, I have no idea of the size of my 'package' compared to anyone else's, just never got around to that particular investigation ... but ... well, maybe this means that I am well endowed eh? or maybe it just means that most of the men in this culture are pussy whipped wimps and afraid to speak up ... can't say, maybe there has even been a slow devolution here as toilet manufacturers have gradually reduced costs by reducing the size, maybe the people who run these factories are women, I don't know

sometimes you come across larger ones in upscale private clubs so maybe this is a working-class thing

while I am on the subject (or sort of :-) ... I ran across this in Fables of Identity the other night:

"Yet Byron had certainly anticipated Shaw's central idea, that woman takes the lead in sexual relations and that Don Juan is consequently as much a victim as a pursuer."

        Northrop Frye, Fables of Identity, Lord Byron.

a-and this revelation offended middle-class sensibilities apparently, and was a contributor to Byron's loss of readership in England ... interesting.

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Appendices:
1. What's behind the shake up at 'Canada's newspaper of record'?, Nick Fillmore, June 2 2009.
2. Adenir DeOliveira experienced 'auditory hallucinations' to kill people, judge told, Timothy Appleby & Anthony Reinhart, February 21 2009.
3. Yes, we love our country, but ‘best in the world'? Get real, Jeffrey Simpson, July 1 2009.
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What's behind the shake up at 'Canada's newspaper of record'?, Nick Fillmore, June 2 2009.

The media community was buzzing last week over the departure of the Globe and Mail’s Chief Editor Ed Greenspon, replaced by the highly-decorated John Stackhouse, who most recently whipped the Globe’s bastion of free enterprise thinking -- The Report on Business (RoB) -- into shape.

Within hours of the Globe upheaval, David Akin of CanWest News Service in Ottawa Tweeted that the “gossip” was that Greenspon had been forced out because he refused to agree to a new round of staff cuts. But others speculate that it’s possible Greenspon was fired or resigned on the spot following a dispute with Globe Publisher Phillip Crawley over a number of issues. Greenspon had spent a long six years as Editor-in-Chief and either he or Crawley, or both of them, may have felt his time was up.

Stackhouse may have gotten close to the truth when he said on the Globe website that, while he and Greenspon have “similar visions of what quality journalism is,” he would be better than Greenspon at cooperating with other divisions at the Globe as well as with outside organizations with which the paper needs to build partnerships.

New Editor rose through the ranks

The position of Editor-in-Chief of the Globe is an important one because of the political tone the person sets for the paper and the impact he (historically always a man) has on the nature of journalism at what is the country’s most influential media institution.

Stackhouse is probably the only Globe journalist, other than Greenspon, whom one might have expected to come up through the Globe ranks to become Editor-in-Chief. Both have had great accomplishments in mainstream journalism. Greenspon had been a top-notch reporter in Ottawa, a published author, and, like Stackhouse, head of the RoB. Just three days before Greenspon disappeared from the Globe, the paper won six of 22 top national newspaper awards.

Stackhouse, 46, who lacks managerial experience, may be arriving in the post before he is fully equipped to take it on. Nevertheless, his track record is impressive: a winner of a record five National Newspaper Awards, he is remembered for his six years of groundbreaking reporting overseas as Canada’s sole development journalist, and for a controversial series of stories he wrote after spending a week living amid poverty in downtown Toronto. While head of the RoB, he humanized the publication by adding new features and columnists.

Stackhouse, who likely focuses better on the task at hand and who is a better ‘team player’ than Greenspon, is likely to bring new changes to the paper -- but we’ll have to wait to see which will be in the public interest and which will simply serve the Globe’s corporate interests. Once Stackhouse has worked his way into the job, he could strengthen the Globe in a number of ways. Even though the paper is strapped for cash, Stackhouse, who knows the importance and impact of big stories, might be able to fight to maintain a budget for investigative and in-depth journalism of the nature that won the Globe its six awards last year.

Big business perspective favoured too often

Additionally, Stackhouse could implement newsroom policies that would bring more balance to their stories. Too often stories are skewed in favour of big business or government with opposing views buried at the bottom of the story or totally omitted. He would have the authority to correct one of Greenspon’s sins, by reducing the obsessive coverage of Ottawa and federal politics.

But it’s unlikely he’ll be able to increase the size of the Globe’s news hole, or to reinstate full Focus and Books sections in the Saturday Globe. And will he want to -- or be able to -- reduce the Globe’s preoccupation with crime stories, which the higher ups probably feel need to appear in the paper to help them fend off the likes of The Sun papers across the country.

No matter who occupies the post, the Editor-in-Chief will almost certainly never be able to change some of the most fundamental restrictions and repressive policies that exist at the Globe. Publisher/CEO Crawley and the behind-the-scenes faceless “higher-ups” who call the shots make sure that anyone in a position of authority at the paper accepts the values of the mainstream media.

The Globe is a formidable partner in and supporter of Canada’s corporate culture, and this role takes precedence over and, indeed, shapes the paper’s approach to news and information. As a result, no new editor-in-chief is likely to tackle these fundamental problems with the Globe:

• While the paper is greatly valued by tens-of-thousands of Canadians for its excellent coverage in areas such as the environment, justice, public-interest investigations, foreign features and the arts, when it comes to the all-important area of national politics, its reporting too often favors small-c conservative positions and its editorials tend to have a neo-liberal flavour. Using an approach taken by most media in today’s right-wing dominated society, the paper tends to provide much of its coverage based on the power and influence of the Right. Its political coverage would be much improved, and of greater value to Canadians, if more stories focused on serving the public interest and discussing alternative political ideas.

• The paper’s reporting and editorial positions largely accept the business community’s mantra that all policies should be evaluated in the light of their ability to serve ‘the market’ and those who most benefit from it. Although, in the light of the collapse of the world economy, this position would seem to be indefensible, it remains -- and will continue to remain -- the philosophy of the Globe.

• When Greenspon and Stackhouse were at the RoB, neither tackled one of the most serious problems with business journalism. The RoB follows its own business-friendly standards when it comes to journalism. Unethical corporate behavior might be considered ‘newsworthy’ in the front section of the paper. In the RoB, by contrast, where investment and profit are the main measures of newsworthiness, if a Canadian company mining in, say, Indonesia is destroying the environment and paying poverty wages, editors don’t consider these mere details relevant to the story of the company’s ‘success.’

• While the paper is quick to promote national pride around events such as Canada Day, it is strongly opposed to nationalistic public policy positions taken by groups such as the Council of Canadians and various unions. The Globe is much more likely to mock such groups through its conservative columnists than give their positions and efforts the attention and analysis they deserve.

• The Globe seldom, if ever, reports on or editorializes in a positive way about progress being made in radical socialist countries. In fact, it is much more likely it will send a reporter to one of these countries -- for instance one of the Latin American countries turning to socialism -- to prepare a pre-planned critical report, ignoring advances that may have occurred, such as progress in land reform, education or health care. As a result, Canadians who rely on the Globe for their foreign news don't get a balanced view of the world.

Given the Globe’s right-wing biases and its old-school approach to journalism, no one should be surprised that thousands of Canadians -- particularly young people -- prefer to go to the Internet to get their news and information.

Deep pockets at the Globe

There’s some evidence to indicate that CTVglobemedia, of which the Globe is part, is facing less financial stress than most other media companies. The Globe owners are in a strong position to take on short-term debt because they have very deep pockets. The primary owners are BCE Inc., owners of Bell and several other companies, and the Thomsons, one of the richest families in Canada with a net worth last year of more than $18 billion.

Writing on J-Source.ca, journalist Kelly Toughill indicates that CTVglobemedia did fairly well financially last year. Citing difficult-to-access financial figures she uncovered, she says, “CTVglobemedia had an operating profit of 9.7 per cent in 2008, before the cost of interest, taxes and non-cash items like impairment of goodwill,” which is the perceived decline in the value of the company.

In May, Peter Rhamey of BMO Capital Markets Equity Research Group indicated in a report that CTVglobemedia’s major parent company BCE was coping well during the recession. And at least one part of BCE Inc. isn’t broke. In March, Bell Mobility laid out about $150 million ($142 million, according to this article in The Star) to buy controlling interest in The Source, which has some 750 outlets where Bell will now market its telephone and Internet products.

Like other newspapers, the Globe’s most serious challenge ahead will be to try to lessen the bleeding of millions of dollars in advertising revenues to Internet-based companies and to establish its own revenue-generating presence on the Internet. One of the problems is that unless an Internet site has a huge reach, its ads aren’t very lucrative. John Honderich, chair of the Toronto Star, spoke recently of the “10-cent dollar” -- every dollar spent on advertising in a newspaper tends to bring in about 10-cents on the Internet for a similar ad.

Wayne MacPhail, a board member of rabble.ca who has developed on-line content for many major Canadian companies, says the Globe and other newspapers were warned as long as 15 years ago that the Internet would have a significant impact on their businesses. He says there are very few people at the Globe who understand the type of innovation needed for the paper to successfully establish itself on the web. “The problem is, unlike the best web-based organs, the Globe is burdened with the historical, emotional, attitudinal and infrastructure baggage that weighs it down as it plods slowly forward.”

There is speculation that Stackhouse may be more successful than Greenspon in establishing the Globe on the Internet, but the ‘baggage’ that MacPhail refers to will inevitably limit the paper’s changes in this area -- as in so many others.


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Adenir DeOliveira experienced 'auditory hallucinations' to kill people, judge told, Timothy Appleby & Anthony Reinhart, February 21 2009.

THE SUBWAY INCIDENT

Whatever demons may have been lurking inside Adenir DeOliveira's head last week when he allegedly tried to kill three teenaged strangers by shoving them in the path of a subway train, there had been no apparent signs of trouble.

However, at a brief hearing yesterday at Old City Hall, Judge Kathleen Caldwell was told that at the time of the incident, Mr. DeOliveira was experiencing "auditory hallucinations" directing him to kill people.

The 47-year-old was examined Thursday at the Toronto (Don) Jail by Julian Gojer, a psychiatrist, upon whose advice Judge Caldwell ordered Mr. DeOliveira to undergo a 30-day psychiatric assessment at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health on Queen Street West.

There had been occasional hints of instability: A flash of temper, as recalled by a former landlady from Toronto's east side, where he once lived; the use of anti-depressant drugs; an inconsequential police encounter a couple of years ago.

But no one had any inkling that he might have been a ticking bomb. Not the police. Not his neighbours in his run-down, four-storey apartment block. And certainly not his horrified common-law wife, with whom he had been living on and off for six months.

A police source said she was "flabbergasted" by the charges.

"Right now we have no answers as to why he [allegedly] took these actions," said Inspector Bryce Evans of the Toronto police.

The outcome of last Friday's incident could have been far worse. Police allege that as an eastbound subway train roared into Dufferin station, Mr.

DeOliveira, unprovoked, shoved two 14-year-olds and a 15-year-old from behind. One of the three managed to stay on the platform; the other two tumbled on to the tracks. Both escaped serious injury when one rolled under the lip of the platform and pulled in his friend.

Stocky, neatly dressed when arrested, Mr. DeOliveira seemed unremarkable until he was catapulted into notoriety. A childless immigrant from Portugal, he owns and operates a modest lawn-care business and lives in an apartment in a working-class, immigrant-heavy section of west Toronto near Vaughan Road.

He has no criminal record - an unusual background for a man facing multiple counts of attempted murder and assault. And as far as is known, he has never received mental-health care inside an institution.

"He would go to work, come home, cook and go to sleep," said Nurjehan Meghji, who owns an East York townhouse, near Scarborough, where Mr. DeOliveira occupied the basement until about two years ago. He lived alone and paid $600 a month in rent.

"He was a very quiet person, he would only talk if he was being talked to and he never created any problems for me."

Mr. DeOliveira's marriage had recently ended at the time, and he would still visit his ex-wife, Ms. Meghji said. He used his pickup truck to haul materials for his lawn and sprinkler business. Ms. Meghji saw no signs of alcohol or drug abuse.

But her tenant could also be testy, she said. "Once I asked him to clean the snow outside and he became a little temperamental. He said, 'Why are you asking me? There's other people living in the house.' After that, I didn't ask him to do anything."

A few blocks from Eglinton and Victoria Park Avenues, the brick-clad townhouse is in an enclave of mostly Muslim families, with a mosque a short walk away. When Mr. DeOliveira moved to the west end, Ms. Meghji said, he explained that he wanted to be among people from his own background. She said she found nothing strange about that. "Mostly he seemed completely normal."

But at Mr. DeOliveira's first post-arrest court appearance last Saturday, it became plain that he was struggling with some difficulties. Relaying a request, duty counsel Al Hart asked that Mr. DeOliveira be given access to a trio of prescription drugs, all associated with anxiety problems: Effexor, Lorazepam and Seroquel.

Effexor is used to treat depression, while Lorazepam is prescribed for anxiety symptoms and insomnia. Seroquel is an anti-psychotic prescribed to patients with schizophrenia and manic episodes associated with bipolar disorder, and is also used to treat severe anxiety or refractory depression.

"Those three medications wouldn't tend to be [prescribed to] someone with a first episode of depression or anxiety disorder," said Wende Wood, a psychiatric pharmacist at Toronto's Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, stressing that she was speaking in general and not about Mr. DeOliveira's case. "It's not that unusual. I actually have a number of patients on similar combinations."

Mr. DeOliveira was a relative newcomer to the drugs' use. A source familiar with the investigation said that up until about a year ago, when severe depression began to set in, Mr. DeOliveira lived a relatively normal existence.

The drugs he took inhibited his sex drive, the source said, leaving Mr. DeOliveira unsure about continued use. Yet when he went for a medical checkup a couple of weeks before the subway incident, his doctor increased the dosage.

The 30-day NCR (not criminally responsible) assessment ordered yesterday was in response to a request from Mr. DeOliveira's lawyer, Ian Kostman. The lawyer presented a written report to Judge Caldwell, who took several minutes to read it and then agreed to send the accused directly from court to the CAMH building.

He will remain in police custody during the assessment period and return to court March 20.

Mr. DeOliveira, who wore beige pants, a baggy white T-shirt and an expression part blank and part melancholy, asked, through his lawyer, to be placed in protective custody. "He's concerned for his safety," Mr. Kostman said.

Referring to Dr. Gojer's report during yesterday's proceeding, Mr. Kostman said his client experienced auditory hallucinations "while speaking with the doctor and over previous days, telling him to kill people."

Dr. Gojer, Mr. Kostman said, had concluded that Mr. Oliveira was having "an acute psychotic episode," during the subway incident.


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Yes, we love our country, but ‘best in the world'? Get real, Jeffrey Simpson, July 1 2009.

If Canada's so great and the world needs more of us, name the last great Canadian initiative

There was something rather nice about Canada, years ago, when it was a modest country, or at least when Canadians thought about their country in that fashion.

Today, if polls can be believed, Canadians are in love with their country - which is okay - but in love to a fault in that, apparently, almost 90 per cent of them believe they live in “the best country in the world.”

There are many admirable aspects of Canada, and we exult in them around Canada Day. But the dangers of thinking of your country as the cat's meow are hubris and, worse still, a stubborn inability to look problems in the eye or to learn from others.

If there is one assertion around which almost all Canadians would rally, it is that, as the Chapters Indigo slogan puts it, the “world needs more Canada.” The assumption supporting this assertion is that we Canadians are so worthy, morally upright and generally well-intentioned that the world would be a better place if it were more like, well, us. Which, in turn, leads Canadians to their deadliest sin: an unsinkable moral superiority.

We do lead the world in some instances. For example, we have the world's worst record among industrialized countries for emitting greenhouse-gas emissions that cause global warming. Of all the countries that signed the Kyoto Protocol, Canada's emissions rose the fastest - faster than even U.S. emissions under George W. Bush.

We are now parading ourselves at climate-change conferences proclaiming a goal of reducing emissions by 20 per cent by 2020 from a 2005 yardstick. Our previous record, however, is so bad, and the Harper's government's interest in climate change so ephemeral, that almost no country in the talks gives Canada much credibility at all.

Canada is almost alone in flogging asbestos around the world, or at least preventing more serious impediments to its export, all to protect some jobs in the Quebec town of Thetford Mines.

We club baby seals and give ourselves a black eye in Europe and elsewhere for an industry that, yes, has been around for a long time and, yes, forms part of the Inuit's traditional culture, but that brings in very little revenue in exchange for terrible publicity.

We have the tar sands, the defence of which no government will fail to try, without contemplating, let alone forcing, new ways of exploiting the resource in ways that might make it sustainable - except for a useful but far from adequate investment in carbon capture and storage.

The world trade negotiations, the so-called Doha round, are dormant, but when they showed some flickering life to liberalize trade, Canada was in the dark corner with France, some other European countries, Japan and South Korea - the usual suspects - blocking agricultural reform to preserve the protectionist supply management system.

Canada used to have a reputation as an honest broker with peacekeeping troops serving United Nations missions - a role that won kudos. But now our troops are committed to NATO's mission in Afghanistan, so very few are available for what Canadians used to think the world liked us for doing.

Put matters another way: If Canada is so great and if the world needs more of us, just what Canadian “initiative” can you think of in the past, say, four or five years, since Paul Martin suggested a G20 instead of a G8, an idea that matured into a reality?

Domestically, the country's greatest accomplishment was getting its fiscal house in order - which, in turn, led to excellent short-term results and positioned the country well for the aging of the population that will strain government resources. We also beefed up money for university research. But our productivity and competitiveness continue to lag.

The decline of manufacturing and the struggles of high technology reveal Canada for essentially being what it's always been - a hewer of wood and drawer of water, a country excessively dependent not on brain power but on natural resources.

To repeat: There are admirable aspects of being Canadian, and these have all been justly celebrated on Canada Day. But self-satisfaction can lead to a refusal to acknowledge weaknesses, to allow patriotism to curb critical thought, to refuse to face hard choices, and to cover a slow, albeit comfortable, slide toward international marginality and domestic mediocrity.



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