I launched myself onto Twitter yesterday, but only halfway. After signing up, I tweated a few times into the great vault of cyber-space. I even established a new rating agency along the lines of Standard and Poor’s, to be called the James Laxer Rating Agency. It will specialize in rating empires. In its first rating, the Agency downgraded the American Empire from a double D+ to a triple E.
But I’m only halfway onto Twitter because I don’t know any elegant way to tell anyone that I’m there. I spent hours trying to get a Twitter button onto my blog, but failed. I have now handed that task over to someone who was born when the American Empire was healthier, but not nearly as healthy as it was when I was his age.
So, maybe we'll encounter each other in the Brave New World of Twitter.
Sunday, August 07, 2011
Tuesday, August 02, 2011
WE DON’T NEED A LECTURE FROM ALBERTA “FIREWALL” HARPER
The Conservatives pride themselves on their ability to throw opposition leaders under the bus. And they’re at it now with NDP interim leader Nycole Turmel. She is a self-proclaimed federalist and always has been. She was a member of the BQ and of Quebec Solidaire and the Conservatives are trying to use this to prove that she and the NDP have serious questions to answer about their commitment to federalism.
You’ve got to love the Conservatives.
Look at Stephen Harper whose commitment to federalism was a lot shakier than that of Ms. Turmel ever was before he became leader of the Canadian Alliance. He was on the record with views that were intensely hostile to Canada, something you cannot say about Nycole Turmel.
In 1997, Harper delivered a speech to a U.S. conservative think tank in which he said that “Canada is a Northern European welfare state in the worst sense of the term, and very proud of it.” He further stated that “the NDP is kind of proof that the Devil lives and interferes in the affairs of men.”
Following the federal election of 2000, along with other right wingers, Harper co-authored a document called the “Alberta Agenda”.
It called on the provincial government to “build firewalls around Alberta” to stop the federal government from redistributing the province’s wealth to less affluent regions. That year Harper also wrote that Canada “appears content to become a second-tier socialistic country…led by a second-world strongman [Jean Chretien] appropriately suited for the task.” He advocated a “stronger and much more autonomous Alberta.”
This guy is the Conservative idea of a federalist!
If the Conservatives are going to start demanding loyalty oaths from political leaders, they are going to have to delve into the past and check out the late Richard Hatfield who was Conservative premier of New Brunswick for many years. Not only did Hatfield seek electoral advice from the Parti Quebecois while Rene Levesque was the sovereignist premier of Quebec, on the theory that they both hated Liberals, in a moment of enthusiasm he even took out a membership in the PQ. Hatfield a separatist! Who knew?
You’ve got to love the Conservatives.
Look at Stephen Harper whose commitment to federalism was a lot shakier than that of Ms. Turmel ever was before he became leader of the Canadian Alliance. He was on the record with views that were intensely hostile to Canada, something you cannot say about Nycole Turmel.
In 1997, Harper delivered a speech to a U.S. conservative think tank in which he said that “Canada is a Northern European welfare state in the worst sense of the term, and very proud of it.” He further stated that “the NDP is kind of proof that the Devil lives and interferes in the affairs of men.”
Following the federal election of 2000, along with other right wingers, Harper co-authored a document called the “Alberta Agenda”.
It called on the provincial government to “build firewalls around Alberta” to stop the federal government from redistributing the province’s wealth to less affluent regions. That year Harper also wrote that Canada “appears content to become a second-tier socialistic country…led by a second-world strongman [Jean Chretien] appropriately suited for the task.” He advocated a “stronger and much more autonomous Alberta.”
This guy is the Conservative idea of a federalist!
If the Conservatives are going to start demanding loyalty oaths from political leaders, they are going to have to delve into the past and check out the late Richard Hatfield who was Conservative premier of New Brunswick for many years. Not only did Hatfield seek electoral advice from the Parti Quebecois while Rene Levesque was the sovereignist premier of Quebec, on the theory that they both hated Liberals, in a moment of enthusiasm he even took out a membership in the PQ. Hatfield a separatist! Who knew?
Monday, July 04, 2011
Rob Ford: It’s Safe to Come Back to Toronto Now
Rob Ford has nothing to fear. Pride 2011 is history. He can slink back to his office at City Hall.
I can report to the Mayor that nothing untoward happened at the great Pride Parade. A million plus people packed the streets on a brilliant day to celebrate humanity, and diversity. So much more than tolerance---it was a celebration, a proclamation of love and respect.
I spent most the time calling out for the marchers and those on the floats to spray us with much needed water, which they happily did.
At a time like this, when the narrow-minded and the dividers rule in Ottawa and at Nathan Phillips Square---soon to come to Queen’s Park I guess---we got a chance to see the true face of this civilized city. I was among those who received a stirring short lecture from a postal worker on the need to protect social services.
It was wonderful to bask in the energy of all the people who came out to represent a very broad range of organizations, from gay hockey players to Catholic high school kids, to the magnificently attired in all their finery.
But I’m sure Rob Ford will get a briefing from City Councillor Giorgio Mammoliti and his camcorder. The Councillor skulked around the Dike March on Saturday with his camera seeking evidence on which to base his conviction that Pride Week should receive no city funding next year. He found a few marchers who proclaimed that Israel is an Apartheid State. If he’d come back on Sunday, he would have found a happy, celebratory contingent of gay Jews, who carried Israeli flags and touted the benefits of Israelis and Palestinians enjoying cafes together.
Gotcha Mammoliti is like one of the censors in Elizabethan England who checked out the London theatres to prove that the women characters on stage were being played by actual women. And when they got the proof on their camcorders, they shut down the shows.
Rob Ford should be warned that Toronto has changed since he took off for his cottage last week. He provided the punctuation at the celebration on Sunday. His face leered out from every body part.
In the months to come, he’ll have to face up to the fact that we know what he did last summer.
I can report to the Mayor that nothing untoward happened at the great Pride Parade. A million plus people packed the streets on a brilliant day to celebrate humanity, and diversity. So much more than tolerance---it was a celebration, a proclamation of love and respect.
I spent most the time calling out for the marchers and those on the floats to spray us with much needed water, which they happily did.
At a time like this, when the narrow-minded and the dividers rule in Ottawa and at Nathan Phillips Square---soon to come to Queen’s Park I guess---we got a chance to see the true face of this civilized city. I was among those who received a stirring short lecture from a postal worker on the need to protect social services.
It was wonderful to bask in the energy of all the people who came out to represent a very broad range of organizations, from gay hockey players to Catholic high school kids, to the magnificently attired in all their finery.
But I’m sure Rob Ford will get a briefing from City Councillor Giorgio Mammoliti and his camcorder. The Councillor skulked around the Dike March on Saturday with his camera seeking evidence on which to base his conviction that Pride Week should receive no city funding next year. He found a few marchers who proclaimed that Israel is an Apartheid State. If he’d come back on Sunday, he would have found a happy, celebratory contingent of gay Jews, who carried Israeli flags and touted the benefits of Israelis and Palestinians enjoying cafes together.
Gotcha Mammoliti is like one of the censors in Elizabethan England who checked out the London theatres to prove that the women characters on stage were being played by actual women. And when they got the proof on their camcorders, they shut down the shows.
Rob Ford should be warned that Toronto has changed since he took off for his cottage last week. He provided the punctuation at the celebration on Sunday. His face leered out from every body part.
In the months to come, he’ll have to face up to the fact that we know what he did last summer.
Thursday, June 23, 2011
NDP REPRIEVE: SOCIALISM LIVES TO FIGHT ANOTHER DAY
In my last post, rumours of Socialism’s death were greatly exaggerated.
At age 215, Socialism had its neck on the chopping block at the recent NDP convention in Vancouver when a last minute reprieve spared it.
The fate of Socialism was referred to the NDP executive where its future will be deliberated and a recommendation will be made to a future convention at an unspecified date. The mere thought of having one’s fate referred to the unblinking, steely gaze of NDP executive members gives me a fit of the horrors.
Instead of having its neck on the chopping block, Socialism now has one foot on a banana peel. It could still roll through the streets on a tumbril in the not too distant future to a place of execution.
(Meanwhile, word has just been received that the United Church has put Jesus Christ on waivers. He may be sold to a rival denomination.)
At age 215, Socialism had its neck on the chopping block at the recent NDP convention in Vancouver when a last minute reprieve spared it.
The fate of Socialism was referred to the NDP executive where its future will be deliberated and a recommendation will be made to a future convention at an unspecified date. The mere thought of having one’s fate referred to the unblinking, steely gaze of NDP executive members gives me a fit of the horrors.
Instead of having its neck on the chopping block, Socialism now has one foot on a banana peel. It could still roll through the streets on a tumbril in the not too distant future to a place of execution.
(Meanwhile, word has just been received that the United Church has put Jesus Christ on waivers. He may be sold to a rival denomination.)
Saturday, June 18, 2011
BULLETIN FROM THE NDP: SOCIALISM, 1796-2011, IS DEAD. RIP.
The NDP leadership has announced that Socialism, aged 215, is dead. “Nobody uses the word ‘democratic socialism’ in contemporary terms. It is very rare,” an unnamed senior party official told the press on the eve of the NDP convention in Vancouver. The convention was expected to remove the word “socialist” from the preamble to the party constitution. When unnamed NDP officials speak they get their way.
As these things go, socialism had a good run before the NDP brass consigned it to the dustbin of history.
In its modern form, socialism put in a first appearance in 1796 in the latter stages of the French Revolution. In truth, it was the foundling of the revolution, unanticipated by the Revolution’s most illustrious figures who ushered the tenets of liberal capitalism onto the stage of history as a transformative force.
Up popped the first socialists during the revolution to proclaim that the liberal conception of equality was incomplete, that it bestowed the rights of citizenship on all men (not yet women), but that it did not come to terms with the social and economic inequality that is intrinsic to capitalism. Capitalism establishes a new ruling class and capitalists control those who work for them and reap the profits of their labour, the socialists declared, before being dispatched to the guillotine.
The capitalists had managed a great revolution, the socialists said, but there was another giant step toward equality that remained to be taken. With that step, social and economic exploitation would end and those who worked for a living would gain the fruits of their labour and would set the priorities for their places of work. Economic and social democracy would exist side by side with political democracy.
Equality of condition and not merely equality of opportunity would be the goal.
In Canada, the greatest achievement of those who espoused equality of condition has been medicare. Tommy Douglas knew that medicare must serve all people who need health care on an equal basis, regardless of their income or wealth. Barack Obama is mired in a liberal muddle, trying to introduce fairness to a health care system that leaves private insurance companies in charge.
During its 215 year lifespan, socialism took many forms and socialists fought long and hard internecine battles. In the totalitarian Communist regimes that called themselves socialist, dissent was a capital offence. (Capitalism had its own dark side, I should add. Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and militarist Japan, not to mention today’s China, have all been capitalist societies.)
Democratic socialism proved a hardy breed and took multiple forms in the industrialized countries. Some sects were small enough to meet in a telephone booth; others could have held their conclaves in psychiatric institutions.
Socialist parties in Europe have often achieved more that their sisters and brothers in Canada---in some cases including free university tuition, strong job protection and termination benefits, higher minimum wages, better pensions, pharmacare, free full day early childhood education, state funded family vacations, worker participation in the management of industry, generous parental leave, a shorter work week, rent subsidies, and in a few odd cases, free firewood, and free access to municipally owned ski lifts and ski runs.
The Party of European Socialists in the European Parliament, one of the two largest groupings in the EP, includes member parties from across the EU including the French Socialists, the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party, the British Labour Party, the German Social Democrats, and the Swedish Social Democrats.
The early 18th and 19th century socialists would not have been surprised to learn that for the past several decades the gap in income and wealth between the rich and the rest of the population, including wage and salary earners and the poor, has been yawning ever wider, that greater inequality is a fact of life in all industrialized countries. That’s capitalism for you, they would think. Time to roll up our sleeves and carry on the socialist struggle, they would have concluded.
But I’m not one to argue with the NDP leadership, especially its unnamed officials, who have announced that socialism was dead.
Word of socialism’s death will still have to be broken to the millions of Europeans and their parties who haven’t yet heard the news. Perhaps a top, unnamed NDP official should be sent on a mission to let the laggards know that at the age of 215, socialism has gone belly up.
As these things go, socialism had a good run before the NDP brass consigned it to the dustbin of history.
In its modern form, socialism put in a first appearance in 1796 in the latter stages of the French Revolution. In truth, it was the foundling of the revolution, unanticipated by the Revolution’s most illustrious figures who ushered the tenets of liberal capitalism onto the stage of history as a transformative force.
Up popped the first socialists during the revolution to proclaim that the liberal conception of equality was incomplete, that it bestowed the rights of citizenship on all men (not yet women), but that it did not come to terms with the social and economic inequality that is intrinsic to capitalism. Capitalism establishes a new ruling class and capitalists control those who work for them and reap the profits of their labour, the socialists declared, before being dispatched to the guillotine.
The capitalists had managed a great revolution, the socialists said, but there was another giant step toward equality that remained to be taken. With that step, social and economic exploitation would end and those who worked for a living would gain the fruits of their labour and would set the priorities for their places of work. Economic and social democracy would exist side by side with political democracy.
Equality of condition and not merely equality of opportunity would be the goal.
In Canada, the greatest achievement of those who espoused equality of condition has been medicare. Tommy Douglas knew that medicare must serve all people who need health care on an equal basis, regardless of their income or wealth. Barack Obama is mired in a liberal muddle, trying to introduce fairness to a health care system that leaves private insurance companies in charge.
During its 215 year lifespan, socialism took many forms and socialists fought long and hard internecine battles. In the totalitarian Communist regimes that called themselves socialist, dissent was a capital offence. (Capitalism had its own dark side, I should add. Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and militarist Japan, not to mention today’s China, have all been capitalist societies.)
Democratic socialism proved a hardy breed and took multiple forms in the industrialized countries. Some sects were small enough to meet in a telephone booth; others could have held their conclaves in psychiatric institutions.
Socialist parties in Europe have often achieved more that their sisters and brothers in Canada---in some cases including free university tuition, strong job protection and termination benefits, higher minimum wages, better pensions, pharmacare, free full day early childhood education, state funded family vacations, worker participation in the management of industry, generous parental leave, a shorter work week, rent subsidies, and in a few odd cases, free firewood, and free access to municipally owned ski lifts and ski runs.
The Party of European Socialists in the European Parliament, one of the two largest groupings in the EP, includes member parties from across the EU including the French Socialists, the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party, the British Labour Party, the German Social Democrats, and the Swedish Social Democrats.
The early 18th and 19th century socialists would not have been surprised to learn that for the past several decades the gap in income and wealth between the rich and the rest of the population, including wage and salary earners and the poor, has been yawning ever wider, that greater inequality is a fact of life in all industrialized countries. That’s capitalism for you, they would think. Time to roll up our sleeves and carry on the socialist struggle, they would have concluded.
But I’m not one to argue with the NDP leadership, especially its unnamed officials, who have announced that socialism was dead.
Word of socialism’s death will still have to be broken to the millions of Europeans and their parties who haven’t yet heard the news. Perhaps a top, unnamed NDP official should be sent on a mission to let the laggards know that at the age of 215, socialism has gone belly up.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)