I am frustrated with our situation in Canada. We have stood tall and acted like a leader in the past century, and we seemed determined to ensure this never happens again.
Once upon a time - We were dynamic when we fought against human rights abuses. We were among those who sought to find means to keep the peace rather than just picking sides in international conflict. We were pioneers in environmentalism. We strove to create an international legal system to ensure nationalism would not be a protection from justice. We acted boldly in many ways to bring about solutions to the social issues which effect every person around the world.
That said, we were not always as effective in practice as we were in principle. Our treatment of native Canadians was and is shameful, even as we advocated universal rights. We polluted and abused our natural wealth at home while we endorsed and ratified environmental initiatives abroad. We imposed marshal law and forcibly stifled separatists in Quebec while publicly supporting the rights of others to assert their own independence abroad. We were not saints or even consistent in our morality. But, at least, we did address what was right even when we could not live up to those ideals.
That is a Canada which is gone. Today, our government cannot back out of environmental treaties we once spear-headed fast enough. We are even abandoning global projects to monitor environmental degradation. We are disabling our very sovereignty to ally ourselves with some of the worst abusers of the environment, human rights and international law. We do nothing as international crimes, war crimes and atrocities are committed. In the present economic 'crisis' we are rewarding those who created the situation with tax dollars while doing nothing to ensure it doesn't happen again. I wouldn't be surprised if we were to pull our support for the ICC, International Criminal Court, start producing landmines and endorse child labour any day now. I know many in government wish to reinstate capital punishment (state sanctioned murder). The situation is dire, and no-one would suggest we are leaders anymore - unless it was, perhaps, that we are leaders in the movement against social responsibility and good governance.
How did we get here? What could be done to turn this desperate situation around? Are we to become a second-rate nation which digs in its heels and resists the moral, political and environmental initiates of other nations? Or, can we once more push with other bold leaders to create a better and brighter future for the whole world? Not surprising, I think, the answers can be found at home.
We must become leaders, not as in the past, with motions and initiatives on the floor of the UN, but with bold steps to improve things in Canada. We must lead by example if we wish to regain our now tarnished credibility. We must move decisively to protect the environment, and in so doing we prepare ourselves for the future by ensuring our continued resource availability - we cannot afford to 'manage' our remaining environmental wealth the same way we did the east coast fisheries. Nor can we afford to allow industry to destroy whole eco-systems to access commodities for their own short term gain. Our national economy will not benefit by raping the earth - a brief industrial high can't justify an eternity of poisoned land, water and sky, stripped of all value. We must make 'sustainability' a primary social value while it is still possible.
We must find ways to ensure the human value and dignity of every person in Canada. We must establish a just system for resolving our long term injustices and that should be a template for resolving all future conflicts. Native claims must be resolved fairly, I believe that in most cases if we accept the treaties then resolution would be easy. I cannot understand how legally binding contracts between our government and native tribes can be so hard to figure out by our politicians. Likewise, Quebec sovereignty must be addressed once and for all - and the massive systematic bribes to Quebec must cease. French-Canadians cannot be treated as special while other cultural demographics are ignored. Ideally, these resolutions could then be applied anywhere to any people having been 'proven' by our bold initiative. Rather than by writing international laws and cajoling other nations to ratify and comply with them, we could do these things, because they are right, and encourage others to follow our lead.
And we must once again stand up in the UN, flawed as it may be, and oppose any violence, state sponsored and not. We must oppose human rights violations no matter where they occur. We must support every environmental protection, and work ceaselessly to accomplish them both at home and abroad. We should support universal workers rights and boycott trade with any nation which will not protect its workers. We must call out hypocrisy everywhere it is found. Our military allies and economic partners cannot be spared criticism lest our voice be known to be false, selfish and worst hypocritical. We cannot support military action outside the UN, ie. NATO except where it is in the concrete defense of allies by military threat (no more proxy wars; Bosnia, Afghanistan etc.). We must work to legitimize the UN by working tirelessly to end the 'veto' held by the (first) five nations who threaten the world with nuclear destruction. We must do everything we can to end the military threat posed by nuclear weapons, especially by those nations with the largest stockpiles. The choices we need to make are easy. If we always side with justice, equality and peace internationally, and strive wholeheartedly to achieve these values at home in Canada we cannot be anything but be a great nation.
We cannot let war profiteers, mega-corps and industrial polluters determine our national destiny for their own gain any more. We must work to make Canada once again a real democracy.
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Hillary didn't Lose because of Sexism
(this is an older piece from last summer)
This isn't even an issue of which suffers more discrimination, blacks or women - anyway if you want to see real discrimination try black women for the ultimate trump card (or, say, black, gay, handicapped women but really they are, numerically, a less significant demographic).
For me Hillary's failure really began, not from her sex but her own actions. Hillary has demonstrated clearly that she would excuse, cover-up and/or forgive any immoral, unjust and even criminal actions and activities of those in her government. A strong woman doesn't ignore and forgive habitual infidelity from anyone let alone from those whom she is most intimate with. If she would support and ignore her husbands repeated infidelity until he gets caught and then 'stand by him' and forgive him in the face of all reason, how do you think she'd act if members of her government (political party) were committing acts unbecoming or even illegal? We can only guess but based on her record she'd most likely side with the perpetrators, bravely forgiving them and supporting them 'in their hour of need'.
To me all the hoop-lah during this Democratic showdown has been distracting diversions from any real debate. The US has always been ruled by wealthy white men. And neither Hillary nor Obama is substantively divergent from their predecessors. Hillary may be nominally woman and Obama nominally black but both a rich and privileged. Neither is offering serious change. Neither is committed to election reform. Neither is committed to international law. Both are heavily funded by the same corporate interests that also fund the Republicans. Both are right of center politically - put another way, neither is a liberal by any meaningful definition. All the heated discussion about race and sex is to obscure these facts.
Hillary didn't lose because she is a woman any more than Obama won because he is black. They pretty much tied because they aren't either especially dynamic or different.
I want to say, in closing, that both women and blacks are still under valued in North America (socially and politically) and there is still far too much racist and sexist discrimination in play. And we should all be doing everything we can to achieve universal parity among all people. But electing only superficially black or feminine candidate won't make it happen. The only way you get to run for President as leader of either major party is to vote like a rich white man. Period.
That said, I, as a Canadian, am far more ashamed of my own nation's political choices. In our last feeble election every candidate for national leader (excluding Elizabeth May a fringe candidate whose party has never won a parliamentary seat) was a white man with blue eyes. Even the, supposedly, socially 'liberal' New Democratic Party.
I for one won't regain serious faith in our electoral system until an aboriginal woman is a real candidate for PM. And any candidate who does not address election reform cannot be viewed as credible in my eyes. We have fallen far behind most developed nations politically and if we continue on the path we are on we will continue our moral and social decline.
This isn't even an issue of which suffers more discrimination, blacks or women - anyway if you want to see real discrimination try black women for the ultimate trump card (or, say, black, gay, handicapped women but really they are, numerically, a less significant demographic).
For me Hillary's failure really began, not from her sex but her own actions. Hillary has demonstrated clearly that she would excuse, cover-up and/or forgive any immoral, unjust and even criminal actions and activities of those in her government. A strong woman doesn't ignore and forgive habitual infidelity from anyone let alone from those whom she is most intimate with. If she would support and ignore her husbands repeated infidelity until he gets caught and then 'stand by him' and forgive him in the face of all reason, how do you think she'd act if members of her government (political party) were committing acts unbecoming or even illegal? We can only guess but based on her record she'd most likely side with the perpetrators, bravely forgiving them and supporting them 'in their hour of need'.
To me all the hoop-lah during this Democratic showdown has been distracting diversions from any real debate. The US has always been ruled by wealthy white men. And neither Hillary nor Obama is substantively divergent from their predecessors. Hillary may be nominally woman and Obama nominally black but both a rich and privileged. Neither is offering serious change. Neither is committed to election reform. Neither is committed to international law. Both are heavily funded by the same corporate interests that also fund the Republicans. Both are right of center politically - put another way, neither is a liberal by any meaningful definition. All the heated discussion about race and sex is to obscure these facts.
Hillary didn't lose because she is a woman any more than Obama won because he is black. They pretty much tied because they aren't either especially dynamic or different.
I want to say, in closing, that both women and blacks are still under valued in North America (socially and politically) and there is still far too much racist and sexist discrimination in play. And we should all be doing everything we can to achieve universal parity among all people. But electing only superficially black or feminine candidate won't make it happen. The only way you get to run for President as leader of either major party is to vote like a rich white man. Period.
That said, I, as a Canadian, am far more ashamed of my own nation's political choices. In our last feeble election every candidate for national leader (excluding Elizabeth May a fringe candidate whose party has never won a parliamentary seat) was a white man with blue eyes. Even the, supposedly, socially 'liberal' New Democratic Party.
I for one won't regain serious faith in our electoral system until an aboriginal woman is a real candidate for PM. And any candidate who does not address election reform cannot be viewed as credible in my eyes. We have fallen far behind most developed nations politically and if we continue on the path we are on we will continue our moral and social decline.
Friday, February 13, 2009
Hey, Honky! Discriminate Much?
As a white male I have been considering reclaiming and reframing 'honky' much as the dread n-word has been revived among the hip-hop community. I for one would be very happy, and quite amused, to see two white folk greet each other with a hardy, "Hey, Honky" or "How's it, my Honky". Of course, we would also be frightfully offended and indignant if any non-whitey* used this term to define us, naturally.
*I for one can't see anything too offensive about the term 'Whitey'. It is an only mildly diminutive version of 'whites'. It's absolutely harmless, outside the obvious division of people by superficial and genetic features. Which really should be no more offensive than any other external physical definitions; 'brunette', 'tall' and 'cute', for example.
Though, now that I am considering it, many people ARE very offended by the diminutive labelling of their physical attributes, as in 'shorty', 'blondy' or 'baldy'. But many people would be just as offended by being described as 'fat', 'short' or 'hairy', no matter how accurate the description may be.
I feel that far too many of us live in denial of our natures. I am white (okay, pinkish), I am a bit over-weight, and I am balding. Is it really rude for anyone to mention these 'facts', any more than it should be to say someone is tall, fit and handsome, assuming they are, of course?
The problem isn't that we describe things as they appear but that we might judge the value of things based on how they appear. But even that is inevitable to some degree. Are we prejudiced if we reject a banana because it is brown, or a sweater because it is too small or a steak because it smells funky? Isn't it wrong and discriminatory, to have any preferences at all? Where do you draw the line? Is it okay to like wine and not beer, but prejudice to prefer blondes? Is it okay to like physical, athletic people but discrimination to like, say, Asian girls? Is it reasonable to want to live in a community that shares your faith and values but wrong to distrust those who don't?
I do, however, find the terms 'The Man' to be pretty offensive when it is used as a generic description of white people, but that's because I am a poor white graphic designer who owns no property or stocks. Dick Cheney is 'The Man'. Bill Gates is 'The Man'. Hell, your landlord can be 'The Man'. To be 'The Man' you need at least a little bit of economic or social power. To me, from where I'm sitting, Barack Obama is totally 'The Man' - but he isn't half 'The Man' Hillary is.
*I for one can't see anything too offensive about the term 'Whitey'. It is an only mildly diminutive version of 'whites'. It's absolutely harmless, outside the obvious division of people by superficial and genetic features. Which really should be no more offensive than any other external physical definitions; 'brunette', 'tall' and 'cute', for example.
Though, now that I am considering it, many people ARE very offended by the diminutive labelling of their physical attributes, as in 'shorty', 'blondy' or 'baldy'. But many people would be just as offended by being described as 'fat', 'short' or 'hairy', no matter how accurate the description may be.
I feel that far too many of us live in denial of our natures. I am white (okay, pinkish), I am a bit over-weight, and I am balding. Is it really rude for anyone to mention these 'facts', any more than it should be to say someone is tall, fit and handsome, assuming they are, of course?
The problem isn't that we describe things as they appear but that we might judge the value of things based on how they appear. But even that is inevitable to some degree. Are we prejudiced if we reject a banana because it is brown, or a sweater because it is too small or a steak because it smells funky? Isn't it wrong and discriminatory, to have any preferences at all? Where do you draw the line? Is it okay to like wine and not beer, but prejudice to prefer blondes? Is it okay to like physical, athletic people but discrimination to like, say, Asian girls? Is it reasonable to want to live in a community that shares your faith and values but wrong to distrust those who don't?
I do, however, find the terms 'The Man' to be pretty offensive when it is used as a generic description of white people, but that's because I am a poor white graphic designer who owns no property or stocks. Dick Cheney is 'The Man'. Bill Gates is 'The Man'. Hell, your landlord can be 'The Man'. To be 'The Man' you need at least a little bit of economic or social power. To me, from where I'm sitting, Barack Obama is totally 'The Man' - but he isn't half 'The Man' Hillary is.
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
It Begins
I have been told by many of my friends I should blog my political and social views, as well as share my movie reviews. And this is the place where I will do it. I hope you enjoy. Thank you for visiting.
Yours virtually,
Nic deGroot
Yours virtually,
Nic deGroot
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