I have been trying to keep politics out of this blog for a while, but I had to say something about this important visit.

I applaud Stephen Harper for making the decision to meet with the Dalai Lama publicly instead of the more common and cowardly option of meeting in private to avoid policital problems with China.

That said, I hope that some of His Holiness’s message gets through to our fearless leader. I think the government is simply responding to opinion polls in making this meeting happen, but there is almost no one on this earth who can not have a big smile on their face when listening His Holiness speak.

Stephen, I hope you end up with big smiles of compassion on your face this afternoon. Canada and the world needs your compassion.

Conservative MP Garth Turner was turfed from the Conservative causcus yesterday because of his blog, the Turner Report.  The Conservatives cited confidentiality concerns.

I like this guy, I don’t agree with him on much politically, but I really like his take on democratic engagment.  His blog has unmoderated comments, and he participates in conversations with people who comment.  This type of front line engagement with constituants is exactly what we need in politics today.  Few people don’t feel threatened by the openness of social media, but this guy is absolutely fearless.

But there is a political blogging lesson in this.  If you are the maverick MP with differing opinions from your causus, I’m not sure that I would use my blog to further the debate.  What is said in Causus, should stay in causcus.  But that doesn’t mean that he should not engage in discussion.  By all means, write about the important issues and express your opinion.  But don’t be an idiot and tip your bosses hand.  That’s the kind of move that’ll get you fired.  And it did.

So as much as I like the guys “people first” attitude, I wish he handled this with a little more tact.  As much as I cringe everytime I read the “reaganomic” basis for his financial policy, I like having someone in the conservative causcus who will ask questions and disagree.  Disagreements lead to discussions, and good heated discussion inherently sqashes dictatorial leadership. 

We are worse off with this guy at home.

PS: Check out the comments in yesterdays post.  Gosh I’m glad I don’t hang out with hardened conservatives.  They might start calling me a commie, and I hate that. 

Photo courtesy of SMITH Magazine

I’ve been reading a graphic novel called Shooting War.  It’s a very distopian view of the Iraq conflict and paints a very morbid picture of what is going to happen in Iraq in the next 10-15 years. 

There is plenty of blogger porn here: cool gadgets, overly left wing political diatribes, and demonisation of major corporations.   If your not into this stuff I would skip this one.  But if you are into these things then you’ll find that the writing is intelligent and the comic book like artwork is very well done.

It is with GREAT dismay that I watch Israel and Lebanon continue to escallate toward war.  Both sides are being totally unreasonable and I can’t help but comment on the conflict. 

Israel are almost always heavy handed in their response to Hezbollah attacks of any kind.  The soldier that was taken back in June is a perfect example.  They take one guy in a huge fire fight, and Israel totally loses it and launches every damn helicopter they have and start pounding away on every “suspected terror target” they can think of or create.  This sort of disproportionate response is totally in-character for the heavy handed and angry state of Israel.

But the damn Palestinians are just as dumb.  In the midst of heavy bombardment, Hezbollah have upped their demands, asking for the release of Arab/ Palestinian prisoners that Israel is holding.  WTF???  Why would you give a positively infuriated army more reason to bomb the hell out of you.

The use of civilian targets on both sides is very, very disturbing.  Israel have formed a sea and air blocade that is essentially cutting off Lebanon from the rest of the world.  Funny how one country can unilaterally form economic sanctions on a country and the rest of the world only “condemns” the action.  Where is the UN?  Where is the mighty USA?  Someone has to see reason!

Hezbollah are also using civilian targets as threats, recently threatening to bomb Haifa.  (A small village on the east coast.  My sister just got back from Haifa where she was attending university.)  These threats on small civilian cities gives legitimacy to the claims that Israel are fighting Palestinian terrorists, as opposed to a government.  (Everytime I write the word –terrorists–, I want to put it in quotes, but I’m still not sure that is appropriate given recent actions.)

I am totally dismayed by this senseless escallation of violence.  As two angry ideologies play out this drama with missiles and guns, the people just continue to die.

I’ve been a big fan of the mac for a few years now.  I’ve never been an Apple fanboy, and I am the first to admit that I have my fair share of problems with my macs over the years.  But recently Apple have begun to grate my ethical nerves for a couple of reasons.

Blogging and Social Media

Apple have been developing applications that allow people to blog and podcast with their mac right out of the box.  (Granted the apps aren’t all that great, but whatever.)  Apple customers, and this is a great big generalization here, have been at the forefront of social media.  It’s easier to do audio and video work on a mac, and corporate culture of “Think Different” lends its self to these digital hippies that are creating content for free. 

However, Apple have not adopted these technologies into their own corporate culture which makes a lot of people think that Apple are being very hypocritical.  Bloggers have been bashing Apple’s PR practices for months now and there has been no response at all.  Command and control messaging that has been used by companies to build their brand is no longer effective.  Consumers are skeptical when they hear the lattest tagline, and it is getting harder and harder to buy into corporate messages.  Social media advocates will tell you that the only way to get out of this type of messaging is to engage with your customers.  Listen to them, talk to them. 

Apple was perfectly positioned to do that.  Mac fans are just that: fanatics.  There would be so much good feed back coming from their customers.  But sadly Apple have decided to close the door and continue to bombard us with lifestyle ads.

One last rant on the Apple’s relationship with its customers.  As I mentioned earlier, mac people are fanatics and are constantly waiting for the next product release.  There are several websites that write about rumoured products and services that will be appearing from Apple in the near future. A little while ago, Apple tried to force one of these sites to reveal the source of a leak that revealed a new product.  Apple argued that the blogger is not a journalist and thus was not covered by the first amendment.  Apple recently lost the case, thus granting bloggers the same rights as journalists.  (At least in California anyway.) 

There is a huge irony in the fact that Apple was the company to get everyone all excited about creating new media, these same bloggers are somehow less credible than other journalists, and finally reinforced blogger’s rights by losing a court battle.  Damn, there’s some weird Karma going on there.

Production Practices:

The other thing that bugs me about Apple is that they have positioned themselves to be the ethical company that enables people to change the world.  (Search google video> “Apple ads” to see what I mean.)  They invoke Ghandi and other labour leaders to make their point in their advertising.  How dare they?

Wired ran an article yesterday on how Apple products are manufactured in China.  Apple assembles all of their products in China and their labour practices, although not terrible, have been called into question.  As the article points out, politically propressive Apple should be way above the minimun labour standards.  This is yet another missed opportunity by the Apple PR department.

Another thing about the Apple’s production that bothers me is the quality.  Just a few years ago the aluminum powerbook was a the epitome of production quality.  Recently bloggers and websites have been reporting more and more defects and shody quality standards on their flagship products.  Several class-action suits have been launched against the company and again their has been no public response from the company.

Conclusions:

Will I stop buy macs?  We’ll see.  Although i like to be an ethical consumer, almost every hi-tech product in NA has passed through an asian factory with relatively low paid workers.  As for the PR gaffs and non-communicative nature of the company, we can only hope that Apple will eventually drink the kool-aid and start talking to it’s customers.  We’ll see what happens when people start to get really pissed off.  They are already making comparisons to the “old” evil-empire Mirosoft.

I’ll leave you with some questions:  How important are these things to you?  Is the contradictory corporate culture a deterent to you as a consumer?  Do you care if your products are produced in sweat shops by a company that markets to the politically progessive?

The terrorism arrests this past weekend and the anxiety coming out of the Muslim community have got me thinking about immigration, belonging in community, and just what it means to be a Canadian living in ethnically diverse regions in Canada.

I was not at all surprised to hear the media report that the Muslim communities were worried about backlash.  I read local politicians saying things like “we have never had a problem with them”.  Them.

In Canada we live among an amazingly diverse ethnic population.  Often we see these communities living together in small areas.  The idea of ethnic enclaves makes some people uncomfortable.  It feels like self-imposed segregation.  It seems wrong, in a multicultural community like Canada that we need to create China Towns, Little Italy’s, or the Portuguese neighbourhoods. 

This idea of ethnic enclaves is not contrary to our ideal of multiculturalism.  I like to think of this as a way of people staying connected to their roots, while still participating in a larger urban environment.  Neighbourhoods that are ethnically concentrated are a way to be alike and different at the same time.

When we have a small sub-group of an ethnic group act on radical fundamentalist views, we often see the leaders of the ethnic group responding.  (I would want to do something too if I had the windows bashed in on my place of worship.)  This is where our beautiful multicultural society breaks.  Muslim groups feel they have to respond because a sub-group has gone and done something that reflects badly on them as a community and they fear the response of other communities.  This pro-active self-defence moves the emphasis off the events and focuses them on the reaction of the communities. 

In the US they have taken to heart the “us and them” attitude.   Bush decided to polarize people instead of letting people look at issues from their unique perspective.  I like to think that Canadians can avoid “us and them” thinking by shifting the focus off ethnicity and moving it to the issues at hand, namely murder and destruction.

In Canada we have a unique opportunity to move the emphasis away from ethnic politics, and focus on preventing harm to our citizens.  We cannot change the minds of the people that want to hurt us, (they have there own ideals for what is a perfect world) but we can come together to condemn violence and to say that we will not tolerate it.  This can be done in mosques, in Parliament, in cafés and blogs. 

I’m nervous that after our first brush with serious terrorist threat that we will take that US approach to dealing with terrorism.   We can respond differently.  We can look at the mechanics of things instead of the ideological root causes.  Getting into this intellectual debate takes the focus off real problem.

The media love to report on the inner workings of terrorist cells, and the methods, ideologies and plots.  This makes for interesting news.  People want to see Tom Clancy novels played out in their own neighbourhoods.  We are starved for the juicy detail of what the suicide bomber’s last meal was, or what he said to his family before leaving to become a martyr.   But this creates the romantic view that an ideology is being played out.  It conjures up images of soldiers going off to war to protect what they believe in.  This leads us down the intellectual path that asks us to evaluate the beliefs of others, not their methods.

Terrorism is not a holy war.  It is not glorious and it is not glamorous.  It destabilizes communities that have worked so hard to create healthy environments to raise their families, make a living, and live with people in harmony.  Terrorism is cold-blooded murder that moves us further away from these community ideals.  We need to deal with terrorism with the same attitude and motivations that we use when we are combating gang violence or domestic abuse.

 I hope that Canadians will be responsible enough to call a spade a spade and avoid the temptation to get into ideological arguments over who’s view of the world is right.  We have live together for well over a hundred years, focused on making things better.  That seems like a really great place to start.

Well it is finally happening.  Canadians get to see what a Conservative government is really like.

This week Stephen Harper made a statement that his government would pick and choose which reporters questions they will respond to.  Harper went on to say that some reporters/ news outlets had a “vendetta” against his government.

How the story has changed.  From the beginning of the federal election campaign, Harper has talked about accountability.  He has beaten the message to death; government must be accountable to the people.  But when it comes time to be accountable in the media, Harper and Co. are singing a totally different tune. 

Mainstream media has a political slant.  This is axiomatic truth.  Every government that comes to power must deal with both sides of the media.  If the government is given the choice of which media outlets they are going to answer, they are effectively removing the press as a safe guard.  They are taking away the presses right and obligation to ask the hard questions and put the leaders on the hot seat. 

What makes a good politician?  A good politician can take questions from both sides, using friends to reinforce messages and using foes to discredit alternate theories and/or courses of action. Funny that Mr. Harper is so uncomfortable answering questions, as he touts his fine debating and speaking skills. 

I am incensed that our government would choose to avoid the hard questions.  Politicians deal with media.  This is how they communicate with citizens and the world.  If journalists cannot ask challenging questions, then we have just lost a key component of our democracy.

The Conservative party are like the school yard bully:  they are all tough when they are beating up on the kindergarten kid, but start crying as soon as they are called into the principals office. 

 Cowards.

Over the past few days we've seen a bunch of people expressing interest in the Federal Liberal Leadership.   Some of the candidates are truely surprising both from a personal perspective as well as their position on the political spectrum.

Bob Rae was the first really big surprise.  I have a soft spot for Bob Rae as he's a friend of my step father's and one of the first really prolific left politicians.  Many blame him for deficits that the conservatives inherited, but his social policy was solid.  I think with a strong cabinet, Rae would be a great choice for a leader.  (Although he might be a hard sell to Liberals in general, as he is a little too far to the left for people to be comfortable.)

Gerrard Kennedy is another unlikely candidate.  Education has been a priority for the McGuinty government, so Kennedy has been in the news a fair amount in the past year.  From a policy perspective he would be another liberal favorite.  He has a great track record working with disparate groups and building consensus in difficult places.  But from a political point of view, he is kind of awkward.  He's not great while in the hot seat, and it might take a few years to get him up to the standard of public speaking that is required of a leader. 

Stephane Dion has more federal experience than the others, but is a little awkward as well.  I caught a bit of his press conference this morning, and while the speech was good, he totally read it.  Again, media training might fix this but I think that a leader of the Liberal Party should already be a little more cultivated. 

There are others of course that have expressed interest in the parties leadersip, but they are city councillors and such.  Without a huge political network to get financing, making those bids come to anything will be a monumental task.

So to conclude, the contenders so far seem to be a little further left than in the past, they seem to be a little less polished, and they seem to lack the federal political network that is needed to make it happen.

The next few months will be interesting for sure. 

I just learned through my Local union president that OPSEU contributed $55,425 to the NDP in the recent federal election campaign.  Aside from the fact that I don’t think that union dollars should be spent on political campaigns, I have a real problem with the politics of how this money was distributed.

Unions have always been heavily vocal and influencial in political campaigns.  The history of this political connection goes way back to Social Democratic Party in 1911.  Obviously unions want to support candidates and parties that will further the common goals of the union and the party.  This seems a reasonable thing if it was restricted to an verbal or written endorsement.  How ever financial contributions are a totally different matter.

In this past campaign, OPSEU decided to endorse the NDP both with words and finances.  What really ticks me off is that the OPSEU board passed a motion to contribute $55K for political contributions for this campaing, but defeated an amendment that allowed this money to be distributed to OPSEU members that are running campaigns for parties other than the NDP.

So just to make this clear:  If you are an OPSEU member running for election, you get financial support as long as you run under the NDP flag.  If you are a Liberal running, then you are on your own. 

In this day and age of strategic left-wing voting, is the union really looking after the best interests of it’s members by choosing a party to support?  It is surely not representing the membership when they make decisions like this.  Leah Castleman has once again hijacked the union to further her personal political beliefs.

These contributions don’t reflect my political views and I believe that they actually run contrary to the good of the country.  If OPSEU had desided to endorse the Liberals instead of the NDP, then maybe there would have been a couple of more seats for the Liberals.  To me any effort that keeps the Conservatives out of office would further the union’s objectives.   Sometimes even the left have to vote centre to deal with specific situations.

All that aside, there was absolutely no communication with the members about this.  No one asked my opinion about where my dues should be sent.  I’m a left leaning person and am pissed, just think how angry a conservative OPSEU member would be.

Our local president is trying to raise awareness on the issue in our region and hopes that the matter will be dealth with at our annual convention. I’m not holding my breath.  Needless to say, I’ll be writing a letter to our fearless, yet misguided, ruler.  If you an OPSEU member reading this I would suggest you do the same.

I would like to get this out of the way right away, I would vote for the NDP if I could. 

 
Good ole Jack has accused Canadians of strategic voting, ignoring his party in order to deal with the immediate threat of Conservative Government.  If Stephen Harper and his crew are elected into a minority, or God forbid a majority government, we are in for years of social conservative policy that simply has not been discussed in this campaign.  Martin has tried to call out Harper and get him to show how blue his blood really is, but Harper has insulated himself so well with the negative ad stance that came out just after the holidays.  (It drives me crazy how quickly people forget the Reform/ Alliance party policy platforms…)

 
The NDP have been strongly targeting seniors, which is a strategic mistake to begin with.  Most of these folks are old school Liberals or Conservatives who are voting for their party.  It’s like moving heaven and earth to shift these votes.

 
If they targeted the youth, who are much more fickle with their votes, then they could gain some headway.  This is a much better demographic for them as well as the baby-boom echo is now voting age. They are smart though, and know that tax dollars equate to services, and know that if there are not enough tax dollars, there will not be as many services.  Give them a plan Jack.

 
Here is my advice to the Jack and his “strategists”:

• Give us a financial plan.  Outline the new initiatives and back them up with quotes from economists, think tanks and experts.  People love to accuse the NDP of giving away the farm, go ahead and prove them wrong with a comprehensive budget plan.
• Get Cool.  The NDP have the advantage of having artists, musicians, and many other creative types that have a strong liberal message for the youth.  An appearance with K-Os or the Beastie Boys would go a lot further than more “Liberal Corruption” rhetoric.  (Leave that to Mr. Harper.)
• Speak about politics like grownups.  Canada is a part of the G7 and a superpower on the world stage.  The NDP in front of me doesn’t play like that. The emphasis is so focused on domestic issues, that I have a hard time thinking of Jack as leader on that international stage.  Think West Wing, not BC municipal politics.
  
• Present a viable slate of people.  The NDP need to build an image of a capable group of folks that can take the reigns of government.  The folks on the slate are not ready to take on ministerial roles.  (Sven Robinson would be crucified in Ottawa in less than a week.)  The Canadian public need to be reassured that an NDP government staff could actually work with bureaucrats once elected. 
  

 
Maybe by the next election Mr. Layton and his party will be ready.  Layton has come such a long way in the past 5-6 years, with his public image and political strategy.  (He actually managed to get something done in the last parliament.) So I hope that in the next four years he will put together a real alternative. 

 
In the mean time, I’m exercising my strategic vote.  A Liberal government is a hell of a lot better than a Conservative government that hides it’s true colours during an election campaign and assertively promotes social conservative policy once it’s over.