tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-81131767460869463352024-02-07T16:18:08.831-08:00The Edge ColumnsGerald McEachernhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11355704123788099401noreply@blogger.comBlogger275125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8113176746086946335.post-15604472605439813332022-03-29T16:18:00.016-07:002022-03-30T18:26:39.625-07:00Oscars at intersection of global cultural crisis<p><span style="font-size: large;">ON SUNDAY, MARCH 27, 2022, fifty years of neoliberalism walked onstage at the Oscars and smacked comedian Chris Rock in the face. It was the slap that was heard around the world, easily displacing headlines including the war in Ukraine.</span></p><p><span style="color: #444444;"><span><span style="font-size: large;">Pundits immediately set out extemporizing on who was in the wrong, Rock or his assailant, Will Smith, the underlying culture of misogyny and bullying, the limits to free speech, who should apologize to who, and speculating on the psychological roots of Smith’s actions.<br /><br /><b>The noisy details</b> </span></span></span></p><p><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;">It was Smith defending his wife, Jada Pinket Smith, and her sensitivity to both hair loss and perceived verbal abuse, that led to the assault on Rock. So, at the hub of this media swirl is Pinket Smith, host of the Facebook Watch show Red Table Talk, with her daughter Willow and mother, Adrienne Banfield-Norris as co-hosts.</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;"></span></span></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTJPyIsePFivyHl6nD65waQYoCBOp_i0BhkBE5_Gk1e1bpiHvDqOvqRSCEEEE-uYEazBwnnD_ZHWmTyje-zLaJ188H9wFAZrjK14pVe_xT3F7jtUOs8bi-IiVmAQgiYPz38O5V-NRA-INdp5SWetSYi5m8AFaFmhBye-M6hTwEKeWrjz8fnJGsIlNg/s3820/SHOQCB33LFN5FBIIMSXHRFU55U.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2533" data-original-width="3820" height="423" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTJPyIsePFivyHl6nD65waQYoCBOp_i0BhkBE5_Gk1e1bpiHvDqOvqRSCEEEE-uYEazBwnnD_ZHWmTyje-zLaJ188H9wFAZrjK14pVe_xT3F7jtUOs8bi-IiVmAQgiYPz38O5V-NRA-INdp5SWetSYi5m8AFaFmhBye-M6hTwEKeWrjz8fnJGsIlNg/w638-h423/SHOQCB33LFN5FBIIMSXHRFU55U.jpg" width="638" /></a></td></tr><tr align="right"><td class="tr-caption">Photo source REUTERS/Brian Snyder</td></tr></tbody></table><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />Ironically, Smith’s protectiveness about his wife’s condition may well have stemmed from the fact that their marriage had been on the rocks a year earlier—which was the subject of a husband-wife interview on one of Pinket Smith’s shows, during which she discussed her affair with another man. Weeks later, in an interview with GQ magazine, Smith himself copped to having extra-marital relations. Which all points to two things: the instability of their relationship, and the public’s insatiable appetite for celebrity gossip.<br /><b><br />The underlying cultural drivers</b> </span></span><p></p><p><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;">Both Rock and Smith represent the dynamic shifts in culture in America over the past 50 years. Here are two black men at the top of their professions. According to Celebrity Net Worth, Rock is worth $60 million. Smith’s net worth is nearly six times greater at $350 million, according to the same source.</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;">The entertainment industry is one of the US’s strongest exports. SelectUSA.gov reports that it accounts for 4 percent of total US global service trade exports, creating a trade surplus of $10.3 billion (most recent data, 2016). As of December, 2020, the entire US entertainment industry accounts for $660 billion in revenues annually, and is growing at a rate twice as fast as the rest of the US economy.</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;">It is not an overstatement to say that US media and entertainment sector has become one of the most powerful influencers on the planet, not only in terms of dollars, but also in terms of shaping our collective cultural narratives.</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;">The two main staples of the American entertainment narrative are profanity and violence. It comes as no surprise to anyone that Rock and Smith are entitled darlings of the industry, given the enraging/engaging content they deliver to the public. In reference to Smith’s defence of his partner, a great deal of the onscreen—and offscreen—profanity minimizes women, which has been fuelled to some extent by black culture over the past few decades. </span></span></p><p><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;">“Bitch” and “motherfucker” come to mind. To “fuck” someone, or to be “fucked” is to be placed in the female position of doing it to someone as if they’re a female, or having it done to you as if you’re a female. It’s basic female subordination, masked by the rudeness of profanity. “Cunt”, “ho” and a litany of other epithets fall into the same gender-reducing category.</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;">Violence is even more prevalent in the media, not only in movies, but in the news (“if it bleeds, it leads”), on television, and across all media platforms. Violence is a staple product of the mainstream US entertainment industry, much more than sex. This is not to dismiss the tremendous expansion of porn—and its degradation of women—since the beginning of the internet age. Yet, in a grossly ironic and almost humorous turn, in his apology, Will Smith extolls the need for love. But mature love, as opposed to sentimentality, is in short supply in today’s media environment.</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;">What all of this doesn’t explain what’s at the roots of these recent phenomena. The audience is a contributing factor. The most profitable market segment is the youth audience, which is attracted to brief glimpses of sex, breaking of social norms and destruction of property. Marketers and the people who make movies, understand all too well that this is the low hanging fruit of the entertainment industry, and both Smith and Rock are products of this cultural shock-and-awe system aimed at youth. Violence is simply the empty calorie fast food broadside of the business.<br /><br /><b>Changing roles and expectations</b> </span></span></p><p><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;">The actions of figures like Harvey Weinstein, Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein have generated a backlash. Public opinion woke up in response. Allegations against public figures including Dustin Hoffman, Kevin Spacey, Gerard Depardieu, Israel Horovitz and Allison Mack in entertainment, not to mention figures like JFK, Bill Clinton, Anthony Weiner, and George H.W. Bush in politics have revealed the scope and depth of the problem.</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;">But there’s more to it than mere public reaction. A new Utopianism has taken hold after two decades of political correctness. There’s a growing intolerance for behaviour deemed unacceptable by the majority. The punishment is swift and harsh: job loss, banishment, ostracism and deplatforming. Public figures and even ordinary citizens are now extremely wary of crossing the fine threshold of public tolerance. Which is what makes the Rock–Smith encounter so noteworthy. How will each of these two manage the narratives in their favour without relegating themselves to the trash heap of political correctness?</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;">Political correctness is reactive, but also the leading edge of Utopianism. The unspoken mission of PC policing is to reform human behaviour—even in the face of rampant misbehaviour and entitlement among the privileged classes, which includes Rock and Smith. But the dark underbelly of Utopianism is authoritarianism, whether covert or overt: society must have its controls.</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;">Digging deeper, we witness the widening divide between the entitled and the disenfranchised. The entitled are easy to see. They’re on our screens and in our faces every day. They’re our “real” housewives and famous house guests. The disenfranchised are less easy to see—until they hit the streets as Gay Pride, Occupy, #MeToo, Black Lives Matter, Capitol Hill or Freedom Convoy protesters. And they only get real when they hit the mainstream media news.<br /><br /><b>A rising tide of desperation</b></span></span></p><p><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;">What’s even less visible is a growing desperation among ordinary people. Both Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump tapped into these feelings. The question becomes, why are ordinary people feeling so resentful? And what has this got to do with Rock and Smith?</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;">For the past 50 years there has been a concerted effort on the part of neoconservative and neoliberal ideologues to decouple business from government oversight and regulation, while at the same time infiltrating government through the funding of candidates in exchange for pro-business and pro-wealth legislation. The architects of this include Frederick Hayek and Milton Friedman, Ayn Rand, James M. Buchanan, Henry Kissinger, students of the Chicago School and a host of others.</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;">Their collective success has been staggering. Not uncoincidentally, every president since the assassination of Kennedy, excluding perhaps Johnson, has fallen in line with this ideological vector, from Nixon to Ford to Carter to Reagan to Bush I to Clinton to Bush II to Obama to Trump and finally now to Biden. Nixon severed currency from the gold standard, allowing fiat currency to be infinitely flexible and footloose. Later, out of office and wandering in the political wilderness, he helped open the bridge to China that enabled US businesses to access a huge pool of inexpensive and willing Chinese labourers. That, coupled with so-called “free trade” agreements, led to the rapid decline of unionized labour in the US and stagnating worker salaries since 1990—while American GDP rose to unprecedented levels over the same period.</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;">The offshoring of labour—turning the US into a service, marketing and distribution economy—plus the financialization of the economy, disenfranchised the blue collar American male worker. From 1970, as more women entered the workforce in service and management roles, the opportunities for male workers declined, leading to not only lower wages but increased job insecurity and financial precarity.</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;">By now, the American people, or a majority of them, know that they have little to no effect on their government’s legislation and believe democracy is dead, which, arguably has never been achieved in Utopian terms in the US or elsewhere, as the interests of the elite are invariably achieved before all else.</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;">The financial crash of 2008 made this painfully clear as millions of Americans lost their homes and their savings while Obama and Timothy Geitner bailed out the “too big to fail” banks and financial institutions, which then turned around and gave their C-suite executives million dollar bonuses for their fine work. Speaking to the losers in packed stadiums in 2016, Bernie Sanders appealed to their rational thinking. In similarly packed stadiums, Trump appealed to their emotions and surprisingly, even to himself, won the presidency.</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;">The driving force behind everything that’s happened in the past 50 years, including the storming of the Capitol in Washington, is the massive transfer of global wealth to a very small billionaire class. The phenomenon is so extreme that mildly conservative economist, Thomas Piketty, recognizing that redistribution of wealth is of vital importance to economic and societal well-being, has declared himself a socialist. </span></span></p><p><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;">After Reagan challenged Gorbachev to “tear down that wall” and helped break up the Soviet Union, the same system of transferring wealth upward and disenfranchising workers led to the current Russian regime. Putin, an autocrat trying to stabilize an economy in free fall due to rapid neoliberalization, stripped dissenting Russian oligarchs from their newfound power, and appointed subordinates he could control. Power abhors a vacuum, and Putin conveniently filled the space, and in doing so stabilized the Russian economy, which is not something we often hear in the mainstream media.<br /><br /><b>From desperation to mass psychosis</b> </span></span></p><p><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;">From sitting in meetings through the years, I’ve learned that people will discuss possible solutions to minor problems almost endlessly. But when it comes to solving large problems deep discussion is avoided, and only discussed briefly and resolved quickly with a simple yes or no to an A or B solution. The A-B solutions are usually alternate proposals that unseen experts have formulated in the background for months or even years.</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;">It’s no accident that both Reagan and Zelensky were actors. They, and other leaders around the world, including Trump, Boris Johnson, Justin Trudeau and others are performers who deliver pre-written policy scripts to the public, informed by a small group of public policy experts and guided by another small cadre of public relations experts continuously taking the public’s pulse. Their collective task is to manage the actual corporate agendas that would likely to be distasteful to the general public. </span></span></p><p><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;">There are two methods to assure public compliance: either soft or authoritarian control. Soft control is the preferred method in the West. It’s based on nuanced salesmanship, a call for public safety and civility, and dispensing just enough money to local public projects to keep voters satisfied and showing up to vote. Authoritarian measures only become necessary when protests break out that challenge the official narrative. The most recent example is the Canadian government’s invoking of the Emergencies Act to quell the Freedom Convoy occupation of Ottawa using armed and mounted police to forcibly clear the streets—and freeze financial donations to the protest through FINTRAC and the banks. This has been seen by some around the world as government overreach, especially the now-permanent government’s spying powers on personal finances enabled through FINTRAC.</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;">From Will Smith’s public aggression to the unleashing of FINTRAC on the public, the ability to distinguish right from wrong seems to have been seriously eroded. At issue is trust. When Will Smith left the audience, climbed the stairs and strode on stage he broke the theatre’s cardinal illusion: the fourth wall. By breaking the invisible fourth wall dividing the performer from the audience, taking the audience on stage, he broke trust in the illusion of the Oscars as a special theatrical pageant elevating excellence to a higher professional level.</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;">I would argue that Trump and now Zelensky, Putin and Biden are betraying the same trust, breaking the illusions we hold sacred: that governments can provide universal peace and order in a chaotic world. The public can clearly recognize the US’s hypocrisy after serial involvement in altercations in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Gaza, Somalia, Yemen to name a few of the most recent. As the late Madeleine Albright famously said after being asked if the deaths of a half million Iraqi children would be too high a price, she answered, “…the price is worth it”. When the extinguishing of millions of lives becomes a mere policy point, you know we’ve reached the limits of civil interaction as a species.</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;">And now we’re on the threshold of nuclear war as the US through NATO and Russia face off in Ukraine. We now see the world dividing into distinct sides, them and us, and all the attendant propaganda and embargoes directed against the evil monster, Putin, his apparatchiks and Russia’s allies, which may or may not include the Chinese depending on how they succumb to being coerced into line by the US.</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;">War, of course, is the ultimate mass psychosis. The Ukrainians and Russians are now fully under its spell. What started as an asymmetrical mismatch between heavily armed Russian vs. the smaller Ukrainian military has turned into a brutal quagmire as the US and NATO allies feed state-of-the-art weaponry to the Ukrainian side, stalling the Russian onslaught, prolonging the war and pushing negotiations further into the background. Their hope seems to be that the Russians will concede and withdraw. The underlying fear among Western leadership is that public opinion might encourage the West to impose a no-fly zone over Ukraine, further escalating the possibility of a direct confrontation between US and Russian aircraft.</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;">Missing in the picture is what an aftermath might look like. Ukraine has just armed its civilian population with weapons and munitions—after 8 years of civil war between western Ukraine and Russian-speaking eastern Ukraine. What could possibly go wrong?<br /><br /><b>The disenfranchised self and the rigid collective</b> </span></span></p><p><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;">Massive technological disruptors such as the creation of the global information network, bioengineering, robotic production capabilities, rise of social media, empowerment of government personal data collection, and tracking and surveillance systems have reduced individual human beings to data points that can be controlled and mined to the most utilitarian ends by both private corporations and governments.</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;">These intrusions are rightly seen by the public as new existential threats and breaches of the public trust and, as real personal income continues to decline relative to the growth of wealth at the top, levels of society-wide frustration and anxiety will continue to rise. On top of all this, the continued push to maintain consumer spending, based on personal debt to shore up the crumbling economy already facing higher interest rates, is pressurizing the system to its structural limits.</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;">A growing number people are feeling isolated from each other and from the society they once viewed as mutually supportive. The public, consciously or unconsciously sensing that they are being exploited as data points rather than being treated as living, breathing human beings, is more isolated and socially atomized than ever before in history, despite a global population nearing 8 billion.</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;">Our entire system of overconsumption growing exponentially over the past five decades and built on the backs of ordinary people, has had an extraordinary effect on the natural environment. The inexorable advances of climate change, soil and water degradation, and species extinctions are as existentially threatening as a sudden nuclear war.</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;">War is a natural human behavioural response. War is the ultimate curative to mass psychosis brought on by social pressure, the ultimate purging and reordering of societies. The question before us now is, can we afford another major war at this critical point in human history? Or any war, for that matter, given the collective work we have to do to repair and restore our natural environment here on Life Raft Earth.
</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;">So over to you Chris Rock and Will Smith. Tell us how we back out of this one.</span></span></p>Gerald McEachernhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11355704123788099401noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8113176746086946335.post-66287157825021824642022-03-03T05:40:00.026-08:002023-04-17T19:59:50.949-07:00Freedom, fear and the next killing floor<p> <span style="font-size: large;"><br />It’s 5:00 am on the first Thursday in March and I
can’t sleep. It’s warm and quiet in the house, I just fed the cat and
let the dog out. I don’t know where to begin unpacking my thoughts. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">After
two years the COVID pandemic is over but it’s not. In a few days the
provincial mandates will be lifted. The so-called Freedom Convoy has
been dispersed and the protesters have all gone home. No one close to me
has died though hundreds of thousands have, but I do know a few people who
have had adverse reactions to the vaccine. Somehow, most of us managed
to get through this relatively unscathed. I can appreciate the masks and
social distancing, and the federal government support
cheques, but I remain skeptical of the widespread distribution of untested vaccines and suspicious of the profit motives driving the pharmaceutical industry.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">I expect the effects of the pandemic will remain for years, much like
the effects of the 2008 financial crisis are still with us. I don’t know
what those long tail impacts will be. It’s possible employment will be
less secure as both employers and employees have learned to adjust to
living without each other in close proximity. Relationships with family
and friends may take on a higher priority. Other changes may be more
insidious. Governments around the world have acquired expanded powers
that will likely never be fully surrendered, and the public has become
accustomed to relinquishing civil liberties to protect their immediate
safety. This was true in a post-9/11 world and now even more true in a
post-COVID world. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">These are systemic shifts
and the effects are widespread. The twin dragons of rising prices and
inflation threaten our retirement savings and our children’s futures.
Rents and housing costs increase while wages stagnate at 1990 levels.
Yet most of us persevere. But for an increasing number of us the question
becomes, for how long?</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Yes, all of this
affects my sleep, and then there’s the war in Ukraine. Both of my
maternal grandparents were Ukrainians. As the oldest grandchild I was
close to them. I ate their food, learned to speak a few words of their
language, adopted their work ethic and appreciated their gratitude for
what our country had given them. And I listened to their stories. They
married young. My grandmother was a singer. My grandfather had been a
Cossack impressed into the Polish army not once but twice. After
defecting the first time and almost dying of influenza he was saved by a
farmer’s wife in Poland who hid him in a hayloft and nursed him back to
health. I also learned how stubborn they could be, and how
conservative; I share their history but we are not the same.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">I’ve
spent the last two weeks trying to understand the buildup to the war.
For millennia Ukraine has been an envied and actively contested
region. Before the Second World War Stalin’s agricultural
reforms in the early 1930s ravaged Ukraine, the holodomor starved and
killed 3.5 million Ukrainians. With the fall of the Soviet Union the
country became independent in 1991, and the new government, seeing the
country as more European rather than Eurasian, turned to the West.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">The
first two presidents, Kravchuk and Kuchma were pro-European. The third,
Yanukovych, pivoted back to Russia which ultimately sparked public discontent, which led to a controversial election between Yanukovych and Yushchenko. Yushchenko’s followers took to the streets in the Orange Revolution (orange after Yushchenko’s campaign colours). Another election was called and Yushchenko was declared the winner and assumed the presidency in January of 2005. </span><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: large;">Under Yushchenko the country descended into political chaos. </span>His government lasted a year before another election was called in early 2007. Yanukovych again won, but Yushchenko formed a coalition as president with the runner up, Tymoshenko, as prime minister. The coalition lasted a year before collapsing, then re-establishing with third party support, hanging on until 2009.<br /><br />In 2010 Yanukovych retook the presidency. Following the political upheaval over the past few years, government corruption was rampant.
Relations with Russia improved, resulting in the reduction of Russian gas transit fees through Ukraine, and the abandonment of the goal of joining NATO. In 2013, as the Ukrainian parliament was moving toward formalizing relationships with the EU, Yanukovych bowed to pressure from Moscow, stalling the process—while walking a fine line between building economic bridges to Europe and reassuring Russia. Ultimately, the situation unraveled, with help from American and Russian interference. Protests broke out, and the Maidan Revolution (aka Revolution of Dignity) ended in the ouster of Yanukovych.<br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">The Obama-Biden administration, through Assistant Secretary of State Victoria
Nuland, meddled in the 2014 election, trying to secure an anti-Russian
president. When advised that the EU would not like her choice, her
famously leaked response was “fuck the EU”. Her choice, the anti-Russian Yatsenyuk was installed.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">It was at this point that Hunter Biden was hired at $1 million a year for consulting services and a seat on the board at Burisma Holdings (controlling Burisma energy). A year later US Vice President Joe Biden handling the Ukraine portfolio for the Obama administration would release $1 billion in funding to the Ukraine government.<br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Yatsenyuk took office just as separatist pro-Russians in the east began rebelling. The Crimean parliament voted to secede from Ukraine and Russia became actively repatriated Crimea—justified by a
Russian-funded public referendum. The US responded by applying economic sanctions on Russia. The eastern states of Donetsk and Lugansk
declared themselves independent republics.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">In May, 2014 Ukrainian billionaire Petro Petroshenko won the next election in a landslide victory, pledging to build stronger connections to the EU. The US subsequently stepped up
with a $5.4 billion commitment in aid and weapons to support the Ukraine
government, along with another $3 billion in loan guarantees. Full civil war
broke out in eastern Ukraine resulting in over 9,000 lives lost and
200,000 people displaced in the Donbass region. By 2018 the Ukrainian
economy was in the tank.
</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Poroshenko
continued Ukraine’s shift west. In 2019 the Ukrainian constitution was
rewritten, enshrining the alignment with the EU. Soon after, in 2019,
political novice and popular Ukrainian actor Volodymr Zelensky was
elected president, and began formalizing membership in the EU and NATO,
with strong support from the US.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">The rest we
all know. Putin, bristling at the possibility of NATO and missiles on
Russia’s doorstep, amassed an army on the border, and when the Zelensky
government refused to back down, ordered the invasion of Ukraine on
February 24.<br /></span></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgPVd0PmuevmaKxBYUHbGINLwtrgyim2pP0KHr8ISZuX9BxQdU0zg_9554f-odk_7Nlu9XTXN00Ir-VebOOc87uHEx4VN237oMRlB0USgqwoIa7ah8x7yBGqZKc5SQzPITc2i7Pdy2C-CZOx7s647F91z8QtuSs4phvRz6m8uaWC6KUG6g3oHAb5Sfk=s1906" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1072" data-original-width="1906" height="317" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgPVd0PmuevmaKxBYUHbGINLwtrgyim2pP0KHr8ISZuX9BxQdU0zg_9554f-odk_7Nlu9XTXN00Ir-VebOOc87uHEx4VN237oMRlB0USgqwoIa7ah8x7yBGqZKc5SQzPITc2i7Pdy2C-CZOx7s647F91z8QtuSs4phvRz6m8uaWC6KUG6g3oHAb5Sfk=w564-h317" width="564" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Family fleeing to Poland from the Ukraine. (AP Photo/Markus
Schreiber)</td></tr></tbody></table><p></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">This is not the story I wanted
to write. The story I wanted to write would deal with the Russian gas
pipeline through Ukraine, the conflicts between the two countries over
transit fees, Europe’s dependence on Russian natural gas, the US’s ongoing expansion of NATO towards Russian borders, </span><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: large;">Canada’s role,
</span>the
militarized neo-Nazi element in Ukraine, including the Azov militia
making up a significant portion of Ukraine’s military, and more. So much
more.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">A fuzzy black and grey junco has landed on a snowy branch outside my window.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Big
questions hang over all of us. How will this invasion unfold? How will
it affect our future? Is it still possible to negotiate a peace? What is
Putin after?</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Two things bear consideration:
the recent past and the immediate future. The past Chechen War tells us
a lot about Putin’s methods. He has little regard for the loss of
lives, not for enemy combatants, civilians or his own troops. He is
willing to press on despite lack of popular support in his own country.
Once committed, he is not inclined to negotiate. And he is militarily
cautious. He is willing to take whatever time he feels necessary to
achieve a victory. On the other hand, at the end of a conflict he is
willing to withdraw, and allow a reasonable amount of local autonomy,
but always with reservations. These patterns may reapply themselves in
Ukraine; time will tell. In the end the scale of devastation in Chechnya was shocking. Tens of thousands were killed including thousands of
Russian soldiers, and almost half of the population displaced. Now,
consider that the population of Chechnya is less than 2 percent of
Ukraine’s total population—and picture the potential effects of this
much larger new war.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">China is the immediate
future. Russia and China have just approved a 50 billion cubic meter gas
pipeline from Russia through Mongolia to China to bypass Western
sanctions. This gives Russia a back door lifeline, literally, but at
what cost? China has been busy forging economic alliances around the
globe, while Russia has become increasingly more isolated
internationally. China also depends on its massive trade with the US and
the West for its economic growth. In the short term China is unlikely
to directly challenge the US’s military and economic hegemony, at least
until it has fully established alternative markets. China is playing a
long game. Russia does not have the resources or the staying power to
play the long game. In the same way that the US and the EU are allowing
the Ukraine to become the killing floor separating Russia and the West,
Russia itself might become the ultimate killing floor separating China
and the West—and my belief is China would not intervene.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">These
future projections are not reassuring. The potential collateral cost on
lives and the environment is unimaginable. Nuclear war is an
ever-present possibility. Perhaps war is a permanent feature of the
collective human psyche. Perhaps this is just who and what we are.
Wealth and power are the addictions that drive us, drive us into
fighting each other to the death on the ground. For what? Just to repeat
the cycle over again while the rich get richer and the poor even
poorer?</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">It’s still dark outside. The water is calm on the bay in front of the house. For now.<br /></span><br /><br /></p>Gerald McEachernhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11355704123788099401noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8113176746086946335.post-82877721069484258242021-12-23T07:08:00.019-08:002021-12-24T09:42:34.697-08:00The world is on fire. And so was the Hoito<p>THE LAST TIME I went to the Hoito restaurant I was working in Thunder Bay and living in a small room 2300 km. away from the place I now call home. That was three years ago just before Christmas. It was late afternoon, already dark and cold. I walked down the hill, alone, through Waverley Park and down Secord Street. The old brick and frame houses along the way looked depressingly familiar behind the dirty snowbanks. This was my hometown, the town I’d left 15 years earlier. </p><p></p><p>It was about 5:30 in the evening when I got to the restaurant.
Everything was the same as the last time I’d seen it. The old weigh
scale stood in the corner by the door, the terrazzo tile in the enttry looked sickly green under the dull florescent lights. The place was
empty, I was still alone. I walked back to a table near the kitchen door and
waited. After a while a waitress came out, a young African woman,
and gave me a smile. “Coffee,” she said. I nodded as she laid down the
white paper placemat with the blue knotted Hoito logo still pretending
to look modern. "We're closing soon," she said.<br /></p><p>Back in the mid ’60s, before it became a
hippie hangout and later a world famous destination, my brother used to
drag me down there. That was before it was renovated. I can’t remember
the walls, maybe painted green or salmon pink and shiny white. The terrazzo floor was
the same. There was a lunch counter along one wall and rows of wooden
booths with tall backs that you could hide behind. The waitresses were
older, all Finnish, and friendly once you got to know them after a few
visits. It wasn’t crowded, it wasn’t popular. It was mostly old men in
green work clothes and plaid bush jackets. As young Anglo guys, we were a
bit of a novelty, and the waitresses took us under their wings like
flirty mother hens.</p><p>Like most Thunder Bayers, I spent a lot of
time at the Hoito over the years. There were morning-after breakfasts,
and late afternoon coffees with new girlfriends, I can’t remember any
one specific occasion. It was a timeless place with its own rhythms.
The solid-bodied waitresses, strong coffees in white china mugs, Finn
pancakes and Karjalan rye piirakkas with egg salad, the bland dinner
entrees with over-boiled vegetables. Big enough portions, and cheap.
Which made it popular. As its popularity rose its authenticity faded. A
lot of us got tired of standing in long lines waiting to get in on a
Saturday morning. So we walked across the street to the Kestatuppa, or
across Algoma to the Scand Home, or got back in the car and drove over
to the Kangas Sauna snack bar.</p><p>It’s as if the entire city began to
discover its Finnish heritage back in the late 1960s. The newly-built
Kangas Sauna may have sparked that renaissance. I remember visiting the
old steam bath at the base of Secord Street a few times, but Kangas
Sauna made Finnish culture and nakedness cool. Many of us took advantage
of the by-the-hour rates to explore intimate relationships without the
sigma of renting a cheap hotel room for the night. Finnish culture
somehow made sex safe and clean and fun, and fit perfectly into the free
love sensibility of the time. That spilled over into the social scene:
the Bay Street Blues Band, Murray McCullough, Ken Hamm, Lauri Conger and
so many others playing dances at the Finn Hall and various Legion halls
across the city.</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiQKpy_O1tnVXu3UQi2HsngDFeHwblY2l3xiTxi3QGHPkyRpl63wiWBI53orMd11GVP4BRmwCvP756EVl_CTF3cmGSV4Hu92v99BQ0FNS89V27fQ4PCDSeaSsb8u13QIcBZ252xWdyOrCOwtw4Dse2mIu2PqpIui02113jujw2BXFcQBc8och_aEuJF=s1574" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1574" data-original-width="1536" height="476" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiQKpy_O1tnVXu3UQi2HsngDFeHwblY2l3xiTxi3QGHPkyRpl63wiWBI53orMd11GVP4BRmwCvP756EVl_CTF3cmGSV4Hu92v99BQ0FNS89V27fQ4PCDSeaSsb8u13QIcBZ252xWdyOrCOwtw4Dse2mIu2PqpIui02113jujw2BXFcQBc8och_aEuJF=w464-h476" width="464" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Hoito Restaurant–Finnish Labour Temple fire, December 22, 2021 (photo © Jon Thompson)<br /></td></tr></tbody></table><p>There have been a lot of changes since I’ve been gone. The Bay and
Algoma area is a trendy, higher density urban neighbourhood. Meanwhile
downtown Fort William continues to decline, and downtown Port Arthur and
the Marina Park have become the cultural hub of the city. But the city I
once knew is rapidly disappearing. Thunder Bay remains one of the most
spread out and unwalkable cities in Canada, and while I love the
scenery, I don’t miss the sprawling urban environment. What I do miss
are the memories of warm friends and family and good times. Yes, the
food in Thunder Bay is better, the restaurants are great, the coffee is
fabulous. But the old Hoito, well…</p>The Hoito didn’t leave us in
the fire, we left it a long time ago. And the world I once knew is on
fire and rapidly burning down.<p> </p><p></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr><tr align="left"><td class="tr-caption"><br /></td></tr></tbody></table><p></p><br /><p><br /></p>Gerald McEachernhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11355704123788099401noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8113176746086946335.post-14678486214045365322018-09-21T20:40:00.000-07:002018-09-21T21:19:33.676-07:00Postmodernism. Mm, when is it over again?<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #666666;">©<br /><br />I was a teenager when I fell in love with modern. The 1960s was perhaps the absolute zenith of modernism when Western Enlightenment met Eastern philosophy, mods knocked off rockers, peace and love were effective answers to complicated problems, and music, dance, literature, art, architecture, science and technology were at their elegantly minimalist finest.<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #666666;">And then it was gone, demolished, or perhaps euthanized, first by Manson and Altamont, then Nixon, Watergate, a design sludge of boat-like cars, Brutalist architecture, Exxon-Mobil, blocky Spanish-style decor, Big Tobacco, the quagmire in Vietnam, Proctor and Gamble, and the Rockford Files. Modern was over. It’s hard to describe what replaced it other than “shit”.<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #666666;">Modernism was not only a reductionist language, it was a recombination of seminal inspirations. On the one hand it was a great cleansing, clearing away the rubble of two world wars, the heavy, suffocating Victorian and Viennese cultures of 19th century Europe and its oppressive ornamentation. On the other it was the convergence of new thinking: the efficiency of Bauhaus design, the pragmatism of New Deal social democracy, the refinement instruments and new technologies including the camera and the birth of electronic media. But mostly it was the language of hope, the belief that Utopia was possible. That people—living on a human scale—mattered.<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #666666;">A lot has been written about how the political Left went off the rails in the late 1960s. Conservative thinkers like Hayek, Friedman, Buckley had been working on its dislocation since the 1940s. The arrival of conservative politicians like Goldwater, Nixon and later Reagan and Bush I and II, culminating with Trump today, coincided with the corporate takeover of elections by virtue (irony intended) of unrestricted campaign donations.<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #666666;">During this 40-year period technology grew increasingly more complex—with ever-slicker user interfaces that made the highly complex seem simple. Electronics went from home built Heathkits to handheld supercomputers in two generations. As production became computerized, manual skills were off-shored, disappeared altogether or turned into high-value craftwork.</span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #666666;">These four forces: the moralistic reaction to the freedom of modernism, the rise of conservative academics, the corporate takeover of government, and the ever-increasing and evermore expensive proliferation of complicated corporatized technologies, coalesced into a single symbiotic whole that de facto excluded ordinary people from the ability to control their own means of production and influence over their political processes.</span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #666666;"></span></span></span><br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEii_w2Utk3ILInwcG2dZiDEop_XeHgK5ZGHvyb4SV27bv8lJoDE3nPSS2oPw212Ay1xunntMA8pwD0yahucmQMrX1Q5gJNhA3ebb8522j3vN-s5pT1oE5BsZPuOdDH1sA5i2MowIXnYMb8/s1600/Gerkin.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1354" data-original-width="1600" height="540" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEii_w2Utk3ILInwcG2dZiDEop_XeHgK5ZGHvyb4SV27bv8lJoDE3nPSS2oPw212Ay1xunntMA8pwD0yahucmQMrX1Q5gJNhA3ebb8522j3vN-s5pT1oE5BsZPuOdDH1sA5i2MowIXnYMb8/s640/Gerkin.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Modernism and postmodernism and a space for meaning</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #666666;">No better expression of this can be found than in today’s postmodern architecture. Led by starchitects like Frank Gerhy, Renzo Piano, Norman Foster, Zaha Hadid, Bjarke Ingels and a handful of others, new strange new buildings have shaped new cities and reshaped the old. Stainless steel walls wave and weave in the sun, entire buildings lean into each other like inebriated sailors, massive top-heavy structures defy gravity, colour, texture and materials fight for our attention. </span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #666666;">The fanzines characterize these buildings as ‘contemporary’ rather than postmodern, a term that itself has fallen victim to postmodernism. Not only do these buildings—and their designers—fight for our attention, they fight each other for attention. No longer is the city an integrated space dominated by the Bauhaus principles dictating the most cost-efficient use of rectangular glass and steel. Goodbye Mies, hello Jean Nouvel.<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #666666;">Postmodernism depends on education rather than innovation. At its foundation it is complex and technical, requiring years of indoctrination, dedication and training. In its final expression it is forthrightly and shamelessly narcissistic. At last we get to it: the definition. Postmodernism is the ultimate expression of <i>the idea</i> of the individual—overshadowing the modernist Utopian aims of the collective.<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #666666;">Modernism has defined the vanguard of our thinking since the 1950s. Salinger’s <i>The Catcher in the Rye</i>, Roth’s <i>Portnoy’s Complaint</i>, Kerouac’s <i>On the Road</i>, and later Pirsig’s <i>Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance</i> defined the white male-dominated modernist ethic. What they all shared was a paring down of plot, minimizing external activity and the good-evil conflict-driven plot devices to focus on the internal voice of ordinary life, in many ways the universal inner voice—even though it was for the most part a male voice.<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #666666;">Since then storyline plot has made an astonishing comeback. It’s even an important element of memoir, narrative non-fiction and so-called “literary” fiction that combines real and fictional elements, often autobiographical. As I sat wondering about why this should be so, I was caught by the actual question: why plot? <br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #666666;"><b><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">We crave plot because our postmodern lives are devoid of meaning. </span></b><br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #666666;">Utopia is dead. Or relegated to the hopelessly naïve. In its place is not cynicism, but narcissistic diversion, the endless looking in the mirror and the craving for something more—which is conveniently supplied to us, like narcissistic supply, electronically in the form of the endless plot twists of Netflix series and Hollywood blockbusters. Information, into which we are completely enmeshed, weaves us into its artificial, Matrix-like plots in endless loops that take us back to endlessly looping newsfeeds of artificially induced meaning.<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #666666;">Postmodernism is driven by information. And it’s the lens through which we see. It even applies to our science, cosmology and the quest to understand ultimate meaning—or meaninglessness—of our universe. “Information” is now the first cornerstone of and emerging theory of the reality. Another emerging cornerstone is “consciousness”. As current theory goes, our universe is literally made up of bits of information, is made real by conscious observation—and that all time exists simultaneously. It’s aptly called Emergence Theory. Its surface is slick, but it’s anything but simple, though it may be as simple as a single description of universal reality can be. I suppose.<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">In the end postmodernism is all about endless distraction without meaning. As the ultimate diversion, it plays into the conservative and neoconservative agenda set out in the early 1970s: to firmly place the control of social, cultural, political and economic forces into the hands of an intelligent, deserving elite. That’s the plot. And so far it’s working. For them, at least. </span></span></span><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">OK, and to be honest, I'm attracted to a lot of these new buildings. And therein lies the dilemma.</span></span></span><br />
<span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><br /><br />Additional reading:<br /><br /><span style="color: #6fa8dc;"><br />https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_modern_American_conservatism<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #6fa8dc;">https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1995/12/the-conservative-1960s/376506/<br /><br />https://www.thenation.com/article/the-roots-of-american-conservatism/<br /><br />https://www.architecturaldigest.com/gallery/jean-nouvel-architecture<br /><br />https://www.architectsjournal.co.uk/news/culture/opinion-why-starchitecture-fails-society/8692723.article<br /><br />https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0ztlIAYTCU</span></span></span>Gerald McEachernhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11355704123788099401noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8113176746086946335.post-49463826791605043302018-05-24T15:33:00.000-07:002018-05-24T15:34:45.717-07:00Time to say goodbye to the printed page. Again<span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">©<br /><br />There I was on page 12. Not me, exactly: I’m talking about my print column that ran last week in the Saint Croix Courier. The piece took up half a page, the other half was advertising. I’m used to seeing my column on the editorial page surrounded by other opinions, but with the reformatting of the newspaper I’ve been shuffled, along with a few others.<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">A newspaper is many things, among them a published record of news, events, celebrations and opinions. In many ways, the interplay of the information gives us, the readers, a sense of the immediate world around us. Whether it’s big city Canada or small town New Brunswick, I think the printed newspaper has a very important role in the community. Like a book, the newspaper is a tangible record. Evidence that we exist, historically speaking.<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjadwk4Ca8cn9AOAQBdojfTe0ciLKFWagnigqUD0K3_Ywi6up4V9quJQRb35IIFIm_5PEgOgI4ovz4IALJGuHsIVhBo1ddqeBc7qcNNb57BczgrP7W57L9dc0fiAqGSue316yZBVxjAKsA/s1600/20708231_1746254318735843_8427148487010989633_n%25281%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="700" data-original-width="700" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjadwk4Ca8cn9AOAQBdojfTe0ciLKFWagnigqUD0K3_Ywi6up4V9quJQRb35IIFIm_5PEgOgI4ovz4IALJGuHsIVhBo1ddqeBc7qcNNb57BczgrP7W57L9dc0fiAqGSue316yZBVxjAKsA/s640/20708231_1746254318735843_8427148487010989633_n%25281%2529.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The old Courier banner before the redo</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Yes, electronic publications are also archived, and preserve history, I suppose. But those ones and zeros are tricky. Unlike a newspaper which is printed once, an online piece can be manipulated at will, updated, edited, rewritten and so on, whenever the copyright-holder chooses. It’s a bit like Photoshopped images. It’s hard to trust what we see. “Is this real or airbrushed?”</span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">All of this is a way of saying goodbye to the print version of this column. I’ve been writing it on an off since 2005, and have been handled by five newspaper editors—Chuck Brown, Jim Cornall, Kent Walker, Vern Faulkner and now Krisi Marples. If you’re reading this, thank you all, you’ve been great. It’s been a good run, but I’m running out of inspiring things to say. Or maybe I feel that there are just too many of us saying too many things at once—with diminishing effect.<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I’ve written about some important things. Poverty and inequality here in Charlotte County, New Brunswick. The perils of running a province on resource extraction. The problem with living under the shadow of the Irving elephant. The weakness of our provincial government, and its inability to stand independent of big business interests. And on a larger scale the unsustainability of our present economic system, our addiction to fossil fuels, the risks of monocultural agriculture—including aquaculture, and the seemingly endless resource wars around the world, tacitly supported by our own Canadian government.<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I’ve written about Harper and Trudeau and Trump. I’ve invited ‘real men’—business leaders—to drink Monsanto milk, and written about global business is now farming and harvesting human beings. I’ve spoken a lot about climate change, and our inability to collectively do something about it. Along the way I’ve documented some of my own life: family travels, a few challenges, and a lot of personal observations. <br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">There is always more to say, of course. It’s not that I’ve run out of things to talk about exactly. As I said, it’s more about influencing positive change. In the early days of this column I felt that it was possible to draw attention to problems, to provide insight into solutions. I feel less certain about that today. I don’t actually think that anything I say or write will affect any modest change at all. But more personally, I feel I may not be changing enough, either. <br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I have to admit I’ll miss the discipline that comes from turning out a regular print column with a rigid deadline. Each one takes about 4 hours to write, and I’ve probably written around 500 of them. I started collecting and posting them here on this blog back in 2010, and have over 270 posted. Feel free to check a few of them out. Quite a few of them seem to remain topical.</span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">So, where does that leave me? The little Courier newspaper is not the same. I’m not the same, nor are any of us. The only constant is change. That said, Charlotte County does seem to change at a much slower pace than many other places on the planet—and that is both good and bad.<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">What would I wish for my local region? One good politician with some backbone would be good. A lot less generational poverty. A lot more job opportunities, and a more robust local economy that relies less on box stores and big business, and more on innovative thinking. And perhaps the rise of a sharing economy where services can be traded instead of bought. Overall, I’d like to see a culture of trust building here. But trust takes time, and more often than not depends on first having financial security.<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">As for me, I’ll take some time to reflect. And, yes, to keep posting here, even if a little less frequently. </span></span></span>Gerald McEachernhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11355704123788099401noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8113176746086946335.post-80477905221407414262018-05-22T11:17:00.004-07:002018-05-22T11:17:38.843-07:00Is this any way to live?<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">©<br /><br />Yet another week without home internet. It’s a bit of an unplanned social experiment. A few of us go through this, I expect. People who are hospitalized for example, and maybe they suffer some kind of withdrawal. </span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">I have internet at the office, so I can get my fix when I have time. At home it’s different. At home I have to plan my emails, then find a wi-fi base close by, so I can send. Yes, I can use my iPhone as a ‘personal hotspot’ to connect, but I’ve already used up all the data on my plan this month, so I have a few days to wait. So here I sit in the office at 10:45 in the evening typing out tomorrow’s column.<br /> </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Before coming back to the office tonight, I sat in the living room looking out at the world. An airplane hung in the air, going so slowly it looked too heavy to fly. The wind had died down, the clouds were still. A few birds were moving around in the branches. And the leaves were in bud, showing their green for the first time. It’s funny how the trees are bare one day and then the next day, under a hot sun, everything snaps to life.<br /> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">There was nothing in my mind as I sat there. It was the first time in weeks that I’d stopped moving and thinking. The room and the world outside were as quiet as my mind. This comes after a working weekend. From Friday evening at 7:00 p.m. to Monday morning at 3:00 a.m. I worked on a project to meet a deadline. I managed to put in a full work week—37 hours—in just two+ days. And then got up and went to work for 9:00 in the morning.<br /> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">There is nothing heroic in this. Other staff members visit friends on the weekends, take extended trips to concerts in other cities, go shopping. So could I. Other than policing and fighting fires, there’s almost nothing in this world that needs to be done that urgently.<br /> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Once upon a time there was no shopping on Sundays. Now there’s online shopping around the clock. Which reminds me, if you’re a young kid today, clocks no longer go around. The numerals simply blink. Everything is going digital. Which, as I’ve said before, is why Amazon, Google and Facebook are among the largest companies in the world. They produce nothing. But they generate transactions—social and financial—like never before in history.<br /> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Busy-ness and transactions at the speed of light suit the digital era. Our screens are reshaping our minds and how they process information. It’s predicted that the written word is losing its power. Pictures are more effective on-screen than words. Our concentration spans are getting shorter by the microsecond. We no longer need memory. Everything can be recalled at the press of a finger. Who starred in movie <i>The Swimmer</i>? What year did it come out?<br /> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">I delude myself into thinking my work is important. Perhaps in some small way it is. But mostly what I do just keeps the show on the road. Whatever show it happens to be this week. And that’s perhaps why we work: to lose ourselves and to avoid the depression that comes from facing meaninglessness or purposelessness. We work so we can feel real. How many of us define ourselves in adulthood by our careers? How many of us defined our childhood by the work we did? It’s interesting how a span of 10 years from being a kid to being a grown-up changes everything.<br /> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">This is a trap for retired people. They work all their lives to save money to retire and take it easy, and then miss the affirmation and self-definition that work used to bring. So they keep busy at something, anything. Or they get depressed. Or lost. It seems incredibly difficult for modern humans to just ‘be’. <br /> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">There was a movie about that. In <i>About a Boy </i>Hugh Grant plays a shiftless, purposeless character who lives off his father’s song royalties. His days are filled with dating attractive women, carefully planned shopping trips, self-grooming and idle chatter to himself. Of course the point of the movie is to have him discover he needs a point. And sure enough, he discovers one. But why? Why do we need a point?<br /> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Most of our fellow creatures on the planet get by with no point at all, other than existing. Trees don’t seem to have a point, any more than fishes do. Yet here we are, rushing like crazy to get…where? You see it in a simple commute driving home from the office. Today some dude in a small car raced in front of me almost taking off the nose of my car. I tried to swerve to the shoulder, but there was a cyclist beside me.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Then we all stopped for the next stoplight, fuming.</span></span>Gerald McEachernhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11355704123788099401noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8113176746086946335.post-37444990885175874172018-05-08T12:47:00.001-07:002018-05-08T12:53:16.537-07:00100 years from Model T to the end of Ford cars—but is it the end of the world?<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">©</span><br /><br />As I write this I don’t have Internet service. So I’m winging it. No Google or Wiki to verify any details. We’re on our own here—just like the days before we got wired in.<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Which was 1993 for me. Counting on my fingers I see that I’ve been online for 25 years. Computing went hand-held wireless a little over 10 years ago with the introduction of the first iPhone, and now we find out that the carbon footprint of cell phones is now equal to the carbon produced from our cars (but don’t hold me to that, because I can’t fact check it). Given the power we feed into server arrays and microprocessors and cell towers and the billions of phones produced and billions of us online, is it any wonder?<br /> </span></span></span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixnIj4XX1JXo6OeQVr8dateEYrCpYaNDBV169IOWPl0FZAWiVS6hIL3BKB6DahrvLBkQpFhd043vN3yCAwhndy3SWtKroXv_Q1Sl0KGL2-zkDOP_2eDxFqGnlF373F48boe4O9Q2di0iI/s1600/original-iphone-100703076-orig.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="1200" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixnIj4XX1JXo6OeQVr8dateEYrCpYaNDBV169IOWPl0FZAWiVS6hIL3BKB6DahrvLBkQpFhd043vN3yCAwhndy3SWtKroXv_Q1Sl0KGL2-zkDOP_2eDxFqGnlF373F48boe4O9Q2di0iI/s640/original-iphone-100703076-orig.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The original iPhone, released June 29, 2007</td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Several decades ago I spent a year in England. It was a great experience. I bought a small car for £500 and drove across the country, mostly on narrow one-lane roads. Our house had a coin-fed meter to keep the lights on, and hot water heating system fired by a small coal furnace in the kitchen that needed filling twice a day, with trips outside to the small coal bunker behind the house with a coal pail (a “hod” I think they called it). Uh, yes, we had indoor plumbing.<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">What I noticed most about the country at that time was the frugality of life compared to here. People bought food in small amounts from the high street market, only enough for one day, two at most. And those cars. Tiny by comparison to our giant American gas-guzzlers. When I got home to Canada my brother picked me up in his big yellow Ford crew-cab truck, and let me drive. Its size was unforgettable, as were the other bloated vehicles sharing the road.<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">One would think that after a few oil crises and climate change we’d be a whole lot more conservative about our transportation. And in many ways we are. Vehicles are far more fuel efficient for their size—but rather than shrinking our vehicles we’ve managed to make them even bigger, heavier and more luxury- and gadget-laden. Leather seats, electronics, rearview cameras, power everything including sunroofs, multiple airbags, 300+ horsepower engines, the list goes on in an endless options list. Airplanes follow the same track. The engines are more fuel-efficient but the fleets are growing faster than ever—as we travel more than ever. (I won’t worry about my carbon footprint when I go on vacation or a business trip if you won’t. Or so the subconscious unthinking goes.)<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Ford got my attention last year by converting all of its popular F-150 pickup trucks to aluminum bodies. I never did get the reason for it. I assumed it was for the weight reduction, which shaved about 135 kilograms off each vehicle. But have you ever thought about these pickups really? Ford, GM, Toyota, Nissan, Ram, they’re all so tall as to be practically unusable for anyone shorter than a professional basketball player. Compare them to any mid-1960’s truck. What are we thinking?<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">When I was born there were only 2.5 billion people on the planet. (Again, don’t hold me to that, it’s just what I remember.) Now we’re over 7 billion. Carbon is now at 411 parts per million in our atmosphere—the highest in 800,000 years, I just read. Carbon output is directly chained to two things: technological progress and population growth. Cars and computers count for a large portion of our carbon output. That’s transportation and communication.<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I was thinking about what life would have been like just before the invention of the automobile. Would I be living in a one-horse family, or a two-horse family? How far would I travel every day? One thing I learned from driving across rural Maine for a few years to visit relatives was the distance between small, disappearing old communities. They were all between 8 to 12 kilometres apart. Why? Because that’s about as far as someone could travel round trip by horse and wagon in a day. Our technology limited the range of our travel.<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Recalling those days in England, one of the more astonishing things I learned was how little the English travelled at that time. Many hadn’t been more than 20 kilometres from their birthplaces. Today, you’d be hard-pressed to find a middle class Anglo who hasn’t flown to some exotic vacation destination. World travel is no longer rare.<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Just last week I read that Ford announced that would eliminating almost all cars from its lineup; only the Focus and Mustang will remain. The rest will be SUVs and trucks. Again, I’m shaking my head. What are we thinking? Bigger is still better? Oh. Right, it’s not the about planet, its about the market. As always. And life goes on…</span></span></span><br />
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Gerald McEachernhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11355704123788099401noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8113176746086946335.post-76926954455586472362018-05-01T13:07:00.000-07:002018-05-01T13:07:38.861-07:00Just when you think it couldn’t get any sicker things get a little better…for a minute<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #666666;">©<br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;">Who’d have thought Kim Jong Un would turn out to be a hero? Even Donald Trump has come out looking pretty good on this one. The 65-year-old Korean War is unofficially over, and the two Korean leaders have agreed to denuclearize the Korean peninsula.<br /> </span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;">The ever-tone deaf Donald Trump immediately took credit for the reconciliation. But even there, he’s managed to chart a better course, giving China its due. Last Friday he tweeted, “Please do not forget the great help that my good friend, President Xi of China...particularly at the Border of North Korea. Without him it would have been a much longer, tougher, process!” That almost sounded statesman-like.<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;">Just a few months ago the media were speculating that Trump could trigger a third world war with Kim via Twitter. Happily, all that has evaporated. But things are still boiling on the other side of the world in Syria. Trump gave the go-ahead for US air strikes on suspected Syrian chemical weapons sites—even though there’s little hard evidence such sites exist, or that Assad’s forces are using them. Of course the UK and France joined in the aerial festivities. There is no good news in any of that; Syria is a disaster.<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;">So is Gaza. Palestinians are camping out along the Gaza-Israel border wall, lobbing firebombs at the Israeli troops, and Israeli soldiers are firing live ammunition back at the protesters, including children and journalists, dismembering many. All of this is passively condoned by the US and Saudi Arabia, neither of which wants to get involved. The faint good news there, according to Israel’s Haaretz news outlet, is the suspicion that the US and Saudi Arabia are going to give up in Syria and leave the country to Assad, and ignore Gaza, leaving it to the Israelis (clearly not such a good thing).<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;">But the US and Saudi Arabia have other fish to fry, one being Yemen. The war there is particularly ugly. It was one of the first military adventures the young Saudi Crown Prince bin Salman leapt into when he rose to power as defence minister. Even though he’s hot off a recent PR tour of the States, the war is destroying his reputation—for good reason. Human Rights Watch writer Kristine Beckerle excoriates bin Salman for his dirty little war that’s starved millions of Yemenis, and killed and wounded thousands of others over the past three years—including the aerial bombing of a wedding party last week, killing the bride and 20 others. The Guardian reported that 30 children were also wounded, some with severed limbs. Oh, yeah. And it was a ‘double tap’ strike. The US-supplied and serviced planes swooped in for a first strike, then circled back for a second, more deadly strike.<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;">These wars are just good business. Donald Trump will tell you that. In fact he did. “Saudi Arabia has been a very great friend and a big purchaser of equipment and lots of other things. … Some of the things that we are now working on—thanks—and that have been ordered and will shortly be started in construction and delivered: THAAD system, $13 billion; the C-130 heli—airplanes, the Hercules, great plane, $3.8 billion; the Bradley vehicles, that’s the tanks, $1.2 billion; and the P-8 Poseidons, $1.4 billion. … So, we make the best equipment in the world. There’s nobody even close. And Saudi Arabia is buying a lot of this equipment.”<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;">This is how psychopaths talk. But we’re all complicit. I don’t see any of us taking to the streets to stop it. We are, in fact, supporting it. Canada is selling armoured vehicles—manufactured in Quebec—to the Saudis, with our own sweet Justin leading the charge last month. The Guardian reports, “Justin Trudeau has defended his government’s decision to sign off on the sale of more than 900 armoured vehicles – including dozens described as “heavy assault” and equipped with cannons—to Saudi Arabia, arguing that the deal is in line with Canada’s foreign and defence policies.” Well, I guess it is, since it’s bringing in $15 billion. Trudeau shrugged off any criticism, saying that the government had to respect the contract made by the previous Harper government, and that “Our approach fully meets our national obligations and Canadian laws.” Right then. How Canadian of us.<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;">Fortunately, all’s quiet on the home-front. Only a little pipeline spat between provinces as climate change worsens, and rental van plowing down a crowded sidewalk in Toronto, killing 10. Yep, we’re all just fine.</span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #666666;"><br />Additional reading:</span><br /><br /><span style="color: #3d85c6;">https://www.ctvnews.ca/world/korean-summit-provides-unusual-look-at-kim-jong-un-1.3906266<br /><br />https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/north-korea-south-korea-donald-trump-korean-war-nuclear-weapons-a8326321.html<br /><br />https://www.politico.com/story/2018/01/06/north-korea-nuclear-war-264526<br /><br />http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-43762251<br /><br />https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/13/opinion/trump-us-foreign-policy.html<br /><br />https://www.haaretz.com/us-news/.premium-trump-saudi-arabia-in-lockstep-give-syria-up-to-assad-ignore-gaza-1.5967245<br /><br />https://www.hrw.org/news/2018/03/18/saudi-crown-prince-must-answer-atrocities-yemen<br /><br />https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/apr/23/at-least-20-killed-as-airstrike-hits-yemen-wedding-officials-say<br /><br />https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2018/04/24/yemeni_student_saudi_double_tap_air_strike_on_yemeni_wedding_party_only_possible_because_of_us_arms_sales.html<br /><br />https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/mar/21/justin-trudeau-defends-canada-arms-sales-to-saudi-arabia<br /><br />https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/8-women-2-men-killed-in-toronto-van-attack-coroner-1.3905302<br /></span></span><span style="color: #3d85c6;"><br /></span>Gerald McEachernhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11355704123788099401noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8113176746086946335.post-61235597396928803112018-04-23T06:23:00.000-07:002018-04-24T15:44:15.976-07:00Old religions, old people, old media, old money and good old Graeme Decarie<span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">©<br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;">The Saint John diocese is closing nine Catholic churches in New Brunswick. The reason is obvious. Congregations are greying out and dying out, fewer people go to church, and large church buildings are horrendously expensive to heat and maintain. The best business case is consolidation, which is exactly what the Church is doing.<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Canada’s changing social culture has taken a buzzsaw to organized religion. Since the 1960s more people have turned away from conventional Christian churches, either rejecting the faith outright, or exploring new avenues for spiritual fulfilment. Since 1971, the numbers of Protestants in Canada have dropped from 41 percent of the population to 27 percent. Catholics, not so much, falling from 47 percent of Canada’s population to 39 percent. Other religions grew from 4 percent to 11 percent, and the “religiously unaffiliated” rose from 4 percent to 24 percent (Pew Research Centre 2011). A graph would help here, but you get the point.<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Apart from the numbers of people moving away from religion, there are other points. We’ve witnessed a significant shift in morality over the past 50 years, ushered in by The Pill, women’s liberation, the sexual revolution, the “me generation” and “greed is good” ideologies of the 1980s and so on. As well as the inevitable backlash: the return to conservatism, renewal of “family values”, the rise of the political right wing and its authoritarian, eye-for-an-eye morality, and the explosion of fundamental Christian evangelism, especially in the United States.<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The “religious right–moral majority” is now a serious political force, which has delivered grassroots power to a new breed of reactionary conservative politician, including Donald Trump and Ted Cruz in the U.S., and Stephen Harper and Doug Ford in Canada. <br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">These new religious movements make for strange political and economic bedfellows—especially on the right. This is the backlash to the social liberation of the last half century—combined with declining economic prospects for ordinary people. The result is a deep craving for security and order, a craving that is easily satisfied by conservative theology, both secular and religious. Add those factors to an aging population, which tends to be more cautious and conservative, and we get a somewhat polarized society: the socially liberated centre-left on one side and the socially conservative centre-right on the other.<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">But none of that matters, it seems, when it comes to power. A similar effect happened in Russia following the Glasnost movement and the fall of the Soviet empire. Much of the public reacted to the new open society as a lack of comforting structure—and turned to the Orthodox Catholic Church for emotional security. Vladimir Putin seized this opportunity, turning to religion himself, as a way of attaching himself to both the religion and the people, and enshrining himself as the Church’s anointed one. It was a play right out of Machiavelli’s <i>The Prince</i>.<br /> <table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZsvNYFUpFiUtEmJ8guAvP6dEsDLEoCYAUYzQj_NofVb9jtogf7iaDBBYlCzgdwzSJfqxojfDblJqh6_ElvlgB_CUZP_sKhpBsZ3MQeVQi0SmZUF-Dj5obEWgP_YrH6ySUDMiuwamAbCM/s1600/DSC_0564.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="854" data-original-width="1280" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZsvNYFUpFiUtEmJ8guAvP6dEsDLEoCYAUYzQj_NofVb9jtogf7iaDBBYlCzgdwzSJfqxojfDblJqh6_ElvlgB_CUZP_sKhpBsZ3MQeVQi0SmZUF-Dj5obEWgP_YrH6ySUDMiuwamAbCM/s640/DSC_0564.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Researcher and writer, Graeme Decarie</td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The ruling class wants to rule, and religion is just one more weapon of control in their arsenal. The media is another. Enter Graeme Decarie. I read—and admire—his blog. This week he once again took on Brunswick Media and the Irvings.</span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">He writes, “It’s so intellectually and morally corrupt it screams for attention”, and wraps up with, “Since 1945, the greatest issue in the world has been the U.S. determination to rule the world. All of it. This is not a secret, except in our news media. The purpose of this is not to spread democracy or to kill evil people. It’s to give U.S. capitalists power to control the economies of the whole world for their own benefit. And a rag-tag Britain and France—and Canada—and others have to join in because U.S. capitalists and their news media have whipped them into line. But don’t expect to learn this from the Irving press. Once you get past the obituary pages, there’s not a damn thing worth reading.”<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Decarie is 85 years old. In his bio he tells us he was kicked out of grade 11, became a factory hand and office boy; went back to night school for a BA, worked some more, trained as a teacher at McGill, got an MA at Acadia, then a Ph.D from Queens and ended up teaching at Concordia for 35 years. He’s a smart dude who’s written thousands of pieces on current events. He has a meagre 75 followers on his Decarie Report blog. <br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">I wonder, how does that compare to the combined circulation of Irving’s daily newspapers: Moncton’s <i>Times & Transcript</i>, Saint John’s <i>Telegraph-Journal</i>, Fredericton’s <i>Daily Gleaner?</i> (Answer: 430,000 a week. Think about it.)</span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #666666;"><br />Additional reading:</span><br /><br /><span style="color: #3d85c6;">http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/saint-john-diocese-closes-and-consolidates-1.4629517<br /><br />http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/keeping-faith-the-changing-face-of-religion-in-canada-1.3071353<br /><br />http://www.pewforum.org/2013/06/27/canadas-changing-religious-landscape/<br /><br />https://theconversation.com/how-the-religious-right-shaped-american-politics-6-essential-reads-89005<br /><br />https://www.aljazeera.com/blogs/europe/2017/10/putin-triumph-christianity-russia-171018073916624.html<br /><br />http://themonctongrimes-dripdrain.blogspot.ca/2018/04/april-21forgive-me-again.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed:+TheDecarieReport+(The+Decarie+Report)<br /><br />https://nmc-mic.ca/.../2015-Daily-Newspaper-Circulation-Report-by-Title-SPREADSHEET_FINAL</span></span>Gerald McEachernhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11355704123788099401noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8113176746086946335.post-14265351556820029322018-04-17T05:55:00.001-07:002018-04-17T14:43:51.603-07:00Falling off the demographic cliff: the younger face of New Brunswick’s aging population<span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">©<br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;">“It is estimated that over 50,000 young adults have left the province in the past two decades.” So says a UNB report last year. That’s enough to get your attention. But that’s not what got me thinking. It was a CBC report written by Julia Wright.<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Her piece opens with, “Myth of the unspoiled island: how Campobello got trashed”. While on the face of it the piece deals with trash on the island, the subtext is actually Campobello’s declining and aging population. Simply put, residents are getting too old—or too financially strapped—to demolish the decaying private infrastructure falling into the ocean, or clean up the trash dumped around the island due to lack of a community landfill site.<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Wright interviewed 88-year-old woman, Sissy Newman, whose family owned Jackson Bros., a local fish plant, gas bar and general store. The place is now abandoned and falling into the harbour. Of the building Newman, the last family member, says, “I was hoping and praying that a good nor'easter would take her down, but it hasn't done yet.”<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">There are scenes like this all over rural New Brunswick. Covered bridges that can’t be repaired. Old homesteads decaying into the forest. Old trucks rusting into the woods, and boats rotting on the shore. It’s picturesque. But sad.<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">The provincial government is too cash strapped to do anything about the collapsing private infrastructure. It has a hard enough time providing decent health care for the aging population. The obvious government emphasis is now on the retention of youth in the province—to staunch the outmigration. <br /> </span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">I did a quick search to see what they were doing about it. I came across A Youth Strategy for New Brunswick, a 20-page report published in 2011. The first 13 pages deal with vision, mission and methodology (essentially boilerplate), with just 5 pages of recommendations. “Disappointing” would be an understatement. Take Recommendation 4: <i>“…we need to improve our retention strategies so that they respond to the priorities of young people and emphasize their potential. These strategies must promote youth retention and their repatriation so that they will settle here and contribute proudly to the economic and social development of our province.”</i> Genius. Stating the obvious. One wonders how much this canned process cost the taxpayers, or what became of the recommendations.<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Moncton, the darling of the Atlantic Canada job opportunity market, has its own problems. On the same day Wright published her piece about Campobello, CBC ran another piece on the trouble with youth retention in Moncton. Reporter Hadeel Ibrahim interviewed young computer science graduate David St-Pierre, who said it took him 11 months to land a job in his field after graduating. The reason it took so long? He didn’t have on the job experience. He solved his problem the old-fashioned way: he went out and made connections—and avoided the easy trap of landing a mind-crushing call centre job. Moncton economic development consultant suggests that local businesses need to “really explore the talent that’s coming out from university and colleges out here and really mentor [them]”. Again, genius. The trick is getting them to do that.<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">A link on the same CBC webpage reads, “New Brunswick lost 1800 jobs last month”, and another reads, “Employment opportunities directly linked to population growth”. There’s a connection between these two thoughts. New Brunswick’s population is not growing—so there aren’t a lot of job opportunities.<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">New Brunswick has great divided highways linking its larger cities. The countryside looks beautiful as you drive through on your way to Quebec, PEI or Nova Scotia or the other way to the US. More of that countryside is devoted to fewer large corporations extracting greater wealth from the natural resources, while small local, rural businesses die. Unlike rural areas, cities in New Brunswick, like cities elsewhere, thrive on technical, service and knowledge-based businesses. But the province’s cities are small, and lack the high-quality amenities that big cities elsewhere offer to attract younger workers. Which is a vicious circle, because lacking amenities, there are fewer jobs available, which in turn attract fewer young applicants.<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Meanwhile, the rest of the population just keeps getting older, day by day. The Gallant government sees this as a silver lining stating, “10,000 jobs will become available each year in New Brunswick thanks to our aging population, and there aren't enough people to fill them“. So it’s spending $25 million on a new Youth Employment Fund to keep youth in the province—which obviously assumes young people are too stupid to take advantage of 10,000 new jobs a year. More genius. Thanks government. But young people are going to go where they want. Fund or no.</span></span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Despite all efforts over decades to shift the population, New Brunswick’s ratio of urban to rural residents remains stuck at 1 : 1, while the rest of the country has moved to the city—with a 3 : 1 urban to rural ratio. </span></span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">New Brunswick remains stubbornly rural and aging. While its youth continue to outmigrate. I’m pretty sure $25 million is not going to change that.</span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="color: #666666;">Additional reading:</span><br /><span style="color: #3d85c6;"><br />http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/campobello-island-new-brunswick-1.4614387<br /><br />http://www2.gnb.ca/content/dam/gnb/Departments/sd-ds/pdf/Youth-Jeunesse/YouthStrategyNB.pdf<br /><br />http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/employment-growth-challenges-moncton-1.4620807<br /><br />http://www.country94.ca/news/26184109/gallant-government-doubles-down-youth-retention-program-funding-adding-25-million</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #3d85c6;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">http://sorc.crrf.ca/nb/</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #3d85c6;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/education-college-university-new-brunswick-statistics-census-2016-1.4424441</span></span><br />
<br />Gerald McEachernhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11355704123788099401noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8113176746086946335.post-29734924562885799442018-04-10T10:40:00.000-07:002018-04-10T10:57:21.351-07:00Is the human species an out-of-control organism? And is that an excuse?<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #666666;">©<br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;">Let’s face it, the poor are an embarrassment. They’re usually unattractive, have bad hair and bad teeth, eat cheap food, tend toward obesity, wear shabby clothes, drive wretched cars—if they drive at all, and have too many kids. Nobody wants to be poor. And not only that, there are too many of them.</span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;">On the other hand, everyone wants to be wealthy. The wealthy have it all, including the tendency to marry into better genetics, generation after generation. The downside to wealth is that it breeds uncaring monsters. But comfortable ones, with good teeth and pretty spouses and nice houses and beautiful cars and interesting wine collections. Aside from not being able to recognize and nuance suffering in others, rich people are nearly perfect. Most people defer to them, so we all subconsciously acknowledge that this is true.</span></span></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;"></span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;">Personally, I’m satisfied with what I have, and if I had to choose between being wealthy or being poor, I’m not sure I would choose wealth. It’s all relative. In fact, studies on wealth and life satisfaction tell us that it isn’t the amount of wealth one possesses that determines satisfaction, it’s the level of equality you have in your local environment. Research says you’re not likely going to be happy living in a place that has a great disparity between the “haves” and “have nots”. That’s the trouble with being poor in a tony neighbourhood like Rothesay, New Brunswick, and the trouble with Rothesay being located so near the low-income city of Saint John—it’s all too unequal for true happiness.</span></span></span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtNCHFaugap67KcT_gprqznPcM8Wfax3sE6ETA_3-wLaNjWePsWxMvH4Ta1OD4CUJCLzYfeFZP81IrOm7oesdwgtz44Y2ssDZHle4WCkKlM3d1UZytOaz2riJaY9SyuPW1vhZx-pFPUaE/s1600/Eshot.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="322" data-original-width="576" height="356" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtNCHFaugap67KcT_gprqznPcM8Wfax3sE6ETA_3-wLaNjWePsWxMvH4Ta1OD4CUJCLzYfeFZP81IrOm7oesdwgtz44Y2ssDZHle4WCkKlM3d1UZytOaz2riJaY9SyuPW1vhZx-pFPUaE/s640/Eshot.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Is the human species out of control? What would Elon say?</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;">Irrespective of where they live, poor people can’t afford to buy Teslas. At least not yet. But the man who makes Teslas, Elon Musk, thinks about poverty. He sees technology fast replacing human labour, which is one of the reasons he supports a universal basic income. And last year he funded a $15 million XPrize competition to find revolutionary ways to teach literacy skills to the 260 million or so children on the planet who can’t read. Apparently, Google’s Pixel C computer tablets were involved.<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;">Ironically, he views computers, and more specifically artificial intelligence (AI), as a threat to all life on earth. This past weekend he funded a free online viewing of the new AI scare documentary, <i>Do You Trust This Computer</i>. Tellingly, perhaps chillingly, the film opens with the Mary Shelley quote from Frankenstein: “You are my creator, but I am your master.”<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;">The documentary takes us on a wild ride through the astonishingly rapid expansion of AI into our lives, from computers to robots to sex toys. In one segment a surgeon is shown teaching an AI robot how to perform a routine surgery. The segment ends with the surgeon confessing that now that the robot has taken over the task, he’s already forgetting how to perform the operation, and may soon become obsolete himself. But the real threat exposed in the documentary is the possibility that self-replicating, self-determining AI will soon be able to assume full consciousness, becoming a mechanical species capable of replacing, or at the very least, dominating humans.<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;">Musk’s answer to this threat is Neuralink. It’s his newest brainchild (pun intended). The idea is to embed computer chips into the human brain, which would allow us to interact directly with AI, thereby retaining control over it, rather than the other way around. Um. Given the message in the movie, which is that AI can already evolve to think around these kinds of obstacles, I’m not so sure our friend Musk has his head on straight. What’s to prevent super-aggressive AI from taking over the chips in our heads—if this really is an evolutionary war shaping up as the movie suggests?<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;">OK. So let’s take stock. Large corporations have already taken over our political systems to deregulate corporate activities. More wealth than every before is being extracted from people and the environment and delivered to a tiny group of super-wealthy individuals. Corporate growth depends on consumer spending, which is now financed by personal credit and debt. Ordinary people are getting poorer. The oceans are filling with plastic. Animal species are going extinct at an alarming rate. The earth’s climate is destabilizing. Resource wars are raging in the Middle East with millions of people displaced. And now out-of-control self-replicating AI.</span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;">Oh, and I should mention that AI is particularly good on the battlefield and on the streets. It’s almost as if the Terminator was a prophecy.</span><br /><br /><br /><br />Additional reading:</span><br /><br /><span style="color: #3d85c6;">https://www.citylab.com/life/2015/07/the-poor-are-less-happy-in-places-with-more-income-inequality/400001/<br /><br />https://www.indy100.com/article/elon-musk-project-tanzania-reading-15-million-africa-poverty-support-companies-7803061<br /><br />http://doyoutrustthiscomputer.org/watch<br /><br />https://www.digitaltrends.com/movies/do-you-trust-this-computer-documentary-elon-musk/</span></span>Gerald McEachernhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11355704123788099401noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8113176746086946335.post-54930419463370514402018-04-03T15:48:00.000-07:002018-04-03T21:27:09.645-07:00This is it, your last chance Greg Thompson and John Ames<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #666666;">©<br /><span style="font-size: large;"><br />A provincial election is slated for September 24 here in New Brunswick. Already there’s a grassroots movement to push for a minority government—by convincing voters to vote for any other party than Liberal or Conservative. The movement even has its own <i>“Minority Power”</i> T-shirt sporting the party colours of the NDP, PANB and Greens.<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;">Good luck with that. Given how small “c” conservative this province can be, it’s unlikely to happen. The usual provincial reflex is to toggle back to the other side. Liberal now, PC next time, which is likely to happen again, though the voters are definitely showing signs of a deeper-seated disenchantment with both big tent parties.<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;">Which makes Greg Thompson’s announcement to run more interesting. Greg is a brand name politician, having served in Ottawa from 1988 to 1993 and again from 1997 to 2011, spending four of those years as Minister of Veterans Affairs. Several months after his retirement as Minister, it was disclosed there were privacy abuses in his department that led directly to him, according to the information on his Wikipedia page. At any rate, Greg knows the big game. Interestingly, he also endorsed his potential opponent, the youngish John Ames in the last provincial election.<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;">Coincidentally, both Thompson and Ames are former high school teachers. One could not be faulted for thinking that’s where the similarity ends. They certainly don’t share the same stature physically or politically. But they may be more similar when it comes to policy. Both are party men. Greg is true blue, and John is red through and through.<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;">If the <i>Minority Power</i> people had their way, neither would be elected. In the real world I expect Thompson has the advantage this time around. But in all fairness, it doesn’t matter who gets elected. It matters what needs to be done—and who has the spine to do it.<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;">Compared to most other Canadian provinces New Brunswick is not exactly the blueprint for successful governance. Our province ranks near the bottom of most measures, from debt to employment to health. And it’s been that way for decades. In 2014, for example, New Brunswick’s economy ranked last among the 10 Canadian provinces—and 16 other countries—and had the lowest per capita income. And the Conference Board of Canada gave the province a ‘D’ rating. There are reasons for the poor performance.<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;">New Brunswick is a captured state. Much of its legislation is written to benefit large corporations in the province, most notably the Irving empire. While that certainly benefits the Irvings, it does little to benefit ordinary New Brunswickers. With one bright exception: Moncton. When that city hit the financial skids in 1988 when CN closed its rail shops there, the city began a process of diversification that eventually led to a much healthier local economy—while nearby Saint John, home of the Irving empire headquarters, languishes.<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;">Moncton points the way for the province. So, if you’re reading Greg, or John, here’s where this needs to go. First, the Irving media stronghold has to end. No one company that depends so much on provincially-owned natural resources should completely dominate the province’s mainstream media.<br /> </span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;">Second, the government needs to stop favouring macro-projects for the promise of “jobs”. That means ending monocultural forest “management” policies, including glyphosate spraying, and instead supporting and developing the economic value of natural mixed forests. It also means, as a government, getting out of resource extraction businesses like open pit mining and fracking, and researching better alternatives to food production and energy generation (read: land-based aquaculture, and wind and solar power).<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;">Third, the province needs to start taxing its massive corporate wealth, which has been generated for the most part from the province’s rich natural resources. Not only by raising taxes on these corporations, but also working aggressively with the federal government to repatriate wealth sheltered in off-shore tax havens.<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;">Finally, the province needs to learn to turn its liabilities into assets. Call it the “microbrewery effect”. By relocalizing, retooling, and reskilling, the province can create hundreds, if not thousands, of new opportunities for new businesses. But only if it begins to think small. Last thing the province needs is to chase another failing company (Sears) with $4.3 million in government loans, only to watch the company lay off 350 workers a few months later.<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;">That’s assuming Greg and John have the guts to stand up and do something different. But it doesn’t matter what I think. It’s what you think come voting time in September.</span><br /><br /><br /><br />Additional reading:</span><br /><br /><span style="color: #3d85c6;">http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/new-brunswick-s-struggling-economy-ranks-near-bottom-of-report-1.2642653<br /><br />http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/saint-john-sears-1.3944383<br /><br />http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/sears-call-centre-closes-saint-john-1.4384165</span></span>Gerald McEachernhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11355704123788099401noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8113176746086946335.post-78287758464902007032018-03-20T14:20:00.000-07:002018-03-20T14:33:36.974-07:00The idiocy of Huddle. And the search for big ideas to save New Brunswick<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #666666;">©<br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;">Huddle is a news website that’s run by an ad…er…content-creation agency called Bonfire in Saint John. One of it’s co-founders, Allan Gates, got into the news a couple of years ago when he was advising Premier Brian Gallant on strategy.<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;">Trouble was, it was unclear whether Gates-Huddle-Bonfire was a news outlet or a marketing outfit, or both. CBC quoted Kelly Toughill, a prof at King’s College in Halifax. “If there’s a commercial relationship and there’s a contract to make the government look good, and you’re also writing about the government, then that’s clearly a conflict of interest.”<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;">These kinds of grey-boundary relationships aren’t rare—especially in New Brunswick, where all of the mainstream newspapers in the province are owned by one family that also runs the largest resource-based companies here—and have a huge stake in the outcomes of government decisions.<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;">To defend the opportunistically entrepreneurial point-of-view, there’s a whole lot more money to be made cozying up to the powers-that-be than in opposing them. Which is where Huddle and its writer, David Campbell, landed last week. He wants the government, or big business, or somebody, to finance a two-week summit that puts “10 top thinkers” in a room together to come up with great ideas for New Brunswick.<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;">Let’s not give Campbell too much credit. His writing rolls around like a box of rocks. He goes from questions like “how do we attract and retain a ‘wave’ of immigrants when we haven’t seen anything like it in 150 years?” to “I spent 2-plus years in government in a senior role and met and interacted with some brilliant folks but I can tell you there is very little concentrated and coordinated capacity for the kind of thinking that we need,” to “I am mostly personally running out of ideas,” to “I would like to have a kind of think tank that would be churning out ideas…Kind of a new Pugwash, but for local challenges that could be applied globally.”<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;">Trouble is, David, that’s already been done. The Atlantic Institute for Market Studies (AIMS) has been at this for years. A look back at the think tank’s 2005-2006 annual report highlights papers like “Brain Drain or Brain Gain?” “Characteristics for Tomorrow’s Successful Port,” “Excellence is in Short Supply in Atlantic Canadian Schools,” and “Why Bureaucrats and Environmentalists Miss the Point of Canadian Aquaculture.”<br /> </span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;">AIMS has even flirted with the idea of a single united Maritime province, that would, in their words, “change this region’s narrative… Efficiencies—and countless millions in savings—would be possible right off the bat.” And David, get this, they even suggested a new capital city: Pugwash.<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;">Admittedly, I’m not a huge fan of the pro-corporate, pro-big business AIMS bunch. While they try to rouge up their policies to look innovative and progressive, it’s the same old neocon and neoliberal economics that has been failing Atlantic Canada for generations.<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;">One would hope that Huddle-Bonfire, or any of the youngish, trendy marketing companies, might come up with a more honest approach to strategy. Rather than paying lip service to the province’s “problems”, they might take a look at the actual product.<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;">New Brunswick is chock-a-block full of old people, poor people, rural dwellers, low-income earners, old white families with a generational grip-lock on land and culture, abused single moms, nepotism, conservative thinkers, francophiles and anglophiles, a couple of ungodly powerful families with mind-numbing wealth, lifer politicians doing their very best not to upset anyone who might hurt their sources of funding and chances for reelection, cliquishness that can defy description, and a propensity, as a former friend often said, for “eating their own.”<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;">Well now. That’s a real time trip into the past. So, what kind of economy can you build on that? The answer is, Maritime provinces are already doing it. It’s called “retirement,” and “tourism,” and “escape from the urban treadmill,” and “downsizing,” and “cashing out,” if you own your own house in one of Canada’s big cities and want to convert your equity.<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;">That’s the only wave of immigration that will actually work for New Brunswick. But instead of marketing to these people, the locals do their level best to drive these “from aways” off. Tradespeople prey on them when they arrive to buy old houses and try to renovate them. Local business people view them as marks, or competition. Even tourist operations treat them like they’re necessary annoyances.<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;">Wake up, David-Allan-Huddle-Bonfire. Wake up New Brunswickers. If you want opportunity, start marketing what we have—and stop whining and daydreaming.</span><br /><br /><br /><br />Additional reading:</span><br /><br /><br /><span style="color: #3d85c6;">http://huddle.today/in-search-of-the-big-ideas-that-will-save-new-brunswick/?ct=t%28RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN%29<br /><br />http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/huddle-allen-gates-1.3444516<br /><br />http://www.aims.ca/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/AnnualReport2005-2006.pdf<br /><br />http://www.aims.ca/in-the-media/we-are-the-maritimes-one-province-nearly-2-million-strong/</span></span>Gerald McEachernhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11355704123788099401noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8113176746086946335.post-64283716029558648712018-03-13T16:38:00.002-07:002018-03-13T16:40:06.066-07:00Reconsidering the lobster, the lobster worker and the burning lobster factory<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #666666;">©<br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;">“Consider the lobster” wrote the late David Foster Wallace in his famous essay on visiting the annual Maine Lobster Festival. So let’s.<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;">I was surprised by the news of the March 1st fire at Paturel’s lobster plant on Deer Island. This is the second fire there in the last two years, this one putting 130 people out of work. Reports say they won’t be back to work for two years—bad news for a small island that already has high unemployment and limited job opportunities.</span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;">Canada produces about a third of the world’s lobster. Half of that—25,000 metric tonnes a year—comes from New Brunswick. Today a live 1-pound lobster sells online for $13.50 US. Doing the math, New Brunswick’s annual catch comes to $742,500,000 US. The province’s processed (frozen) lobster alone, not including live lobsters, hauls in between $400 and $500 million a year, according to the Lobster Council of Canada. That’s big business.</span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;">Back in the 1930s there were over 700 lobster canning plants in Canada. A century before that lobster was considered “poverty food”, but canning, distribution and food shortages during two world wars turned lobster into a delicacy. Inevitably, increased harvesting and efficient canning factories took a toll on lobster stocks. In 1860, Maine lobsterman James P. Baxter reported that 4- to 5-pounders were “small”, and 2-pounders were routinely tossed as not worth the bother. Twenty years later the canneries were using half-pounders.</span></span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;">Lobsters do not reproduce easily. Yes, they can spawn up to 20,000 hatchlings at a time. But most of that is eaten by just about everything—including other lobsters. A female lobster can only mate just after she sheds her shell. Before molting she seeks out a male, and sprays pheromones to attract him and to neutralize his aggression. Then she moves into his den, molts, and while naked and vulnerable, mates. She stores his sperm, regrows her shell, and 9 to 11 months later ejects thousands of eggs—that get fertilized on the way out by the sperm she’s stored. A sticky substance glues the eggs to her tail for another week or two before they hatch and release into the ocean. Where most of them are eaten. Of every 10,000 eggs hatched, only 10 survive.<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;">Point being, it’s tough being a lobster. And tougher to get big. Humans like large lobsters, because unlike most meat, lobster meat gets more tender as the lobster grows. And because lobster meat doesn’t store or travel well, it has to be eaten or flash frozen immediately after it’s killed. A lobster’s life may be tough but it’s meat is fragile.<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;">Foster Wallace describes lobsters being boiled alive. He writes, the lobster “tends to come alarmingly to life when placed in boiling water…they even try to hook their claws over the kettle’s rim like a person trying to keep from going over the edge of a roof…The lobster…behaves much like you or I would.”<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;">But what of the lobster worker? As it turns out, half of them are not locals, they’re foreign. Back in 2014 Paturel won a legal proceeding against the federal government about foreign workers’ wages. The government based its numbers on median EI payouts at $13.79 per hour for similar work. Paturel argued for the local median wage, $11.25 per hour, and won. That low wage might be one of the reasons the company hires foreign workers.<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;">It seems the life of a lobster worker may be nearly as tough as the life of a lobster. A quick scan online about working at Paturel reveals a few clues: “by far the worst place i could ever think to work. excruciatingly long hours, ignorant and selfish management, be expected to work some 16-18 hour days, 6 days a week, and at the end of the week, get told that you didn't work hard enough. never a clear idea on what's going on. constantly re-doing the same work over and over and over because they can't seem to make up their minds. basic slavework.” <br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;">Alternatively: “we have a lot of good co-workers. the typical at work is only seasonal. sometimes we work 3 days only and the time is like only 4 hours. i learn how communicate to other people even i am a filipino…the management is to good.”<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;">A CBC headline reads: “Paturel unlikely to provide compensation after fire employees say.” And the local paper reports that half the workers will be back to work in a few weeks.<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;">Definitely food for thought. Thinking back to the salmon, cod and herring industries, you have to wonder about the long term sustainability of satisfying one third of the world’s appetite for lobster—and who’s keeping all the money.</span><br /> <br /><br /><br /><br />Additional reading:</span><br /><br /><br /><span style="color: #3d85c6;"><span style="font-size: small;">http://lobstercouncilcanada.ca/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/LobsterManualLow-Res.pdf<br /><br />http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/lobster-prices-new-brunswick-high-1.3759037<br /><br />https://lobsteranywhere.com/seafood-savvy/what-size-lobster-to-buy/<br /><br />http://www.gma.org/lobsters/allaboutlobsters/lobsterhistory.html<br /><br />http://www.columbia.edu/~col8/lobsterarticle.pdf<br /><br />http://www.visalawint.com/uploads/4/7/4/8/47487647/court_sides_with_employer_in_wage_dispute.pdf<br /><br />https://ca.indeed.com/cmp/Paturel-International/reviews<br /><br />https://ca.indeed.com/cmp/Paturel-International-Company/reviews<br /><br />http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/lobster-plant-fire-employees-compensation-1.4566605<br /><br />https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/1/13/1728712/-The-Swiss-Ban-on-Boiling-of-Live-Lobsters</span></span></span>Gerald McEachernhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11355704123788099401noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8113176746086946335.post-33829968097639320802018-03-06T13:06:00.000-08:002018-03-06T13:06:43.306-08:00A scan of today’s Facebook feed: recipe for extreme humour or advanced depression<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="color: #666666;">©<br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;">Life is looking a little dreary as we leave February and head into March. Still there’s Facebook to bring a little foreign sunshine into our lives, right?<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;">The first FB post I check out is a video titled “When water flows uphill”, with the caption, “Two physicists…discover a new and fun means to manipulate the movement of water.” As if we haven’t been doing this since we learned how drag a stick from one mud puddle to the next.<br /> </span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;">The next is another video explaining what happens when modern food, water and electrical distribution infrastructure collapses—like in Puerto Rico, New Orleans, Venezuela, Libya, Yemen, Syria and Sudan. As one might imagine, what happens is not exactly fun. The point of the video is actually the US’s abdication of compassionate leadership, something it had when it rebuilt Europe and Japan after WW2. Uplifting.<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;">Yet another video introduced as “hope for the future!” a short documentary promoting unlimited energy from nuclear fusion—the same power that lights up the sun. So far, the energy produced is only equal to the energy put in to get these machines up to 100 million degrees C. Just maybe in 20 to 30 years… technology will save us.<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;">Fourth video. This one titled “New tardigrade species found in parking lot in Japan.” It looks like a microscopic slug. The poster enthuses, “I’m loving evolution. Hate extinction.” Enough said. The same could be said for the next one: “Goat yoga is the most adorable new trend.”<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;">Finally something I could sink my eyes into: a nearly naked man sporting goggles and a white beard skiing in the sunshine, with bikini-clad young women in background. Title? “White people have no culture.” Caught, I read the article. The author thinks white people actually do have culture—a culture of appropriation and colonization, and, well, all things ugly and evil. A commenter points out the stupidity of her argument: “All major parts of the world has seen empires rise and fall, Byzantine, Mongols, China, Feudal Japan, The Ottoman empire, the Umayyads, the Mali empire, the Aztec empire etc. Being capable of doing atrocities is not an exclusive feature of white people.”<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;">Paul Ryan is up next, talking about the need for health care reform in the States. I just can’t. Next, a friend posts a photo of a raspberry and brownie dessert with Pollack-inspired swirls of chocolate drizzle.“Oh my god.” That, and so much nicer than Paul Ryan.<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;">The next title says it all. “Trump signs resolution to permit dumping mining waste into waterways.” Just ahead of this corker: “‘Pure madness’: dark days inside the White House as Trump shocks and rages.” The caption tells us that Trump’s friends “worry that he is becoming too isolated.” Who are those friends, one wonders.<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;">On to the next. “Key US lawmakers want to boost Israel’s $38 billion defence aid.” No one seems to be boosting foreign aid to the Palestinians living in Gaza.<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;">A post on chemtrails. Skip to: “Trump just publicly humiliated Melania,” obviously another chemtrail story. And “President Trump suggests executing drug dealers.” A true progressive.<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;">Scroll down to Gordon Ramsay and James Corden facing off on “late night’s grossest game: Spill your guts or fill your guts,” with a photo of James gnawing on a massive chunk of meat.<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;">Next we learn McGill University is tainted with antisemitism, that cleaning products may harm female workers’ lungs as much as smoking a pack a day, and that the EU is planning a $3.5 billion trade war against the US. Now we’re talking.<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;">This leads to “The many benefits of backyard chickens,” a piece from the Toronto Star that has Thunder Bay friends clucking. And another scam warning about a fake Canada Revenue letter. Beware. Another friend posts a set of recent watercolours of flowers. Pretty. Just ahead of a photo of young women sitting on a bus staring into their cellphones while two old women stand, hanging onto the overhead bars.<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;">Then two photos in a row, one comparing young Trump to young Mueller in army gear, and another comparing Ivanka Trump to Angela Merkel, who is giving Ivanka the side-eye.<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;">And another video. Here’s a guy dressed in a giant cymbal costume, drumming on…wait for it…a cymbal. But the high-point of the FB tour is the Photoshopped pic of Justin in a white US police uniform with short-shorts, bare legs, handgun and cowboy hat, captioned, “I see Justin Trudeau is visiting the US to speak about gun control.”</span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;">That’s all I have for now. The newsfeed keeps rolling. Catch you next week.<br /> </span><br /><br /><br /><br />Additional reading:</span><br /><br /><span style="color: #3d85c6;"><br />https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEOCNFhIv-0<br /><br />https://qz.com/1219484/scientists-just-found-the-168th-species-of-japanese-tardigrade-in-a-mossy-parking-lot/<br /><br />http://www.star941atlanta.com/blogs/goat-yoga-fitness-latest-trend-thats-too-adorable-not-try<br /><br />https://www.terraincognitamedia.com/features/white-people-have-no-culture2018<br /><br />https://www.washingtonpost.com/videonational/president-trump-signs-resolution-to-permit-mining-waste-dumping-in-waterways/2017/02/21/cde426aa-f84b-11e6-aa1e-5f735ee31334_video.html<br /><br />https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/%E2%80%98pure-madness%E2%80%99-dark-days-inside-the-white-house-as-trump-shocks-and-rages/ar-BBJPjqc?ocid=sf<br /><br />https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-israel-defense/key-u-s-lawmakers-want-to-boost-israels-38-billion-defense-aid-package-idUSKCN1GB2NQ<br /><br />http://washingtonpress.com/2018/03/04/trump-just-publicly-humiliated-melania-speech-annual-gridiron-club-dinner/<br /><br />http://time.com/5181830/president-trump-execute-drug-dealers-opiod-crisis/<br /><br />https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCjY3ZQY8WY<br /><br />http://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/student-says-anti-semitism-still-an-issue-in-mcgill-student-government<br /><br />https://www.thestar.com/opinion/contributors/2018/02/26/the-many-benefits-of-backyard-chickens.html</span><br /></span>Gerald McEachernhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11355704123788099401noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8113176746086946335.post-69365151294148944292018-02-26T19:36:00.000-08:002018-02-27T08:46:22.703-08:00It’s easy to get demoralized and give up. Especially if you live in Saint John, NB<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #666666;">©<br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><i>“Speak up. Learn to talk clearly and forcefully in public… Be a nuisance where it counts… Do your part to inform and stimulate the public to join your action…. Be depressed, discouraged and disappointed at failure and the disheartening effects of ignorance, greed, corruption and bad politics—but never give up.”</i><br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #666666;">Those are the words of Marjory Stoneman Douglas, the namesake of the school and site of the mass shooting in Florida on February 14. A 19-year-old, Nikolas Cruz, confessed to shooting 31 people, killing 17. </span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #666666;">Cruz was pretty much a marginalized human being from birth. He was adopted at age 2, his adoptive father died when was still a boy. He suffered from ADHD, anxiety, depression, stress and anger issues, and had a history of displaying violent tendencies. A victim himself, he bragged about killing animals and hating blacks, Mexicans, gays and others. Cruz was the lit end of a political fuse attached to an American powder keg of white male anger directed at minority groups that appear to be doing well. Cruz’s attachment to Stoneman Douglas is cruelly ironic.<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #666666;">As unstable as he is, he’s able to connect his own alienation to the well-publicized white male alienation and rage, all of which is symptomatic of something, but not the cause.<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #666666;">Although most of the mainstream media does its collective best to ignore the causes, there’s enough evidence available. Growing income inequality, rising debt, lack of jobs for semi-skilled workers, especially white males, have led to social breakdown, rising divorce rates, domestic violence, single parent poverty, substance abuse, social isolation and homelessness.</span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #666666;">This is not just an American phenomenon. The same patterns can be seen in the UK, Canada and elsewhere. The patterns are macroeconomic: the deregulation of industries; the exporting of jobs to cheap labour pools overseas; the flatlining of wages for over 30 years while productivity and prices continue to inflate; the rise of the super-rich and offshore tax havens; the necessity of two-income families; rising student debt; the wildly inflated cost of housing; and the reliance on credit card borrowing to merely survive. The economic pressures from above are crushing those least able to bear it.<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #666666;">The Canadian poster city for this story is Saint John, New Brunswick. It’s one of the poorest cities in Atlantic Canada. Its local government can’t afford to repair the roads. Yet it’s home and headquarters to one of the wealthiest families in Canada, a family that historically promised jobs, and asks and gets lowered taxes, while its industries foul the air—a 2009 Conservation Council study pegged lung cancer rates 40 to 50 percent higher in Saint John than in nearby Fredericton and Moncton.<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #666666;">Instead of tackling Saint John’s problems head-on by raising taxes on industry, and rigidly enforcing environmental pollution, the provincial government has decided to ‘give’ Saint John a $22 million financial aid package. In May last year the government created a $10 million fund to address generational poverty in the city, and in October it announced a $50 million commitment to build a new provincial museum in Saint John. All of this comes after the province followed a third-party recommendation to write down Irving’s Canaport property assessment by $202 million dollars. Of course, none of these financial exchanges are connected. And certainly not connected to the upcoming provincial election on September 24.<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #666666;">Which brings me back to Stoneman Douglas. Her advice is to “do your part to inform and stimulate the public to join your action”, to be a nuisance, to never give up. But in the face of intergenerational power, wealth and poverty, not much seems to change in Saint John (and New Brunswick, for all that) no matter who says or does what.<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #666666;">Let me be perfectly clear. I have no personal axe to grind with the Irving business complex, or any other business. I don’t even have a personal beef with the provincial government—whether it’s red this year or blue the next. I do, however, have a personal issue with New Brunswick citizens. All of us know what’s going on here. Nothing I’ve written about is a surprise to anyone. So why is it so difficult to simply find new candidates, vote them into non-red-blue parties and change the game? Is it some kind of Stockholm Syndrome, or is it something deeper, wired into the franco-anglo political DNA of the province?<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;">Or perhaps it’s something simpler. Like cowardice and laziness. Or plain giving up. If that’s the case, we should all be heeding Stoneman Douglas’ advice. September is just 7 months away.</span><br /> <br /><br /><br /><br />Additional reading:</span><br /><br /><span style="color: #3d85c6;">https://www.nationalobserver.com/2016/06/06/news/what-have-irvings-done-new-brunswick<br /><br />http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/city-saint-john-premier-brian-gallant-don-darling-1.4532708<br /><br />http://www2.gnb.ca/content/gnb/en/news/news_release.2017.05.0748.html<br /><br />http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/canaport-lng-property-tax-assessment-appeal-1.4009062</span></span>Gerald McEachernhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11355704123788099401noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8113176746086946335.post-38547401465502573242018-02-24T10:33:00.000-08:002018-02-24T10:33:19.612-08:00GMOs and other science marvels: are we turning ourselves into industrial experiments?<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="background-color: white;">©<br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;">Our entire society functions on technology that works. Right down to the little things, which became abundantly clear this afternoon when one of my windshield wipers flew off as I drove through the mud-and-salt road-spray. I needed that wiper.<br /> </span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="background-color: white;">The day before, I had a conversation with my brother-in-law about the same sort of thing. We were watching a NASCAR race. He’s a trucker, and during commercials we talked about how much we depend on trucks for survival. If the trucks stopped in the middle of winter, he said, every store would be out of food within a week, and we’d all be starving the week after.<br /> </span></span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="background-color: white;">We’ve placed a high level of trust in our technology. Maybe that’s why we’re so willing to accept any technological innovation that adds to our immediate quality of life.<br /> </span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="background-color: white;">But back to the NASCAR race. Years ago televised races were pretty boring, but now the cameras inside all the cars take you right inside the action. The cameras also pick up another important detail. I noticed a prominent Coca-Cola decal parked right beside a driver’s elbow. After the race we watched as he reached for a bottle of Coke.<br /> </span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="background-color: white;">Coca-Cola is a product of the machine age. A quick scan of the internet turned up a list of 51 other uses for Coca-Cola, from removing rust to cleaning burnt pans to neutralizing a jellyfish sting to cleaning toilets to stripping paint from metal to removing gum from hair.<br /> </span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="background-color: white;">Within minutes of drinking a can of Coke your blood sugar spikes and your liver goes into overdrive, converting that sugar into fat. Then the caffeine kicks in. Your pupils dilate, your blood pressure shoots up and your liver dumps even more sugar into your blood. After that your dopamine levels bump up giving you a high—like a mini-dose of heroine, a few other chemical interactions happen, binding calcium, magnesium and zinc in your lower intestine, before the diuretic effect kicks in and you need to pee like a racehorse. And after an hour the rush wears off and you crash.<br /> </span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="background-color: white;"><i>That’s</i> industrial strength pleasure. But industry always moves from pleasure to profits. Industrial agriculture runs on short term results: fewer pests equal higher yields. Roundup to the rescue. Monsanto has built an empire around redesigning plant DNA to resist massive doses of Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide. This is good for industrial farmers who want to get rid of weeds that eat into their crop yields. And it’s very good for Monsanto because their genetically modified (GMO) seeds are patented and only available from, you guessed it.<br /> </span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="background-color: white;">In Canada we now herbicide and insecticide tolerant GMO soy, corn, canola, sugar beets and alfalfa growing in our fields. Two disturbing things are now happened here and around the world. Herbicide use has skyrocketed—and the plant gene pool has become polluted by GMOs. Permanently. Genetic pollution, we’re told, will outlast global warming and even radioactive contamination.<br /> </span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="background-color: white;">While industry would like us to believe GMO food is safe, it isn’t that clear. Check out this warning: “Several animal studies indicate serious health risks associated with genetically modified food (AAEM 2009), including infertility, immune problems, accelerated aging, faulty insulin regulation, and changes in major organs and the gastrointestinal system.” Another academic paper begins with, “The results of most studies with GM foods indicate that they may cause some common toxic effects such as hepatic, pancreatic, renal, or reproductive effects and may alter the hematological, biochemical, and immunologic parameters.”<br /> </span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="background-color: white;">But it’s not just GMOs. Most manufactured products pose serious health risks. The flame retardants, mould inhibitors and pesticides in drapery, carpets and furniture cause toxic reactions and infertility. Exposure to household cleaning products actually reduces lung capacity in women—but strangely not in men. And now complex, ultra-processed foods, like mass-produced bread, are seen to be a long term health risk. A recent French study showed that a 10 percent increase in eating ultra-processed foods was linked to a 12 percent increase in cancer. The researchers couldn’t identify the particular ingredients causing the problem, but it could be what they call the “cocktail effect” of all ingredients.<br /> </span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-size: large;">Personally, I’d take that even further. The entire industrial cocktail, from high-frequency microwaves to GMO crops to manufactured food, to industrial and consumer waste is poisoning us—and every other living thing on the planet. That much is clear. But I’ll still need to replace that wiper blade in the morning.</span><br /><br /><br /><br />Additional reading:</span></span><br /><br /><br /><span style="color: #3d85c6;">http://www.wisebread.com/51-uses-for-coca-cola-the-ultimate-list<br /><br />https://therenegadepharmacist.com/what-happens-one-hour-after-drinking-a-can-of-coke/<br /><br />https://cban.ca/gmos/products/on-the-market/<br /><br />https://arxiv.org/pdf/1410.5787.pdf<br /><br />https://thetruthaboutcancer.com/implication-of-gmo-foods/<br /><br />http://www.hgof.ns.ca/index2.php?function=gmos<br /><br />http://responsibletechnology.org/10-reasons-to-avoid-gmos/<br /><br />http://responsibletechnology.org/gmo-education/health-risks/<br /><br />http://responsibletechnology.org/gmo-education/65-health-risks-of-gm-foods/<br /><br />https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18989835<br /><br />http://www.greenpeace.to/publications/carpet.pdf<br /><br />https://www.msn.com/en-gb/health/familyhealth/cleaning-sprays-as-harmful-to-your-lungs-as-smoking-20-cigarettes-a-day/ar-BBJbGXc?ocid=sf<br /><br />https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/feb/14/ultra-processed-foods-may-be-linked-to-cancer-says-study</span></span>Gerald McEachernhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11355704123788099401noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8113176746086946335.post-25718320278368957972018-02-13T15:18:00.000-08:002018-02-13T15:18:45.979-08:00The power of the hive mind: how and why society makes the decisions it does<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #666666;">©<br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;">Imagine, if you will, that you’ve entered the realm of science <i>non</i>-fiction. Imagine a world in which you’re literally connected to everyone else’s brain—as easily as today’s cellphone connects to the internet.<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #666666;">Before we get into that let’s step away from the frontier and take a look at where we’re at and how we got here. <br /> </span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #666666;">Each of us already has a hive mind, technically speaking. According to recent neurological research, when it comes to decision-making, the human brain behaves very much like a hive of bees—as Jason Castro explains in a 2012 piece in <i>Scientific American</i>. “Every decision you make is essentially a committee act.” The committee, he tells us “is the densely knit society of neurons in your head.” So far so good. He keeps going: “<i>[Committee]</i> members chime in, options are weighed, and eventually a single proposal for action is approved by consensus… Our brains seem to work by representing many possibilities in parallel <i>[all at once, not one after the other]</i>, and suppressing all but one.” <br /> </span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #666666;">It turns out that this is exactly what bees do in real life. When ‘deciding’ to swarm to a new hive, scouts go out to collect information, and come back to ‘discuss’ their findings with the rest of the colony. Through gestures, wing buzzing and head butting, the scouts present their cases—all at once. The decision to swarm is actually made by the head butting, the strength of which puts a stop to endless discussion and forces a group decision.<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #666666;">So we’re already living inside a personal hive model. But what about a human collective hive model? Does such a thing exist? Nietzsche thought so. ““Madness,” he wrote, “is rare in individuals—but in groups, political parties, nations, and eras it’s the rule.” This harkens back to William Foster Lloyd’s <i>Tragedy of the Commons</i> in which he theorizes that humans behave rationally and morally on the local level, but that same behaviour on a global scale transforms into irrationality and immorality. As in, how fencing of pastureland can turn into zealous protectionism, nationalism and war.<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #666666;">But it’s not quite that simple. Humans are a complicated species. University of San Diego professor Dipak K. Gupta identified 12 steps leading to mass insanity, a.k.a. war. In his 2001 <i>Path to Collective Madness</i> he broke these into four groups: greed, ideology, social cost (as in the high price of leaving the larger social group), and facilitating factors (such as social acceptance of violence). <br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #666666;">To reframe that, take greed, add ideology, then social pressure, and normalize the whole process, and <i>presto!</i>, you have a pressure tank of collective madness ready to blow. There is plenty of historical evidence to support this, from barbarians invading Rome to the current, ongoing wars in the Middle East. And the pressure is mounting on the streets closer to home—down in Trumpland.<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #666666;">I just read an opinion piece on how the Big Six media corporations are losing control of their ‘hive mind’ audiences. OK, fair enough. Mainstream media is losing its grip on the public. But the article misses the power of the new media mega-corporations, that don’t just control the hive mind, but <i>are</i> the hive mind. Amazon, Google and Facebook, along with Microsoft and Apple, and the US government cyber security agencies form the most seamless hive mind the world has ever known. Everything we do and share becomes a data point for hive knowledge. This is more than just the end of privacy. This is the end of the individual.<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #666666;">Which brings me back to a science <i>non</i>-fictional world in which everyone’s brain is connected to everyone else’s. According to George Dvorsky, a Canadian bioethicist and futurist, the technology needed to wirelessly—and effortlessly—connect human brains together into a single hive mind is already here. In an interview with Kevin Warren, a British professor of cybernetics, Warren tells us that “the technologies required to build an early version of the telepathic noosphere are largely in place.” All that’s required, he says, “is ‘money on the table’ and the proper ethical approval.” He goes on to say, “I also think this communication will be far richer when compared to the present pathetic way in which humans communicate.” <br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;">Two questions immediately come to mind: who will ultimately control the flow of information, what gets implanted, shared or edited out? And what how does this super-organism behave on a global scale? The mind boggles, truly.</span><br /><br /><br /><br />Additional reading:</span><br /><span style="color: #3d85c6;"><br />https://io9.gizmodo.com/how-much-longer-until-humanity-becomes-a-hive-mind-453848055<br /><br />https://books.google.ca/books?id=rjgehWHnhPcC&pg=PA130&lpg=PA130&dq=gupta+12+steps+to+collective+madness&source=bl&ots=Dkb3_eCcIt&sig=VDKQsVFSJK6vrjn3QQsS8-Ka2y4&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi9xbD2rpzZAhUJMGMKHUSwD9YQ6AEIMDAB#v=onepage&q&f=false<br /><br />http://www.returnofkings.com/82250/how-the-corporate-hivemind-is-losing-control-over-society<br /><br />https://io9.gizmodo.com/how-much-longer-until-humanity-becomes-a-hive-mind-453848055</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #3d85c6;">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xs_HhZrCBdg</span></span><br />
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Gerald McEachernhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11355704123788099401noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8113176746086946335.post-15619862912994778472018-02-06T12:20:00.001-08:002018-02-10T21:57:06.854-08:00Forget the regular corporate 9 to 5. Introducing the rise of the experience economy<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #666666;">©<br /><span style="font-size: large;"><br />Two of the more successful new business startups in our small corner of the world have been coffee shops. Both sell expensive espressos, lattes, chai teas and fancy baked goods. Sure, the products are good, but what sets these businesses apart from your average Tim’s is the experience.<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;">The staff at these boutique shops take their time. They put a little extra effort into your coffee, making sure there’s enough crema on the top of your shot of espresso, enough steam in your steamed milk to create just the right amount of foam in your latte. It’s the attention to detail, the theatre of preparation that adds a valuable intangible to the coffee experience.<br /> </span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;">Your local banker might not have predicted success for these two companies. Neither town is particularly bustling. Both towns have very busy Tim Hortons stores. But banking isn’t what’s driving the experience economy. It’s an economic paradigm shift.<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;">The experience economy is not exactly a new idea. Joseph Pine and James Gilmour wrote about it in the Harvard Business Review back in 1998. They wrote, “From now on, leading-edge companies—whether they sell to consumers or businesses—will find that the next competitive battleground lies in staging experiences.” <br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;">The reason they cite is the service economy, like the production economy before it, has become “commoditized”. And when anything becomes a bulk commodity like, say, general accounting, it loses its distinctiveness, and decreases in value. Adding a unique experience to the service adds that value back.<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;">But I think there’s more to this paradigm shift than shifting a marketing tactic. <br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;">All over the world, universities and colleges are facing declining enrollment and increasing competition for students. At the same time, more and more workers are facing the reality of being replaced by artificial intelligence (AI), including accountants, lawyers and other high-cost professionals. Add to that the fact that more older workers remaining in the workforce, young people are finding it more difficult to find jobs, let alone afford to get married and raise families. Young people are waiting longer to get married, if they marry at all, as recent statistics show.<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;">Not only has the production economy slowed as most of our homes are now overloaded with stuff we’ve purchased, but we’re over-saturated with services we don’t actually want or need. And if we do, we can easily buy them online.In other words, the general economy is stagnating. That’s not to say we’re not consuming. As the global population continues to expand, we’re increasing our consumption exponentially. But individually most of us are beginning to feel that we’ve been at this banquet table too long. We’re full.<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;">Corporations and governments know this. The ranks of mid-management have swollen to the extent that large organizations can no longer afford to add more bloat to the payroll. Graduating students, unless they’re from the best, big brand schools, can no longer find jobs. <br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;">Meanwhile, the environment is suffering from too much corporate extraction. GMO crops threaten our health and pesticides and industrial processes threaten the environment. Within this century we’ll be running out of oil, fresh water, rare earth minerals and arable land. We all know, either consciously or unconsciously, that lowering consumption is the only logical answer.<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;">And that brings us back to employment. If we’re not producing and consuming as much, including services, how will we survive? Where will the new jobs come from?<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;">That is exactly what the experience economy delivers. Our future success depends on creating creative jobs—not corporate jobs. Our colleges and universities will be slow to change course, tied as they are to the corporate job-feeder and funding mechanisms. Yes, corporate jobs will continue to exist. But the next economy will require entrepreneurial skills not currently taught in post-secondary institutions or in the corporate-bureaucratic world. As AI wipes out corporate jobs, more young people will turn to creating experiences to support themselves. This will include performance, theatre, music, relaxation therapies, recreational and sports training, soul work, mediation, natural healing, game design, outdoor guiding and much more.<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;">And these have been the very non-tangible subjects schools have been dropping from their curricula for decades. Given how dry and unsatisfying the education experience has been for most of us—and the commoditization of post-secondary education itself—change won’t be a bad thing at all.</span><br /><br /><br /><br />Additional reading:</span><br /><br /><span style="color: #3d85c6;"><br />https://hbr.org/1998/07/welcome-to-the-experience-economy<br /><br />https://www.forbes.com/sites/danielnewman/2015/11/24/what-is-the-experience-economy-should-your-business-care/#4be4c5131d0c<br /><br />https://theconversation.com/why-are-fewer-people-getting-married-60301<br /><br />https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Ivo_De_Sousa/post/Can_anyone_suggest_papers_on_evaluation_of_a_University_strategy/attachment/59d63b5179197b80779985f4/AS:410153829584905@1474799702006/download/The_Trouble_with_Higher_Education__A_Critical_Examination_of_our_Universities.pdf.</span></span>Gerald McEachernhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11355704123788099401noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8113176746086946335.post-37808091358963012062018-01-30T14:00:00.000-08:002018-01-31T06:42:31.347-08:00Here’s the number for the nearest food bank. Can’t afford a phone? Use mine.<span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">©<br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;">Karen Ludwig posted one of those helpful meme posters on Facebook listing all the phone numbers of all the food banks in and around Charlotte County. That seems kind and empathetic on the face of it. So why do I find it so outrageous?<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Because Karen (and our other fine representatives) have been elected to help reduce and eliminate problems like local poverty and hunger—not to become the cheerleaders for private sector donation-and-volunteer groups. Karen and Co. need to use our hard-earned tax dollars to redistribute wealth and resolve at least some of our growing social inequality.<br /> </span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Meanwhile, back in reali</span></span></span><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">ty, the Irving family has stashed millions, perhaps even billions of tax free dollars in Bermuda since the 1970s, while building a conglomerate empire that employs almost twice as many people as the province’s civil service. Everyone living here knows this story. They know the Irvings own most of the mainstream media, with the exception of CBC and a couple of others. They know that the Irvings pressure the government to write legislation that favours their interests—like spraying glyphosate over our Irving-managed forests. They know that the Irving family has a history of punishing upstarts that challenge them. They know that it doesn’t pay to speak out against them. They know it’s about power, and the Irvings have it and they don’t. It’s all out there. CBC reporter Jacques Poitras even wrote a book about it. <br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Predictably, the Irving family lodged a complaint with the CBC’s ombudsman in an attempt to have Poitras banned from reporting on the family in the media. And they were serious. They hired Lenczner Slaght LLC, a high-powered Toronto litigation firm to draft the complaint. <br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The question becomes, “who’s afraid of the Irvings?” We all know the answer. But this is not a rant against the Irving family. It’s a rant against power and hoarding wealth. And it’s a rant against us and the way we govern ourselves.<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Over the decades we grew complacent while local jobs disappeared. In their place we got a single fibreglass sports car factory and call centre jobs—all from well-connected politicians who would ‘save us’. We got a few corporations that got bigger with government’s help to “create jobs”. It was all “create jobs”, no matter what the environmental or social costs. Along the way we got toxic forests and polluted oceans. We got a large and permanent poverty class in cities like Saint John. And powerful corporate conglomerates that simply absorbed successful startups and muscled out the competition. We didn't complain, we didn’t protest, for fear of losing our jobs. We sucked it up.<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">But as the corporate sector knows, New Brunswick isn’t lacking in natural resources. It doesn’t lack innovative people either. So why is it suffering? The answer is, things aren’t bad enough yet. Most of us are still anxiously getting by.<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">And it’s not only New Brunswick. Politics and business have become handmaidens around the world. The resulting income inequality has reached epidemic proportions almost everywhere. To the extent that even the high-flying Davos elites are getting worried about it.<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">What we need to do is what was done centuries ago. Like the earlier separation of Church and State, we now need a radical separation of Corporation and State. We need to reclaim our own finances, taking back the control of own currency that Pierre Trudeau gave over to private bankers back in 1974, when he stopped borrowing from the publicly-owned Bank of Canada, ballooning the national debt from $18 billion to over $100 billion in a few short years. <br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Along with the rest of the world, Canadians have become debt slaves. Today, there are only three nationally-controlled central banks in the world: Cuba, North Korea and Iran. Tellingly, every country that has resisted transferring their public banking systems to the private sector have been coerced, overthrown or invaded.<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Who should I blame for this food bank vs. wealth disparity? The spinelessly polite politicians who toady to corporate interests? The celebrity politicians from influential families with their wide telegenic smiles? The rapacious businesses and their leaders? The bankers fuelling the economy with our debt? Or the rest of us who are so willing to accept it?</span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;"></span><br /><br /><br />Additional reading:</span><br /><br /><br /><span style="color: #3d85c6;">http://www2.gnb.ca/content/dam/gnb/Departments/ohr-brh/pdf/other/WorkforceProfile2016.pdf<br /><br />https://www.nationalobserver.com/2017/03/30/news/are-irvings-canadas-biggest-corporate-welfare-bums<br /><br />https://pinetreewatch.org/new-brunswick-irving-company-province/<br /><br />https://www.litigate.com/<br /><br />http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/glyphosate-spraying-public-meeting-1.4278428<br /><br />https://www.nationalobserver.com/2016/06/27/news/how-irvings-intimidate-their-critics<br /><br />http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2014/1/davos-inequalityeconomicsinstability.html<br /><br />https://theconversation.com/davos-grapples-with-inequality-90791<br /><br />https://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2015/04/17/Liberate-Bank-of-Canada/<br /><br />http://www.theeventchronicle.com/finanace/three-countries-left-without-rothschild-central-bank/<br /><br />http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/new-brunswick-food-bank-usage-1.3323924</span></span>Gerald McEachernhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11355704123788099401noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8113176746086946335.post-25545314037880601962018-01-23T19:24:00.001-08:002018-01-23T19:24:28.264-08:00Woven plastic mats the answer to homelessness, who knew?<span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">©<br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;">“Falls Brook Centre hoping to get 11 mats made to make up for lack of beds in the city,” reports the CBC yesterday. The mats in question are apparently woven from discarded plastic shopping bags. The group has already made three, and are ‘hoping’ to make eight more. OK then.The same report tells us that the men’s shelter in Fredericton has 39 beds the city actually needs a minimum of 50 beds to accommodate the number of homeless people every night. Hence the 11 mats.<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Last night it was -7ºC in Fredericton. The night before it was -16ºC. This is Canada, folks. On the other—warmer—side of the Atlantic volunteers are addressing a similar problem. There are 4000 homeless people in Belgium. Because canvas tents are banned there, a local concerned citizen, Xavier Van der Stappen, designed a cardboard tent using donated materials from a nearby factory. He’s produced 20 of them, aiming at improving the design and making 100 more. That only leaves another 3880 people without shelter on the streets. OK then.<br /> </span></span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"> While I admire the enterprise and compassion of these creative volunteers, where are our public services? Why, with all the corporations sending tax-free income—and jobs—offshore, are our governments not doing something to alleviate suffering on our streets? The question isn’t just rhetorical.</span></span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Getting to answers is as complex as the reasons why people end up on the street. Homeless people don’t only suffer from lack of money. Many suffer from substance abuse, mental illness, physical handicaps, lack of skills and education, and more. Over the past four decades our governments have cut back on the social services that looked after these people. The not-for-profit sector has picked up some of the slack, relying on private donations to keep their operations going. But, no matter how conscientious their efforts may be, it’s no substitute for a unified, coordinated, society-wide solution.<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">It doesn’t have to be this way. Since 2005 the State of Utah has reduced homelessness by 75 percent. It’s estimated that there were only 300 homeless people in the state by 2015. How did they pull off this miracle? Under a program called Housing First the state government built homes for them. <br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">The idea came from Sam Tsemberis, a New York University psychologist, back in 1992. “I thought, they're schizophrenic, alcoholic, traumatized, brain damaged,” he said in an interview with Mother Jones. “Why not just give them a place to live and offer them free counselling and therapy, healthcare, and let them decide if they want to participate?” The idea worked gangbusters, reducing homelessness by 88 percent over 5 years. Public officials had their doubts, but the idea caught on in Denver, Seattle, Massachusetts and, most successfully, in Utah.<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">All in all, the situation here is not as dire as elsewhere. The city of Edmonton with an urban population similar in size to the entire province of New Brunswick has a homeless population of 1750 people. Estimates done by the Point-in-Time Count, a national strategy funded by the federal government, pegged our provincial homeless population at about 200. The survey identified 13 people experiencing “absolute homelessness” in Bathurst, 50 in Fredericton, 60 in Saint John and 77 in Moncton. That’s significantly fewer than, say, the city of Thunder Bay, where there were 289 people—75 percent of them Indigenous—living on the streets.<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">But even 200 are too many. Of the 60 homeless people in Saint John almost 50 percent of them are women, which is far above the national average. One probable reason: domestic violence. Another is the extremely high poverty rate among single mothers in the region.<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">There’s no excuse for this in a city that is home the largest oil refinery in the country, and one of the wealthiest families in Canada, especially one that has been tax-sheltering its wealth in Bermuda for decades.<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">The logical answer would be to increase taxes on extreme wealth in this province, and abolish homelessness and poverty in this province. But that is nowhere on this (or any past) government’s radar.<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Instead our government is busy trying to privatize health care services, which, given experience of privatization around the world, is only going to produce a reduction of services. Going backwards is never going to solve our problems going forward.<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;">Is anyone listening? Hello, Fredericton? </span><br /><br /><br />Additional reading:</span><span style="color: #3d85c6;"><br /><br />http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/plastic-bags-beds-for-fredericton-homeless-1.4496725<br /><br />https://www.reuters.com/article/us-belgium-homeless-tents/housing-the-homeless-cardboard-tents-sprout-in-brussels-idUSKBN1ET1HE<br /><br />http://www.businessinsider.com/this-state-may-be-the-first-to-end-homelessness-for-good-2015-2<br /><br />http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/02/housing-first-solution-to-homelessness-utah/<br /><br />http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/homeless-count-women-nb-1.3484914<br /><br />http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/thunder-bay/homeless-count-thunder-bay-aboriginal-1.3464406</span></span>Gerald McEachernhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11355704123788099401noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8113176746086946335.post-23780272169770079782018-01-17T05:47:00.001-08:002018-01-17T05:47:38.609-08:00The worst marketing ever: Opportunities New Brunswick big campaign fail<span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">©<br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;">“I AM NB PROUD” reads the Facebook ad, this one featuring a photo of Geoff Clark, a ‘delivery executive for IBM Client Innovation. The subtitle reads: “Make your move to New Brunswick.” It’s hard to begin to explain why this ad campaign is so bad to someone who doesn’t live here.<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">But fortunately, real New Brunswickers are able to directly comment on the ad, thanks to Facebook. Here’s what one of them clearly articulates, despite his spelling.<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">“Even the refugies are leaving there is no work for the young generation and the other struggle its so sad to see the the gouvernment paying for that instead of fixing the probleme that probleme is irving that bleed the province drop by drop and stashing there money in bermuda instead of contributing to the systeme like all the others look at saint john that town look like a dump and broak but housing the biggest refinery in canada having one of the weltiest famly running and owning it ruinning he crown kand with all the poison they make the gouvernement put on the crown land so they can controle the the forest inbthere advantage but the wild life number suffer its not rare to see a moos getting weard deasease.The thrute is this province belong to irving the gouvernment act like puppet and ppl see no future here i workbout of province to suporte my famly no choice.”<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">One woman writes: “It took my husband almost 2 years to find a job in the Saint john area. Mean while we were trying to live off the minimum wage job I have. No jobs here if ur not bilingual.. Sad. Too bad we almost lost everything because if the bilingualism policy here in saint john where the majority speaks only English.”<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Another man writes: “Nb proud??? Please I would love to get out of this province....... Absolutely nothing here!!!!!”<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">And finally this. “Lol, IBM has been doing a massive international employee clear out. Teams of ten are down to two. Projects are being dropped, and there's been a hiring freeze. It's been all over the tech news feeds for months.”<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">This last comment reminds me of the incredibly stupid deal the province did with Sears Canada as it was going bankrupt—offering Sears $8.7 million in subsidies to locate call centres here. Fortunately, the company folded operations before it could qualify for the subsidies. And it’s not as if the provincial government didn’t know Sears was tanking when it signed the subsidy deals to secure 350 new jobs—as hundreds of other retail jobs were about to be lost across New Brunswick.<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">No one should be ‘NB proud’ of that one. Which is the problem with the ad campaign. Proud? Of what? A slow motion employment crisis in the middle of a demographic collapse? One would hope for even a glimmer of truth in advertising.<br /> <table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhe_r4e7paY62VzuHTJxasRDJJm3YV7kTnSAlantCrws1wOLh3T9GmeRPJm9rw8Ls5nIWmPEMRdZfXog0ywWvAjyNo4lfAkiSimbj01ZjFbacvD4dlV-S2D5MRPH7BUxMYteNN4NRt2uE/s1600/peters-street.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="664" data-original-width="1180" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhe_r4e7paY62VzuHTJxasRDJJm3YV7kTnSAlantCrws1wOLh3T9GmeRPJm9rw8Ls5nIWmPEMRdZfXog0ywWvAjyNo4lfAkiSimbj01ZjFbacvD4dlV-S2D5MRPH7BUxMYteNN4NRt2uE/s640/peters-street.png" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Derelict housing, Peters Street, Saint John, NB</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Here’s the reality. New Brunswick has the fourth highest unemployment rate in the country. Back in April the official rate was an abysmal 8.7 percent. As of last month it was down to 7.8, adding back 2,700 full-time jobs and 1,600 part-time jobs. That’s the official rate. The job participation rate for men is five percentage points below the Canadian and PEI rates (70 percent each), putting us on par with Nova Scotia (65 percent) and just slightly better than Newfoundland (just 62.2 percent), which is to say, poor. <br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">The participation rate is the number of people actually employed combined with those actively looking for work. Of New Brunswick’s 620,000-person potential workforce, 35 percent, a total of 217,000 people, is not actively looking for work—on top of the 31,000 unemployed people looking for work.<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">And the staggeringly brilliant solution offered by the NB Proud ad campaign—is to entice new people to the province! Uh, why? Because we don’t have enough resident talent or skills here? Or unemployed New Brunswickers want too much money? Or because they’re too lazy? Just exactly what is this government saying to its citizens?<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">What it isn’t saying—and neither are the governments of Canada and provinces like Alberta—is how dependant we are on resource extraction, how little we invest in home grown innovation, and how badly we commercialize the ideas we actually do develop. And how our governments subsidize corporate monopolies that strangle the local economies to death—as we’ve seen in the province’s north.</span></span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">What we do have in New Brunswick is not opportunity, it’s a culture of stagnation.<br /></span></span></span><br />
<span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><br /><br />Additional reading:<br /><br /><span style="color: #3d85c6;">http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/nb-no-public-money-sears-call-centres-1.4352163<br /><br />https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/immigration-is-the-only-way-to-reverse-atlantic-canadas-population-decline/article33958301/<br /><br />http://www.statcan.gc.ca/daily-quotidien/180105/cg-a003-eng.htm<br /><br />http://www2.gnb.ca/content/dam/gnb/Departments/petl-epft/PDF/Emp/Profile-NB-LabourForce.pdf<br /><br />https://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/rob-commentary/to-boost-productivity-canada-needs-to-focus-on-innovation/article26283449/</span></span></span><br />Gerald McEachernhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11355704123788099401noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8113176746086946335.post-54024616732234157982018-01-08T15:07:00.005-08:002018-01-08T15:13:53.997-08:00Trump is the end result of the WWE: a world where fiction triumphs over fact<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #666666;">©<br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;">Don’t blame Donald Trump. Blame Edward Bernays. He was the original marketing genius who appropriated his famous uncle’s— Sigmund Freud’s—psychology to literally invent modern propaganda. The rest, as they say, is marketing history.<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #666666;">Bernays may have been well-intentioned—at first. He was hired to help Woodrow Wilson to convince the American public to enter and support World War I. So marketing and politics have been bedfellows from the very beginning. And marketing takes money, which explains why hundreds of millions of dollars are spent on marketing during every US election cycle.<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #666666;">We’ve been in this marketed reality for 100 years now. Bernays, God bless him, figured out a way to use marketing and PR to get women smoking back in the 1920s. He helped the aluminum giant, Alcoa, convince special interest groups that adding their toxic product, fluoride, to drinking water was a good idea. (He did it by convincing the American Dental Association to support it.) Bernays never worried about mixing business and politics. He helped the United Fruit Company protect its interests in Central America by enlisting the CIA to overthrow the president of Guatemala back in 1954. You just can’t make this stuff up.<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #666666;">Here’s how Bernays describes his approach in his own words: “Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.” Think about that as you read one of the Irving newspapers or watch CNN.<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #666666;">Bernays spent a lot of his time bending the truth, and leading the way for a whole industry, all the way through Mad Men to today. But to be clear, there was always an element of truth—based on real facts—in the message. That is no longer the case.<br /> </span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4BT_lZHAj2kdyKF2CN5Y6Z32lVyFhnBmwLhc5URJhHox86JzKwoRHFavuVCDBYrXVkQD_ZQhfVChGWx8y_Di4btlzEbk2YyRrMaZ_4qCwVSKjs4o3vvUmIVT_FlFYLrFwsscBbmvExys/s1600/Screen+Shot+2018-01-08+at+6.02.31+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="999" data-original-width="1600" height="398" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4BT_lZHAj2kdyKF2CN5Y6Z32lVyFhnBmwLhc5URJhHox86JzKwoRHFavuVCDBYrXVkQD_ZQhfVChGWx8y_Di4btlzEbk2YyRrMaZ_4qCwVSKjs4o3vvUmIVT_FlFYLrFwsscBbmvExys/s640/Screen+Shot+2018-01-08+at+6.02.31+PM.png" width="640" /></a></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #666666;">Somewhere around 1960, television began to change marketing as dramatically as social media is doing today. A new kind of entertainment began to emerge that blurred the lines between sport and theatre. Leading the charge was a company that turned into the World Wrestling Federation. It’s now called World Wrestling Entertainment Inc., or WWE. Here’s what Wikipedia says about it:<i> </i></span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #666666;"><i>“WWE shows are not legitimate contests, but purely entertainment-based, featuring storyline-driven, scripted, and choreographed matches, though they often include moves that can put performers at risk of injury if not performed correctly.”</i><br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #666666;">Since then, several generations have grown up watching this stuff, rooting for their favourite wrestling stars. This pattern of scripted fake reality has evolved into reality television. Of which Donald Trump was just another one of the actors. This blurring of lines between reality and fiction has extended into every aspect of communications. You can see it for yourself if you care to tune in to mainstream TV. The majority of news is now discussed to death by ‘pundits’ as if we need experts to interpret the already pre-sterilized news we’re being fed. But they’re there to add legitimacy to the messages.<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #666666;">The real question is, are the messages real? So far the news, as we know it, has become a lot like Bernays’ PR. There’s an element of truth to most of the news we take in. The whole truth is what’s not included in the news. In the rush to war, we’re no longer shown the atrocities we help perpetrate through our involvement. As Canadians, we don’t get to see the end results of our armoured vehicles being used by the Saudis in Yemen. As customers, we don’t see the effects of sweatshop labour in foreign special trade zones. It’s just not news—because none of us wants to see it. So we’re in denial. Yes, we know our cars are killing the air and the oceans, and melting the polar ice caps, but damn it, we have to get to work in the morning.<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #666666;">And denial leads to something worse. We end up denying facts, and denying reality itself. Having normalized half-truths and fakery as “real entertainment”, we’ve now managed to normalize total fiction as reality. We’ve truly become Orwellians, living in a world where war is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength.<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #666666;">Enter Donald Trump. He’s not an anomaly. From Nixon to Obama, he’s just another marketer selling a bag of half-truths and undeliverable promises. Except Trump doesn’t even bother with half-truths. It’s all just BS. And the poor get poorer. The middle class gets smaller and more fearful. The wealthy get wealthier. Now I see there’s a move to draft Oprah Winfrey for a presidential run. Oprah? <i>Seriously?</i><br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;">To repeat what Bernays said so honestly and clearly, “Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government.” The question is, who’s actually running things? And why are we letting them?</span><br /><br /><br />Additional reading:</span><br /><br /><span style="color: #3d85c6;">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_relations_campaigns_of_Edward_Bernays<br /><br />https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WWE<br /><br />https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/love-inc/201102/dr-phils-very-bad-advice</span></span>Gerald McEachernhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11355704123788099401noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8113176746086946335.post-63632952248760005972018-01-02T09:07:00.000-08:002018-01-02T09:13:02.593-08:00The privatization of health care services: an abdication of public trust?<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #666666;">©<br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;">So the Province of New Brunswick has gone ahead with its plan to privatize nursing home-care and tele-care management services, quietly rushing to sign a deal with Medavie over the weekend. Medavie is already managing the province’s ambulance services. The new services are meant to dovetail into Medavie’s ambulance services to deliver more efficiency to the province.<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #666666;">To be perfectly clear this is not an exclusively Liberal deal. The former Conservative government put the idea on the table in 2013. Four years later the Libs have delivered the goods. Coincidentally (and these things are always coincidental), the new Medavie CEO is Bernard Lord, former Conservative premier of New Brunswick (1999–2006), who is in a very good position to know how the levers of government work.</span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #666666;"><br /> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkUoIgUvWJ1wI8JrYqqMx40sLTobyRJ1FxrJ2jHWTWhRmy9We_n8RAz4dXRHVD1agNb8p2_B4cRMcBl-_0jw83knyQ8xyIh3t9ecUcmc6_eurxlbPEc-9NJ6FEdL2_tShcbRL7FkLxKTk/s1600/Screen+Shot+2018-01-02+at+12.01.25+PM.png" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="492" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkUoIgUvWJ1wI8JrYqqMx40sLTobyRJ1FxrJ2jHWTWhRmy9We_n8RAz4dXRHVD1agNb8p2_B4cRMcBl-_0jw83knyQ8xyIh3t9ecUcmc6_eurxlbPEc-9NJ6FEdL2_tShcbRL7FkLxKTk/s640/Screen+Shot+2018-01-02+at+12.01.25+PM.png" width="640" /></a></span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #666666;">Not everyone is happy with the deal. There have been public protests throughout the decision-making process, nurses and health care unions are decidedly against the deal. One of the reasons for union opposition is the plan to have ambulance paramedics do double-duty: while waiting between calls, they’ll now be expected to drop in on home-care patients. The idea is to improve efficiencies, both financial and physical. The unions aren’t convinced. And neither are vocal members of the public.<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #666666;">And neither, apparently, is Conservative leader Blain Higgs, who pointed out in the Legislature that: “People are waiting for ambulances that are sitting empty because there are no people to staff them. ANB [Medavie-managed Ambulance New Brunswick] is refusing to give information to the standing committee because it is the intellectual property of that company. How is it that the Premier cannot understand the concerns of New Brunswickers when their health care becomes the intellectual property of a private company?” I would ask, if Medavie can’t staff the ambulances is presently manages, how can it possibly provide double duty to home-care patients?<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #666666;">Well, Medavie would have an answer to this. Even <i>better </i>management! Because Medavie won’t be actually delivering these new services. Just as it does with the ambulance contract, it will be taking over the management of these government-owned services. The 700 workers will still be employed by the government, with the same pay and benefits. Only 32 managers will move over to Medavie. Recently retired health minister Victor Boudreau acknowledged there wouldn’t be any savings realized from the change. So why are we doing this again?<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #666666;">One wonders what’s really going on in Fredericton. Two years ago the province’s Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Eilish Cleary turned in a major report on the health effects of the herbicide glyphosate sprayed on New Brunswick’s forests. She was fired by (Boudreau’s) Department of Health and paid $720,000, binding her to a confidentiality agreement. Glyphosate is an important part of protecting the province’s forest products industry—but at what cost? A cynical person might sense a pattern here: more than a few of New Brunswick’s politicians appear to be particularly business-friendly. <br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #666666;">Bernard Lord, for instance, was premier when Medavie started negotiating for the original ambulance management deal back in 2006. He joined Medavie’s board of directors in 2008. Now he’s Medavie’s CEO. So it all works out.<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #666666;">To be fair, the province’s ambulance service was a mess prior to 2006. There were over 50 ambulance service contractors spread across the province. But it was the government that brought the system into focus, not Medavie. The government could just as easily set up its own management team. <br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #666666;">It’s impossible to know whether the move to privatize health care management is the result of good strategic planning, personal opportunism or just plain laziness. There’s nothing particularly innovative in managing a government-owned and bankrolled operation. Vitalité Health Network CEO Gilles Lanteigne, who leads the francophone half of the province’s health care sector, predicts that “splitting the provincial health system up into several components will make it increasingly difficult for us to achieve expected results, namely in terms of quality, continuity of care, effectiveness and efficiency.”<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #666666;">But one thing seems certain: Bernard Lord is probably making a lot more money at Medavie than he did in 2006 as the highest paid premier in Canada. So you have to ask yourself, what’s next for the current premier, Brian Gallant?</span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #666666;">Additional reading:</span><br /><br /><span style="color: #3d85c6;">http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/bernard-lord-extramural-program-medavie-1.4289106<br /><br />http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/bernard-lord-medavie-ceo-1.3636465<br /><br />https://atlantic.ctvnews.ca/new-brunswick-signs-controversial-contracts-with-medavie-1.3740864<br /><br />http://www.gnb.ca/legis/QP/documents/58/4/QP02171025e.pdf<br /><br />http://davidcoonmla.ca/province-hands-extra-mural-tele-care-management-to-medavie-times-transcript-1-sepember-2017/<br /><br />http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/eilish-cleary-health-settlement-1.4191543<br /><br />https://atlantic.ctvnews.ca/report-involved-with-nb-doctor-s-dismissal-released-to-public-1.3008391<br /><br />http://www.newswire.ca/news-releases/medavie-blue-cross-to-operate-new-brunswicks-province-wide-ambulance-system-533866961.html<br /><br />http://www.gnb.ca/cnb/news/he/2007e0751he.htm</span></span>Gerald McEachernhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11355704123788099401noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8113176746086946335.post-87354995161709126472017-12-26T09:09:00.000-08:002017-12-26T09:24:44.383-08:00What connects Christmas, Les Misérables, and a Wocket in My Pocket<span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">©<br /><br />“Sometimes I feel quite certain there’s a jertain in my curtain.” I’ve read that line hundreds of times to our kids before bed. It’s Christmas night. The gifts have been opened, the turkey carved, the wrapping paper tossed away, and I’ve just finished another bedtime story. But this time the reading was different. Tonight, my six-year-old daughter read the story to me, slowly, carefully, word by word.<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Unlike other Dr. Suess books like The Grinch or The Lorax, this one doesn’t have a deep moral message. It’s simple: a boy points out eccentric creatures like zamps in the lamps because, “that’s the kind of house we live in, and I hope we never leave it.”</span></span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">This week our whole family came home for Christmas. Our oldest is just in from BC where she’s teaching. Our son drove home from university. I flew across the country a few days ago. It’s great to hear the teasing and the laughter in the living room again. But there are always jertains hiding in the curtains.<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Last night we visited friends. One of their horses wasn’t feeling well, and every 15 minutes or so one of us would go out to the barn to make sure she was OK. Still, it was a wonderful evening. We said our goodbyes, drove home, wrapped last minute gifts, and went to sleep for a couple of hours before getting up to drive to Saint John at 3:00 a.m. to pick up our daughter, who’d spent the entire day travelling across the country. After we’d unwrapped presents and had breakfast, I checked my phone for messages. The sick horse had died.<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">There’s something about Christmases that seem to go that way. And somehow we know this intuitively. Houses burn. Car accidents happen. Aging relatives pass away in hospital. Life and death march on, with no regard for special occasions.<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Despite that, these occasions are often quite special. Today it snowed. The sky swirled with fine white flakes for most of the day, eventually spreading 15 centimetres over the ground. Our neighbours were invited for Christmas dinner, so I drove up the hill in the snow to pick them up. After we ate I fired up the old plow truck, cleared the parking area by the house and pushed the snow all the way down the driveway to the road. The heater wasn’t working in the truck, so I figure the thermostat is rusted shut. So another small repair coming up. The windshield stayed fogged up, which made it hard to see, and I worried about going off the road.<br /> </span></span></span><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"></span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjx9cZDqgoR_YqGEiwr-v2gMfOSmj9lvmc77nEXlfYeS-o8DQ3mDnJDgBv_rK8jF6oItKJAW3HieoPp26o1RBtTz4qs7Lo0FDjafYxV-NMTA-nzWHxXPS6He_hXwu9jLXDxNsPEz7AFE0s/s1600/les+mis.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="843" data-original-width="1600" height="336" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjx9cZDqgoR_YqGEiwr-v2gMfOSmj9lvmc77nEXlfYeS-o8DQ3mDnJDgBv_rK8jF6oItKJAW3HieoPp26o1RBtTz4qs7Lo0FDjafYxV-NMTA-nzWHxXPS6He_hXwu9jLXDxNsPEz7AFE0s/s640/les+mis.jpg" width="640" /></a></span></div>
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<span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">When I got back inside Les Misérables was playing on the TV, and everyone was chilling and watching. Watching Les Mis is a lot like reading Dickens. The gap between the “haves and the “have-nots” is painful. Which is the point of the story. <br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">As I watched I started thinking. The word gratitude came to mind. I was grateful to be living here and now. Grateful for my family. Grateful for a warm house. Grateful for the food and gifts under the tree. Grateful for friends. Grateful to be living here in this country, in this time. I could write a very long list of things for which I’m grateful—as I hope many of us could.<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Other things came to mind. Like how the movie represents what’s happening around us in our world, how much more unequal society has become over the past 40 years, and how Les Mis is still a reality for much of the world’s population. And then there was the irony of the story itself, the young heroine, Cossette, being rescued by a young man of great wealth—the great wealth that led to the crushing inequality of the early 1800s in the first place. <br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Victor Hugo wrote Les Mis in 1862. It was a condemnation of inequality, injustice and punishment without forgiveness. Unfortunately, Hugo didn’t offer solutions. There’s no call for reformation of the economy, or policing, or the courts, or the prison system. But he and others like Dickens raised the issues into public consciousness, though it didn’t end there. Inequality would keep spreading right up until the stock market crash in 1929.<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">What the snowfall, the dying horse and broken plow truck bring home is the fragility of our present circumstances. Too much more snow and we might join the 10,000 people in Nova Scotia right now who are without electricity. Too much more cold and other animals perish. Too much bad weather and our old truck could break for the last time.<br /> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">In many cases we survive by mere luck—and the goodness and generosity of the people around us. If nothing else, Christmas should remind us of how important it is to take care of each other. Every day.</span></span></span>Gerald McEachernhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11355704123788099401noreply@blogger.com0