It goes without say (in the mainstream media) but Israel’s retaliation for today’s suicide bombing and the subsequent political support by the reigning Ph.D.s in Hamas is going to be immense. It’s a truly bloody perfect storm coming in the next few days or week: A new and untested Israeli government and prime minister, a vocal and posturing (and elected) Hamas leadership, a taunting (but inept) Iranian government, a soon renewed (but inept) White House administration, and the decision on the part of multiple (inept) Arab governments to fund the Hamas government will, assuredly and sadly, lead to major bloodshed. I cringe.

The Muslim world has gone nuts over the past few days because of a pretty ugly series of cartoons. I don’t blame them for being pissed. Jews get pretty angry when Saudia Arabian and Lebanese and Syrian papers, for instance, publish heinous editorial cartoons of Jewish leaders looking like Nazis. This happens pretty much every day in strictly Muslim countries.
But more shocking than Muslims burning down the Dutch embassy in Beirut is that the liberal media (who I read with pleasure) has said absolutely nothing of meaning about this. Is their Street closed? Nothing of import and no headlines in Salon, Slate, The Nation, etc. Take a look a look. It’s not unlike a few months ago when France and other parts of Europe were burning (or at least vehicles there were). Are they afraid of their offices being torched? Do they, like the US Government, not have enough “translators” to follow the story? Perhaps they don’t have an opinion about thousands of people burning buildings, cars, and effigies?

Disclaimer: I know nothing about Canadian politics.
There’s a very strange thing going on in Canada right now with the election only a week or so to go.
I don’t get it. The Canadian press and all polls show the Conservative party winning this next election and the new Canadian Prime Minister will be Stephen Harper. Why? It’s time for a change. It’s total bullshit, at least to me. The Liberals, which are essentially the Democratic party of the States, have had 12 years of good economics, sound fiscal policy, strong deliberation and stands against U.S. foreign policy, same-sex marriage legalization, general overall political and national unity, and healthy immigration. There’s this scandal, concretized by the Gomery Report, that Canadians seem very upset about wherein money changed hands wrongly in Quebec and there was definitely some mismanagement of taxpayer money.
But now even the left-leaning newspapers like The Globe and Mail have issued new editorials stating that Canadians should kick the Liberal bums out of office because, well, there is a need for somethin’ new.
It doesn’t add up. From my experience in the States, conservatives and conservative parties have done a phenomenal job of convincing mass numbers of people that they have a better way of getting things done by killing government programs and then telling them, when government doesn’t work well, that government doesn’t work. It’s brilliant, no doubt. It has an elegant internal logic in terms of public appeal that kept George Bush in the White House a few months ago. And now the Conservatives in Canada, which seem to essentially a “lite” version of Republicans, are making the case that they have “new ideas” such as tax cuts, Kyoto-defiance, healthcare privitization and space militarization that might actually be neat if they could be implemented. Canadian polls show that they don’t like the current Prime Minister, Paul Martin, because he doesn’t seem to connect with their concerns and he had a chance to do something great and they haven’t seen it, yet.
There’s absolutely no assurance that a Conservative government in Canada can do anything except make the nation a U.S. backwater which rationalizes its best policy, intellectual, and national assets away. Conservatives are billed as change agents while the Liberals are viewed as old, sitting ducks. I feel sorry for Mr. Martin, who honestly seems committed to pushing forward a European/American-style approach to good government.
Finally, I can’t help but think, as a new American immigrant in Canada, that the Conseravtive party must be getting lots of very nice financial and strategic help from their buddies in the States, who, in turn, are looking to make life easier for themselves with a conservative northern neighbor. I have little doubt that Karl Rove and other friends of the right are rubbing their sweaty palms together, awaiting the kingship of Conservatives in Canada who can begin to dismantle the nation’s “welfare” statehood.

I hate being cynical. It’s a total waste of time. Except when it’s fun to be realistic and cynicism is the only out. In the name of realism and in the hope of connecting some lost dots, I’ve attempted to create a list item rondo that will explain the viscious circle of contemporary cynicism:

1. Life is too short for anyone to be truly kind.
2. Individuals have no ability to self-police.
3. Businesses are, as the tax laws state, fundamentally individuals.
4. Government has a reason to be self-organized for itself.
5. Communities organize around delusionally common attributes.
6. Organizations act on their own behalf.
7. Financial institutions act as a lever to consolidate wealth.
8. Travel is inherently colonialist and escapist.
9. Building is destructive.
10. Staying in place is anarchic.
11. Life is too short for anyone to be truly kind.

My daughter is collecting her pennies and nickles and dimes to give to the poor here in Winnipeg. It’s through a program called Pennnies from Heaven. She gets a penny or two for things she does around the house and then has collected them in a small container. We’ll be putting the coins in a collection jar at school on Friday.
I just finished watching Seoul Train, the independent documentary about the many hundreds of North Koreans who escape their poverty and plight by fleeing to China every month. The hateful Chinese refuse to honor these families as refugees or give them asylum and return them to the North Korean government. The Koreans then imprison, torture, and kill these people. Despite China’s paper commitment to the UNHCR, it refuses North Koreans admittance. It was an incredibly moving portrait of a few families who braved everything they had (which was only their lives) to have freedom. Real freedom. Not the kind that is spouted about by politicians or academics. The freedom that these North Koreans are seeking is of the most primal sort: the capacity to live. That’s all they want and the film makes very clear that there are 20 million people in the country who do not have just that.
Here in Canada, the Conservatives (capitalized because it is a party not an ideal) are wanting to cut down the national tax from 7% to 5% over the next few years. The adline goes “Stand Up for Canada.”
I got a call from the financial arm of the automotive company from whom we purchased our car a few years ago. The message left said “Mr. Boardman, please call us as soon as possible about an … important financial matter.” With much anxiety (and under the assumption that I somehow owed them thousands of dollars), I called the number left and the company representative told me they need my address to mail me a check for $29.37.
One of the cats has been throwing up. It appears to be happening every other day.
I’ve lost touch with a lot of friends and colleagues in New York.
Need a cookie.

As you probably already saw, the Canadian government yesterday actually fell.
And I can’t help but think that this seems to be such a useful tool that could be exported to America. If publicly elected officials doesn’t have “confidence” in one’s government officials, the superstructure is simply disbanded and the rest of the organizational institution continues to run smoothly – its social, security, defense, communication, leadership and cultural programs work fine without a Parliamentary structure in tact. In fact, there’s something very self-sacrificing about the no-confidence vote held in Ottawa, Canada’s capital; Ministers of Parliament not only actively disband the government’s policy producing body but they also send themselves home to be re-elected by the populace.
Fascinating. In part, it’s because of its apocalyptic nature to me. In the States, if the Government fell, funding would stop immediately, the overall leadership structure would collapse, state governments would have to take over and there would be lawlessness and localized military and militia control. (Elected officials in the U.S. are, by default and now more than ever, intimately entwined with everything the nation does or can do; the gap between elected officials and bureaucrats in the Government has been closing. We saw a glimpse of this back in the mid-1990s when budgets wouldn’t get passed and the country was essentially held hostage by new Republican legislators. Gee, remember that?
As one friend noted, it’s odd that the Parliamentary system appears so much more advanced than the American system. I remember learning over and over in Junior High and HIgh School that the federal system we had in the U.S. was an advancement over that of our British ancestors – that our system of checks and balances among the Executive, Judicial, and Legislataive branches would keep any one set of people from gaining too much power or privilege.
As anyone can tell from recent polls on the Presidency, a clear majority of Americans now think that the current Executive branch has too much concentrated power which has, in turn, lead to major mistakes, lies and criminal acts. The closest we got in recent memory to “felling” the U.S. Government was when Mr. Clinton was impeached. And I guess that this is the closest we’ll ever get.

I’m sitting here writing while watching the Wall Street Journal Editorial Report on Prairie Public Television. Paul Gigot and three similarly aged white men have now articulated, a few times, that it could have been a lot worse for the White House today because Mr. Rove was not indicated (though Mr. Libby was).
“On the other big story of the week, the news was not good, but not disastrous. Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald decided not to seek an indictment of the President’s top aide, Karl Rove, in connection with the leak of a CIA officer’s identity. True, an indictment did come down against Vice-President Cheney’s aide, Scooter Libby. But that was not the political blow an indictment of Rove would have been.” “I’m guessing that Rove is in the clear.” “It could have been a lot worse for President Bush.” “This is not, what it comes down to it, an accusation of a major cover-up.” “There are obvious weaknesses in the White House operation, and I think they need to be addressed.”
These men, to a one, look like a league of rats on a ship that sprung a leak at sea that is without life buoys and without a connection to a media which smells blood and wants some meat.

The occupation of Gaza (and the vast majority of the West Bank) was a torrid piece of Israeli and Jewish history. It was not helpful to anyone, least of all the Palestinians, and it placed tremendous strain on Israel and the United States to maintain some semblance of political optimism about the future of the Palestinian nation. It essentially helped to bankrupt those living in the Palestinian territories while providing unnecessary fuel for extremists (Muslim, Jewish, and Christian) to aid the murder of innocents. Superbly wealthy countries like Saudi Arabia (friends of Americans like Mr. Bush) used the poverty of the Palestinians as a whip against the West and will continue to do so. Meanwhile, Palestinians themselves remained uncritical of their own leaders and allowed their schools to become recruitment zones for killers and hate mongers.
I saw a fascinating BBC documentary the other day that showed how, previous to 1935 or so, Arabs in the region were very tolerant of Jewish settlers and Christian tourists. During the rise of the Nazis in Europe, very strong ties were developed among them and powerful Arabs in the region and the rise of tyrants throughout the area can be directly tied to European fascism, anti-semitism, and state control. These Arab countries used the Nazis and then the Soviets to maintain power over their subjects and ensure that oil was critical to the success of the West.
What is atrocious and generally unspoken is that the synagogues left in Gaza were burned down by the Palestianians for no reason other than spite. It’s understandable that their hatred has become fierce. But in Israel and other Western nations, the burning of a place of a worship is crime of massive proportions. It’s not acceptable to burn (even abondoned) sites of devotion. Israel protects all houses of worship.
When I visited Poland ten years ago, those synagogues that remained after World War II were rarely used by Jews there; they couldn’t be because there are only a few thousands Jews in Poland out of a population of 40 million. (The Jewish population, pre-war, was about 25% of the total.) But the Poles (almost never) burned the buildings down and instead used them most recently as churches, libraries, gymnasiums or banks.

Here in the mittle of Canada, things look very odd way South. I’ve seen and read the news to the point of almost nausea about N.O. and it continues to be the saddest story of the year, in part because it could have been prevented, in part. But here are a few weird news-worthy tidbits I’ve seen and read, none of which are confirmable, and all of which add up to a stranger story. Radio silence from the official U.S. Government caters to these oddities:

• There are between 5,000 and 10,000 dead in N.O.
• Cuba is publicly offering 1,500 doctors to be immediately sent to the region
• Despite Bush’s grin when he said “Send Cash” a few days ago, that’s actually what non-profits and others need
• Texas has put a limit on either 250,000, or 350,000, or more, “refugees” from coming to Texas
• Residents now homeless are not only “refugees,” but they are “victims,” “civilians,” and “Mississippians”
• Other states like Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Indiana and West Virginia are taking smaller numbers of residents into their statewide arms but the secret among U.S. state governors is essentially, “We don’t want them.”
• AIGA, an advocacy organization for designers, posted this on their site Hurricane Katrina has brought unexpected devastation to the design community in the Gulf Coast region. This is bizarre.
• Some say that the entire city will need to be leveled.

If it’s true that the first casualty of war is truth, it’s also true today that the first casualty of disaster is truth.

I wish sincere condolensces and solidarity to everyone directly and indirectly affected by the blasts in London today. While it’s easy to say that it was “inevitable” as so many bloggers are saying, it remains an outrage that cowards feel it’s their duty to kill in the name of any higher cause. These were very cowardly acts and there’s no real justice that can be had out of this.