Canada: The Political Situation 2013

It seems to be a problem that the Canadian Conservative Party of Canada (CPC) does not live up to their own ideology.  In this essay I want to go through their party platform and beliefs of the CPC and see how and what they have been doing since they took office in 2006, to see how their actions compare to the words and rhetoric.

According to Wikipedia, it is very difficult to nail down the beliefs the CPC holds.  For starters, they want to more closely match US foreign policy - sort of - except we know when the US intervened in Syria and Libya, Canada allied with the Americans only as cheerleaders - didn't actually do much of anything.  They foster strong ties to China and are aggressively pursuing trade agreements with Europe and other countries around the world.  Although the actual benefits of these trade agreements and why they benefit Canada are not talked about specifically, we are told repeatedly that it is good for Canada's economy and we will benefit more as a result in some way.

The Conservatives also mention in their platform that they are in favour of abolishing the Senate, but in actuality they advised to appoint Michael Fortier to the Senate in 2006, and filled all 18 seats that were vacant in 2008.  Every Canadian with a television, radio or internet connection knows how that is working out for them at the moment.  Still in the midst of the Senate Scandal, they are refusing to call an inquiry, declining options to have people connected to the scandal testify, and generally trying to act like it is all going to go away on its own, when their own rise to power happened as a result of the Liberal Sponsorship Scandal in the early 2000's. That idea of SCANDAL, how to deal with one and how to avoid one, should have been the first lesson they had learned before taking power, yes?  Nigel Wright, one of the 4 people whom the conservatives condemned as the ONLY people involved in the scandal, even he has not testified .  In fact, I could not come up with much of anything he has said or done since writing the $90,000 cheque of his own money.  Apparently he is a shrewd, intelligent, rich guy who actually recruited Steve Harper when the current party was being formed.  Harper conversely promoted Nigel to the party Chief of Staff after winning party leadership.  This guy is not an idiot, and he is very well connected by his past to the current Prime Minister.  The fact that he is not saying anything speaks volumes to me: this guy wants to avoid the limelight at all costs, so he can do whatever it is he does innocuously in the background.  It is very difficult to pin his activities down, but he doesn't seem to concerned about having his name dragged through the mud in this case.  Obviously there is still quite a bit going on, and he seems very capable of avoiding any sort of news reports.

Next I want to mention one huge campaign promise the CPC had was at the time of the Sponsorship scandal and wanted to implement measures to hold government to account, including the parliamentary budget office.  Instead of the PBO being an aggressive watchdog, nipping at the heels of government and keeping things in line it seems like some sort of sad pathetic inbred toothless cur, with a failing liver and weak ankles and probably also crossed eyes.

Another big campaign promise conservatives like to toot their little tug boats about is lower taxes.  As it turns out, the government decided to tax income trusts in fall of 2006, effectively breaking one of their election promises.  The government did lower taxes federally, but announced that the growth of future health and social transfers to the provinces are tied to economic growth.  This forces the provinces to raise their own taxes via methods such as the HST, and doesn't really solve any of the problems associated with lowering taxes.

Conservatives like to use the phrase stewards of the economy - this branding seems pretty effective because anybody I talk to who admits to voting conservative seems to think that they are fiscally confident and wise managers of wealth.  They also think that any other political party will destroy Canada's economy, but there is no actual basis to think that way.  I can say that Auditor General Michael Ferguson was unable to find 3.1 billion dollars in antiterrorism spending between 2001 and 2009.  THEY LOST 3.1 BILLION DOLLARS.  The conservatives can also take full ownership of the fact that they misrepresented the costs of the f-35 jets, which as it turns out would end up costing $25 billion plus maintenance.

On another topic conservatives can be heard bleating about is making a smaller government - Since in power Harper has actually increased the size of cabinet to 39 ministers.  Combine that will expansions of the senate, the addition of the PBO, and the bloating of the deficit by funding government stimulus, the government has only gotten larger during their period in office.

I cannot argue the Conservatives have perused related to their platform is the promotion of traditional religious and cultural values .  Harper has firmly taken the "progressive" out of conservative, by making a huge stink about the royal wedding, queen's jubilee, re-re-naming the Royal Canadian Air Force and Navy...because we want to go back to remind ourselves we are a British colony?  Exporting our resources on behalf of a country whose only gifts to the world are banks, stock exchanges and pharmaceuticals.  Canada is now choosing to define itself by the past in a way that is probably not at all flattering to First Nations, some of whom are getting a flashback of colonial times in the process of protesting shale gas exploration on the East Coast.  By and large many Canadians seem to be enjoying this retro-ification of Canada's culture, possibly because it is the only few things that really are associated with Canada.  They certainly can't tout environmentalism or peacemaker stereotypes that previously defined Canada (although I'm not sure exactly when this was - maybe in the 70's and early 80's?).  It would be interesting to talk to young Canadians to see how they define themselves within the context of their country's culture, because that is a mighty big black box to me.

One 'victory' conservatives like to talk about is their fulfilment to reduce gun controls and scrap the long gun registry.  This one will not be put to rest easily, in part because Quebec and the CPC don't quite get along, but also within the historical context of the Polytechnique shooting in December 1989.  That province is still fighting the gun registry abolishment in court, and trying to hang on to the records that they have already collected.  While the issue seems to have passed in the rest of Canada, Quebec seems willing to fight tooth and nail to hang on to these records in any way or court possible, and if they can establish even a small foothold in keeping those records the Conservatives will find it very hard to shake it by 2015.

Another campaign promise Harper has done with his whole heart is in the promotion of the energy and gas sectors.  When I found out the Canadian government  was spying on Brazil and reporting the information to oil companies, it became very evident to me who Stephen Harper's bosses are.  Wouldn't a genuine conservative want to "conserve" their environmental resources and protect it from outside influence, rather than selling them off and destroying our other resources in the process?

On the promise of enhancing crime and law enforcement,  the senate scandal has made one thing clear: the CPC are doing everything in their power to hinder justice and obscure the truth - criminals in this case are given a blind eye, and they don't see anything wrong with that, no need to call an inquiry, no need for people involved to testify and find out what is actually going on.  Of course conservatives will push for higher sentences for blue collar crimes such as drug possession, shoplifting and vandalism, while the less visible but much more costly white collar crimes such as industrial espionage, environmental regulations, manipulations of the stock market, property and construction, tax evasion, and crimes by politicians have got no such attention, no new bills passed, no tightening of loopholes to bring the rich and powerful to the conservative party perception of justice.  Those super-prisons they were bragging about starting in 2009 will not be housing Rob Ford or other powerful individuals or corporate decision makers who profited in the 2008 market collapse and job destruction.  Instead they will hold petty thieves, small time drug dealers and the mentally ill while the owners of the prisons profit from the influx of criminality.

Internet surveillance is finally becoming a reality as the release of documents by Snowden revealed the extent of collection and analysis of users' internet usage both in the United States and Canada (and presumably most or all other countries with internet access).  For a long time surveillance of all kinds has been getting a hard push, under the pretence of terrorism.  Whether or not the loss of all privacy is "worth it" in the long run is an issue that will only grow as the surveillance becomes more elaborate and more intensive.  I'm sure all sorts of dirt will be found on who is sleeping with who, who is using which drugs, and other (mostly) victimless crimes are brought to light and a perverse sense of justice, as the number of criminals increase and another excuse given to fill up super-prisons, I'm not sure what point has to be reached before a serious debate begins on if this is the direction people generally want to be headed in.

As I've already mentioned, there is still a stalwart base that will vote conservative regardless of the obvious criminal activity and lack of transparency on the part of the CPC in their time running the Canadian government.  The few conservatives I have spoken with and comments I have read express that they feel the CPC is their only choice in Canada's electoral system, that other parties will "ruin Canada worse" or squander Canada's resources more so than what is already happening now.  I can't say with any certainty that the Liberals or the NDP would manage spending and the economy any better than the Conservatives have, but nobody with any fairness can say they will manage things any worse, either, since they actually haven't been given an opportunity to.  Overall the Liberals had a VERY good spending record during their long period running the country, and the NDP have yet to have been given a chance FEDERALLY.  Being as scrutinized as they would be, it seems to me like an NDP minority would ensure a very responsible spending policy, since it is such a contentious issue constantly being parroted by the conservatives as the holy grail of government responsibilities.  I would argue that until they have been given a chance, you can't know with any certainty how good or badly they would perform the task.  And given that the CPC has squandered every opportunity to create a transparent, responsible, accountable government, we can't collectively sit on our hands and say "well we can't hope for anything better", because we CAN do something better: what needs to happen is that our very fundamental system of government is the problem, and by changing the way the government works in a more broad sense external of which political party is in office, we are capable of bringing a new concept of government in to the world, a system where people can make their voice heard and actually bring back democratic values to a system that is obsolete, broken, and thoroughly corrupt.  In future posts I hope to discuss ideas for Canada's political future in more depth.

The Biggest News Story of 2013 (Canada Edition)

It seems only most natural that in the year 2013, the Information Age of humans, that the most important news story got a mere passing blurb, a thoughtful microponder before being buried underneath the drag-it-out-to-the-middle-of-a-field-and-beat-it-with-a-bat story that is the Senate scandal or human accident Rob Ford.  This story distinguishes it self from the others as being a story with no build, no foreshadowing, no deadly political repercussions, and no lives lost (even if those lives would have been only military personnel).

The story I'm referring to lasted about a week in October, when the country of Brazil made allegations that Canadian security officials (specifically, CSEC, a Canadian establishment controlled by the Ministry of Defense) were not only spying on Brazil's energy and mining ministry, but they were also giving that information over to private energy (aka oil mining and gas) companies in Canada.  When questioned, Ministry of Defense spokesperson Jean Paul Duval said "It is standard practice for security agencies to discuss issues with Canadian industry in order to protect lives and sensitive infrastructure from terrorism and other threats".  Not an at all relevant statement when you are talking about commiting industrial espionage.

This is a big deal.  This is not the Cold War.  We are not spying on "The Enemy" with opposing political and social ideologies (although 20 years later we still have only the haziest of ideas of what the Cold War was actually all about).  Brazil is supposed to be an ally and trading partner, the capital letter B in the BRICS, a buzzword to describe countries playing catch up to the advantages held by first world countries in Europe and North America.  Our leaders, under better circumstances, would tell us that Brazil is trying to imitate us in a most flattering way, to climb up out of poverty and catch up to first world countries technologically and economically.  So by stealing their secrets regarding energy prospects, could this be seen as a snub to Brazil, taking what advantage we can from them before kicking them back down from where they surfaced?  CSECs Canadian brand of spying is actually part of the larger five-eyes network that includes the US, Britain, Australia, New Zealand.  None of the articles I read implicate involvement of the other member countries, but it is reasonable to presume at the least they aren't going to say no to free information.

Five eyes aside, handing over sensitive information that CSEC agents knew could damage relations between our countries if it was found out is both telling and at least a bit disturbing.  Not only are they giving particular companies an advantage with that information, but we don't know what, if any, limits there are for what information they giving away.  We only know about Brazil because the Brazillian government caught them and blew the whistle.  This information sharing from public organizations to very particular private interests has no real limits, because you and I have little way of knowing what is going on.

On top of all of that, CSEC is a Canadian Government operation paid for with Canadian tax dollars.  We are paying for an oil company to extract information from our allied trading partner, ruining our countries reputation, so that this particular company can get some sort of advantage, to the obvious end that they don't have enough money.  Can not some argument be made that since CSEC gave that information outside of government operations that it needs to be made public domain, or that it needs to stop happening, full stop?  And do not the media (ie the CBC) need to push harder to find out what is going on and what else is being used with this misappropriation of spy funds?  I don't expect any accountability or transparency from our government, but when nobody else seems to care, even the media who I would think would be looking to expand news stories out of their self-interest, what other options are available?

Tampa the book

Being the edgy and controversial dude I am, I decided to get ahead of the bandwagon and read Tampa by Alissa Nutting.  Before I go on and tell you any details about it I have to get two things out of the way: One, I hate fiction.  DEPLORE it.  I enjoy sharp dialogue and well written, clever passages that make me laugh out loud with how clever they are.  Raymond Chandler is the standard that I hold all fiction to.  Because this tittilation happens so few and far between (but does happen)I find it very discouraging to read any fiction, and I generally regard it as an almost assured waste of my time. 

Second thing is, I primarily wanted to read this book for the sex scenes, to see if a 26 year old "hot" schoolteacher having sex with a 14 year old borderline (giving that one to Alissa, hmm? - Ed) prepubescent boy could be erotic and turn me on.  Turns out she really can't, or maybe she didn't want to, in which case she totally dropped the ball on that one.  This is just the first of a wave of 50-Shades-of-Grey-with-a-Shamalan-twist clones that printing presses and electronic publishing software will churn out for our generation.  Something to look forward to. 

To her credit she does lift some ideas from American Psycho, she does not steal enough to make her novel entertaining, and does attempt to put us in to the mind of a beautiful 26 year old psychopathic pedophile.  She masturbates while thinking a lot about boys, which I'm sure most people have done, but then takes the next logical step and plans her entire life and career around molesting boys.    Everyone else around her are just inconvenient tools whom she is incapable of having any feelings for.  Maybe there are mental illnesses that make people that way.  As Bret Easton Ellis showed us, reading about people with mental illnesses is pretty fascinating because they have bizarre, very particular personality qualities that usually make them interesting to read about, such as WesleyWillis or Phineas Gage.  However, Alissa decided to pick the most excruciatingly boring of psychopathologies, and proceed to write almost two hundred and fifty pages about her. 

If you enjoy similes that involve the words like and as you should definitely read Tampa. 

I'm going to tell you another reason you should read the book:  there is an idea in it that is fantastic.  Part way through the book she wants to get rid of the boy she had spent the first half of the book seducing.  She goes on to seduce another boy, but the implications of her reasoning why she loses feelings for the first kid is interesting.  She finds him unpleasant to be around, he becomes less intimate and rougher and emotionally distant.  All of these are because of, the result of, the ideas she gives to him and the experiences she subjects him to.  She at no point dwells on this, that she has made him in to a person she is incapable of tolerating, the same way she regards her husband and possibly also other adult men.  I think she is talking about male female relationships in general.  When we are young to the dating scene the first few people we have intimate contact with form a very lasting impression.  It is very easy for people to become frigid because of early relationships when sex was not good, and have poor future relationships, spreading that negativity to others who may have been impressionable or new to the experience.  We are capable of shaping our future experience and be willing to make another attempt by keeping an open mind, instead of perpetuating an endless cycle of misdirected revenge or confusion of our own animalistic tendencies. 

In the end, or at no point whatsoever do we find out anything about the main pretty lady person's past because the writer thought it was probably a bad idea to give them any sort of empathy, explanation her behavior or anything that would accidentally develop her "character". 

Century of the Self and Simulacrum

In my last entry I discussed how Adam Curtis' observations in his insightful documentary series Century of the Self could be used to interpret political situations throughout the 2010's in America, and how a world was created where the average person's priorities were misdirected based on irrational, unconscious emotions centred around consumerism.  This world is promoted and reiterated by Big Media to maintain a passive population.  As it turns out, the basis of these theories are based on classic theory of social analysis, deep thinker and sociologist turned philosopher Jean Baudrillard.  Writing on the relationship between people and objects in the late 60's, consumerism in 1970 and politics and culture throughout the rest of his career, Baudrillard's most famous work was a book in 1981, Simulations and Simulacra, writings that served as inspiration for the Matrix movies.

Humans relationships to objects have changed as the roles and functions of objects have evolved alongside us, serving as limbs, sensory objects, or changing how we in turn interact with a third object.  Objects originally bought for a primary function begin to serve a secondary function, and suddenly the secondary qualities becomes the object's primary purpose.  Baudrillard uses the example of a refrigerator, where all old fridges used to be white, once they introduced fridges in different colors, suddenly you must select a fridge based on the color scheme of the rest of the kitchen.  The fridge becomes an accessory to the kitchen's ensemble, and by proximity becomes a statement made by the people who live there.  A person can express themselves by the arrangement and relative colors mixing about the kitchen. 

This analysis continues in The Consumer Society and Simulations, where personal expression is solely done through the purchasing of items in the full spectrum of imagination, and this is but one component of the Simulacrum, where we live in a "hyperreality" where mass production and consumption has created a fakeness or series of reproducible clones.  This ubiquity of copies of objects changes the way we think about objects, believing in the reproducibility of everything and so attributing a disposability and temporariness of everything around us.  A striking example he uses is Disneyland, a hyperreal fantasy that we (as a society) not only use to escape the "reality" that normally surrounds us for a while, but also reaffirms in our minds that the reality we normally inhabit is not a simulation.  This conviction that we are living in a more "real" reality is what allows us to continue living in it, and not questioning why the things around us have to be the way they are.

Century of the Self examines Bernays marketing techniques, but otherwise paints a similar picture where social order is based around consumerism, and where objects are given relationships to powerful emotional symbols based on self-expression.  And if you keep stimulating that irrational self you can maintain the relations of power and control the animalistic forces by keeping them engaged.  Bernays pioneered the technique of marketing research, meeting with volunteers and encouraging them to pretend they are consumer products and act out their relationships with the products.   Similarly, political marketers encouraged people to talk about policies and how they felt about them, encouraging them to act out these relationships as well.  This was the creation of the simulacrum that surrounds us presently. 

Not only are people engaged in this hyperreality, they are completely immersed in a reality created by the forces of media, big business and government.  Advertisement campaigns create emotional attachment by conveying unspoken ideas, encouraging self expression and activity through the purchase of products.  Curtis uses the example of the World's Fair, creating a Disneyland-esque atmosphere, while surrounding the visitor with the icons of consumption and self-expression. 

Freud and Mass Media

Recently I've been watching documentaries by loyal BBC employee and all around adept documenter Adam Curtis.  His voice soothes like every story he tells were a bedtime story, and he has the patience of 8000 Terracotta soldiers.  I am amazed at his ability to provide quality factual programming while somehow avoiding censorship. 

His best known work is Century of the Self, a 4 part journey following the effect of psychoanalysis on consumer culture and world politics.  In my next few posts I'm hoping to tie some of the ideas of his documentary with other pieces of things I've found.  What I've been focused on mostly on the role of the media, what it is and what it actually is doing.  Curtis points out very early in the first few minutes Freud's (love him or hate him, this is important) deduction that information was driving human behavior in indirect ways, at an emotional and almost animalistic level.  His nephew Ed Bernays used this information to create market consulting and eventually focus groups, finding out what people's unconscious ideas were relating to objects, and then giving people what they wanted but didn't realize it was what they wanted, in the form of consumer products like cigarettes and cake mix.  The idea is that you play to people's irrational emotions, because they knew what the people they were targeting wanted and presented the product as a means to get what it is they really wanted.  This is important for understanding advertising, to begin with, but related and also important is that the news media plays to irrational emotions, too, and there is no reason they wouldn't use similar tactics. 

But what would be the media's end goal?  To sell more papers?  Print barely exists any more, and although many institutional news sources have complained about steep drop in newspaper revenue, somehow they manage to scrape by and carry on their messages.  I'm used to the media never ever telling me anything critical about the media, because maybe that does not sell as many papers, and so I was surprised when I found this article written by Neil Macdonald on CBC news (June 6, 2013).  As the CBC correspondent in Washington, he wrote an article here discussing his confusion around media coverage in the United States, the fact that the American army sexual assault scandal received little or no coverage, while the IRS scandal is getting constant priority coverage by all the major American media outlets.

Even though the media does enjoy referring to news (as referring to news coverage of the news or the media talking about the media) and sporadically commentating on the effect the media has, in a general way, it is rare that someone talks about what it means in the broader context, let alone as problematic.  In the end, Neil asserts the media does not cover it because American's aren't interested in the story.  He surmises the reason American's are not interested is because it is somehow communicated to their society as a whole not to be interested, not to care, it is embarrassing.  The IRS story is only embarrassing for some people, problems in the military is embarrassing for all Americans.  But is anyone outside of America concerned either?  The American army is huge and has exerted a massive influence as long as the country existed.   Nobody seems to indicate that they care about the news story, nationally or internationally, and I suppose it will be gone rather quickly.

In Century of the Self, Curtis states that the position of democracy in America became one where they want to maintain the current relations of power, and they could do it by stimulating the psychological lives of the public (ie war on communism), that is, stimulating particular emotions, the same "irrational self" that was being used to convince the advertisement-viewing public to buy products they don't need.  Only by this application, the emotions invoked can sell people on the decisions of the president so it can do what it wants to do.

 A faction of Americans want to believe Obama ordered the IRS to destroy his enemies.  I have not been able to see any of the news footage on the military rape charges or the IRS scandal, but if we apply the ideas in Century of the Self, then we can clear Neil Macdonald's confusion through the explanation that the emotions invoked by the media are perhaps apathy while covering the military court coverage, and invoking strong bipartisan emotions like anger for the anti-Obama camp and maybe even some other emotions for people that still like Obama.

Neil ends his articles drawing some poignant conclusions, all the while having no idea why this is being done.  Maybe he is savvy enough to know the answers but not be the one to break kafabe.   "Even the media doesn't believe what they are saying... they don't believe their own claims... Those of us who try to do our job properly are just dupes."  I can't tell if the last statement is a cynical joke or if he honestly believes the existence of pure journalism in mainstream media.  My guess would be he likes his job and wants to keep it.

The Future of Social Networking (Surrogate 2.0)

On the internet, sometimes the most popular people are quite often people who, by consensus, are annoying, stupid, or straight up ridiculous.  This is not constrained just to the internet, nor is it anything new (for reference see: Howard Stern, Alex Jones, or the collective media concept "TMZ").  Like other more easily recognizable forms of consumption, the internet simply facilitates the desire to watch a train wreck from a safe distance.  Of course not only does the internet make it happen, but it happens faster and more effortlessly, so you can fit this entertainment in more easily in between going to work, sleeping and masturbating.

I'm convinced the purpose of Web 2.0, with social networking and sophisticated multimedia integration is to make massive amounts of money and collect personal information and psycho-social profiles from you.  However, a welcome side effect to this is that one can easily find many sources of entertainment, people frantically petitioning your attention in an attempt to validate their online existence, shedding petty, unnecessary human hangups like "dignity" and "introspection" in favor of pushing the post button a few seconds faster.  And while clicking through a particularly funny rant I eventually came across a web site with facebook comments and found a comment sort filter called "facebook rank".

I had never heard this term before, although I am well aware that for however long now fb has been sorting people's news feeds using something called "edgerank".  Without going in to a lot of detail, edgerank basically works like this:

And higher score = higher up on the page and more likely to be there.  If you want to read more about how this works and how to exploit it, you can surf on over to this website.  It is pretty interesting stuff, but not what I'd like to talk about.

The point is, I read through a few sites like this, advice towards marketing departments and aspiring Andy Warhol types who think thousands of likes and upvotes and whatever will help sell their shitty art, or at least draw enough suckers to their website so Adsense will support their lifestyle.  The sites give tips, how to get legit people visiting their site, generating the much desirable buzz that will keep their edgerank bumped toward the top of the pile.  But they also give some other advice, less reputable methods of achieving the same end.  This largely consists of hackers (or any kind of programmer, really) writing program to automatically "bump" existing posts, post other media, and make comments using vaguely human sounding AI.  Not only that, but using google images and some face recognition software, programs that could create new profiles, which could then subsequently make posts, comment, etc.  There has already been a wave of this happening years ago, I'm sure it happened to you too, someone you don't recognize with 1 picture and a bland, generic profile tries to friend you.  Facebook managed to suppress it somehow, to some extent, but it won't happen forever, especially once corporations with big money see value in it.  And as artificial intelligence develops, not only will the bots get smarter and better at evading deletion by posting realistic status updates, photos, etc. but the AIs may themselves start to reproduce via social network.  I'm certain the first real artificial intelligence will aquire millions of followers, and say and post really really really stupid shit.