Rick Salutin: If people prevail ... Syriza and Greece

Greek flag - Wikimedia

"Where was the coverage? I expected wall-to-wall news about Sunday's Greek election. Monday morning it was almost nowhere. We got the blizzard in the U.S. and the red carpet at the SAG awards. CBC had the usual arrests and traffic jams. Yet this was the first successful electoral challenge to 30-plus years of a dominant political mentality. And it happened, as it were, here. Such challenges have been mounted in Latin America, they've become normal there. But Greece is First World (or almost, it's also pretty Middle Eastern). I think what's lacking is the mere vocabulary to think in new, non-neoliberal terms. When you don't have the language, it doesn't really exist. Not yet anyway."  Rick Salutin, Rabble.ca

Murray Dobbins - a prophet for our times

I really appreciate the way Murray Dobbins observes and analyses what is happening in Canada.

He reveals how the neo-liberal market ideologies have diminished our democracy through corporate funded think tanks.  We have had " four decades of systematic assaults on the liberal/social democratic state". This began with a series of complaints of an “excess of democracy”.

Now we live in a time of  "democratic deficit" and "a decline and erosion of democracy that should be the most important focus of critics and citizens alike".

A major study sponsored by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Centre reports that this erosion of democracy "has put western civilization on a track to irreversible collapse. The study focused on population, climate, water, agriculture and energy as the interrelated factors that determine the collapse or survival of civilizations going back 5000 years."

You can find many more on Dobbins blog here: Murray Dobbins' Blog

Peggy Mason on Saudi Arms Deal

Since the 9/11 attacks, Western democracies, in the name of fighting terrorism, have enacted countless anti-democratic measures to curtail free speech, free assembly, peaceful political dissent and most especially due process and the rule of  law. At the same time, we have partnered with anti-democratic regimes abroad to counter the illegal use of force by violent extremists with our own military “reign of terror.”

Nothing can illustrate this Orwellian approach more clearly than Canada’s unholy alliance with Saudi Arabia. It is one of three countries, along with the United States and Israel, that not only violent jihadists but the vast majority of moderate Islam (with much justification) hold largely responsible for preventing Muslim countries in the Middle East from taking their rightful place in the world community.

Peggy Mason, Embassy New, Wednesday January 21, 2015

Creating the Next War

"If the world learned one thing from George W Bush, it was that it is a terrible mistake to confuse a crime, however monstrous, for war. After 9/11, the belligerent rhetoric of the war on terror fostered deluded ideas of a “victory”, legitimised the torture that still stains America’s moral standing and licensed ruinous misadventures overseas. In this difficult hour for France, and Europe more widely, a calmer fury must prevail." The Guardian



"Today, after many years of a failed "war on terror," numerous scandals about abuse of political power, torture and indefinite detention, people have come to realize that this dichotomy is false and that security for all can't be achieved without respect of human dignity for all." Monia Mazigh


"Yet the violence is an inevitable consequence of a world which systematically dehumanizes so many people who are made to feel powerless and despairing and deeply depressed about the possibility of finding the milk of human kindness anywhere. The representation of evil dominates the media, and becomes the justification for our own evil acts. And that evil is made possible because so many among us avert our eyes and shut our ears to the cries of the oppressed." Rabbi Michael Lerner


"That's the nature of journalism, you can't wait till you get it perfect. You have to keep pushing it out and hope at least some of it will be redemptive." Rick Salutin

Living on a Dollar a Day

"With an introduction by the Dalai Lama, the 10 chapters focus on issues such as “Children at Work” and “Health Care.” The stories enlighten detractors who think poor people are just lazy, a recurring argument spewed by the privileged.

The chapter “Women at Work” provides countless examples to counter that argument. Jacaba Coaquira, an 80-year-old Bolivian farmer, works from 7:30 a.m. to dusk, gathering oats and green beans. Unable to feed her cow and donkey, she walked five hours to the closest town to sell them. Then there’s 25-year-old disabled single mother Jestina Koko and her 5-year-old daughter Satta in Liberia. Crippled since childhood, Koko scoots around by dragging herself on her arms. She survives by doing laundry, selling cookies and begging. Her only wish is to make enough money to send her daughter to school. Their temporary home is a sliver of dirty floor where they squat in a doorway." Truthdig, Liesl Bradner

Fracturing the Human Heart

Today on Facebook I read how two cars did a sudden U-turn quickly in front of an oncoming car to get into the ferry line-up.

There is a special loop for cars to turn into so they can safely turn into the ferry lane. There are signs to alert the drivers where to turn if the line is full  past that loop. Clearly the sudden U-turns are dangerous for oncoming traffic blindly coming around the corner.

Decades ago rules of the road were created to keep us from reckless danger. Decades ago laws were created to protect workers, consumers, citizens and children from unnecessary harm. Even international laws were created to keep nations from mindlessly slaughtering one another.  Do these laws matter today?

A recurring topic at dinner parties is the lack of ethics and principles in public places by customs officers, police, politicians, and other public servants. There is a perception that stakeholders have given up on caring, that we have no allegiance to anything beyond ourselves.

The media readily headlines brutality and injustice all over the world but doesn't spend much print or air time on conversations that seek to correct them.  The common understanding is that viewers and readers are only interested in the sensational news and will not spend time investing in ideas to correct this. The media is for entertainment not for guidance or education. Not for informing society. Corporate sponsored media shies away from 'values' of any kind other than consumerism. Media that attempts to engage an audience on the nature of civil society will not be supported by advertising.

Somehow we have been convinced that there is no such thing as society or the common good.  It has crept up on Western nations since the end of World War II and each generation seems more jaded than the last. It's too bad but what can we do?

The human heart is not merely broken in this environment it is shattered.  It is removed from ethical concerns and appears to no longer care about justice or fairness. Isolated within our egos we zip through our days "getting and spending" not seeing how our culture has eroded. Our tribes become smaller and our loyalties narrower.

So those who drive as though they are above the law may be picking up on the signals they see and hear around them. Are these signals really true? Do they represent the middle in human nature or the lowest common denominator?

Poverty

"The latest poverty statistics were released by Statistics Canada last Wednesday, and the data once again shows that British Columbia has one of the highest poverty rates in Canada.

Using the Low Income Cut-Off – After Tax (LICO-AT) as the poverty line, 1 in 10 British Columbians are living in poverty. That's 469,000 people struggling to make ends meet. In relation to the rest of the country, B.C. is tied third with Quebec after Ontario and Manitoba."

Trish Garner, Rabble. December 17, 2014.



And an absence of real justice ...

"But most frightening of all is that a crime in America seems to be becoming more what authorities say it is, rather than what the law says.

The most obvious example is the prosecutors who appear to have guided grand juries away from indicting police who killed unarmed citizens, even when there was no obvious need to deploy that kind of force." Neil Macdonald, CBC.ca

These are the signs of illegitimate power at work.