Important Canadian Diversion

Many recent court cases across Canada have Judges accepting that rights are infringed under Section 2 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and that such infringement is acceptable because Section 1 of the Charter provides that if the infringement of rights is within reasonable limits prescribed by law, then such infringement is acceptable. The two cases that spring to mind are the Ontario Superior Court decision regarding eviction of the Occupy Toronto Camp from St. James Park (

http://www.canlii.org/en/on/onsc/doc/2011/2011onsc6862/2011onsc6862.html) and the BC Supreme Court decision regarding the right to practise polygamy (http://www.courts.gov.bc.ca/jdb-txt/SC/11/15/2011BCSC1588.htm#SCJTITLEBookMark3493).

Whether or not you agree with the outcome of either of the above cases (which I do in both cases), I think the reasoning from the Judges is somewhat troubling as to why rights conferred by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms are ‘reasonably infringed’. It seems wrong to me and possible given the reasoning in these cases that the government of the day can pass legislation according to its whim (for example the omnibus crime bill put forward by the present Federal government) and then use that legislation as a basis for infringing our Section 2 Charter rights. I think this is very troubling, particularly in view of the omnibus crime bill and other pending legislation from the Harper Tories that seeks to expand the role and powers of law enforcement in Canada.

I believe that Harper is creating the conditions for a police state like environment in Canada. I think he is doing this consciously; the handling of the G20 in Toronto I believe is evidence of this. I also believe that Harper does not care about the average Canadian, that’s why his party cheated in terms of spending in the 2006 election - they finally pleaded guilty to this (

http://www.edmontonjournal.com/news/Conservatives+plead+guilty+election+spending+case/5694652/story.html). I think Harper would like to rule Canada in a manner similar to how he rules his party – ‘do what I say or I’ll sideline you’. I wish Canadians would stand up to this man more. Do not be afraid of this small man who doesn’t care about you or Canada particularly. He cannot push all of us aside. The only thing Harper cares about is having power so that he can wield it to feather his own nest. He is a rigid, stubborn and fearful man with outdated policy and thinking. He doesn’t want to listen to Canadians. A sample of recent Tory action appears at the end of this post.

I understand that Canada is a country of law and in this respect the Judges’ hands are tied – they must uphold the law, not make the law. However, it seems to me that if the Judiciary is to keep some relevance, particularly in view of the legislation like the omnibus crime bill, then Judges will have to stop being apathetic. I would like to see some jurisprudence showing that the Judiciary might have the courage to stand up to what would be humanly clear as bad legislation. I am not asking for Judicial law making per se…on the contrary, I am asking for judicial disobedience in solidarity with the civil disobedience recently displayed by the Occupy movement. It is perhaps too early for judicial disobedience, but it would be nice to think that Judges are not just automatons serving a government that wields total power having received only 39.6% of the popular vote in Canada. I would like to encourage Judges to re-evaluate their role and realize that the time has come for them to judge again, not simply follow blindly what legislation and precedent is put before them.

　

I would be curious to know if other countries have similar concerns regarding recent legislation. Please comment. The price of freedom is eternal vigilance......we must all pay attention.....how much of a say do we have?

Below are some of the "highlights" from our current Canadian majority government, which promised to clean up sleaze….you judge for yourself…(straight up links appear first, followed by quotes and paraphrasing of the same articles).

　

1)

Foreign Affairs Minister Baird demands gold on new business cards

By Dean Beeby, The Canadian Press | The Canadian Press

　

2)

Article: MacKay spent hundreds of hours on Challenger

CBC

3)

Article: Minister Clement to break silence on controversial G8 legacy fund

The Canadian Press – Joan Bryden

　

4)

Article: RCMP won’t investigate G8 legacy fund – The Canadian Press

　

1)

Foreign Affairs Minister Baird demands gold on new business cards

By Dean Beeby, The Canadian Press | The Canadian Press

OTTAWA - John Baird has set a new gold standard for business cards.

The Conservative foreign affairs minister demanded — and got — gold embossing on his business cards shortly after being shuffled into the portfolio last May, contrary to government rules.

Baird then ordered the word "Canada" dropped from the standard design, also against federal policy.

And he insisted that "Lester B. Pearson Building" be removed from the standard street address for Foreign Affairs' headquarters in Ottawa, thereby erasing the name of a former Liberal prime minister and Nobel Peace Prize winner.

The controversial changes initially provoked resistance from the senior Foreign Affairs bureaucrats who are responsible for implementing policies on government branding.

But in the end, Baird won a temporary exemption from the rules — and got his way.

A gold-embossed Canadian coat of arms now glistens from his unilingual English business cards, which lack the wordmark "Canada," a federal branding design that features a small Canadian flag above the last letter.

With the disappearance of the large "Canada," the biggest type on the card now is "The Honourable John Baird, P.C., M.P."

Emails, invoices, memos, letters and other documents detailing the gold-card caper were obtained by The Canadian Press under the Access to Information Act.

　

2)

Article: MacKay spent hundreds of hours on Challenger

CBC

Defence Minister Peter MacKay has spent hundreds of hours and millions of dollars on Challenger jets since 2009, according to flight logs, with one trip costing more than $200,000.

An analysis of the logs by CBC News shows between January 2009 and June 2011 MacKay used a Challenger for more than 471 hours.

An hour on the Challenger in 2009 cost $10,104, including maintenance and the pilot's salary.

The logs show the cost of that.

In July 2009, a Challenger flew empty from Ottawa to Tofino, B.C., to pick up MacKay and fly him to Trenton, Ont., for one of the repatriation ceremonies. It also returned him to Tofino an hour after the ceremony to continue his holiday, and flew back empty to Ottawa from the West Coast.

The Challenger spent more than 20 hours in the air, at a cost of $205,111.20.

Had he flown on a commercial airline, leaving the day before and returning the day after, an executive class ticket would have cost about $5,600.

In November 2009, MacKay was at a Canadian Forces appreciation night at an Ottawa Senators game. He got on a Challenger at 11:02 p.m. ET to fly to Halifax, arriving at 1:34 a.m. ET. The next morning, he announced infrastructure funding, then left on the Challenger again at 9 a.m. to fly to Toronto, landing at 10:47 a.m.

The plane spent 4.9 hours in the air at a cost of $49,509.60.

John Baird, then the public works minister, flew commercial. That cost $1,032.66.

Harper defended MacKay Thursday during question period in the House of Commons.

NDP MPs, referring to a report that MacKay has taken nearly $3 million worth of flights on the government's Challenger jets since he was appointed defence minister in 2007, called on Harper to "ground this high flying minister."

　

3)

Article: Minister Clement to break silence on controversial G8 legacy fund

The Canadian Press – Joan Bryden

Clement was mocked in the Commons for his steadfast refusal to answer opposition questions about the fund, used primarily to beautify towns in his riding prior to hosting last year's G8 summit.

He was called a "coward" and "ridiculous" for sitting silently in his seat while Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird fields all questions. Baird was the infrastructure minister at the time of the summit and signed off on funding for 32 projects.

But how much Clement will actually be allowed to say at committee remains to be seen. Baird will also be there, along with other officials involved in doling out the cash.

"Will he hide behind John Baird?" said Liberal Leader Bob Rae.

Later during question period, Clement remained glued to his seat as Baird once again fended off new charges from New Democrat MP Charlie Angus.

Based on embarrassing emails the NDP has obtained through provincial freedom-of-information legislation, Angus said Clement intervened to persuade the town of Gravenhurst to drop expansion of a recreation centre from the list of projects it wanted funded through the G8 legacy fund.

Clement advised the town to apply to the Building Canada Fund instead, which it did. The Gravenhurst project subsequently became the focus of a police investigation into allegations that a kickback scheme ended up defrauding taxpayers of almost $1.8 million.

Angus said the move was designed to give Clement "a much larger pot of goodies" to hand out.

"The Gravenhurst project blew the budget, people were fired, the cops were called in. Does the minister think this is an appropriate way to abuse the public trust?"

Baird responded that the Gravenhurst project was not funded out of the G8 legacy fund and accused Angus of making up facts. Angus later said Baird's non-response demonstrates why Clement, the only one who knew what was going on, needs to answer for himself.

"I find it extraordinary that someone as important as the foreign affairs minister, who's speaking at the United Nations, who's dealing with international crisis in Libya, has to come back and cover up for poor Tony," Angus said.

"Tony, if you're not fit to do the job, what are you doing there?"

Rae said Clement's refusal to be accountable to parliamentarians is symptomatic of a government that is showing "the most unbearable form of arrogance" only six months after finally winning a majority.

"The whole attitude is one of kind of triumphalism. Every answer they give says: 'We've got the mandate to do whatever the heck we want, we're going to do it.'

"They're turning committees into rubber stamps. The agendas that are being set by committees are not taking into account the views of other parties. I mean, this is showing a very dangerous sign of pathology on the part of the Conservative government."

Rae complained the government has cut off debate after only one day on a massive omnibus crime bill, stacked a committee hearing with critics and competitors of the CBC and refused to allow NDP officials to appear at another committee to answer Tory charges of breaking election financing laws.

He said the partisan pettiness has extended even to the traditionally non-partisan parliamentary Canada-Israel friendship committee, where not a single opposition MP has been elected to sit on the executive.

　

4)

Article: RCMP won’t investigate G8 legacy fund – The Canadian Press

OTTAWA—The RCMP has decided not to investigate allegations the Harper government misappropriated funds to lavish on a cabinet minister’s riding prior to last year’s G8 summit.

Former Liberal MP Marlene Jennings had asked the Mounties during last May’s election campaign to look into the legality of the $50 million G8 legacy fund.

The fund was used to pay for gazebos, parks, streetscape upgrades and other beautification projects in Treasury Board President Tony Clement’s Parry Sound-Muskoka riding, which hosted the G8 summit.

Jennings’ complaint was prompted by a draft of an auditor general’s report, leaked to The Canadian Press in the midst of the election campaign, which suggested the funding may have been illegally obtained.

After reviewing the matter for almost seven months, the RCMP has now concluded there is no need for an investigation.

"To date, no information has been brought forward by the auditor general or otherwise that suggests contravention of an act of Parliament that would warrant a criminal investigation by the RCMP," Supt. Paul Bateman wrote in a Nov. 8 letter to Jennings.

Mixing Up The Real With The Imaginary

I have had many recent discussions about the 'Occupy' movement. "What is the purpose of the camps?" is a continual theme. The movement and the ideology seem to resonate emotionally with many people and in some sense I think that is what binds the movement. But is the ideology real or imagined by the people with whom it resonates? The ideology is real and it is imagined by many different people and the camps are physical manifestations of the group ideology. I liken the camps to a set of disparate parliaments that combine to form a neo-parliament if you will – places where you can go, be heard and have your voice incorporated into the group ideology and, perhaps more importantly, contribute to a new way of addressing what many of us feel is a deaf ‘ruling class’ of people. Apathy is at the heart of our current malaise and your silent obedience to the ‘ruling class’ is what needs to change. I encourage everyone to visit an Occupy camp near to them.  　

Ayn Rand seems to be back in the mainstream philosophical discussions again and I wonder if there is a relationship between this kind of thinking and what I perceive to be the general feeling in the world about the current economic state of affairs. Rand promoted Objectivisim and Individualism, which I have in interpreted in many aspects as analogous to the free market approach to economics. That is to say that both the free market and Rand prefer to boil things down to the "reality" - look at the facts and figures and take reasoned action based on the reality of the facts and figures that are before us. The action to be taken is, in both Objectivism and the free market, trade. I feel like this approach strips us of our humanity. Emotions are not rational. It is difficult to boil down an emotion to something that is a tradable commodity, though many advertisers are masters of this sort of trade. I believe that our emotions have a legitimate role in contributing to our lives as well as others and that while they are not rational, they deserve conscience recognition. I believe that much of the Occupy movement is driven by this kind of consciously recognized emotion.

Rand believed that there was an external reality common to the universe. I do not believe this. I don’t think that they way I see the world is the same as the way you see the world. No one perspective is right and no one perspective is wrong, merely the manner in which the universe ‘chooses’ to reflect itself in the particular manifestation that is observing it. We shape the universe according to how we see it and are shaped accordingly. In this regard I agree with Rand that it is important to recognize and rationalize with clear reason your own personal needs and requirements. However, I don’t think that should be to the exclusion of other people and life in the universe, and this is where I part from Rand; if it were not for the other life in the universe, I’m not sure life would be worth living. Hence, it is important to nurture life, your own and others’. I’m not saying Rand didn’t value other life, but I do believe that she encouraged an underdeveloped sense of community to say the least (indeed she rejected collectivism).

With the information available today, I think the time as come to recognize that we need to help all people in the world attain a good standard of living. I know, good is relative and difficult to define, and I’m not going to get into that here (I’m ducking the issue for today). Typically, people work together to achieve things. It is rare that a single person is responsible for all of the work required in a particular project. The notion that the "mindless" or "menial" labourer is not as valuable as the salesman who sells 50,000 widgets is crazy – all are needed to achieve the goal. Are CEO’s really worth tens, or hundreds, or thousands of times more than the average employee in their company? Should we even be measuring such worth in money terms? Even if one CEO is worth that much more, I find it difficult to believe that all of them are. A chain is only as strong as its weakest link and hence the strong link (and not just the strongest link) has a good reason to help out the weakest one. Why not help the weakest in our society – it will make us all better as a whole.

Right now we are being bathed in fear through the media, we are being held in control by debt and unemployment (and the statistics the government give us help to undermine our confidence in them as I think we all know that the stats for unemployment are wickedly ‘massaged’). We bailed out the banks (I don’t know why – perhaps for public confidence, or maybe it was just greed), and we also bailed out the auto industry. At the time, I wondered why we bailed out the auto industry of all the industries to choose from on main street and I wondered if war was on the minds of politicians – auto factories were retooled in the previous world wars to make weapons and ammunition and vice verse after the wars). Obama seems scared and has done an about face on so many issues, such as Israel, relatively recently. I wonder why. Why is Obama forsaking his seemingly heartfelt promise to bring change to America – perhaps because war is to be avoided and if it can’t be, then you need to be prepared for it.

Real or imaginary, people make emotional decisions. Occupy wants to embrace these sorts of decisions and try to reason them in some strange hybridization of Objectivism and Relativism in which relative ideas are brought to the table and then objectified at camps. Rand would go to war, if physically threatened first, and indeed in her time that is exactly what happened. I want to try the Occupy approach and see if we can avoid war this time…Occupy is a globalized local phenomenon lets reach across the borders of countries.

　

Action, Ownership and Movements

Sorry for the delay. I am back. Surgery went well.

Action is so important. Action is not simply a reflection of you, but a contribution to the world and society we live in. Talking is action and I encourage talking and communication as an important form of action to strive towards diversity in a peaceful world. Please talk to everyone you know about the world we live in and are experiencing. It is important for us to share our understanding of the world with each other.

I have spoken with many people lately about the Zeitgeist movement. I am not a member or officially affiliated with the movement. I have seen three movies by the ‘founder’ of the movement, Peter Joseph, and there is certainly, at the very least, food for thought in these movies and movement. One thing that I like particularly about this movement is that it appears to be working very hard to not be hypocritical. For example, the movement rejects the use of money and doesn’t have an open donation system which accepts money. Indeed it is clear that the movement has thought very carefully about the issue of money and I am impressed by its approach. I have sympathy for the movement.

The Zeitgeist movement is against ownership. I struggle with this notion in part because my living is based on the notion of ownership. On some level I absolutely agree with the notion of non-ownership. However, when it comes to somewhat more limited things, like for example the Hope Diamond, I think ownership, or at least some nuanced version of ownership, such as responsibility for, has to come into being. It is easy to have non-ownership of things that can be distributed sufficiently so that everyone on the planet has a ‘fair share’ (whatever that might mean). It is not so easy to ignore ownership when the resource is finite in a manner that truly precludes the effective use of it by all of those who want to use it. Further, it might be that one person’s use of the Hope diamond would smash it up, thereby preventing another person’s use of the Hope diamond, which use needed the whole diamond intact - can’t just get another one. Ultimately, I think that there needs to be a hybrid system in which some things are owned and others are public. I at least agree that too many things are privately owned in this part of the universe.

I’d like to bring up diversity again. I believe that many movements, such as Zeitgeist, believe in a way that is somehow knowable and predictable. I fundamentally disagree that the future is knowable and predictable. I do believe that our experience of it is malleable. I also believe that the key to our successes as a species is that we have been able to adapt to our changing environment and surroundings. In order to best achieve this I think that we need, the selfless, ‘life is better when we co-operate’ type of person as well as the ‘bu***r you I want this’ type of person in which some people own lots of stuff and others own almost nothing. Who gets what and why – that is too detailed to be worthy of plan – that comes down to trusting the plan making of the underlying universe (Aka "que sera sera") The diversity is important – lets make sure to keep it alive.

Occupy Wall Street

The Occupy Wall Street movement is being criticized for being leaderless and lacking organization. Well, I think that just about sums it up. The way I see it the people have lost confidence in their government to do anything to prevent antisocial behaviour that is occurring on Wall Street and various other financial entities around the world. In other words, the people feel like their leaders have abandoned them; so yes leaderless.  This does not render it an unworthy movement.

I saw a great photo of a mother with her child at the occupy Wall Street rally. She was holding her baby and a sign that said something like: I am not a hippie, I am not an anarchist, I am not a mob, I am not a left-wing nut job, I am just a mother that wants a better life for her child. This summed up the leaders of this movement. I do not believe that the protesters want a leader per se. I think that this is a beautiful expression of "look here is where all the anti-social behaviour is – let’s draw some attention to it and stop it." It is a very gentle form of vigilantism if you will. Peaceful protest. If no action is taken to stop the anti-social behaviour then the next stop will be something like Greece style protest, then onto North Africa style protests. I don’t think anybody wants that, so let’s listen to each other and speak about the problem and implement a solution.

What is the problem? Fundamentally, I believe that the root of the problem is the present trend in politics to provide large amounts of money to financial institutions and corporate entities and then saddle the people with the repayment of the debts. People want to be free to eat, drink and generally live. With continual debt being mounted on them and the government purportedly representing them being the entity piling it up on them, they are worried that they are being enslaved and will no longer be free to eat, drink and generally live. How much this feeling is justified or will grow will depend on whether or not the system continues to pile debts on the people. People generally want to contribute to society. We might all have a different view as to how to best do this, but if you force people into doing it one way, you are likely to get discontent. The larger the number of discontented people there are, the larger the ferocity of the protests will be.

In North Africa, the freedom and wealth of the people was dramatically lower and the protests were more violent. Similarly, in Greece, the protests are more violent then in America, but less than in North Africa and the Middle East. On some level I think this is reflective of how good America and Europe has had it over the last many decades. I think we in the West have been spoiled somewhat and need to realize (and I think many people do realize already) that our standard of living will likely need to suffer somewhat in order to redress a global balance of wealth. Having said that, they way to do this is not to bring the wealth of the masses globally (aka the 99%) to the value of the poorest people and have a very small minority (aka the 1%) live off the backs of the 99%. The internet has done much to educate the 99% about the disparity of wealth in the world. This is a good thing.

With the American masses mobilizing, as it were, I think that the financial establishment should take heed. This is perhaps the last gentle finger pointing. After the banking fiasco of 2008 people wanted some proverbial heads on sticks – this didn’t happen. I do not believe that the 99% will allow this to happen again. I see these protests as a challenge to government and in particular to Barak Obama to step up to the plate and take action! So what are you waiting for Barak? Where is that change you promised? This is your moment, or have they corrupted you too? These are some of the questions I think the people are genuinely asking of their government. So to paraphrase JFK – ask not what your country can do for you, but ask what is your country doing for you? The people asked for change, change that was promised (albeit amorphously) by Barak Obama and now they are waiting for delivery of that change. In the absence of delivey, we will take action all by ourselves.

I fully support the Occupy Wall Street movement in this way and I believe it is a great expression and example of anarchy in action. It is also potentially a sort of prelude to the sort of anarchy which many people associate with anarchy – the violent sort. I hope the violence can be averted, but it will take courage and strength from some very brave politicians to avert the violence. It will also take courage and faith from the people who will have to rally around any brave politicians in order to ensure that the corporate propaganda machine that is seemingly controlling things does not succeed in their plan to scuttlebutt any opposition to their greedy pursuit of power. I will proudly, actively and vocally support any action that seeks to end the debt trap game and give power back to the people.

Who is Right Anyway?

Recently many people have discussed with me the notion of whether it matters or not that you are right. I think it does, though I appear to be in the minority. Let me ask you this though – if you had the choice between being right or wrong (whatever that might mean) which one would you pick? I know I would pick being right. Why? Because I think it is better. The more important (and difficult) question to me is "what is right?"

Right is sometimes obvious - 1+1 is 2. In such a scenario the facts are clear and the frame of reference is generally assumed to be one in which that scenario is right. You can, with some annoying logic, redefine the frame of reference so that 1+1 is not 2, but then you are living in a universe that is different from the one that I prefer to live in. So am I saying that there is no absolute right? – yes I am. Perhaps Descartes said it most succinctly - "I think therefore I am". Nevertheless, from a practical perspective, there is a right and I think it is better than wrong.

Right is less obvious when the facts are unclear or the situation involves a variety of variables that are difficult to analyse or resolve. I find human relations in this category. People have different views and I think that there is no absolute right to these sorts of quandaries. It is helpful to set up some definitions and boundaries for being right and wrong in these contexts. The definitions and boundaries are, in my opinion, the first step in terms of determining the frame of reference from which each person is viewing the situation. For example, if 1 person plans to see a movie, it is easy for that person to come to a consensus, they just pick the movie they want to see and go. However, if that person wants to see a movie with someone else, then they need to factor in the desires of the other person, or accept the fact that the other person may not be interested in seeing the same movie. If they other person does not want to see the same movie, then a choice is presented – either see the movie of choice alone or change the movie (I am assuming that there is no persuading the other to see the movie of choice). There is no right or wrong selection per se, but there is a right or wrong choice depending on what the true desire is - do you want to see the movie or do you want to spend time with the someone else. This is a choice that you are entirely in control of and I argue that it is in these moments that you are presented with the opportunity to truly be yourself. This is why it is important to be right.

The movie scenario is trivial, but I think that many people can relate to it. The same choices are presented in terms of supporting one particular vendor over another, the types of food you eat, the type of government you support and all of the things that make up the society we live in. I choose not to eat meat that is grown on a farm. I have made this choice because I believe that it is environmentally responsible for me to behave this way, particularly in terms of water conservation. I like meat and I would eat it with joy if I didn’t believe that society is better with pescaterianism (I only buy wild fish because I believe that farmed fish is also harmful to water supplies). Having said that, I understand that there are likely some people who need to eat meat, perhaps because they are allergic to enough foods that a healthy diet can only be maintained by eating meat. So absolute right – no of course not – frame of reference is important.

Many people have a frame of reference that is rationalized into something like, ‘it is okay for someone else to do something, so therefor it must be ok for me to do that as well’. This is not a good frame of reference and leads to many poor or wrong choices.  I do not beleive that treating everyone the same is a fair way to treat people.  For example, it is acceptable for a 6 year old to engage in certain behaviours that it is not acceptable for a 3 year old to engage in. Further, it is acceptable for a 6 year old to engage in activities that it is not acceptable for a 30 year old to engage in. Further still, there are activities for 30 year olds that are not acceptable for 6 year olds. The permutations can continue, but I think the point is made. Before an understanding of right or wrong can be achieved by someone, they need to think hard and carefully about what they want and why they want it. This step is often missed by people and a short term approach (typically slightly hedonistic) is often adopted when in the long run this will likely not lead to a desired outcome. I believe this because your actions, while in the short term may bring you joy, speak very strongly about who you are and other people will begin to understand who you are and what you believe by your actions. If your actions do not match your words, then people will not heed your words; your ‘word’ will become meaningless.

I don’t want to leave the impression that there is only one way to be right – this is clearly not correct. I do want to leave the impression that you are responsible for your actions. Those moments of choice that are presented to us daily and your response to them directly affect who you are and how people perceive and understand you. The choices made will define you and root you in a particular universe (or said differently, but with a slightly different meaning, your actions will define the people with whom you are most likely to spend time with and the activities you are likely to engage in). If you find yourself in a universe that you do not like, then I suggest that you have the power to change it, but only by thinking hard about what is right and what is wrong and deciding to act upon your choice of right and wrong. Some people will disagree with you and oppose your actions, particularly when you begin to act upon your decided notion of right and wrong, but fighting through that opposition is the first step in changing universes. "With great power comes great responsibility" (Stan Lee, creator of Spiderman).

Its all about You

It is entirely possible to think everyone else is at fault and not you. This is a perspective that I understand, yet find difficult to reconcile with my belief in diversity. I have tried accepting blame in circumstances when I am not to blame, where it is for all intents and purposes inconsequential, but this doesn’t help. The message received is that the activity for which blame is seemingly required is ok, when really the activity of laying blame is not okay. I have also tried ignoring blame, but this too doesn’t work, since you can come across as cold and indifferent to the situation. I’m sure there are many approaches to handling the blame game and each one suited to a different situation, but I am not clear as to when any of them apply.

I fully believe that as humans we all make mistakes and generally blame is not a helpful thing. However, I do think it is important to ensure that people understand the consequences of their actions. At some point, if antisocial behaviour persists, then action must be taken to improve society as a whole beacuse you can't allow, for example, a murderer to carry on as he wishes. While the example of a murderer is a good clear example to the overwhelmingly vast majority of people, other activities are not so uniformly disliked or liked.  This is where it gets difficult for me. First of all, what is antisocial to me may not be to someone else. Secondly, in the words of Shakespeare: "there is either good or bad, but thinking makes it so." It is so easy to believe that blame lies with someone else, but it is not that simple, the blame lies with you, me and everyone else too.

Banks, governments and corporations don’t have feelings, so I can harp on about poor bank behaviour and at worst all I have to deal with is being called are a few names from people who disagree with me (or for the conspiracy theorists among you perhaps the worst is a visit from a CIA operative). People, however, do take offence sometimes.

With people, I frequently just distance myself from those who it would appear have very different views from mine and hope that our spheres of existence do not collide too often. In some ways, this would appear to be the easiest and most peaceful way of handling the situation. On the other hand, building bridges of understanding takes courage and effort. I wonder if sometimes I should have more courage and put more effort into building these bridges.

I do try to understand people who I disagree with (actually often the most interesting conversations come from this sort of activity) and sometimes, in my attempts to understand them, I find myself changing a bit. I change not because I am persuaded by their argument or position, but more because I have achieved a greater understanding of people. I think this is the power of diversity. If you can embrace different perspectives, no matter how hard it seems to be at the time, I think you grow as a person and will find life easier to navigate. For clarity, embracing the different perspective is different from adopting it – you merely have to understand it, not agree with it, although agreement is fine too.

People often freeze with fear in situations where they find themselves confronted by a difference of opinion. Many actions are indicative of this fear – sometimes people get angry with you, sometimes people start BSing, sometimes people change the subject, sometimes people try to cloud the issue by using big words that maybe don’t make sense (could be because you don’t understand them, they don’t understand them or both). All of these things sorts of behaviours have something in common – they are intended to end the argument. I argue that this is when the ‘bridge building’ ends. Have courage and persist with the argument. Of course, do not continue the argument in the same way - that will only serve to make the situation worse. Try to understand why the person is angry or embarrassed or unwilling to see your perspective (and here again I don’t mean adopt your perspective – getting agreement is not important– understanding should be the goal I think). However, bear in mind that persistence is only warranted if you are still seeking to understand their perspective - there is nothing to be gained from trying to force someone to understand your perspective if they are not willing to listen and understand, though it is wonderful when two-way communication occurs and results in mutual understanding.

People also freeze when they have bad news to deliver. This is a fear that I understand completely, but is usually horribly misguided. This is the sort of fear that makes things a whole lot worse. Sometimes bad things happen and those bad things need to be faced; delaying the inevitable just wastes time I think. There are situations when a person is not able to handle more bad news. In which case, facing the situation may simply be understanding what needs to be confronted now and what can wait – not everything can happen at once. Nevertheless, action is still required, even if that action is only to feel, recognize and understand the pain.

So why am I talking about fear and confronting people with differing views and striving for understanding? Because I think we all have some of this fear in us. If we can understand this about ourselves and each other, then perhaps we will be better able to be conscious of the moments when another person is genuinely trying to understand us, even if that attempt appears to be annoying. Indeed, if it is annoying, then I would suggest that you have something to learn about and understand from the other person also. Unfreeze, take action and rid yourself of doubt and apathy by being honest with yourself and others.

Banking, Corporations and Government

　

I want to pick up from "inset banking system"...

Present day banks as a general rule are not terribly good at helping the average human at the moment, though it has to be said that we would be in a much worse economic state without them. What I object to mostly is the notion that banks are somehow just another corporation that deserves to be a corporation just like any other corporation. This is absurd - there are bank charters or similar statutes and laws in almost every single jurisdiction around the world that provide banks with very powerful and unique privileges that other corporations simply do not have, like lending more money then they actually have as just one major example. Put it this way, you can`t just start a mom and pop bank in your basement; the regulations are a bit stiff. Hence, even competition in the banking market is skewed. Banks do not fit the usual profile for a corporation.

As banks have embraced the notion of being just another profit driven corporation, they have forgotten their most useful purpose in society, which in my view is to ensure that money remains in circulation and not unduly hoarded, while simultaneously allowing an individual to accumulate wealth so that an individual can have a realistic chance to earn and save for a retirement. The banks are in some aspects one of the worst offenders of wealth accumulation - witness their massive profits. This is slightly odd considering that they loan more money then they have, but in the process of doing this, they have reborn a debt-slave game that has been frowned upon by past societies several times. Credit cards and mortgages are examples of this game and not withstanding the value of loans (of which there are many), the banks thrive on the recalcitrant repayers of those loans and seek to keep such people in the position of paying off the minimum in order to maximize their profits and they do this at the expense of maintaining the flow of money throughout society. Banks loan money so that they can hoard it by collecting interest on the loan. In order to obtain the maximum amount of interest, they need to identify and keep the somewhat recalcitrant repayers of such loans (in other words, those that are trying their best to repay the loans, but really are making no headway whatsoever). Through this process the banks accept that some of the loans will default and then they kick these defaulters to the kerb as deadbeats, thereby dissociating them from society. Banks squeeze what they can from an individual and as soon as the gig is up, they get rid of that individual.

If banks cared about maintaining an individual’s involvement in society they could use the statistics they already collect and analyze to identify those people that need help out of the debt trap and, as just one example, proactively reduce the interest rates they are charging. In many, many circumstances, banks will reduce your rate right now if you call them up and tell them that you are going to transfer your loan balance to another institution, so the banks can`t argue that it is unprofitable to reduce their interest rates (and you can’t argue that the banks are totally crap if you don’t fight with them for their lowest rate, though it would be nice not to have to have the fight in the first place). But really – banks don’t care about maintaining an individual’s involvement in society.

Moral hazard I hear from the champions of privatization and capitalism? With the truly amazing trend of giving massive amounts of money to the banks to ‘stabilize the banking system’ I have to say that I would rather deal with the moral hazard of some individuals in society than the moral hazard of the very powerful banks and bankers. Any system has faults and ways to abuse it, the question to me, at least with respect to banks and ‘fixing the banking system’, is why are we as a society so prepared to let banks off the hook and not a collection of individual people who are vastly less able to abuse the generosity of the government? Somehow helping banks is seemingly more palatable to society. Not to me.

　

I wonder why in America, the government didn’t just use the money they gave to the banks to create state housing projects by buying the properties that were in foreclosure. This would have cleared the banks’ books of the bad loans and given the government something in return for clearing the bad loans. In addition, the ‘people who had no right to own a home in the first place’ (whatever that means) wouldn’t own a home directly – only vicariously through their government. Further, more people would still have a roof over their heads (instead of more empty houses) and the value of the non-defaulters’ houses would be better off since the government would have maintained at least some of the demand for property. Housing bubble yes, but it was created by the bad loans in the first place, so no difference there. Isn’t the government supposed to represent the people?...or wait, is it the banks? Actions speak loader than words here I think. In reality government represent both banks and people, but as I mentioned earlier, the banks are dramatically better positioned to abuse the government’s generosity and to shape the opinions and decisions of government. Too much privilege for banks. This must change!

　

Food for thought – why do we not view government as a special corporation, just like the banks? When I hear arguments against government involvement I often hear that "government has no place in (insert suitable example of private enterprise)". What I don’t hear, but seems implicit to me, is that private entities do. Why the distinction? Why does the government, as a collection of people, have less of a right to get involved in activities than a private entity? They make the laws – conflict of interest is a common response I get to that question. But the government (at least in a democracy), even with the conflict is at least accountable to the people that it is involved with. I cannot say the same for private entities – there is no redress for the punter or accountability for the actions of the private institution unless government gets involved.

In a conversation I had recently with a friend of mine, it was pointed out that Forbes magazine had rated Canada as the top country in the world for doing business (http://www.forbes.com/lists/2011/6/best-countries-11_land.html), citing a strong banking system and low corporate tax rates among other things. It was also pointed out to me that Forbes magazine is a magazine printed by billionaires to help people become billionaires and hence, the subtle message might be – Canada will let you suck it dry better than any other country right now. Some accolades are just not ones that you want if you value a future in which we all strive to improve everyone in society thereby developing a stronger society as a whole.