The Mid-East Threat

It has been a rough month around home, but I have managed to keep up on world events.  Here are some thoughts on one of the trouble spots we see in the news every day.

In the Middle East, we have the emergence of the Islamic State (IS, ISIL, ISIS) of extremist fighters, a group of Sunni fighters who claim to want to return to the seventh century using AK-47s and Twitter.  Every western country has condemned them but none of them actually want to fight them.  The west claims that the IS is a threat to them, but there is no proof of that yet.  The other question being asked is why are some young men from western countries being radicalized and going to Syria and Iraq to fight.  We’ll return to that question later.  The IS rampage is undoubtedly another example of a group seeking power by using religion as a motivator for the masses.  The word “jihad” sparks all kinds of emotions in people.  But it is just another example of militarism.

As for why young men from western countries become “radicalized” and join such movements, the answer may be simpler that we think.  We in the west have created societies that are overwhelmed with safety and security.  This is not necessarily a bad thing, but it can produce some unexpected results.  Young men who grow up in a society that does not allow them to “test their mettle” may become determined to do just that.  They have an urge for adventure and danger.  All ancient societies had some sort of test of manhood.  Not so today in modern societies.  But the human spirit does not stray very far from its roots, particularly when they are told that it is “manly” or “macho” to seek adventure.  Many find the release in sports and indeed the growth of so-called extreme sports would give this some credence.  But some want more.  As Barbara Tuchman said in her book August 1914 about the beginnings of World War I, “and in the opinion of one observer the welcoming attitude toward war owed something to the ‘unconscious boredom of peace.’”

Our Canadian government has spoken out loudly on the IS, condemning them at every opportunity.  The problem here is that they have paid no attention to Theodore Roosevelt’s admonition, “Talk softly and carry a big stick.”  Instead they seem to believe that they should speak loudly but carry no stick at all.  “We’ll just holler here in the background in hopes that someone else with do something.”  This is not the way to carry on foreign policy.  

Although I abhor the idea of war, the unfortunate truth is that the only way to defeat the IS is with boots and weapons on the ground, lots of boots and lots of weapons.  It is estimated that there are now more than 30,000 IS fighters in Syria and Iraq.  They are fluid and mean.  To come to grips with them may require at least 100,000 trained troops.  The Kurdish fighters have shown that the IS is not invincible.  We need to support the Kurds and add to their numbers by surrounding the IS locations.  Talking loudly will not do it.

Whither the Great War

There is a lot of talk, events and even celebrations these days about the Great War – World War 1.  Although why people would want to remember the beginning of a war I have no idea.  But I have been doing a lot of reading about that war over the years including my current reading of Margaret MacMillan’s excellent work, The War that Ended Peace, about the origins of that war.  In some ways this book shows that some things have changed in the intervening one hundred years.  Unfortunately, it also shows that some things tragically have not.  In many countries, nationalism and its companion militarism are alive and well.  Ethnic differences are causing many problems around the world.  Arms races continue with the result that some people seem to think that these new and improved weapons should actually be used.  And despite all of things that we think have changed in the world, human nature stays stubbornly the same. Mazlov’s hierarchy of needs is still relevant. 

Inevitably, there are the critiques, second guessing and what-ifs about the war.  There are those who say that Europe didn’t have to go to war, but they weren’t there.  There are those that say the war should have been fought differently, but they weren’t there.  One of the most ridiculous arguments I have seen recently was from the Canadian writer and historian, Gwyn Dyer.  In an excerpt from his new book that was printed in the Globe and Mail on Saturday, August 9^th, he postulated that it would have been much better if Germany had won the war.  His argument was that Germany would have imposed a much less harsh peace treaty on the losers than the Treaty of Versailles imposed by Britain and France.  This would have led to peace and harmony throughout Europe and prevented the Second World War.  This assertion has no supporting evidence whatsoever.  Germany was a militaristic power and the militarists, who by winning the war would have enhanced their power, would have insisted on sanctions, reparations and other punishments against at least France and probably Britain and Russia.  Germany’s biggest problem would then have been Russia, as it has been through much of Prussian and German history.  Although the ongoing Russian Revolution may have rendered Russia weak in the short term, it would have eventually become strong enough to challenge Germany.  France and Britain could well have joined Russia in retribution for the treaty forced upon them at the end of the Great War.  Hence, we would have had World War 2 in Europe.  

And let’s not forget about the growing enmity between Japan and the US. Although Japan was ostensibly an ally to France and Britain in World War 1, its growing demand for hegemony in Asia, particularly China, was already causing problems for the US who saw themselves as a benevolent protector of China.  The strains that eventually led to the attack on Pearl Harbor and the US entry into World War 2 would still have been there, and the result would, no doubt, be the same.

Mr. Dyer makes the mistake, common among some historians and critics, of thinking like a 21^st Century person rather than a later 19^th Century person, which is what the decision makers of the day were.  The truth was that people in Europe were conditioned to accept war and many were looking forward to it.  There had been several crises in the years between 1900 and 1913, and most people expected that one more spark would lead to war.  War came as no surprise in 1914.  We, who have seen the effects of 20^th century warfare, do not generally want more war, but that was not the case in 1914.  What did surprise the world was the length and intensity of the Great War.  All of the military planners had expected and planned for a short, sharp war with a decisive battle deciding it all.  This is, after all, what had happened in 1870 in the Franco-Prussian War, the last war of any consequence in Europe.  The carnage of World War 1 came as a complete surprise to almost everyone.  It was this unexpected level of destruction that made the war so terrible and memorable.  Nobody expected the war to last that long.  Nobody expected it to be that destructive.  If Germany had defeated France in the two months they expected the war to last, it would have been a war that was expected, and it would probably encouraged other wars in Europe over the rest of the century until one of them became so destructive that it would have become the memorable war – the War to end all Wars.

Any current analyst of the Great War inevitably must see it through the prism of the death and destruction that was that war, just as even the men who dictated the Versailles Treaty had to look at the war.  It coloured our entire outlook of the 20^th century, and even led to conditions that are still causing world problems, the Middle East being one good example.  We cannot escape history, but we also cannot live it from the future.  In the future as in the past, old men will declare wars; but it will be young men, and now women, who will die in them.

Election Blues

“Whenever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship.”

  - Harry S. Truman

Now that the Ontario election of 2014 is finished, there will undoubtedly be more cries for electoral reform.  The argument will again be made that a majority government has been elected with less than 40% of the popular vote.  They will also point out that the Green Party got 5% of the popular vote and yet again gets no seats.  All of this is true, and is a common outcome for the type of voting system we have. 

Our present system of the winning candidate being the one with the most votes comes to us from the British parliamentary system and is still used there and in the United States.  The US system relies of the fact that there are only two parties of any consequence in that country.  A viable third party, as has sometimes been the case in the past, raises the same concerns there as here.  Is the system flawed?  Probably.  Can it be fixed? Possibly.

Ontario tried to introduce a different voting system in a referendum in 2007.  It was dubbed the MMP (mixed member proportional) system and would have had a proportional representation system for most of the members plus a group of 39 seats (“the gang of 39”) set aside for candidates to be nominated by the parties in proportion to their elected seats.  As I said at the time in a letter to the editor, my “concern is a conviction that the voters will never get to directly vote for party leaders or prospective cabinet members.”  It was a system that could only have been devised by a committee.  Fortunately, in my opinion, the electorate turned down the proposal.  But the attempt points out one of the problems with the various ideas that have been floated for electoral reform.  Each of the ones proposed so far have been a mish-mash of ideas like the MMP system above.  Each has seemed to try to address a number of factions while satisfying none.  All have appeared to be designed by committee.  

Are there other options?  There are two methods of candidate election that are used extensively in other democratic nations and they are much more straightforward than any of the ones being discussed in Canada.

The first is straight proportional representation.  It is widely used in Europe.  Under this method, the recent Ontario election would result in about 42 Liberal, 35 PC, 24 NDP and 6 Green seats – a minority government, but representative of the popular vote.  There are, however, some downsides to this method.  They invariably result in minority governments which in turn bring about coalitions – a word that is somehow anathema to Canadians.  They also tend to open the door to new parties so that many represent very special interests.  This not to say they are unworkable – they just take more effort to work out the necessary coalition dynamic that can rule effectively.  However, the major defect in my case is that the elected representatives are drawn from a party list with no apparent concern for local representation.  The first seat goes to the party leader and so on down the party’s list.

The second alternative is the use of run-off elections.  In this case, when no candidate gets 50% of the vote for his/her riding, there is a run-off between the first two vote-getters.  This ensures that the winner gets over 50% of people’s first or second choice.  Of course it takes a bit more time with the run-off, usually held one or two weeks after the main election.  And we are an impatient lot who demand instant answers, so that wait might not be popular for some.  However, it is in my opinion, the best of the alternatives.  It is straightforward, fair and effective.  It can produce majority or minority governments, depending on the mood of the electorate.  Other supposedly similar schemes such as ranking preferences on the initial ballot with some sort of numerical scoring to select the winner can become confusing for many voters and could be open to question of the results.  The run-off format is clear and transparent.

So, in a country that is essentially a three party system, which method of selection of your governments would you like to live with?  

“Too bad the only people who know how to run the country are busy driving cabs and cutting hair.”
  - George Burns

What Price Security

Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled.
  - Michael Crichton

I was having a discussion (actually a political disagreement) with a neighbour the other day and I happened to mention my concern about the Canadian (and other) government’s ever increasing encroachment into our private communications under the guise of saving us from terrorists, child molesters, child pornographers, or any other excuse they can make hay with.  I told him that I did not like the idea of the government having relatively unfettered access to my communications, whether phone, smart phone or internet.  And of course, I got the same old answers that I have come to expect, “If you haven’t done anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about” and “We have to protect ourselves against terrorists,” always invoking 9/11.  So I thought about these reasons and came to the following conclusions.

If we start with the, “If you haven’t done anything wrong” argument, I like to paraphrase the statement as follows, “When they came for the Gypsies, I said nothing for I wasn’t a Gypsy.  When they came for the Jews, I said nothing because I wasn’t a Jew.  When they came for the Catholics, I said nothing because I wasn’t a Catholic.  When they came for me, nothing was said because there was nobody left to speak for me.”  While you may not think you have done or said anything wrong, somebody else, or some other group may think otherwise.  Who’s to say what will be considered wrong by someone at some point now or in the future.  We pride ourselves that we have always had a rational government; a government that supposedly has all of our best interests at heart.  But as politics in this and many other countries gets more partisan and polarized; as the income gap gets wider, with the rich able, in some cases, to pay to get sympathetic politicians elected; as the issue of climate change gets more contentious; and as transnational companies get more and more above the law of any one country, who’s to say what ideas you may have that will run afoul of the prevailing “rightness” of the day.  The problem with your privacy and freedom of thought is that once it is gone it is very hard to get back.  Once the damage is done, it is done

.

The argument about 9/11 is another one that needs examining.  Apparently the laws that had provided for our safety for dozens if not hundreds of years were no longer adequate to protect us from another 9/11.  In light of that event, new intrusions into our lives had to be devised.  This subsequently led us to the ability of the NSA and CSEC to monitor any e-mail or telephone call in their respective countries.  The fear of another terrorist attack raised the level of paranoia to such an extent that many people were willing to accept this intrusion.

But let’s look at the facts.  There has not been a successful terrorist attack in North America since 9/11.  The security minded point to this as proof their argument is right, although we are told by authorities that none of the attempted attacks was first detected by phone or e-mail.  This being the case, the prior intelligence could well have been used to request a warrant for legal eavesdropping.  But maybe that’s not the reason.

The question is do foreign terrorists really need to expend the money and effort to strike another attack against North America?  Let’s look at what the terrorists accomplished from that original attack.  They made the world paranoid and many western countries willing to pass draconian laws to curb many of the personal freedoms that had been the hallmark of western civilization.  They caused the United States and other western countries to undertake two debilitating wars in the Middle East.  Canada fought in one of those wars.  These wars caused massive debts that now make it impossible for these western countries to afford to fight new disturbances around the world.  In this way the terrorists could be said to have won.  They don’t have to strike the west again.  The damage is done.  The major terrorist groups now seem to be concentrating of participating in the more conventional (by today’s standards) wars in the Middle East.  They are now heavily engaged in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and some of the old Soviet republics with a view of establishing governments that conform to their view of religious states.  That should keep them busy and focussed for many years to come.

I’m not paranoid about my well-being, but I do resent agencies having unfettered access to my personal correspondence without knowledge or recourse.  And it’s getting worse, because new laws being proposed would open such access to corporations and agencies beyond the police and government security agencies (law societies, medical societies, corporations to identify copyright infringements).  Who’s going to police them?  Who’s going to ensure that they don’t abuse the privilege?  Now you’re making me upset.  Now you are going too far.

You will find that the State is the kind of organization which, though it does big things badly, does small things badly, too.
  - John Kenneth Galbraith

All human situations have their inconveniences. We feel those of the present but neither see nor feel those of the future; and hence we often make troublesome changes without amendment, and frequently for the worse.
  - Benjamin Franklin

Easter: What’s it all About?

Approximately 1980 years ago, give or take five years or so, a man was crucified on a hill on the outskirts of Jerusalem.  His name was Jesus.  Although the execution was carried out by the Roman authorities, for only they were authorized to do such things, the proceedings leading to it had been carried out in a Jewish religious court.  The condemned man was, after all a Jew.  We are never explicitly told what the charge was, but it was probably about blasphemy or heresy of some sort.  They accused Him of calling himself the King of the Jews, which He never did according to the records.

We are told that He died on the cross quite quickly, hours instead of a day or two.  Of course it didn’t help that a Roman guard had stuck a spear into Jesus’ side which probably sped up the process.  We are also told that on the third day, the day of the crucifixion being the first day, His tomb was found to be empty and that in subsequent days He appeared before His friends, family and apostles.  We do not know if these appearances were physical or spiritual, and I’m not going to speculate one way or another.  From this event, some His apostles and a certain Paul of Tarsus formed a new religion called Christianity, now the most populace religion in the world. The current shape of Christianity owes more to the teachings and writings of Paul than to any other person.  But is this what Jesus wanted?  It should be noted that some of His disciples continued to preach to the Jewish population, no doubt understanding that this was the message that Jesus had wanted to convey.

As I said before, Jesus was a Jew.  He was born a Jew and He died a Jew.  Nowhere in the Biblical story of His life did He ever espouse starting a new religion.  His preaching and message was for Jewish ears.  His endeavours were directed at reforming Judaism.  If you read histories of that period, you come to realize that things were not going well for the Jewish faith and nation for over a hundred years before Jesus came along.  There were internal squabbles within the Jewish religion itself with competing group vying for power and influence.  The two main groups were the Sadducees and the Pharisees.  Think of this conflict as the political differences of today in Canada or the US.  Then there were the tensions caused by the Roman occupation.  There would be many who were willing to fight for freedom from this occupation; after all there were two recorded major revolts of Jews against this occupation in the hundred years before and after Jesus.  The latter was so serious that the Romans destroyed the Jewish temple in 70 AD; something the Romans didn’t normally do in occupied countries.  And there was also the clash between the traditional Jewish culture and the dominant Greek culture that was prevalent in that part of the world.  Even Roman culture was heavily influenced be the Greeks.  Judaism itself was fighting for its place in this scenario.  For one thing, it was becoming more rules based with serious strictures about everyday life.  Because, in many of the societies of that day, religion and government were one and the same, any law passed by the government became a religious law, and vice versa. The dominance of the Jewish temple in Jerusalem gave little comfort to Jews that did not live in Palestine but who accounted for an estimated 75 – 80% of the Jewish population.  So you had all of these tensions playing on the Jewish people and many, no doubt, were looking for some guidance.

  

Into this came Jesus who preached a simple, common-sense message on religion.  He preached a loving religion, including with strangers.  To a lot of people, it obviously struck a nerve.  They liked it.  His message about giving unto Caesar gave a way of resolving their conflict with the Roman occupation.  His message about the “good Samaritan” gave them an example of living with the non-Jews in their midst.  His “miracle” of feeding the multitude with the five loaves and two fish gave them an example of the power of sharing, for that is probably what the miracle amounted to.  They were very understandable messages, but they were messages meant for Jews.  One of the ways that you can tell is that He frequently referred to the Jewish prophets, particularly Isaiah.  Nobody in that time would understand these references except for Jewish people.

So who is this Jesus that made Him so famous in His own time?  We are told that He is the son of Joseph and Mary.  Joseph was a carpenter in the town of Nazareth.  In those days, a carpenter would have been a pretty important person in such a town, equivalent to building contractor and furniture maker of today.  He would be one of the more important tradesmen of the town.  He could well have had some education, including religious education from the town’s priests.  As Jesus was growing up, Joseph would undoubtedly have passed on knowledge to his son.  We are told that when Jesus was at about the age of majority (13) He visited the temple in Jerusalem where He debated with the priests about the nature of Judaism.  We are led to believe that He was a kind and gentle man.  He must have been personable, probably with a sense of humour, since He was able to attract people to His cause and to His talks.  To some degree, He was probably charismatic. 

His fame spread throughout Palestine (the Roman name for the province) until it reached Jerusalem where, in the days before Passover, He was greeted by a large crowd.  But Jesus must have known that, by stepping into the centre of Judaism, home of the temple, He was courting trouble with the Jewish leaders.  Would they accept Him, or condemn Him?  We now know the answer because several days later, He was tried before a Jewish court, which would be a religious court because that is the only thing that the Jewish leaders were authorized to bring charges against.  He was condemned to death and the finding was brought before the Roman governor, one Pontius Pilate.  At first, the governor was reluctant to authorize the death sentence, but finally he had to give in.  Jesus was crucified.  Easter was born.  The rest, as they say, is history.