Tag: Thinkin’ and Theory

Disorganized

Last time I wrote about this, it was the day before the London bombings but London Mayor Ken Livingston’s comments again remind me of that question of how will we know if this slow war against shadows is over or even changed?

The terror threat faced by London is “fairly disorganised” and involves small groups of disaffected people, according to the capital’s mayor. Ken Livingstone told the BBC London was not the focus of a “great organised international conspiracy with orders flowing down the chain”. But he said there had been 10 attempted attacks since 11 September 2001, two of which had come since the 7 July bombs.

What is the background level for disorganized dissaffected people that you may never remove from society? Is there a difference between, on the one hand, events of terror by international criminal gangs or whatever Al Quada is now and, on the other, events of horror caused by the disorganized and dissaffected? Is that difference such that the state’s right or obligation to monitor mail and email, listen in or worse stop or will that just continue – less noticed or accepted – as well? Or is the plan to drop the hammer once every five or eleven years without real purpose or practical plan for restoration of anything, like dreamy sophomoric murderers in the unfocused post-colonial open season for disorganized dissaffection.

Canada The Powerhouse

There are plenty of folk who use blogs – imagine – to blindly criticize our fair land, saying it is a shame that we do not have standing armed forces of 250,000 to rattle our swords now and then, saying it is a shame that we are taxed for sensible public services looking with envy southward where conservatives get to spend but not pay for it, saying that it is a shame we let people actually live as and with whom and how they decide without asking for permission. So it is good to be reminded that Canada is doing very well these days as it has been doing for quite some time. We’ve even it the lowest unemployment rate for 30 years despite the dollar being now about 25% higher in relation to our largest customer compared to where it was about two years ago.

You wonder when some folk would ever be happy.

Lost Email

Arther recollects the emails he sent and received on 9/11 but did not retain. It reminded me that I have lost or, recently, abandoned sets of email three times. The first was an error of cleaning up a hard drive, the second was turning off an intranet and the hird a deliberate closing of an account. Like this blog, each had thousands of notes and conversations from many, many people. As information it was great stuff, giving the ability to trace an argument over months, to track how a project developed but it was also a bit of a millstone focusing importance on the past as well as the flow and the source. It was authoritative but in relation frankly to mostly low grade content and gave too much weight to what was rather than was would be.

I don’t know why that resonates with the fact that I’ve come across an interesting couple of themes recently in that book I’ve been reading on the Anti-Federalists of 1787. Some of them thought two things were necessary for them to get their message across – anonymity and a free press. By anonymity they meant the ability to write under a pen name so that the readership would not be able to pre-judge through status. By a free press they meant one without commercial pressure from the Federalists, one where printers would print and distribute all pamphlets equally. In this way virtuous public opinion could be best generated:

Public opinion was even more crucial than it had been in any other republic. “In a confederated government of such extent as the United States” it was vital that “the freest communication of sentiment and information should be maintained.” Centinal envisaged the public sphere of the print as an important means of cementing a nation together. Print afforded a means of achieving social cohesion without a stron coercive authority.

Ratification proved the danger of allowing the press to become a tool of a party or faction: the suppression of Anti-Federalist writing facilitated ratification in a number of states. Centinal complained that “the liberties of that coutnytr are brought to an awful crisis,” for it was precisely the Federalists’ ability to dominate the press that allowed supporters of the Constitution to isolate and “overwhelm the enlightened opposition”…

I don’t know what the connection is between the emails of 2001, this blog and the press of 1787. This site has over 2000 posts and many more thousand comments. But I do not really treat it like an archive as I rarely recollect that I have written something before. It is also practically anonymous as I have met only a very few of you comment makers in real life. It is also one of millions making them as a group, like personal email repositories, practically inaccessible for any real purpose – so free and so available that they are unfunctional as tools for the advancement of ideas into the community for shared consideration and development. This is even the case of the so called A-listers – that notion spoken of in 2003 but not really much any more: people who thought they were important because of hit counts seemed to think that that would bring authority and a means to make change.

I will have to think about whether there is anything to this.

Thanks A Lot

It is a funny thing in the Canadian character that we love to be mentioned, to be thanked as a nation. It is good to do something good, for sure – but sometimes I think we would get all gooey over being over-praised for a smallish thing than be proud in an achievement despite no much notice being paid. None of this is to take away in the the slightest from any of the good things done or recognition being made in the wake of Katrina…but making a list of all the people who say nice things and making a lead article out of it in a national paper is a tiny bit strange – but more in a sweet way than needy.

Sort of a variant of when Canada is noticed and a close tangent to worrying about not being too American.

Time To Cut Equalization?

Is it time to cut equalization and other aspects of the massive Federal funding to the anti-constitutionalist PEI government?

It may be the law, but same-sex couples can’t get married on P.E.I. None of the provincial bills that cover marriage have been changed, and P.E.I.’s attorney general, Mildred Dover, said it will take an undetermined amount of time for the Island to follow Canadian law.

This was hardly unexpected in light of the general Charter fighting track record of the current suits…but isn’t it time to penalize those who would obstruct the enjoyment by Canadians of the full rights of being Canadian?

Panhandling Policy

My policy on panhandling is clear:

  • I buy a lot of crap that costs way too much. What a panhandler gives me materially is more honest. I get a bit of “no thing” in return for a small amount of expenditure. A bargain I understand.
  • I pick favourites. I try to support a few who are there all the time. I favour women and the elderly.
  • I do not quibble about giving something that will provide comfort like a good coffee or a bottle of cheap wine. If I ever find myself in that position I expect each of you to give me that – and don’t give me that look when you do.
  • Look in the eye and say “no, thank you” or “have a good day.” Like Mormans, these folk are too easy a target for too many folk.
  • I am no hero as it would be lucky if I gave 1/1000th in this way but it is good to be good and nice to be nice.

Home Grown

Steve in Manchester has put it very well again:

Why, why, why? You were born here FFS! What medievil twat filled you with that much hatred? Was it moral outrage? Bare female arms at the height of summer? Rowdy young men quaffing ale outside the pubs of England? Was it the very notion of democracy that offended you? A deep yearning for the proud civilsations of the Tigris, Euphrates, Ganges and the rest to return to some kind of perverted ascendancy? What was it? What made you think that setting that timer, triggering the carnage with a mobile phone or whatever; what made you think it was THE RIGHT THING TO DO?

‘Cos, for the life of me I don’t get it. I really don’t.

I suppose for me the futility of it is what is dumbfounding. This morning’s 6 am CBC radio news says one suicide bomber’s parents rain a nice fish and chip shop in a mixed neighbourhood where everyone got along and that the bomber was a friendly guy, excellent cricketer. What is so ill about that picture that you blow yourself up for a cause that will never come within a thousand years of ever coming to pass? Because, frankly, there is nothing the slightest bit attractive in the form or the substance of the message.

I also suppose one odder thing is that it is fanatical regressivism. At least the IRA and, say, the 1890s Chicago anarchists blowing themselves up were revolutionary in the sense they were trying to make a better day in their twisted attacks, nasty utopians. But what is the plan with these back-facers? Most fans of tyranny do the right thing – take over the army, enslave and destroy the people and reap the rewards. But these guys appear to confuse the tyrant and the victim: “if you don’t watch out I will blow me up…and when we’ve all blown ourselves up then…err…watch out!”

I am coming to think that there is little to the fighting the causes of terrorism but also there may be little to the fight – unless we get a clue what this is about. I think islamo-fascism is too simplistic. The faith has been around for 1500 years and no one has talked about a puritan nilhilistic militantism like this in the past. There is something awfully odd wrapped by the guise of islamo-fascism. Georgetown odd. Columbine odd. So someone is passing a compelling message – which is hate speech. Hate of normal folk.

Hitchhikers’ Guide To The Galaxy

Went to a movie. That is four times in 18 months which is something of a revival as I did not sit in the seat thinking how odd to be at the movies or how odd that I am staring at flickering images on a wall having a group emotional experience with strangers. I quite enjoyed it, the group-tee-hee.

When I was a kid, in that span from say age 12 to 27 long ago, CBC Halifax played a serialized for radio version of the book the Hitchhikers’ Guide To The Galaxy but it was in such short chunks that I gave it half attention and never picked up the book in the same way I never went to see Rocky Horror Picture Show on Friday midnights, cold toast in my pockets. Like that movie, I knew about the Guide but was not immersed in it. See, I had a brother who was always dragging sci-fi books home and so, like the Boston Bruins and the other brother, that was never my territory. Sci-fi movies and TV, however, were as I grew up in the era of not only Close Encounters of a Third Kind (grade 8 or so) or Star Wars (I recall seeing The Empire Strikes Back in grade 11 with pals on a summer night) but also Space 1999 on 1970s CBC Halifax TV Saturday night before the hockey but after CTV had the Ali fight, Dr. Who on Maine PBS TV a few years later at Saturday evening suppertime and, of course, the never ending repeats of Captain Kirk and the original Star Trek. What made all these shows differ from every thing from the Star Trek: Next Generation and afterwards was they were pre-ironic. The golden era of slightly prickly pricky irony can be quite specifically dated. It started quietly with the David Letterman’s morning talkshow of the early 80’s and ended with 9/11 – when it was enough to point out that someone didn’t get something, though only a facet, was enough to curse them as not “getting it”, that undefined yet elemental thing called “it”. During that era of irony, crapping on something as light judgment was considered funny and somehow insightful. It lasted long enough that there are actually people raised mainly in that era, unaware that pre-irony existed, who think it is a synonym for humour alone – unaware that it is the humour of the slightly bastardly. Anyway, in the pre-ironic era, people could and did believe in things (baseball, sci-fi, political parties, faith) while having trust in what they knew that was at odds with the belief. I knew my baseball team was bad and would never win the World Series or that a given politician was on the take but was otherwise useful – but it did not colour the entire relationship I had with baseball or politics because I knew there was much I did not know. Hence, the pleasure of supposition concerning the possible.

Now, we think we can know everything, know we must know everything and “believe” in politics, religion and sports teams as absolutes not as things in themselves full of fallible people and not just as sets of particular facts but as global ideals. We have to “believe” because this is the era of serious stuff when the person who raises a particular fact that makes complications for a given ideal is to question the idea and its absolute nature thereby being a heretic rather than someone just noting the reality of the relative – again, we can suffer not “getting it” without the accuser having ever to define what “it” is. In this way, irony and belief are two sides to the same coin. But in the pre-serious, pre-ironic era when we knew bad stuff happened, in the world, to each of us and we took it in stride. Ali was beaten from time to time so we could watch sci-fi and think to ourselves…maybe…just maybe that is who things will work out. The motto of the Hitchhiker’s Guide (meaning the book within the book, radio, movie) of “Don’t Panic” has a ring of “Keep On Truckin'” to it – things will be bad from time to time but life will either go on or it won’t and there is not much you can do about that – going with the flow, sucking up the bad thing that has yet to occur. It is a message of confidence.

That is why this movie and a few others going around lately seem to me to be showing a possible dent in the culture of the serious and absolute, just as 9/11 undid irony, though in no way as swiftly, tragically or cataclysmically. It is fundamentally a movie about the question of the possible turned on its head, sci-fi of the likely in which earth is not Captain Kirk’s center of the universe, but one in which we humans do not have the right answer and where others are indifferent to our fate. Neither technology or governance will protect us from that. In that way, even thought it is a fantasy it is realistic, and so something which has been quite rare in this post-ironic era. Unlike the 1990s movies about the disco era, you are inside the premise of this movie – not asked to watch it as an outsider, mildly ridiculing the past. You know that you are watching you and you know that these are not special times you live in.

So there are three types of people: those who know what the word “Dalek” means, those who believe there is something ultimately profound in the words “red state” and “blue state” and those who may sense some dissatisfaction with both contemporary absolutism and the lingering legacy of irony whatever the cause. The first group has already seen the movie and bought the t-shirt, the second will not enjoy it and will pray for those who made it to find their final repose in hell…but there is some hope for the third.