Israel a Colonial Enterprise?

UN Mandate, 1948

I note people accusing the Jews of stealing land from the Arabs in order to form the state of Israel. One correspondent compares the Israeli position to Italians laying claim to England on the grounds that it once belonged to Rome.

But that is not a fair representation of the history. The Jews did not take the land. Israel was mandated to the Jews in 1948 by the United Nations. If there was an injustice done to the Palestinian Arabs, it was done by the international community, not by the Jews. Canada had a vote in the UN General Assembly; the Jews did not.  To blame the Jews is scapegoating.

What do those who make this argument now propose? That the Jews, having been legally ceded the land by the UN generations ago, are now to be evicted due to the claims of some prior inhabitants? Aren’t such theorists guilty here of exactly what they are falsely blaming the Jews for?

If dispossessing the Arabs was wrong then, by the same standard, dispossessing the Jews would be wrong now.

I would allow that the original grant was unfair to the Arabs. The world community was giving the Jews someone else’s land. The recent attempt by Hitler to exterminate them no doubt made it seem pressing to the international community that the surviving Jews be given their own homeland, where they might be secure from such mass murder. 

Wherever that homeland was established, it was going to require the dispossession of whoever was currently living there. 

Perhaps it would have been more just to give the Jews a slice of Germany, rather than taking land from the innocent Arabs. But then, a small Jewish state would never seem secure from bigger neighbours in Central Europe. Ask Poland about that.

Perhaps Canada should have offered some of its own territory, rather than voting to give the Jews some of the Arabs’.

But then, Britain was indeed altruistically giving some of its own territory for the creation of this Jewish homeland. Britain had conquered the territory from the Ottomans in the recent World War.

And Palestine made the most sense, not necessarily because it was the ancient homeland of the Jews, but because it had the largest concentration of Jews anywhere. 

This was largely because of its symbolic important to the Jews, and largely because the British had already been legally bound, by League of Nations Mandate in 1922, to create in Palestine a homeland for the Jewish people. Accordingly, they were more or less bound to allow Jewish immigration into the area. 

Stalin made a parallel attempt to set up a Jewish homeland in Siberia, but got little uptake.

The only solution I can see is acceptance of the status quo.

Indigenous Health and Cultural Safety

 

University College, U of T

Are the universities salvageable? Would it make more sense now to just close them and start again?

Looking at recent faculty openings for any established mainstream university is disheartening. 

The University of Toronto is currently calling for a tenure-track instructor in “Indigenous Health and Cultural Safety” for the Dalla Lana School of Public Health, the Temerty Faculty of Medicine, and Women’s College Hospital. Both parts of that discipline title are troubling. Is indigenous health different in principle from the health of humans in general? Should it be studied separately? What can this imply but discrimination? But a fundamental difference in kind among people, that would justify different treatment?

And what is “cultural safety,” and what does it have to do with one’s health?

“Excellent Indigenous knowledges methodology skills are essential.” Is “indigenous knowledge” different in kind from human knowledge? If aboriginal groups “know” differently than the majority, there is presumably no chance for integration. If their reality is different, any conceivable action against them might, in principle, be justified.

“Preference will be given to candidates who self-identify as Indigenous. Recognizing that there are a variety of terms that potential candidates may use to self-identify, the University uses the term ‘Indigenous’ in this search, which forms part of the U of T Response to Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, to encompass the people of Turtle Island, including those who identify as First Nations, Métis, Inuk (Inuit), Alaska Native, Native American, and Native Hawaiian people.”

Those who have posted the job notice do not seem to understand that “Turtle Island” refers to the entire Earth, indeed the cosmos, not to any one geographical area. Accordingly, anyone native to the cosmos should properly identify as “indigenous.” 

But it is just as well, since hiring someone on the basis of their race is a violation of the Canadian Constitution and of human rights.

Perhaps this descent into objective madness was inevitable once the universities lost their religious raisons d’etre. They are now like ancient masted ships without a keel or anchor. They blow any which way, or no way at all.

Deaths at the Kamloops Residential School

 

Kamloops Residential School

The lead item in the Canadian national news yesterday was the discovery of 215 child corpses in an unmarked grave somewhere near the old residential school on the T’kemlups reserve in Kamloops, BC.

Should this be big news? Each of those deaths is terribly sad; it is sad that they were not better commemorated. But is there anything truly surprising or scandalous here?

To begin with, this is a preliminary report. No excavation has been done, the site has not been disclosed, and no images have been released. Preliminary reports are usually false. If there is a scandal, it is too soon to say so.

The old T’kemlups residential school is not in some remote location. It is iin plain view of downtown Kamloops. It is the most prominent building on the T’kemlups reserve, which is surrounded, or bordered, by the city on two sides.

If there was something untoward going on here, if children were being killed or even buried secretly in unmarked graves on the T’kemlups reserve, where was the band council? What was their responsibility? What about the municipality of Kamloops? Where were the parents? Did they not notice one of their children was missing?

Given the school’s central location, it even seems less than certain that any burial ground near the school was used exclusively by the school. These preliminary reports claim that the remains of children as young as three were found—below school age.

Perhaps the band council has simply found the local “Potter’s Field.”

Let us suppose, however, that the burials are from the school, and the number given is accurate. It may seem shocking to us today that a school-age child might die, but deaths of children were common only a few generations ago. In Tom Brown’s School Days, the classic account of Rugby School in the 19th century, Tom’s best friend is taken off by scarlet fever. In 19th century Canada, an estimated one third to one half of all children died before the age of five. They fell from the general run of childhood diseases, from scarlet fever, from polio, from Spanish flu, from smallpox, and above all from tuberculosis. 

The Kamloops school ran as a residential school for 79 years. Two hundred and fifteen deaths over 79 years is 2.72 deaths per year. The school, I read, hosted 500 students. That means a death rate of 0.54% per year. This does not sound particularly high for the time. Especially since tuberculosis was a special problem in the residential schools—reputedly 4.9 times the national average.

If that sounds like a condemnation of the schools, the tuberculosis rate on reserves in general was eight times the national average. In 1909, two physicians examined 243 Indian children awaiting admission to residential schools in Calgary. They reported that “in no instance was a child awaiting admission to school found free from tuberculosis.” A study of 175 school-age Indian children in Saskatchewan in 1922 reported that 93 percent showed evidence of tuberculous infection.

Some children were bound to die. Sad that they were not given a more dignified burial; but where were the parents to arrange it? If the parents were too poor, or did not care, where was the band council? Where were the municipal authorities? The provincial authorities? The federal authorities? The local churches? Perhaps everyone simply thought it was somebody else’s responsibility.

Moderation as a Moral Value

 

Friend Xerxes has his own definition of sin: “I define sin as taking something good, beneficial, healthy, and pushing it to an extreme. Too much, or too little.” Life, then, is a matter of balancing opposites. 

Carl Jung believed in something similar. He credited the concept to Gnosticism. It is also perhaps reflected in the yin-yang symbol familiar in the Far East.

This is not the Christian idea, and it does not work.

For balance itself, being a value, must be balanced by its opposite. Moderation must not be pushed to an extreme, or one is immoderate. One must be only half-balanced. And “the good” must not be pursued, but must be balanced by evil, or – or evil happens? Too much good is not good?

In other words, the concept produces immediate self-contradictions.

And can we hold that there is such a thing as too little rape and murder? What amount of each would be just enough? By what standard can we judge this, or anything, if there are no absolute values?

Christianity holds, instead, along with ancient Greek thought, that there are absolute values: one cannot have too much good, too much truth, or too much beauty.

The Real World of Discrimination

 

The much-despised Tree of Life, in Kabbalistic symbolism: a representation of the attributes of God.

Caitlin Press in Tofino is calling for poems for an anthology about trees: ideally poems that “dispel the myth of hazardous and inconvenient trees.”

This is striking, because there are no such myths. In every known culture, trees are venerated. Which is why there is a market for an anthology of poems about trees. People love trees.

The much-despised Christian Tree of Life

This points to a common phenomenon. There is a persistent tendency to declare things or groups that are especially favoured to be or to have been discriminated against. Conversely, things or groups that have genuinely experienced discrimination get no love. In fact, this almost goes without saying: you are automatically not discriminating against any group you lament as being discriminated against.

For example, we are told endlessly that women have faced discrimination throughout history. Yet demonstrably, current laws discriminate in their favour in myriad ways. This is also true historically: women have always been put on pedestals. In many cultures, women were exempt from prosecution for any crimes; they were protected in times of war, rather than being sent to the front; and on and on. The exalted status of women has always been, in a phrase, a “motherhood issue.” And this is biologically hard-wired. Men are expendable, but women are not: they are needed to ensure the survival of the tribe.

We in Canada are told incessantly, and have always been told, that Indians have been discriminated against. Yet they are demonstrably given more rights than other Canadians: special treaty rights, a wide range of benefits not available to other Canadians. Any history of the Indian in literature reveals an unrealistic reverence for the “noble savage.” Everyone has always wanted to be an Indian, in Canada and in the US. And no, their land was never taken or stolen from them—a subject that might take us, for the moment, too far afield.

What about African Americans? Everybody agrees they have been discriminated against; and surely they have a legitimate grievance? After all, they were enslaved. But compare the Irish; the Irish too were enslaved in the New World, if not perhaps to a comparable extent. Indentured servitude. Moreover, the Irish, unlike the blacks, have been systematically oppressed wherever they lived for about five hundred years, including a mass starvation in the middle of the last century. About the same time slavery was abolished—after it was abolished throughout the British Empire. On balance, then, the Irish have arguably had a tougher time of it for longer. Yet there is little or no sympathy for the Irish. Current laws discriminate in favour of African Americans; and against Irish Americans.

It may be disturbing to accept it, but chattel slavery was thought throughout its existence to be of benefit to the African American slaves. They were understood to be unable to look after themselves properly, whether due to genetic incapacity or lack of civilization, and, like children, were to be taken care of. They were not hated or despised, any more than children are.

The Irish, by contrast, were hated and despised.

Who has authentically been persecuted and discriminated against, in recent times? The Jews. Within living memory, there has been a systematic and international attempt to exterminate the Jews. Compare African American slavery—never meant to harm, and abolished a hundred and fifty years ago. Anti-Semitic attacks are still the most common hate crime in Canada, and are on a rapid upswing across North America and Europe. Yet there is little public attention to it; if anything, it seems to be encouraged by some public figures.

The Poles. As many Poles as Jews were executed by Hitler in his camps; their country was carved up and enslaved in turn by Germany, Austria, Russia, and the Soviets. Yet Poles remain one ethnic group it is still acceptable to lampoon. Polish jokes are more or less okay in polite company.

There was something like an attempt to wipe out the Ukrainians within living memory. Yet Ukrainians remain another ethnic group it is still acceptable to lampoon. 

There was a concerted attempt to wipe out the Armenians barely a hundred years ago. It may not be fashionable to mock Armenians, but there is also no sympathy for them.

Who else has known great suffering in recent decades? The Koreans suffered a brutal occupation and something like a genocide under the Japanese, from 1911 to 1945, after which they lived through a devastating war. The Filipinos suffered more under Japanese occupation, reputedly, than any other occupied nation during the Second World War. It was not a matter of discrimination, but the Chinese and the Cambodians suffered holocausts of historic proportions within the lifetimes of many, and the Vietnamese lived through perhaps thirty years of scorched-earth war. Yet these groups are given no consideration in North America; instead, they are systematically discriminated against.

To be fair, African Americans, Indians, and perhaps women have a legitimate grievance, that they have not thriven despite the special help they have been given throughout recent history. Conversely, the Irish, the Jews, the Armenians, the Poles, the Ukrainians, have been successful, even notably successful, despite persecution.

But that is neither here nor there. Being coddled is not necessarily to one’s long-term benefit, because it strips you of self-reliance. It gives you unrealistic expectations, and, when they are not met, leaves you capable of doing little but complaining loudly.

These two unlucky fates, being genuinely discriminated against and being coddled, correspond to two common fates within a dysfunctional family. One child will be spoiled into arrested development, and will grow up to be a narcissist. The next child will be tormented, but, if they survive and survive without being permanently crippled, may even be stronger for the experience. They may grow up to be a hero.

Too Many People

 

Friend Xerxes notes that he finds individuals almost invariably kind, while society as a whole is systemically at least nearsighted.

I am completely in agreement with his claim that individuals are more trustworthy than people in groups. What he presumably does not see is that this, if true, is a powerful argument for free markets and individual liberty, as opposed to government control and group identity. In other words, for the right and not the left.

Xerxes, on the other hand, is probably trying to argue for original blessedness; for the idea that people are innately, naturally good, and will always do good if they just follow their instincts—a romantic notion, in the proper sense of the word. Therefore, impositions on instinct from “society”—formal ethics—are the source of all evil.

But the basic claim, that individuals are usually more trustworthy than groups, is in accord with what we all can observe: mobs are irresponsible and dangerous. 

The problem is with identifying the mechanism to explain this. If you assume that people are all individually good, yet corrupted by society, you have a classic “problem of evil.” Society is a human creation. If people are good, yet society is evil, where did the evil come from?

Xerxes’s theory is that people are good only in moderation. The evil comes somehow from there being too many in one place. He uses, among others, the analogy of a campfire versus a forest fire. Too much fire is bad; too many people are bad.

But the difference between a campfire and a forest fire is not quite that. It is that the campfire is under control, and the forest fire is not. A fire in a waste paper basket is probably smaller than a campfire, but it is still bad. A controlled burnoff of a field is a common agricultural practice, and it might easily be larger than a forest fire. A nuclear reactor is a rather bigger fire in a sense than a forest fire, but can be useful.

So with people. The problem is not more or fewer of them, but whether they are controlling their animal instincts and their selfishness. As individuals, we are obliged to take responsibility for our acts, so our conscience is engaged. If we pass our individual responsibility over to the group, we can more easily shirk our conscience. We can let our sinister tendencies “run riot,” to use the familiar phrase. This is most evident in a mob, but a clear danger in any group. “I was only following orders.”

This is because, like fire, we already have those sinister tendencies. This cannot support a romantic idea of original blessedness. The bad tendency must already exist at the individual level; but be held in check.

Trying to find an analogy that might work better to justify Xerxes’s concept of innate human goodness, I thought of locusts. According to at least some theories, they change from relatively benign to humans to a plague due to overcrowding—due, then, to sheer numbers, more or less. But again, this does not really work in support of his concept of humans, because each individual locust also transforms in nature. In Xerxes’s human model, the individual remains good even as the society in which he or she participates misbehaves.

I have read that lab rats, if overcrowded, begin to bite one another. Perhaps this is more apt, but it still does not work. Each bite is an individual, not a group, action. The individual does not remain moral while the group imposes immorality.

Given the correct observation that people behave better individually than in groups, we are left needing to acknowledge the concept of original sin. The tendency to evil as well as good must be innate at the level of the individual.

There is also something troublesome, surely, in the very concept of “too many” humans. Too many for what? If your measure is what is good for humans, surely existing is the most fundamental of goods. If your standard is not what is good for humans, what is your standard? The obvious suspicion is that it is what is good for yourself…

Happy Empire Day

 

This year, unusually, the 24th of May falls on the 24th of May.

It is a day hallowed to all Canadians, although few remember why we celebrate. It is Queen Victoria’s Birthday. In one sense Canada’s founder, this woman presided over the greatest empire the world has ever known for an unprecedentedly long time, as though she were as certain a feature of the cosmos as the North Pole. Little Alexandrina Victoria Hanover was born on May 24, 1819, as the first steamship was crossing the Atlantic. She died in 1901, just before the world went to hell.

Traditionally, her birthday was one of Canada’s two “national” days. This is Empire Day, on which we celebrated our birthright as British subjects, paired with Dominion Day on July 1st, on which we celebrated ourselves as Canadian citizens.

It remains important, even though the sun has long set, as the traditional start of the cottaging season, bookended now with Labour Day in September. One had to get outside for a barbeque or a picnic on this Monday, damn the weather. I can remember years with coats and mittens and picnic sandwiches cruelly cold. It is not easy to eat a picnic sandwich in mittens.

The evening ended gloriously with fireworks, from Hands or Brock, bought in some shop on the main street that specialized in them seasonally. The finale always had to be the Burning Schoolhouse, to celebrate the coming end to the school year. You would stuff in all the duds in hopes of getting something spectacular, but most often, and perhaps most satisfyingly, it generally ended in a slow, quiet burn.

No more pencils, no more books… and the glorious summer stretching before us, on which the sun barely set.

Happy birthday, Queen Victoria; reminding us of a time when the world still made sense.

Scott Adams Discovers Narcissism

Previously a sceptic, Scott Adams discovers narcissism is real, and gives a decent account of it.

 

Community Spirit

 

A community gathering in Nuremberg

An annoyingly common phrase in the popular culture these days is “my community,” or “the X community.” 

Community is a good thing, but in this case, it does not refer to a neighbourhood or small town. It refers to a tribe: “the black community”; “the LGBTQ community.” It implies that you have nothing in common with, and do not want to spend any time with, anyone who does not share some random, usually physical, characteristic.

It is radical apartheid.

Hell on Earth

 Since childhood modern suburbs have horrified me. What could be worse than living in one? The deadening sameness; the lack of any sense of community; the labyrinthine streets designed to be hostile to escape. They are the stuff of nightmares. They seem designed to promote conformity. Just as might be most desirable to an oppressive totalitarian government.

It is apparently not just me who thinks so. Locally, there have always been jokes about having to live in "Scarberia." Yet people are forced to do so, everywhere, against their will.

They are also oppressive to the poor. They make it necessary to own a car, and to use it to do anything. They require you to pay for a front yard, of no use to you. They offer no inexpensive row housing or apartments. They prohibit any jobs nearby.

The cities of Europe or Asia are infinitely more interesting and charming; and not because they are older. When I lived in Seoul, it was a revelation that even the remotest suburbs had charm, street life and amenities. And densities to support decent public transit.

The problem is zoning bylaws. It seems to me that zoning bylaws have always been used maliciously. Urban planning has always been malicious. Give somebody such power over others, and you will attract the power-mad. Other than setting aside some land for parks, streets, and public utilities, a mere absence of rules would have produced a better result. The market would have forced development of just what people wanted and most needed. We would have diversity. We would have services and work nearby. We would not have the frightening housing shortages and high housing costs we now face in Canada. Nor would we have the urban sprawl and high carbon dioxide emissions environmentalists so lament.

It could all be fixed, if not quickly, by repealing zoning bylaws. That’s a cause I wish some provincial or municipal political party would take up.

Schitt's Creek

 

Having been through the entire original run of Corner Gas, I’m now binge-watching Schitt’s Creek. After a couple of decades abroad, it is a good reorientation to Canadian culture.

Both follow the Canadian tradition of focusing on small town life; like Sunshine Sketches, Anne of Green Gables, or Alice Munro. But they are very different in tone. Corner Gas relies on a more distinctly Canadian sort of comedy: nobody is allowed to take themselves too seriously. Nobody is better than anybody else. There is no fourth wall. And it is laugh-out-loud funny.

Schitt’s Creek is more like an American comedy in having both straight men and clowns. You are supposed to laugh at some characters, not others. Some are serious. The overall tone is more serious; people can get hurt. And I have only been moved to laugh out loud once in the first season.

One element, however, besides the occasional place references, makes Schitt’s Creek feel Canadian. Formulaically in comedy, since the ancient Greeks, characters we are supposed to laugh at are from the lower class, and most often rural: “clown” originally meant a hayseed. 

Compare Green Acres, an old American sitcom built on a premise similar to Schitt’s Creek. We were expected to see it all from the point of view of the city people; the rurals were exotics. Or Beverley Hillbillies, a reverse of the Schitt’s Creek premise: the rurals were sympathetic characters, but odd and foolish.

Now look at Schitt’s Creek. The rurals are the straight men; we are to laugh at the odd and foolish upper class people from the city. The locals are more sensible, and always outsmart them.

This strikes me as an expression of the Canadian character. Culturally, we are profoundly democratic, and an essentially rural people.

Nasty Rumours Are Starting That the Pandemic Is Almost Over

 

60 Minutes on UFOs

https://www.cbsnews.com/video/ufo-military-intelligence-video-60-minutes-2021-05-16/#x

The Growing Threat of Affordable Housing

Poor people: not as spiritually uplifting to look at as wildflowers.

Friend Xerxes laments that a local hiking trail he has been accustomed to use to view wildflowers has now been fenced off to allow the construction of a new subdivision. “In our social structure,” he observes, “private property is close to sacred.”

He gets that just about backwards.

The basic premise on which our common law is founded is that nobody can really own land.

Land is God’s creation, and is therefore meant by him for the use of all mankind—just as we assume with air or water.

One does not actually own the land, but the labour one has put into it. If this is inseparable from the land itself, that establishes ownership.

This is why we have “squatter’s rights.” If land is lying unused, anyone who builds on it or tills it or seeds it establishes ownership. This supersedes any paper deed.

This means that any government is acting illegitimately if it prohibits productive use of land; if it leaves land as wilderness. So long as anyone genuinely needs that land in order to grow food, it is immoral to refuse this. So long as someone genuinely needs that land to build shelter, it is immoral to refuse this.

To justify preserving a local hiking trail, you need to argue that this use of that land is most beneficial even to the poorest of citizens. Ultimately, not just the citizens of the local area, but all mankind.

Unfortunately, we have lost sight of this. The poor are suffering everywhere as a result.

Are You Going to Hell?

 

In the video clip. A college student asks Frank Turek whether she is going to hell. 

Turek of course does not want to say so. He dodges the question. But in fact, she is a good example of someone bound for hell.

She says she is a “good” person. She of course hopes this is sufficient. But her definition of “good” is “according to the standards of our society,” and in the expectation that others will treat her the same.

This is what the Bible condemns in the passage 

 “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. 14 But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.”

Doing whatever society expects is an abdication of moral responsibility. It is taking society and your own well-being as God. Idolatry is a far graver sin than lying, theft, or murder.

Speaking of which, some of my students troubled me recently. The text was on lying. And the book asked the question, “Is it ever all right to lie?” 

“Sure,” they answered. “If nobody finds out.”

At the beginning of the clip, Turek has just asked the student, “If God exists and if Christianity were true, would you become a Christian?” 

She answers “there is no proof that I would be able to accept.” 

When he offers her a book to read on condition that she promise to read it, she at first will not do so. I wonder if Turek meant this as a test. It demonstrates that she is not looking for the truth.

This is the essential qualification for heaven. This is what true faith means: to seek truth. The Christian God is “the way, the truth, and the light.” 

Not wanting truth means rejecting God. And Turek is right in his definition of heaven: heaven is the presence of God, hell is the absence of God. If we reject God in life, we choose for ourselves to go to hell.

I suspect in the end this woman will find her way. I sense a tremor in her voice when she asks about hell. She finally does promise to read the book. Part of her is seeking; otherwise, she would not have come to the talk. She is at least hearing the voice of her good angel.

It is those who will not read the book if offered, who are surely going to hell.

Each of us, before our deaths, perhaps gets that offer.

Why Germany Started World War Two

 

Useful and I think accurate background for why Hitler started World War Two. I suspect the situation for China today is similar.

The Coming Holocaust

 

The Economist has published an alarming analysis of the situation of Taiwan.

Apparently, China has established naval dominance in the Eastern Pacific. The proximity of the Chinese mainland ensures air dominance over Taiwan. This dominance cannot be reduced without bombing the Chinese mainland. 

American wargaming now shows the Chinese winning any confrontation with the US over Taiwan.

The Economist, as always, is relatively sanguine about the prospects. Why would China risk upsetting the global applecart so long as the situation for them is improving year over year?

I am less sanguine. If this were their calculus, why march in and take Hong Kong? Why rattle sabres in the South China Sea? Why cross the Zone of Actual Control with India?

It is not clear that things are really improving for China year over year. The calculation in Beijing may be the opposite: that things are likely to collapse unless something is done to reshuffle the deck. 

What is really going on in China in economic terms has never been transparent. We must rely on government reporting on their own performance. It seems likely the figures are fake. The prosperity is real, so long as everyone thinks it is real. But it can pop like a soap bubble.

China is progressively less competitive on their prime advantage, cheap labour. Without that, can they compete with the West on innovation and efficiency? I suspect a centrally-planned society intrinsically cannot. The officials in Beijing see the real accounts, and they may look grim.

This, after all, is the obvious explanation for the rapid rise of Xi Jinping’s totalitarian domestic policies. The government feared unrest. Loosening up failed to save the old Soviet regime in Russia; they were determined to do the opposite. 

The Soviet Union hit a wall and collapsed: this seems to have been because their economy was all smoke and mirrors. Nazi Germany faced the same dilemma: their impressive economic performance towards the end of the 1930s was based on cooking the books and printing money. Hitler had no choice but to invade neighbouring countries and seize assets to meet the next payroll or debt repayment.

Xi’s China may be in the same situation. They may have taken Hong Kong because they needed the assets. They may have been probing for weakness elsewhere.

They may see a pressing need to take Taiwan.

Taiwan is the world’s largest chipmaker. That is an immense asset. China could rule the market in high-tech.

For this reason, taking Taiwan could also change the balance of power globally. According to someone The Economist quotes, losing Taiwan could be “America’s Suez,” the effective end of US dominance.

In other words, the stakes are gigantic, for both China and the US. The stage is perfectly set for a serious, total war; for neither side can easily accept defeat.

And it would probably be a world war. Australia, India, Japan, are also necessarily deeply concerned should China come to dominate. Britain and France have also recently signaled their concern, sending warships to the area. Vietnam, the Philippines, Indonesia, South Korea, Canada, would probably also join an American-led anti-Chinese coalition.

China may bank on the West being too decadent to pull themselves together to resist. And they may be right, Ominously, a poll suggests only 50% of the Taiwanese themselves are prepared to resist if China invades. 

But Hitler made the same calculation in 1939, and turned out to get wrong. Imperial Japan made the same calculation in 1941, and turned out to get wrong.

And we thought COVID was the big problem…

The TED Commandments

 

TED Talks is reviving the vital art of the lecture. Lectures used to be popular entertainment--on the Chautaqua circuit, in the Medieval university. For years, teachers have been taught that lectures are boring. They are -- only if you do not know how to lecture.

Each prospective TED speaker is send these ten "TED Commandments." A decent guide for any lecturer. This is how to make a lecture interesting.

Thou Shalt Not Simply Trot Out thy Usual Shtick

Thou Shalt Dream a Great Dream, or Show Forth a Wondrous New Thing, Or Share Something Thou Hast Never Shared Before

Thou Shalt Reveal thy Curiosity and Thy Passion

Thou Shalt Tell a Story

Thou Shalt Freely Comment on the Utterances of Other Speakers for the Skae of Blessed Connection and Exquisite Controversy

Thou Shalt Not Flaunt thine Ego. Be Thou Vulnerable. Speak of thy Failure as well as thy Success.

Thou Shalt Not Sell from the Stage: Neither thy Company, thy Goods, thy Writings, nor thy Desparate need for Funding; Lest Thou be Cast Aside into Outer Darkness.

Thou Shalt Remember all the while: Laughter is Good.

Thou Shalt Not Read thy Speech.

Thou Shalt Not Steal the Time of Them that Follow Thee

Church Service Organizers

 

CBC’s The National last evening reported that two “church service organizers” in Calgary were arrested for violating lockdown orders. Global News reports the same.

“Church service organizer”? Why the awkward phrase, instead of the standard term, “pastor”?

Perhaps because the two were not ordained by any recognized large Christian denomination?

This is not required. Merriam-Webster defines “pastor” simply as “a spiritual overseer.” The Oxford English Dictionary has “A person who has the spiritual care of a body of Christians.” “Pastor” is the correct term here. 

To Sir, With Love

 

We are at the point, in Canada, in America, in the UK, perhaps across the Western World, at which telling the truth is a dangerous, subversive, brave, even revolutionary act. 

But it is essential to keep telling the truth, whatever the consequences. Truth is of ultimate value. If we stop telling the truth, we have invalidated our very existence. Solzhenitsyn said, of the old Soviet Union, that if one day one man woke up determined to say nothing but the truth, the entire enterprise would have collapsed.

That’s where we are.

The obvious example is the one which brought Jordan Peterson to fame: that men are not women. We are now under tremendous pressure on this particular issue. We are not allowed to be neutral: we must endorse the view that men are women.

The second obvious example, in Canada, is the residential schools. We are not allowed to suggest that they were a good thing. Although we are obliged to agree that education is a good thing in all other cumstances.

But why these issue in particular? Of the infinite number of possible lies that can be told, why is all the electrical charge on these particular things?

If, after all, a real woman were addressed as “sir,” or “bro,” would she take great offense? Would this be considered a slur? That trans people do consider it so is a tacit admission that they are lying, and they know they are.

No—the issue is not “misgendering.” It is that one must explicitly endorse the premise that others have the right to lie, and further endorse the premise that those who lie have a right to silence those who seek truth.

A second clue is that this aggressive insistence on lying is focused on sex, and not, say, race, height, age, or weight. One is required to accept and vocally agree if a man says he is a woman; one is not required to accept and agree, at least not yet, if Rachel Dolezal says she is African, or if Elizabeth Warren says she is Indian, or if some sixteen-year-old insists she is eighteen.

That seems to suggest that the underlying truth people want to deny is sexual.

The second prominent aggressive lie is about Canada’s “First Nations.” It may not be so clear that this, too, is about sex; but it is. To our primitive minds, aboriginal culture is all about the absence of supposedly oppressive sexual mores. Accordingly, nothing bad must ever be spoken about aboriginal culture. To do so would be to criticize unrestricted sex.

We make much of missing and murdered aboriginal women. The cause is no mystery; but nobody is allowed to say it. These young girls were either abandoned, or forced to escape, by their birth families. A lack of sexual mores was the obvious problem. We are being forced to very publicly declare it was not. 

If aboriginal culture represents unrestricted sex, the residential schools represent the opposite. Because they were run by the churches, their primary intent, in the popular mind, has to have been to impose sexual morality. Or, using the standard euphemism, “erasing native culture.”

Our culture is going totalitarian and decadent, is actually prepared to destroy itself, in order to preserve sexual libertinage.

You, gentle reader, may be reacting badly to my bringing up sexual morality. Isn’t this “puritanism”? Isn’t it all nonsense and foolish inhibition? After all, who is harmed by a supposed sexual sin? Who’s the victim? 

The first and obvious answer is, the children. Sex is obviously designed, by God or by nature, for conceiving children. Engage in it randomly, and children are entirely liable to pop up. 

The initial premise behind the “sexual revolution” was that, with the new birth control pill, this connection had been broken, and we were now liberated to engage in recreational sex. 

That might have worked were birth control one hundred percent effective; but it is not. So free and unrestricted abortion became a thing: mass murder. And we are feeling deeply guilty, and in denial, about that.

But even aside from that, it is callous to suppose there is no victim. Recreational sex necessarily involves viewing another human being as a mere means for physical pleasure. Like we view a steak or a beer. On the unhappy chance that a given sex partner does not see themselves the same way, as a mere slab of meat, and does not see you the same way, as a slab of meat, you are hurting them emotionally, possibly gravely. Emotional blows are at least as cruel as physical blows, and can leave scars at least as deep.

It is time to sober up, gang.

The Nuclear Age

 

Xerxes has seen an art exhibit on the theme of the nuclear age. He left angered, he reports, at Canada’s “complicity.” Canada; after all, was a participant in the Manhattan Project, The uranium used in the first bombs was mined in Canada, and refined in Canada.

But was unleashing the genie of nuclear power on balance a bad thing? This is far from self-evident, and an interesting question.

For example, when Canada joined in the Manhattan Project, circa 1942, there was good reason to believe that getting to the bomb first would be the difference between ending Nazism and surrendering the world to it--should they have gotten there first. Should any Canadian feel guilt? I think pride is more appropriate.

Today, many are concerned about global warming—even seeing it as some world-ending threat. Nuclear power is our best option to reduce greenhouse gases. Aside from being more practical, it is less harmful to the environment than any alternative. There is something to be said for cheap, clean, essentially unlimited power.

Of course, there is a risk of nasty accidents; that is an engineering challenge. Fire is risky in a similar way, but we have not refused to use it.

Then there is the horror of nuclear war. But even this, since 1945, has been only a theoretical danger. That’s a pretty good safety record in itself. It may be that the concept of “mutually assured destruction” was right: once both sides have nuclear weapons, there is essentially no chance of any high-intensity conflict. It would be suicidal, including for the leader who initiated it. In the first half of the last century, we had two devastating “world wars.” Right up to the invention of the bomb, it looked as though “total war” was going to become a permanent and escalating feature of our existence; the sides were already drawn up for the next big one. This is what Orwell predicted in 1984. It looks as though the bomb ended all that with an exclamation point.

Someday, someone in authority might make a miscalculation, or just not care anymore, and unspeakable devastation might result. But it seems possible that the bomb has been preventing unspeakable devastation for seventy years or so, and counting. That perhaps should be weighed in the balance.

Racism in Canada

 

I am pleased to see that some farmers in the US are filing suit against the federal government for racial discrimination.

The problem is worse in Canada. The Trudeau government is blatantly setting tax funds aside for female-run and black-run businesses.

Unfortunately, while racial and sexual discrimination is ultimately illegal in the US, it is legal in Canada. The Canadian Constitution has a carve-out:

“Subsection (1) does not preclude any law, program or activity that has as its object the amelioration of conditions of disadvantaged individuals or groups including those that are disadvantaged because of race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, sex, age or mental or physical disability.”

As well as a separate carve-out for “aboriginal people.”

Any government can therefore discriminate against any group so long as they declare their intent to be to balance out some supposed advantage.

Hitler insisted that ethnic Germans were disadvantaged by the Jews in 1930s Germany. Mussolini insisted that Italians were disadvantaged as a nation in the 1920s. Jim Crow began in the US South because white Southerners saw themselves as disadvantaged by the North.

And so it goes.

What Are those Three Little Pigs Really Afraid Of?

 

Odd that I had forgotten about “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf.” An eccentric friend just posted a belated review on his website; I’m grateful for the reminder of something that was once very important to me. When I applied to take a film course back at Queen’s, I cited it as one of my three favourite movies; the other two were “Bonnie and Clyde” and “2001: A Space Odyssey.”

The best thing about it was of course the dialogue. I love me that snappy dialogue. I also find the classical unities compelling, here as in “High Noon,” or “Culloden.” That is, events in the movie take place in real time, centre around the same action, and do not jump (rather than move) to another place. This gives an immediacy, like watching news live as it happens. 

I also think the acting was a tour de force, by Burton, Taylor, and Dennis. Especially Dennis.

I have actually met the stage manager for the original run of the play on Broadway. He scoffed at the movie, on the grounds that Taylor was miscast and just did not have the talent to hold up her end as Martha. A cheeky claim, considering that she won a Best Actress Oscar for the role. I think she went all out to prove she was more than just a pretty face, and she succeeded. I suspect my acquaintance just resented the greater fame of the movie version, with which he had no association. “You haven’t really seen it done right if you haven’t seen my version.” Burton is always compelling to watch, and is ideally cast as a history professor.

Although it was Mike Nichols’ directorial debut, I am amazed by his framing. Especially when George goes for the gun; that plays a lot like Hitchcock, the way Nichols uses depth of field to show different things happening in the foreground and background, the swinging light, the gun as it is revealed from under an old carpet, the living room seen from George’s perspective returning, the reaction shots, Martha’s face in closeup. And I think Nichols uses this to make us think we are about to see a Hitchcockian turn, an actual murder. Damn fine.

Watching it all again now, the one thing that doesn’t work for me—is really the most important thing of all. The ending.  The problem is, you cannot kill an imaginary character. George and Martha are not facing the cold light of dawn; mourning someone who never really existed is just continuing the fantasy. And logically, since it is a story, and utter improbabilities have already been allowed, and breaking of all conceivable rules, it would be perfectly easy for either George or Martha to declare that the report of Sonny Jim’s death was, after all, mistaken. 

Perhaps that was supposed to be the point, that there is no way out for them or for us, that there is no reality, only stories, that Godot does not come.

But if so, if everything is fantasy, why get so worked up in the first place? Why all the drama? Why not Buddhist detachment? One is left feeling cheated. It seems to me there really has to be a hard reality, something worth concealing. But in the movie or the play, we do not get to see what it is. It cannot be the death of an imaginary son, and it cannot be something so pedestrian as not having been able to have children.

I think Martha and Honey are very powerful portraits of two types of narcissism. George and Nick act out two roles family members take to try to cope with narcissism. This is, I think, what really most hooked me on the movie back in the day. I remember having seen it at least three times by second-year Queen’s; no small thing back before VHS or the Internet. Having grown up in a dysfunctional family, I recognized these people, knew them well, and the chaos they brought with them. It felt liberating to see it all portrayed on a big screen for the world to see. 

And yet, in the end, we do not see where this all comes from, or how it ends.