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A bittersweet symphony

And so last the final act of this roller-coaster of an election was engraved forever in Canadian political history. Like throughout the entire length of the election it's final act always was a "shaking" of the established ideas that once made Canada such a "stable" (in terms of politics at least) nation.

First of all it seems that it's the end, maybe even death of a "Liberal Nation", for decades the Liberal Party of Canada was at the heart of Canadian politics it fashioned Canada into it's image. To really catch the grasp of this historic "meltdown" of the Liberal Party we have to take a glimpse back into history. From 1896 and the election of Wilfrid Laurier to the defeat of Paul Martin and the rise of Mr. Harper in 2006, the Liberal Party hold power between it's hands. It ruled Canada with an iron authority, only one country in the world with a multiparty system can say the same (Mexico with the rule of the Institutional Revolutionary Party). And yet yesterday as Micheal Ignatieff took front stage it seemed that some political tectonic plate had shifted in the Canadian political landscape. The shift had for effect an earthquake and the Liberal Party of Canada collapsed. Many things may be said about this campaign and how "inefficient" Mr. Ignatieff was, but do not be fooled the problem is much more deeper then mere logistic problems. No it's a crisis inside the Liberal Party, probably inside it's owns basis perception of their ideals. The lesson all Canadians have to take out of this debacle is that a weak Liberal Party is unhealthy for the Canadian left.

It's unhealthy as of yesterday night because the collapse of Liberal Canada allowed the unwanted ascension of Conservative Canada. Harper did certainly win a majority yesterday night and that was the bitter side of the election results, I know from my point of view the catastrophic side of the events, but remember the conservatives won a relative majority not an absolute one. Many pundits came out during the night and early morning stating that it was a crushing victory for the Conservatives and the Conservative agenda, but it wasn't. Harper won 40% of the national vote 10% shy of the 50% by my calculus the majority mark. On the other hand the Liberal/New Democratic vote combined is over that "dotted line". So the lesson is yes it was catastrophic that the Conservatives gained a majority on the hill, a majority that will allow them to turn Canada more and more away form it's fundamental values. But the only ones we have to beat-up around here is ourselves. If the talk of coalition had not been taboo, if instead of a picking a fight against each other the Liberals and NDPs had decided work out an agenda of "circumstances" with the idea that the main threat was a Harper majority. But then again it's all idealism because in the end it's all about political gain, or is it?

So middle way through the night Layton appeared. Confident and smiling as always crowned with the biggest victory in the history of his party and as leader of the official opposition. But Layton had a lot more to smile about first of all I think we can all no mater what our political orientations are that Layton's campaign was morally speaking the cleanest in the race. Layton did things his way, instead of giving into the politics of division and fear Layton offered a renewed hope in the political system, engaged hundreds of new voters and gave an asthmatic democracy a new breath, maybe even new lungs (only time will tell). But probably the most important thing Layton did through his campaign was that he gave Quebec a voice in federal affairs and in doing so for first time in decades showed Canada that unity can still be achieved and that Quebec is still no matter what part of Canada.

Yesterday night was also the death of the Bloc and what a death going form the mid-40's in the number of MP's to barely 4 it was the end of "souverainiste" Quebec. It was the end of an ere, almost like the end of war that started in the late 1960's and that continued on to today. No province made a stronger statement yesterday evening, Quebec with one unified and symphonic voice reengaged itself with Canadian politics and decided to be the new propulsion of change in Canada, Dieu Merci! So when Duceppe said what before would be seen by the rest of Canada as a horrible threat to nation unity "And we will not stop until Quebec becomes a (independent) country" it was just some bickering of an old man that forgot to jump on the "reality" train. What an amazing weekend during the night of Sunday we assisted to Bin Laden's death with all of it's consequences and it's meanings (there will be an up coming post on that subject) and on Monday night we assisted to death of the Bloc, let's just hope that it stays were it should be forever that's means in it's grave.

So yes without any doubts yesterday's election was a breakthrough in Canadian politics a "watersheder" and for sure this pivotal election will be remembered as a turning point in Canadian political history and the power behind such change (we have to stop fooling ourselves with the talk of the Conservative tide-wave) it was the meteoric ascension of the NDP who changed the face of Canadian politics as we knew it. So Harper beware for you might have left us a bitter taste in our mouths emphasizing the division between Liberals and NDP to gain a majority but beware because in doing so you have given the Canadian left the greatest opportunity in decades if not history to unite and re-enhance a "Liberal (as in the left leaning sense) Nation". So I guess it's a bittersweet taste indeed but a bit more sweeter then bitter, the game is on now to make it all about sweetness.

Sky                 

Zen everybody

Sky

Beware the socialists are coming to Ottawa!!!

As this blockbuster of an election, hastily enters it's last days of campaign only one thing pops out above all others... the NDP and the personality of Jack Layton. It's hard to believe that some weeks ago the NDP were down below their 2008 poll levels and out of the blue tonight the NDP is looking towards it's biggest electoral victory yet.

Now what are the ingredients of such an amazing success? it's a 6 letter name HARPER. Harper is the source of this NDP surge. It's now been 5 almost 6 that Mr. Harper controls the ways and customs of power in Ottawa, this goes without saying that PM Harper has done a good job to keep Canada on it's toes during this financial downturn. We have to credit him for the achievement of enabling us with the strongest and fastest recovery of all of the industrialized nations. That being it's not because his economic "bilan" is clear cut that Canada must without any hesitation reelect him.

The meaning of Harper's 5 years are not as clear cut as the economic heritage he leaves us. In a time when Canada needed a uniting figure, Harper has been a polarizing figure. At first he seemed to finally be asking the questions, of which all Canadians were awaiting answers, he seemed to tackle the question of Quebec sovereignty, he was in some sorts cleaning up Canadian society and protecting the interest of the everyday Canadian at least that's what filtered through the mainstream media. And now 5 and a half down the road where are we? The NDP surge is something I consider essential for the political heath of our democratic system. Day in and day out throughout Harper's "mandate" the conservative government has ridiculed and stampeded Canada's values. Once champion of human rights Amnesty International rebuked Canada. The most important issue is the inhumane detainment of Omar Khadr at Guantanamo Bay, for as much as I know with my little knowledge is that Omar is a Canadian citizen and by that being should be judged by a Canadian court and detained if such is needed in Canada not in a American prison. Second of all Omar was minor when he was criminally abducted and taken to Guantanamo to be tortured and interrogated by American agents. Even a more powerful argument for a Canadian intervention against the illegal detention of Omar is that the pieces conviction against him are nonexistent. Second of all one thing that has always characterized the "Canadian ideal" is that Canada has always been a world leader in ecological defence terms and well let's just say it like this the Copenhagen conference wrecked that record.

So this election and probably the next election because even thought I hope with all my heart that Jack Layton/ the NDP and the Liberals of Micheal Ignatieff with find common ground and lead a coalition to Ottawa come May 3th, it seems like Harper with regain a minority government. But this election has been prove that after the catastrophic 2008 legislative campaign that we still stand on guard for Canada, for the ideals, the values that have been past down form generation to generation. And so this election is just the start I guess of a Canadian renaissance. We might be sick and tired of the same old broken politics of Ottawa but instead of giving in to radicalism and nationalism (something that happens commonly when citizens are deceived by the political situation of their country), on May 2nd a new political spectrum will be born. In the end this election has been the nirvana of Jack Layton's political career he has proven throughout the length of this election that form time to time citizens like you and me, without any foreseeing form the so called "pundits" can rise up and change forever the political game. We are the guardians of our democracies, we still stand on guard for thee.

Sky



Omar Khadr we haven't forgotten.

Lessons of Democracy

As a new wind sweeps throughout the middle east. Us Occidentals look upon the happenings with a certain unease. The fact is that this democratic revolution in the radical sense (radical as for root) of the term are changing forever our perception of democracy.

For some time now in our modern occidental style democracies, popular involvement in politics has been on the down side. A big gap has been created between on one side the governed and the other the government. Political power is capitalized in the hands of an elite merely, probably at most 5 percent of the total population. Press and politics are gathered into the same grey body, civil society is only an extension of politics, and citizenship has for definition the right to vote ever 4/5 years. The fact is that the questioning that is happening south of the mare nostrum is not happening to it's north. Maybe the infiltration of power so deep into our society has created a sort of empathy of the governed? Maybe democracy has made us political slaves of some sort? The fact is that we have a lot to learn form our southern brothers in this quest for righteous government.

The uprising in Tunisia and Egypt have been very much publicized throughout the occidental world, yet for us at least for the majority of us (I do not considered myself as part of this majority) the political revolutions of the Arab world are but part of processes of democratization that has finished in most of the western world since the mid 20th century. Well I guess that the heroes and parents of our modern democracy must be rolling all over their graves trying in vain to crawl out and put some sense into our humble beings. If anything, democratization is never over, it's a cycle and with each generation or few generations comes a need of what I would call "re-democratization". In the history of political science its said that the implementation of democracy and democratic institutions was hard long battle called democratization it's a very simplistic approach the truth is that the accent of democracy is a much more complicated and tangled tale, and it can surely not be contained within a sentence, but then again it's just a vulgar explanation of common dogma. True democracy did not fall form the sky it was a long and bloody battle, but whoever said it was over? Because if the democratization of our modern occidental societies is finished then I guess democracy lost.

Democracy in name exists throughout the occidental world, but does it exist in theory? As we have seen with communism an ideal can exist and be chanted on by various supporters and never really exist in reality, once again humanity is face to face with the never ending problem of theory vs theory in practice. The democratic ideal is far form being fulfilled not even in our wildest dreams, but with the Arab revolutions of 2010/2011 a new breath filled what at times seemed to be a lifeless body.

First of all if anything the Arab revolutions have proven to us that civil society is the basis of any democratic society, if civil society doesn't rise up form time to time to "to water the tree of liberty with the blood of tyrants" then democracy can consider itself a death row inmate. 2nd of all, the Arab revolutions have questioned the form of modern governance, of how our modern governance works and the axis on which such government rotates. The Arab revolution put under the spotlight a notion that french sociologist Bourdieu called "La violence symbolique" or in English symbolic violence, which is the oppression of the state through promising social equality and social ascension but through it's institutions maintaining social hierarchy and a sort of bizarre "class-warfare". 3th of all probably the most important lesson is that the Arab revolutions have proven to the world that democracy is question of always keeping power within the grasp of the powerless. It's that we occidentals have forgotten the most important of lessons, democracy is unlike any other regime it maybe it's strength maybe it's weakness but power must always emanate form the "people" the low-classes of society (as would say Marx), the classes that are most capable of progress because "progress" for them is question of survival not a trend. So when democracy loses it's popular foundation the card-house crumbles. And finally the 4th lesson politics is politics and politics is sacred. When the affairs of the "polis" become mixed up with interests, when politics the affairs of all of the inhabitants of the "polis" become the privilege of some, when a regime is the tool of oppression some political machines scrap it.

Now only time will tell, if regime change and the inauguration of new democratic* regimes will really bring the change needed and deserved for so many or is it a cover up or mask to implement the same old same old?

As John Philpot Curran said "The price of freedom is eternal vigilance"

Sky


*Democratic: the fact is that for a very long time a period occidental governments want to obscure now, we talked of the toppled regimes of Ben Ali and Mubarak as "democratic".

A night for Freedom: or the dawn of new age for the middle east.

It arrived a bit like the big bang, transmitted by CNN and Al Jazeera throughout the television waves to every corner of the globe. The toppling of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali after more then 20 years at the head of Tunisia. During the night of the 14th it seemed as if something had sifted, once and for all. After years and years of uprisings and revolts that hadn't done much to budge the status quo in the region. And yet as Ben Ali's airplane left Tunisian airspace it was sure that something was happening, something we couldn't really grasp yet, but something like a kind of political tectonic plate had sifted and creating a gigantic political earthquake.
Today about 20 days after it's still to near to really grasp what will or what will not happen, but as many other countries in the region turn their backs on the out of date "strongmen", we can start to perceive that something "strangely" new is seeing daylight in the region. But I'm not writing this to relate some facts that everybody reader knows very well. What I want to look into here is what are or maybe the origins of this "new" revolutions springing up all over the Arab world. Back in 2009 Iran was teared apart, was bloody and in bitter chaos. It seemed as if the regime that was in place since 1979 seemed to be more unstable then ever, it seemed that the foundations that once had made the Islamic Republic of Iran one of the worst fears of every conservative republican out there. The elections of 2009 we're false, corruption was the main political force in the election, the religious power of the Islamic Republic try to disintegrate any legitimate opposition. After much bloodshed, the movement died out.
Now why did the uprising in Iran die out and not the uprisings in Tunisia and the on going revolt in Egypt, why did the green revolution die and the jasmine revolution succeed.
The thing is that this wave of revolutions that started in Tunisia and now continues in Egypt, and starts to spring up in Jordan, Yemen and bit all over the Arab world. This revolution is not a revolution that is boxed up in one country, as we have seen it can not be contained to one nation, because unlike what happened in Iran back in 2009 was excursively a Persian revolt. But the departure of Ben Ali whispered in a new age , that is still comprehensible for us occidentals, we who have always believed that our great values could never build stable regimes in these Arab countries that had a too different culture form ours, a culture in which democracy would never thrive. So what has happened since the liberation of the Arab countries since the end of WW1 the "west" has created and maintained a firm gripe on the region. Oil was the main factor that explain why all the imperialistic ambitions had put their eyes firmly on the rich lands of Northern Africa and of the Middle East. First of all the United Kingdom place fictive royal families on the new thrones of Irak and Iran, in Saudi Arabia in Egypt in Jordan. The French protectorates were given independence around the same time but very fast with the support of the United States and of the English and the French the fragile democracies crumbled in to ruins, the monarchic regimes some were toppled by democratic movements and these movements were themselves toppled by reactionary dictators. The Shah took power in Iran backed by the big petrol Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. In Irak, Syria and North Africa the army and new dictators took power with the help of the "west", for sometime Egypt seemed to be the renegade of the region only to become the "west" biggest ally in the region. Since the independence of the Arab countries after WW2 the "west" through military interventions and the toppling of governments and the financing of "thug" dictators and rough states.
The message that resonates form the central squares of Tunis and Cairo is that democracy is not an exclusively occidental value, that the world has changed and that the "great powers" can not take entire peoples hostage.
Now we fear that the so called Islamic groups will take power and like in 1979 create hostile anti-west Islamic states. Let this be said the Islamic revolution of 1979 is in so many ways the fault of the Occident, and now if an Islamic state does rise up form the old regimes of Egypt and Tunisia and maybe other Arab nations, we don't have to look to far to see who's fault it is, it's without any doubt ours.
This revolution sheds a light on the wrongs in the Northern African and Middle Eastern societies, it also sheds a light on our cowardice and our imperialistic ways. The time has come, to see that the new world order is much different form anything we have known in a longtime or maybe even ever before, but we have to get use to the fact that actions have consequences, and that Al-Qaeda and other such organizations didn't just fall of the sky they are our creations. And the best way to fight then is to cut the evil at the root, that means to give freedom and democracy to all the peoples of the Arab world and to promote the values we love so dearly and help the young democrats of the Arab world to really build new and withstanding democratic regimes.

We are all Egyptians now.

Sky

Why America is going to hell or not.

I guess I'm finally back in a sort of Eminem kind of way. That being I've been silent for sometime, but I guess that circumstances have gathered to make my come back once again.
Now when I talk about circumstances, I guess everyone that will read this post is up to date with the flow of current events in Arizona. Yes in the small town of Tucson, Arizona Saturday the 8th horror shaded the town forever. During a meeting with her constituents congresswomen Gabrielle Giffords a progressive democrat, that had voted for the so called "Obamacare" reform and that was the an essential target on the tea party's list, was wounded during a killing spree that took the life of 6 people of those the chief judge of Arizona a well known progressive voice in the state and a 9 year old girl that happened to be born on the 11th of September 2001. I've took the time to reflect and hear everyone's point of view before posting this, I'm not the one that is in need of a scapegoat for some gain of political points, but the truth is that this incident fatefully shows that the whole system is to be condemned in my point of view much more so then the young man.
First of all as always, before even knowing the really causes that engaged this young mind on a killing spree every media in the country qualified the young man as a monster and very dis-equilibrated mentally. The fact is even if this young man is as some say "crasy" the thing we have to know is what push him to commit such an act. In my point of view the act was not just pure folly far from that. The individual knew very well who he was going to shoot down and try to kill a congresswomen.
A congresswomen Gabrielle Giffords, that had been the target of all of the hate of the political tea party machine, during the fall elections interviewed inhabitants of Tucson said to have rarely seen any such hate campaign in " a town where everyone knows everybody".
The thing is that such hate campaigns are not marginal anymore, since the end of the 2008 election in which things were already turning nasty, with the fake allegations that Obama for having a middle name Hussein was in fact a Muslim, a whole anti-Muslim campaign was produced by the Palin machine during the final weeks of running, a racist xenophobic campaign that made tensions boil up to the boiling point. Then things seemed to cool down a bit and then during the summer of 2009 when the tea party felt that they were losing grasp of the political world, the machine once again decided to unleash hell upon the Obama administration. People would come loaded to town hall meetings, during the protests in Washington during the heath-care debate, photos of Obama as Hitler or as monk were a common view. And today Miss Palin asks herself on national television "how did we get here?"
The fact is that Palin and the entire tea party are not smart enough to answer anyway else so really I'm not going to waste much time on that subject. The fact is that tensions have flared and have cumulated to this horrific point and in the building up to this moment the tea party has played an essential if not central role.
In fact not just the tea party, but the entire American political class with some honorific exceptions (in my view the president himself is not one of them excuse me Mr.President, but we'll get to his case later on, in some other post). The American political class have kept this nation in a horrific gridlock. As we morn the dead in Tucson and all over the nation let us morn also the millions of lives shattered by the gridlock that obstructs Washington, the jobs lost, the soldiers still dying in Afghanistan for no given reason for we have no real plan, the millions of sick that need heath care so bad, but won't see it because the republicans have decided to destroy as always all the reforms the democrats made before them and this visa versa for some years now.
Now take me for no fool, I understand very well that, politics is no easy affair and that consensus is never easy to find, but as I was watching a CNN report the other day, the journalist was ecstatic saying "that the congress had found complete consensus in condemning the murders". We are better then that. It's time to find some common sense as Pain said and in doing so some common ground in this nation.
Just as the end of the year of 2008 was a crisis for the financial world and we had the chance to fix it so Tucson is a crisis in depth for our political system, and now stands before us the opportunity to fix things once and for all, to clean up our political classes and our corridors of congress that have been too full of lobbyists and others of their "genre". An opportunity now stands before us to renew our broken democracy.
The lasts words of Sarah Palin in her address to the nation were very interesting i find "God bless America", it's in fact not time for the "god bless americas" it's time for more for some "whats wrong with America?"

Sky