A complimentary review of Facing Ali by Omer M. Mozaffar on Roger Ebert’s Chicago Sun-Times page, which he calls Our far-flung correspondents.

This is a unique documentary…

What I did expect from the film was a huge amount of respect for Ali by these (formerly) gifted athletes. What I did expect, but did not receive, was anger against Ali. What I did not expect was that almost all these fighters – having faced harder punches outside the ring – seem to have made peace with themselves and with their circumstances. What I did not expect was the huge amount of love directed to Ali. The repeated sentiment, even from a teary-eyed, sympathetic Joe Frazier, was modest gratitude. These men were grateful for his role in their lives, as fighters, as African American men in the Civil Rights era. They were grateful for the sense of value and courtesy he gave them. This movie would be the best, most endearing eulogy a person could ask for…

…we get the sense that the men who faced him were themselves real people, speaking of a dear friend, that they hold not in high esteem, not in reverence, but in a loving awe.

And then a further conversation about Islam and so-called Islamophobia that is open, indeed, to conversation and god knows what else—as it will be for years to come. I’m not a religious person, and a friend of mine who isn’t, either, said to me recently, “In some ways I envy religious certainty.” Upon further discussion, she didn’t really mean it. I, like her, am actually repelled by the idea of such certainty. Imagine—and this includes science, too—being certain in this world, which has to be, still, all observations and facts included, something like 99.9999% mystery. Heck, we don’t even know what dark energy or matter is, let alone how it works, etc., and yet listening to physicist Lawrence Krauss, I think he said this ‘substance’ is the majority of the weight in every proton, and thus the majority of the weight of ourselves. It is also virtually ‘empty’, so-called. We are here but for a moment, ever-changing. I’ve got to figure out how to love more, and let the rest of the crap flow right on through that empty space.

After a long and fascinating haul, the Network Entertainment produced I Am Bruce Lee film, that I directed, is finished, and possibly coming to a theatre near you. You can check locations here, for about 170 theatres across the US. I believe it might be doing the same in Canada in March.

I deeply enjoyed researching Bruce Lee’s life, and directing the film. And as always, it was fantastic meeting such interesting and passionate people on the interview process, and great always to work with such talent on the production side of things.

In a very cool article in the Wall Street Journal today called Why Bruce Lee Has More Kick Now Than Ever, Jeff Yang wrote, quoting me:

“From my point of view, the 20th century gave us just two [sports] icons who rose above time, space and race: There was Muhammad Ali, and there was Bruce Lee,” says documentary filmmaker Pete McCormack, explaining the rationale behind his two most recent projects, the feature documentary “Facing Ali,” shortlisted for the Academy Award in 2010, and its new followup “I Am Bruce Lee,” which hits 160 theaters across the country for special screenings on February 9 and 11.

It’s an assertion that instantly prompts thoughts of obvious alternatives (was that a muffled cough from Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr.?) — but the truth is, it can’t be dismissed as hyperbole either.

Ali and Lee were rare and similar figures: Exceptionally charismatic individuals who thrived in the spotlight, and who earned their permanent place in history by both embodying and overcoming the contradictions of their era. They were unifiers and provocateurs, paramount warriors who preached peace, racial role models whose impact reached far beyond their own communities.

Let me just say, and I do speak very quickly, I was referring very specifically (at least in my head) to sports icons, not any icons. In the category of sport, I think the comment is arguably accurate, with many other possible nominees. My point was, I wouldn’t want to do just a sports documentary (thought that can be great). I was moved by what had unfolded beyond their respective sports, and was inspired to try and capture some of that wonder and greatness on celluloid. Okay, we shot digital, but you get my point.

To quote the title of Christopher Hitchens’ book on Orwell (Why Orwell Matters), the day after Christopher’s death, seems appropriate. And I do so simply because I just read what I think is a so-called Op-Ed piece in the Globe and Mail entitled Be very afraid: Stephen Harper is inventing a new Canada.

The irony and audacity of course, despite being described generally as a Left Wing publication—whatever that is—is that the Globe and Mail endorsed Harper for Prime Minister, in print, this year, April of 2011.

It’s such a racket, this mainstream media trip.

From today’s article against Harper:

The new Canada is a place where militarism is given pride of place over peacemaking. Watching Defence Minister Peter MacKay taking bows at the Grey Cup game for Canada’s part in the Libyan campaign, Globe columnist Lawrence Martin observed:

The blending of sport and the military, with the government as the marching band, is part of the new nationalism the Conservatives are trying to instill. It is another example of how the state, under Stephen Harper’s governance, is becoming all-intrusive. … State controls are now at a highpoint in our modern history. There is every indication they will extend further.

There it is: ‘the state…is becoming all-intrusive…’ Indeed, and meanwhile (and generalizing), the Left attacks the Government, while demanding more Government (bigger Government) to reign in the Government.

And from the Globe and Mail endorsement:

Only Stephen Harper and the Conservative Party have shown the leadership, the bullheadedness (let’s call it what it is) and the discipline this country needs. He has built the Conservatives into arguably the only truly national party, and during his five years in office has demonstrated strength of character, resolve and a desire to reform. Canadians take Mr. Harper’s successful stewardship of the economy for granted, which is high praise. He has not been the scary character portrayed by the opposition; with some exceptions, his government has been moderate and pragmatic.

So between our two so-called ideologic wings, is the plane these politicians (and media moguls) actually fly on, together, one pushing for a bigger state, the other a more intrusive state. The similarities are undeniable, utterly interchangeable, and have never worked out without the other.

And of course a newspaper can offer varying positions on whatever. But why not just give us the facts? And any newspaper’s outright endorsement of a leader seems to me a little troublesome. Is it? Well, this is planet earth.

It was Karl Marx who desired a complete State, nothing but the State, running everything, and then suggested such a State would somehow “…whither away.” The anarchist Bakunin chided him for such idiocy. If you like a bigger state, so be it—but the State, by definition, will not of its own accord, ever, whither away. Has it not shown its MO to be always to expand? And one would be utterly void of facts to think Republican politicians on the Big Stage down south actually prefer (and fight to create) a smaller state, as a rule. They clearly don’t. The wars alone, continued by President Obama (a Democrat, of course), show that it goes both ways.

George Orwell matters because he spoke so much truth, so brilliantly, and so many of his insights remain pertinent today.

Early in life I had noticed that no event is ever correctly reported in a newspaper.
—George Orwell

“…the word anarchy freaks people. Yet anarchy—rule by no one—has always struck me as the same as democracy carried to its logical and reasonable conclusions. Of course those who rule—bosses and politicians, capital and the state—cannot imagine that people could rule themselves, for to admit that people can live without authority and rulers pulls out the whole underpinnings of their ideology. Once you admit that people can—and do, today, in many spheres of their lives—run things easier, better and more fairly than the corporation and the government can, there’s no justification for the boss and the premier.
—Mark Leier

Who knows what’s going on when a bunch of politicians get together for their own interests and lie and fight over massive debt, defaulting on said debt, and all the rest et cetera?

Here’s an interesting take on the situation from Democracy Now.

A few snippets:

This is theater. This is political theater in which the two parties are posturing for the election coming next year, using this occasion—to put it in perspective, the number of times the government has raised the debt ceiling since 1940? Ninety, almost twice a year. This is a normal, automatic procedure. Every president, Republican and Democrat, has asked for it. When they ask, typically, the representatives of the other party say, “Well, you’re not managing the government real well,” and then they vote for it. And that has happened over and over again. So what you’re seeing is a decision, politically, to make it theatric, out of what otherwise would have been a normal procedure…

If you look at what happened to the American budget over the last 20 or 30 years, the culprit is obvious. We have dropped corporate taxes. We have dropped taxes on the rich.

Let me give you a couple of examples to drive it home. If you go back to the 1940s, here’s what you discover, that the federal government got 50 percent more money year after year from corporations than it did from individuals. For every dollar that individuals paid in income tax, corporations paid $1.50. If you compare that to today, here are the numbers. For every dollar that individuals pay to the federal government, corporations pay 25 cents. That is a dramatic change that has no parallel in the rest of our tax code.

Another example. In the ’50s and ’60s, the top bracket, the income tax rate that the richest people had to pay, for example the ’50s and ’60s, it was 91 percent. Every dollar over $100,000 that a rich person earned, he or she had to give 91 cents to Washington and kept nine. And the rationale for that was, we had come out of a Great Depression, we had come out of a great war, we had to rebuild our society, we were in a crisis, and the rich had the capacity to pay, and they ought to pay. Republicans voted for that. Democrats voted for that. What do we have today? Ninety-one percent? No. The top rate for rich people today, 35 percent. Again, nobody else in this society—not the middle, not the poor—have had anything like this consequence.

Keep on truckin’.

Pete

When I did interviews last summer at the HIV/AIDS conference in Vienna, I heard a few times about the remarkably brave Iranian Drs. Arash and Kamiar Alaei. In 2008, the two were arrested and jailed (hardly shocking, but shocking nonetheless) for their relentless, passionate and courageous work with HIV/AIDS patients in that country (they were accused of espionage, trying to overthrow the government and so on—the same pathologically demented and hateful accusation that was pinned on the three American hikers).

Evidently, Iran also has one of the highest per capita heroin use in the world. Unchecked, the sharing of needles has been a disaster for slowing down HIV rates (same in Russia).

Here’s a website worth looking at. May those two doctors be somehow still healthy, and soon released, and allowed to do what is right and humane.

And here’s the petition on the site.

This is a short (7 minutes) and cool and quickly provocative talk from Ted and a fella called Dave Maslin:

Lots of love, and love more, and may you see both the barriers and openings before you,

Pete xo

Interesting interview here with famed director Francis Ford Coppola. An excerpt:

What’s the best piece of advice you’ve given to your children, inside and outside of the industry?

Always make your work be personal.

And, you never have to lie. If you lie, you will only trip yourself up. You will always get caught in a lie. It is very important for an artist not to lie, and most important is not to lie to yourself. There are some questions that are inappropriate to ask, and rather than lie, I will not answer them because it’s not a question I accept. So many times we are asked things in our work or in life that you want to lie, and all you have to do is say, “No, that is an improper question.”

So when you get into a habit of not lying when you are writing, directing, or making a film, that will carry your personal conviction into your work. And, in a society where you say you are very free but you’re not entirely free, you have to try. There is something we know that’s connected with beauty and truth. There is something ancient. We know that art is about beauty, and therefore it has to be about truth.

I’m actually on a posting hiatus—work is busy, as is life in general. But I had to post this. If you’re wondering what’s at stake in Wisconsin and elsewhere, even beyond the attempted smashing of collective bargaining (and, of course, this smashing is deeply related to the overall current attack on long-fought-for freedoms), check this out. A recent bill has been passed already in Michigan in the House. From Democracy Now!, of course:

NAOMI KLEIN: Well, I just found out about this last night, and like I said, there’s so much going on that these extraordinary measures are just getting lost in the shuffle. But in Michigan, there is a bill that’s already passed the House. It’s on the verge of passing the Senate. And I’ll just read you some excerpts from it. It says that in the case of an economic crisis, that the governor has the authority to authorize the emergency manager—this is somebody who would be appointed—to reject, modify or terminate the terms of an existing contract or collective bargaining agreement, authorize the emergency manager for a municipal government—OK, so we’re not—we’re talking about towns, municipalities across the state—to disincorporate. So, an appointed official with the ability to dissolve an elected body, when they want to.

AMY GOODMAN: A municipal government.

NAOMI KLEIN: A municipal government. And it says specifically, “or dissolve the municipal government.” So we’ve seen this happening with school boards, saying, “OK, this is a failing school board. We’re taking over. We’re dissolving it. We’re canceling the contracts.” You know, what this reminds me of is New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, when the teachers were fired en masse and then it became a laboratory for charter schools. You know, people in New Orleans—and you know this, Amy—warned us. They said, “What’s happening to us is going to happen to you.” And I included in the book a quote saying, “Every city has their Lower Ninth Ward.” And what we’re seeing with the pretext of the flood is going to be used with the pretext of an economic crisis. And this is precisely what’s happening. So it starts with the school boards, and then it’s whole towns, whole cities, that could be subject to just being dissolved because there’s an economic crisis breaking collective bargaining agreements. It also specifies that—this bill specifies that an emergency manager can be an individual or a firm. Or a firm. So, the person who would be put in charge of this so-called failing town or municipality could actually be a corporation.

AMY GOODMAN: Whose government they dissolve, a company takes over.

NAOMI KLEIN: A company takes over. So, they have created, if this passes, the possibility for privatization of a whole town by fiat. And this is actually a trend in the contracting out of public services, where you do now have whole towns, like Sandy Springs in Georgia, run by private companies. It’s very lucrative. Why not? You start with just the water contract or the electricity contract, but eventually, why not privatize the whole town? So—

AMY GOODMAN: And what happens then? Where does democracy fit into that picture?

NAOMI KLEIN: Well, this is an assault on democracy. It’s a frontal assault on democracy. It’s a kind of a corporate coup d’état at the municipal level.

And I’ll post this again: A Chinese man, Han Dongfang, living under tyranny in 1989, lets us know how utterly essential and vital collective bargaining is to workers’ rights and dignities. We should hear the irony of his fight for collective bargaining in conjunction with the current U.S. attempt to smash collective bargaining—collective bargaining, in a sense, being the right to be equal before one’s employer.

Stay strong, expand community, love more,

Pete

Okay, of course Ayn Rand isn’t an idiot. She might even be a genius. But I can’t read Ayn Rand anymore than I can read Karl Marx—both of whom know everything, which right there is a contradiction.

And granted, I’m a little behind the times here, talking about a person whose most famous works came out in the ’40s and ’50s, although folks still bow at her altar today—as do Marxists for Marx, that cantankerous, boil-butted fundamentalist. The thing is, they’re both so verbally autocratic—and then others translate this emotion with a hammer in hand. Anyway, I read the following quote the other day, from Ayn Rand, who is the author of the massive-sellers The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. She is also the ‘founder’ of Objectivism. She writes:

Contradictions do not exist. Whenever you think you are facing a contradiction, check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong.

Who outside of, well, possibly God (who never precisely returns my emails), lunatic dictators and fundamentalists of all sorts, religious or non-religious, could really believe this?

In other words, I must contradict Ayn Rand. I think I’ll write her a letter that I think she’ll read. Even though she’s dead. Those two ideas may be a contradiction.

That hat contradicts both logic and fashion, so does smoking and freedom. ‘I am free to smoke, and then smoking chains me by addiction, gives me cancer, and I am anything but free.’ A contradiction.

Definition: Contradictory: of words or propositions so related that both cannot be true and both cannot be false; “‘perfect’ and ‘imperfect’ are contradictory terms.”

The letter:

Dear Ayn,

We live on a perpetually spinning yet life-producing round rock, and we don’t fall off, though we fall down, and it’s going nobody-knows-where, warmed by the sun, cooled by water falling from clouds, yet we claim to be in control of our own lives; we feel and/or long to be ‘free,’ yet are utterly dependent on everything—nature, air and others; we are imbued with a relentless yearn for life, yet must die, all the while living in a curious balancing act of choices and non-choices, controls and freedoms. And by our very physical design, we misperceive what we believe is certain.

So Ayn, to say contradictions do not exist, is naughty. And silly. And some would say idiotic. Calling you naughty may be a contradiction to what you really are. Although that hat is rather naughty. And I’ll give you this: you are thought-provoking—but you’re actually a fundamentalist. Minus the fun. Although the ‘fun’ in fundamentalism might also be a contradiction. Or maybe I don’t know what a contradiction is. Which would mean my so-called logic has contradicted itself. Damn.

Love,

Paradox

Ditto with this:

“People create their own questions because they are afraid to look straight. All you have to do is look straight and see the road, and when you see it, don’t sit looking at it—walk.”

As long as the ‘straight’ is the same direction as Ayn Rand. Otherwise, according to the above, one doesn’t understand. Anything. Unless you’re saying two people can go in opposite directions and both be right. But that would be a contradiction, and generally leads to war, or worse, ill-feeling. I went over all this with Atlas, and he shrugged.

My life—a very fortunate and wonderful life—my existence, is all bound together and pulled apart by contradiction. Which may be a contradiction.

Feel free to contradict me.

Yours in love and contradiction,

Pete

Of all possible solutions to a problem, certain American State lawmakers have come up with another fantastic solution to the most rare of problems—the crazed gunman. My friend Jesse sent me this from the New York Times:

In Arizona, known for its gun-friendly ways, state lawmakers are pushing three bills this year focused on arming professors and others over the age of 21 on Arizona campuses. Sponsors talk of how professors and students are now sitting ducks for the next deranged gunman to charge through the classroom door. Some gun rights advocates go so far as to say that grade school teachers ought to be armed as well, although even this state is not ready for that proposition.

By the way, in case no one noticed, the crazed gunman is also armed.

What’s outrageous is that these elected officials, legislators and lobbyists have no issue—but likely great self-interest, money and power-wise—bringing these anti-creative, asinine solutions to a world already constantly creaking with unrest and turmoil (although life day-to-day is pretty darn amazing, don’t you think?)

And some publications don’t even write with ridicule about the arming of teachers as a first-line plan against others carrying guns. Think, by contrast, how the French were ridiculed for protesting against their retirement age being pushed to the nearly-dead age of 62.

Surely having your child’s fourth-grade teach toting a piece could label a society pathologically unsteady. Unless of course this is, say, Northern Uganda where children, for years, were readily and horrifically abducted by a crazed rebel group (built up with the abducted children) called The Lord’s Resistance Army. There the government simply put thousands of families in camps, with limited protection and limited or no provisions, where their abduction was made easier.

But here in the West, if this trend continues, we writers, being crazed pen-men, will also be shot for suggesting things that threaten said Power (or we’ll be simply too intimidated to write anything). Them thar words are violent! Shoot him!

And for the record, will all these gun-toting philosophy professors and fully-armed kindergarten teachers know anything about having a gun, how to use it, how to be safe with it, how to, say, not accidentally shoot their students?

We could have mandatory Gun 101 classes for first year university students, or Armed Combat 11: How to Reload Quickly or How To Get The Mark You Don’t Really Deserve instead of Home Ec, which doesn’t matter, because we can just live off drive-thru, fast-food anyway.

And what about home-schooling? Should parents arm themselves, too? Swimming lessons? Sunday School with classes like Who Would Jesus Shoot? (sorry, Jason!) or How To Be Armed for Allah. Actually both those probably are taught, one here I found in ten seconds on-line (and taking a break) and of course at the Saudi-funded, rabid Wahhabi schools. The Saudis, of course, being good friends with the US Government, and certainly the House of Bush.

You know, we could at least try pushing for an ethos of discernment and kindness, at least among people in our own countries, and then evolve, yes, even beyond that. Have you read comments on-line, in general, lately? People really think they hate each other, and really think they know the answer. Both ideas are profoundly untrue, in my opinion—we just don’t realize it. But as most know, whenever one deeply tries to love another, the other becomes and remains quite wonderfully mysterious—heck, they become three-dimensional, maybe four. Not simply a cardboard cutout enemy via our perceived picture of who they are because of some apparent ideological stance, or less. Think about it.

Arm yourself with love, all the time, no matter how idiotic the people are running more of the show. When the time comes to really fight, all that love will offer intelligent insight. If not, at least you didn’t lead a paranoid life full of hate and ignorance.

Love more!

Pete

“In our glorious fight for civil rights, we must guard against being fooled by false slogans, as ‘right-to-work.’ It provides no ‘rights’ and no ‘works.’ Its purpose is to destroy labor unions and the freedom of collective bargaining…We demand this fraud be stopped.”
—Martin Luther King, speaking on right-to-work laws in 1961

I wanted to put this piece up again—an interview with Han Dongfang—given the times in the Middle East and North Africa and the United States, Wisconsin in particular. It’s interesting to compare what is happening universally and see what questions the news begs.

A trade unionist I also interviewed from Iraq made it clear how important (and difficult—ie people being murdered) the right to organize is. Colombia is a nightmare for unions. In China, in 1989, Han Dongfang risked his life for the hope of one day having an independent union with collective bargaining (basically the right to have the right to negotiate grievances with an employer). Across North Africa and the Middle East, one can be certain if any freedom opens up, groups will be fighting for similar rights. And in the U.S., in several States, in contrast to all these places, legislatures are voting to make collective bargaining illegal.

It was really something unsurprising yet alarming to hear—in a telephone sting—Governor Walker admit that he thought about using “troublemakers”, so-called agent provocateurs, to infiltrate protests.

Han has said before that China has a so-called union—The All-China Federation of Trade Unions—but it doesn’t have collective bargaining, and thus has nothing.

The labor movement means just this: It is the last noble protest of the American people against the power of incorporated wealth.
—Wendell Phillips (1811-1884), American abolitionist and orator

Whatever one’s thoughts on labour and worker’s rights and dignity, this is food for thought.

I mentioned a few of those radical Quakers a few posts ago, but I have to do it again. I was able to get my hands on an article published in that blustery and at times brutal year, worldwide, of 1968. Upon reading the paper entitled Henry Dawkins and the Quaker Comet, how could I not post a little about Benjamin Lay, who was a Quaker so relentlessly annoying he even annoyed the Quakers?

Relentlessly.

Born in 1681, Lay was barely over four feet tall, it is said, and a hunchback, as was his wife Sarah. Born in England, he later lived in Barbados, but his hatred for slavery was deeply “obnoxious” to most everybody there—except, I am sure, the slaves.

So Lay and his wife then moved to Abington, Pennsylvania, where he continued to be utterly obnoxious with his fervent anti-abolitionist ideas and his attack, mostly, on the leaders of congregations, who held slaves and did other things he found utterly wrong and hypocritical.

But consider the time, the early to mid 1700s. Nearly a hundred years before slavery was abolished in England. A hundred and fifty years before the American Civil War.

And his radicalism didn’t stop at slavery. Indeed, he may have been a hero had he lived in 1968, though undoubtedly still on the fringes. Actually, despite his radicalism, he was far too restrained in other obvious ways for the 1960s.

[Benjamin Lay] wore plain clothing made of tow and linen of his own weaving, refused to ride a horse or coach, and eschewed the use of any meat or other product of animal suffering. He was an ardent student of the Bible and religious literature, and was reputed to have collected an unusually large library. He objected to capital punishment, arguing that wantonness and idleness were sinful and might be reformed in prison, but that no repentance was possible from the grave.

To these ideals few Friends could object in principle, but his fulminations against slavery kept him continually at odds with the Quaker community.

Lay’s objection to slavery was on moral and humanitarian grounds, and his campaigns were carried on with great fervor. He lost no opportunity to prick the consciences of Quaker slaveowners and rub them with the salt of his own anguish.

He harangued Meetings with annoying length and frequency, and more than once was forbidden entry to Meetings or bodily removed for harassing brethren and ministers who were testifying.

An example to us all! Including the ‘ministers’ of the financial sector and alld the political ministers. Lay’s conviction goes even farther. According to Wikipedia:

He would wear nothing, nor eat anything made from the loss of animal life or provided by any degree by slave labor. He was distinguished less for his eccentricities than for his philanthropy. He published over 200 pamphlets, most of which were impassioned polemics against various social institutions of the time.

Also, he and a few others wouldn’t even buy goods that were taxed, because the taxes went to military build-up. Who would even consider that today? How can one even dream of avoiding the consumer ethos—heck, how could one survive without it, if only to a small degree. Sometimes it surprises me when I realize food doesn’t grow in cans.

Kidding. But Lay? Wow.

A proclamation he wrote, printed by none other than Benjamin Franklin, around the year of our Lord, 1737:

ALL SLAVE KEEPERS that keep the Innocent in Bondage, APOSTATES Pretending to Lay Claim to the Pure & Holy Christian Religion; of what Congregation so ever; but especially in their Ministers, by whose example the filthy Leprosy and Apostacy is spread far and near; it is a notorious Sin, which many of the true Friends of Christ, and his pure Truth, Called Quakers, has been for many Years and still are concern’d to write and bear Testimony against; as a Practice so gross and hurtful to Religion, and destructive to Government, beyond what Words can set forth, or can be declared of by Men or Angels, and yet lived in by Ministers and Magistrates in AMERICA. THE LEADERS OF THE PEOPLE CAUSE THEM TO ERR. Written for a General Service, by him that truly and sincerely desires the present and eternal Welfare and Happiness of all Mankind, all the World over, of all Colours, and Nations, as his own Soul; BENJAMIN LAY

I have to run out. Might add more later, but I thought you’d appreciate it. Lay died in 1760.

Lots of love. And good luck making your own clothes, harassing the folks and leaders in your congregation, eating only milk and vegetable products that you grow yourself, and not buying any consumer goods. Oh, and if that’s not enough for you, throw in kyphosis. Here’s to you, Benjamin Lay, and Sarah, for giving it all you had…

Pete xo

This is the spirit [behind] all the great struggles of the workers to improve their working conditions: Liberty and freedom for collective bargaining is what they want and what they must have.
—Mary Anderson (August 27, 1872-1964)

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker wants to crush collective bargaining in that state. In 1949, Mao Tse-tung crushed any ideas of collective bargaining and independent unions in China. For my liking, that’s way too similar—and a spit in the face to all American workers over the last 120 years. Maybe Governor Walker and Chairman Mao have similar ‘five-year-plans,’ too.

Whatever one thinks of labour unions, it is self-evident that to destroy the right of workers to engage in collective bargaining with the employer is to set back the rights of workers (ie almost all of us) to the turn of the century. And I mean 1900.

Last summer I interviewed the courageous and articulate Chinese trade unionist Han Dongfang at the ITUC World Congress in Vancouver. He was adamant about the absolute necessity for workers to have the right to collective bargaining in China and all over the world. Indeed, at Tiananmen Square in 1989, he risked his life for it.

Without collective bargaining, he said, human rights downgrade to animal rights, where all the employee can do is hope he or she is treated like a human being. All over the world, the result is often a working hell.

Check out this piece, as Han talks passionately about collective bargaining, workers rights, opposing the regime at Tiananmen Square, globalization, and being one of the “top ten luckiest” people in the world.

Wishing everybody more discernment, more justice, more love—and the right of workers to have a dignified say in their working conditions,

Pete x

“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.”
—Joseph Goebbels, Nazi Propaganda Minister

First of all, I hope Sidney Crosby’s head is going to be okay. These contact sports are certainly tough on the old noodle, as countless injury reports attest. Ironically, cheerleading kills more people every year than UFC. I actually read that. But what I’m talking about here is how Sidney’s overtime goal in the 2010 Olympics, giving the Canadian team the 3-2 gold medal win over the US in hockey, stopped a revolution.

Okay, Sidney’s goal didn’t stop the revolution. There was never going to be a revolution. This is Vancouver, for god’s sake. But the emotional timbre of the city pre-Olympics was undeniably bleak (can a timbre be bleak?). The sickening and inconceivable billion-dollar security bill was a shock from the original estimate of $175 million, blatant RCMP spying on anti-Olympics protesters was disconcerting, the utter lack of snow anywhere was like an omen, and the tragic death of a Georgian luger hours before the opening ceremony was simply painful to see.

People were ornery. People were edgy. Heck, some even grumbled.

Okay, in the end, let’s face it, it wasn’t only Crosby’s goal that changed the mood of the city. The revolution that was to be an uprising against political fiscal idiocy, corporate control of B.C. mind space and Big Brother, was also put on hold because Canada won a record number of gold medals in the Vancouver Olympics, and with each win our collective angst turned to pride, showing how fickle is the human mind. With every victory we the people became more sedated than the folks sucking back super-sized Soma in Brave New World.

And Crosby’s overtime goal clinched the mood, convincing us all, unabashedly, that the athletes’ victories were identical to our own: we all won gold, right? I think that collective deluded belief among sports fans, that they, too, win when their team does, actually has a medical name. If it doesn’t, it should. Either way, all I know is I personally didn’t get one endorsement out of the Olympics. Not even a phone call. Never signed an autograph.

And the other truth is, Vancouver just isn’t a revolting kind of place. Okay, little uprisings in the early ’70s and the IWW in the 1910s and the March to Ottawa in the dirty ’30s, and somebody broke a window when the Canucks lost in game 7 in 1994, and maybe a few others.

But the fact is, my friends, we’ve got used to good times, and a good standard of living, and our revolting boots are somewhere way at the back of our multi-car garages.

ALl THAT GLITTERS IS NOT GOLD

This particular post is actually about the idea that the massive economic windfall of prosperity predicted if the Olympics came to town—early projections were ten billion dollars by key business players and local politicians—may have been Goebbelian propaganda (in the repeated ‘big lie’ sense).

In short, according to an article in the Tyee:

The Feb. 17, 2009 budget claimed the economic impact would be $10 billion. By Oct. 28, 2009, Small Business Minister Iain Black told the legislature that the Games would be “a $4 billion revenue-generating spectacular.”

For those keeping track at home, that’s a $6 billion drop in 8 months, which is twice what I made last year, after taxes.

But here’s the worst part about the Tyee article: it turns out folks with high IQs have actually studied the anti-climactic economic fallout of mega events in great detail.

One group from the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts studied the economic realities of the Salt Lake 2002 Winter Olympics. Afterwards, in 2006, the results were sent out as a warning call to governments. Politicians were urged to “…view with caution any economic impact estimates.”

I guess that warning, like the one Brooksley Born offered Alan Greenspan at the Fed, got lost in the convenient shuffle. I’m only kidding—I’m sure it was read. They just didn’t give a crap.

And it’s not that I am even one iota surprised about this extraordinary dislocation between tax-payer expenditures and limited return. Are you? Is anybody anymore? The North American bail-outs made the “rules of rip-off” even more extreme, cynical, up front and plundering.

Victor Matheson from the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts offers this:

“While most sports boosters claim that mega-events provide host cites with large economic returns, these same boosters present these figures as justification for receiving substantial public subsidies for hosting the games. The vast majority of independent academic studies of mega-events show the benefits to be a fraction of those claimed by event organizers.“

Isn’t that fraud? Or is it the Stalin syndrome: Kill one person, it’s murder; kill a million it’s a statistic. Kill twenty million it’s Mao. Steal a trillion, it’s Wall Street.

As for debt, it’s more like a cancer. Even diagnosed, we may not particularly feel it. But evidently it can be extremely painful when the debt collector cometh. Has he got an ETA?

The report said:

A May 2010 Holy Cross report found Salt Lake 2002 “had a modest short-run impact on employment and no significant impact on total employment in the long run.” That followed a Nov. 2008 report that found hotels and restaurants gained $70.6 million, but general merchandise sales fell $167.4 million. This happened, they say, because the Games caused local residents to alter consumption patterns and local residents and regular visitors were displaced by those attending the event.

And then a closer-to-home-truth from Vancouver.

Fast forward to Dec. 17, 2010, long after the last athlete went home and all the banners were gone. PricewaterhouseCoopers—in a study paid for and scheduled by Ottawa and Victoria [the tax-payer again—it never ends!]—downgraded its estimate, saying only $2.3 billion was generated over seven years. This, in a province where the Gross Domestic Product was worth almost $198 billion last year.

So there were gains, but galaxies away from the estimate. And what of the cost? Will outright manipulation, even lying, and costing the tax-payer billions of increasingly devalued dollars ever be considered fraud or illegal? Likely not, as long as it’s done by a certain group of people. The system is set up with endless technicalities as excuses and almost never any clear person or persons can be found to be blamed.

But it sounds again like public-subsidy for private gain.

Ah, politics. Ah, Wall Street. Ah, so-called free markets. Ah, mega-events.

The only hope now is, once again, Sidney Crosby. Sid the Kid. Gold medal magic. If he can’t come back to the NHL, which would be tragic, maybe he’ll lead the revolution, which would also be tragic. But it would be good for press.

And if that doesn’t work, we can always Twitter. Hey, it works in the Middle East and North Africa, or so we are told. Personally, and call me crazy, but I would think that the world-wide economic crisis and the inability of people in Northern Africa and the Middle East to afford food was probably even more important than Twitter (and so-called democracy), but maybe I’m just annoyingly old-school.

What a world—and so much beauty, too! I need a glass of Soma. Anybody else?

Pete xo

“The right word may be effective, but no word was ever as effective as a rightly timed pause.”
—Mark Twain

I have said or written many times how important I think it is to specifically define the subject you are talking about before you plough in with the diatribe (yes, I’m talking to myself here). In other words, if you are talking about such massive subjects as, say, God or democracy or Christianity or freedom or free-market or Left Wing or pacifism or globalization et cetera, make clear what you actually mean by the word. Without doing so, our talks are more confusing and less enlightening than we may suppose.

To wit:

All I can think to add is the same advice I gave my 13 [now 18] year old niece:

Whenever somebody asks, “Do you believe in God [or abortion or evolution]?” or, “Are you a Socialist or a Democrat or a Republican?” I strongly recommend getting their definition on whatever they’re asking you so you don’t get immediately boxed in to someone else’s agenda. Because everybody has their take on “God”, and God is a very loaded term, and before you know it you’re caught in a mini-Crusade, and theoretically you could end up on the side of the infidels. But with a little sweetness of speech, a conversation may just begin that serves both people.

On that note, this little youtube piece sent to me from my multi-talented friend Andrea. My god, we went to grad together—which was just before John A. McDonald ran for Prime Minister (sorry, Andrea), the Vancouver Millionaires won the Stanley Cup, and even before I had finally grown a full-blown mullet).

The piece is, like, pretty, like, you know, entertaining? Actually, so is the short essay about, like, my mullet.

Love ya!

Ol’ Pete (and by love, I mean, you know, like, on a deep cosmic sort of level and unity and and also I hope your life is going well and also I love ya, that’s all).

If the youtube piece didn’t make you laugh, or left you laughing but wanting more, and the mullet-piece did or didn’t do the same, maybe you’d like to listen to this read-out-loud excerpt from Understanding Ken, a novel I wrote after my mullet had been amputated, yet possibly when John A. McDonald was still boozing it up, god rest his pickled liver.

“The very purpose of existence is to reconcile the glowing opinion we hold of ourselves with the appalling things that other people think about us.”
—Quentin Crisp

In a Reddit interview with famed evolutionary biologist and staunch atheist Richard Dawkins, Richard was asked:

Reddit: In your opinion, what are the three most important unanswered questions in biology?

Richard Dawkins:

How does consciousness evolve and what is consciousness?

How did life itself begin from non-life? What was the origin of the first self-replicating molecule? The first gene, in effect. That would be the second one.

And the third one would be, why do we have sex?

I found it interesting that these questions are not only deep biological questions, but deep spiritual questions.

“If you thought that science was certain—well, that is just an error on your part.”
—Richard P. Feynman

Feel free to comment by giving answers that actually are the absolute truth. Anything less will be deleted or mocked. Ironically, so might the absolute truth.

Thoughts:

For question two, to describe life from non-life as Richard did, almost sounds unscientific. Sort of like the idea of the creation of something from nothing sounds unscientific. Or the religious argument that says there had to be a God to get the whole thing going which, of course, begs the question of who begat God.

Clearly this mass of energy called existence has inconceivably, and thus eternally, always been here, just in different forms. In other words, scientifically speaking, how could existence have not been here and then be here now?

“There is a point where in the mystery of existence contradictions meet; where movement is not all movement and stillness is not all stillness; where the idea and the form, the within and the without, are united; where infinite becomes finite, yet not.”
—Rabindranath Tagore

And for three, the answer ‘Because it feels good,’ only gets part marks—depending of course, on just how good it feels, including a strict definition of what is meant by ‘good.’ But too much information will result in a loss of marks. Good luck!

“Man is the only animal for whom his own existence is a problem which he has to solve.”
—Erich Fromm

Here’s to the mystery, and joy, and lots of lookin’ out for the other fella, too.

Pete

I don’t know much about what’s going on in Wisconsin, but I just read this article by Lauren Knapp, entitled Wisconsin, Other State Legislatures Consider Eliminating Collective Bargaining. Knapp writes:

Republican state senators in Wisconsin tried for a second day Friday to vote on a bill that would take collective bargaining rights from public workers.

The fight over Wisconsin state workers’ right to collective bargaining came to a dramatic halt on Thursday when fourteen democratic state senators left the state to avoid voting on the controversial bill. The state senate issued a “Call of the House,” which allows them to send out state troopers to retrieve the missing senators.

The bill, proposed by newly elected Republican Governor Scott Walker, would strip government workers of their right to collective bargaining and require that workers pay for half the cost of their pensions and 12.6% of their health coverage.

CHINA, HAN DONGFANG and COLLECTIVE BARGAINING

Consider, in the same conservation, the following:

In 1989, in Tiananmen Square, 26-year-old railway electrician Han Dongfang helped form the first independent trade union in China in 40 years, and fight for the right to have collective bargaining. For his trouble, Han spent 22 months in prison, was treated brutally, and in the process, acquired TB and lost a lung.

Han Dongfang

That 40 years without independent unions, of course, is just one of the many putrid side-effects of Mao Tse Tung and the Chinese communists coming to power in 1949. Improved literacy was a positive. Mass murder another negative.

ORWELL’S NIGHTMARE

For those who choose to see, the Chinese communists and the Soviet Union offer us prime examples of the absurdity of so-called Left and Right politics.

QUESTIONS

Are Unions of the Left or Right? Left. Right?

Are the Soviet Union and communist China considered Left or Right? Very Left. Exactly. That’s completely right.

What did these two politically Left nations do? They smashed and crushed anything resembling a labour union, anything resembling workplace democracy, anything resembling the right of assembly, and at times murdered or imprisoned those who tried to gain rights for workers.

But heck, I thought the Left were in favour of labour unions. Turns out the Communist Chinese and the Soviet Union both despised labour unions.

So repeat after me:

What we’re left with here is the mistreatment of workers that isn’t right.

But not being right doesn’t make it Left, right? Unless you’re Right and you hate the Left, which is the right way to be Right. Then you think that anything that’s left with the Right that isn’t right is Left.

But the Left thinks that things that aren’t right aren’t Left but Right, right? Either way, how can it be right to be left with this Chinese/Soviet Right-hating Communist disdain for labour unions being called Left, when that’s the right way to think to be called Right, and what’s left to the Left is unions, because those who are right on the Left say labour unions are right, and it’s the Right who hate labour unions because they’re “supposedly” Left, right?

So the right meanings of Left and Right are left meaningless by Right and Left ideologues and the mainstream press, Left and Right, who left the right nuance too far behind to grasp that we don’t know what’s right or what’s left—let alone what’s Left with the Right and Right with the Left, right?

Fools!

TREATING HUMAN BEINGS RIGHT

I had the chance to interview the gracious Han Dongfang last summer (I have a short clip that I will post soon). Here’s what he said, referring to collective bargaining and the dictatorship of China:

In my understanding, democracy should be meaning, in the workplace, the workers should have the equal position, in front of the employer. The chance to speak, the chance to discuss about our salary, our benefits, so it’s a mutual respect relationship based on collective bargaining.

The [2010] Honda Factory Worker strike [in southern China broke] the ice completely and the labour movement in China now looks much brighter than ever. The most important message they brought out was the idea of collective bargaining.

We have at least 500 million workers in China. If one-third of them have the rights to have real, workplace collective bargaining, we will be able to change the whole way that globalization develops and the whole world develops based on cheap labour without workers’ unions.

UNION TROUBLES

There are, of course, unions and union employees who actually contribute to some of the negative ways people and the press speak about unions. A guy I know, for example, a temporary shop steward in his union, was able to end the shift for his workers an hour early one day. A couple of folks happened to have to work, literally, a few minutes more to finish up. For having done so, they filed a grievance.

This kind of bullshit, evidently, is not unusual, and limits external empathy. I would be a liar not to admit that.

Some teachers that I know, and damn good teachers, feel little or no affiliation or solidarity between themselves (as the rank and file) and their Union (as bureaucracy). The relationship, for many, has gone cold. So Unions have problems and a lot of work to do, and maybe size is one of the problems (those teachers are, nonetheless, guaranteed a lot of union-fought-for advantages).

In the same vein, the massive bureaucracy and the non-democratic nature of some unions or aspects of unions definitely bother me, along with the corruption of some unions. The Teamsters leap to mind—for everyone. But there are many others, worse, as a rule, in the US than in Canada or Europe. Corruption sucks.

And, of course, wages that are too large for a company to pay, and still compete, are a problem. Of course, they’re competing with other companies working in dictatorships where their workers are treated like beasts of burden—poverty cheap pay under horrifically long hours and inhuman conditions. So is the problem actually high wages or competing with slave wages?

And these same companies, of course, while fighting unions, and fighting minimum wage laws, are also constantly fighting to put caps on CEO pay and bonuses (see the Financial Sector pre- and post-bailout), and shareholder profits.

The last half of that sentence (the italicized part) was unadulterated sarcasm.

And in that bleeding vein of CEO bonuses, how much of this attack in Wisconsin simply serves as a fantastic distraction from the truly criminal stealing and ongoing thievery by large parts of the financial sector on Wall Street and all over the world?

SELF-DEFENSE

But the essence of unions, it needs to be remembered, has been and always will be (or should be), as I have been told over and over, “a self-defence mechanism against the brutality of Power.” History shows this to be so often true.

ANIMAL RIGHTS AS OPPOSED TO HUMAN RIGHTS

One could then rightly ask, ‘Well, what about a good employer? Is that not enough?’ I asked Han the same question. His answer was enlightening. He said human beings are not equal if they have to hope to have an employer who treats them well, who hopefully allows communication et cetera.

And granted, some non-union employers are fantastic. But hoping for a fantastic employer is not human rights, or civil rights, Han told me, this is animal rights—where hopefully the animal is treated well (and you’ll notice how often animals are treated brutally).

For humans to have a semblance of equality, of dignity, they need to have the right (and the opportunity) to freely and safely air grievances—in this case with their employer. This is, by definition, collective bargaining. The right to negotiate collectively with the employer.

Without this, it is a dictatorship—even if a benevolent one. It is certainly not democracy, and it is not free speech. Many massive corporations already exclude or de facto exclude this right of negotiation—a situation deeply exacerbated for workers when only no or limited or unenforced legislation is available, like in much of the Third World—or even with, say, Canada’s own Orwellian-labelled Permanent-Temporary workforce.

This explanation between Animal Rights and Human Rights from Han Dongfang—who risked everything to fight for what Wisconsin is trying to end—made sense to me.

And whether one agrees with ‘unions’ or not, name a single country in the world with decent workers’ rights that doesn’t have a decent union history and unions in place today.

I can’t.

Unions need to evolve, of course, but they were and are themselves a vital part of the evolution of the West towards free speech, towards the right of assembly, the right to discuss freely with one’s employer, and all that offers.

These rights are vital to plant the necessary seeds for even the semblance of a decent society, for dignity amongst the largest portion of the population.

To say it again, you’ll notice that countries without unions are invariably (always?) really shitty countries that also don’t have, for example, freedom of speech or any tangible legal recourse for the non-elites. That, in my opinion, is not a coincidence.

WALL STREET JOURNAL, HEAVY ON THE WALL STREET

Finally, this questionnaire came from the Wall Street Journal on-line, and is typically disjointed:

Ohio and Wisconsin are considering a bill which would strip state’s public employees of most collective-bargaining rights. What do you think? Would the end of collective bargaining for public workers means [sic] new savings and efficiencies for taxpayers? Or would it be unfair to state workers?

Sounds fair?

First of all, only a newspaper as unjournalistic as the Wall Street Journal (and all the others) would make this an and/or question.

Secondly:

Question One—Would the end of collective bargaining for public workers means[sic] new savings and efficiencies for taxpayers?—is controversial, but let’s just leave it alone for now.

Question Two—Or would it be unfair to state workers?—is simply an intentionally misleading, manipulative question that separates the worker here from almost everybody else (who just so happen to be workers, too).

To echo the brutally-lived experience of Han Dongfang—not to mention millions of workers in the Canadian and American past and, yes, present—the Question could just as easily be:

Would it be unfair to state workers to give up their human rights (the right and opportunity to safely negotiate grievances with an employer is collective bargaining) and thus abandon gains fought for over centuries to live instead under ‘animal rights,’ where the worker, at best, can only hope and pray for a decent employer?

I, personally, have limited faith in some benevolent dictator curing, say, the misery inside factory farms. Indeed, the reality of Power (backed by the State) is why Unions formed in the first place. I have not seen any sort of systemic, innate benelovence by multi-national corporations working in the Third World, either, when First World laws no longer apply. Have you? The main function of a corporation, for better or worse, is to maximize profit, and profit expands wherever it can. That is the DNA of profit.

For CBS News, I’m Dan Rather, as in Rather Concerned. Actually, I’m Pete McCormack, and I hope a little of Han Dongfang’s story makes us pause.

Love more! Fight for the innocent underdog!

Pete

“That draft-dodger will never fight in my state, period.”
—California governor Ronald Reagan supposedly said this when Muhammad Ali was attempting to return to the ring.

In an earlier blog, I mentioned in an ironic, sarcastic way, that Ronald Reagan was a ‘union man’:

As for fuel conservation, here’s President Carter’s energy conservation speech of 1977. It certainly didn’t help with his re-election, and the solar panels he put up on the roof of the White House were taken down by the Gipper, Ronald Reagan, President of the Screen Actors Guild (a big union man, clearly).

So here is a little about Reagan’s time as seven-time president of the Screen Actors Guild of America, including during the awful and staining House Committee on Un-American Activities hearings and the shameful blacklisting of Hollywood talent for communist or alleged communist ties.

One-time New Deal and FDR supporter and president of the Screen Actors Guild Ronald Reagan testifies before the House Committee on Un-American Activities.

From the Screen Actors Guild themselves:

[Reagan] would serve a total of seven presidential terms, including six one-year terms elected by the membership in November 1947, 1948, 1949, 1950, 1951 and 1959. Issues—Guild, national, and international—during Reagan’s presidencies and board terms, 1946-1960, were among the most vast and complicated in the Guild’s history…

[Reagan oversaw] the Guild’s first three strikes (1952-53, 1955, and 1960); the first residuals for filmed television programs; first residuals for films sold to television; and the creation of the pension and health plan.

Pension and health plan! What? Handouts! Aaagh! Socialism!

Health plan, indeed. Well, for some, anyway.

Of course, in 1981, as President of the United States, he set a different sort of precedent when he fired over 11,000 (ostensibly illegally) striking Air Traffic Control Workers, for not returning to work within 48 hours of his order.

According to Labor Law Professor Charles Craver at George Washington University, in an article in the Baltimore Sun:

“The biggest thing that that [mass firing] did was it sent a message to the private employer community that it would be all right to go up against the unions. Whether he intended to do that, I don’t know.”

From Gary Chaison, industrial relations professor at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts, in the same article:

“I do think that Reagan showed the labor movement how important it is to have a friend in the White House and how vulnerable the labor movement can be if they have someone who’s not a friend because there were no labor law reforms passed, the minimum wage laws were not changed, foreign competition grew tremendously and ate away union jobs.”

Either way, given his two different positions—President of the Screen Actors Guild, by definition pro-Union, and the President of the United States, by most people who talk of Reagan’s two terms, strongly anti-union—what is clear is that Ronald Reagan was a truly natural political being.

As for the mention of having friends in high political places, I did some independent interviews with people from different countries at the World Labour Congress in Vancouver last year. While there, I was told that British Columbia Premier Gordon Campbell had been asked to speak at the Conference, but declined. I don’t actually know the details, but if true, that speaks volumes. Imagine the climate when the Premier of British Columbia, regardless of his political stance, can’t find a way or even a good spin to celebrate workers in general. After all, workers have only built the province and its economy.

On route to the G-20 in Toronto, Argentinian leader Cristina Kirchner took time out to stop in Vancouver and give a greatly appreciated talk. What does that say?

Anyway, a little trivia: Ronald Reagan, Union Man for the ages. Now if only he’d kept those solar panels up. And it sure is a shame about the massive expansion of his country’s debt while he was leader. And Central America was brutalized. Ah, who am I kidding, so were unions. Yet through it all he made Americans feel good about themselves. Now that’s talent.

I prayed for twenty years but received no answer until I prayed with my legs.
—Frederick Douglass on escaping from slavery

I mentioned Frederick Douglass (February, 1818—February 20, 1895) in a recent blog, and then saw these two quotes. Douglass was born a slave, escaped (and wrote about it) and went on to become a great American social reformer, deeply involved in the abolitionist movement, a writer and statesman, known for (as the quotes below show) fiery and clear oration.

With the following quotes, think of the West in many, many instances, think of Frederick Douglass’ own fight, think of today even—think with great care and discernment. Power and Rights are always in flux, regardless of what tyrants say, or what legislation says. And, of course, think of the present uprisings across the generally dictatorial North Africa and the Middle East:

Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did, and it never will. Find out just what people will submit to, and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue till they have resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they suppress.

And this one, with that wondrous freedom—freedom of speech:

Liberty is meaningless where the right to utter one’s thoughts and opinions has ceased to exist. That, of all rights, is the dread of tyrants. It is the right which they first of all strike down.

The hilarious Rick Mercer, who is host of CBC’s aptly titled show The Rick Mercer Report, said about the 4,000-year-old Dire Straits song Money for Nothing, which was recently, pathetically and idiotically censored in Canada for use of the word ‘faggot’:

“…the song doesn’t offend me, because it’s all about context, and it’s a character line spoken by an ignorant person who is jealous of a glam rock and roll star.”

Now Rick might only be saying why the song doesn’t offend him, because it’s all about context. That’s fair, of course. But we’re in a country that espouses freedom and free speech. Real, tangible, practicing, vibrant freedom of speech actually has almost nothing (verging on nothing) to do with context. There may, of course, be some exceptions. But true free speech rests precisely on the right to say god-awful things, and to have that right defended (the right, not what’s being said) by others—even if we despise what is being said, and the person is an ignorant, hateful knob.

I like what was said by actor and comedian Scott Thompson, who is not only funny but gay. He was disgusted by the censorship:

“When you ban a word, you make the word more powerful. All this banning that’s going on just makes (the hate) go deeper and deeper into the soul, where it festers. Let it it out. I want to know what you really think. I can handle it.”

That’s an important point: by pushing this kind of pathetic, moralistic enforcement above the power of free speech, the ‘state/government’ is playing ‘parent,’ coercively, and to me, sickeningly, all the while increasing their Big Brother Power. This is, of course, worst in dictatorships. Either way, to play parent to adults is offensive to freedom: they are of course not parents at all. But when they attempt to play the role (and by definition that is the state), they even fail miserably at that. The worst parents by definition: constantly squabbling, lying, distant and largely unaccountable, rarely if ever apologizing (unless it’s politically expedient), making countless rules that very few people believe in and, of course, they are infantile, even criminal, with money. Imagine leaving so much debt that you’re actually stealing from your grandchildren!

STRONG CHILDREN

We actually used a quote from Frederick Douglass at the opening of Uganda Rising, about the brutal war in Northern Uganda:

It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.

I would not like to mess with Frederick Douglass—although I am sure he would allow and defend my free speech.

A ten-minute clip from Uganda Rising—this portion mostly about colonialism and the so-called Scramble for Africa.

Here’s to protecting everybody’s freedom, with intelligence and discernment, and expansive thought. A grand irony of freedom is that it requires stunning and intelligent restraint.

Pete xo

As the intense changes happen across the Middle East in this winter of 2011, I happened to see this news clip from the OPEC imposed Energy Crisis during the Yom Kippur War in October, 1973. It’s interesting to see. By summer 1974, I recall, gas station line-ups were massive. People used up more gas waiting to get to the pump than they were able to get from the pump itself. That’s the same feeling I get when I believe an advertisement.

This is so long ago, Tom Brokaw was a journalist, my boyhood hockey hero Yvan Cournoyer had won the Conn Smythe Trophy as Most Valuable Player in the NHL Play-offs and Tie A Yellow Ribbon Round The Old Oak Tree by Tony Orlando and Dawn was the years number one song (1973). Good times.

As for fuel conservation, here’s President Carter’s energy conservation speech of 1977. It certainly didn’t help with his re-election, and the solar panels he put up on the roof of the White House were taken down by the Gipper, Ronald Reagan, President of the Screen Actors Guild (a big union man, clearly).

Carter’s speech begins with the inspiring:

“Good evening. Tonight I want to have an unpleasant talk with you…”

Ah yes, the material world, constantly changing, constantly staying the same.

Pete

I had this hockey card in a drawer, with tons of other ones. One day, something happened, and all the cards were gone, along with my animal bone collection. I’m still looking for clues. If you know anything, please call…