There they go again, those Zionists and Crusaders!

Everyone has heard about the grievous transgressions of the West, the sacrilege of some backwater Danish newspaper portraying the Prophet. And the world of Islam, not at all recovered from these insults, no doubt somehow traceable to the Zionists and latter-day Crusaders -, now staggers amidst the rubble of one the Shia Muslims' most holy places, the Askariya Shrine in Samarra.

The obvious culprits - aside from those ubiquitously conniving Jews who many in the Arab world also are still certain are the perps behind the World Trade Center attacks - are Sunnis violently embittered by their loss of power when the US et al brought down Saddam's regime. Here, one cannot but be struck by what religious respect means among the Believers versus we, the Infidels. Let us travel back to early June 1967 when, as part of their rapid rout of their belligerent neighbours, Israeli forces entered Jerusalem and fought hand-to-hand to retake this ancient prime city of their faith at the spiritual centre of which was the site of Temple. On this holiest of site for Judaism, a mighty mosque had been built- Al-Aksa or "The Dome of the Rock". Much vaunted as Islam's third holiest site, some very good questions can be asked about just how revered the site was for Islam prior to 1967 and the Six Days War. Notwithstanding, invading/returning Israelis in 1967 were under the strictest military orders to forego the use of heavy artillery in the vicinity of the Dome as they pushed back Jordanian soldiers. As a result, that bloody, if short, battle resulted in no significant damage to the Mosque, probably at the cost of extra Israeli caualties sustained by virtue of their mandated reticence and respect in the vicinity of this Muslim holy place.

In the years that followed, quite understandably, devout Jews pushed hard to take down the Dome and rebuild the great Temple for whom more than a millenium of mixed Muslim and Christian authority in Jerusalem had shown no respect. Today, Muslim commentators ridiculously assert that Israel never allowed this to happen because of its fear of "retribution from the Muslim World": yeah, that's pretty credible - the Israeli government's 1969 ban on any practice of Jewish religious ceremonies beside the Dome(let alone razing the Dome)came came two short years after little Israel had kicked ass of its far more populous Muslim "neighbours."

What we saw then, what we see now, is a fundamental distinction between what is deemed to be sacred and inviolable - even among one's enemy's icons - between western democracies (including Israel therein) and the practiced radicalism of Islam.

Shalom...Salaam

A Better Storyline: Hooray for the Swiss!

After the Canadian hockey team fell to the nigh anonymous Swiss yesterday, the rah-rah commentators of the CBC quickly adjusted, rolling out the predictable "wake-up call" metaphor, as if our multi-millionaire squad's conquest by the Helvetians was just an obligatory chapter in the Bildungsroman of inevitable Canadian Olympic Gold. We Canucks so often point fingers at the American media coverage of international sports for its indubitably jingoistic flair. But this kind of post hoc rationalization in defeat - something we are rather good at through long practice - is just as bad, as our journalists neglect the better Cinderella storyline of the Swiss who have beaten two historic hockey powers in succession. This narrative is all the more intriguing in light of the fact that the most lopsided game in international history was Canada's drubbing of the same diminutive nation 33-0 way back in 1924. Surely the long and winding road from that ancient humiliation at Chamonix is a better plot than cliches about wake-up calls to spoiled pros! But for Canada the narrative of should-have-beens is pretty well-grooved.

Mine own awakening to the Olympics generally and the Canadian thema of rationalizing unexpected but almost inevitable defeat was in 1960 when world-record holding Harry Jerome pulled up lame in the gold medal final of the prestigious 100 metres. Shucks, I said, a word that I so often repeated until 1980 - when the Yanks had shown that true grit could beat out the Russians in hockey after all our own country's efforts had so long proven inexplicably fruitless. At that point, jubilant as I was with our great southern neighbour's triumph, I did some long overdue soul-searching and in good internationlist spirit, concluded that there was no valid reason at all to root primarily for athletes with whom I merely shared the accident of geographically proximate nativity.
(To be honest I had begun a curmudgeonish resistance to hometown fidelity long before that, growing up on Montreal's south shore and cheering on the Detroit Red Wings and the man who is still the greatest of them all, a case for which I shall make on, and you can look forward to until, his upcoming 78th birthday, March 31st).

Since that reflective revelation, I have always pulled for the underdog, which brings me back to my exquisite delight with yesterday's Swiss miracle. Getting blanked by unknowns couldn't have happened to a more deserving self-important assemblage than Team Canada and, especially to their Executive Director - whatever that is - the hockey personality for whom centerstage and limelight have become nothing short of an addiction. I refer of course to the man who despite his much-trumpeted epithet and scoring records, is about the 5th or 6th greatest player at best, in NHL history and who has managed to get his famously grinning visage centerstage whenever Team Canada wins, despite doing little other than making obvious picks for who is to play. Oh yes, he inspires them...as if the Olympic circumstance should not be enough for seasoned professional hockey players.

As the distinct possibility, I am hopeful, looms of no gold, perhaps even no medal, my mind casts back to late in the 1995-96 season when Gretzky whined himself into a trade from the lowly Los Angeles Kings to the more prospective St. Louis Blues quite openly stating that he wanted to play for a "real contender". Odd: other great players in pro sports have usually assumed that one's superb talents are supposed to be applied on the ice or field to making your team a contender, rather than fussing until you can be once again surrounded, as Gretzky was in his most triumphant Oiler days, with a champion-level mix of stars to help you and bullies to clear your path.

Well, who knows? Wayne's absence from the glare of defeat Saturday may not have been just a hangover from the Tocchet gambling affair or his lifelong situational shyness when his team has just taken a shit-kicking. Perhaps he was off trying to cage a deal to join up with the unbeaten Slovaks or Finns...or maybe even this year's "miracle on ice" little Switzerland. After all "the Great One" likes to be with real contenders.

Postcripts on Cartooning

Since my brethren in the Middle east will not let go of this bone, I must show no less perserverance.


I came across a news story that the Iranian newspaper, Hamshahri, has decided to exercise one of the less overtly violent protest options in response to the blasphemous West: a contest is underway for the best (funniest? most offensive?) cartoons about the Shoah (Holocaust). It is nice, I guess, that usually muzzled would-be political satirists of that paleolithic state, now have a sanctioned opportunity to be"creative." In announcing this, Hamshari's editor said, "The Western papers printed these sacrilegious cartoons on the pretext of freedom of expression, so let’s see if they mean what they say and also print these Holocaust cartoons." I do hope that our journals of record shall comply with these wishes, so that those in our midst who think Bush et al overrate the dangers flowing from the world of radical Islam, gain insight into the minds at work there. As a preview, here are a few readily found ouevres that the children of the Prophet have already demonstrated their artistic prowess with.

Fight Back - Buy Danish

There is a beautiful story -- which I was raised believing -- which really ought to be true: it is that of the brave Danish people, led by their King, donned yellow stars-of-David when the invading Nazis ordered all Jews to do so in 1941. Apparently this particular heroic is all myth, but accurately reflected the real courage of countless Danes who hid away or ferried their Jewish neighbours away from the jaws of the Shoah.

I am put in mind of the need for such solidarity in the face of the totalitarian mindset winning in the current furor over the cartoons of the Prophet. Throughout the Muslim world, the usual suspects -- gigantic drooling mobs of primarily youthful males with a smattering of stern looking elderly mullahs -- sweep through the streets looking for anything Danish to torch. Despite the more than sufficient-seeming apologies not only by the editor whose newspaper carried the Mohammed cartoon but by Prime Minister Rasmussen, this hooliganism continued and spread around the Muslim world. Likewise, boycotts were launched against Danish products, regardless of the affected companies and workers having had nothing to do with the original sin. Righteous outrage, of course, is never selective in its targets or collateral casualties.

Muslims in their own lands and even in the disapora of Europe and North America which, despite our insensitivity to Allah, have a powerful attraction for Middle Eastern immigrants, have every right to choose their own cheese, so to speak. And while reprehensible, even the right or ability to violate Western embassies is I guess, a time honoured tradition of the Muslim world. The True Believers must make their own choices, governed, sadly, by the mediaeval mentality that envelops and retards their worlds and driven, it now appears, by the concerted effort to foment these riots by what has been aptly called “a global fascist movement masking as religion”. The goal, let us be clear, is not simply revenge but intimidation, a muzzling of anyone in the West who, consistent with our ideals of free thought and speech, has the temerity to criticize or satirize the violent turn that a small but dangerously significant fraction of Muslims appear to have chosen. The killing of Dutch film-maker Theo van Gogh for his documentary on the ill-treatment of Muslim women, was, alas, the mere prelude to the well-orchestrated symphony of intimidation that Islamic Jihadists have in store for us.

Hordes of that cohort swarming through the streets burning flags, desecrating Christian sites, even assassinating innocent and unconnected “non-believers” have become commonplace. One cannot shake memories of tediously identical scenes of ferment bubbling over in Middle Eastern cities when a few of their more dedicated brethren commandeered planes into several architectural icons of American life on September 11, 2001. Largely we turn the other cheek at the plenitude of insults and worse dumped onto the places and symbols that Westerners treasure but are expected to don hair-shirts when a rather poorly executed cartoon violating Muslim sensibilities re-ignites their world of unceasing griping and gnashing.

I don’t doubt that many of the less Internet-able people here in Canada, the US and Europe would like to see just what the fuss is all about, exactly what the cartoon depicted. In our society under our customs of free speech and press we have every right to expect our media to have the guts to show the full story, inclusive of reproducing the source of all this moral outrage. Alas, fear and spinelessness have prevailed and, to my knowledge neither the major North American networks nor any of our principal newspapers have dared display the offending cartoon.* This monolithic self-censoring of the free world’s media has sent, an unequivocal and welcome message to Muslim extremists: burn a few flags and embassies, shoot a priest or two, shun some cheese and the mightiest nations on earth will bow down.

I hope that everyday citizens in the West will be less craven and, as one small step I come back to the beautiful myth about the star-of-David armbands. Let’s get out and strike our own delicious blow against the vicious mentality of the marauding hordes in the streets of Damascus, Beirut etc.: Purchase and proudly serve some creamy Havarti, a tangy Saga Blue, a smoky Rygeost, smelly Esrom and some unequalled Danish butter.

__________________________
* Update: I stand corrected. The Philadelphia Inquirer has drawn itself away from the flock of journalistic sheep and reproduced the egregious cartoons. At least in this case, I am inclined to concur with the posthumous W.C. Fields about where I'd rather be!

Guten Tag!

Many helpings of matjes herring later, I have returned from Deutschland. My apologies to loyal fans for making them go "cold grouse" all this time. I was five days in the great Hanseatic city of Hamburg attending a remarkable gathering led by Israeli scholar, Dan Bar-On at the Korber Foundation. The latter is an institution established by the late eponymous gentleman who got rich inventing a machine to put the tips on cigarettes but who had deeper avocations, to wit, ensuring that Europe never forgets recent history's lessons. After the sessions, I fast-trained it to Berlin where many hours were spent in the marvelous Judisches (Jewish) Museum there. It seemed fitting to come to this epicentre of the Shoah and so devote my time. Even more apt was learning what I had never absorbed before - that Berlin's Holocaust Memorial was plunked down right atop Adolf's bunker where, so belatedly, he cleansed the world of his own nauseous self. So much for the Final Solution; so much for the 1000-year Reich!

Two Grinnin' Grits on the Morning After

Despite victories in their home ridings, the 103 elected Liberals must feel bittersweet this morning after. Overall, the Grits didn't do all that bad, better than many polls predicted. Of course, critically, they held on to their Ontario plurality: that was a given. And they actually gained a seat in BC. As John Manley - who will not be the new leader - bespoke: "Well it's not just 2 seats" unsubtlely reminding us of the 1993 Tory humiliation. But still a night of somber sobriety it was ...except for two prominent Liberals who weren't even running.

One, of course, is Chretien whose enduring hatred for Paul Martin is a matter of record. He will be unconcealedly delighted with the ignonimous dumping of that persistently pesky pretender to his throne. Especial glee may come for Jean in contemplating that, whatever his own sullied "legacy", Martin's will inalterably be even lesser, a small piece added to the dusty miniature collection of prime ministers who never won a majority and, accordingly, didn't stay around long enough to have even back alleys named for them (e.g. Turner, Campbell).

The other Lib whose mirth may be really hard to contain in this pale blue dawn is the man who, I predict, in a surprisingly short time, will assure Stephen Harper's place amidst that same array of the soon-to-be-politically-forgotten: His Excellency, Frank McKenna. Methinks he'll quickly be winging home from Washington ready to inherit the mantle of Canada's Natural Ruling Party. Once the Liberals have reorchestrated under this glib New Brunswicker's baton, they will get busy undermining Harper's tenuous minority government -- which will not be all that hard to do. The strange and creepy fauna whom the Conservative election machine managed to gag for the past two months will come bobbing into public view from their customary abyss, readily giving the re-engineered McKenna Liberals more than enough ammunition to insure reclaiming their divine right of governance.

Getting Tough on Disruptive Foreign Elements

In the U.K., so-called “xenophobic” reactions to certain immigrants are, in my view, perfectly understandable, indeed should have come much, much sooner than they have to no-longer-so Merrie Olde England. For far too long, indeed generations, a way of life that was unique and admirable has steadily been eroded by an onslaught of aggressive outsiders, ones not even from the always avaricious but more closely related adjacent continent but from much further across seas real and virtual. These are aliens with no intention of mixing and mingling with indigenes who’ve inhabited that fair and mellow land for aeons.

To the contrary the foreigners have imported their own peculiar lifestyles and thereby narrowed the lebensraum of good Anglo stock. High time, indeed past time, that extreme action be taken. Over the years, some so-called experts, mostly soft-hearted as well as soft-headed, have counseled moderation to English folk. “Do nothing uncivil; this is, after all, England, the tolerance-loving land of John Stuart Mill! Just give them more time and they'll adjust and peacefully fit into the lifeways here."

Not so. A glance at the demographics alone proves almost indisputably that these “refugees,” as some may naively label them, are literally pushing natives out of niches that once were exclusively theirs. Already an ever diminishing proportion of that fair but finite Island remains in the kind of pure and natural state that the English “species” needs if it is to remain itself. The loud and loutish public behaviour of the newcomers terrorizes native populations whose reserve, even shyness, is so legendary. It seems only a matter of time until the rapacious spread of these immigrants will obliterate the local bio-culture and natural economy and, concurrently, destroy the physical environment that signifies the essence of what it is to be English.

And before you even think of it, forget merely trying to keep more of them from getting in. It’s whole decades too late for that. They’re here, already outnumbering original British stock by a shocking 66 to 1. They must be stomped or perhaps sterilized so that they can no longer breed like the rodents they are!

Accordingly, and reluctantly (from a purely humanitarian standpoint) the Grouse must applaud the announcement of a proactive eradication program targeting Sciurus caroliensis. Only in this way will the native British red squirrel,Sciurus vulgaris, hang on tenuously to the few outposts of Great Britain yet beyond the reach of the grey peril.

(For a more in-depth analysis of this unfolding tragedy, please consult the European Squirrel Initiative website.)

Misremembering Chretien's "Courage"

In desperation at their impending electoral boot in the arse, the Liberal Party has dredged up, rather ineffectively, it seems, Stephen Harper’s unambiguous support for the 2003 invasion of Iraq. In so doing they not only are busy fudging Paul Martin’s dubious stance on the issue but also perpetrating poppycock that is being swallowed by an ever-increasing proportion of Canada’s apparently amnesiacal population: that is that Jean Chretien was some kind of national and international strongman, a stalwart and defiant bastion against the indisputable bad judgment and bad intentions of our giant southern neighbour’s president.

Waiter: reality check, please! How soon, we forget the weeks of waffling and months of temporization before March 20th, 2003, when Chretien offloaded the dreadful choice at hand onto “international law” as represented by the collection of do-nothings and bad asses known as the U.N. Security Council. Even NDP leader Jack Layton, in correctly crapping all over Paul Martin’s Iraq credentials, lifts Chretien to Churchillian heights, as a lone and valiant guardian against a gathering military storm. Thus, in a campaign speech supposedly about public transit, Jack careened off course, as he is so inclined, to say: “Mr. Martin is wrapping himself in the courage of his predecessor…”

Courage? Huh? Or should I say, “Eh?” Have we forgotten both the impoverished rationale for non-engagement and the confusing, shilly-shallying verbiage of that “courageous” predecessor and his foreign affairs minion, Bill Graham? Do we not recall that it was way less than 48 hours before the Yanks struck that Chretien finally announced what Canada’s position was?

The reasoning and the timing reveal anything but courage – or even coherence. One may pore in vain over the reports of the Liberal deliberations and revelations of the time for a lucid statement or position justifying the now commonplace image of a stalwart leader. Did Chrétien ever doubt, let alone dispute the likelihood of WMDs based on Saddam’s earlier liberal use of chemical and biological warfare and the suspicious Osiraq nuclear facility which the Israelis wisely reduced to rubble in 1981? Not at all: indeed, his boy Bill, summing up the basis for Canada’s position to Parliament on the very day of the invasion, mused about why all this had happened:

What then are the lessons that I draw from the past few days? First, I would say that Saddam Hussein acquired weapons of mass destruction. This is clearly what started this and what brought us to where we are.

Chrétien and his coterie no more questioned WMDs than did Bush or Blair at the time. Indeed, at least according to then-Cabinet minister, Sheila Copps, the Prime Minister had a Canadian-style pint-sized brigade all ready to head for Iraq but got talked out of it by herself. Nor did he ever challenge the terrorist connection the Americans asserted, despite the preposterous notion of an alliance between the secular Ba’athists – who routinely included Islamic militants in their murderous swath of repression - and the Wahabi-spouting devotees of Osama?

Chretien’s barely intelligible mutterings throughout the long drawn months as Bush and the Brits rattled their sabres, were all about deferring to whatever the U.N. Security Council (not a nicety that Chretien gave two hoots about when Canada was indeed among the most bellicose participants in NATO’s bombing of Serbia). But this time around, Chretien was ready to jump off any cliff if -- but only if – selected external powers sitting at the Security Council table, said okay. Our much-trumpeted and over-stated national reputation as peacekeepers, indeed any real sovereignty was to be gladly signed over to the say-so of the same clique who fiddled while Rwanda burned, who, now, for two years have dithered about whether the 6-figure killings in Darfur are really genocide and who despite the wordy bluster of Resolution 1441, did little but chatter as Saddam thumbed his nose at weapons inspectors and the world. This is how, and only how, Chretien set his and our nation’s moral compass re the Iraq invasion.

Chrétien’s belated, garbled and thinly-justified position on the American adventure was so bafflingly feckless through the long build-up to war, that analysts had to look elsewhere for an explanation. It could not escape notice that, with his licked finger ever to the domestic political wind, Chrétien was closely watching the reaction from notre société distincte, the one that has consistently opposed military action, since Confederation. Old political fox that he was, Chretien could see that the deployment of Canadian troops to full combat would be a gift to the Bloc and their PQ confreres, something he could never stomach.

This was no admirable mighty-mouse stand for Canada against the 800-pound Yankee gorilla, no shining exemplar of international morality, just quintessential Chretien doing, at the eleventh hour and fifty-ninth minute what any natural born snake-oil man would: play righteous big-shot to the gullible.

And, I suppose, it is further testament to his guile, - not courage - that the myth survives, nay, thrives, of how and why he and his colleagues did what they did amidst March 2003’s “shock and awe”.

Blood on Yonge or, Whose Life Matters Anyway?

It is not all that surprising that in our milquetoast fair dominion the ugly and deadly Boxing Day gunplay in Toronto would prompt such a feckless reaction as Paul Martin’s. One might have hoped, what with his overdue promises about handgun control – promises made only when, for the first time in 17 months, he lacked the power to act upon them – in responding to the tragedy, Martin would have zeroed in on wiping up and out Toronto’s endemic street scum.

Instead what does he say? "I think more than anything else they (the shootings) demonstrate what are, in fact, the consequences of exclusion.” If only those otherwise sweet lads brandishing the Remingtons and Colts felt that the rest of us really loved them, they'd turn in their guns for frisbees, right?

Martin blubbered this out, of course, without knowing diddley about the identity and backgrounds of the perpetrators, how included or excluded this subhuman trash actually were or felt they were from Canadian society. Toronto already teems with publicly and privately funded programs on youth unemployment, the alienation and unemployment experienced by recent immigrants and their families, and a myriad of broader multi-culturalism and youth initiatives. But all Martin knows is (quoting the Globe and Mail), “... how young people in the city's violence-plagued Jane-Finch neighbourhood spoke to him about their sense of hopelessness and isolation." That cinches it, causally speaking, doesn't it? As if youth alienation isn’t ubiquitous in neighbourhoods and communities throughout Canada, the vast majority of which do not host and suffer violent gangbangers.


In this, Martin - never accused of having an original thought on his mind or lips - blindly spewed out the bilge that overflowed when those worthless hooligans terrorized Paris for three weeks earlier this fall. Punks who wanted nothing more than the fun of what Olivier Roy called playing “cowboy and Indians” with the cops, were elevated there too, to figures of existential Fanon-esque angst and disadvantage.

All this is nothing more than the widespread soft-focus and soft-headed sociology whereby criminals are implicitly and – in egregious instances as with Martin’s apologia for the Boxing Day bloodshed – even explicitly excused for their offenses.

The youth we should be caring about and protecting by coming down like a sledgehammer on young hoodlums, are ones like the late Jane Creba. If we want to talk about the system failing anyone, surely it is a 15-year old who, unlike her killers, was making something of her life, a life snuffed out by superfluous social rubbish on Yonge Street.

Consequences, friends, dire consequences – that is what the beast must have to curtail its vilest behaviours. The youth gangs of Toronto need not inclusivity, empathy and the like but to feel ultimate mortal terror of harsh consequences, something their lousy parents could never instill in them as they grew into the kind of twisted little fucks who'd run around shooting guns on a busy downtown street.

The Lequesne-McKay Centre

A recent correspondent to Prince George's journal of record, made a provocative and excellent suggestion which, alas, has been summarily disregarded by Mayor and Council. It was that the ill-conceived agreement that renamed the city's Multiplex after Canadian National be rescinded in recognition of (a) the fact that the most of our citizens were vehemently against the original BC Rail sale boondoggle; (b) that CN doesn't seem to be able to keep its trains on the tracks and (c) that the corporation has shown an utterly irresponsible and reprehensible disposition towards the widows of its dead employees, killed because of CN's negligence. Mayor Kingsley and CN boss McLean were seen grinning like Cheshires last April when news of our municipal prostitution the CN John was first bally-hooed.

All over Canada, cities are sucking up to corporations who, generally for a pitifully small investment, can have their names plastered all over facilities that have been predominantly paid for by us taxpayers. I was recently in Victoria and in looking about for a grocery store, thought I had come upon a "Save-On" only to realize that that company has so prominently splashed its logo on the new memorial
centre that it looks like just another of Jimmy Pattison's stale food emporia.

What is PG getting? A whopping $1.3 million over 15 years! I mean, there are undoubtedly middling call girls in Vancouver, perhaps even Prince George, who make that for puckering it up for big shots with fat wallets.

How much more pride we could take in our facility -- and our city -- if, as the unheeded Citizen correspondent suggested, the facility were renamed after Art McKay and Ken Lequesne who died when the collapse of one CN's poorly maintained railroad bridges near McBride, BC, sent their freight train tumbling into a ravine

CBC - All Quiet on the Klander Front

Has anybody noticed the unnoticeable? Seems that Mike Klander, the Executive Vice President of the Ontario Liberals may have imbibed a bit more than his limit of Christmas cheer and committed the unspeakable crime of blogging on about what he saw as similarities between Jack Layton's candidate wife, Olivia Chow and the eponymous dog breed. As a result, the guilty party has been defrocked, forced to resign his post, no doubt to the great if belated amusement and satisfaction of Sheila Copps whose failure to win re-nomination in Hamilton in 2004 had much to do with the machinations of public relations guru Klander. (Update Flash: Sheila has now stepped out of the shadows to comment on how Klander's utterances are entirely consistent with the demeanour of Martin's locker-room's banter.)

Well, perhaps the crime and its consequence are just too shocking for the Canadian public to deal with or maybe the story just got washed away by CBC's obsessive memorializing about last year's Asian tsunami, but nary a breath of this sordid tale of candidate or canine defamation has made the cut in the CBC radio broadcasts I have heard. I would have thought that this was right up there with the beer and popcorn faux pas as evidence of just what kind of handlers our PM and his party surround themselves with!

Coda:

The CBC has something to learn from the Libs on fast and timely media management, for already this morning, in a visit to the website wherein the Liberal Party of Ontario's executive is profiled, one looks in vain for the smiling face or name of one Mike Klander.

Klander in Happier Times

Picking Your Own

The New York Times "Public Editor" column - an avenue for the recently much besieged world journal of record to confront the concerns of its increasingly disaffected readership - today is about the recent annual selection of the year's 100 "most notable" books. Each December, I carefully study that list and inevitably, despite reading the NYT Book review most every week, profit by encountering works hitherto unseen. Last week's much-awaited list however left me with a queasy feeling, for, it turned out that the recent literary endeavours of authors who double as Times' columnists was somewhat generously represented in the list. The fact that these well circulated "best lists" have an indubitable marketing benefit, adds to the disquiet.

I cannot really take credit for the Public Editor having chosen to single out and address this concern today, especially since I only muttered to myself and promptly forgot about it. But others apparently did more and so Mr. Calame, the purported "reader's representative" disgorged several hundred impeccable bons mots in response. This piece actually strayed from the specifics of "100-best" cronyism into an insightful, more general essay on how reviewers are chosen for book reviews. Interesting as this was, it is a matter somewhat distinct from the precipitating problem of, it turns out, annointing no fewer than six Timespeople to the century of the chosen for 2005.

Towards the end of his column, Mr. Calame did swing back to the procedure for the year-end 100-best, one that I find a bit less than satisfying:

"The selection starts with about 400 reviewed books that had jumped quickly to the paper's best seller list or been cited as an Editor's choice during the year..." Selling like hotcakes does not really seem a very satisying criterion of notability while the second seems to say nothing more than a Popeye-like we choose what we choose because we chose it.

Ubiquitously, less noble and less high-minded institutions grapple all the time with what is clearly and merely conflict of interest. In so doing, the twin-barrelled test is almost inevitably whether a choice is a conflict of interest, but also if it looks like one. If the New York Times wants to lift itself from the mire of recent reputation-tarnishings (the Judith Miller affair and the more general gullibility about Iraq's WMD) not to mention, be once again above the throng of lesser journals, it should deal with this no-brainer by automatic, no ifs, ands or buts, disqualifying its own "family members" from ineluctably subjective and potentially self-enriching in-house evaluations.

Imagine!

I don't know precisely where I was when, exactly a quarter century ago today, the news of John Lennon's death outside the Dakota on Central Park reached me. So,no, it wasn't as big as the Kennedy assassination nor 9/11 in that sense of burning a indelible brand of one moment onto my memory. But it did leave me and lot of others who grew up with the Beatles - which I guess is the notorious boomer generation - feeling utterly empty, utterly and unwillingly grown-up.

At that very moment, our youth and the long lingering twilight of the 1960s was done for. One of the three or four icons of that passing era joined history. Instantly, I (and no doubt many others) put away, at least for a respectable mourning period, our grudges towards Lennon and his (we always thought) ill-chosen life-mate. We had to accept as never before that the dream of seeing those four mop-top boys on stage together again was even more impossible than post-Yoko. The demise of the Beatles had traumatized an entire generation unused to permanent separation (in the way that our own children have acclimatized to the absurd prevalent divorce rate). Lennon's death sealed that split and we all were thrown into the hopper of the never-ceasing mills of passing time, forced to watch other bands, some pretty good, supersede our heroes. These new musical giants, like U2, the Police and Supertramp were mostly younger than us - damn it! - and we now found ourselves defending the Beatles' superiority to much younger friends and offspring, much as our own parents reacted to the fab four's "greater-than-Jesus" popularity, by muttering about how we shoulda' seen Bing Crosby or Frank Sinatra in their primes.

A few preposterous moments outside the Dakota 25 years today uncomfortably reminded us of what was already long gone. So here's to the memory of John - and, ultimately, to the memory of the rest of us for whom his death spelled belated childhood's end.

TREVISO - End of a Short, Sweet Life

For the apparently all too few patrons of that brief flaring star of Prince George cafes,Treviso, any joys of this Yuletide not already dampened by the shenanigans of Mssrs. Martin, Layton, Harper and Duceppe, have been severely reduced by its recent closing. Apparently named for an Italian city about PG's size, Treviso unabashedly called itself, "...where Prince George meets the world." Alas, not often enough.

More than any other cafe in BC's Northern Capital, Treviso dripped ambience. Red couches arranged in little alcoves, separated by sheer curtains; avant-garde art adorning the loft-like space; even TV in the john; super sophisticated mags for your idling pleasure; Friday and Saturday night light jazz piano; fine coffee, an electic snacky kind of menu ranging from homemade wonton soup to baguette sandwiches, and - drum roll please - simply the best damn milkshakes this side of heaven. But now, like snow upon the desert's dusty face, gone, lighting a little hour or two, it's gone.

The hens-teeth scarce customers who frequented Treviso while broken-hearted, cannot be surprised at this passing. There were probably a dozen alcoves that could have seated 4 or 5 friends each and yet I never saw more than a handful of folks partaking in the whole echoing chamber. What would have been an otherwise comfy atmosphere was quite dimished by this client deficit and the sense of foreboding it created.

Like the old mostly overly simplistic adage goes, Treviso's problem was "location, location, location." The far from anything else mini-mall Treviso was in has other vacancies as well as several tenants whose customers would come and find them no matter where they were situated - All Mobile Veterinary Clinic, Ospika Pets and Papyrus printing and copying. But none of these generate the flow of walk-by traffic that Treviso desperately needed.

I never even knew the owner-operator's name but I want to thank him for his pluck, his panache and milkshakes that made a bigger person out of me.

Bologna in Kelowna

The thin altitude gathering of Canadian political and Aboriginal elites in Kelowna, B.C. last week left me uncharacteristically speechless for several days. I have recovered. I have found voice.

Together in the sumptuous Grand Okanagan, “nestled on the crystal waters” of the eponymous lake, were the usual high-rolling suspects - hotel Indians, mealy-mouthed politicians and assorted wannabees, has-beens and never-wases who have buzzed around “the Indian Problem” like shitflies these many years.

From all the bally-hoo one could naively take this to be an historic moment, a new and guiding light in a world hitherto under the "long and terrible shadow". Canada’s arguably premier cross-country Native organization, the Assembly of First Nations must be getting tender hands from all its recent clapping having first loudly “applauded” Martin’s residential school initiative and now, putting their hands together vigourously for the "historic meeting" in Kelowna.

Yet there was something very retro in the air, redolent of the old White Paper advanced by the Liberals per heap big Indian agent of the day, Johnny Chretien, back in 1969.The basic premise then as now is throw what looks like a lot of money at First Nations
and they’ll steadily transmogrify into little simulacra of the Anglo mainstream. Despite the loud noises about “healing”, this is a classic instance of choosing symptomatic relief over confronting systemic causes.

As always there were lots of aspiring beneficiaries noisily lining up for the pecuniary slop about to be poured into the acculturative trough. Indeed, media coverage of the odd dissenting Aboriginal voice turned up only little piggies who just didn’t shoulder themselves into the first row fast enough and were thus squealing predictably.

But where were the champions to decry the blatant make-shift band-aid measures that equate Aboriginal grievance with the under-servicing of any poor people and communities? Where are the heroes of Kahnasetake, Ipperwash, Gustafson Lake and Lubicon and the myriad thoughtful advocates whose penetrating diagnoses rang throughout the multi-year Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples? Where, in a single word, was the issue of land – and its theft with all the social debilitations that flow there from?

The highly manicured output from Kelowna, titled “Strengthening Relationships and Closing the Gap” asserted in opening paragraphs that immediate action was needed in “four important areas” – health, education, housing and relationships. The first three are political gimmes –sectors that uncontroversially lead the wish-list of Canadian public expenditure whether from Kitsilano or Kashechewan. Thus did the final communiqué announce a dole-out of a bit more money for First Nations in those areas although not a heckuva lot (see “Kelowna Math 101” below). Notwithstanding, agreement on health was not reached which, to my suspicious mind, looked like a pre-orchestrated agreement-not-to-agree on at least one item, lest the attending Native big-shots looked too much like Martin yes-men, lest the whole farce be seen for the concocted non-event it was.

And of relationships, that buzz word that got first billing in the title? Well, if you were expecting some mechanism that offered profound inter-cultural dialogue and healing … get serious! The First Nations' top-dogs came away with an invite to an annual pow-wow (like there haven’t been enough of these before, eh?), this time called the “First Nations Multilateral Forum”. This means that once a year the same high fallutin’ drones from the small but powerful Native ruling class will get to do it up brown, roast goose and all the trimmings, just like Kelowna all over again. That should really heal the relationship as called for in the Royal Commission.

What is really needed on the front lines is not warm-and-fuzzies betwixt the likes of Martin, Campbell, Fontaine etc., but direct and sustained dialogue between you, me and the folks living out of sight on countless reserves and in the Aboriginal urban cores where fear among and of the Native community abounds. There are serious models and approaches potentially useful for dialogue-based cross-cultural healing. But don’t hold your breath for such initiatives to arise from gourmet shindigs like the one at the Grand Okanagan.

* * * * * *
Kelowna Math 101

The commitment by a Government that had one weekend left until its mandate was inevitably squashed by a forthcoming no-confidence motion, was for 5 years, $5.1 billion. Easy math here, that’s about $1.02 B’s per annum. There are 1.3 million beneficiaries (2001 census of Canadians of Aboriginal ancestry), so there’s a whopping $3,923.08 increment of, no doubt, carefully spent and heavily administered poverty alleviation for every Aboriginal man, woman and child, every blessed year. And just by way of context, the budget for Canada’s Internal Colonial Administration (sometimes known as Indian and Northern Affairs Canada) was $5.8 billion for fiscal year 2004-5 and had actually been slated to decrease by $233 million this fiscal year.

Sorry Seems to Be the Hardest Word

Yesterday, one - and I must stress just one - of the major sources of grievance for Canada's indigenous peoples was addressed through the agreement in principle on residential schools. Indeed, it was quite a day for redress of all sorts (with the keyword being Indian albeit different usages thereof ) The Honourable Ann McLellan had also reached lightning conclusion to accept Bob Rae's Air Indian ruminations and hastily name him to fill the post of commissioner of inquiry, Bob had suggested (see for comment and links the immediately preceding entry below). But the busy Min also found time to announce Justice Frank Iacobucci's hard won deal for at-long-last compensation for Natives who'd been in the residential school system.

It would be much worse than a grouse to in any way detract from the legitimacy of this belated redress notwithstanding the ambient odour of the imminent federal election. This has been a long time coming. The residential school system, along with smallpox and the various laws that long existed to consign Canada's Original Peoples to the bottom of the social heap, left a tragic legacy in native communities, one that has echoed forward into the lives of today's youth in ways that many of them -like the rest of us - can hardly fathom. (Click here for the chapter on Residential Schools in the 1996 Final Report of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples)

What I do want to draw attention to first, however, was the concurrent refusal of the Minister to include an apology as part of the announcement. It's understandable if unattractive that while compensation negotiations are unfolding, a guilty party is hesitant to say its sorry for what it did. But are we not well past that now? Could our government not show a little more class and remorse than just to mutter about regrets as if our First Nations were victims of some externally caused natural disaster rather than the targets of brutal acculturative policy?

The level of compensation is also less than impressive at least if you cast your mind back to settlements with other aggrieved parties such as...the Right Honourable Brian Mulroney who received a tidy $2 million -- and a formal apology - after suffering the indignities of the Airbus affair. Now, I am not one of the many Mulroney-bashers and did not begrudge that settlement. But I can't help but compare the level of suffering, such as it was, that the former P.M. endured to the miserable lifetimes, indeed inter-generational traumas, foisted upon Canada's native population. It has been claimed with justification that no aboriginal person alive today has been unaffected by the residential school system. So, just for a lark, take Mulroney's settlement and multiply that times the roughly estimated numbers of Canadian Natives (about 1.2 million). The resulting national bill if we were to admit that their hardships were no less than Brian's? 2.4 trillion - more than a thousand times higher than the package now being so heartily endorsed across Canada,

That should put in perspective the cost of a simple but wide and thorough "sorry".