Hillary, Meet the Canadian Chicken Littles

NOTE: ON APRIL 16TH MY LETTER WHOSE NON-PUBLICATION IN PART SPARKED THIS POST LAST WEEK, SPRANG TO LIFE ON THE OP-ED PAGE OF THE CITIZEN, FOR WHICH THANKS. THIS HAPPENED AFTER I EMAILED THE URL FOR THIS BLOG TO THE NEWSPAPER - A RESPONSE CAME THAT THEY HAD NOT SEEN THE ORIGINAL, AN ODD MISPLACEMENT SINCE I MAINTAIN QUITE AN ACTIVE CORRESPONDENCE. BUT THERE IS A FIRST FOR EVERYTHING AS CAPT. EDWARD SMITH MUSED TO HIMSELF FROM THE BRIDGE OF THE TITANIC, LO THESE 98 YEARS AGO! STILL, THOUGH ALL IS FORGIVEN, I'LL LET MY ORIGINAL FIT OF PIQUE STAND, FOR IN IT THE AVID READER MAY TAKE SOME AMUSEMENTS...

I have been waiting patiently all week for the local journal of record, the Prince George Citizen to carry my spirited rebuttal to an editorial in which they roundly castigated Hillary Clinton for having dared to answer honestly a question posed by CBC's George Stroumboulopoulos. Alas, the good editors have not seen fit to share with other readers the fruits of my insights on the matter. Thus must I resort, as is my wont, to grousing.

A couple of contextual things minor and not. On the minor side, those of you who are disadvantaged by not waking up to this crisp little paragon of journalistic endeavour, the Citizen, should know that one of the most common applications of the readers' privilege of getting their letter published, is this kind of thing (made-up but close to the usual form and literary merit):

I really want to thank whoever stole the little Black Sambo lawn ornaments from my house on Bumtickle Street. My late mother gave Shirley and me them for our silver wedding anniversary. So I hope you enjoy them whoever you are.

This kind of razory riposte comes forth from the readership almost as frequently as creationist and homophobic screed.

The other more important background in case you missed it - and my American fans who have bigger things to occupy them may well have - is that when Hillary replied ever so tactfully to direct questions about the US disposition to Canada's announced 2011 departure from the Afghan NATO mission, there followed loud caterwauling across this fair Nation's op-ed media. The Winnipeg Free Press dubbed her Hurricane Hillary, noting her bluntness on Afghanistan as well as Canada's duplicitous stance on abortion and occluded approach to international diplomacy regarding the Arctic.

The Globe and Mail's Lawrence Martin, apparently never having read the source transcripts on Strombo's question and Hillary's answer, called for Clinton to get a hearing aid; hadn't Canada been clear enough on its impending pull out for some time, he demanded? Of course, Hillary's actual answer showed nothing but crystal clear awareness of the Canadian position and probably more respect than this arbitrarily dated pull-out policy deserved. Perhaps -- a wag might say -- it was Mr. Martin's communicative organs that need upgrading?


Not to be out-shouted by his journalistic betters, the tiny imperfect local Prince George paper lashed out at Mrs. Clinton with such gems of reasoning as this: "...one hopes Clinton didn't see the death of Cpl. Fitzpatrick, the 141st Canadian soldier to die in Afghanistan - and the resurgence of interest in the war it has generated across the country - as a pretext to contradict the Tories." Fitzpatrick was the first Prince George-born Canadian soldier to die in Afghanistan and his memorial services the day before the Citizen's editorial naturally riveted local attention. But one has to have some pretty ludicrous visions of grandeur to imagine that as Hillary chose her words in response to Strombo's question, foremost in her mind was the goings on in odoriferous little Prince George, BC, 3000 miles away.

But to repeat, despite my best efforts to set the Citizen straight on this, they seemingly have deep-sixed my anti-flatulent elixir for editorial bloat. Thus here in its bullshit-cutting entirety, the not-to-be-seen letter:

Dear Editor,

Canadians have a very bipolar disposition when it comes to Americans stating their views about us or about matters pertaining to us. We maintain apocryphal notions of how little the USA cares and knows about us but then when a high-ranking official like Hillary Clinton ever so tactfully indicates that our presence as a continuing ally in Afghanistan would be welcome, there pours out the kind of bombast and hyper-defensiveness seen in both the editorial and editorial cartoon in today’s Citizen (Saturday, April 3).

It is hard to grasp how what Mrs. Clinton actually did say could lead to such bloviating. In the wide-ranging interview that has caused such offense CBC’s George Stroumboulopoulos naturally got around to Afghanistan and Hillary’s first response only praised Canada as a great ally whose forces “have been superb.” After further kibitzing about Americans and Canadians playing hockey in Kandahar, the interviewer asked straight out, how Hillary felt about Canada’s scheduled pull-out. Given that the American policy which Obama (with Hillary) developed so painstakingly for months is well-known, what else could she say but the extraordinarily temperate statement about Americans regretting the Canadians’ leaving. Her remarks, as Citizen’s editor admits have not worried knowledgeable foreign policy experts a whit.

But still came the howls and teeth-gnashing of Canadian editorialists, displaying the behaviour more of a thin-skinned adolescent who can’t take the mildest criticism than of a supposedly mature neighbour. To go on to imply that Hillary could have even further tempered her remarks in light of Cpl. Fitzpatrick’s death is to push this self-centered hot air to the furthest outpost of overstatement.

Still, I am glad that the Citizen has now raised the connection between that tragic loss and Canada’s position on military withdrawal. For it brings forth the question we should be asking: if Afghanistan was worth dying for in 2010, what will have magically changed that makes such sacrifice utterly unthinkable beyond 2011? I never thought the mission had prospects for success midst the endless turmoil of that sad country, but I fail to see that anything but the calendar will change next year, certainly not whatever underlying rationale took young Fitzpatrick away from here and, then, ended his promising young life. Thank you, Hillary for helping us get real in pondering such literally grave matters.

Lovingly,
Norm

Thoughts on the Death of a Prince George Soldier

Today they bury Corporal Darren James Fitzpatrick here in his home town, Prince George, BC, otherwise known as BC's Northern Capital, or, by a select fewer, the home territory of the Grouse's Perch. The young man's death has surfaced all the kudos and patriotism one might expect when locals are involved. Thus phlegmatic local journalist and blogger, Ben Meisner, for example, is today defiantly asserting pretty well nothing new in tribute to the fallen youth,as he concludes his opinion article, as usual, "I’m Meisner and that’s one man’s opinion." Shouldn't be very hard to defend an airy opinion that amounts to nothing more than admonishing us to respect the dead. Meisner, like, I would guess, most Prince Georgians and all too many Canadians, is willing (I paraphrase Meisner) to "leave it to people with a better understanding" as to whether the sacrifice is worth it.

Coincidentally, the national news gab in Canada on this funereal Tuesday, whirls around some rather mild remarks made by US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, which unsurprisingly reiterated that the Americans would like Canada to remain beyond the highly artificial pull-out deadline of 2011. Her words as exactly as reported by CBC: "But I'm not going to sit here and tell you we're happy about it because … that wouldn't be telling you the truth. We'd love to have Canada stay in this fight with us. But again, you know, you've got your own considerations and we respect that."

More pretty harmless stuff but, like they say, when your sleeping with an elephant even a mild fart can get your attention.

The question I have as we bury Darren today is why, if it is worth battling the Taliban and Al-Qaeda baddies this year, worth seeing young Canadians whose lives have hardly begun lowered into graves, is there something that magically changes and makes it no longer worthwhile in 2011.

No, Meisner, such illogical decision making is not in the hands of anyone who "knows better" than you or I. The mission in Afghanistan is either worthwhile now (and will remain so in 2011) or not. Under the leadership of a man whose brains are so scrambled that one year he drips apologetic verbiage to Native people for the historic harm they've suffered and the next, claims Canada has no history of colonialism, we had better start thinking this one out ourselves and making it clear to the Pols just how much we are willing to sacrifice or not, and why. Then perhaps, all those Darren Fitzpatricks will be at rest.

Resistance a la Canadienne

I really must be brief because I'm on a bit of writing roll in some studies I'm doing about parallels between Canada's continuing colonization of indigenous peoples and the life of one Gitskan ex-offender. That study zeroes in on the idea of resistance and how, within the well-laid strictures of Canadian society, individuals can find the elbow room to resist.

Along comes this preposterous brouhaha about the remarks Bloc Quebecois leader, Gilles Duceppe, made to the separatist faithful. The now oft-translated text was exactly this:

"For now, we're members of a resistance movement. But members of today's resistance movement are tomorrow's victors. Long live a sovereign Quebec!"

It's not that complicated a statement and utterly consistent both with the lengthy history of separatiste conviction and, more broadly, historic and worldwide independence movements. Fact is, the land that is now Quebec was invaded and conquered by a different cultural-linguistic nationality 250 years ago. Organized opposition to the outcome of this conquest is what resistance means.

However, the combination of Canada's mediocre journalistic mainstream -- who haven't had a figure skater with a dead mother to blather about for a few weeks -- and the no less mediocre morass of federal politicians in government and opposition who need to distract us from their own incapacities -- these social groups have combined to extrapolate wildly from Duceppe's quite legitimate statement of aspirations.

As if the word "resistance" have never had any other connotation, the first step in their dumb and transparent elision was to hold forth that Duceppe was comparing himself to the famed French resistance of World War II. Notwithstanding that Duceppe has validly pointed out the broader usage of the term "resistance" in social change movements and, specifically, his inspiration from writings of Pierre Vadeboncoeur, the late Quebec union activist, bleating MPs continued their duplicity inferring that if Duceppe saw himself as a French resistor, he was saying the Canadian Government were like the Nazis.

Blowhards like Foreign Affairs Lawrence Cannon and the vastly disappointing Liberal leader, Michael Ignatieff, seized upon this nonsense no doubt to divert us from their own obvious shortcomings. Internal email memos puffed up with righteous indignation with statements such as “It seems that Gilles Duceppe has forgotten that Canadians, including Quebeckers, bravely fought Nazism during World War II.” Good grief!

What this is all symptomatic of is the utter shallowness of what federalist populations understand about Quebec sovereigntist agenda and, really, about sources of pride in this thing called Canada. It is as if, no longer having torch-toting Olympic propaganda to cheer about, the masses need an even more ridiculous focus for waning pseudo-nationalism. Let's create an enemy that we can all be offended by as a distraction from a government, indeed a parliament that's nothing to be proud of.

Brings to my mind another far-fetched (maybe) analogy such as when Hitler's thugs burned down to the Reichstag and then blamed it on Jews and Communists. That's how false claims can bolster up an otherwise morally bankrupt regime. As I now return to my essay about internal colonialism, especially recalling Mr. Harper's erasure of Canada's shameful history of colonial suppression of Natives, I'm thinking that perhaps the analogy Duceppe never intended about Nazis and the Canadian government, fits not all that badly.

REDUX III - Where have All the Ooli-gone?

Alas this reduxed article remains as timely now as many springs ago when it was written. The Bella Coola River where once this many-named oiliest of smelt abounded in early spring, is unlikely to see much more than stragglers for the 12th straight year. What is even more irksome, is that after such a long time with the Nuxalk (Bella Coola) Natives and others pressing for the Department of Fisheries and Oceans to do something about this ecological disaster, the grapevine just yesterday brought forth news that the Fraser River eulachon (with that geographic specificity) is being considered under Canada's Species at Risk procedures. This perpetuates DFO's ignoring and ignorance of the far greater and more recent cultural significance of the eulachon in remoter northern areas than in the churning grey sewage pit known as the Fraser River estuary! This is an indigenous treasure and with all due respect, the Fraser First Nations have not exactly made diminished eulachon the high priority as have their more northern coastal brothers and sisters.

But as with the Olympic transfusions of public dollars from poorer regions to the richest, apparently, it is still the Lower mainland that will always get the goods.

So without further ado... an old but still relevant Grouse from the past(April, 2002):

*****

Where have all the ooli-gone?

[Warning: A not very funny Grouse column lies ahead -- and I heard you wags saying "so what's new?"]

For the fourth consecutive year that wee fish of legendary greasiness, Thaleichthys pacificus has failed to return in any worthwhile numbers to the Bella Coola River. Indeed, field surveys turned up less than a dozen as well as a puzzling small flux of eggs drifting seaward.

Lest I infringe upon the customary terrain of my journalistic neighbour Mr. Trischler,(a fisheries biologist who also had a column in the Coast Mountain News at the time of writing) I shall not linger long on the bio-ecology behind this. Which is easy because the level of scientific knowledge about oolichan is nothing less than an embarrassment for a country with Canada's reputation in fisheries biology. Our aquatic scientists have done ten times more research on sticklebacks! And on "really valuable" species -- i.e. ones whose primary significance is "making real money" -- well they seem to get at least one trained ichthyologist per spawner!

Au contraire for the fish of many spellings (ooligan, ullachun, eulachon, olachen, hoolican. etc). Venerated as it may be by First Nations it has been subject to a perilous neglect, scientifically and managerially, whose consequences are now dreadfully manifest. Through the years of this very real crisis, and in the absence of any long or deep baseline information, little more could be done than to wring hands and mutter about the effects of El Nino.

Alas one thing we do know is that the vast majority of these smelt cousins live only three years. It takes neither a biologist nor mathematician to deduce that if it's been four since they graced the Bella Coola in any significant numbers, they are as Monty Python, said of the infamous dead parrot, "history, kaput, finis, ceased to be, gone to meet their maker, bereft of life, and joined to the choir invisible." An ex-oolichan run.

And the response beyond Bella Coola - other than one or two scientists running about here and there looking for traces and some belated "Species at Risk" funding, Canadian society has been a shrug or less. Leaving aside the bio-disaster of all this, I want to speak of the cultural tragedy but that is not mine to tell. It is the Nuxalk's. They are the ones who could explain, if asked, what it means to have your larder and medicine chest stripped of this live-giver, to no longer be able to show your kid how to make grease or trade the stuff for goods and good will with neighbouring oolichan-less peoples. And to see irrevocably shattered this primeval bond between generations alive and departed.

I can only recount two little stories to convey in miniature what has been lost. Both are from the one and only oolichan-spring I've lived through since coming to Bella Coola nigh five years back. We'd moved into Ivan Tallio's home on the river in October 1997 and were delighted to realize how close at hand were the shacks and stinkboxes the Nuxalk used to make oolichan grease. Years before I had worked with a Da’naxda’xw hereditary chief whose territory was at the mouth of the Kleena Kleene on Knight's Inlet. I had been invited but not had the two weeks to spare for the journey to his remote camp of cultural immersion in someone else's rites of spring.

Now, here in Bella Coola, I had literally a front row seat in my La-Z-Boy as thorough my picture window I could see the natural and human rhythm of the oolichan's return. Come the last full moon in March the aerial reveries of gulls and eagles foretold the wondrous event. Soon, River Road was humming. In the thick of it all was a man who I'd seen do little else all winter but wander about picking up recyclable cans, now miraculously transformed into a master of an ancient ceremony.

When he and I had casually chatted only weeks before, I'd taken him to be no taller than I. But now he swaggered about like the architect of a rising skyscraper, five-six and going on seven feet. Here was someone no longer in need of $1,500 healing trips to "Choices" or an HRDC-sponsored Life-skills course to know his place in life's big picture.

And where is he now that there is no run of oolichan? I see him some early mornings despondently checking out the trashcans near empty picnic benches from which no one even bothers to watch the river for the old miracle.

And also from that spring, I recall a knock at the door and Howard Walkus inviting me over to scoop whatever I needed of still live oolichans from a big cold washtub in his backyard. And his grandsons, Lorne and Jordan knocking on my door night after night and gifting me with their own small boys' catch of life-bringers until my then pregnant wife said "please no more fried oolichans this week!"

But these are a white man's bitsy tales from a much larger tragic story that has befallen our Nuxalk neighbours. I have worked in the past two years with the Nuxalk Fisheries Program as they raise research funds and sample of the hand numbing waters of the Bella Coola. But it is lonely out there on the river with no saviour fish. Will they ever return?

The biology is not encouraging and so it is also on a cultural or rather cross-cultural note I end. In Newfoundland when the cod collapsed, provincial and federal governments knew and cared that the very survival of important rural life-ways was in jeopardy. Our society as a whole dug deep in its pockets and transfused several billions of dollars to merely sustain outports. Here in Bella Coola, it is not so clear that money could ever mitigate the manifold losses to the Nuxalk community. But a start must be made somehow.

In the aftermath of those wonderful Bella Coola Town Halls last month where the predominantly non-Nuxalk assembly sang the peace-cry, "Two Cultures, One Community" it is time for something tangible as well as symbolic. Why not a jointly composed "Oolichan Manifesto" that begins with conveying the shared grief and outrage of this socio-economic cultural and ecological catastrophe in a common voice heard all the way to Ottawa?

REDUX 2: The End of Trivia (9/11 one year later)

This column appeared in the Coast mountain News at approximately the first anniversary of the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon

* * * *

Another perfect late summer back to school morning in Bella Coola. The river was down from its last rain driven surge and the only sound outside was the distant drone of Wayne Sissons’ Cessna off for some secret cove among the countless such in this seeming untroubled world of the Central Coast. As is I my wont I was limbering my dialing fingers for another go at CBC Daybreak’s trivia contest, a ritual at precisely 6:53 A.M. each day. Although it was only Tuesday, and I had four days left to qualify, I’d be gone all the rest of the week to Port Hardy.

And then as every conscious human being now knows that September 11th morning lurched sickeningly sideways. Co-host Mark Harvey, voice quavering with emotion and disbelief said planes had crashed into the World Trade Centre and there’d be no more trivia that day.

We rushed to the TV and caught first glimpse of images that quickly became emblematic of that day of horror for many weeks and months, probably forever. Within the hour, I learned that like everyone else in North America, I would not be flying that day nor for some time to come. But for the most part locals here were not very immediately affected by the terrorist attacks. Bella Coola Air got special dispensation to fly some stranded travelers in from the wilderness and then we went about things much as before. Of course, our airwaves and newspapers were inundated, first with fast-breaking news and then with specials ranging from benefit concerts to vitriolic debates about “root causes” to a peculiar onslaught of special programming dedicated to sating our sudden appetite for things Islamic.

As time passed and locals eventually made whatever voyages afar had been in their pre-9/11 plans, they probably noticed the stepped-up security – some poor fellow at Dayton International even had to closely inspect my sweaty sneakers - and then by the added costs which Her Majesty graciously passed on to the traveling public in most (though not yet our) airports.

Now a year has passed and like throngs of journalists and pseudo-journalists worldwide, I am drawn like a moth to flame to muse on what it all has meant, what, if anything, has changed. And I must leave to my colleague pundits in lesser outlets like the Globe and Mail or CTV NewsNet, who have more space, time and are paid better, to fill in the big picture of impacts of September 11th on lives, individual, community, national and global.

Here, so far out of the way, the question of how life changed, is if anything, more problematic. Internationally the effects are blatant and innumerable: We know the footprints of those dire events can be tracked forward to numberless further heartbreaks, like four dead Canadians on an Afghan steppe; the tilting and pitching of stock markets around the world; the inspiring collapse of the Taliban, the less inspiring fact that a total nincompoop has achieved one of the highest approval ratings in the history of the American presidency.

Yes, the world turned upside down. But here? The economy slides downward but on an incline that was quite evident well before Bin Laden dispatched his disciples on their mission of terror. Nighttime TV has changed a bit with some too-close-for-comfort action shows being canned or postponed and the irrepressible Politically Incorrect Host, Bill Moyer, indeed being repressed for daring to criticize U.S. military wisdom, such as it is. Around the world, young men of swarthy complexion and unrecognized accent find air travel uncomfortable at the very least.

But again, these are distant things. The Bella Coola River rushes onward as do the comings and goings of our seasons and people – and, how we too have lost so many dear folks since last year albeit as a steady current of emigration and fatality rather than in one cataclysmic moment! Which brings me in my crabby side-wise fashion to the point that perhaps what changed most and, I hope, enduringly, right here in Bella Coola as in so many sleepy hollows all over this continent – is the heightened sanctity we now attach to what, before that September morning, seemed so trivial -- the smile we can bring to another’s face with the smallest act of good humour or forgiveness; the extra pause taken to appreciate the mere continued existence of people and things we previously took more for granted; the next breath and the one after of some withered old-timer whose knee we once sat upon. And, as always, we turn to the radiant, close-to-God forms of our children with the twofold sentiment – “thank heavens I still have them; thank heavens that they were not among the many so suddenly orphaned one year ago.”

At 6:53 each morning the new hosts of CBC Daybreak still call forth devotees to what they call “trivia” and I even sometimes succumb to dialing in with an answer, though probably less often because of the memory of Mark Harvey’s solemn pronouncement that morning. But way back in my mind, a new small voice is arguing that in this year since some 3,000 souls were so pointlessly, so obscenely destroyed, nothing is trivial anymore.

REDUX 1: Not Wanted on the Voyage (Sept.00)

As already noted, this was the inaugural Grouse column back in the last year of the old century and millennium, which, of course, was 2000 - you wanna argue about that??

****

Well, yes, I know that! Grouses technically don’t perch. I thought that in taking wing, so to speak, with this the first of what will become -- given the power of public demand -- a long series of not so amicable perspectives on the world near and far, I’d give you (those few who know or care to distinguish passerines-- perchers -- from phasianids - literally, pheasantish things) at least the first complaint.

Now, down to business at hand. And speaking of creatures whose plumage far exceeds what is necessary for the ordinary conduct of one’s affairs, my first topic concerns the very pinnacle of formal authority in this fair province of British Columbia, his vice-regalness, the Lieutenant-Governor, the very honourable Garde Gardom, QC, who in early incarnations served the Bennett government and more recently opined how BC at the time of George Vancouver’s visit only needed the presence of humans to fulfill its destiny (somehow forgetting that there were already more than a few indigenous folks wandering about the future province).

Notwithstanding, it was with cardiac palpitations that I opened a gilded letter and learned of the latest perk in my brief tenure as your faithful Area D Director (Central Coast Regional District): The Honourable Mr. And Mrs. Gardom requested the pleasure of my ever so humble company aboard the HMCS Regina one fine late summer evening in September 2000.

Now I know very well that in the echelon of real political power the Lieutenant Governor stands somewhere in importance between the deputy assistant to chief legislative janitor and her majesty’s royal rodent exterminator. But, no matter, I have a confession: I am a devoted royalist (and I hasten to say that this disposition preceded indeed managed to survive the overblown claptrap that grew up around the life and death of the late Princess of Wales). I think having a chief nobody who, in very rare historic circumstances of legislative and/or executive insanity can exercise his or her prerogative, is a remarkable if serendipitous safeguard against American-style nut-bar leadership.

This and the fact that many the summer evening passes in beautiful downtown Bella Coola when there is -- may I say ? -- something of a dearth of entertainment options, made me anticipate with uncharacteristic enthusiasm this coming pomp and circumstance. We the elected were to be ferried out to the royals’ yacht at precisely 6 o’clock for goodness-knows-what ceremonial and gustatory delights!

Especially given the issuance of the invitation by both Mr. Gardom and the missus, I assumed that my long suffering wife, Sue Ellen, and other spouses of the select invitees would be welcomed on this excursion. But being a man of proper protocol myself I thought it best to confirm and so called one Allison Collins, the designated staff person on the invitation.

To my surprise my modest request met with a polite but firm “no way, José”. The good Miss Collins explained with great and firm patience that spouses were not invited because that would lead to excessive numbers and thereby limit the total number of regional dignitaries on the list. Maybe they’d run low on hors d’oevres. Perhaps the tub would tip. No congestion, please, at this floating levee!

I was caught quite off guard because I had never heard of a reception by royalty, or its proxies, which treated so offhandedly the critical role spouses play in making public life bearable. I sputtered out something about knowing that there would be room because I knew of several RSVPs already conveyed to the Lt.Gov. But Ms. Collins knew the self-promulgated laws of the voyage was unyielding. She explained that if an exception were made for any one of us, why others would be very upset.

And now I did get offended. The belief that community leaders of the Central Coast would break out in petty bickering over such a matter spoke volumes of an unflattering image apparently held about Central Coasters by our more southern, urbane and presumptively “civil” servants. Seeing the unrelenting nature of Ms. Collins on the matter, I informed her that the pleasure of my company aboard the vice-regal vessel was not to be had that evening. Then, as is my wont, I dispatched an e-mail to Mr. Gardom’s office to this effect:

“As explained over the phone we locally elected officials work on an entirely volunteer basis and are required to spend many evenings away from our loved ones, not on pay like provincial politicians or government staff but pro bono. To expect that we would want to go out on a Friday evening solo is, to say the least, insensitive. It is especially grating to see that his Honour, Mr. Gardom is co-hosting this event, at taxpayer's expense, with HIS spouse. Protocol and respect would dictate that the invitation be similarly and equitably extended to our spouses.”

“The fact that there were absences from your original invitation list (of which I am aware by official communication) but that inappropriate "rules" limiting attendance are still being enforced because you think there would resentment, displays added evidence of disrespect for the leaders of our region. We are much too busy around here trying to do our jobs as political leaders to be so childish.”

Alas, I have not had the favour of a response and two weeks have passed. Not to worry. My late, dear Uncle George told me that each of life’s tribulations is really a teacher, and, oh, haven’t I learned quite a bit what protocol – and common courtesy – means at BC’s loftiest governing altitudes!

Reduxing the Grouse

It usually can be only the widely acclaimed -- which the Grouse is not - to get away with regurgitating old columns as if they are or should be held with general reverence by the readership. Nonetheless, the felicitous coincidence of having run in to a rather busy spell away from Grousing and, part of that busy-ness, doing some long overdue housekeeping on my various hard drives and related storage devices, thereby finding past writings - that I want to put out into Blogland a few forgotten "treasures." These are from the glory days of the Grouse's Perch and the Coast Mountain news.

As noted briefly elsewhere on this blog, the Grouse really began in September, 2000, when I got royally pissed off by the BC Lieutenant Governor who sailed his yacht into North Bentinck Arm at Bella Coola pre-inviting elected officials of which, I was one (Area D representative on the Central Coast Regional District). Sounded like a lark even if it might mean having to tidy myself up, something I am rarely inclined to do. Just for courtesy, never for a moment expecting anything but an enthusiastic "yes" I called to confirm that spouses could attend. The startling answer was "no" and from that sprang the much ruffled first grouse that soon became a regular column.

So such as they are I shall mount a number of those much earlier grousings, opening, as needed with some context-giving.

Hope you enjoy this waddle down memory lane...

WARNING

Olympic Spirit, Canadian Style

Tempting as it is to seek ways creative or otherwise for completely avoiding the puffed up coverage of the current Vancouver-Whistler Dunciad, this would be to forego just too rich an array of the sort of hypocrisy, your Grouse feeds on like an orca on a stranded seal pup. Thus we shall probably re-visit the balmy melting slopes of the Winter Olympics as the transgression list inexorably lengthens.

Segueing in, I’ll begin by first linking to a short, perhaps a shade too obvious but still worth-marking angle not only on the dishonest claims generally made about any Olympiad, but also of the utter irrelevance of the ever-expanding array of obscure winter sports about which, at any other time no one gives a rat’s ass – nonsense like moguls, skeletons, snowboarding, and strangest of all, biathlon (as in ski, ski, ski, shoot something, then ski, ski, ski… etc.) Jason Zengerle, senior editor for the the New Republic mag concludes his article “Why Bother with the Olympics” by contrasting them with the merited worldwide adulation of soccer, which, “requires no affirmative action. People just like playing it and watching it.”

Yes, obvious, but amidst the jingoistic Canadian trumpeting of how we are "welcoming the world," it’s good to hear a stark reminder that, in comparison to the upcoming World Cup in South Africa, Vancouver’s Olympiad is truly small potatoes.

Item 1: VANOC's INSTA-VERDICT
The unseemly haste with which the organizers – those long-notorious bullies called VANOC, released a statement exonerating themselves and their lightning-fast (read bloody dangerous) luge track, for the tragic opening day training death of Georgia’s Nodar Kumaritashvil. And I quote:

“It appears after a routine run, the athlete came late out of curve 15 and did not compensate properly to make correct entrance into curve 16. This resulted in a late entrance into curve 16 and although the athlete worked to correct the problem he eventually lost control of the sled resulting in the tragic accident. The technical officials of the FIL were able to retrace the path of the athlete and concluded there was no indication that the accident was caused by deficiencies in the track..”

Even run of the mill traffic accidents need more investigatory time to assign culpability than this self-serving “the-show-must-go-on” gutterwash. But, then, VANOC has never been known for sensitivity to what it breaks or whom it hurts in its fanatical headlong rush to these "games" (Read Read Read)

Item 2: KICKING GUEST ASS, CANUCK STYLE

Item 2: Ah the glory of it, the exemplary spirit of true international sisterhood, seen in the opening game for Canada’s defending gold medal women’s hockey team! Saturday against the lowly Slovakians: they run up the biggest blow-out in Olympic hockey history. 18-0!

Was it really necessary to have laid it on so thick and humiliate an obviously inferior squad ? Sure, part of it, is that goal differentials affect final standings. But, get real: does anyone seriously doubt that Canada’s ice-borne amazons will make it to the final against their US arch-rivals? Lovely job of hosting, ladies, putting the lie once more to this “welcome the world” and “we-re a nation of nice ‘guys’ “ crapola.

* * * *
I can’t hardly wait to see how we’re going to follow-up on the first 24 hours of blaming the deceased victim of a dangerously-designed luge course and running up big scores against hapless underdogs. GO CANADA, GO!

Anticipating Schadenfreude from Vancouver Olympiad

Well, I have to say that with every rescue truckload of snow they have to drag onto one of the Vancouver Olympic sites, the tiny cockles of my mine heart go up a few degrees. Today, as the CBC and other dog-tails of the Canadian media are wildly wagging about, is day one of the massive bread-and-circuses operation that Gordie Campbell and his lightweights have been blustering about through most of their regrettable tenure as BC's government.

If I knew voodoo or other magical arts and could bring down a big wet heat wave from Whistler to the mountains of North Vancouver, I would do so. But there is an added glimmer of hope for we who would delight in the Olympics turning into a meteorological fiasco. The final carrier of the flame that has been traipsed literally all around Canada, is top secret. But word on the street has it that Wayne Gretzky got fingered (hey, I was fingering him long before this! Read here, here and here)for the endgame of that happy torch tradition that goes back to and still echoes Hitler's Olympiad.
Flash back to Turin in 2006 when the not-so-Great-One "managed" (no one ever explained much about what that management entailed) the Canadian Men's Hockey Team and they finished a dismal 7th. Remember ? - that was when the Whiner abandoned the team in the dying seconds of loss to Russia, wiping tears from his baby blues, a phony replay of the now immortalized weeping when he, quite voluntarily, deserted the Edmonton Oilers for fatter paychecks south of the border.

Or, more recently than that, note that in their first post-Gretzkian season the Phoenix Coyotes are actually winning again! You take my drift, eh? Have that arrogant, over-rated twit carry the torch to the lighting of the Olympic flame tonight and the whole dog-dumb spectacle that will inconvenience Vancouverites for the next several weeks, may be jinxed and flop as badly as his other recent sports involvements.

For me, avid antagonist of the Vancouver Olympics and of Gretzky, all that would be needed for the perfect storm at tonight's foolishness is to have Celine Dion sing a tribute to Princess Diana.

Margaret Roberta Howatt Dale - 1922-1990

She was my mother. She was born in the village of Cape Traverse, Prince Edward Island, terminus for the mail "ice-boats" that plied the Northumberland Strait before ferry service and long before the fixed link bridge crossing. She grew up mainly in Summerside, became a teacher in a one-room school and then went to work in the post office. During World War II, a young Czech trainee, Bernard Dale, from the nearby air force base, kept buying stamps from her and eventually, they married. Thence my brother, Peter, my sister, Ari and lastly, me.

As my father was an military officer, we moved about, first to Ottawa in 1949 and then to the Montreal area, where my mother resumed teaching at the Preville School in 1959. I was among the pupils in her first incoming Grade 6, an intriguing experience for both of us. She continued her school career until a UN job took my father to Nigeria in the midst of that nation's civil war in the mid sixties. With my father she returned to Prince Edward Island in 1968 and lived there until 1987 when they both moved to Victoria.

Her passion was always animals with an enormous Newfoundland named Angus her deep love until his passing from which, I think, she never fully recovered. Among her things I would later find a little poem scrawled on a note pad:



To Angus

"My Friend is dead.
At peace? Gone to rest?
No
He is dead.
God is there a place
where good dogs go?
I don't know many things
He sleeps in my heart, I loved him so

I know that he was alone when he died
The lilacs had just been born
Did they mourn my dead friend?
I loved him so."




In late 1989 she was diagnosed with lung cancer and died this date (January 21) in 1990. Countless gifts she left us not least of which, a quite brief journal she began to keep December 16, 1989. In it she dutifully recorded the coming and going of pains and medications but also wrote of the things and people she loved, the dreams she had, whether realized or not, and of what, in what turned out to be her final days brought comfort - old pictures, the sound of rain on the roof, and...

Dec. 24, Sunday:

"Had some rather special experience this A.M. during my slumber (6-7:30) I needed this inspiration badly because I was starting the day with the same concerns as yesterday. The message was, 'live today to its best, don't worry about tomorrow... According to the speaker the message is one of Jesus. I had never heard that one before..."

Later she would muse, without, it seemed, huge regret, that she once wanted to write a "great novel...now, look at this!" So her journal,more valued on my shelf than any other book, the picture here of her with me as a baby, and a vaster collage of memories she gifted me with, today define my horizons. I listen to some favourite music of hers, Strauss waltzes, and reflect: whatever is best in me, Ma, you've put there.

Adopting Haiti ~ An Immodest Proposal

Amidst innumerable stories of efforts to do something for Haitians in the aftermath of their latest enormous catastrophe, there have been many themed about adoption. Completing an adoption from the country is notoriously difficult, as perhaps it should be when prospective parents consider transplanting a child into a culturally and, often, racially distinct setting, one that may permanently estrange the kid from her origins. The spate of celebrities toting their little subalterns about as tokens of their generosity and global consciousness only sharpens the doubts within and outside of third world countries regarding such permanent transplants. Add to this, the severe governance defects that Haiti has suffered almost since its inception, and one is sure to have questionable responsiveness on adoption. Thus one readily finds laments about multi-year processing difficulties with Haiti's Institut du Bien-Etre Social et de Recherches, or IBESR. Woeful tales abounded before last week's quake, from would-be parents and harsh frontline workers who cared for Haitian orphans.

The earthquake can be variously seen as likely to exacerbate delays, or just possibly, awaken Haitian social service bureaucracies now ever-more inundated by needful millions, to the necessity of fast-tracking adoption, getting the suddenly tenfold newly orphaned and those already queued for departure, out of horrific conditions that will no doubt persist for a long time. But the latter is far from a strong bet. To repeat, critics will say, with some legitimacy, that even in (perhaps especially in) the aftermath of a disaster that has unquestionably killed tens of thousands of biological parents, rushing little kids out of Haiti risks a host of abuses including fraudulent trafficking and the accidental destruction of already aggrieved Haitian families.

Well, as you might expect, the Grouse has his own immodest proposal that would circumvent the difficulties and much more, take direct aim at the massive human tragedy that has and continues to be Haiti. By way of entree, let me remind you of an attempt back in 1974 initiated by the late NDP MP, Max Saltsman, for Canada to annex the Turks and Caicos islands. The reasoning was far from altruistic: it would, Saltsman argued, give snowbirds a place to spend away without draining the Canadian economy. the idea simmered away for many years: in 1988 the islands made overtures to the Canadian government to consider growing a relationship that just might culminate in confederation. Nothing came of that nor of the efforts of Canadian Alliance MP Peter Goldring in 2004 on much the same idea. Nonetheless, the thought of flying back and forth unrestricted to such an ostensible island paradise was, Goldring argued supported by 100% of Canadians.

Paradise, Haiti is not. But after more than 200 years of corrupt kleptocracy, something more than a marginal adjustment to its governance seems in order. Wait, wait! Before I stand accused of being a patronizing, neo-colonialistic, great white father, I must hasten to say that while I have not - yet - worked out the precise means by which the two sovereign nations of Canada and Haiti would establish an adoptive bond, for sure it would have based on unprecedented bilateral negotiation with ample opt-out clauses. Recalling that in the unrequited relationship with the Turks and Caicos, the operative and unacceptable verb was "annex". I think "adopt" is more a-propos. For a host of reasons, now ever so much worsened by natural disaster, Haiti has just not been able to muster stable, democratic statehood. An extended period - say 25 years - of membership in our Canadian condominium, would allow for sufficient incubation and restoration that the great dreams of Haiti's heroic founders, can be resurrected.

Far-fetched? Undoubtedly, but it is not the first time that we've confederated with a geographically and culturally distant island, and at least the Haitians, unlike the Newfoundlanders of 1949, speak one of our official languages! Indeed, adopting Haiti would give our ever-reluctant confederated marriage partners in Quebec greater demographic comfort in terms of parity between native speaking Francophones and Anglophones. It would remove travel barriers between the home island and the largest diaspora of Haitians, Montreal. Our vice-regal leader and military Commander-in-Chief just happens to Haitian, a fact that would surely facilitate the arrangement and ease the transition.

Canada could give back to Haiti gifts that her people have conferred on the world, not least of which was the since shaky counter-example that a people in chains can achieve and enjoy freedom. Over that quarter century -- and possibly longer if Haiti wanted, Canada could take a leadership role in the real job of peace-keeping that we have foregone in what will, I believe, be the predictably miserable failure of ours, the USA's and NATO's intervention in Afghanistan. In and with Haiti we'd be taken on a rebuilding job that is valiantly challenging but not fated to be deconstructed by popular Muslim extremists. Maybe we'd even restore some of the esteem with which our nation was held BH (before Harper)!

Let us end the talk and prepare for reflection on my proposal with a sonnet that I came across written by no less than William Wordsworth about the founding father of Haiti who was deceitfully abducted by Napoleon's minions, then to die in a Paris prison.

To Toussaint L'Ouverture

By William Wordsworth

(1770–1850)

Toussaint, the most unhappy man of men
Whether the whistling Rustic tend his plough
Within thy hearing, or thy head be now
Pillowed in some deep dungeon’s earless den;
O Miserable Chieftain! Where and when
Wilt thou find Patience? Yet die not; do thou
Wear rather in thy bonds a cheerful brow:
Though fallen thyself, never to rise again,

Live, and take comfort. Thou hast left behind
Powers that will work for thee; air, earth, and skies;
There’s not a breathing of the common wind
That will forget thee; thou hast great allies;
Thy friends are exultations, agonies,
And love, and man’s unconquerable mind.

The Georgia Strait's Big Dicks

For those avid readers flung further afield, I must briefly disambiguate that the Georgia Strait is not the Strait of Georgia, itself a busy waterway, subsumed now within the Salish Sea, and environmentally degraded by the otherwise progressive Winter Olympic City -- you know: the one that doesn't get any winter. Nay the Georgia Strait is a venerable and illustrious Vancouver weekly, once, though no longer, fashionably radical, but still always politically correctly tinged.

Recently, queuing up for all the meaningless but endlessly fascinating end of decade listmania, the Strait, distinguished itself from other compilers with the -oooh- sexist epithet for its targets: "the biggest dicks of the decade." Crude even for the inheritors of the once radical 60s rag, the article was penned by one Mike Cowie, apparently a frequent proselytizer for this journal. Exactly why Mikey's list should be of interest to the world, given his still formative stage of journalistic achievement, one pauses to wonder. But I am a sucker for lists and so perused his litany of decadal villains. Really, not much new or surprising. George Bush and Dick Cheney win, with Bin Ladin in second and other notable malefactors including - hooray from me - "the Dictators of China."

Predictably, given the paper's politics and the world's knee-jerk pick on the Middle East's sole democracy, "the Israeli Government" makes the "biggest dicks of the decade" grade. In the tried and true recitation of that country's wrongdoing, Mikey cites the invasion of Lebanon and Gaza and blithely goes on to rant about creating the world's largest prison camp (i.e. Gaza), failing to acknowledge that Egypt seems no less interested than Israel in hemming in the fiefdom of Hamas.

Naturally, yours truly could not refrain from pointing, in posted comments,how the occludedly learned compiler had missed Hamas itself. That murderous and largely cowardly organization managed to split the already dis-empowered Palestinian "nation" by maintaining a position of annihilating Israel and encouraging its primitive but vicious operatives to provoke their powerful neighbour. When writing his anti-Israel screed, Mikey spoke of how he found it, "fun to listen to Israel's kneejerk defenders explain why all of this oppression and land stealing is not just ok, but is actually the Palestinians own fault." But then - sound of clarion trumpets please! - he shares with us, as only a young Vancouver-based journalist can - THE TRUTH, i.e. "that this (Israel) is one of the last bastions of outright brutal colonialism in the world." Well, of course -- and if he wanted to he could even cite the fact that Israel has by far the highest number of human rights investigations ongoing by that pinnacle of impartial rectitude, the UN Human Rights Council! By way of review, that's the body that has processed more than three times as many resolutions against Israel than it has for North Korea, Sudan, and Burma combined since 2003.

But, for those with such profound consciences, one need not stray quite so far afield to find "bastions of colonialism:" try just driving on down from the Strait's Kitsilano coop, to the pitifully constricted Musqueam homeland in South Vancouver or any of the other 200 or so BC First Nations who, in spite of what Stephen Harper has to say about Canada's imperial history, remain the indentured on-reserve "Indians" of a not-so-post-colonial nation. So much more comfy to point fingers across the sea than to come to terms with the extent to which Cowie like most Lotuslanders, sings praise for living in a "paradise" invaded and then stolen from the original inhabitants.

The Villains of the Piece: China at Copenhagen

That the Copenhagen Summit on climate change fell far, far short of the expectations of anyone who takes this threat seriously, is not only beyond dispute but was probably inevitable. As noted here before, major poly-national treaties that close in on worldwide consensus need to develop organically and adaptively and not be fixated on implausible make-it-or-break-it milestones.
This said, there is a storyline emerging consonant with my admittedly chronic perspective that the Peoples Republic of China is now almost an omnipresent villain: wherever something tragic is happening in the world, inevitably a Chinese "interest" is close by whether this be murdering their own or arming and financing the most repressive smaller regimes on earth such as Sudan, Burma and Zimbabwe. The account of how China sabotaged Copenhagen has been published in The Guardian and on a blog by Mark Lynas, a British journalist focused on global warming and author of the alarming and visionary book, Six Degrees.

Lynas scored an inimitable contact and route into the wormy heart of Copenhagen negotiations having been befriended and selected as a climate change advisor by Mohamed Nasheed, President of the tiny and vulnerable nation of the Maldives. Those islands, in case you need a memory jogger, are coral atolls southwest of India and Sri Lanka in the Indian Ocean. The highest point on the islands is 2.3 metres the same height as Chinese basketball great Yao Ling, a factoid that should telegraph why the Maldives have become a leading and desperate voice for serious action on global warming.

So Mark Lynas got on the inside of what was going on amidst all the brouhaha in Copenhagen and has told tales out of class in a way that you'll never get from the genetically secretive faceless diplomats who usually frequent the highest altitude break-outs at international conferences. His verdict is blunt on how and why the gathering amounted to so little: "China’s strategy was simple: block the open negotiations for two weeks, and then ensure that the closed-door deal made it look as if the west had failed the world’s poor once again." Describing China's surreptitious two-faced and oft-times vindictive actions, he calls that nation's behaviour, "profoundly shocking." Because China virtually runs any number of illicit third world regimes now, it was able to front these small stature criminals like Sudan to make blustering indictments of the west, while tirelessly working behind-the-scenes. This would insure that whatever came out of the conference would in no way limit their massive and exponentially growing use of filthy, dangerous coal.

Along the way, it was not enough to do all possible to make Obama look bad and ineffective by undermining his last-ditch heroics of consensus-building; the Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, even snubbed the US president and other world leaders by sending a foreign ministry underling to what were supposed to be highest level special deal-making sessions. Making America feel small was a fringe benefit of the worn but still effective negotiating tactic called, "higher authority" - which pays off (for those who wish to stall agreement) by necessitating awkward delegate caucuses and telephone consultations while other world leaders wait on China.

Again, one wonders just how much longer the world, especially the diminishing fraction of it that can pretend to be "free", will tolerate the rude, sneering bullies of Beijing. At this time, limiting their power is still remotely possible. But in the horrific Age of Stupid, time is running out on both the problem of climate change and, what we can now see as the closely linked threat of the People's Republic's hegemonic ascent.

2012 - On the End of Days and a Non-Believer's Special Offer

On this penultimate day of 2009, I awake knowing that in just a little under two years, we are all going to blown to smithereens by an as yet unseen celestial onject! Or inundated by a mega-tsunami right up to the peaks of the Himalayas. Or - worst of all - become transformed into gibbering hordes of mystical new-agers, not unlike the krishnas who used to hang about chanting in airport terminals. The horror, the horror!

Now that the movie is out, so too in ever greater numbers will be the dire predictions and expectations of the last days of earth. Variously, this prophecy is Mayan or Hopi in origin -- neither of which really say the world will end only that it will change precipitously, a much safer bet since it has been doing so, according to no less that the great Marcel Proust:

The one thing that does not change is that at any and every time it appears that there have been ‘great changes.’

I had taken about as much notice of this dreaded imminence as I had of the anal infection of the beetle that lives under my desk, until recently when my rather sensitive and nervous 11-year old daughter came home from school verging on tears because her reading group had been avidly discussing the ominous possibilities two years hence. Overcoming my instinctual desire to rip the lips off of whatever presumptive adult had presided over such malarkey-talk, I played the judicious and wise father and explained quite a number of things about the history of prophecy to her. I noted, for example, the fascinating sociological study I read years ago, called When Prophecy Fails. In that account, the researchers - including the late Leon Festinger, originator of the concept of cognitive dissonance - closely followed the dynamics of a millenarian claque in Michigan. The group had received the wisdom of THE END from much further afield than old wise indigenous earthlings - kindly aliens had informed their leader, Mrs. Keech, of a flood that would engulf us all on December 21, 1954 - there's something about the Winter Solstice, eh? So Festinger and his colleagues sat up all night with the believers as they patiently, at first, but then with growing, albeit temporary, disquiet as the hours passed, awaiting the catastrophe.

As you may have already figured out by the very fact of your sitting comfortably reading this excellent blog, they and their extraterrestrial informants were wrong...No wait, not wrong at all! The Keech family wackos took very little time realizing that they and the rest of creation had been saved at the last minute by - you guessed it! - God who in his beneficence had once more held the finger off the global smite button. They came out of it their beliefs intact, the quintessential exemplar of the aforementioned phenomenon of cognitive dissonance.

It does seem, then, that it may take some considerable effort to move devotees of this doomsday bullcrap off their spot and, again in that same conversation with my daughter, an inspiration came to me which I shall apply to anyone I henceforth encounter who espouses the inevitability that at 11:11 a.m. (11:41 in Newfoundland) on December 21, 2012 we'll all be trans-personalized into some infinite or new age-y void. This offer applies to any reader wishing to take me up on this.

I will agree to pay any such person the princely sum of $2,012.00, right now, for full title to their unmortgaged house (or any other similarly-valued chattel) with possession on December 22, 2012. Naturally, their unshakable conviction that I am buying what will at that point no longer exist should have them laughing all the way to the bank, so to speak.

Any takers?

If not then will y'all believers do the rest of us the great kindness of shutting your gob about 2012 and the apolcalyptic hocus-pocus surrounding it!

Who We Are Dealing With: China Murders Sick Man

If all the tainted goods and devastated North American local economies, all the bald-faced brutal suppression of internal opposition and the dogged attempts to discredit his Holiness the Dalai Lama while making Tibet, a "hell on earth,", all the price-gouging and illicit counterfeiting of goods, haven't convinced you, today's state-sanctioned murder of Akmal Shaikh ought to move you a little closer to recognizing the monsters that have been allowed to take over the world economy.
I am not opposed to finding the kingpins who tirelessly underwrite the international drug trade, and removing them in any manner whatsoever. The head honchos are unquestionably destroying lives in every sense of the words. But China, as in so many other things makes punishment into an hyperbole and in this case has plain-and-simple murdered a delusional sufferer of bipolar disorder who was clearly duped into muling several kilos of heroin. This empire, more truly evil than anything even Ronnie Reagan could have ever imagined, carries out nearly three-quarters of annual executions worldwide.

In this case wide-ranging international appeals, including from Britain where Shaikh was a citizen, met with the same "fuck you guys!" attitude that the People's Republic adopts increasingly as its economic might aggrandizes. And be clear: China is vigourously converting that financial clout into military capacity that will further assure their ability to do what they want within and outside their borders. The lethal injection stuck into Akmal Shaikh is just one more small if revolting shot fired in the widening China Wars.

One sees in the stiffly worded but action-free reaction of the British Prime Minister, the extent of empty puffery which most Nations on earth now feel obliged to limit themselves to due to China's power. In response to Gordon Brown's noisy indignation, China has, in essence, even challenged the right to freely criticize their atrocities. Thus does party mouthpiece Jiang Yu rejoin, "We express our strong dissatisfaction and opposition to the British government's unreasonable criticism of the case. We urge [them] to correct their mistake in order to avoid harming China-UK relations."


Correct our mistake? This is the same "re-educational" argot as in Pol Pot's Cambodian bloody regime -- and the time is surely coming when China will not hesitate to apply the very military force that our relentless purchasing of their cheap and dangerous goods has funded, to physically shut up us impudent westerners, just as they now silence the Tibetans and groups such as the Muslim Uighur and Falun Gong.

Is it too late for the West to recognize the monster that we have largely created, and put them back in the isolation tank? Too late to suspend them from every gathering of purportedly respectable world leaders and impose on imports of their nigh slave-produced goods, a rigourous human rights audit? Probably, for to paraphrase from Leonard Cohen's old song, "Stories of the Street," our pleasures - the pleasures of cheap - are the seal of the prison we are now locking ourselves into.