and so this is christmas...

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"To put the world in order, we must first put the nation in order; to put the nation in order, we must put the family in order; to put the family in order, we must cultivate our personal life; and to cultivate our personal life, we must first set our hearts right." - Confucius

I hope 2005 has treated you well. Just wanted to pass on best wishes for the new year: I hope it brings you much success, laughter, and love. Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

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A very merry Christmas
And a happy New Year
Let's hope it's a good one
Without any fear
And so this is Christmas
For weak and for strong
For rich and the poor ones
The world is so wrong

A single father of three fired for taking chocolate bars from a garbage bin at a Zellers store will get some Christmas cheer from a charitable organization. Guy Masse, 47, had planned to give the discarded chocolate to his children, aged 6, 9 and 15, for Christmas. Masse, who was on welfare and had been working at the store only for a couple of months, was first suspended and then fired. "I think it's inhuman," Masse told CJAD radio station in Montreal of his dismissal.

Zellers, which is part of Toronto-based retailer Hudson's Bay Co., has said Masse should have notified his supervisor he was taking the chocolate out of the garbage. "It's a very unfortunate situation. We would never have willingly let an associate go at this time of year without just cause," said HBC spokeswoman Hillary Stauth. "Unfortunately, this associate breached the trust of his supervisors by removing merchandise from the store, and as a result, he was let go from his position."

-- Associated Press (2005/12/21)

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There is inflation. And then, there is what happened this year.

In June, the nation's average price of a house rose to a record $268,000. In September, after the Gulf Coast hurricanes, the price of a gallon of gas soared past $3. And earlier this month, a survey reported the top hourly rate for a lawyer had edged into the four digits for the first time, reaching $1,000. Last week, the National Law Journal identified Benjamin R. Civiletti, a U.S. attorney general under President Jimmy Carter and chairman of the District-based Venable law firm, as the priciest lawyer in America. Civiletti, who specializes in litigation, antitrust law and white-collar defense, topped the National Law Journal's 16th annual survey of hourly rates at more than 100 of the country's top law firms.

Though other lawyers may have reached $1,000 without reporting it, Civiletti's rate is "far higher than any rate I've ever heard," said John C. Coffee Jr., a former corporate lawyer in New York who is now a law professor at Columbia University. More typical for partners in Washington firms is about $500 an hour, said Steve Nelson, managing principal for law and government for the McCormick Group, an executive search firm based in Arlington. The average for partners in large New York firms ranges from about $700 to $800. But Nelson and other compensation experts point out that what a lawyer charges per hour isn't the same as what the lawyer takes home. After the firm pays its bills, the partners split what's left. They may also collect bonuses and contingency fees. Civiletti's rate doesn't come close to making him one of the nation's highest-paid lawyers. Trial attorneys can win multibillion-dollar verdicts and earn fees that break down into more than $1,000 an hour, said Coffee. And a firm working on a merger may charge its client a percentage of a deal instead of billing by the hour.

-- Annys Shin, Washington Post (2005/12/21)

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Team Canada's shame

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It's a shame that Team Canada '06 is coming out of the gate like this, with the selections of an outstanding group of athletes clouded by the decision to add [the goon] Todd Bertuzzi. Team Canada officials have tried to make this all about forgiveness, all about "moving forward." But it's not about forgiveness. It's about selecting athletes to represent the country at the world's most significant sporting event. Bertuzzi, given his actions, simply does not reasonably represent Canada's aspirations and ideals in the sport.

Who can honestly argue that?

Fact is, Gretzky and Co. were always annoyed with the public portrayal of Bertuzzi as a goon, and were dead set on making him part of the roster more than a year ago come hell or high water. There was never to be an honest evaluation of Bertuzzi's play this season. They simply don't care what Canadians believe an Olympian athlete should be.

Nobody disagrees that Bertuzzi is a very talented player. But by putting him on the team, Hockey Canada has essentially gutted the essence of its fair play programs in favour of expedience and convenience. The man has never even explained to the Canadian public why he did what he did to Steve Moore that horrible night. He has asked for forgiveness, but only on his terms while surrounded by lawyers, agents and spin doctors.


The idiots and meatheads who have been insisting for months that Moore deserved everything he got that night have thus been vindicated in their perverse thought processes. Hockey Canada has told them, emphatically, that they were and are correct in how the game should be played, that vigilante justice on the rink is okay, and that those who believe that Bertuzzi's actions essentially disqualified him from ever representing his country should go hug a tree or take up figure skating. This has created, sadly, an unprecedented environment in which some Canadians will be actively hoping for an athlete wearing the Maple Leaf to fail at an international event.

-- DAMIEN COX, Toronto Star (2005/12/22)

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when life hands new york a lemon...

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The following story about the transit strike from today's New York Times starts like a bad joke: The BMW in Brooklyn held an office temp, a lawyer and a technology worker. Then there was the minivan: in it were a doorman, a dental office worker and a man with his son.

Yesterday was a day many New Yorkers will long recall, a day when many put aside their fear and loathing of the stranger, a day when doctors, dancers and designers traded in the normal anonymity of subway trains for the intimacy of an unfamiliar car. It was also a day of creative transportation, when scooters scooted and bicyclists biked. For some, there were corporate chartered buses. For the well-shod, sneakers were a mainstay of the commute.

Throughout the city, strangers crammed into sedans and minivans. Rides were offered from rolled-down windows. Makeshift hitchhiking posts sprung up along the curb. On the Manhattan side, pedestrians were met by Red Cross workers and volunteers offering snacks and coffee. "Congratulations, guys, you made it! Have some coffee or hot chocolate. You need the energy for the rest of your trip."

"It's kind of nice what happens to people when there's a crisis in this city," said Heidi Mortensen, the lawyer who had picked up people in her BMW. "Somehow, they're just nicer to one another than they're used to being. I didn't even worry when I stopped to give these people a ride and I took the first person I asked, the first guy I saw walking down the street. I really believe that when you're nice to people, they're going to be nice to you back."

the ability of new yorkers to take anything and everything in stride is inspiring... there really is something to be said about a city and a community that, despite whatever catastrophe or inconvenience that politics or nature has put upon them, will still brave the obstacles and simply get on with living... talk about sucking out all the marrow of life...

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yet another moment of zen:


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on mushrooms and politics

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To paraphrase a former member of the U.S. House of Representatives Intelligence Committee: "The electorate are like mushrooms. Politicians keep us in the dark and feed us a lot of manure."

Vive la démocratie insoutenable!

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and once again, your moment of zen:


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the question is: would i get in?

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i should probably wait until grade reports come back...

but anyway, i answered this as honestly as i could without trying to be pretentious...

Which Ivy League University is right for YOU?

Harvard

You're the best -- you know it, as does everyone else (except for U.S. News and World Report every few years). You might not be hip, you might not be pretty, but you're smart as a whip and you never need to do another impressive thing in your life.


Take this quiz!

of course, this opens up the whole "admissions quota" can of worms...

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per legem ad gaudium?

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good lord... i can't believe it... the semester has just flown by... law school is just flying by... i'm officially halfway through... where's all the time gone? have i really learned anything? am i going to remember any of this when i get out there in the "real world"?

all i know for now is that i'm glad that exams are over...

maybe i can -- dare i say it? -- relax for the next few weeks...

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"Law is a demanding profession. It provides lifelong challenges. There is never an opportunity to coast. It demands stamina, and occasions stress. It affords the opportunity to give back to the profession and the community through pro bono work and to help build and maintain the system of justice that is a vital element of a free country. Of course, there will be competing demands and priorities. People who are uncomfortable with the challenges, the responsibilities, and the sacrifices that must be made, should not enter this profession. They will not be happy. Those who willingly and with balance and enthusiasm cross what Lon Fuller described as 'the line where the pressure of duty leaves off and the challenge of excellence begins' should enjoy the happiness that attends such a pursuit."

-- Michael Traynor, The Pursuit of Happiness

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messed-up priorities

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here we see in action the very notion of "keeping the world poor" and the messed-up priorities of our society... if these stories don't make your blood boil, then i don't know what will... to echo the words of Vandana Shiva, "if we are serious about ending poverty, we have to be serious about ending the systems that create poverty by robbing the poor of their common wealth, livelihoods and incomes... before we can make poverty history, we need to get the history of poverty right..."

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Professional Athletes to Get "Disaster Relief"

New Orleans Saints players will get a $40,000 bonus from the NFL and the NFL Players Association for "performing under unusual and unanticipated conditions arising from the Hurricane Katrina tragedy." The bonus applies to every Saints player who has been on the roster for the entire season, including inactive players, practice squad members and those on injured reserve, the team said in a statement yesterday. Players on the roster for less than the full season will receive $2,350 for each week on the roster.

-- ASSOCIATED PRESS, Washington Post (2005/12/15)

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The Revolving Door of Debt

Credit card companies have long solicited bankrupt people, on a calculated risk that income from the higher interest rates and late fees paid by those who are trying to get their credit back will outweigh the losses from those who fail to make payments altogether. The companies also directed many of those customers toward so-called secured cards, which require a cash deposit. Credit cards are the most profitable part of the banking industry, with late fees and high interest charges helping make them so. Last year, more than five billion solicitations for new cards were sent out, nearly double the number from eight years ago. "The whole business model of the credit card industry is built around outstanding debt," said Ellen Schloemer, a researcher at the Center for Responsible Lending, a nonprofit group that tracks lower-middle-class financial issues. "This is the only industry that calls people deadbeats when they pay all their bills every month."

Under new American legislation, which the banking industry spent more than $100 million lobbying for, bankrupt consumers may be even more attractive as clients because it makes it harder for them to escape new credit card debt and extends to eight years from six the time before which they could liquidate their debts through bankruptcy again. The new law makes for an even better gamble for lenders because it also requires many of those who do go back into bankruptcy to pay previous credit card bills that may have been excused under the old law. Consumer groups say the new law has put millions of Americans at risk of being in a continuous debt loop through their credit cards. While the banks have taken a short-term financial hit because of the new filings, they will benefit in the long run because the new law makes it much easier to make money on people who live near the edge every month on their credit cards.

-- TIMOTHY EGAN, New York Times (2005/12/11)

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that special someone...

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Schizophrenic genes may be sexually advantageous. A study indicates that creative people and unconventional thinkers get more sex partners. Previous studies showed that creative people are more likely than others to be schizophrenic or have schizophrenic relatives. Authors' hypothesis: Schizophrenia is disadvantageous to passing on your genes, but if you don't get the full-blown disease, schizophrenia-related genes that cause unconventional thinking make you more attractive, and that's why the genes and the disease persist.

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If there were an award for "Best Creative Content on a Huge Corporation's Web Site to Distract You From the Fact That We're in the Gypsum, Chemical, Timber and Paper Industry," Georgia-Pacific would win it. G-P makes Brawny paper towels, and the brand has had a mascot called the Brawny Man since 1974 living on the plastic paper towel wrapper and in ads. No name, just the Brawny Man. Now, at the end of a long day, when your boss has been mean to you and your boyfriend doesn't understand and you could just cry for no reason at all, you can go to the Innocent Escapes website and be soothed and pampered by the B. Man himself.

Or watch him build a rocking horse. Gold... pure gold, I tell ya!

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and finally, here it is... your moment of zen...


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what kind of society do we want?

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Driving the differences between the Liberal and Conservative plans for child care are two very different conceptions of the role of government and two different philosophies about how Canada should approach the pressing problem of productivity. Each party is committed to an $11 billion program, but delivered in fundamentally different ways. The Conservatives would give the money directly to parents, allowing them to spend it as they wish. The Liberals propose to invest in a national daycare system, slightly different in each province, but the goal is to create a system: a set of publicly supported institutions that will gradually add an early child-care component to our existing infrastructure of publicly supported schools.

The debate over child-care reflects, in important ways, different concepts of productivity. Both concepts have merit, but the values underlining them contend. Individual choice or societal equality? Directed investments in infrastructure and human resources or direct payments to individuals?

That is the fundamental choice before us.

Giving money directly to parents is like giving tax cuts to companies and individuals in the hope that their individual choices will make the economy more productive. This is the constant refrain for most economists. But, there is an alternative productivity strategy of investing in people — early child care, training, Aboriginal peoples, the disabled, immigrants, lifelong learning — so that Canada will have the best quality workforce in the world. This is directed investment. Along with investing in people, we need investment in infrastructure, especially in our cities. Public transit, shelter for the homeless, Internet connectivity for rural areas, will not come about through individuals having more tax cuts.

Years ago, in The Affluent Society, John Kenneth Galbraith made the progressive case for public investment. What was the use, he asked, of a wonderful private home if one could not go out at night because of unsafe streets or a deteriorating environment? A thriving and beautiful public space is needed to complement individual choice.

Today, in the choices inherent in the competing Liberal and Conservative visions for child care, we must answer the age-old question: Are we a community or a collective of atomized individuals?

— Thomas Walkom, The Toronto Star (2005/12/11)

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the row over death row

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In the last few weeks many people will have heard the name Stanley "Tookie" Williams, due to a high-profile campaign to spare the ex-gang leader from execution in California. Supporters of Williams, who was convicted of four murders in 1981, range from actor Jamie Foxx and rap star Snoop Dogg to Bishop Desmond Tutu, the Reverend Jesse Jackson and Winnie Mandela. The case has raised a number of political, social and legal issues that have propelled it from the U.S. West Coast into the national arena.

Williams, co-founded the notorious Crips gang, but while in jail has apparently been rehabilitated, winning praise for his anti-gang books, and earning several Nobel Peace Prize nominations for his teachings. His lawyers are not asking California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to spare his life because he is innocent - although Williams still denies the murders. Instead they say he is worth more alive than dead because of his work helping youths to avoid gangs.

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The paths of ethics and law never seem to stray too far from each other. Almost every controversial issue that has been debated in history has been caused by a conflict between what is ethical and what is legal. Perhaps there has never been a more controversial issue in all of history as capital punishment. Herein lies the heart of the debate: Is it ethical to make lawful the infliction of death?

I would argue that capital punishment is a morally intolerable institution. Homicide should not be used as an instrument of social policy because state execution creates a climate that holds life cheap. More importantly, the death penalty ought to be eliminated because human beings are fallible. A study by Amnesty International presented evidence that 350 people convicted of capital crimes in the U.S. between 1900 and 1985 were actually innocent. In most cases the discovery of new evidence of new evidence resulted in acquittal, pardon, commutation of sentence or dismissal of the charges. Some prisoners escaped execution by minutes, but 23 were actually executed. It is trite to say that death is irrevocable and can be inflicted on the innocent, but when lives are at stake, there is no acceptable margin of error. Even if it were possible to administer the death penalty in a fair, equitable, non-discriminatory, and error-free fashion, it is unequivocal that the death penalty would still violate fundamental human rights.

Over half the countries in the world have now abolished the death penalty in law or practice. Most of the countries that retain the practice do so to repress racial, religious, ethnic, or political opposition. The majority of states, of different political and government structures and varying religious and racial demographics, have agreed that the death penalty is unacceptable in their societies. There is something to be concluded from this progress towards worldwide abolition.

By no means is this stance intended to be disrespectful of the victims or the families of violent crime. The argument is against the infliction of death, not to condone the acts of the unequivocally guilty. Ultimately the argument must rest not on emotions but on reason and universal respect for human life. Historically, the death penalty was seen as an exception to the respect for life. It is time to conclude that the exception no longer has any moral or legal purchase. Respect for life should prevail, without exception.

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World Cup 2006 Finals

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A powerful symbol, a great mystery: No one knows why (though theories abound), but in today’s world many people find football the only area of identity in which they recognize themselves and in which they really believe. Whatever the reasons may be, collective dignity has a lot to do with the passage of a ball flying through the air. I do not mean only the communion the fan experiences with his team each Sunday from the stands of the stadium, but also, above all, the game played in the paddocks, in the little fields, on the beaches, the few public spaces still not devoured by urbanization run amok. This sport is a shared endeavour, played in teams; it contains an energy that can greatly help the scorned to love themselves and can save them from the solitude they feel condemns them to being perpetually incommunicado. Sport, especially football, is one of the few places that can provide shelter to those who have no place in the world.

— Eduardo Galeano, Ode Magazine (Issue 29)

We still believe
We still believe
We still believe

It's coming home
It's coming home
It's coming
Football's coming home

It's coming home
It's coming home
It's coming
Football's coming home

Tears for heroes dressed in grey
No plans for final day
Stay in bed, drift away

It could have been all
Songs in the street
It was nearly complete
It was nearly so sweet
And now I'm singing

Three lions on a shirt
Jules Rimet still gleaming
No more years of hurt
No more need for dreaming

Talk about football coming home
And then one night in Rome
We were strong, we had grown
And now I see Becks ready for war
Owen good as before
Rooney certain to score
And Psycho screaming

Three lions on a shirt
Jules Rimet still gleaming
No more years of hurt
No more need for dreaming

We can dance Nobby's dance
We could dance it in France

It's coming home
It's coming
Football's coming home

It's coming home
It's coming home
It's coming
Football's coming home
It's coming home
It's coming home
It's coming
Football's coming home
It's coming home
It's coming home
It's coming
Football's coming home

Three lions on a shirt
Jules Rimet still gleaming
No more years of hurt
No more need for dreaming

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Leftward Leaning

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By Peter H. Schuck
The American Lawyer
December 1, 2005

Elite law schools cherish robust debate, iconoclasm, and arguing issues from all sides, right? Wrong. The dirty little (not-so) secret about these faculties - that they care much more about diversifying their skin colors, genders, and surnames than about diversifying their points of view-has finally come to the attention of the general public. Now that the truth is out, law school faculties are likely to come under increased pressure to surrender some of their hiring autonomy. But this pressure would be misguided. If these faculties know what is good for them, they will acknowledge the dearth of dissenting voices within them - and work earnestly to correct the problem from within.

The 191 accredited law schools in the United States churn out some 40,000 J.D.s a year. These people will become community leaders in business, politics, education, civic organizations, and many other fields. Even today, after centuries of lawyer jokes and other forms of lawyer-bashing, the legal profession remains, as Tocqueville observed, the natural aristocracy of merit in a society that rejects inherited rank and privilege. How these lawyers are trained matters a great deal not just to them, but to the larger society that they will help to lead. Their political values, shaped in part by their teachers and then carried into their communities, will help define them as parents, citizens, and leaders.

What, then, are the political values of law professors, and how closely do those values resemble those of the larger communities that the newly minted lawyers will enter and influence? The answer to these two questions depends on whether you believe the high-minded ideals about diversity emblazoned on the facades of university buildings, celebrated in academic ceremonies, and proclaimed in the briefs that the schools file in affirmative action and academic freedom cases - or whether you believe, instead, the empirical evidence on law faculty diversity that have recently been published.

In the Winter 2005 issue of Yale Law and Policy Review, James Lindgren, a lawyer/sociologist at Northwestern University, observed that diversity-based affirmative action policies assume "that the groups that have been discriminated against historically are the same groups that are underrepresented in universities and further that these two presumptively coextensive sets of groups are coextensive with the groups that would provide more viewpoint diversity if their numbers were increased in academia."

For most faculties, the groups that would add the most viewpoint diversity are "Republicans, conservatives, and evangelical or fundamentalist Christians-none among the groups that were traditionally locked out by the United States's racist and sexist practices of discrimination." (Lindgren also found that Jews, who were subject to hatred and discrimination, are vastly overrepresented in law teaching, by a ratio of 13:1). Among professors at the top 100 law schools that Lindgren examined, "white female Republicans" is the group most underrepresented. But because individuals in this particular subgroup do not fit the left-of-center academic ideal and stereotype of women, faculties seeking gender diversity do not recruit them. Indeed, Lindgren finds that all of the substantial underrepresentation of white women compared to the full-time working population was among white female Republicans, while white Democratic women were overrepresented on law faculties compared to the demographically comparable pool of lawyers.

"Promoting intellectual diversity," Lindgren concludes, "would often point away from hiring more minorities and toward hiring more Republicans or evangelical Christians. Conversely, promoting further ethnic and gender diversity, particularly in faculty hiring, often would not foster a wider range of intellectual or political views-or more representative ones. Indeed, if most of the women and ethnic minorities who are actually hired on law faculties tend to lean toward the Democratic Party, the faculty overall may become less representative of the diversity of views in the wider public."

A teaching institution that constructs an ideologically one-sided faculty, whether liberal or conservative, seriously abdicates its pedagogical responsibilities. Professors have a sacred duty to their students and to each other to affirm-and also to exemplify-core academic and intellectual values. We should convey to our students an abiding respect, even awe, for the complexity of law in society, and we should exhibit the ideological humility that this complexity implies. Any professors worthy of the title have strong views, of course, but they should also have a keen sense that those views may be wrong, or based on incomplete evidence, or highly reductive. Even if we are utterly convinced of the correctness of our positions, we should teach as if we aren't - as if there are serious counterpositions to be entertained and explored, as if even the truth cannot be fully apprehended until it is challenged by the best arguments that can be marshaled against it. And although scrupulous teachers can sometimes challenge their own deepest convictions in class, most of us need competing points of view - on our own faculties, debated before our own students - to keep us intellectually honest and to enrich learning.

Peter H. Schuck is a law professor at Yale and the author, most recently, of Meditations of a Militant Moderate: Cool Views on Hot Topics and Diversity in America: Keeping Government at a Safe Distance.

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broken promises and no saviours

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The news that there will be a federal election campaign over the Christmas holidays — and a mean, nasty, negative campaign to boot — has been greeted in some quarters as being in poor taste. The season of joy and light should not be despoiled by as lowly a thing as electoral politics, the critics charge. The plain fact is that if there were ever two things more closely matched than an election campaign and the Christmas season, they have yet to make themselves known. Someone once said that Santa Claus and the Devil are the same thing: One day you realize both are your parents. This is as good a place as any to start proving my hypothesis.

Christmas is, essentially, a broken promise between people with power (parents) and the wretched masses (children). Children are raised to believe that, by behaving well for a month or so, they can provoke a positive outcome at Christmastime in the form of reward/booty from Santa Claus. In short, they think their actions have a direct effect on the world around them; they develop a sense of control over the world that is similar to the belief, provably false, that voting in an election makes a difference.

As the child ages, he or she discovers that the good behaviour they exhibited in order to be rewarded with gifts in fact had no effect whatsoever on the number of gifts they received, and that it was a foregone conclusion that they would be rewarded to some degree. The adults (politicians) try to manipulate the behaviour of children (the wretched masses) through a base reward system disguised as something noble (altruism). All the power remains with the parents (government), in spite of their claim that the child (the masses) is the one in control.

Christmas wish lists and election campaign platforms also have a symmetry. You ask your child what he or she wants for Christmas, and the child produces a list of potential gifts. As a good parent not wanting to spoil the surprise or to dash the child's hopes, you accept the list wordlessly, and perhaps even post it in a public place such as on the fridge door. At no time do you negotiate it or suggest that they will get all or none of the gifts on the list. The promise that the wish list will be respected within the financial capacity of the parents is a given. This, of course, is similar to an election platform, with the exception that the politicians (adults), not the masses (children), write the wish list based on what they hope the masses (children) want as their reward for carrying out the pointless task of voting in their favour (making their bed every morning in December). In both cases, when Christmas Day comes — or, in campaign terms for the winning party, on Election Day — most of the items on the list will be ignored in favour of one or two that are as useful to the government (parents) as they are to the masses (children).

If the child has asked for an iPod, new pants, a book, a DVD and cellphone, parents will understand they must get either of the two big-ticket items (the iPod or the cellphone), but not necessarily both, in order to avoid a negative backlash. From the other listed items, they can pick one or two that suit them financially or put them in the best light as parents. A wise parent would choose from the above list the iPod, the pants (because most likely the child needs pants anyway, creating a savings), and the book (because it's "good for them"). A less wise parent, desperately seeking the child's approval — comparable to, say, a minority government position — might throw in the cellphone as well, leaving the parent with a debt he or she will come to regret.

Similarly, if a political party has promised new hospitals, gay marriage, lower taxes and more library books, once elected (Christmas Day), it can choose what it will actually deliver. Like the parent, however, it must choose wisely. A wise government would deliver from the above list lower taxes (big ticket) and more library books (inexpensive); or new hospitals (big ticket) and more library books. Only a very unwise government would deliver gay marriage and more library books, as neither of these are big-ticket items.

An equally unwise government would deliver the two costly and, in expense vs. revenue terms, contradictory items — new hospitals and lower taxes — at the same time. The fact that this happens regularly should be seen in the light of the large numbers of families that go into debt financing Christmas every year.

A few more similarities between Christmas and elections:

• Both were once celebrated as the birth of a saviour (less of a theme today).
• In both instances, people intrude on us. Whether it is Stephen Harper, Peter Mansbridge or distant cousins from another province, Christmas and campaigns bring us into contact with people we'd rather avoid.
• Office Christmas parties make strange bedfellows, just as politics does.
• Both produce bad television. What is worse — watching Henry Winkler as the miserly "Benedict Slade" in An American Christmas Carol or watching Paul Martin debate Stephen Harper while Jack Layton strains to get a sentence in?

Finally, Christmas and politics rely for their existence on the optimistic premise that we can all get along with each other, and actually want to do so. During campaigns, as during the holidays, we rise to an occasion that we believe to be noble. Elections are cast as the shining moment in the endless cycle of democracy, just as Christmas is to the eternal cycle of the seasons. We boast to ourselves and each other that these two traditions represent us at our best. Then Boxing Day comes, and it's As you were, people.

— PETER SCOWEN, Toronto Star (2005/12/04)

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fascism then, fascism now

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a cautionary sound-off, as the election campaign and Alito nomination hearings continue...

Observing political and economic discourse in North America since the 1970s leads to an inescapable conclusion: The vast bulk of legislative activity favours the interests of large commercial enterprises. Big business is very well off, and successive Canadian and U.S. governments, of whatever political stripe, have made this their primary objective for at least the past 25 years.

Digging deeper into 20th century history, one finds the exaltation of big business at the expense of the citizen was a central characteristic of government policy in Germany and Italy in the years before those countries were chewed to bits and spat out by fascism. Fascist dictatorships were borne to power in each of these countries by big business, and they served the interests of big business with remarkable ferocity.

These facts have been lost to the popular consciousness in North America. Fascism could therefore return to us, and we will not even recognize it. Indeed, Huey Long, one of America's most brilliant and most corrupt politicians, was once asked if America would ever see fascism. "Yes," he replied, "but we will call it anti-fascism."

By exploring the disturbing parallels between our own time and the era of overt fascism, we can avoid the same hideous mistakes. At present, we live in a constitutional democracy. The tools necessary to protect us from fascism remain in the hands of the citizen. All the same, North America is on a fascist trajectory. We must recognize this threat for what it is, and we must change course.

Business tightened its grip on the state in both Italy and Germany by means of intricate webs of cartels and business associations. These associations exercised a high degree of control over the businesses of their members. They frequently controlled pricing, supply and the licensing of patented technology. These associations were private but were entirely legal. Neither Germany nor Italy had effective antitrust laws, and the proliferation of business associations was generally encouraged by government. This was an era eerily like our own, insofar as economists and businessmen constantly clamoured for self-regulation in business. By the mid 1920s, however, self-regulation had become self-imposed regimentation. By means of monopoly and cartel, the businessmen had wrought for themselves a "command and control" economy that replaced the free market.

It is always dangerous to forget the lessons of history. It is particularly perilous to forget about the economic origins of fascism in our modern era of deregulation. Most Western liberal democracies are currently in the thrall of what some call "market fundamentalism." Few nowadays question the flawed assumption that state intervention in the marketplace is inherently bad. As in Italy and Germany in the '20s and '30s, business associations clamour for more deregulation and deeper tax cuts. The gradual erosion of antitrust legislation, especially in the United States, has encouraged consolidation in many sectors of the economy by way of mergers and acquisitions.

The North American economy has become more monopolistic than at any time in the post-WWII period. U.S. census data from 1997 shows that the largest four companies in the food, motor vehicle and aerospace industries control 53.4, 87.3 and 55.6 per cent of their respective markets. Over 20 per cent of commercial banking in the U.S. is controlled by the four largest financial institutions, with the largest 50 controlling over 60 per cent. Even these numbers underestimate the scope of concentration, since they do not account for the myriad interconnections between firms by means of debt instruments and multiple directorships, which further reduce the extent of competition.

Our collective forgetfulness about the economic nature of fascism is dangerous at a philosophical level. As contradictory as it may seem, fascist dictatorship was made possible because of the flawed notion of freedom that held sway during the era of laissez-faire capitalism in the early 20th century. It was the liberals of that era who clamoured for unfettered personal and economic freedom, no matter what the cost to society. Such untrammelled freedom is not suitable to civilized humans. It is the freedom of the jungle. In other words, the strong have more of it than the weak. It is a notion of freedom that is inherently violent, because it is enjoyed at the expense of others. Such a notion of freedom legitimizes each and every increase in the wealth and power of those who are already powerful, regardless of the misery that will be suffered by others as a result. The use of the state to limit such "freedom" was denounced by the laissez-faire liberals of the early 20th century. The use of the state to protect such "freedom" was fascism. Just as monopoly is the ruin of the free market, fascism is the ultimate degradation of liberal capitalism.

-- Paul Bigioni, Toronto Star (2005/11/27)

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secret santa

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as part of my attempt to make an anti-consumerism statement, i decided this year that my "wish list" for the holidays would include, among other things, "world peace" and "making poverty history" and "brown paper packages tied up with string", just to throw everyone for a loop... lo and behold, my sister drew my name for our family's "secret santa" exchange, and doggone it if she didn't come up with the cleverest idea:

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on race relations

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For Canadians smug in their mythology of inhabiting the planet's most successful multicultural society, the riots of France have been cause for national tsk-tsking and self-satisfaction. At least, goes the script, we've got social inclusiveness right. At least — maybe more by luck than by design — we've avoided the creation of racial underclasses: no endless ugly suburbs of brown and black people imprisoned in poverty from which scant hope of escape exists. At least we've embraced into our national culture the notion of postethnic identity, woven the values of anti-discrimination and equality into not only our laws but into our hearts and national idiom.

Well, hold the complacency, eh?

To be sure, a Canadian mirror held up to the car-BQs of France shows no violent mass unrest brewing in, say, Toronto's Jane-Finch or Jamestown neighbourhoods, Montreal's quartier St-Michel or patches of Greater Vancouver's Surrey and the Downtown Eastside. But what recent research reveals is an alarming and disquieting analogue to the demographic portrait of the French suburban cités. It shows an emerging population of Canadian-raised daughters and sons of visible-minority immigrants à la France whose accents and cultural reference points are as Canadian as maple syrup, but who in many respects feel less welcome in the country than their parents.

The data show, in fact, a generation raised in the milieu of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and multiculturalism's rhetoric, who expect to be treated as equals in Canadian society and who angrily are discovering that they are not. Their disaffection has gone largely unnoticed until now in polls and academic research because, unlike in France, the numbers of the visible-minority second generation are statistically small.

The data show that on virtually all indicators used by sociologists and governments to measure integration into Canadian life, visible minorities rate themselves as less integrated than whites. Add their perceptions of non-belonging to their socioeconomic rankings — among all ethnocultural groups in Canada, racial minorities clearly have the lowest relative household income and the highest poverty rates — and the outlines of underclass loom menacingly from the mist.

"I don't feel accepted," says, Rahel Appiagyei, a third-year student in international relations attending Toronto's elite bilingual Glendon College at York University. "The one thing I don't understand — me, personally, and for blacks in general — is why we're still seen as immigrants." In the Canada of her experience, she says, "the word 'immigrant' is used to mean coloured and the word 'Canadian' is a code word for Caucasian." She tells the story of living one summer in Quebec with a family to learn French. The father made clear that he associated blacks with poverty and one day commented that he had never thought blacks attractive until he met her. "It was a compliment and insult at the same time." She tells of being often asked: "'You're from Africa, how come you know English so well?' I feel I'm always being assessed with lions and tigers, with remoteness. Why is it we're not allowed to feel we belong here?"

University of Toronto sociologist Jeffrey Reitz's findings from the data carries special weight: "Although most Canadians deny harbouring racist views," he says, "they express 'social distance' from minorities — that is, preferences not to act with members of other racial groups." And so, Prof. Reitz says, the alienation of today's visible-minority second generation is a harbinger of the future. What the data also show is that white Canadians tend to discount the claims of discrimination reported by their non-white fellow countrymen and countrywomen. It's not the mythology of multicultural inclusiveness. And yet discounting those claims, Prof. Reitz warns, may make matters worse. "Lack of [racial] conflict in the present may not be a good predictor of the future."

— Michael Valpy, Globe and Mail (11/12/2005)

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