Panglossian Notes

Fault Lines - Avi Lewis: Obama 1 year in

and what have they got. The they are those in the USA.

Avi, the Canuck, like most of the RoW just watched for 12 months with some interest, & fingers crossed. But really, and to be frank, not too much has really changed has it?

Now, going forward (always forward 'cause you can't look back, eh) the RoW, the we, expect, likely, mostly the same old same old from the old geezer with the strange goatee and gaudy clothes.

Adding one of those asides I know I shouldn't but think I have liberty to do, I never was too fussy about Avi's dad, when he was politically active in the NDP, but liked and supported his grand-father David. Yes, I wondered why for sometime, but have concluded now it was Stephen's speaking style.

Great opening shot of Avi. The graffitied and postered old wall behind him is, I think, stunning.

Watching, reading and listening to the Haiti reporting

A while ago I read, then listened to, Chris Hedges (transcript is here) talking about the best way to describe the types of experiences individuals are exposed to in war. Since war is not the normal experience of most Westerns - truly it isn't and to the minority that actually are in a so-called war it's now more surgical relative to what our fathers and grand-fathers endured most times awful though it currently may be - it's easy to transfer Hedges' war concept to almost any catastrophic event where you are exposed to bits and pieces of humans, piles of cadavers and the strange disconnect you can take for granted during the curious excitement of the moment

So if you've cleaned up after an airline crash or bombing incident or been present in a calamity such as the earthquake in Haiti - could substitute the Boxing Day Tsunami also - you can, as a thinking and caring individual be griped, more likely disturbed and sometimes haunted, by what you see, smell, heard and remember.

Hedges' theorizes that the experience is better portrayed as fiction than as fact. I'm not sure of this. I'm thinking of Michael Herr's Dispatches and how I've always thought it had a direct link to Robert Graves' Good-bye To All That both fact, not fiction, but the former one written in the heat of the moment and the latter a mémoire so-to-speak. Neither were what I'd call war-porn and both to me conveyed a sense of both WWI and Vietnam - an aside, the sense to me was the madness of it all.

Why wandering off into the silliness of remembering long ago calamities?

Because I was struck yesterday reading a piece by Brendan O’Neill in The First Post that I was being revolted by the reporting on Haiti. And my revolution extends to Democracy Now, I'm sorry to say.

I've concluded, for 5 seconds, that most modern media people are babes in relation to actual horror shows - i.e. the individuals who now filter the news to me by way of the so-called MSM are ... .

Waiting for the "pundits" to speak, aka, pontificate about Brown in MA

So the USA, or MA, has elected it first porn star, well soft porn, to the US Senate and he's Republican. Pretty funny in a way, though from my perspective the guy, Brown, seems a bit of a dingbat but then St. Ronny had Alzheimers though the defenders of the icon say the disease only sprang on Ron after leaving office.

But what does Obama do now, 'cause it seems the results from Massachusetts maybe a referendum on the POTUSs first year in office?

Will there be a sea-change in Obama's methods?

Will he consider revamping his current, confirmed, slate of senior officials?

Will he dump his political advisors?

Will he become the brand he sold the US electorate prior to November 2008?

Will he give a speech admitting something is wrong in his administration?

Me, I think he'll use the State of the Union Speech to signify ... what? Jeez the last speech he gave in the assembled Congress some twit called him a liar about one element of the vague health reform initiative and you'd have to admit, in retrospect, that the label now seems right, given the dog's breakfast health reform has become in Congress, helped of course, by Obama twisting himself into a pretzel.

Contrition doesn't seem to be something he does too well unless really force to it, which is normal maybe. You don't want to be apologizing too often, after all. But if he does do some form of mea culpa I'll be very interested in both how he delivers it and how it is received by the famous US "folks" i.e. the only ones that really matter in the end.

Why? Because mea culpa's by public figures are always insincere and there really isn't, as yet, a rehabilitation clinic specializing in charisma restoration.

When the mojo is gone, sometimes it's just gone, which maybe the exact case now given the befuddled timidity of the legislative body on which Obama must depend and his own misplaced cooperative spirit.

What did LBJ say about a POTUS only really having one year, the first one, in office to get anything done and the rest of the time you are in election mode.

Thinking of Haiti and Massachusetts 1

Frustration Mounts Over Haiti Aid

Good there are signs of progress as noted in the linked article but it has taken 6 days to get that miserable one "green shoot" comment that there are signs of some aid actually being delivered. But, I think, no matter what the organizational confusion on the ground (sorry what do you expect on the site of a disaster eh) the story that will be remembered for some time is the one with the US diverting planes carrying life saving equipment. The usual suspects who defend authority at every turn will come out with the usual rational explanations ( all fundamentally blaming the victim stories because they are poor of just starving humans who should know better and just sit still and die) to defend the military but the fact is they diverted a plane carrying a field hospital and that will be a lasting impression and image in lots or the world. Definitely in South America where some country's from that part of the hemisphere's aid has also been diverted by what can be seen as high hand Yankee nonsense.

I'm slowly getting the impression that the USA and maybe the West in its entirety are showing real signs of decay in the ability to handle large scale events. All the great marvels of our supposed modern civilization now just appear to fail when actually needed. I'd better go back to reread Simon Winchester's Crack in the Edge of the World to remind myself that at one time, 103 years ago, a less modern USA could actually deal with large catastrophes better in fact damn well.

A Wake Up Call

It would, I guess, be unfortunate if Brown, the GOP candidate, wins the Senate seat in tomorrow's Massachusetts election. Brown seems to me a bit of a nutter, well inline with the GOPs extreme fringe, and not really representative of the people I know in the State. His election could also mean the USs Health Bill - whatever has been cocked up behind closed doors in DC - would be still born, again. It's hard to know whether that's a good or bad outcome right now as most who seem to support it, outside the confines of the Washington beltway, find it hard to signify clear agreement as they hold their noses.

Brown's win would again show Obama as the guy who now seems perennially a day late and a dollar short in regard anything of significance to what Americans call "folks", in a real word ordinary people.

In the article, linked above, there is a pre-mortem of the election strategy and what might have gone wrong from the perspective of Obama's approach to seeing his advantage slip away.

It includes the obvious elements of the Obama failures to this point. The main one is that he appears to be a standard run-of-the-mill politician and people now know it. With the exception that he gives a good speech now and again, he seems hypocritical, self-serving, a lover of the status quo and cultivator of future options with elites.

Obama sold himself, or was sold, as something different at the time of the US election last year. But now he has spent the 12 months from the time he was sworn in demonstrating to all that he was not the product on offer prior to November 3, 2009. To add to the insult and embarrassment of buying a pig-in-poke a cottage industry of know-it-all pundits seems to have sprung up to chastise US voters for having been either gullible, for believing Obama was not the usual lying SOB, or for not knowing that they lived, contrary to 4th of July extravaganzas, in a seriously dysfunctional democracy, one in which not even a god could effect "change" and where "hope" is for Haitians or little children..

Me I'm coming to a different conclusion about Obama and his approach to things. I think he maybe just a lazy guy. I know I am or have been at times in my career and it has lead me to miss the main chance sometimes. I'm reminded of Obama's own allegorical story about his mother making sure he didn't forget his English: "Listen Buster, if I have to get up this early to help you, you have to stay awake and work". Too bad his mother is gone and not here to remind him that he needs to work to effect change and that he has now likely squandered any chance of being seriously considered as anything but an interloper in the WH.

If Brown wins there's chit-chat that the Democrats in the Senate will use the Budget reconciliation procedural rule to pass the so-called Health Reform Bill. Boy that should be fun, won't that potentially turn the so-called progressive Democrats and independent vote against the party. All wonder, of course, why wasn't the procedure used to actually get a reasonably progressive Bill out of the Senate in the first place and not have to surrender to the loopier Democrats in the place.

A grey day in the Captial

Had brunch with a fed minister but more importantly an old friend, her husband and their charming happy good natured baby. Baby showed up in traditional dress, sort of, wolverine fur everywhere and tiny kamiks.

Quickly into chit-chatting I realize I'd forgotten how mind numbing the work of a cabinet minister is mostly: briefings by officials with endless detail, mainly stunningly boring cabinet meetings, speeches to groups of ... , almost nonstop travil to places you'd not want to go personally ... . The list goes on and at the end you only get less healthy and heavier.

Just something personal

I did before Christmas track someone I use to know in the North by CP press releases - yes I've come to that:

No sign of Nunavut woman who didn't return from walking her dogs

(CP) – Dec 12, 2009

IQALUIT, Nunavut — There's no sign of a missing 39-year-old woman in Nunavut who didn't return from walking her dogs.

RCMP Sgt. Jimmy Akavak says searchers on foot and on snowmobile have been looking for Lindsay Hudson ever since her roommate called to report her missing.

Akavak, who is the search-and-rescue co-ordinator, says Hudson hasn't been seen since about noon Friday when she left Iqaluit with her three animals.

She was heading to a small community about three kilometres away, but police fear she may have left the road and wandered onto the open land.

Akavak says Hudson had a backpack, but it's not known if she was carrying anything that would help her keep warm.

Environment Canada's website says the temperature in Iqaluit dropped to a low of -20 C. overnight, but gusting winds would have made it much colder.

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Jeez how can you go missing walking to Apex? You go off the road and twist an ankle, a blizzard comes in you're dead. But no blizzard, cold so what not enough to kill you I'd think, so what the ... .

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Frozen body of missing northern woman found; dogs still at her side

(CP) – 5 days ago

IQALUIT, Nunavut — The frozen body of a Nunavut woman who didn't return from walking her three dogs has been found.

The RCMP in Iqaluit say Lindsay Hudson's body was found on a road outside the territorial capital Saturday afternoon. Her two German shepherds were still at her side; a smaller dog had returned on its own.

Hudson left her apartment Friday at noon and the RCMP were called by her roommate when she didn't return after several hours.

Dozens of searchers on foot and on snowmobile looked for her throughout the night as temperatures dipped to -20 C. before the wind chill.

Police say an autopsy has been ordered, but no foul play is suspected.

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What the f is going on?

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Woman found frozen this week in Iqaluit was upset, left note for family: RCMP

(CP) – 4 days ago

IQALUIT, Nunavut — RCMP say a woman found frozen to death outside of Iqaluit this week with two of her dogs at her side was upset when she left home and may have been drinking.

The Mounties say 37-year-old Lindsay Hudson left a note for her family and friends, but they are not disclosing what the woman wrote.

Hudson took her three dogs walking Friday afternoon in temperatures around -20 C and the two largest dogs were still with her when her frozen body was found a day later.

RCMP Sgt. Jimmy Akavak says the dogs were in relatively good shape when they were found with woman.

The smallest dog had returned home Friday at around the time that the woman's friends and family were alerting police.

Akavak says up to 40 volunteers were involved in the search along with about a dozen snowmobiles, but they were hampered by darkness

As suspected and confirmed by a mutual Northern friend yesterday, but I was really hoping not, Lindsay committed suicide. I've lost track of how many good people I've known who have killed themselves in the North. She was a charming woman when I knew her and I wish I could have been out for a jont on the land and seen her poping pills then laying down to die. I'd have stopped it dogs or not.

Arctic, Nunavut

To honour the POTUS' 12 months in Office

Yeah, I know there are 5 days to go but I'm cleaning my hard drive and need to dump some silly stuff, eh:

John Oliver

Just getting my footing

I like to do that, get my footing, before moving into any new craziness. With the silliness glinting in Mr. Obama's eyes for his very own war in Yemen I thought I go back and re-read the chapter on Aden in Brian Lapping's book End of Empire (and yes I know Lapping is now considered a neo-con with his French holiday house close to Richard Perle's etc.) as that is the only, sorry to say book on my condo limited book shelves that itemizes the British leavings of it "vast" colonies.

I think I noted on my twitter thingy Adam Curtis' BBC blog and his remembering of the pre-1967 muddle that was going on in Aden and Yemen before the British finally left in '67.

In some strange way it's a bit hilarious to watch the US stumbling back over the footsteps of the Empire they threw-off 200 odd years ago. Maybe all modern empires are condemned to endlessly repeat the fiascos of those just past as they, the past ones, snicker politely.

Whatever. I wasn't satisfied that I knew why Aden had become so important at times, and only at times, to the British Empire so I looked online, not too extensively, but curiously, for more information and found Ian Marshall and Passages East which added for me a bit more about the how with Aden.

Curious

It's winter, I'm thinking of ball (testing and rambling)

I grew up in Brantford, yeah Gretzky's hometown so what. When I was a kid hockey wasn't it though I went to school with Dicky Duff's nephews. Ball was it. My grandfather played for the Brantford Red Socks as a short-stop - then he went off to WWI and got blinded but still loved the game back home as I remember sitting on his knee as we listen to games on the radio. At school - I was Catholic & went to separate schools (a name for Ontario eh) maybe different in the protestant (public) schools - in the Fall we listened to the World Series as we sat in classes at St Basil's & St Anne's. The nuns, Sister's of St Joseph had their favourites as did out lay teachers. Only fights were in the school yard - yankee fans vs dodgers eh - but I've always suspected there were close to punch ups between some of the nuns and teachers out of Northern Ontario that taught me. It was playing Ball, eh and everyone had their teams.

Gretzky's Polish so what, eh, the biggest thing for me growing up wasn't hockey but it was getting to play ball, over the Easter holiday time, with the Polish Vet's team. I made it once on one of the teams, playing first base, and still to me it is one of the most important accomplishments of my silly life. Boy I felt I done something making it to a team playing with the Vets - hey I'm Irish we were here before you eh.

I played, as a Catholic kid at Separate Schools, basketball always and my teams always won championships. Hey Catholic kids in Brantford had been doing basketball since we were in grade 2 when we were shrimps who could hardly master the hop-skip-an-jump every Saturday morning; so, getting to high school, even the most lame amongst us was a potential star going up against the protestant schools. Hey get the kids when they are small and you've got them forever: maybe but I still only watch baseball - no hockey or basketball. Must be that I was on a Polish Vet team sometime in the 50's I think.

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