Let's abolish the Senate

Ah, yes. The Canadian Senate. A chamber of second thought, sober or otherwise. Not elected by citizens, not representative of regions nor citizens, and certainly not effective in any manner. It's difficult to know just what the role of a body such as this might be in a democratic federation such as ours.


Senator Nancy Ruth, noted feminist and philanthropist, dropped her last name several years ago as a statement against the patriarchy. All good things indeed. She will now be remembered as the cold fancy-cheese Senator. Nancy Ruth complained about being served cold Camembert and broken crackers while flying first-class. She has to fly first class and have a better breakfast. At our expense of course.


Nancy Ruth is from the Jackman family, three generations of whom have controlled one of Canada's largest financial companies, Empire Life. She sold off her shares in the company in 1980, at the age of 38, because, as she told then reporter Stephen Brunt, "I was tired of working for a living, to be blunt about it." She devoted herself to genuinely good causes and was rewarded in 2005 by the conservative Liberal Prime Minister Paul Martin with an appointment to the Senate. That's about three months of actual work every year, with some party fund raising events to be added of course, and a whack of expenses to be paid by taxpayers. All at a starting pay rate of  $138,000.

Her case is minor compared to some of our senators. A number seem to be severely challenged when it comes to claiming expenses. Legal. Illegal. It' all rather confusing to most of them.






For all of us, the cold camebert story sums up what is wrong with our Senate. Unelected, unaccountable and out-of-touch senators cost our country almost $100 million every year.

It's time to get rid of the lot of them. Unless, of course, someone wants to appoint me.                                                      Copyright 2015 by Jim Murray

Do you really want to defeat Harper?

If you are like me... you want to see a change in government in Canada. Under our system it's possible, in fact, likely, that a government is formed without a plurality of votes across the country. How we vote against the governing party does make a difference.

The election of 2011 was an incredible achievement for Canada's social democrats: official opposition and the chance to provide real change in Ottawa in 2015.

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Come October, British Columbia will be crucial in defeating Stephen Harper and the Conservatives. All the polls since the beginning of the year show a three-way race. The most recent polls indicate a decline for the Conservatives and the Liberals and growing strength for New Democrats.

	CON	GRN	LIB	NDP
2015-03-24	26.3	15.7	27.4	27.5	EKOS

British Columbians can't afford to split the centre-left vote between Liberals and New Democrats, and voting Green is really just helping the Conservatives. Moving from second place to first place in a number of BC ridings can be done ~ if we don't waste our votes on the Liberals or the Greens.

We can make a difference. Find out the stakes in your riding. Contact a constituency office. Get involved. It is up to us.

By Jim Murray. Copyright 2015.

Canada, Islamic State & Syria ~ Haven't we learned anything?

The Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, is keen to expand Canada's up-to-now token military mission in the Middle East to Iraq and Syria. Not that we have been invited, but that's another matter.






According to Foreign Affairs Minister Rob Nicholson, extending our mission is a matter of "moral clarity."

We should take a brief moment to look, and possibly learn, from the recent past.



Today's mess, and the mess we are about to commit our nation more fully, began decades ago when the Excited States, understanding nothing about Afghanistan, decided to arm local militias against the Soviet Union. They funded people like Osama Bin Laden and other warlords in a twisted attempt to unseat a regime that was simply on the wrong side of the Cold War. It seemed a good idea at the time. However. The warlords quickly turned on each other and against the Excited States, and produced al-Qaeda, the Taliban, the attacks of September 11th, and unspeakable atrocities against the people of Afghanistan. Canada, for reasons only Jean Chretien might understand, sent military forces to Afghanistan and stayed for twelve long years. Over 2000 Canadian soldiers were injured and 158 died during our war in Afghanistan, and today the country is pretty much the way we found it all those years ago: a narco-state mired in corruption, violence and misogyny.

In 2003, the Excited States under W, along with Tony Blair, cooked up a bunch of lies to launch a war against Iraq. Saddam Hussein was deposed and the country promptly self-destructed. Hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis died. The social structure of the nation crumbled. The ultimate winners appear to be Islamic State, and probably Iran, though one can never be certain in this part of the world. That the Saudis were happy with the original effort  by W and Blair was probably reason enough. To this day, the country remains chaotic.

Just as a variation of Arab Spring broke out in Libya, various western countries, including our own, decided to remove a former ally in Moammar Gadhafi. Again, as in Afghanistan, we created a lawless state of rogues, gangs and thugs. The military arsenal that once belonged to our former ally, indeed Petro Canada's former ally, was distributed, for a fee, across Africa and the Middle East, quite likely to Islamic State and Boko Haram. Libya, for all our best efforts at ridding the nation of Gadhafi, is in anarchy, and its citizens suffer in ways, we, in Canada, cannot imagine.

So now it's off to Syria. Canada will aid its allies in attempting to destroy, or at least degrade Islamic State, or whatever other name we, or they, use. We will be seen as supporting the rulers of Syria, who are themselves guilty of war crimes against their own people. Why would Canada want to rally to support an despicable dictatorship? The Saudis are happy with our intervention of course, they the shining light of how best to conduct public beheadings.

Our Foreign Minister speaks of a moral clarity and he is right. Canada's mission will involve participation with mass murderers, fanatics of the worst kind, and diabolical lunatics. How else can we possibly describe the leaders of Saudi Arabia, Syria and Iraq. That is morally clear.

Does our government have a plan? Exactly how will a Canadian mission do anything to make Syria, or Iraq, better in any possible way? Islamic State currently operates in Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Tunisia, Pakistan and Nigeria. Is our goal to hunt down and kill all of them? And what if we don't?

Sometimes things can't be fixed. Sometimes violence in response to violence only escalates and promotes even more of the same. Creating martyrs is great for recruitment.

In the end, is Canada's expanding war on terror simply political posturing in an election year? Is this something to appeal to a large swath of  Conservative and Liberal voters, rather than offering anything substantial in the fight against Islamic State? Moral clarity indeed.

Copyright 2015 by Jim Murray.

Tom Mulcair in Vancouver

Tom Mulcair, fresh from a major rally in Toronto on Sunday, brought his road show to Vancouver and had a great rally at a downtown hotel on Wednesday night.





There were over 1200 NDP supporters out for the hour-long event in Vancouver. Long before Tom Mulcair appeared, every seat in the hall was taken and hundreds were standing along the sides and the back. There was an air of excitement in the gathering that only built as the crowd grew. Something has definitely changed since I first met Tom at Kwantlen Polytechnic University in February 2014.

The first election campaign speech I attended was one given by Pierre Trudeau when, as a sitting PM, he visited Weyburn, Saskatchewan, in aid of the candidate, and my father's friend, who ultimately won the riding on the coattails of Trudeaumania. My dad, a long-time member of the federal Liberal Party, was Chair of the local public school board at the time, and he made sure all public school kids had the afternoon off, in order to attend the rally. His argument in allowing and encouraging school children to attend a partisan political meeting during a weekday afternoon when they should have been in school was "When will a Prime Minister ever come to Weyburn again?" He had a point. As kids, we certainly appreciated the afternoon off, not really caring about the reason. As excited, screaming and youthful faces, we were props for the media who followed the election campaign. I don't recall the leaders of the other parties being provided the same aid from the Chair of the School Board when they came to town, but they weren't sitting Prime Ministers of course. Nor were they Liberals.

Our present-day election campaign, which isn't yet official, is certainly underway. The props are in place at every rally, the teleprompters and videographers ready. My flirtation with the Liberal Party is but a vague memory of my youth. Trudeaumania ended with the declaration of the War Measures Act in 1970, and if not then, certainly with the flip-flop on wage and price controls in 1975.

Like most campaign rallies of the past, this one was slightly slow in starting, yet just like my introduction to the campaign rally in 1968, the people present on this night were patient. There was a buzz in the crowd; they came to see Tom Mulcair, and there was an expectation of something special happening tonight.

After a brief warm-up act featuring candidates Constance Barnes (Vancouver Centre) and Scott Andrews (Vancouver Quadra), we rose and looked, and looked for the man of the hour. Tom finally took the stage and after exclaiming his appreciation for the fantastic crowd, the teleprompters guided his speech.

Tom Mulcair is thoughtful, intelligent and passionate about his cause, and it shows.

On the face of it, there's not much charisma going on with Tom; there's that beard which might need a trim, and in spite of coming from the fashion capital of Canada, he's no fashion plate.  Yet, there is an appeal to this gentle man from Quebec who speaks flawless English and French, and switches effortlessly between our two languages.




At the end of his address, while We're All in this Together by Sam Roberts blared from the speakers, Tom entered the crowd and the real fun began.






A crowd of all ages surged around him as he slowly, very slowly indeed, made his way out of the hall. In fact: the leaving part probably took longer than the actual rally.













Everyone, young and old, seemed to want a photo with Tom, and in this age of social networking, his handlers made it easy, getting phones from people and taking the picture for them. All those photos, hundreds perhaps, will be shared and re-shared many times over, and the campaign builds.







It's an amazing difference from that campaign stop in 1968 when school kids were brought in to provide the backdrop for the national news. We still have backdrops in political gatherings, but today's campaign manager's real job is getting the message out through social media, and in building virtual excitement, quite possibly charisma, in the contemporary context.





And by that standard Tom Mulcair is building and driving excitement and charisma. Even Jeem had to have his photo taken with Tom. It won't be the last. It's going to be a long campaign.

Photos by Jim Murray. Copyright 2015.

Something is truly broken in Israel

It was a surprising election outcome; the polls had suggested an end to the right wing lunacy that has plagued Israel for far too long. Instead we have another four years as Israel continues on its road to apartheid. 

Gideon Levy, writing the-day-after in Haaretz, offers a wonderful perspective. There's a reason this courageous journalist receives death threats.

The first conclusion that arose just minutes after the announcement of the exit polls was particularly discouraging: The nation must be replaced. Not another election for the country's leadership, but general elections to choose a new Israeli people – immediately. The country urgently needs that. It won’t be able to stand another term for Benjamin Netanyahu, who emerged last night as the man who will form the next government.

If after six years of nothing, if after six years of sowing fear and anxiety, hatred and despair, this is the nation's choice, then it is very ill indeed. If after everything that has been revealed in recent months, if after everything that has been written and said, if after all this, the Israeli phoenix succeeded in rising from the ashes and getting reelected, if after all this the Israeli people chose him to lead for another four years, something is truly broken, possibly beyond repair.

Netanyahu deserves the Israeli people and they deserve him. The results are indicative of the direction the country is headed: A significant proportion of Israelis has finally grown detached from reality. This is the result of years' worth of brainwashing and incitement. These Israelis voted for the man who will lead the United States to adopt harsh measures against Israel, for the man whom the world long ago grew sick of. They voted for the man who admitted to having duped half the world during his Bar-Ilan speech; now he has torn off his mask and disavowed those words once and for all. Israel said "yes" to the man who said "no" to a Palestinian state. Dear Likud voters, what the hell do you say "yes" to? Another 50 years of occupation and ostracism? Do you really believe in that?

On Tuesday the foundations were laid for the apartheid state that is to come. If Netanyahu succeeds in forming the next government in his spirit and image, then the two-state solution will finally be buried and the struggle over the character of a binational state will begin. If Netanyahu is the next prime minister, then Israel has not only divorced the peace process, but also the world. Piss off, dear world, we're on our own. Please don't interfere, we're asleep, the people are with Netanyahu. The Palestinians can warm the benches at the International Criminal Court at The Hague, the Israel boycotters can swing into high gear and Gaza can wait for the next cruel attack by the Israeli army.

The battle for all these has yet to be officially decided. The next prime minister will be crowned by Moshe Kahlon and the heads of other small parties. At the time of this writing, Kahlon has yet to declare his intention. The ball is in these parties' court; they will decide if Netanyahu continues. Most of them despise him, but it's doubtful whether they will have the courage to turn their backs on the public. That will be their test. That will be the test of their courage and integrity. Moshe Kahlon and Aryeh Dery, do you truly believe Netanyahu is better than Isaac Herzog for the society and social welfare you purport to care for? Does the country's decent and courageous president, Reuven Rivlin, believe Netanyahu will be a better prime minister than Herzog? There is a lot resting on his shoulders now – but the fact that a figure like Netanyahu and a party like Likud succeeded in maintaining power as the country's leading faction already says a great deal.

Netanyahu is threatening to surpass David Ben-Gurion as Israel's longest running leader. He is already in second place, and yet it's hard to think of one significant achievement on his part. The list of damage he has done is long. But he is the nation's, or much of the nation's, chosen one. That choice must be respected, even if it makes it difficult to hope for a good outcome. The only consolation is that another Netanyahu term will prompt the world to act. That possibility is our only refuge.

By Gideon Levy. Published in Haaretz, March 18, 2015, under the title: Netanyahu deserves the Israeli people, and they deserve him

Photos courtesy of Haaretz.