Cassandra's View

A Step Forward

2004-01-28T15:01:00.000-05:00

Hooray!

The Prime Minister is calling for an Inquiry into Arar's case. Finally!

Concerning Power Rangers (what an unfortunate title)

2004-01-28T14:52:00.000-05:00

Reading The New Yorker yesterday I came upon this article by Joshua Micah Marshall. It is well worth reading (although I recommend printing it up first or even, gasp, buying a hard copy since it is rather long for screen perusal). Although some have criticized his blog, Talking Points Memo, as being a tad arrogant, I've been a longtime fan. Not only is his political analysis intelligent, but he writes well.

Here, his theme is the American Empire. And as an Americanist (who did his doctorate in American History at Brown) he uses an American historical analogy to understand where the US is now, noting:

Hard-liners like Perle and Frum would do well to remember that America began as an empire, formally and officially. It wasnÂ’t our empire, of course; it was BritainÂ’s. And the story of how Britain lost its first empire may be more instructive for Americans today than how Britain found itself without its second.

Marshall argues that the root of Britain's control over its American colonies lay in the colonies consent to be ruled. The British Empire's mistake was that "it confused the power it had on paperÂ—its claims to sovereignty and dominionÂ—with the nature of the control it exercised..." Marshall points out that America may be making the same mistake right now, in insisting that the world recognize its imperium.

Of course I agree. I've frequently remarked that the key to the Roman Empire's power lay in acquiescenceence of those who were ruled rather than the relentless application of imperial might.

It strikes me, however, that this concept might be easier for Canadians to understand than Americans. After all, Canada obtained confederation through negotiation rather than revolution. And even now, she maintains an allegiance to the British monarchy as a member of the commonwealth. Personally, as an ardent republican (in the British sense!), it galls me to have Elizabeth's face on every coin, but I suspect that one of the reasons her presence evokes so little popular resentment is the deep seated understanding that she is there by our consent. Should Canada choose, she would disappear. The commonwealth exists because it suits the member countries to maintain it, not because England would go to war if any were to secede.

The United States, on the other hand, has built its own national identity upon the mythology of revolution and conquest. Movies are made about the Alamo (painfully bad movies if the trailers are anything to go by), not the purchase of Alaska. Presidential candidates are expected to display military experience rather than skill at peaceful conflict resolution (Jimmy Carter is an excellent example).

Marshall argues that America probably cannot continue to act with such bluster and so little acknowledgement of the realities of power. I tend to agree. But I wonder if one of the self-perpetuating mechanisms of empire (true for Rome and true for Britain) consists of the willingness of so many provinces to do the Empire's dirty work. To patch together a working solution after the Empire has done its work. The US was able to go into Afghanistan, to wage a war and declare a victory, and then essentially abandon the country. Now it is up to countries like Canada to send soldiers in an effort to maintain some semblance of control. Now everyone hopes that the UN will go in to manage Iraq. It may be that one of the benefits of Empire is having a host of others to fix your mistakes. Or at least die trying.

Righting Wrongs

2004-01-23T14:11:00.000-05:00

Sorry for being silent for so long.

I've been roused out of my winter stupor by the ongoing story of Maher Arar. His case has revealed so much of what is problematic in "post 9-11" Canada (and her relation to our neighbor to the South) that I cannot stay quiet.

As you probably know, the Canadian who was deported by the US while he was in transit on his return home is now attempting to sue the US government for their actions. "Arar alleges he was deliberately sent to Syria so torture could be used to extract any information he might have." It seems a reasonable claim, although (pessimist that I am) I will be surprised if he is able to obtain justice from John Ashcroft, Tom Ridge, or any of the other officials named in his suit. He may, however, obtain some justice back here in Canada. Even if he never obtains personal redress for his suffering, his case may help prevent similar abuses from occurring to other Canadians.

When Arar's situation initially surfaced, it seemed that the US had simply trampled roughshod over the rights of a Canadian. Now, however the situation grows murkier. The US media recently revealed that "while Canadian diplomats were demanding answers from the U.S., it turns out that it was the Royal Canadian mounted police who had been passing U.S. intelligence the information about ArarÂ’s alleged terrorist associations." Moreover Canadian investigations indicate that the Prime Minister was left in the dark. Chretien was not told that the RCMP was investigating Arar, or that they had passed on information to the US government.

And now the press is all abuzz with the recent search and seizure the RCMP performed upon Juliet O'Neil, a reporter for the Ottawa Citizen. She had written on the Arar case and in one article had "cited 'a security source' and a leaked document offering minute details of what Arar allegedly told Syrian military intelligence officials during his incarceration." The RCMP wanted to know the source of that leak, and evoked the Security of Information Act to obtain awarrantt. Yet given what we now know, it seems most likely that the source of that leak was within the RCMP itself. In other words, the RCMP is using its new post 9-11 powers to keep Canadians in the dark about its own operations. As James Travers pointed out in the Star today,

For more than three years the RCMP has been sliding down a slippery slope toward the swamp it finds itself in today. That slide began when Jean Chrétien's administration, determined to reassure a traumatized Washington that Canada is secure, overruled experience, common sense and the royal commission to put the RCMP back in the spy business. That decision recrossed a line Ottawa drew more than 20 years ago when it recognized the fundamental difference between police and intelligence work. What it learned then and forgot in 2001 is that the RCMP has a disturbing history of human rights abuse and political deception. In its watershed report on barn burning, burglary and theft, the McDonald Commission found the RCMP's elected masters were kept in the dark as it broke laws and rules in the name of national security. In a conclusion that now sounds like a forecast, the commission stated: "The common thread which we have detected through these incidents is that of a willingness on the part of the RCMP to deceive those outside the force who have some sort of constitutional authority of jurisdiction over them and their activities."

"Very clearly, we are not a police state and we have no intention of being a police state," says Prime Minister Martin. Does this mean he will listen to the call for an inquiry into Arar's case? A variety of people have come to see the need for one, from the Liberal MP of Ottawa City Centre, to Catholic Bishops, to the stalwart John Ibbitson. Does this mean that the legalizationn that was passed to appease the US after 9-11 will be reexamined, that its potential for abuse will be reassessed? Might we actually learn from the past?

I am not by temperament an optimist. But the media does tend to take an interest in their own. Now that it is a reporter, and not some Syrian-born civilian, who has come under fire perhaps, just perhaps, we might see some change. Here's hoping.

Civil Liberties in a Northern Province

2003-12-08T12:11:00.000-05:00

The other day I went to a panel discussion on "Human Rights and Security" in Canada at The Forum. The subject is certainly topical. In addition to the case of Maher Arar, which is finally getting media attention, there is the recent debacle of "Project Thread," to remind us of the dangers that the fear of terrorism and corresponding desire for "security" create. Speakers at The Forum reminded us that this tension is hardly new. Professor Shin Imai reviewed the justifications and long-term consequences of the treatment of Japanese-Canadians during the Second World War, and Serge Roy detailed how he and many other Quebequois were stripped of their rights during the FLQ crisis.

What does all this have to do with empires, you may ask? Well, one of the audience noted that these events all mirrored similar abuses by our Southern neighbor. True, the US did not deal with the FLQ, but the brutal repression of Quebec activists in Canada echoed the treatment of peace and civil rights activists in the US. And this is the important point. While the US was not responsible for the Canadian government's abuses of human rights -- the Empire was not secretly plotting Canadian domestic policy -- nevertheless Canada appears to have looked South for moral guidance, or moral justification. This is exactly how the Roman Empire worked. It did not rule by the sword alone. It did not simply force all its provinces to follow Rome's lead. The provinces took it upon themselves to gauge what Rome wanted (which given the complexities of Roman politics was not always obvious), and to comply. It was rare that Rome needed to actually force its provinces to adopt the policies it wanted, even though the provinces had their own governments and legal codes.

So it is that, following the creation in the US of the Patriot Act, Canada passed Bill C-36. It is legislation with a similar potential for abuse. And it is notable that it is legislation. Both earlier examples of institutional attacks upon Canadian civil liberties were legally justified as temporary measures. They were legitimized by the war measures act. Bill C-36, on the other hand, has no expiry date.

This is, of course, all very troubling. No one wants their civil liberties eroded. Yet it would be a bit less upsetting if we could really believe that it is Canadian security that is at stake. What galls many is the growing suspicion that Canadians are losing their rights to preserve the security, or perceived security, of the US. In other words, that these erosions are not merely global trends but a policy of imperial appeasement.

In the case of Maher Arar it first seemed that the US had simply ignored the rights of a Canadian. But now there are accusations that he was essentially sold out by Canadian officials to placate the US and Arar and his supporters have been demanding a public inquiry. Prime Minister Chretien, however, has flatly refused to investigate. Whether the incumbent, Paul Martin, will go any further remains to be seen. He has made promising signs, but has not explicitly promised to initiate an independent inquiry. He should, for a number of reasons. Not am I alone in thinking so. It was clear at the Forum that the vast majority of the audience agreed that one was necessary. After all, over 43% of Torontonians are immigrants. Arar's status as a dual national is hardly unusual here. The danger he faced from having two passports is a real threat to many.

Yet in the end, I would be very surprised were Martin to follow through. He has also promised to improve Canadian-US relations, and it is hard to see how he could keep the US happy whilst demanding that the US submit to an investigation of its security agencies. If anything, Martin appears even more likely to appease the Empire than Chretien.

Will the US invade Canada? No. That's not how empires work. Will Canada transform into nothing more than a province of the US? That remains to be seen.

A Modern Cicero?

2003-11-05T15:23:00.000-05:00

Many months ago, I wrote about US Senator Byrd. Little did I know then that he had already composed a slim volume entitled, "The Senate of the Roman Republic". In it, according to the blurb:

"Senator Byrd sees ample parallels between the willingness of Roman senators to hand over powers of the purse to usurping executives and the compliant attitude of United States senators in responding to presidential urging for a similar grant of powers in a line-item veto constitutional amendment."

Given that it came out in 1995, he must be feeling even more prescient than I normally do!

He appears again in the news because, again, he stood out as the sole voice of reason in the US Senate. He was the only one to speak in opposition to the recent bill granting an additional $87 Billion to Iraq. Given that he was against the war from the beginning, his stance is not surprising. And given the nature of the current Senate, the outcome of the vote was equally predictable. What the media has failed to stress, however, and what is truly shocking, is that only six Senators bothered to even show up to vote. The other 413 votes were cast in absentia, without engaging in public debate.

Byrd's speech was, as always, moving, intelligent, and eloquent. Yet it is increasingly clear that he is speaking for posterity. The Senate does not care to debate, and the media is uninterested in publicizing his view. As Studs Terkel explained in a recent interview:

It's as though a coup has already been accomplished. The coup that began with the November election of the year 2000. You have one voice- and this is ironic, the conservative Senator from West Virginia, Robert Byrd. The one eloquent voice, by the way, who throughout has been talking about the dangers of a coup, the dangers of no longer being this country that is so proud of its democratic spirit and openness...

I'm looking at The New York Times right now, and I thought there would be a headline, "Robert Byrd, Senior Senator, Conservative West Virginia and his very eloquent speech." I find it obscene. It had nothing in it about that ... so how come the New York Times ain't got his speeches or headlines. I'm talking about the so-called best paper in the country. Other papers, too. This is the big question, isn't it? How the intelligence of the American people as well as sense of decency is being so assaulted by the senatorial cave, as it is at this moment.

And indeed, a quick survey of the news proves his point. This is not a story the mainstream media wants to tell. It is not a debate almost anyone wants to enter. In keeping with the trend of Roman analogies, the editor of Harper's claimed that Byrd was like Cicero:

The analogy isn't perfect, but Cicero also saw himself as the principal defender of the Senate as institutional bulwark against a military usurper. Eight days before Caesar crossed the Rubicon, Antony, as tribune, had vetoed a Senate proposal to declare Caesar a public enemy if he refused to disband his army...

Antony had Cicero murdered for his defiance. I fear that Byrd and his ilk are being killed by silence.

But his analogy puts the emperor in a much less stable position than I fear is the case. Consider history. Cicero was killed during the chaotic years before the emperor Augustus was either an emperor or "Augustus," when he was merely one of the three men (the trium viri) granted almost absolute power for five years. Their task was allegedly to rebuild the state after the chaos following Julius Caesar's rise and fall. In fact, all three were trying to win power for themselves, and none of their powers were rescinded when the specified term was complete. This was a period of chaos for Rome, when the laws were no longer held in abeyance and massive proscriptions terrified the prominent (killing men such as Cicero) while enriching the triumvirs. No one was under any illusion that this was life as usual. Even the triumvirs would not have tried to argue such an insane point.

Life "as usual" was said to begin once Augustus succeeded in ousting his two rivals. Then the Senate announced that the job of righting the state that they had created the triumvirs to address was finally accomplished. Then the Senate officially gave Augustus his title of Augustus (which had not been his name prior), and began granting him all the powers of a dictator (although he always shied away from the title, which had led to Julius Caesar's assassination). Then everyone began saying how good it was that everything was back as it should be, and no one said anything against Augustus, or his policies, or the fact that the senate no longer had any real power.

As I've said before, it is precisely this kind of silent acquiescence to the wishes of the emperor, this refusal to openly question or oppose him, that was the root of imperial power. In theory, the republic was still very much alive under Augustus and his successors. The Senate met and chose to do everything that the Emperor wanted, more or less. And so it is today. The silence that is "killing" Byrd is the same silence that blanketed the Roman empire once the imperial position was firmly established.

For the American Empire is not just now emerging, it has quietly grown and developed for years. We are seeing it in its full flower. Lucky us.

A Shared Schadenfreude?

2003-10-31T14:39:00.000-05:00

One of the characteristics of Roman culture that strikes most people today as alien and unpleasant, is the obvious pleasure they derived from watching bloody spectacles. Human misery was entertainment. Watching humans be thrown to wild animals and disemboweled does not seem like wholesome family entertainment now. And while modern critics constantly decry the increased appetite for violence in video games and films, it is the very unreality of the violence that worries them. It is a violence without consequences, in which the people who are shot do not die slowly before you, crying and suffering. Today many people obviously enjoy watching apparent violence, but we hold ourselves apart from the Romans. We imagine that it is merely the thrill of danger that excites us, not the human misery that we have carefully excised from our movies and games.

But is it?

I've been following the case of Maher Arar, the Canadian who was deported from the US and held in Syria for a year. Like most people, I assume that he was probably tortured while in custody since Syria has a bad record for human rights violations and Amnesty International claimed:

Maher Arar was reportedly been beaten with sticks and cables, had electric shocks applied to him, been painfully suspended in the "dulab" or tire, and deprived of sleep.

Nevertheless I was surprised to see that as soon as he returned, obviously worn and exhausted, reporters wanted him to discuss the details of whether he had been tortured. In the days that followed, every reference I heard to his case added the speculation about what may have been done to him.

Finally the CBC triumphantly announced "Arar says he was tortured in Syria." Their source? Undisclosed. If you actually read the article (or listen to the report on the radio as I did) you learn that what actually happened was that Mr. Arar met with the Foreign Affairs Minister, Bill Graham, and had a confidential conversation. Moreover,

Graham refused to talk about Wednesday's meeting, saying that he had promised to keep their conversation confidential. But the minister did condemn the "unsubstantiated statements" about Arar.

"I totally, utterly, absolutely condemn all forms of these speculative statements about a person's life because it's not fair to them, it's not fair to the process," Graham said outside the House of Commons Thursday.

In other words, the headline announced something that Mr. Arar did not want to publicly disclose. And why should he? Just being held in prison for a year without torture would be a terrible enough experience. Why one earth should we expect him to share the horrors he endured with us? And why should we want to hear the details?

There is a salaciousness to the news these days that reminds me of (what else?) the blood-lust of Roman society. It goes beyond reporting that terrible things have happened, which is after all part of what the news is meant to do. What I'm referring to here is the way the media tends to linger on sound bytes of human misery. This struck me forcefully the other day, while listening to the CBC's coverage of the Cecilia Zhang case. (For those who don't know, she is a 9 year-old girl who was abducted from her home in Toronto and has not yet been found)

Here is a truly terrible situation, an adored daughter stolen in the night. And when the media first started its blitz coverage I was torn. On the one hand it smacked of scare-mongering, but on the other there was an obvious value in alerting the population at large to be on the lookout for anything that might lead to the girl's rescue.

Yet as I listened to the CBC replay, over and over, selected sound-bytes of Cecilia's parents' heartbreaking pleas (and finding myself moved to tears every time I heard them), I had to ask myself why they played the small clips they did so heavily. I would like to think it was so Cecilia or her abductors might have a better chance of hearing them. Yet the way in which the media emphasized the moments where Cecilia's mother broke down in tears, rather than her words of encouragement to her daughter, makes me fear that is not entirely true. Although we are loathe to admit it, it may just be that we find the suffering of other people just as interesting, as entertaining, as our Roman predecessors. We just package it differently.

Understanding Iraq

2003-10-27T12:33:00.000-05:00

As you probably have heard, there has been an upsurge in the violence in Iraq. This is distressing, if not wholly surprising, but what moved me to post was hearing Bush explain the causes for these attacks on the radio:

[T]he more progress we make on the ground, the more free the Iraqis become, the more electricity is available, the more jobs are available, the more kids that are going to school, the more desperate these killers become, because they can't stand the thought of a free society. They hate freedom. They love terror.

Isn't it comforting to know that the Emperor understands the situation? I am really at a loss for words at the inadequacy of this analysis.

In Response to a Reader

2003-10-23T11:57:00.000-05:00

A propos of my last post, a reader writes:

I read your blog, and agree with your views about the CBC, and also about the dominance of the American corporate media. BUT, the usa is an empire in the geographic sense. Just ask a Sioux Indian. Not to mention the hundreds of military bases it has around the world. In my view, one of the great paradoxes of the American empire is that it doesn't believe that it an empire (until perhaps recently). Another paradox is that it is one of the most culturally insular empires in history, pace, the amazing lack of knowledge most Americans have about other countries. This is partly to do with the media, but has its roots in decades of teaching cirricula, the idea of manifest destiny, and the puritans idea of a city on a hill, a New Jerusalem. But the reality is that the USA is one of the most impressive territorial empires in history.

I thought I should clarify my view.

I do not disagree that the US has military bases all over the world, including Canada. I do not disagree that the US itself physically grew in response to an ideology of expansion and manifest destiny, which have also been used to justify its (often successful) attempts to control political affairs in Latin America.

Yes, the military presence of the US is one of the signs of its empire. I wanted to clarify, however, that the American Empire is not primarily an empire based upon military conquest. In the popular imagination empires come and gobble up smaller countries, annexing them. In reality, both today and in Roman times, the signs of empire are more subtle. The US does not, for example, control the legal systems, the currencies, or even the foreign policies of the countries where it has military bases. It influences them, to be sure, but that is not the same thing as wholly conquering a place and absorbing it.

"Empire" is not a legal definition, nor can it be clearly mapped geographically (despite what all those textbook maps of the Roman Empire might suggest), because it is an attempt to describe power -- and power shifts constantly, ebbing and flowing like the sea.

My reader's secondary point, about the paradoxical insularity of the US empire, is a good one. Yet while it is indeed paradoxical, and thereby striking, I am not so sure that this is a characteristic wholly limited to the US empire. The Roman Empire was also quite insular, at least if you look at the ruling classes in Rome. It is true that they did acknowledge Greek civilization and culture to be worth studying, but accusations of being excessively Graecophilic were standard political slurs (used most effectively against Nero, for example). And Greece was unique in that respect. Romans showed almost no interest in the cultures of the other lands they dominated, and reading Roman sources reveals very very little about them. They renamed local divinities and places with Latin names, yet there is considerable evidence that the people who lived in those provinces did not themselves do so (for example, the re-emergence of the older name Paris instead of the Roman Lutecia after the "fall" of Rome). In short, the image that Roman sources give us of life in the provinces is both limited and misleading in many respects. Romans were interested in Rome, and perhaps Italy. They were forced to deal with provincials, as they streamed into Rome, but you would be hard pressed to find any Roman author celebrating the diversity that resulted. One has only to look at Juvenal (the Roman Satirist who wrote in the late 1st and early 2nd century).

If the Romans understood the lands they dominated better than the Americans, and I am not sure they did, I would attribute their knowledge less to their interest in those cultures than in the higher esteem in which they held education in general. But that, I think, is a blog for another day.

Valuing the CBC

2003-10-14T12:31:00.000-05:00

The recent surge of books bashing Bush, as well as the growing interest in the democratic race in the US, might lead one to imagine that the Empire is about to fall. Most left-wing blogs in the US encourage their readers with the hope that Bush will be kicked out of office next year. Personally, I hope Bush is replaced but Sontag's recent comments should remind us all that the American Empire is not synonmous with the Republican party. Indeed, the underlying nature of the Empire is not really a political distinction.

The American Empire is an Empire not because it has conquered many foreign lands and imposed its own government upon them, it is an Empire because its particular vision of what the world should be like, how it should be run, and who should hold power, has come to dominate politics and society all over the world. It is true that the US has worked to further this process through political and economic pressure but equal blame (or credit) must go to all those foreign nations that have lauded the "American way of life" and emulated them freely.

Perhaps the most insidious characteristic of the American Empire is the strength of corporate interests over those of the common good. The current president is very much a representative of the wealthy few, whose companies have lobbied hard, and who have found their efforts amply repaid. The governing wisdom claims that what is good for them is somehow good for everybody. Hence the need to give them massive tax cuts. Hence the desire to strip back environmental regulations that would limit their profits. Hence the desire to privatize the reconstruction of Iraq. (And some would argue hence the invasion itself, although that is a tad too monocausal for my taste).

Here in Canada, and I imagine in many other provinces of the Empire, it is easy and popular to decry our southern neighbor. Canadians tend to look askance at many of the realities of life in the US -- the crime rates, the lack of public health care, the poor educational standards... We can stick out our chests with pride and think that it is much better here. Yet it is the parties who espouse more "American" models of society who appear to be winning the votes. The left wing NDP just lost official party status in Ontario, and the heir apparent to the ruling Liberal party, Paul Martin, is more of a centrist than the current Prime Minister, advocating closer relations with the US and possessing stronger ties to the business community. Although the Tories who initiated limited privatization of hospitals in Ontario were voted out, their replacements have not indicated that they would stop the process from moving ahead. Canada has not adopted the Empire's ways, but flirts with them.

But we possess an important bulwark against assimilation. The CBC. No, I'm not referring to the insulating qualities of back to back reruns of Anne of Avonlea. It is not the Can-con requirements, forcing broadcasters to show some Canadian shows (although I do, on the whole, think they are a good thing). The CBC's winning characteristic is that it is a non-profit enterprise. The CBC has a mandate, and that mandate is not to make as much money as possible. This is a crucial difference. (And one that applies to other national television/radio organizations like the BBC)

Although the CBC does worry about audience share, and periodically tries to make its shows sexier, ultimately the job of its news reporters is to communicate the news. It does not need to worry about alienating advertisers by presenting material that is depressing, graphic, or disturbing. It does not need to hold the audience by filling the broadcast with teasers about what is to come, rather than in depth analysis of the topic at hand. It is not selling a product, but providing a public service.

The distinction between public and commercial news sources was laid bare by a recent study. It asked how it was that 60% of Americans believed at least one of these misconceptions:

U.S. forces found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

There's clear evidence that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein worked closely with the Sept. 11 terrorists.

People in foreign countries generally either backed the U.S.-led war or were evenly split between supporting and opposing

They looked at what people believed, and then examined how they received their news. The conclusion?

The more commercial television news you watch, the more wrong you are likely to be about key elements of the Iraq War and its aftermath

More specifically, the study shows what percentage of people held to at least one of these misconceptions according to the source they used for news:

Fox 80%
CBS 71%
ABC 61%
NBC 55%
CNN 55%
print media 47%
PBS or NPR 23%

In other words, those who relied upon Public Television or Public Radio were profoundly better informed about what was going on in the world than those who watched or read commercial news. If there was any doubt about why this might be a bad thing, consider another of the study's conclusions:

Before and after the war, those who have held misperceptions have been far more supportive of the decision to go to war with Iraq. In the postwar period, those with none of the key misperceptions oppose the decision, while the presence of each additional misperception is accompanied by sharply higher support for the war.

The study was interested to see to what extent political loyalties shaped the perception of people, if Republicans were more likely to believe the misconceptions that were used in justifying the war. This is an important question (and the answer is a qualified and nuanced yes) but so too is the conclusion that the nature of the media shapes what people believe (with apologies to MacLuan). The right-wing station Fox comes off particularly badly, but there is no escaping that all the commercial stations appear to be doing a really poor job. Those who depend upon public stations, PBS and NPR, are much less likely to believe falsehoods, regardless of their own particular political leanings.

And this is why I celebrate the CBC in Canada. It has its faults but its status as a public station, created to serve the public good and not merely make money for its owners, makes it an inherently better source of information. The result, since far more Canadians rely upon it for their news than American do upon NPR or PBS, is a better informed population. That is a cultural difference with profound reverberations, and it may be this province's best defense against the blind assumption that American values are the best ones to adopt.

Assuming, of course, that Canadians do not lose sight of the CBC's great value, and continue to slash its budget and limit its programming...

Does Sontag read Cassandra's View?

2003-10-13T10:58:00.000-05:00

Well, Susan Sontag agrees with me,

Susan Sontag on Saturday condemned President Bush's policies as imperialistic... Sontag spoke to reporters Saturday, a day before she is to receive the German book trade's prestigious $17,700 Peace Prize.

“I think as long as the U.S.A. has only one political party — the Republican party, a branch of which calls itself the Democratic party — we aren't going to see a change of the current policy,” she said...

“It's really the end of the republic and the beginning of the empire,” she said, likening former President Bill Clinton to Julius Caesar and Bush to Augustus.

Maher Arar Update

2003-10-10T11:32:00.000-05:00

As you may know, the Canadian Maher Arar (about whom I've already written) has been freed. Syria has sent him back to Canada. He arrived on October 6th, leaving many questions unanswered. Why was he suddenly freed? And why was he sent off in the first place?

The Star has alleged that the US initially deported Arar because Canadian security did not believe that they possessed adequate information to justify charging him.

When it was noted that Arar was a Canadian, Canadian security was contacted. "They asked, 'Do you have anything on him,''' an official closely involved in the case said, on condition that he not be quoted by name.

"'Yes indeed,' they were told. 'He is watched because he has been to Afghanistan several times.'"On the basis of that, the official said, Arar was arrested when the plane landed in New York."

Then they said to the Canadians 'If we transfer that man to you, can you give us the assurance that you will lay charges against him?'" the official said. "And the Canadian police told them `No, we don't have anything to lay charges against him. We can't bring any charges.'

And the Americans said `If you aren't going to do anything, if you are going to let him go free ...'" According to the official, Canadian officials replied, "Wait a minute, he has already worked for two years in Boston and you never bothered to do anything about him. "And now he's back in Canada ... all we can say is that he has previously been in Afghanistan. That's not enough, given our Charter of Rights."

Why was he freed? There are various theories. One retired Canadian diplomat has speculated that Jean Chretien made a direct appeal to the Syrian president. Others have argued that it was the intervention of the Secretary-General of the Arab League, who was in Canada last week. Amnesty International admits it is a mystery, and the US government has not been forthcoming.

Given that no one has claimed responsibility, I'd offer two alternate explanations. One, there is the unpleasant possibility that Mr. Arar might actually have had ties to terrorism organizations. If so he could have agreed to name names for release, in which case it would be in no one's interest to broadcast the news.

On the other hand, if we assume that Maher Arar was indeed innocent (which I would like to believe) then something must indeed have changed. True, there was external pressure to free him, and it is reasonable to imagine that some new person could have added his voice to the demands for Arar's release. Nevertheless, recent events in Syria suggest a different kind of change. Mr. Arar was sent back to Canada immediately following the Israeli attack upon Syria -- an attack which signals not only a deterioration in the already terrible relations between those two countries, but also between the US and Syria.

Despite denunciations by the EU, the US Senate has passed sanctions against Syria, and the bill is expected to pass the house next week. It would appear that Washington is again listening to the neocons who wanted to invade Syria after the seizure of Baghdad, claiming that Syria is harboring terrorists.

Given that Mr. Arar was sent to Syria by the US (after a period in Jordan, where it is suspected the CIA questioned him), one could read his subsequent Syrian detention as a favour to the US. A form of "subcontracting" that the American Empire has increasingly used to sidestep its own human rights laws. Yet if the relation between the two countries has soured why should Syria bother keeping him? Why should Syria do the US's dirty work?

As I have mentioned before, the Roman Empire included "independent" kingdoms that were allowed to possess their own kings, their own governments, laws, money, et cetera. One example was the kingdom of Commagene, whose monarchs were successively supported and deposed by the Romans until the emperor Vespasian finally annexed it to the Roman province of Syria. Could it be that modern Syria fears that it will be annexed to the US province of Iraq?

Voices from Iraq

2003-10-02T13:31:00.000-05:00

What with the provincial elections here in Ontario, the anticipation and speculation over the democratic contenders in the States, and the latest Washington scandal, it is easy to forget about the situation overseas. Frankly, it would be nice to forget about it.

The situation in Iraq is so incredibly bleak that my mind shies away from giving it the attention it deserves. And it does deserve attention.

The US casualties have just topped the 1700 mark.
316 American soldiers have died.
51 British soldiers have died.
Somewhere between 7355 and 9155 Iraqi civilians have died.
I do not believe anyone is even keeping track of Iraqi civilians who have been wounded.

The numbers are bleak, and the reality even more gruesome. Two documentaries that I recently heard on the CBC radio bring it home. Listen to this report from the Baghdad morgue, (you may need to download RealPlayer, but it is worth it). Then listen to this one, "The Killing Goes On." Then listen to either Bush or Blair defend their invasion of Iraq and tell me that you don't feel physically ill.

The idea that the Iraqis are somehow better off now belies all the evidence from people in Iraq. And the endless rhetoric about how their suffering, while regrettable, was necessary to preserve the West against terrorism is an affront against those in Iraq who are dying every day, and also those in the Empire who are expected to swallow such balderdash. Among thinking people, it is growing increasingly obvious that the only ones to benefit from the deaths and suffering of all these thousands of people will be the corporate cronies who are already profiting from their governmental connections.

So why bother ranting? In part because the realities of the situation need to be restated, over and over, until ordinary Americans take note. Many of them still believe that Iraq was a direct threat to their nation, that the terrorists of 9-11 were Iraqi, that Weapons of Mass Destruction have been uncovered... And it is easy for people in the West, under the protective umbrella of the Pax Americana, to forget the ugly consequences of their government's policies in foreign lands. The irony, of course, is that that very peace can only be threatened by the destabilization of Iraq, who will be more inclined to turn against the Empire with desperate terrorist acts now that the Empire has turned their home into a war zone.

Fall from Favour

2003-09-26T10:22:00.000-05:00

It looks like the power struggles within the US government are actually doing some good. The Orwellian "Total Information Awareness" (or "Terrorism Information Awareness" as it was renamed, even after they hid the overt Masonic symbolism) has been terminated by a joint house and senate committee. Wow.

"The Poindexter program was over the line, and what has been decided by Congress is the lights are going out on what John Poindexter conceived."

He's out of office, his work is unraveling... and perhaps most tellingly The Washington Post is openly referring to his "terrorism futures" idea as a "program to establish an online gambling parlor to predict Middle East terrorist attacks." If the media is willing to call it like it is, he must be out of favour! This certainly was not the language they employed when he first aired the notion.

Yet, while I cannot help be feel relief that the US Congress and Senate are putting the brakes on TIA, one must ask whether this signals any improvement for all of us provincials. After all, as the ACLU points out:

The bill, however, does authorize a separate, classified program for “processing, analysis, and collaboration tools for counter terrorism foreign intelligence” but the legislation prohibits its domestic use against Americans. [emphasis mine]

As Senator Wyden said, "Americans on American soil are not going to be targets of TIA surveillance that would have violated their privacy and civil liberties.” It's the non-Americans that need to worry (or the Americans abroad).

And Lest any "Americans on American soil" rejoice too soon, let me note that there is still a legal loophole that would allow state governments (namely those of: Alabama, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Ohio, and Utah) to utilize the technologies developed by TIA. This is the MATRIX, or "Multistate Anti-Terrorism Information Exchange" (and yes, that is really its name). And, as the Register notes:

It also appears that the scheme is geared more towards data mining in quest of garden-variety criminal activity than anything to do with international terrorism. When you combine that with federal interest, it's hard to resist seeing the MATRIX as a sneaky way for three-letter agencies to keep tabs on ordinary folk and their foibles, side-stepping restrictions on domestic spying instituted since the Church Committee.

And the conspicuous use of the phrase 'anti-terrorism' does send up a red flag, being the standard incantation with which assaults on the liberties and privacy of ordinary citizens are justified.

So, we are left wondering how much of this change is a real, and how much of it is merely window dressing to placate the American voters. In Rome, when a faction fell from power (or an Emperor) it was common to denigrate everything that they had done, and to proclaim that from now on things would be different. But they rarely were very different, and much of the criticism of the formerly favoured represented nothing more than an attempt to curry favour with the new "in group."

Does Poindexter's fall represent a new set of political ideals in the Empire (i.e. respecting the liberties of its citizens), or is it merely a palace intrigue? My inclination is to be pessimistic.

Remembering Maher Arar

2003-09-19T11:28:00.000-05:00

I've already mentioned the case of Maher Arar, the Canadian citizen whom the US deported to Syria 11 months ago. His case has won sporadic coverage. Now his wife, Monia Mazigh, is renewing her calls to make the Canadian government stand up for the rights of its citizens, and has been told that "the House of Commons foreign affairs committee will look at Arar's case and other cases in which Canadians have been imprisoned in foreign jails."

They had better hurry, since Mr. Arar is scheduled to go on trial very soon, and according to Amnesty International:

There are no known cases of anyone being acquitted by the court and there is no indication that the proceedings will be open to Canadian diplomats or independent observers... "This is a highly politicized tribunal that has nothing but contempt for international standards for a fair trial."

Yet the Canadian response dodges the real issue in Arar's case -- the way in which the US chose to intervene. It was the US that chose to send him to the Middle East, instead of Canada (where he and his family lived). It is because of that decision that he is suffering in jail today, almost certainly under torture. Nevertheless the US has washed their hands of the matter, saying that "it's up to the Canadian government to get its own citizens out of trouble."

Of course, Canada should do all it can to pressure Syria on behalf of Mr. Arar. But the reality is that the US wields far more power. Why then has Deputy Prime Minister John Manley failed to raise the matter in his recent talks with the US? Could it be that he dares not challenge the Empire? That he is trying hard to return Canada to being a mute and peaceable province? "Improving relations" was the point of the meeting, not improving the lot of Canadians like Mr. Arar.

Flash of Insight

2003-09-10T12:12:00.000-05:00

Even though "it's a fad that's almost over" that stalwart bastion of satire, Doonesbury is tackling the "phenomenon" of Flash Mobs.
About a month ago the CBC picked up on the story and was running with it as if it were pretty hot stuff, never mind that this has been a commonplace in the blogosphere since at least March.

But what, pray tell, do Flash mobs have to do with the American Empire or ancient Rome?

Reading the free Toronto weekly, Now magazine, I came across bit of analysis that put it in perspective:

Dave Meslin, of the Toronto Public Space Committee, sees flash mobs as a form of reclaiming space, much like Reclaim the Streets or Critical Mass. "People want to get out of their cubicles and out of their cars and interact with other beings in a way that isn't commodified, branded or sponsored,' ... flash mobs, he says, are a sad reflection of what we have become. "Our streets are covered in advertising but devoid of culture, so anything you do in public, even when it's on public space, becomes a subversive act."

These silly events, where people suddenly manifest and then dissipate, are a form of protest. They are comparable to similar acts by the Dadaists after the first world war. They are not inherently political, nor particularly menacing, and I seriously doubt that the participants act in them as a conscious act of resistance. Yet people do participate for some reason. And I do not think it an accident that the phenomenon has been far more popular in the US than up in Canada.

In a small way these demonstrations allow individuals to reclaim their own public spaces from the corporations who have acquired them. More importantly they allow people to assert their own autonomy, their freedom to jump up and down like chickens (in the case in Toronto's Yorkdale Mall). Why is this resistance? Because it is a way of publicly flaunting the mores of modern society by redefining the aims of public spaces.

Remember that "Public" spaces in cities are unnatural creations, built to serve particular aims. For example, in the 19th century public parks were created to better the working classes, as well as provide a "healthy" dose of nature for the wealthy. Parks had rules, just like everywhere else, that aimed to maintain certain social aims -- no drinking, no indecent behaviour, etc... Just clean Christian living.

In Rome (yes I was getting to it!) public spaces like the forum served to celebrate the powerful families, in particular the emperor under the principiate. It is not an accident that one of Augustus's great contributions to the city of Rome was the Forum Augustum. He built it largely on his own land, and placed two rows of statues on either side: one of Rome's heroes, the other of Augustus's own family -- both culminated with statues of Augustus himself. Indeed this forum, like so many of Augustus's other contributions to Rome, clearly served ideological aims in addition to filling social needs. They glorified the emperor and reaffirmed his right to rule. Public spaces did not exist solely as propagandistic displays, but invariably this was an important aspect to them, and a reason for the powerful few to build them for the masses.

Today public spaces are increasingly functioning as profit making ventures. I recently wrote about the craze of privatization but the trend goes deeper. It is not merely that outdoor spaces like parks are expected to make money, today the dominant form of socializing consists of either spending money, or pondering ways to spend money. People go to malls "for fun." This is probably the most developed consumer culture to have ever existed. Spending money, buying products, is understood as a social good and public spaces are designed to further that aim.

This is no secret conspiracy. Companies need to show profit, and to do that they must sell goods. Hence companies sponsor developments like Times Square in New York, or Dundas Square in Toronto (its second cousin twice removed) as public spaces to foster their products. Likewise companies sponsor politicians to further their aims. Neither is a new development really, just the scale at which it is done and the degree to which there are few other prevalent social mores left to compete.

The nature of the American Empire and the Roman Empire are similar in some respects but different in others. Whereas much of the Roman Empire's identity was linked to the emperor himself, the American Empire is far less connected to the political head of America. The American Empire expands less through open conquest than through the international adoption of its beliefs and ways of "doing business" -- for business is at the heart of the American Empire's interests.

Roman Emperors strove to proliferate an image of a powerful ruler, eventually turning him into a god, who was legitimate and beloved. The American Empire focuses less on the Emperor (although Bush's disingenuous photo-op on the aircraft carrier is a good example of the phenomenon) than on the proliferation of laws, governmental systems, and beliefs conducive to doing business. Which brings us back to the Flash Mobs.

Flash mobs are not about to overthrow the social order. They are not revolutionary, or even dangerous. Yet they are a form of protest against the Empire's social meme of continuous consumption, an unobtrusive form of protest that fits a pattern. I've discussed the concept of "political terror" before. In ancient Rome open dissent against emperors was almost unknown, largely for reasons of self-preservation. There are still today open protests against various aspects of the Empire (its war in Iraq, the WTO, etc...) but the popularity of Flash Mobs may indicate a growing disinclination to overtly challenge the Empire and its social ideals. People are acting out against these social ideals, but not in a manner designed to evoke change. Rather Flash mobs appear to be frustrated expressions of dissatisfaction, comparable to the reactions of men in ancient Rome who disagreed with Imperial policy but dared not overtly oppose it.

A Note: Read Raed

2003-08-30T11:21:00.000-05:00

Just a quick note for now, but I will write more later. Take a look at Salam Pax's account of how the Empire's soldiers treated his family. He gives some insight into how the US forces are hunting down terror cells in Iraq. It is well worth reading.

Dark days...

2003-08-19T14:25:00.000-05:00

One of my favourite Torontonian bloggers recently touched on how the terrible mess of semi-privitization of hydro (or electricity, to my Southern readers) may have led to the recent blackout. Although there are widly differing perspectives in the debate over privitization (both for and against) everyone seems to agree that the current situation in Ontario is not a good one. Nor is this issue limited to local Canadian politics. The craze for privatizing is a hallmark of the American Empire -- be it federal jobs, Air Traffic Controllers, national parks, the military, or even Iraq's public sector.

Personally, and I'm sure this will come as a surprise to no one, I think most public utilities (like hydro) should be public for two major reasons.

Too many people stand to suffer drastic harm should they fail.
The motive of demonstrating quarterly profits is antithetical to maintaining necessary services for the public good.

Even Roman Emperors saw the practial benefits of maintaining some public utilities, of a sort. Given that the concept of economics had not yet been developed, their failure to develop an articulated economic strategy is understandable (as is the difficulty economic historians have in analyzing the Roman economy). Nevertheless, the importance of maintaining a minimum level of social services -- namely bread and water -- was sufficiently evident that all the emperors, even the rather nutty ones like Caliguala and Nero, maintained it at their own expense.

The Emperors distributed bread to the poor of Rome, initially at a fixed price, then later for free. For water people relied upon the aquaducts, which emperors made a point of building and naming after themselves, although they were hardly the first to do so. If necessary, they could use the army to maintain the massive structures. On a grander scale, all the emperors went to considerable legnths to maintain their personal control over Egypt, because it was one of the major sources of the grain they needed to make the bread.

Ironically, such pragmatic concern for the populace's welfare is now denigraded as bleeding-heart liberalism, or even worse socialism, within the American Empire. Oh Nero, that bleeding-heart liberal! That Socialist Tiberius! That such tyrants can be lauded in these terms paints a very grim picture of the priorities of this modern empire.

Whether the power grid holds or not, it looks like we're in for dark days ahead.

Gibbon revisited?

2003-08-15T18:41:00.000-05:00

One of my gentle readers drew my attention to this op-ed by Kristof, in the New York Times, which points out that according to polls, "Americans are three times as likely to believe in the Virgin Birth of Jesus (83 percent) as in evolution (28 percent)." The rise of evangelical Christianity, and the strength of religious belief in the American Empire is a topic I have already touched upon, but which bears repeating since it appears to go hand in hand with educational, or cultural, decline. After all, evolution is a pretty funadamental scientific concept.

Gibbon flagged Christianity as the cause for the Roman Empire's fall. That view is now rather discredited (although The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire is still well worth reading), but the change in religious mentality from polytheism to monotheism certainly played an important role in shaping the culture of late antiquity. Indeed, most historians shy away from even saying that Rome "fell," but rather embrace a model in which it simply changed into something completely different (the Byzantine empire in the Eastern Mediterranean, and a chaotic mix of small kingdoms in the West). Yet, whatever the semantics, Western European society in the fifth century was less civilized that it had been four hundered years earlier -- there was much less stability, less urbanization, less centralized power, less trade, less literacy, and much less artistic production. Roman civilization never vanished (there's still a lot of it about), but "Fall" or no, the nature of life certainly changed a lot in the West.

And one of the big changes was the official adoption of a religion that tolerated no other forms of belief. A religion that is still going strong. So it is particularly disturbing to see that, just as the American Empire's self-image fits better with those of less developed nations, so too do its religious beliefs. turning to religion in a manner more characteristic of less developed nations. According to a PEW poll:

Among Wealthy Nations U.S. Stands Alone in its Embrace of Religion -- Religion is much more important to Americans than to people living in other wealthy nations. Six-in-ten (59%) people in the U.S. say religion plays a very important role in their lives. This is roughly twice the percentage of self-avowed religious people in Canada (30%), and an even higher proportion when compared with Japan and Western Europe. Americans’ views are closer to people in developing nations than to the publics of developed nations.

And with that religious fervor comes religious intolerance. A more recent poll indicates that there has been an almost 20% increase in the number of Americans who believe that Islam is more likely "to encourage violence among its believers," from 25% last year to 44% this year. There has been a 13% increase in the numbers of Americans who believe that Muslims are inherently anti-American, and a steady decrease in those who believe that "their own religion has a lot in common with Islam."

Nor is that intolerance limited to Islam (a religion which has 5-7 million apparently invisible followers in the US). According to the CIA factbook (which omits any mention of muslim Americans) fully 10% of Americans have "no religion" -- and that they may be even more discriminated against. The same poll revealed that while 38% of Americans would not vote for a muslim presidential candidate, 50% refused to vote for an Atheist.

These are dark days, dark days...

Economic disconnect?

2003-08-12T11:31:00.000-05:00

The US government's failed proposal to create a "terrorism futures market" is old news. But this morning on the CBC they asked whether it was such a bad idea after all, which got me to thinking. My initial reaction when I heard about the proposal was that this was nothing more or less than gambling on the lives and welfare of others. It was clearly a callous gesture by the Empire, and extremely unlikely to have any positive impact in the war against terror. There are arguments that it might have been effective, working from the premise that futures markets have been good indices of future events in other spheres. Without entering into a diatribe about economic theory, these struck me as fallacious. After all, the market is notoriously stupid in many ways (witness the recent, and ongoing, slide of the stock market that was predicted to never stop rising). The programming principle of "Garbage in, garbage out" applies. Why would traders possess any good knowledge about future terrorist attacks? Attacks which, by their very nature, are incredibly difficult to predict, since they are known about by very very few people in advance.

But what struck me most about this whole debate was what it demonstrated about the way in which we conceive of the economy in the Empire (and I'm including Canada here). That the "terrorism futures" market will continue, in the form of online gambling, strikes at the heart of the matter. Making predictions about whether somebody will successfully strap explosives to himself and set them off in a public place (unless you are that person, in which case you probably have other motives than making a buck) is indeed nothing less than gambling. Issues of compassion aside, it seems an problematic investing strategy.

Investment almost always (probably always always) entails some uncertainty, of course. It is a form of gambling, like poker -- although you cannot control what you will be dealt, you can minimize losses by sound strategy and skill. The good poker player will always make money off of the poorer one, at least in the medium run. Likewise, traditionally, the investor weighed the strengths and weaknesses of companies in which he or she wanted to invest and acted accordingly. One did not buy or sell stock on a hunch, but rather upon information. Futures markets, on the other hand, have always been more like a crap shoot. The only wise investors were those with insider information.

In the past decade two changes in the financial world have undermined the model of sage investment. First, as the market continued to rise, more and more people began investing. People who knew nothing about investing found that they could make large amounts of money. So a whole new group of investors was born, who imagined that they grew rich through their skill, rather than the current nature of the market. Of course, when the market crashed, they got burned. Then there were the accounting scandals, Enron and company. These served, not only to destabilize the market, but also to cast serious doubts upon the reliability of the information experienced investors relied upon.

Consequently, both novice and experienced investor is now more prone to view the financial markets as a form of gambling. And it is this attitude towards the financial markets that leads people to embrace "terrorism futures," which unlike other futures (like Orange Juice) produces no actual product with inherent value (however variable).

Aside from the moral implications of a terrorism market, the signs of increasing divide between the acquisition of wealth and the production of any actual good should alarm people. The Roman Empire's economy may have been slave based, it may have had enormous distinctions between the haves and the have-nots (the latter were even judged by different laws), but at least it was founded on tangible products. The man of status possessed land that provided produce that allowed him to live. There is evidence that there were speculative markets even then, but they were viewed as sordid. Now the new Empire would make them the foundation of its national security... O tempora! O mores!

August is the slowest month....

2003-08-12T09:59:00.000-05:00

Just thought I should post a brief word about why there have been so few posts recently. As you know, August is a slow news month. Right.

What really happens is that the CBC (or news outlet of your choice) starts playing reruns and almost all their top reporters go on holiday. Hence, instead of any attempt at investigative journalism, we are almost entirely spoon-fed press releases of dubious merit. Consequently Cassandra hears less news, and gets less worked up about how the whole world is going to Hell in a handbasket.

Also, let's face it, it's summer. And after last winter I feel a certain impetus to get outside and enjoy the warm weather.

But perhaps the main reason has been that, in following current events, Cassandra has felt a certain amount of despair. It is rather depressing to see all of one's predictions come true. The American Empire has embroiled itself, and the rest of the world, in a terrible mess in Iraq, and the Middle East in general. People are dying, both Americans and Iraqis, and it is hard to feel smug about that, even if you did see it coming. And it is hard to think of something new to say about such a morass of greed and destruction, save for to deplore it, again and again.

(Or maybe it's just been Bloggers Block).

The Uses of Morality

2003-08-02T10:33:00.000-05:00

The current bruhaha over the proposed legality of same-sex marriages highlights an imprtant difference between Canda and its Southern neighbor. For those who have not been reading the news, the Pope has come out with a condemnation against the legalization of Gay marriage, leading the Bishop of Calgary to threaten the Catholic Prime Minister of Canada with damnation for supporting the bill:

"He doesn't understand what it means to be a good Catholic," Bishop Fred Henry of Calgary told the Globe and Mail on Wednesday. "He's putting at risk his eternal salvation. I pray for the Prime Minister because I think his eternal salvation is in jeopardy. He is making a morally grave error and he's not being accountable to God."

The federal government has drafted legislation that redefines marriage as "the lawful union of two persons," after two provincial courts ruled it is unconstitutional to deny same-sex couples the right to marry. The Supreme Court is reviewing the legislation after which a free vote will be held in Parliament.

Yet in Canada it appears clear that, whatever the personal religious views of politicians, there is separation of Church and State:

"For me, we have a Charter of Rights, there is evolution in society and according to the interpretation of the courts, they concluded these unions should be legal in Canada," the Prime Minister said when he announced his Liberal government would not appeal an Ontario court ruling that struck down a federal ban on gay marriage in June.

In the past, the Prime Minister has described himself as a good Catholic, but he has said he firmly believes politicians should not use government to impose their religious beliefs on others.

This is a distinction which is less clear down South, where the situation appears inverted. In the US, the Emperor is considering creating a constitutional amendment banning gay marriages, and the Gay rights group GLAAD notes:

It is equally important that the media carefully scrutinize and hold up for debate President Bush's invocation of religion as the fundamental rationale for his policy of excluding same-sex couples and families from the protections of marriage. By saying he has charged government attorneys to explore ways to 'codify' the 'sanctity of marriage,' and through numerous biblical references in his discussion about this issue, the president is clearly signaling his conviction that his personal religious beliefs should be the basis for governing law. In a country where the separation of church and state is a founding principle, this mix of personal beliefs and his administration's public policy needs to be examined critically by the media.

Of course, "Bush has never been shy about injecting his faith into the public arena." And it is this point that summons historical comparison.

I should note that the Roman Empire was, by and large, extremely tolerant of relgious beliefs and practices. While human sacrifice was deemed unacceptable, and everyone was expected to do homage to the imperial cult as a manifestation of political loyalty (although this caused some moral dilemnas for the monotheists of the Empire, namely the Jews and later the Christians), there was relatively little political intervention in the religious sphere. Nevertheless, the first great Emperor, Augustus, did not hesistate to use religion for political ends. Although it is clear that he had not pursued an especially high-minded life prior to becoming emperor (he was, among other things guilty of killing rather large numbers of Romans and taking their ancestral lands) he was quick to present himself as a restorer of "the good old ways." To read his own account of his deeds, it is clear that he expended considerable effort, enacting moral laws, building temples, and restoring "neglected" religious rites. Why?

Most historians argue that he did all this to reinforce his claims of legitimacy in the minds of Romans (since he had seized power, more or less, by commanding the largest army). He presented himself as the restorer of old values, instead of the creator of a very new system of government.

Do you see any paralells with the American Empire today? Hmmm.....

Is knowledge power?

2003-07-30T13:03:00.000-05:00

One of the reasons why the Roman Empire is still viewed as a great civilization is that it appears to have enjoyed a surprisingly high rate of literacy. Of course, these things are impossible to measure accuracy (alas we possess no standardized reading tests from Augustus's reign), nevertheless, the pervasive use of writing to communicate formal edicts and such suggest that a significant portion of the population could indeed read. And the apparent decline in literacy, and the associated signs of a literate population, are one of the factors that many people point to as sings of "decline" in the latter centuries of the Empire.

(A word of clarification. This "decline" appeared in the Western portions of the Empire. In the East, in what is now Greece and Turkey, Greek literacy appears to have continued unabated by any pesky "barbarian" hordes, plagues, or the emergence of monotheistic belief-systems -- in other words despite all the alleged causes of the "fall" of the Empire... but that is another story. For now, we're talking about the West.)

Literacy remains an important standard by which we continue to judge how developed a society is. And while official literacy rates throughout the developed world are almost certainly far higher than they ever were in the Roman Empire, there are signs that standards are beginning to slip... (And I've noted this before). The recently released study by the US department of education reveals that:

Fourth-grade students showed improvements, a testament to ongoing education reforms that focus on early grades. But 12th-grade scores slipped: Those rated as proficient readers dropped to 36% from 40% in 1998. The problem was particularly acute for senior boys -- only 28% received a proficient rating. The test scores show the dangers of neglecting reading instruction in upper grades. While remedial reading is prevalent in elementary schools, it is virtually non-existent in middle and high schools. Most high school English teachers aren't even trained to deal with students who are poor readers.

And these results merely echo the subjective experience of others, from high-school teachers to military admirals to myself. My years teaching undergraduates at a "competitive" university in the American Midwest were eye-opening, and honestly deeply troubling. Students found words such as "amenity" or "assess" incomprehensible, and routinely pluralized nouns by attaching apostrophes (i.e. "table's"). I once asked one student, who was bright, industrious, but a terrible writer, what books had been assigned in High School English. His answer? "None."

In four years of high school they had only read short stories or selection in a reader! And a colleague who regularly supervised student teaching in a local high school told me equally horrifying tales -- grade 12 students assigned to "make posters" during English class to decorate the room, or perhaps read all of twenty lines of "Our Town" as a reading assignment. Sigh.

It is a problem that can only grow worse in the US, as education budgets continue to be slashed. And who can be surprised when the emperor himself has grown famous for his mangling of the language? The situation is not yet so dire in Canada. Not yet.

Addendum: Just in from the Globe and Mail's ever entertaining "Social Science" section:

Rob Kyff, a columnist for The Hartford (Conn.) Courant, has spotted a new menace: "It's the rampant proliferation of 'me' in the nominative case... Within recent months, I've heard sentences like these slithering from the mouths of public officials ('The Republican leadership and me collaborated...'), business executives ('The board said my colleagues and me were fairly compensated...'), and graduation speakers ('I remember, back in high school, my friends and me...')... So far, the use of the nominative 'me' has been restricted to double subjects, as in 'Jane and me.' But the single nominative 'me' is surely next."

Imperial Armies

2003-07-22T18:19:00.000-05:00

That American voice of reason, Paul Krugman, addressed some of the problems that the US army will be facing as a result of its presence in the quagmire of Iraq. Not only is it overextended, but we can expect to see a drop in recruitment as the dangers of doing military service become clear. What will the Empire do?

Well, if we look to history (specifically Roman history) one solution would be to create a new kind of army. In the earlier days of the Roman republic all Roman men were expected to serve in defence of the patria. They would go off and fight, and return home to farm. Of course, as the Empire grew larger and larger, this arrangement became increasingly unworkable. The distances were too great. The time commitment made it impossible to lead a normal life. They really needed a more permanent standing army. So it was that, over time, they developed one.

But, again, as time went on it appears to have grown increasingly difficult to attract men to serve (at least in the lower ranks -- officers, or their equivalent, were exlusively drawn from the elite until the reign of Septimus Severus, at the end of the 2nd century CE). In part this was due to the requirement that Roman soldiers actually be Roman. Before the Emperor granted universal citizenship in 212, the provinces were full of folks who, while part of the Empire, were not Romans. Finally some canny fellow realized that by granting non-Romans citizenship, on the basis that they serve in the Roman army, there would be a great many more recruits. And so it was that, by the heyday of the empire, the actual soldiers of the army rarely came from Rome (although they were technically now Romans, by dint of enlisting).

Will the US Empire try something similar? They've already announced plans to create militias of Iraqis, to free up the American troops. But what are they offering them? Certainly not US citizenship! And I have to wonder how excited many Iraqis would be to expose themselves to danger on behalf of, what they view as, an occupying army. The label "collaborator" is not a flattering one.

On the other hand, the US could just hire mercinaries. It is a terrible idea for a host of reasons, but given the US Empire's adoration of anything involving the term "free market" (a term that was wholly alien to the ancient Roman worldview), I wouldn't be surprised if they picked it.

The dangers of seeing clearly

2003-07-21T16:41:00.000-05:00

It is comforting to know that although Americans appear to hold very strange views about the presence of Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq, a recent poll conducted by the Globe and Mail indicates that:

More than 70 per cent of Canadians believe the U.S. military has become mired in a Vietnam-like situation in Iraq that will lead to increasing casualties, an Ipsos-Reid/CTV/Globe and Mail poll released Friday indicates. And 44 per cent of Canadians believe the United States knowingly used incorrect or fabricated intelligence to make the case for going to war... Only one-third of Canadians polled believe that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction...

The results indicate a great deal of strain on the credibility and trust of the U.S. administration, Mr. Wright said. "I think this makes it harder for the administration to get Canadian support for any platform."

Of course, whether the US administration cares about Canadian support is another question entirely. The treatment of the Canadians held by the US suggests that the Empire has already decided that Canada is not playing ball. Canada.com reports that:

The United States agreed Friday to suspend legal proceedings against British and Australian terror suspects facing military tribunals at Guantanamo Bay until the three countries discuss the cases. However, there was no word on the fate of two Canadians being held at the facility in Cuba.

Let me remind the reader that both Australia and England have supported the US in its war in Iraq. What an amazing coincidence that they should win some rights for their citizens! Rights which, Amnesty International has been quick to point out, everybody ought to possess. So while I applaud the perspicacity of Canadians, I worry what the cost of their clear vision will be...

Living in the Empire

2003-07-21T15:27:00.000-05:00

There were lots of reasons to celebrate the Roman Empire in its heyday, and the emperors worked hard (with building programmes, gifts of food and money, and lavish shows) to remind people of it. Yet, as with many (if not all) authoritarian regimes, one of the costs for Romans was an erosion of their liberties and a radical reduction in their political self-determination. As many an undergraduate student has noted, the "good" emperors did lots of things that improved peoples' lives -- the problem was that many weren't "good" and that there was precious little anyone could do to stop them.

It should come as no surprise, therefore, that we are witnessing a similar phenomonon in the Empire to the South (despite the oft-proclaimed, and ardently celebrated, value that Americans place upon their freedoms).

One man was thrown off his flight to London (in fact, the whole airplane was turned around just as it was entering its taxi to takeoff, delaying about 300 passengers) for wearing a button that read "Suspected Terrorist." Many people have pointed out that the airline was within its rights, which is true, but rather misses the point. The message of the button was political, eminism created it to remind people that, as things currently stand, everyone in the US is a suspected terrorist. And that is a bad thing because this suspicion (the same panicky worries that led the airline to eject a paying harmless passenger) ends up harming the very society that it aims to protect.

A soon-to-be graduate student was interrogated by FBI agents for reading an article critiquing Fox Media. Is this a threat to Americans??

We can see the dangers clearly in the way in which the enforcement of the Patriot Act, allegedly created to protect Americans from Terrorists, has already led to numerous civil rights violations

"This report shows that we have only begun to scratch the surface with respect to the Justice Department's disregard of constitutional rights and civil liberties," Mr. Conyers said in a statement. "I commend the inspector general for having the courage and independence to highlight the degree to which the administration's war on terror has misfired and harmed innocent victims with no ties to terror whatsoever."

But what is really upsetting is that, even when the Patriot Act is properly enforced, it allows for the authorities to terrorize innocent people. Consider the experience of this New York resisident who made the mistake of dining out. He and his friend were just tucking into their dinners when...

All of a sudden, there was a terrible commotion and five NYPD in bulletproof vests stormed down the stairs. They had their guns drawn and were pointing them indiscriminately at the restaurant staff and at us.

"Go to the back, go to the back of the restaurant," they yelled.

I hesitated, lost in my own panic.

"Did you not hear me, go to the back and sit down," they demanded.

I complied and looked around at the other patrons. There were eight men including the waiter, all of South Asian descent and ranging in age from late-teens to senior citizen. One of the policemen pointed his gun point-blank in the face of the waiter and shouted: "Is there anyone else in the restaurant?" The waiter, terrified, gestured to the kitchen.

The police placed their fingers on the triggers of their guns and kicked open the kitchen doors. Shouts emanated from the kitchen and a few seconds later five Hispanic men were made to crawl out on their hands and knees, guns pointed at them.

In the end the entire incident appears to have been based on a mistake (but go read the whole account for yourself). There were no terrorists in the restaurant. Yet it was all legal. It was all acceptable. And these examples are merely a few of the many that could be cited. Scary days in the Empire -- even for its citizens.