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.

The Committee for the Republic

2003-07-16T12:27:00.000-05:00

A "Committee for the Republic" is e-mailing a manifesto all over the US capital. It is an attempt to warn of the dangers of Empire, perhaps a familiar theme to you, my dear readers. The Wall Street Journal reports that:

We are all, it seems, imperialists now.

Bush Administration officials avoid the "e" word, not so much because they disagree with those who use it, but because they recognize it as bad public relations. What they say, however, is less important than what they do.

The U.S. is operating open-ended protectorates in Afghanistan and Iraq, at a combined cost of $5 billion a month, or $60 billion a year. That's roughly triple the entire foreign-aid budget, and almost double the federal government's budget for elementary and secondary education. Meanwhile, intervention in Liberia appears just around the corner. U.S. soldiers reside in nearly 100 different countries. During the president's trip last week to Africa, there was talk of opening bases elsewhere on that continent.

You can argue that none of this is "empire" of the British or Roman variety, since it doesn't involve, for the most part, elaborate systems of civil as well as military governance. But it's close enough.

And it is worth noting that while the British Empire did indeed set up elaborate administrations in their colonies, the Romans did not. Ahem. For the record let me repeat -- Roman provinces were self-governing. The Roman governor was sent to keep an eye on what they did, and to represent Roman citizens within that province.

The American Empire is pretty damn similar.

Addendum: It looks like Warblogging has taken up their message, pointing out that:

The costs of empire are severe. American soldiers are overburdened and demoralized. They are facing financial difficulties and their families are doing poorly without them. Many of them paying the ultimate price for Bush's lies — their lives. Many more are losing limbs and eyes and becoming permanently disabled because of Bush's lies.

There's much more, well worth reading.

Signs of decline?

2003-07-13T11:53:00.000-05:00

I was biking home from the beaches the other day, along the lakeshore. Only a few years ago the spot would have been under the Gardner expressway, but now the Eastern extention has been dismantled, and this trail created (allowing bikers and rollerbladers to zoom past the endlesly-mired traffic, very gratifying). You can tell that the highway used to be here, however, because the city has left standing many of the gigantic cement supports that once held the road up. They stand, like modern megaliths, and the trail goes around them. Lights have been installed in the ground to highlight them at night (although I have never actually seen them in use, since I don't bike at night).

It doesn't look bad, but it it does seem a bit odd. After all, these aren't particularly beautiful examples of archetecture -- they are cement supports, nothing more, nothing less. Why celebrate them like this?

The whole thing reminds me of (yes, you guessed it) the Roman Empire. Not in the glory days, but later, in the fourth and fifth centuries. Western historians often refer to this period as the declining years of Rome. They might even talk about its fall (Rome was sacked in 411, which creates a nice date to drill into students heads), although the term is pretty misleading. Rome did not really fall, so much as change a great deal. Power moved to the East, where the emperors continued to refer to themselves as Roman well into the fifteenth century (when Constantinople was finally captured by the Turks). Yet in the West things certainly did change. Aquaducts stlowly fell into disrepair, rivers silted up, practical government grew increasingly local, population (probably) fell...

Art historians look at the sculpture and coinage in the west and note that is is more primitive, cruder. Fewer new buildings were built, and those that were increasingly used older structures, not merely for artistic inspiration, but for actual building materials. Pillars were reused, not always even as pillars, sometimes merely as cut stone. I have often wondered what the people living then thought about what they were doing. Did they wonder how it was that they had lost the skills, lost the trade routes and supplies, lost the organized manpower, to construct works on the scale of their predicessors.

Ok, despite the usual problems in maintaining Toronto's infrastructure, I am not suggesting that the city is in decline. In fact, unlike 4th century Rome, the population here is booming, and the city is growing at a fantastic rate. What struck me as comparable, however, is a pattern I see in the way we (not just in Toronto) seem to increasingly cannibalize the past for art, for beauty, instead of creating enduring works of our own. Celebrating cement highway supports is but one example.

This summer a nifty new neighborhood was "opened up" (quite near the aforesaid bike trail actually). Gooderham and Worts, an old distillery which was built in 1837, has been turned into a "destination," with extensive cleaning, the installation of art galleries, a microbrewery, a restaurant, and a really excellent cafe. It's quite nice. Why? Because the buildings are gorgeous -- mostly redbrick with supurb 19th century details. But what does that say about modern culture that we look back at old factory buildings and think, golly we can't build anything like that anymore! We'd better make the most of it!

And you have only to glance around you to see many, many, more examples. It is becoming almost a commonplace for older cities to try to make old industrial areas (be they shipyards if the city's on a coast, or factories and warehouses further inland) into charming destinations. And the fact is that most of these, if they are developed intelligently, do turn out to be much prettier, and more interesting, than modern spaces.

Another recent project in Toronto was the renovation in the posh Summerhill neighborhood of the old Toronto North rail station, which is now the largest (and certainly the nicest) liquor store in the city. The resulting space (while still not quite complete) has character and charm. Compare it to the new creation of Dundas Square in Toronto. This was the site of many of the massive anti-war demonstrations, but observers have noted that, on an ordinary day

It doesn’t have any drawing power. It’s like a nice parking lot..."

"I wish there were trees... It’s too modern... It doesn’t have character."

I would have to concur. It is an ugly and uninviting space. So I end up applauding civic efforts to make the most of our historic heritage, and begin to think that this preservation, this renovation is progress. But is it progress? Are we merely clinging to a past that we no longer hope to match? Have we already, despite all our technological developments, sunk into a cultural decline? It makes me wonder.

Provincial Navel-Gazing

2003-07-09T16:07:00.000-05:00

Well the media is all abuzz about Canada slipping to eighth place in the UN rankings. This is, of course, a tempest in a teapot -- a chance for politicians (like Stephen Harper) to get up on soapboxes and bemoan the country's fall from greatness. Like all rankings, be they of schools or cities, there is a great deal of subjectivity involved. What characteristics should one stress? How should one measure them? According to the Globe and Mail

Canada's biggest handicaps were the low Canadian dollar at the time the ranking was compiled and the rising proportion of new Canadians who have not completed university programs, an official with the United Nations development program said in an interview yesterday from New York.

Spokesmen from the development program would not comment on the report before its official release on Tuesday. However, the official, who asked to remain anonymous, said Canada is penalized under the approach adopted by the UN agency for being a more open and heterogenous country... The official also cautioned against reading too much into Canada's sinking status in the world. "The difference between eighth place and first place is really quite small," he said. "It could be attributed to statistical fluctuations. They are so close together . . . it does not really mean anything.

What is a more interesting question is how the US managed to surpass Canada in the rankings. How could that be? If we compare the statistics the UN used for Canada, and those for the US, an interesting pattern emerges.

First, let's consider some of the areas in which Canada outscored the US.

Canadians are less likely to die anytime soon. Overall life expectancy is 79.3 years (vs. 77.1 in the US). Americans are almost twice as likely to die before reaching 40, and almost 50 percent likelier to die before 60. They're even more likely to die as infants than Canadians. (And let's not even think about giving birth, since maternal mortality is 1 in 12500 in the US -- Canada doesn't even have 1 in 100,000).
Candadians are better educated than Americans. 20.7% of Americans lack functional literacy (compared to 16.6% of Canadians), perhaps because fewer receive primary schooling -- 99% of Canadian kids enroll while only 95% of American kids do. A difference that only grows by the time they reach secondary school. The Canadian stats only fall by one percent, the American by 8%.
Canadians are less likely to be poor. 17% of Americans live below the median income for the US, while only 12.8% of Canadians do. Moreover, even thought that median is lower in Canada (since Canada is a poorer nation) far fewer Canadians earn less than $11(US) per day -- 7.4%, compared with 13.6% of the US population.
There is less economic inequality in Canada. In the US the wealthiest 10% of the population controls 16.6% of the GDP. In Canada the same group only controls 9%. Likewise the poorer segments of Canadian society control more of the GDP than their American counterparts.

So why does Canada rank after the US? In short, "It's the economy, stupid." Not only is the US richer, it also has signifigantly less long term unemployment (less than half Canada's). And its wealth can attract talent.

Canadians may be healthier, but there are far fewer doctors per capita -- presumably a consequence of the brain drain. Likewise, Canadians may be better educated, but they have far fewer scientists and engineers doing R&D, and far fewer patents. All of these are categories the UN uses in compiling their lists.

And so does the empire extend its long arm, attracting Canadian talent (not to mention that of many other nations!), and rising in the rankings. But would you really want to live there?

Wave that flag

2003-07-03T23:21:00.000-05:00

I'm not one to get gushy over national holidays, generally they seem to bring out the worst in people. I've already had to deal with plenty of obnoxious Canada Day behaviour (almost getting run down by inebriated holidaymakers twice in one day makes me grumpy), and was all set to feel glad that I will miss out on the July 4th festivities down south.

In the States it's a much bigger holiday, and people are a lot more belligerent about any perceived slight to the nation. When I was living in the midwest colleagues told me, with concern, that they did not think it would be a good idea to fly a Canadian flag on July 4th. (I wasn't really planning to, but they were worried). Here in Toronto they were selling US flags alongside the Canadian ones.

I'm still a bit puzzled about that actually. Why would anyone want to buy a US flag on Canada day?

Well, I was all set to feel smug about avoiding the Independence Day broughaha when I was put to shame for my nasty thoughts. This week's New Yorker has a charming piece on Canada, well worth a read. Such love, and straight out of the Empire State, no less! So happy July 4th, America. There's some good in the Empire after all.

Pax Americana?

2003-07-03T23:02:00.000-05:00

I just read this article in the New York Times (yes, you need to register to read it, sorry) and was struck by the old familiar feeling of prophecies coming true despite my wishes... Three different attacks on the US occupation army in one day, the third a rocket propelled grenade fired in broad daylight on a busy street in Baghdad.

Witnesses also said that in response, soldiers in one of the other vehicles opened fire indiscriminately, seriously wounding, and possibly killing, at least one Iraqi driver nearby. Blood pooled next to the driver's blue car soon after the attack.

The attack suggested that the urban warfare that had so concerned military planners before the fall of the Hussein government was materializing in unexpected forms. The attack against the convoy on Haifa Street was at least the second rocket-propelled grenade assault in Baghdad during daylight hours this week.

In both cases, the attackers escaped. Whether out of fear or sympathy for their cause, bystanders and witnesses have done nothing to help allied forces apprehend attackers... A crowd of people gathered around the destroyed Humvee and looted it, taking whatever they could remove. Children and adults climbed on top, stomping on it and chanting, "God bless Muhammad!" Then someone set the vehicle on fire, and the crowd backed away, watching it slowly burn. Children hurled stones at the blazing vehicle...

The crowd's ire seemed to be fueled as much by a lack of jobs and electric power in Baghdad — most parts of the city still have no more than 8 to 10 hours of electricity a day — as by anti-American sentiment.
"It's not because of Saddam that people are doing these things," one man said. "It is because there's no government, there's no electricity and just false promises." ...

The situation in Iraq is turning, or has already turned, to shit. The proliferation of grenades as the weapons of choice was noted by Salam Pax two weeks ago. Can anyone really believe that the US is in Iraq to bring peace? Certainly the Iraqis do not appear to be so deluded. According to the Times article:

"Get out from our country," someone had scrawled on a wall nearby. It was written in English, so for the soldiers passing by there would be no mistaking its meaning.

Yet it is a mistake to think of Imperial Peace as peace for everybody. The Pax Romana lasted for about two centuries, yet for the people living in the provinces on the edges of the empire there was a great deal of fighting, a great deal of dying. The Roman Peace is thus named, not because it was a peace brought to the world by the Romans, but because it was a peace relative to the Romans -- at least those Romans who were not in the army and hence not off on the frontier killing "barbarians" and getting killed in turn.

The Pax Americana too involves much bloodshed. But then, it isn't peace for the world that the Empire seeks, but peace for the heartland of the Empire. "Let them hate me, so long as they fear me," and so long as the US empire is feared, it hopes to remain safe. (Although any historian could point out that this particular strategy did not actually work very well for the Emperor Caligula, who allegedly coined the phrase prior to his assassination)

Remember those prisoners

2003-07-03T20:49:00.000-05:00

I've already gone on, at some length, about the "foreign nationals" currently being held by the US, how we know at least a few are Canadian, how the US has refused to openly disclose who they have, the apalling conditions in which they are being kept, and the fact that they will be tried by tribunals and subject to the death penalty.

It's not news anymore. But I'm reminding you because, not only should we not forget any of these things (and Thank You Warblogging for keeping the spotlight on this topic), but the CBC just reported that:

Six prisoners linked to terrorism are eligible for trial by U.S. military tribunals... It is now up to U.S. Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz to decide whether the six will face the military commissions.

Yet neither the CBC not the Toronto Star mention that one or more of these six men might be Canadian citizens, nor do they highlight the controversial nature of these trials. AP news goes into more detail, and reminds us that:

The United States may not publicly identify the suspects even if they go to trial, a senior Defense Department official told reporters. None of the officials who discussed the matter Thursday would say where the suspects are being held, though all are in U.S. custody.

The Pentagon officials also raised the possibility that the military might continue to hold the suspects even if they are acquitted by a tribunal. The prisoners' status as "unlawful combatants" in the war against terrorism is separate from their guilt or innocence on charges brought before a tribunal, a military official involved in the tribunal process said.

Unlike traditional criminal trials, the proceedings of military tribunals can be kept much more secret. The prospect of secret trials drew criticism from the chairman of the American Bar Association's task force on the treatment of detainees in the war on terrorism.

"The State Department issues a report every year in which it criticizes those nations that conduct trials before secret military tribunals," said Neal Sonnett, also a former president of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. "What I'm hearing sounds alarmingly like something similar."

Where is the Canadian outrage? Trying to stop the Empire from doing what it wants may be a lost cause, but surely it is worth at least voicing some disapproval? I wonder whether the reaction to this news would be different if the US had acknowledged the nationalities of the six men -- since as it is there is only a chance that they are Canadian. It is easy to think (and statistically more likely) that these six men come from some other foreign country. It is easy to imagine that this could never happen to Canadian citizens. Gee, the US and Canada are such good friends, after all!

Will we wait until a bodybag is sent North for burial before voicing any outrage at what is going on? I hope not. But I'm not optamistic.

Imperial Justice?

2003-06-25T18:03:00.000-05:00

The American Empire has flexed its mighty muscles, and and won an extradition agreement with the European Union, or should we say the province of Europe? Now the US can try suspected terrorists who have never even entered the US, and can search containers departing from European ports.

And as Talk Left points out, those trials aren't going to be the traditional, judge and jury trials that one associates with the US (or with democracy, for that matter). As of November 2001,

military tribunals can be used to try non-citizens accused of terrorist acts. Individuals brought before the tribunals would have no right to a jury trial, no right to confront their accusers and no right to judicial review of trial procedures or sentences, which could include death.

Moreover, these military tribunals will be selected by one man -- no, not the Emperor -- the man who will choose the members of the tribunal will be Paul Wolfowitz!

But wait, it gets worse.

If commission members cannot resolve matters related to procedures, motions or facts, Wolfowitz will make the final decision.

So, the Empire can now sieze people in foreign countries, send them back to the US, and throw them on the mercy of Wolfowitz. That's just great.

Unforeseen Costs

2003-06-25T11:23:00.000-05:00

The Roman Empire is famed for its amphitheaters. Not only were they tremendous architectural feats, but the shows that occurred within them are still fodder for many a hollywood film. Of course it is the gladiatorial combats that attract the most attention, but it was probably the animal shows that had a much greater impact on the Roman world, oddly enough. For the Romans had a great interest in seeing exotic animals, and often in setting them to fight, either humans or each other.

Emperor Augustus bragged that in the shows he had offered to the people, a total of 3,500 animals were killed. Given the standards of animal transport one must assume that far more died before ever reaching the amphitheater. Moreover, the numbers increased with time as subsequent emperors struggled to please the inhabitants of Rome (hence the famous quote about bread and circuses). About a century after Augustus, the Emperor Trajan more than tripled the number of animals slaughtered.

The impact of all this was not merely the suffering of many wild animals -- in a society that embraced the use of human slaves the charge of animal cruelty seems rather feeble -- but a wholesale transformation of their ecosystem. The most striking example is the wholesale extinction of the European lion.

And for what? For a bit of fun? Well, not really. The Emperors spent enormous sums importing these creatures and throwing lavish displays, not because it would be fun for them, but rather because it was perceived as a vital means of maintaining power. The population of Rome was huge, and demanded placating. Also the shows were a good way of manifesting the Emperor as kind of patron to his people, and hence corresponded to societal expectations of behaviour. In short, they fulfilled a political function.

But what relevance to lions and amphitheaters have to the present day? Well, you may be unaware of this, but the smog days of summer have arrived. Here in Toronto smog advisories fill the air as the elderly or resperatorally-impaired are warned to stay indoors and to avoid strenuous activity. I (who am neither of the above) can feel a tightness in my throat, and notice that I get winded more easily. It's a problem.

And why do we, along with so many other major cities, suffer smog days? I'm no climatologist, and know that the reasons are many -- yet the big reasons is the amount of pollution in the air, the "particulate matter" that you can see when you look downtown. And why do we have such pollution? Because the government refuses to regulate the industries and individuals who create it. That's why.

The Toronto Star reports:

Ontario's environment minister is urging people to forgo backyard barbecues this week in order to reduce smog, but says coal-fired plants are only a "small part" of the province's pollution problem... Jack Gibbons, chair of the Ontario Clean Air Alliance, said that while the province's coal-fired plants produce as much air pollution each year as six million cars, the impact of barbecuing is "so trivial that no one has ever quantified it."

Perhaps the BBQ manufacturers need to do a better job lobbying the government. Seriously, in addition to the coal-fired plants, there is the serious issue of traffic congestion. Why? Could it be that the government doesn't want to threaten the automobile manufacturers by penalizing drivers? Could it be that the government doesn't want to upset drivers who like using their SUV to drive a few block to buy groceries, or pick of the kids, or go to a movie?

Not even I would suggest that the conservative government of Ontario actually wants more smog days, but it is the result of short sighted policies that aim to maintain popularity -- just like the games the emperors offered up to the plebs...

And, for the record, despite attempts to blame the Empire to the south, this is one problem that is not really their fault (although they too are suffering, probably even more thanks to the current emperor's policy of dismantling the EPA's as an effective organization). It is Ontario who lags in compliance to the clean air treaty made with the US.

Cappadocian Comparisons

2003-06-23T14:46:00.000-05:00

It is worth remembering the history of Cappadocia, which lay between the kingdom of Galatia and the Parthian Empire in the East (in the Eastern part of modern-day Turkey, and well worth a visit). In order to stabilize the East, the Roman General Pompey backed one of the various claimants to power in the region -- a local dynasty who claimed decent from the original Persian satrap who had opposed Alexander the Great, hundreds of years ago. Pompey's star went into decline, and ultimately he was killed whilst resisting Julius Caesar's rise to power. (Yes, yes, this is a simplification, if you want a more detailed history you could check out Josephus's History).

After Pompey's downfall, Marc Antony rose to prominence and went out East to ensure that the various kingdoms remained loyal to the new powers in Rome. He killed the king and set up, yet another, dynasty in the 30's BCE. His candidate had fought against Pompey, as a general for Mithridates, and was named Archelaus. He was terribly unpopular. The Cappadocians attempted to remove him several times, but failed.

When Marc Antony was defeated, and Octavian (hitherto called Augustus) solidified his hold on the Empire, Archelaus managed to retain Roman support. Yet Augustus's successor was not so tolerant. He invited the monarch to Rome, imprisoned him, and openly seized control of Cappadocia, formally turning it into a province of Rome.

And this was how the Roman Empire functioned. As the Republic crumbled in the last decades of the 1st century (BCE) various men rose to power, and tried to ensure that regional powers were supportive. Augustus's rise to power heralded in the much famed "Pax Romana," largely because he managed to hold on to power for some 45 years, without interruption, and hence lay the foundation for Imperial Rule.

So what relevance does all this have to the present?

The recent arrival of Sherif Ali bin Hussein in Iraq brought all this history back to me. He's the heir to the (rather defunct) throne. The Blogosphere's Man-on-the-ground, Salam Pax, reports:

His first stop was the royal cemetery where he was supposed to make a speech and meet “his” people. He got out of the car and immediately he had the traditional lamb-sacrificed-under –your-feet thingy happening to him, after that more sheep got the sacrificial treatment along with a couple of chickens and the meat was being distributed to the “poor”. There was a moment when the crowd gathering to get the meat was bigger than the crowd cheering for him. And there was of course the brave young man who pushed his way thru and snatched a chicken and ran off, everybody was after him “who cares what the king is saying, follow the meat”.

Well, it's all part of the pattern. Various forces are jockying for attention in Iraq, trying to gain the goodwill of the US so that their claims to power will gain support. This particular king wannabe is part of a long line of candidates to power. Who will win out is anyone's guess, but it seems unlikely that the current "Coalition Provisional Authority" will be able to function in the long run. Not only are they unpopular, but their existence requires a greater US involvement than the current administration has any stomach for. Already the US is paying the soldiers who fought for Saddam to go back to work.

Yet it is clear that the American Empire has no real desire for the people of Iraq to determine for themselves who will govern them -- since they are not even allowed to vote for their mayor. No, they will choose someone and place them in power, as they have done in other countries so many times before. And what will happen to that ruler when another Emperor ascends the throne back in the US? Look to Cappadocia.

The Rights of Provincials, part II

2003-06-18T16:11:00.000-05:00

One hopes that, by now, everyone is aware of the controversy of Guantanomo Bay and the plight of the men who are imprisoned there. Amnesty International (and other human rights organizations) have been attempting to draw attention to it for some time. The conditions there appear appalling, and may well be in violation of the Geneva Convention. Suicides are on the rise and one man claimed that he was subjected to truth drugs.

And their future looks bleak. The US plans to try them by military tribunal, and may construct permanent prisons and an execution chamber for them all on the island -- a "death camp" according to the Australian press. Even within the US Legal experts have strongly criticized the Pentagon's plans, calling the proposed justice, "A kangaroo court of the worst kind." All of which is rather bad news for the folks being held there.

But did you know that some of these detainees are Canadian citizens? One is a boy who was only fifteen when he was captured and now may be facing the death penalty. The Globe and Mail reports that, "Ottawa has sought consular access to the teenager, but has been denied." And why should we be surprised? This is hardly the first time that the American Empire and its Emperor have demonstrated how little they respect the rights of Canadians to have access to their own consulate (in accordance with international law).

Ah the benefits of provincial citizenship!

Empirical Research

2003-06-17T09:34:00.000-05:00

As I mentioned before, polls can be a lot of fun. Tom Tomorrow (well actually his stand-in Bob Harris) noted what a bizarre picture they paint of the American people. Among other things:

34% think Rock and Roll has had an overall negative impact on America
33% believe a wife should "submit herself graciously" to a husband
30% say the Bible is the "actual word of God" to be taken literally
29% think people will be "more likely" to afford college for their kids in 2020
28% disapprove of labor unions on principle
28% say the government should have the right to control news reports
27% believe divorce is "morally wrong"
26% thought various disasters in 1999 might "foreshadow the wrath of God"
26% think grade-school teachers should be allowed to spank their kids
20% believe that the killing of civilians in Vietnam was "relatively rare"
12% think the United States should have a British-style royal family
11% think "Titanic" was the best American movie of the 20th century
10% say they are "very likely" to become rich someday
8% could not name a single TV network
8% fear they are "very likely" to be shot or badly hurt by a stranger
7% think Elvis is possibly still alive

A propos of the number of Americans who hold completely erroneous beliefs about the situation in Iraq, he goes on to conclude:

Looking at the other opinions floating around 20 percent, I'd say that the extent of lunatic public perception of WMDs is, if anything, surprisingly low, given the constant drumbeat of bullshit coming out of the White House and megaphoned by the press for much of the past year....

Speaking of social progress, there sure seems to be a remarkably consistent hardcore of about 25-30 percent who seem to be living sometime in the late 19th century at best. Beatings as a form of education? Wives submitting graciously? Vengeful gods screwing with the weather?

This latter point is worth consideration. Do all societies hold such weird views, at least in such numbers? I don't think so. Perhaps I am merely succumbing to the stupid Americans on This Hour has 22 Minutes, but (seriously) the poll I considered a few days ago indicates that there is one major difference between the world-view in the heartland of the Empire, and that from its Northern province -- Religion.

58% of Americans think that it is necessary to believe in God to have good moral values. Only 30% of Canadians agree. Religion is important to Americans, at least a certain kind of religion. 62% of Americans feel that the United States is not religious enough (although only 39% of Canadians share this view of their Southern neighbour), and only 19% feel it is too religious.

But surely religion is a force for good? Without opening a big can of worms consider that Americans define their religion in rather narrow terms. Polls tend to only offer varieties of Christianity (with Judaism thrown in). So does the CIA factbook -- according to them the religious breakdown of the country is " Protestant 56%, Roman Catholic 28%, Jewish 2%, other 4%, none 10%" What about the Muslims? The Buddhists? Moreover, the aforesaid polls claim that almost half of those surveyed identified themselves as "evangelical or born-again."

Religion is important because it shapes the ideals of society. A concrete example -- In the (apparently rather evangelical) US 42% of those polled thought that homosexuality should not be accepted by society. In Canada only 26% of society agrees. And since gay people just won the right to legally marry in Ontario, these differences in opinion can lead to real differences in policy and law. Something worth remembering as the power of the Empire grows.

Nobis deceptum est?

2003-06-16T22:16:00.000-05:00

In his recent column, Kristoff concluded that "it does look as if ideologues in the administration deceived themselves about Iraq's nuclear programs." Marshall, in Talking Points Memo, adds:

Kristof at least is on to something. There was an element of self-deception. A strong one. If you simply insist on believing white is black, even when you can see it's white, then when you tell people it's black then, well, maybe you're sort of not really lying, right?

Marshall gets to the crux of what "State Terror" really is here (go read him). It is not merely the little people who practice doublethink in order to keep reality in line with what they are told. The whole government, the army, the intelligence agencies, the senators, everyone follows the emperor's lead. Until another emperor comes along at least.

Right now the mendacity of the current administration is beginning to get some air time. Journalists brazenly assert that, not only do there seem to be no apparent weapons of mass destruction laying about in Iraq, but that there is rather a lot of evidence that the administration made claims it could not substantiate about their existence. Even congressmen are entering the fray -- Michigan representative John Coyers made a speech in the house in which he expressed his fury that the administration had misled the American people and the congress with deliberate falsehoods, adding:

I shall consult with my colleagues, with legal scholars, political scientists and historians, in order to weigh the appropriate actions necessary to prevent this or any future Administration from usurping the power of Congress and the power of the people to decide public policy on the basis of accurate knowledge.

An accurately informed public is the essence of our democracy. It is most essential on the ultimate question of peace or war. To deceive the Congress and the public about the facts underlying that momentous decision is to transgress one of the president's supreme constitutional responsibilities. I believe the House Committee on the Judiciary should consider whether this situation has reached that dimension.

Could he seriously be hoping to impeach the president? Perhaps. But before everyone breathes a great big sigh of relief, remember the Roman Empire. No emperor lasted forever. Some only lasted for a few months. But when one was ousted, another inevitably took his place. It would be comforting to imagine that the democrat who runs against Bush in the upcoming election would somehow change the system were he able to win. But while a different man would be different in certain ways, would the nature of the Empire change that much? I doubt it.

See No Evil...

2003-06-16T12:17:00.000-05:00

Knight Ridder comments that polls show that the US population is woefully misinformed about the reality of WMD in Iraq, since "A third of the American public believes U.S. forces found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq... and 22 percent said Iraq actually used chemical or biological weapons in the war." Inded there seems to be a heavy fog laying upon the US, obscuring the truths. An earlier poll showed that 83% of Americans appear to imagine that at least some of the 9/11 hijackers were Iraqi.

The article asks, "How could so many people be so wrong about life-and-death information that has dominated news coverage for almost two years?" The director of the Program on International Policy Attitudes (at the University of Maryland), which directed the poll tried to explain the results:

Given the intensive news coverage and high levels of public attention, this level of misinformation suggests some Americans may be avoiding having an experience of cognitive dissonance.

In other words, people must be deliberately filtering out the information that contradicts what the goverment has told them (over and over again). Americans are viewing their world through an orwellian filter -- wouldn't want to commit a thoughtcrime!

Seriously, what is really troubling is not that the Empire will swoop down upon citizens who voice skepticism about its policies (at least not yet). What is upsetting is that there is no need for it to do so. The people seem quite happy to censor themselves, to internalize the fraudulent views of the administration and cling to them in the face of reason and evidence. Yet this is not new. It was the same in Rome. While they lived the emperors' policies were not challenged, save by usurpers of course.

Addendum: Honestly, I didn't know that all this week "Ideas" on the CBC is airing "Is Big Brother still watching?" But what do you know, they are. I suppose I'm riding a cultural meme or something.

Haruspicular Insights

2003-06-11T10:26:00.000-05:00

The Romans wanted as much information as they could get before taking important actions, and turned to trained professionals to obtain insight into the situation, the Haruspices. By examining the liver of a sacrificial beast (or studying lightning, or prodigies) a haruspex was able to analyze the situation. From the time of Emperor Claudius, haruspices grew increasingly important for governmental decisions -- assisting in the decision-making processes of emperors.

(It's worth noting that the haruspices weren't actually Roman, rather they were Etruscan. But the Romans were generally loathe to admit their cultural debts. A bit like White America and Black culture really)

Today we still have haruspices -- we just call them pollsters. I'm not at all sure that our modern methods are a great deal more accurate for understanding the world than looking at chopped up livers, but it's always fun to ponder the results! One of the more famous polling agencies, the Pew Center has just released a rather long report (available in PDF format), which is chock full of interesting insights. It claims a margin or error of 3 points for the US and 4 for Canada, but even given that there are a number of things that stand out.

The Empire is watching its borders. Foreigners are worrisome. 43% of Americans think that immigrants exert a bad influence upon society (only 18% of Canadians feel the same), and 64% believe that their way of life needs to be protected from foreign influences (compared with 41% of Canadians). A whopping 81% of the US wants stricter controls on who is allowed to enter the country (only 16% do not, compared to 30% in Canada).

This makes sense since there are lots of scary things on the other side of the border. Like SARS, which Americans are more worried about than Canadians (although we allegedly are harboring the disease).

And those borders might be more flexible than you thought, since 32% of Americans believe that parts of the countries that neighbor the US (i.e. Mexico and Canada) really belong to the US. Gulp! (In all fairness, 52% of Americans disagree, so we probably do not need to brace for an imminent invasion).

The Empire is watching the lands beyond its borders. In response to this question "Do you think that using military force against countries that may seriously threaten our country, but have not attacked us, can be justified?" 22% of Americans said "Often," and 44% said "Sometimes," while only 17% said "Rarely" and 13% "Never." (By way of comparison, 10% of Canadians answered "Often," 41% "Sometimes," 29% "Rarely," and 16% "Never"). Clearly a majority of Americans believe in pre-emptive strikes, in case recent history allowed one room for doubt.

You can see the merits of this brand of foreign policy in their handling of the Middle East, at least according the Americans who were surveyed. 66% of them think that their policies have made the Middle East a more stable place. Only 48% of Canadians feel the same. Yet, of the people who actually live in the Middle East, few agree. In Pakistan 14%, Lebanon 25%, Jordan 4%, Morocco 10%, Palestinian Authority 3% with only Kuwait (at 48%) and Israel (at 70%) bucking the trend. I guess if the Empire takes your side you might be happy for their help.

The Empire knows best. 64% of Americans believe that their culture is superior to all the others. It's worth noting that, the US is not alone in possessing a strong sense of self-worth. Many other countries express similar, and even greater, levels of pride in their native culture, with the highest ratings coming from India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Turkey, Indonesia, South Africa and Uganda. Indeed, the only countries in the study with a majority population that does not believe their own culture to be the best in the world are: Germany, France, Britain, and Jordan. Canada sits on the edge, with an even split between those who believe its culture to be superior and those who do not.

News Flash!

2003-06-09T16:40:00.000-05:00

Dissent within the Empire is Immoral! Not that this is news really, since I've said it all before.

Modern Provincials

2003-06-09T15:20:00.000-05:00

The Globe and Mail is running a special series of articles examining how Canada is changing. I was struck by the following assertion about the youth of Canada :

They are not voting. Just 21 per cent of 20s Canadians marked a ballot in the last federal election — a harbinger, political scientists warn, of the generation's political behaviour as it ages. This is the result not of apathy, experts suggest, but ignorance and alienation: There are those who don't know and don't care how the system works, and those who do know and think it works very badly... Canadians in their 20s do not see traditional political institutions as the route to change or progress.

This is a trend that has already taken hold in the Empire to the south, where the voters comprised a miserable 36 percent of the "Voting Age Population" in the 1998 election. Could it be that provincials are coming to realize that the interests of the Empire do not reflect their own interests? And that their Republic is rapidly becoming something else?

Of course, Augustus was elected. As were a number of his sucessors (technically). So I suppose one could argue that the republic never died. He certainly would have done so.

The article also notes that:

The gap is widening — in life choices and income — between Canadians who make it to university and those who don't. At the same time, some 20s are discovering they've been inappropriately educated for the workforce they're encountering — two many undergraduate degrees, too few electrictions and plumbers. (emphasis mine)

But I will leave the topic of disintigrating standards of literacy and cultural fluency for another day. Sigh.

The Value of Provincial Citizenship

2003-06-03T19:47:00.000-05:00

The Star reports that:

An internal U.S. government report has officially confirmed the systemic abuse of the rights of hundreds of immigrants from Arab countries who were held in dehumanizing conditions in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

What it does not detail, however, is that at least one of those detainees was a Canadian citizen, innocent of any "acts of terrorism" against the Empire. It seems extremely likely that there were more. In April 60 Minutes reported on one of them:

Of the 1200 men detained after September 11th, the government claims about 130 of them actually did commit crimes. Shakir Baloch is one of them. Baloch, a Canadian citizen born in Pakistan, admits he entered the U.S. illegally... to take classes at this New York hospital to become an ultrasound technician. He was arrested soon after September 11th.

“One of the officers told me, ‘You did this thing to us, we will kill you here,’” remembers Baloch... he claims five prison officials smashed him against the prison walls and told him he was a suspected 9/11 terrorist...

“It sounds extreme, but the fact is I interviewed dozens of people in Shakir's situation, and one after another they told me this story -- that upon entry someone would take their head and smash it into the wall and then make some statement about them being a 9/11 terrorist,” says Goodman. Baloch spent seven months in prison, five of them in solitary confinement. He couldn’t contact his family for five months. The Justice Department never notified Baloch’s family or the Canadian government that he was in custody. Eventually, he was deported back to Toronto, but Baloch says his ordeal is far from over. He suffers from depression, flashbacks, and he hasn't been able to work.

Although the report is available in PDF format, and makes for disturbing reading, Mr. Beloch does not appear, at least not by name. And it is impossible to deduce from the report how many of these detainees were Canadian citizens. Canada only appears once in the report (ignoring the classified sections, obviously), where it states (p. 64):

A Middle Eastern man in his 20s was arrested on August 30, 2001 – more than a week prior to the terrorist attacks – for illegally crossing the border from Canada into the United States without inspection. After the September 11 attacks, the alien was placed on the New York “special interest” list even though a document in his file, dated September 26, 2001, stated that FBI New York had “no knowledge” of the basis for his detention. FBI Headquarters did not request a CIA name check on the detainee until November 8, 2001. The name check came back negative 13 days later, but the clearance letter was not issued until December 7, 2001. The alien was removed in late February 2002.

Was he a Canadian national, or just coming from Canada? The presence of Canadian nationals amongst the detainees is obscured by two factors.

The report presents the number of detainees from various countries as a bar graph, and Canada is not amongst them. Fourteen of the twenty categories are states with a majority Muslim population. Two more have large numbers of Muslims (India and Israel). The only non-muslim countries from which people were detained were Guyana, France, UK, and "Other." The "Other" is the clincher, since it would appear that Canada falls into that category. About 70 detainees come from "other" countries, but it is impossible to know how many of them were Canadians.
Canadian detainees would probably appear under other categories anyway, since the most likely to be detained would be those who possessed ties to muslim countries, i.e. dual nationals. Since Canada does not oblige its citizens to forsake foreign citizenship, it is fairly common for immigrants to retain citizenship in the country where they were born. That was certainly true in the case of Maher Aher, whom the US deported, to Syria (where he is still being held).

So we are left wondering about how many Canadians have been illegally siezed and held by the US government, and why the Canadian media has not raised a greater hue and cry over this blatent infringement of the rights of Canadian nationals. Could it be that the realities of imperial power have become so accepted that complaint seems futile?

Or have we, as Canadians, adopted the Empire's values for our own?

Squwaks of Foul from an overseas province

2003-06-03T12:50:00.000-05:00

How heartening that the mainstream media in at least one province dares to defy the Empire and cry foul! The British media, both on the left and the right, have wholly taken up the Empire's serial mendacity, and are begining to openly question the veracity of its claims justifying its most recent war, the one in Iraq.

But why are these inquiries only hitting the big papers now?

These rumbles are echoed within the Empire's own halls of power. Indeed, they can be said to eminate from them. In the US the failure to discover any weapons of mass destruction, and indeed the embarassingly thin nature of the evidence, should not be news. Nothing about it is new. One of the main reasons that this story has finally leapt out into public discourse is that in a Vanity Fair interview, Wolfowitz said:

The truth is that for reasons that have a lot to do with the U.S. government bureaucracy, we settled on the one issue that everyone could agree on, which was weapons of mass destruction, as the core reason.

In other words, the administration has come out and admitted that they were lying. They are still hesitant to admit it, but KnightRidder reports:

Another senior official, who agreed to speak only on the condition of anonymity, said that Wolfowitz's remark was accurate: CIA and State Department analysts, he said, sharply disputed the Pentagon's claim that Saddam had forged links to al-Qaida... Another top official, who also agreed to speak only without attribution because, he said, "talking out of school is frowned upon at the White House," said White House political director Karl Rove and other officials were displeased by the report of Wolfowitz's remarks because they feared it would undermine public support for the war.

So why admit it now? Because the lies have served their purpose. There is no need to maintain them. The US has gotten into Iraq, and no one is going to make them leave (although the iraqis may try).

Indeed, as this story washed through the media, the G8 met in France, and there they agreed to allow the US to pursue its foreign policy unopposed. The Empire is free to start moving in on North Korea, so why should it care if its past lies are hung out for all to see. So long as no one dares to cry "Liar!" and oppose them there is no need for silence.

The strength of the Roman Empire came, not merely from its military might, but from the cooperation the Romans were able to attain, first from their allies, and then from their provinces. The brutal acts of repression we associate with totalitarian regimes (think Stalin, Mao, Franco) were rarely required in the Roman Empire. The subjects knew better that to openly oppose Roman authority. Looks like our governmental leaders feel the same way.

Provincial Independence

2003-06-03T10:12:00.000-05:00

Ikram reminded me of Michael Adams new book, Fire and Ice: The United States, Canada and the Myth of Inevitability. I'd read a review of it in the Globe and Mail a week or so ago (unfortunately now off their site) and it made me think. On the basis of polls, Adams concludes that the US and Canada are actually growing increasingly divergent -- the split growing from the nineties to the present.

Now, polls are tricky things. The way in which one presents the question has a surprisingly powerful affect. And I am not a statician, so I really have no idea what kind of numbers would be necessary to obtain an "accurate" sampling. So, without necessarily endorsing Adams conclusions (although they seem to match my own subjective experience), allow me to posit one possible reason for this divergence.

In the US it has become increaingly unacceptable to express or possess views that are in opposition to those of the administration. It is a modern version of the "State Terror" the emperors exercised upon the Senators and more humble romans (as I have said before). Since the administration has grown increasingly conservative (democrats included), for a variety of reasons, the political and social views of the US population have shifted in accordance.

Yes, this is an oversimplification, but it has truth in it. Consider (since we are on the subject of polls) how Americans became increasingly convinced that Iraq was directly involved in the attack upon the World Trade Center in the lead up to the US attack on Iraq.

In a Jan. 7 Knight Ridder/Princeton Research poll, 44% of respondents said they thought "most" or "some" of the Sept. 11, 2001, hijackers were Iraqi citizens. Only 17% of those polled offered the correct answer: none. This was remarkable in light of the fact that, in the weeks after 9/11, few Americans identified Iraqis among the culprits... In the same sample, 41% said that Iraq already possessed nuclear weapons, which not even the Bush administration claimed... The same survey found that 57% of those polled believed Saddam Hussein helped terrorists involved with the 9/11 attacks, a claim the Bush team had abandoned. A March 7-9 New York Times/CBS News Poll showed that 45% of interviewees agreed that "Saddam Hussein was personally involved in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks," and a March 14-15 CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll found this apparently mistaken notion holding firm at 51%.

The significance of this is suggested by the finding, in the same survey, that 32% of those supporting an attack cited Saddam's alleged involvement in supporting terrorists as the "main reason" for endorsing invasion. Another 43% said it was "one reason." Knowing this was a crucial element of his support -- even though he could not prove the 9/11 connection -- the president nevertheless tried to bolster the link. Bush mentioned 9/11 eight times during his March 6 prime-time news conference, linking it with Saddam Hussein "often in the same breath," Linda Feldmann of The Christian Science Monitor observed last week. "Bush never pinned the blame for the [9/11] attacks directly on the Iraqi president," Feldmann wrote. "Still, the overall effect was to reinforce an impression that persists among much of the American public."

It is as if the US population took the administration's cue, and then ran with it, embellishing as they went, spinning the tales that they were told, refusing to ask difficult questions. So should Canadians feel superior? After all, Adams book suggests that Canada is growing apart from the US...

Canadians should feel wary! Remember, that what applied to Rome, then to Italy, was eventually imposed on the rest of the Roman Empire -- and not by brute force (for the most part). Already the contenders to succeed Prime Minister Chretien are arguing that Canada needs to repair her ties to the US. And that includes muffling those nasty cries of dissent when the Empire does something that Canadians don't like (such as bombing Iraq into the ground, to pick an example). The provinces can keep their local ways, their laws, their customs, but ultimately they are provinces. Will Canada go the way of a Galatia? A Cyrene? Will Canadians continue to diverge, or will their differences with the Empire grow muffled?

Views of Empire

2003-06-02T10:29:00.000-05:00

The Guardian has just reviewed Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World by Niall Ferguson. He is a star "historian of finance" that the Stern Business school at NYU recently wooed from the ivy halls of Oxford (although he maintains a visiting professorship there), and he has been making regular appearances on the CBC for the past few weeks. And every time I hear his mellifluous tones my blood pressure starts to rise.

Why? His main thesis, that the US is an empire, and that by looking at the history of the British Empire we can better understand what is going on today, ought to be appealing. He argues that:

The United States is the empire that dare not speak its name. It is an empire in denial, and US denial of this poses a real danger to the world. An empire that doesn't recognise its own power is a dangerous one.

Surely this should be music to my ears -- historical analogies, empire, doom and gloom -- no?

No. The essential differentce is that he sees the power of empire as a force for good. Didn't you know that colonialism was a good thing? Sure, many of those former colonies are going through a bit of a rough patch right now (consider the recent events, in the Congo ), but overall, wasn't the presence of a benificent imperial force ultimately civilizing?

The problem, as he sees it, is that the US is not exerting its imperial responsibility. Were it to do so, the Empire would benefit the world. Like the British Empire did. (On second thought, perhaps he's right. I'm sure that the native peoples of Canada are still thanking the benificent English for coming and civilizing them. After all, they didn't even have flush toilets!).

Update: This has all been said, and said quite well, about a month ago, in Warblogging. But it still bears saying!

Those uppity provinces!

2003-05-29T10:41:00.000-05:00

The Roman Empire consisted of both territories that has been militarily conquered by Rome and also kingdoms that Rome dominated, such as Bithynia-Pontus (in modern-day Turkey). The latter sometimes had kings of their own (at least for a time), and almost all the provinces had their own local languages and legal codes, religious practices and customs. There were local senates, with members drawn from the local elites, who dealt with local matters. It was rare that the Roman governor, there to oversee the interests and rights of Romans in the province (since provincials were not usually, again at first, Roman citizens), actually interceeded. It was even rarer for the Emperor to intervene himself. Why did the Empire requre so little political oversight? Obviously the reasons are complex (and by the third century of the principiate, that is after the destruction of the Republic, local problems increasingly became imperial problems), but one of the major factors in the apparent lack of formal control was that the provinces, and their local governments, went along with what the Emperor wanted. There is little sign of dissent, although, from time to time, there were murmerings of discontent (and there were almost certainly more of these than the Roman records record).

There have been some murmers this week in the American Empire, from the peaceful province of Canada.

There's a tempest brewing over the recent remarks by Prime Minister Chretien of Canada. On the way to the G8 summit in Greece he had the gall to explain that he (and by association his government) has different priorities from those of Bush Jr. Oh the horror! Now Chretien is getting lambasted by the Canadian media. Online polls want to know whether Canadians approve of the way he "deals with the Bush administration" (and as of posting 58% of those who care strongly enough to vote don't).

What is strange about all this is that Chretien said nothing that was not common knowledge. Yes, he and Bush have different views about abortion. Yes they have opposing positions on capital punishment and gun control. These are hardly secrets. They are hardly news.

Moreover, Chretien's comments were made in the context of explaining that he also differs with the Bush administration's current fisical policy. He does not believe that deliberately running a deficit (by cutting taxes) is wise, and his own government has gone to great trouble to eliminate the deficit -- an achievement of which he is proud. Given that the Prime Minister was traveling to the G8 expressly to discuss strategies for economic development, his views on the economy are hardly out of place. Why then the uproar?

Because he dared to speak openly. He dared to say what was true, and what is common knowledge, that everyone does not agree with the American Empire's ways. That is the problem. Unrepentant, Chretien responded:

"People want a prime minister of Canada who speaks his mind on some issues, that's what I've been elected for and I've not been known to shut up because I do my job the best I can and I've been doing that since 40 years now."

I only wish that this claim were true. In fact it is not only the media who has leapt in horror at the Prime Minister's bluntness in dealing with the Empire to the South. Chretien's bravado paints a false picture, for he is reaching the end of his tenure in power and he knows it. Chretien has been forced to conceed that he will step down from leading the governing Liberal party at the end of this term (and some speculate that he may allow a new election even earlier), in part because his former finance minister, Paul Martin, has developed a strong power base in Chretien's party and is set to oppose him.

On May 2, 2003, Martin outlined his foreign policy plans, saying Canada has to spend more on its military and develop a "more sophisticated" relationship with the U.S... He said that as prime minister he would join Washington's controversial missile defence program, which some say would turn North America into a fortress. (from CBC overview)

Like Senator Byrd in the US, Chretien can speak out because he has nothing to lose. But what of his successor, be it Paul Martin or another? Will he or she dare to criticize the American Empire?

Relentless march of progress

2003-05-28T12:29:00.000-05:00

We like to feel superior to people from the past. Anyone who studies classical civilization can say, "Well, that's all very nice, but they had slaves! And what about women? They had an awful time of it." And that's pretty accurate. If modern civilization can feel smug about anything, formulating a belief in essential human rights should occupy a top spot. The idea that all human beings, regardless of gender, or economic status, or ethnic and geographic origins ought to possess certain rights is a very new idea. And its a damn good idea, even if it has yet to be evenly applied in the world.

So we should feel pretty good about ourselves, right? Well...

According to Amnesty International, human rights violations are on the rise. Why? The "War on Terror" has diverted attention from human rights in the US, and elsewhere too.

The Blogosphere is ringing with accusations that the US is supporting an administration that is famed for its use of torture, namely Uzbekistan. To be fair, this is hardly the first time that the US has turned a blind eye to human rights violations in its allies (one has only to think of the history of US involvement in Latin America). What is more telling are the US's own actions, both at home and in Guantanamo Bay (which Amnesty International includes in its condemnation).

And what is even sadder is that countries like Canada, who have better histories of upholding human rights, are following the lead of the American Empire in their handling of potential "Terror Threats."

Quiet on the Western front

2003-05-27T17:36:00.000-05:00

These are strange times. The cover of this week's New Yorker ("the house of cards") alludes to the speech Senator Byrd gave recently. It was a rousing critique of the actions of the current administration, similar to several others that he has made this year. Given his voting record he is an unlikely liberal hero. The Washington Post points out:

As a young man, he briefly belonged to the Ku Klux Klan. As a senator, he filibustered against the 1964 Civil Rights Bill, speaking for 14 hours... In 1989, Byrd became chairman of the Appropriations Committee, a post that enabled him to channel several billion federal dollars to projects in West Virginia. Critics mocked him as the "prince of pork..."

So why has he begun to stand up and criticize the current administration in such strong terms? And perhaps more importantly, why is he almost alone in doing so? Surely he cannot be the only person in power to feel that the US is following a dangerous and unwise course? (True, Krugman has been expressing his fears twice a week in the NYT, yet while his words may carry far, he himself is neither a politician or a policymaker, however much I wish he were.)

Perhaps Senator Byrd can stand up and shout because he is 85 years old and may not run for another term -- because he has little to lose. He can afford to risk alienating voters, and the even more necessary special interests who fund his campaigns. Personally, I do not doubt that his sentiments are heartfelt, and I suspect that there are many other senators and congressmen who are privately alarmed by the way in which the nation is developing under the leadership of Bush Jr. Yet even those democrats who hope to run against Bush Jr. in the next election do not seem to dare oppose him openly.

About two thousand years ago, when Augustus Caesar consolidated the power of imperial Rome around him, historians, artists, and even the senators lauded him to the skies. There were those who opposed his unprecidented rise to almost absolute power (for there were plots against him), but those voices were effectively silenced -- they barely appear in the records. How did this self-censorship come about? Consider the fate of the most famous orator in the Roman senate, Cicero. Although he had initially supported Augustus, fearing the tyranny of Marc Antony, Augustus later had him killed, and his property confiscated. The message was far from subtle.

Historians have described the hold that Augustus, and his successors, exercised on their empire as "State Terror." Locally, (and also in the provinces -- but that is another topic), individuals did not dare oppose the regime. Criticism was veiled, or muted until a regime change made an attack upon the former ruler acceptable. (Some argue that this is why the descriptions of the emperors depict them as either heroes or monsters, since criticism of them was either repressed or encouraged by the current regime). Yet at no point was the imperial system seriously criticized -- the longing for the old republic, so romantically portrayed in the blockbuster "Gladiator," never was acceptable.

Are Americans succumbing to a subtly imposed "State Terror?" True, few would argue that senators who speak out need fear for their lives (although the sudden death of Senator Wellstone in an airplane accident, after he announced he would "vote against any plan to allow the United States to launch unilateral strikes against Iraq," leaves some room for some doubt). Yet much of the pressure to remain silent is more subtle, or at least less deadly.

Consider the example of the Dixie Chicks, whom Clear Channel Radio banned for their criticism of Bush Jr. Investigation shows that they were pulled from the radio conglomerates, not in response to public outrage, but rather in response to requests from the Republicans. Clear Channel engineered outrage, and are now about to be rewarded by the administration -- for they will stand to benefit enormously from the proposed changes to FCC regulation (changes opposed by folks on both the left and the right). This kind of patronage (you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours) would have been very familiar to Augustus, or to any of his successors.

None of which is to say that dissent has been silenced in the US. Yet. Nevertheless it seems that, according to the New York Times, complainers are growing increasingly unacceptable in American society. Those few voices that do speak up, like Byrd, like Krugman, have been subjected to vitriolic attacks (like this). The administration is allowed to openly lie, and yet there is almost no one in positions of power who dares to challenge them.

There is so much talk of the Pax Americana (although surprisingly little Pax has accompanied it), yet most of the talk is of the outward forms of empire, the military interventions, the economic domination... The US is not Rome, but she is growing more like her all the time.