World Politics – Page 16 – Babel-on-the-Bay

Is it the Trans-Pacific Profit Protection Pact?

October 7, 2015 by Peter Lowry

There is a disquieting trend emerging in all these trading partnerships that are being negotiated around the world. Who do they benefit? The right wing talks about all the potential jobs but what guarantees do we get as to where those jobs might be? That seems to be left out of the plan. Does Canada just get on board because of its resources or does it really gain opportunities?

What people do not seem to be aware of is that the negotiations for these deals might be between trade ministers but the handlers in their corners are the global corporations. These are the real beneficiaries. And the worst trend of all is that these deals seem to exempt multi-national business from more and more controls.

Going back 25 years, we know now that the North American Free Trade Agreement was never favourable to Canadians. We have had to fight for fairness while losing manufacturing capability in almost every sector. We have spent more time in courts fighting for our trade rights for products such as soft wood lumber than in talks to improve the deal for both parties. Even when we included Mexico, the U.S. pitted the smaller countries against each other and continued to rule the roost.

And the Harper government certainly did not help matters vis-à-vis the Mexicans. The Mexicans have been left with sweat shops and drug thugs. The walls against Mexico in the American Southwest are a deep and lasting insult to a neighbouring country. When ignorant American political wannabes propose a similar approach to Canada, the insult should not be ignored.

And why should Canada pay for that new bridge to Detroit? We have put up with the obstructive and miserly attitudes of the old private bridge owners for too long anyway. Instead of helping with the border problems in the region, Washington bureaucrats have been just as obstinate and obstructive. Canada should open the new bridge and then close the road to the old bridge for construction—for the next ten years.

While Prime Minister Stephen Harper thinks he is some kind of white-knight of trade deals, he has also been the guy to screw them up. His arrogance and off-putting ego have left such a bad taste with European leaders that the deal with Europe that he touted so vociferously has been locked in a diplomatic limbo that Harper does not understand.

Trade deals that need to be negotiated in secret are obviously not the kind of deals that will please everybody in the light of day. Of course there has to be give and take. Different countries naturally develop varying regulations and incentives in dealing with businesses that do the trading. There has to be some levelling of the playing field. That is how it works. The rules have to be fair. Mutual trade has to strengthen the participating countries, not beggar them.

In this day of global corporations, these corporations have to accept their role as rowers of the triremes of trade. They are not the warriors who walk the upper decks. They have to be good corporate citizens in all the countries in which they operate. They have to be responsible for moving us forward. They cannot dictate.

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First-Past-the-Post debate ignites Brits.

May 12, 2015 by Peter Lowry

A sudden influx of hundreds of readers can make any blogger’s heart go pit-a-pat. Since last week, Babel-on-the-Bay’s readership has reached new heights. It was not because of our sage advice on Canadian elections but something written eight years ago at the time of the Ontario referendum on voting reform. Our latest surge of new readers is from Great Britain. Now that they have had their hard fought general election, it seems that some Brits want to change the rules on how they vote.

Admittedly, a Canadian’s knowledge of the British parliamentary system is somewhat coloured by the satire of Gilbert and Sullivan and the comedic commentaries of films by the Boulting Brothers. We have never been too sure of how the British parliament managed to survive after the days of David Lloyd George.

Not that we think the Canadian parliament owes anything to the mother of parliaments beyond a nosegay on Mothers’ Day. The parliament in Ottawa has gone its own way now for almost 150 years and many of the worst aspects of the British parliamentary system are only now besetting its poor occupants.

But it is in the choosing of the denizens of the Commons Chamber that is causing the current controversy. Yes, the Brits invented the first-past-the-post (FPTP) voting system in the days when the villagers met in the town square and shouted out their preferences. The first thing you notice about those demanding change is that they are not proposing any specific system. They are starting by tearing down FPTP.

And, in many ways, they are right. Yes, FPTP is an anachronism. While it is old and creaky, it has served us well. There is not always a relationship between share of votes and share of seats in parliament. Minority governments can happen. A shift of voting patterns by a strategic block of maybe ten per cent of voters can turn parliament on its collective head.

But before counting FPTP out for the count, one really needs to understand what is being posed as a replacement. Does any educated citizen who respects democracy want to vote for a party list? Or would we condone systems of transferable votes or mixed member systems that cannot be understood by all the voters?

Where we are failing in this entire exercise is our miserable performance in developing better voting systems. We are reaching a point today where we can trust the Internet for secure voting and for cost-free instant run-off elections. Why are we not moving in that direction? Why are we not thinking about it?

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ISIL: the cancer on contemporary Islam.

February 24, 2015 by Peter Lowry

They call themselves the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. What they are is vultures tearing at the heart of modern Islam. They are brigands and murderers, thieves and cowards, fools and braggarts. They promise a new Caliphate but their membership is drawn from the scum of those who only profess to follow the teachings of the Prophet. And they encourage the West to treat them as the bogeymen of the next Crusade?

Our politicians have sent our planes to bomb anthills. They have been railing against atrocities that we cannot comprehend. We have been told tales of these cretins to frighten, appal, oppress and maybe return the price of crude oil to more than $100 per barrel.

Stop! The Crusades are long over. Westerners bring no new expertise to the sands of the Middle East? The Bedouin have traversed these lands for centuries. This is the home of the Semites. These are where there are the vast reserves of oil to provide a carbon economy for the West and opulence for a very few.

We have made the Saudi, the Emirate and the Kuwaiti leaders rich and their people oppressed. We have kept religious fanatics supplied with funds. We buy the opium of Afghanistan and the cotton goods of the sweat shops of Pakistan. And the monies we pay out come back at us in the pockets of fanatics.

In exchange for our condemnation these same fanatics continue to threaten us and since 9/11 we have believed them. Oil money buys destruction. Are we not satisfied with the slow death of the melting icecaps?

And why are we letting politicians use these tensions to subjugate us? Why let them pass unnecessary laws to ward off the supposed jihadists within? Are we fools to believe the propaganda of our own technology? Is the pervasiveness of the Internet that persuasive?

Why is the West spending money on solving the problems that the Prophet addressed more than a 1000 years ago. Islam is a way of life and it is the leadership of Islamic countries who have to realize that Islam either has to accommodate change or to seek isolation. Yet there is no hope for isolation in a global economy.

It is an increasingly smaller world and accommodation is the challenge to all.

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Netanyahu buys into Harper election tactics.

February 10, 2015 by Peter Lowry

If it was good enough for Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper to bring his election campaign to Jerusalem, why should Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu not try it? The difference is that Jerusalem to the Jewish leader is Washington. With an Israeli election in three weeks, Netanyahu has pulled out all stops.

But even if he wins re-election, he has a pissed off President Obama. Lame duck or not, it really does not pay for a Jewish leader to annoy a sitting American president. Netanyahu accepted Republican House Leader John Boehner’s crassly political invitation to address Congress without doing the proper diplomatic discussion with the U.S. State Department and the President. That is very bad manners.

Not that good manners are a regular part of the right wing code of conduct. In aid of re-election, Stephen Harper brought a load of Canadian Jews to Israel in a re-enactment of the wedding reception scene from the 1969 movie version of Philip Roth’s Goodbye, Columbus. The Israelis politely looked away and dutifully applauded whatever it was that Harper said in addressing the Knesset.

Even as late as a couple weeks ago, when then Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird was in the Levant stirring the pot of hatreds. He seemed to enjoy the shoes and other objects being thrown at him by protesting Arabs. It is really too bad the Arabs do not often play baseball. It would have been nice to see a few sliders hit the mark.

Mind you, Stephen Harper does not have to go far to stir the pot of hatreds, suspicions, distrust and retribution. His current dialogue in the House of Commons is built on the few disturbed people who have reacted to the potential notoriety offered by jihad. His alarms and efforts at revenge are creating more.

And for this, he insults Canadians, ignores rights, ridicules the need for oversight and accuses his naysayers of failing Canadians in a time of fear.

But those who are really failing Canadians are the New Democrat’s Thomas Mulcair and the Liberal’s Justin Trudeau. They are letting the right wing trample rights for cheap political points. It is a time for leaders to lead or to fall by the wayside. As a famous American President once said, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”

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Scots, Wha Hae.

August 9, 2014 by Peter Lowry

Even if your ancestors left Scotland more than 200 years ago, you can still rise to the skirl of the pipes, honour a haggis with other fans of Robbie Burns, sing along with old Harry Lauder recordings and dance the Gay Gordons at a ceilidh. What you cannot do is read the mix of emotions in Scotland on the upcoming referendum. On September 18 this year, Scotland will be voting on whether or not to become a nation that stands alone.

While Scots nationalists have been vocal and demanding for many years, the Scottish National Party might be misreading its own people. In the same way Britain’s bookies current 5–1 betting odds in favour of separation have to be viewed in emotional terms and are not realistic. If you know one thing about the Scots is that they are a very practical people.

What there is not in the Scottish situation is any comparison to the referendums held in Quebec. In a recent article by the Toronto Star’s Chantal Hébert, she points out that Quebec voters would never agree to risking an after the fact negotiation with the rest of Canada as is part of the agreed vote in Scotland. She sees the conditions of the Scottish vote as anathema to the selling of separation in Quebec.

One of the factors making it hard for anyone to read the tea leaves in Scotland is the fact that the vote has been extended to people from age 16 up. The youth vote was pushed by the nationalists in hopes that this younger vote will take the emotional aspects of the vote to the polls.

But what we know from past experience is that there seems to be a balance in that age group from 16 to 19 that matches the overall result of their parents. Lowering the age to vote is not the answer and just getting them to the polls is enough of a problem.

There is no question but the romanticism of university-level Scots nationalists will be voting for separation but they are not the ones needing a job the next day. These nationalists will also be joined by the disenchanted, the losers and the bitter. That adds up to a solid vote for separation.

But it is probably not enough. The realist is going to wonder why they should want to swim in a smaller economic pool. All they are guaranteed by separation is the probability of higher taxes and lowered economic opportunity.

But the realist is pitted against such words of Robbie Burns as: “The story of Wallace poured a Scottish prejudice in my veins, which will boil along there ‘til the floodgates of life shut in eternal rest.”

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Is Canada supporting racism in India?

May 22, 2014 by Peter Lowry

It can happen. In our eagerness to support democracy, we sometimes get put in a position where we appear to be supporting causes that we would never support back in Canada. This is obvious in the enthusiasm and support Barrie’s Conservative Member of Parliament Patrick Brown has displayed for India’s new Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Mr. Modi has been strongly criticized for his support for Hindu extremism.

Possibly it is a nuance of Mr. Modi’s character that Mr. Brown would not recognize. He would certainly be aware of Mr. Modi’s strong support for business interests and smaller government. Those are political positions close to Mr. Brown’s heart. He might not be as well aware of Mr. Modi’s less than stellar record in human rights and his possible ignorance of the unimproved living conditions of most of the 60 million people in the State of Gujarat where he was chief minister for the past 13 years.

But these are not things Canadians can debate without first-hand knowledge. We have to restrict ourselves to the areas we do understand and in which we have direct information. It has always served this writer well to remember a friend who was an industrialist from Bombay. He was always a very friendly and easy-going chap except when the then Prime Minister of India Indira Ghandi was mentioned. His visceral hatred for his country’s leader always muted further discussion of the subject. It only made it a bit easier to understand when the lady was so brutally assassinated in 1984.

Talking to friends in Canada from India, we get mixed messages about Mr. Modi. With some expatriates it is only the perceived need for the country to move on from an old and entrenched Congress Party. There are also those of mixed marriages (widely frowned upon back in India) who came to Canada for the opportunities offered for them and their children and to live in peace.

What we do not need from Mr. Brown is his obvious pandering to the wider Hindi community that has immigrated to Canada and now call it home. You expect that first generation immigrants will always pay close attention to happenings in the old country but we also expect them to learn about their new country. It is by his obviously biased view of the conditions in India that Mr. Brown does them a disservice.

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If the Hair is not there, can it be important?

February 27, 2014 by Peter Lowry

There is confusion across the country. The Hair is sending Foreign Minister John Baird to the Ukraine. Canadians know that if there is an important trip to anywhere, the first people allocated space aboard that big Airbus A310 are the Hair and the hairdresser.

But on this trip, the Hair sends Baird? We all know that the Hair only takes John Baird along sometimes because he asks politely and does not make a scene wanting to get into picture opportunities.

But why send Baird this time? Is there a possibility of some more shooting? Do you think Mr. Putin, Emperor of Russia would need it as an excuse to invade? Would shooting Baird be enough of an excuse? The more you think about it, a simple flesh wound would guarantee Baird’s re-election in his Ontario electoral district. Canada has never had a foreign minister who really deserved to get shot.

There is no question that the Russians are looking at the disorganized rebels in Kyiv and considering a surgical military strike to carve Eastern Ukraine and Crimea away from the troubles. People in Eastern Ukraine and Crimea are mainly of Russian origin and there is considerable precedence for action from the Russian viewpoint.

But even if the shooting has ended, why would the Hair send Baird to Ukraine? What is he going to do there? Is he going to go up and down the streets of Kyiv asking (through an interpreter) who the heck is in charge? And you can hardly ask the first cop you see. Most of them have left town until people cool off. You find it difficult to shoot at people one day and go back to giving out speeding tickets the next.

There is a parliament, of sorts. What the legitimacy of that parliament might be is open to question. Baird can hardly go to them and offer a generous aid package when you have no idea who will endorse the cheque.

The first beneficiary of any cheques Canada or any of the Western countries write will be the Russians. Russia supplies Ukraine with its vital natural gas supplies which provide home heating and electric power. And the more independent Ukraine wants to be from Russian influence, the higher the price of gas might go.

Frankly, the Hair might have made a bit of a mistake here. If you have to deal with all the complex problems related to maintaining peace on the Eurasian Steppe, you best send someone a hell of a lot smarter than Foreign Minister John Baird.

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Let the games begin. Please.

February 9, 2014 by Peter Lowry

What do ballet, the opening ceremonies at the Sochi Winter Games and Russian winters have in common? They are too long, too dreary and too boring. You almost expected to see a camera shot of President for Life Putin fast asleep. And the silliest expectation was the Russians giving the CBC’s Peter Mansbridge a script to explain what was going on in the centre ring of the arena. Not only was his timing off but his reading would have been more appropriate for a funeral.

And who says the Olympics are not political? They have been politicized since Athens first challenged Sparta. How soon we forget the games in Berlin of 1936! Every country tries to make a political statement. Only the Brits would host an Olympics with the only apparent objective of boosting tourism. And they made fun of themselves without hurting others. President for Life Putin would never understand that.

But what is with all of this silly emphasis on medals? Whatever happened to sportsmanship? If some other country gets one more medal than Canada, good on them. We come to honour the athletes not their countries. All this crap about “owning the podium” is unsporting, callow and a disgrace to the games. Putting such undue extremes of pressure on our athletes is unhealthy and unwarranted. And we should put a stop to this jingoism of raising the country flag and playing the national anthems of the athletes just because Julian beat Harry by two-tenths of a second.

The athletes who really do not need to remind anyone where they are from are the Americans. Those costumes they wore in the opening were hilarious. They not only lost the fashion race but they gave the world a good laugh—which is always welcome.

The fashion police probably gave the gold medal in costuming to the understated French. Try as we can though, there is no way to admit that khaki and grey are compatible. At least our Canadians looked like dismounted Mounties in toques. They had fun.

When Catherine the Great decided that Russia would expand its domain to the Black Sea, it was assumed that she just wanted a dacha there to get away from Moscow winters. It is an unusual place for Olympic Winter Games. Mind you at $50 billion for almost getting things ready, President for Life Putin has sure beaten Catherine’s bills.

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Harper can skate backwards.

September 2, 2013 by Peter Lowry

Do you feel that you have been getting mixed messages from the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) lately? It is like watching a fast-paced hockey game. The puck and the teams keep changing ends. From a hawkish stance a week ago, we are now seeing a more reticent Prime Minister and PMO staff. It seems that war with Syria has moved to a back burner. And it was not cooler heads in Canada that made the difference. It was the combination of a vote in the British Parliament and a smart move by U.S. President Barack Obama.

After all, how could an Anglophile such as Harper be condoning a war against Syria when the Mother of Parliaments has voted against it? The fact that a group of Tory backbenchers voted against Brit Prime Minister David Cameron’s wanting to retaliate against Syria changed positions in other parts of the world.

What was thought to be a fait accompli earned an overnight note of caution. The dogs of war were given a time out. President Obama was forced to spread the blame. Losing such an important ally as Great Britain carried with it a note of caution. What, he reasoned, might work is to force the Republicans in his impossible Congress to face their supporters and either go along with him against the Syrians or give him a way out.

His solution is to take Syrian reprisal for using chemical weapons to Congress. Let them authorize it. If they say yes, he is vindicated and goes to war without sanction of the United Nations or his European allies. If the Congress says no, he has kept his word and it is Congress’ fault that he could not carry out the promised reprisals. This is a win-win for Obama.

And what is Harper going to do? His mouthpiece Andrew MacDougall tells the media that Mr. Harper is going to speak severely to Russia’s Vladimir Putin at the G20 summit next week. This is if the Russian President will give him an audience. One would expect that at any private meeting, the Russian bear is going to listen to Harper impatiently while the Canadian explains the situation as he sees it in Syria. He also intends to complain about Russia’s treatment of homosexuals. When he is finished his statement, Putin is liable to growl: “So what are you going to do about it, sweet cheeks?”

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The Hair is hawkish on war.

August 29, 2013 by Peter Lowry

Is war just a telephone call away? Is it that simple? Can the Canadian Prime Minister just call up the President of the United States and say, “It’s okay. You can go to war with Syria. Canada is behind you. In fact, since we are hiding behind you, you might just say we have your back. Can we make sandwiches? Or knit socks for the troops?”

If President Obama is really serious about showing Syria’s al-Assad regime that chemical warfare cannot be tolerated by the civilized world, he has to move as soon as the proper proof is available. If the U.S. and its European and Israeli allies do not have sufficient assets on the ground and eyes in the skies to report thoroughly on this, they are not serious in seeking peace in the Middle East.

Building this tension for war smacks of the flimflam about weapons of mass destruction that led up to the Second Iraq War. More days of delay are questionable and it is obvious that the scientific evidence is quickly degraded. The longer the delays, the more questionable is the punishment. If Obama waits until after the meetings in Russia next week, he might as well send troops to Damascus to publicly spank Bashar al-Assad and his generals. Are there many other options available after weeks of warning?

While the West prepares, Syria can move its airplanes to hardened cover. Ammunition dumps and troop concentrations can be dispersed. And they have already assured al-Assad that they are not aiming at him.

It has been obvious for some time that the U.S. and its allies are supplying the rebels in Syria. The rebels have just not had the tanks, training and leadership they need to topple the oppressive al-Assad regime.

But hawks like the Hair are missing the more serious point. If al-Assad falls, who takes over? Would the West not be trading one oppressive regime for another? While people rejoiced at the Arab Spring, nobody liked the Arab Summer.

Rather than egging on Obama in his revenge for chemical attacks, what Canada should be doing is working on the diplomatic front to convince al-Assad to make accommodation with the rebels. Surely he is not so foolish as to continue to want his country destroyed.

Let those involved in the chemical warfare business resolve their issues. Canada can show leadership for peace.

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