Stop “Fox News North”

I have a bullhorn, and I’m going to use it.

Those of you who come here from Facebook have seen this already, but maybe didn’t sign it. Stephen Harper, I suppose growing weary of pretending not to be a right-wing ideologue, has decided to shed his sheep’s clothing and put political pressure on our CRTC commissioner to bring a Fox News-style channel here to Canada.

This is a petition to stop it. Please sign it.

A few people, some of whom are people whose opinions I greatly respect (although they differ sharply from my own), have pointed out to me that the media is already biased, and/or that my objection to a Fox-style channel is that I just don’t like conservatives. I feel the need at this point to clarify a few things:

1 – I don’t like conservativism (although I greatly enjoy the company of my few conservative friends – there are few in university science programs, which is my cohort). That’s emphatically not the source of my opposition. I’d be just as against this if it was a bunch of lying arch-Liberal finks (who I also detest).

2 – Even if I did buy that our current media outlets are biased, I fail to see how adding one that is explicitly and purposefully biased makes that situation better. An informed electorate is crucial to a healthy country. Adding another voice to the supposed pantheon of radical viewpoints doesn’t improve the situation at all – it makes people less informed. Fox News isn’t watched by those on the left to “get the other side of the argument”, it’s watched by those on the right to confirm their in-grained biases; the same can be said vice versa. The answer is to reduce the amount of bias in media outlets through careful surveillance, not to burn the whole house down because you spilled some wine on the carpet.

3 – Even if I did buy that adding another biased point of view (as all points of view will be) will somehow improve the lives of Canadians, Fox News is not simply another network. They lie, distort facts, invent facts when they can’t twist the ones that already exist, and are unrelentingly hypocritical in their stance on issues. They are unprincipled, they lack integrity, and they are poisoning the political and social discourse of the United States. Any station patterned after them will do the same thing, sending Canada down the road to destruction down which the United States is currently drunkenly weaving.

4 – Even if I did buy that a Fox News equivalent would be a good thing for the country, the Prime Minister has no business spearheading it, or shilling for it in any way. He certainly has no business forcing out the qualified head of the CRTC simply for standing up for media standards. All of this is to say nothing of the meetings that Mr. Harper has taken with Rupert Murdoch in order to make this a reality. It is a blatant political ploy designed to ensure that he has a channel that is completely uncritical of his policies that he can lavish his special attention and political influence upon, much the way that Bush/Cheney/Rove and the Republican Party has done with Fox News.

Personally, I like my country. I don’t want it to turn into the pathetic circus farce that is the current political reality of the United States, where a Harvard-educated constitutional scholar has to fight with a clueless, ignorant and feckless “hackey maam” from Wasilla to win the trust of the populace. Apparently Steven Harper will be much happier ruling over that country – I think we should be aiming to get better, not worse.

Sign the petition.

To kill a classic novel

I guess I have some re-reading to do:

I refuse to go along with this week’s warm, feel-good celebrations of Harper Lee’s novel (published fifty years ago today), To Kill a Mockingbird. Simply put, I think that novel is racist, and so is its undying popularity. It’s also racist in a particularly insidious way, because the story and its characters instead seem to so many white people like the very model of good, heartwarming, white anti-racism.

I read To Kill a Mockingbird when I was in high school. It was during a glut of classic literature in which I devoured as many ‘must-read’ books as I could. No part of the book resonated with me whatsoever, and I put it down feeling a little mystified as to what the big deal was. Perhaps if I had read it and considered the context of what was happening at the time of its publication, it would have meant more to me.

Macon D. is clearly not a fan:

Actually, that right there is the first reason I think this novel is, in effect, racist — it allows, indeed encourages, today’s well-meaning white people to think that “America is a very different place” than it was when Lee wrote her novel, and thus to think that widespread and deeply entrenched racism died a long time ago.

I must admit, my initial reaction to reading this article was to disagree. “It speaks to its time – the anti-racism movement in its contemporary form wasn’t even on the horizon.” While this may be true, we’re still teaching it in schools today as an exemplar of anti-racist fiction. It is most certainly not anti-racist fiction for reasons that Macon outlines:

1. A common reading of its central symbol (mockingbird = black people) degrades black people.

2. The novel’s noble, white-knight hero has no basis in reality, and the common white focus on the heroism of Atticus Finch distracts attention from the pervasiveness of 1930s white-supremacist solidarity among ordinary white people.

3. The novel reduces black people to passive, humble victims, thereby ignoring the realities of black agency and resistance.

Highlighting To Kill a Mockingbird as anti-racist is like calling Tess of the D’Urbervilles* a triumph of feminism (yeah, I made a Thomas Hardy reference – deal with it!). By the time I got to the end of the article, I was firmly in agreement with the conclusion, albeit with one caveat, which I will present here.

Novels like To Kill a Mockingbird or Uncle Tom’s Cabin or Huckleberry Finn, each of them a stunning example of “aw shucks” racism, should be taught. They should be taught as what they are – signposts on the road to establishing equality. Each of them is a missive from the past that tells us where we once were. They should be taught in their modern context. The racism that Macon (rightly) attributes to the book is not necessarily a fault of the book it’s self. Rather, it is the product of the day in which it was written, and its failings need to be discussed. To Kill a Mockingbird is not the example of racial empowerment I want exemplified – all the power is still held by Atticus Finch and the white judge. Highlight the failings of the book, and where we have to go still now that lynchings aren’t commonplace.

Anyway, I thought this was interesting and deserved re-posting. Read it!

*For those of you who aren’t up on the latest classics of the romantic period, I’ll give you a brief summary. Tess is a peasant. She meets a rich guy. He buys her. She resists his ‘charms’, so he rapes her(?). She gets pregnant, and delivers. The baby dies. She becomes a milkmaid, meets a seemingly nice guy who says he’s in love with her. She tells him what happened. He disowns her. She goes back to the rapist, eventually stabs him, then slinks off and dies. Nobody learns anything. I’m not a big fan of this book either, clearly 😛

My new hobby

As the blurb on the top of the homepage says, I am a scientist by day and a musician by night. In between those two things, I try my best to stay in touch with what’s going on around the world and in my own community. From time to time (actually, on average once a weekday :P) I find something relevant in the news that I think warrants sharing. In my own small way, I like to think I am contributing to a solution by calling attention to problems.

Another thing I have just started to do along those lines is to write letters to my member of parliament. There are a handful of issues I’ve felt strongly enough about to write letters, including a decision to add a former GSK executive to CIHR’s board (those of you in the health research field are gasping and shaking your heads, those of you in other jobs are probably wondering what the hell a GSK is), the parliamentary board of internal economy refusing to allow the auditor general access to details from MPs expense accounts, and today the decision by the Harper government to change the 2011 census in such a way as to make data reporting voluntary rather than mandatory (with thanks to Reka Pataky for bringing the issue to my attention). The letter I wrote to my MP Hedy Fry reads as follows:

Dear Member Fry,

I am writing to inform you of my disapproval and concern regarding the changes to the long-form questionnaire of the 2011 Canadian census. This is a major decision that was carried out with no consultation. It will drastically change the information we have about the Canadian population – information that is vital to decisions on economic, social, health, and policy matters.

The switch to a voluntary survey for 2011 will render the long-form data biased, unreliable, and largely worthless given that only those who choose to respond will respond. Sample data that are collected voluntarily cannot be declared representative of the population from which they were collected, and as such, cannot be used reliably to draw inferences or make decisions about that population. This change to the census will eliminate one of the most important data sources available to researchers, policy makers and the general public.

This of course is to say nothing of the fact that the poorest Canadians, who are already under-represented by the census (and therefore by government services) will be further disenfranchised. I can only interpret this action as a deliberate attempt by the federal government to justify cutting services to those who need them most. As a health researcher, I know that it is crucial that we have accurate and comprehensive information on vulnerable populations, and the census is one of the primary sources of such information. These concerns stand in addition to those posed by the business community, who use this data for marketing campaigns and to plan where to target specific business expansion.

In short, the Canadian census, one of the most important data sources in Canada renowned in the world for its content and representativeness, will be under-minded by the decision to change to a voluntary survey. To perform such a drastic change without broad consultation and consideration of the consequences to the Canadian population is extremely disturbing. I hope that you will represent Canadians in speaking out against this unwarranted change.

Sincerely,

[Signed]

The sections in bold are my own addition to a form letter originating with Perry Hystad, a PhD candidate at UBC. I e-mailed a copy of the letter to Member Fry’s parliament e-mail, and have sent hard copies to her Vancouver constituency office and to her Ottawa parliamentary office. Previous response times to my e-mails and letters has been about 6 weeks.

I encourage all of you to send a copy of this letter to your own MP, as this is an issue that will affect all of us. The census affects funding for programs, political representation, business and housing initiatives… basically any services you want from the government and a number of private-sector issues as well.

So, as a new feature here on the Manifesto, I will periodically post the issues I write letters about, copies of the letters I write, and the responses I get from MPs. If there’s an issue you think I should feature or write about, please write it in the comments section of any post. If you share my enthusiasm for getting the attention of government, please write your own letters (or feel free to copy mine).

MP called to resign after making anti-Israeli comments

I spend a lot of time picking on other countries, but since I’m on a roll in picking on my own country, I thought I’d bring up a free speech issue that’s happening right here at home:

Prime Minister Stephen Harper called on NDP MP Libby Davies to resign as her party’s deputy leader after she suggested Israel has been occupying territory since the country came into existence.

If any of my Jewish readers are still speaking to me, can someone please explain to me why saying that Israel has occupied territory belonging to Palestine is grounds for getting shitcanned? Don’t get me wrong, I don’t agree with her assessment. The reason Israel has to exist is because there was a worldwide effort to deny Jewish people a homeland, and to essentially eliminate Jews. Historically, the establishment of Israel was an attempt to combat global anti-Semitism; however, like so many things done in the wake of World War II, a decision was made by European powers that completely ignored the needs of the indigenous peoples of the regions that were carved up into territories, and generations of conflict were the direct result.

Since then, Israel as a political entity has made several missteps – not because they’re Jewish, but because they’re human. Right now there is massive suffering and death happening in Gaza as a result of those missteps (as well as ongoing Jewish/Arab conflict). Ms. Davies made the observation that Israel has done some morally reprehensible things, and in many cases has behaved like an occupying force. She supports a two-state solution, rather than allowing the status quo to continue.

Apparently, according to Stephen Harper, that makes her an extremist:

“The deputy leader of the NDP knew full well what she was saying,” Harper said during the daily question period in the House of Commons. “She made statements that could have been made by Hamas, Hezbollah or anybody else with no repercussions from that party whatsoever.”

I’m not a fan of Stephen Harper. He has been the worst prime minister in terms of the environment, the democratic process, and the Canadian style of open governance that I can see. Far worse, for example, than Paul Martin was (for the 20 minutes he was PM before a completely unrelated scandal forced him out of politics). This despicable smear of an MP who said something impolitic as a terrorist is below reprehensible. Of course, Mr. Harper seems to do his best work in the sub-reprehensible region so it really shouldn’t come as a surprise. What does come as a surprise is that anyone would continue to support this man who cracks down on free speech and responsible government by pandering to the basest and meanest instincts in people.

If what I have said here is insensitive or incorrect, I’d really like to hear why. If there’s a good reason why Davies should be considered an anti-Semite or should be forced to resign, please let me know. All I can see so far is a slimy weasel trying to score points off the political misstep of an opponent, and casting a chill on the climate of free speech we enjoy here in Canada.

EDIT: Below is a video of the actual comments that MP Davies made. I confess my ignorance as to the history of the conflict, or of specific actions that Israel has taken over time. I do know, however, from doing a bit of reading about the story, that a two-state solution (which is what MP Davies seems to be suggesting) has been brought forward many times before. My anti-Semitism radar is pretty poor though, so if there’s stuff in here that is clearly offensive, please help me by pointing it out.

I break character for a moment

This is not a political or law blog. There are enough of those out there, and I don’t consider myself informed enough to give a meaningful opinion on the law. However, this story made me upset:

The federal government is moving once again to scotch the Criminal Code’s so-called faint hope clause, which allows killers to seek parole up to 10 years earlier than normal if they can satisfy a jury that they’ve reformed.

“Tough on Crime” is a catch-phrase we hear often in political debate. Conservatives are supposedly tough on crime, while “hug-a-thug” (doesn’t the right wing come up with such clever names?) Liberals are weak-willed and think that the criminals should have more rights than the victims.

I am not pro-crime. However, I want to see my government pass legal legislation designed to actually reduce crime, not simply increase punishment for those who don’t have good lawyers. Actions like this one by the federal government do not serve to lower crime, they are merely optics designed to dupe people who only pay attention to sound-bytes into thinking that their lives are somehow being made “safer” by keeping people in prison longer.

Never mind the fact that people get bounced out of prison due to over-crowding, or the fact that people with longer stretches in prison are more likely to re-offend than those who are granted pardons based on genuine reform. No, let’s take away the motivation that convicted people might have had to demonstrate some improvement. Let’s make sure that the people in prison stay bitter, resentful and come out far more dangerous than when they went in. That should fix everything. And don’t worry about the cost, it’s only 7-10 billion dollars over 5 years, also known as twice the annual national aid budget.

This is what gets me so upset about Conservativism, and politics in general. Policies get made that aren’t designed to make anyone’s life actually better; it’s done to get votes from the people who are probably least qualified to hold an opinion. Leadership isn’t about following the uninformed will of the masses; it’s about showing people why your policies will make their lives better. All this is to say nothing of Harper’s recent bill that refuses to allow foreign aid dollars to fund abortion. He says he doesn’t want to “divide Canadians” by bringing up the abortion debate.  It’s pretty clear that he’s perfectly happy to divide Canadians, since there has been no debate except among the right wing. All of sudden though, there’s a debate! Presto! Gee Whiz! I wonder how that happened…

Recently, Ontario premiere Dalton McGuinty announced a bold new approach to sexual education, designed to teach kids the facts about sex and sexuality early in their schooling. As soon as I heard about it, I sent him a letter telling him that although he was sure to get a lot of flack from people for “teaching kids to have sex” and “usurping the role of the parents”, that this was a courageous and admirable step to make changes that work. Of course, the very next day he pulled a complete about face and announced that the program was going back on the shelf. If you believe in something, fight for it. Don’t let people’s meanest and least-informed instincts deter you from the right cause by using fear tactics. There are some things that are more important than getting re-elected.

Anyway, I will get back to my usual topics of discussion. I just felt like talking about this for a second.