Ignatieff letter pure lie

In a letter to The Star on Monday, Michael Ignatieff wrote that he had "never supported torture, torture 'lite' or coercive interrogation," and said anyone familiar with his writings would agree. Sadly, he is mistaken.

On May 2, 2004, in his New York Times Magazine piece titled "Lesser Evils," he wrote, "defeating terror requires violence ... indefinite detention of subjects, coercive interrogations, targeted assassinations, even pre-emptive war." He defined "permissible forms of duress" as including "disinformation and disorientation, like keeping prisoners in hoods."

Mr Ignatieff has repeatedly said that torture is unacceptable. But his definition of torture is so narrow that he manages both to legitimate torture 'lite' and explicitly call for "coercive interrogation", though he now denies this. And it is in this context -- so-called human rights advocates whittling away at the prohibited -- that the torture of hooded prisoners in Abu Ghraib took place.

So far, the Star has only printed one reply, a brilliant letter that dredges up this rare gem, which Ignatieff spoke in an interview with ABC Radio:

But there may be ways of putting people through severe recursive, non-physical, harassing interrogating that stops short of torture, stops short of this kind of lasting psychological abuse ... I think it's a problem of finding a small category of coercive interrogation techniques that will get us intelligence results without dishonouring the United States, and shaming the operators.

This guy is splitting all the wrong hairs. I'd like him to give a seminar on "severe recursive, non-physical, harassing interrogating" to the thugs who generally put in practice such delicate distinctions.

Bolivian socialist's stunning victory

Check out the article on Jim Shult'z blog about Bolivia's election and Evo Morales's unprecendent victory. Jim Shultz is a highly credible source, an American democracy activist who's lived in Bolivia for years. (Also, the comments on this blog are usually lively and confrontational.)

For real change, click heels (Socialists win in Bolivia)

Yesterday, Evo Morales, who described himself as a "nightmare for Washington" for his leftwing policies and his opposition to US efforts to eradicate the coca trade, won Bolivia's election and will be the country's next President and its first ever indigenous leader (over half the country is indigenous). His party, Movement Towards Socialism (MAS), got about 50% of the vote, well above the number in the mid-30s many polls were predicting. But don't expect Canadians to notice.

To their credit, The Toronto Star ran a wire story on the election today, though not available online, and CBC Radio 1 has been covering the election result in its hourly newscasts this morning. But The Globe ran nothing on the Bolivian election (nor on the pivotal constitutional referendum in Congo, also covered in a Star wire story not available online.) And in a campaign with zero discussion of foreign policy that doesn't involve the U.S., you can be sure the Canadian political landscape will remain unchanged. (You can read about Morales's victory in many other places, such as this NYT article.)

This is a serious problem. Canada's probably the only country in the hemisphere that doesn't have a sense of pan-American identity.

The Latin American nation we know best is Cuba, thanks to Fidel and Che's celebrity status alongside our leaders' consistently and visibly refusing to cave to U.S. pressure to isolate the island economically. Of course, given that Canada is currently aiding an anti-democratic occupation in Haiti, it's unlikely Paul Martin would be defending the sovereignty of the Cuban revolution had it taken place during his reign.

It's ironic that the only real presence the Latin American left has in Canadian minds is its most archaic incarnation, given that today it is in a renaissance of astonishing proportions. Brazil, Venezuela, Uruguay and Argentina have all elected leftwing governments that are trying to mix pragmatic governance with a slow transformation of the regional balance of power. Chile is on the way to electing a Socialist president and Mexico's leftwing candidate is slightly ahead in the polls. These are now joined by Bolivia's Evo Morales.

It's unforgivable for us to consider the majority of our continent an irrelevant American backyard. It's increasingly obvious that future peace on a global scale depends on increased cultural links between global citizens and a multi-polar distribution of power. Canadian leftists have always longed for a way to get closer to Europe (maybe an enormous earthquake...) when in fact, clicking our heels together would be far more effective.

South of the United States is a world of incredible cultural riches and where original models for social and economic development are emerging. Following the Canadian election campaign, it's sometimes impossible not to feel a dark frustration that we're mired in a re-hash of half-forgotten doctrines defined principally by their dullness. The great challenge of our era, confronting economic globalization and its consequent inequalities at home and abroad, isn't even on the map.

Fresh wind isn't blowing from Paris, London or Berlin however, but Caracas, La Paz and Buenos Aires. We can only alleviate our depence on the Americans by fostering inter-dependency throughout the Americas. As individuals, becoming conscious of the novel arts and ideas to our South can be a revolutionary jolt to our identities. As a country ostensibly tired of being scolded by American ambassadors, solidarity with a new, responsible Latin American left carries almost overwhelming potential.

I only wish more people felt the same way.

Last night, tonight, and the Martin-Duceppe love story

Last night

1. Quebecers love government. Or at least, the strangely rural mix of discontents assembled by the debate people do. They asked about so many different programs, even Harper came off trying to sound like Santa Clause – red mantle and all.
2. Stephen Harper hates gay people. Asked if he would still love his kids if they came out of the closet, he solemnly declared that every parent has a duty to love his or her children (“un devoir”). Hmm, this sounds more like a Roman senator defending the indefensible than a national leader showing an open mind, but hey.
3. Paul Martin and Gilles Duceppe are not each other’s worst enemies – they’re best friends. The Bloq and the Liberals now enjoy a symbiotic relationship in Quebec. Each party’s sole campaign message is: vote for us to kick out the other guy. Disappear the Bloq, and suddenly the Liberals aren’t Canada’s only national party, they’re just Canada’s mediocre ruling party with no business in power. Remove the Liberals, and a more leftwing federalist party actually in tune with Quebecers’ values would replace them and disabuse the Bloq of its raison d’être (pardon my French).
4. Everybody hates the environment and foreign aid – except, sort of, Jack. Not a single leader broached the subject of foreign affairs last night (isn’t there a War on Terror going on? or at least a Clash of Civilizations? or something nasty?) except for Jack Layton, briefly and lamely, referring vaguely to some broken Liberal promise. (Probably the old 0.7% of GDP to aid debacle.) Jack also made the most of Martin’s laughable failure on greenhouse emissions, though nobody else picked up on it and not a single leader broached his plan to do something about it.
5. Paul Martin has zero credibility. Stephen Harper is clearly a charlatan who will win no seats in Quebec, but who may nonetheless rip the country apart. (Will he tell his English audience that he thinks Quebec should represent itself in international summits??!!) But Paul Martin, whose commitments really mattered, made a fool out of rational discourse by claiming over and over to be a progressive leader, when in fact he’s reduced social spending as a share of GDP. There are good reasons Martin re-structured Canada’s economy, whether you agree with them or not. But it is sheer cowardice for Martin to fail to explain himself to his audience – not the IMF advisors who told him what to do, but the voters who should make these decisions.
6. Gilles Duceppe isn’t such a great debater. It’s now conventional wisdom that Duceppe is, like, the most charismatic, best, sexiest debater ever. Sadly, this nonsense is only propagated because a) his opponents are terrible, and b) the Canadian media echo chamber is very small. Duceppe’s lame smile, on display after most of his comments, must be the most foreign-to-joy facial expression anyone has ever seen. More importantly, the range of his arguments is extremely narrow. He swaggeringly unloads on Paul Martin, which a twelve-year-old with the same cue cards could do, relying mostly on the beaten-to-death sponsorship scandal. He amiably affirms his commitment to the unemployed, which consists of voting yea or nay to other people’s legislation. But the thinner the file, the easier it is to master. Duceppe is only slightly less cowardly than Martin, and will probably be much less successful. By declining the leadership of the PQ, Duceppe showed he’s not up for the big game. Moses didn’t settle for being in opposition – why should Duceppe?

Tonight

As you can see from my comprehensive summary, last night’s debate more or less sucked. The fact that two neoliberals and one obstructionist rubbed out Layton’s message by themselves claiming to be social democrats is appalling – though only if you’re bothered by hypocrisy. Tonight, expect more of the same, except this time the Anglophone leaders may use up to a dozen un-rehearsed sentences.

The new format is a good one insofar as it gives politicians the chance to lay out their arguments in a reasonably civilized way. But it also exacerbates the worst aspect of Canadian political campaigning, namely the utter fakery of it all. In this format, with the fresh, dewy faces of Canadian voters on constant display, don’t expect leaders to drop for an instance the PR bull-shit that’s an enormous reason most people find politics so eye-glazing.

There’s also the atrocious media coverage that comes afterward, where pundits push their own talking points, usually at the expense of the NDP, which is treated as a cute indulgence instead of Canada’s third-largest party. (It gets a higher share of the popular vote than the Bloq.)

She's a Swarthy one

All right, tomorrow morning I'll be posting through the fog of my debate hangover.

In the meantime, read up on Jack Layton on my cousin Jane Swarthy's revamped blog. Last I checked, there weren't a lot of women blogging about Canadian politics. (Hmm...)

All right, let's just say, first impressions:

Jack did a lot better than last time, though he still hates French. Not as much as Stephen Harper, a) whose French sucked, and b) who talked like a left-of-centre politician. Paul Martin is a monstrous liar whose claims to compassion you can find roundly refuted anywhere you care to look. (In case you're lazy, check Inaki's blog -- heck, read the whole thing if you can stomach Martin's perfidy.) Gilles Duceppe, well, how would you do if you were debating really, really stoned people?

Also, pretty dull.

Kids before Coors!

Conservative blogger Stephen Janke, also known as "Angry in the Great White North," has finally taken a stand against the Bolshevik Liberals and their contempt for Canadian parents (also, their Soviet love for enormous government.)




Demonstrating maturity and a subtle sense of humour, he's done what proud citizens should do: posted an online petition. This one is to make sure Paul Martin knows just how offended Canadians are that a Liberal insider thinks every Canadian parent is currently hammered and stuffing him or herself with double-buttered popcorn. Check it out at http://www.kidsnotbeer.com.

In my last post, I claimed that arguing about silly things like beer and popcorn clouded the substantial issues facing democratic societies. What a bore. I could have actually written about the issues themselves and pointed out that the Conservative childcare plan, $100 per month per child, works out to about $5 per working day per month. In Quebec, where there are a limited number of $7-per-day childcare spaces, some parents under the Connies could actually pay only $2 a day for childcare. That's a great deal!

Sure, you say, that only works if you treat the Conservative party policy like a condiment instead of a sandwich. But then, you're an asshole. Can you imagine how offended Canadian parents would be if you told them you thought they'd rather feed condiments to their kids than sandwiches?

This is getting confusing. Why couldn't you just use the condiments on popcorn? Is butter a condiment? How about paprika?

Listen, if there were actually anything to "debate," "Angry in the Great White North" -- a tag that clearly has no racist connotations, and shame on you if it even crossed your mind -- wouldn't be begging Canadians to tell Paul Martin just how much they love their children. (Single welfare moms and NDP-voters are encouraged not to sign.) I mean, if it was worth rationally comparing policies, why would "Angry" spend his time blogging about Belinda's brother's shady online gambling business? ("Andrew Stronach: Combining Hooters with Meals-on-Wheels")

Rick Mercer, meanwhile, that biased, Communist-Broadcasting-Corporation-subsidized, Liberal-loving, humourless fop with Jewish hair came out with his own petition, this time -- if you can believe it!! -- asking Canadians to register their disgust at the all the anti-beer rhetoric out there. The nerve of that wimpy pinko! It's enough make your Bud curdle!!!

Beer and popcorn media coverage: suds and fluff

When the media falls over itself to cover the "beer and popcorn fallout", all it's really doing is covering itself -- and doing short- and long-term damage to democracy in Canada.

I just finished listening to an awful, but representative, CBC Radio report. It claimed that a Liberal strategist's comments that parents would spend their child-care stipend on beer and popcorn "overshadowed" the campaign today. Since only the media decides what counts during a day of campaigning, the report consisted of the media covering its coverage of yesterday's throw-away soundbite. The report, and countless others on the Radio, TV and in the papers that have appeared and will continue to appear, could instead have paid attention to the substance of today's policy announcements.

It's absurd for the media to claim to be covering a "campaign" when in substance it's only covering its reactions -- an incestuous feedback loop now referred to, by media pundits, as the all-important 'news cycle.' Talk about navel-gazing.

The reporter, Mr Armstrong, pointed out that Harper and Layton, while announcing other policy, also made beer-and-popcorn jibes. Fine. But Mr. Armstrong could have simply ignored these and discussed the announcements themselves by measuring their merits against their rhetoric. Constantly pursuing this same strategy -- ignoring petty jibes -- would revolutionize the way campaigns are received.

(Another example is the frequent pundit insight that the NDP's goal must be to get attention for itself and not get sidelined by the Liberal-Conservative jockeying ... even though it is these very pundits -- usually reporters, columnists or editors -- who are deciding to primarily cover only two national parties.)

This maddening form of media coverage damages our democracy short-term because it fails to serve its basic purpose in an election: make it easier for Canadian citizens to make informed choices when they vote. Today, Layton and Harper made serious policy announcements. If citizens were given any but the most cursory analysis of these plans, they would have a much easier time making a decision based on reasoned appraisal of the choices presented to them. Could a senior editor at a Canadian news outlet please explain how coverage of stupid booze sound bytes is more useful to voters than coverage of the policies voters are voting on?

So why does the media do this? Let's take the simplest, superficial reason. Many political reporters, because of a combination of laziness, stupidity, and time constraints, do not put in the hours and do not have the expertise to cover most political stories in depth. So instead, they cover what they do know: empty politicking.

Most political reporters in Canada, sadly, seem know more now about PR and political strategy than they do about what politicians in power actually do: create policies that have a concrete impact on the life of Canadians. By extension, come an election campaign, these people, camped out on campaign buses instead of libraries, cover the campaign itself. This is simple, flashy, and useless to voters. (Though it's great for strategy-obsessed political junkies, a miniscule minority.)

The long-term problem is that this approach fosters cynicism among politicians and voters, encouraging both to come to understand the sphere of politics as pure politicking instead of policy. Campaigns are tailored for TV news shows -- generally the worst offenders -- which then educate Canadians with cheap, simple-to-produce segments on political strategy that have no bearing on anything. Long-term, by encouraging the population to perceive politics as nothing more than bickering, the media does its share to reduce voter turnout and cheapen public debate.

The media then covers this disenchantment as a strange and tragic phenomenon when, once again, it is merely covering itself. This, the long-term change in the way we perceive politics because of the way politics is portrayed, is the 'news cycle' in the truest sense of the term.

This cycle, which is so obviously a distraction that more and more people have thrown up their hands and given up, does benefit some people. It immediately benefits pundits, political insiders, campaign and PR specialists, spin doctors, etc., whose professional expertise grows in value as democracy is denigrated. It also benefits others more generally, as it reinforces the political and economic status quo. The less serious political discussion becomes, the harder it is for serious change to take place.

Note that the mainstream media today is operated by corporations (with the exception of the CBC, whose management, we saw this fall, merely has a corporate culture) and that federal policy since 1984 has had a clear pro-business slant (we've had a Montreal businessman as Prime Minister or Finance Minister this whole time). For more on this, see the excellent work by Inaki Mondragon.

One of the leading contenders for leadership of the Liberal Party after Paul Martin is Frank McKenna, who, before becoming Canada's ambassador to the US, was the chairman of the board of CanWest Global -- the enormous media conglomerate famous for its centralized editorial vision and creeping censorship of its reporters.

This system has served its small number of beneficiaries far better than the vast group of Canadian citizens. So is it really such a surprise that no one but the NDP -- the ultimate political outsiders -- will stand up to take proportional representation seriously? Certainly, the 12-year-and-counting hegemony of a political party enjoying less than 50% support makes zero sense. But try telling that to a drunk Canadian whose ears are stuffed with popcorn!

Ignatieff unmasked

It's because we could use a distinguished academic in Ottawa that we've got to say no to Michael Ignatieff, an apologist for the worst imperial excesses of our time.

An article I wrote for this month's issue of The New Internationalist -- you should read it! (scroll down a tiny bit for the link) -- exposes Ignatieff's egregious thought, from his strange admonition that a "liberal society cannot be defended by herbivores," to his manly savvy that "imperial power requires controlling the subject people’s sense of time, convincing them that they will be ruled forever," to his now famous insistence that

defeating terror requires violence ... indefinite detention of subjects, coercive interrogations, targeted assassinations, even pre-emptive war.

The single thread of continuity that ties Ignatieff's incoherent ramblings together is the worship of power. Since the build-up to the Iraq war this was obvious to readers of his journalism, and became more and more disquieting as time passed and his position become ever more aggressive. His love of power has manifested itself anew in Canada, where he arranged to be undemocratically parachuted into an Etobicoke riding; he is now praising Chrétien for staying out of Iraq, recanting everything he stood for -- aggressive American imperialism -- as recently as this past summer.

Intellectuals serve us when they prioritize deep learning and difficult knowledge over spin and expediency. They should demonstrate careful, considered thought and they should work hard to challenge the lies of the powerful. After all, tenure does give them job security the rest of us dream of. In other words, they must speak truth to power. As Rick Salutin recently wrote in the Globe, Ignatieff does the opposite, he speaks power to truth.

Last week, we heard about Ignatieff's cosmopolitan discomfort with Ukrainian nationalism. Now, we must raise much more important and uncomfortable questions about his true political colours. This is a man, after all, who not only uses the word 'we' repeatedly when discussing the United States, but who wrote in Granta,

I loved my own country, but I believed in America in a way that Canada never allowed. I was against the [Vietnam] war because I thought it betrayed something essential about the country. I marched [against the war] because I believed in Jefferson and Lincoln. [...] The power of American scripture lies in this constant process of democratic reinvention. [It is] the only country whose citizenship is an act of faith, the only country whose promises to itself continue to command the faith of people like me, who are not its citizens.

Elect Ignatieff to office, and at the very least we'll save the White House having to pay for an American ambassador. I doubt they can find one more eloquent on the wonders of the Homeland.

Mayor Miller hates the Pixies

Hey, whatever happened to our uber-progressive downtown, NDP mayor??!! First Mayor Miller opts to clear Nathan Phillips square of Homeless people. Then, after a summer of gun violence, he decides to get tough on crime. I mean, tough on ... punks?


Punks like our lady of love (pictured above)?

Already, reports are pouring in from community workers and criminologists that the new Liberal "ban on guns" is mostly smoke and mirrors. Take this from a recent CBC.ca story, for instance:

Anthony Doob, a University of Toronto criminologist, said he's skeptical that taking the additional step of a total ban would help much.

"We've got lots of laws (already)," Doob told the Canadian Press. "We've got laws about carrying, we've got laws about ownership, we've got laws about transfers of ownership."

Rev. Harry Lehotsky, an activist in Winnipeg, echoed Landau's views, saying a ban will make no difference.

"They're illegal anyway," Lehotsky said. "The cops have a million ways, reasons, to take those guns away from these guys already, so it's totally irrelevant."

But don't say that to progressive lefty David Miller. In a story in the Toronto Star today, which also contains quotes from Liberal-gun-ban skeptics, Miller comes out enthusiastically swinging for Martin's plan, declaring:

"Guns turn punks into killers."

But are punks really the problem? One entry on dictionary.com helpfully defines a punk as "A young person, especially a member of a rebellious counterculture group". That seems a little broad. In "street" lingo, of course, punks tend to be those protesting, angry, vaguely lefty -- sometimes even anarchist! -- people who are in perpetual turf wars with neo-Nazis. Then again, Mayor Miller's electorate in North York may not be aware of the "street" definition...

But maybe the problem isn't that Mayor Miller, in his days as a Harvard economics student, missed out the punk movement. Maybe he just misheard. Maybe he was listening to the Pixies' 'Sad Punk' the other day but couldn't make out the words:

I smell smoke/ that comes from a gun/ named extintion/ it was a long time ago/ could have happened to anyone/ he was struck by a bullet/ and he melted into fluid named extintion

...

I read something/ about a son of a gun/ named extinction

A portrait of creepy

Try to figure out the location of these four pictures, painted in enormous scale onto the walls of a swanky dining room:

First, happy pilgrims:



Next, happy slaves:




Now, a cryptic panaroma, also looking idyllic...



But look again: these slaves have been bad. And... they're getting it.



Well, you guessed it, these pictures are painted onto the dining room in a beautiful apartment on the left bank, right off St-Germain, in Paris. What relevance to the Canadian election? you ask. Ha! The world is interconnected in so many ways...

The truth about young people and politics

It has little to do with voting, quite a bit to do with social class, and you won’t find it in The Globe.

Today, our national paper printed yet another laughable dud (found on the authors’ web page for free), this time an op-ed piece by the people whose polls are to the scientific method what creationism is to, well, the scientific method. (I’ll also tell you about a very interesting study that The Star, to its credit, briefly wrote up in its front section today.)

My main problem with the article is not its assumption that the research it provides is sound – read on, and you’ll see their research is a joke. No, what’s annoying about their story is how they keep confusing political action – even transformation – with the act of voting. For instance:

[Young voters] are the voters we want going to the polls and shaping our country’s future.

But nobody who’s taken time to think would suggest that by voting for one of three or four parties anyone will transform the country. To its credit, the DemPro people did puzzle out that the lack of attention to the issues of “funding postsecondary education and the environment” is a major problem. (Both are central NDP policy planks, receiving hundreds of millions in the NDP budget, but whatever.) But the article’s recommendations, namely lowering the voting age to 16 and somehow “hold[ing] the parties accountable when it comes to engaging youth” show that they’ve entirely missed the point.

First off, because of our first-past-the-post electoral system, allowing younger people to vote will mean almost as little to them as allowing old people to vote. In most ridings, there is a two-way race between two parties with everyone else trailing far behind. If not for sheer habit or a stubborn sense of duty, no one would ever vote for a distant third-place party in their riding. There are many options for proportional representation that would make every vote count: young people, wondering why they should vote if it won’t count, might actually appreciate one of them. If we’re going to re-shape out future, as the piece’s authors claim to want, we might have to contemplate changing the system a tiny bit now.

Secondly, and here the StatsCan study comes in, the idea that ‘voting’ in itself is the way to change things politically is highly dubious. If there’s something we should learn from young people (I’m 23 – is that a conflict of interest?), it’s that the ballot box is not exactly “where it’s at” when it comes to transformative politics.

The new StatsCan study, which is worth reading, shows that while 22-29 year-olds voted less than the average for all age groups, they were more likely to engage in non-political activity than the average, and much more so than seniors, who vote the most (58% of 22-29 year-olds vs. 39% of 65+).

Social class also plays a key role. StatsCan found that young people whose family incomes had been under $20,000 growing up were more likely to engage in non-voting political activity than those whose family income was above $60,000. And yet,

On the other hand, young adults in low-income households had almost 50% lower odds of voting than those in high-income households, even when other factors (including student status) were taken into account.

Draw your own conclusions on what active youth are telling you about class, social transformation, and “proper” political activity.

Here’s another interesting finding. The main reason given by the The Democracy Project for youth not voting is “lack of information about candidates and issues” (Globe article). According to the StatsCan study, 36% of members of the 15-21 age group, and 32% from the 22-29 group reported “search[ing] for information on a political issue,” – each age group’s numbers being above the average for all age groups of 26% (this does not seem to include daily media consumption).

In fact, StatsCan shows that the older the respondents, the more likely they were to vote and the less likely they were to look political information up, or, in fact, engage in any non-voting political activity. Strange: that would imply not that the young ‘uns are incurious, but that the majority of (older) voters don’t know what the fuck they’re voting for. Not a comforting thought.

So, our first conclusion is that we should be highly skeptical of “experts” claiming to know youth, but who aren’t willing to contemplate the deep systemic reform needed to make our democracy more responsive to all voters. Next, despite the fact that they make fun of our “gerontocracy” and ask questions about rock bands, these DemPro people, who seem to think the future will be shaped by good boys and girls who tick the box, well, they’re out of touch.

PS, As for the methodology of the poll, which claims that Green Day fans are the most likely to vote, and is conducted by The Democracy Project, it’s discussed here. Note how they say they polled “a representative sample” of 2,517 young Canadians “using an online survey,” followed by pseudoscientific drivel. Simply put, respondents to online surveys are nothing resembling representative, no matter how they’re “weighted”. What the press release doesn’t tell you is the even wilder fact that you have to register on their site to even access the questionnaire. Lame.

I couldn’t find the complete methodology of the StatsCan study quickly. It’s taken from information extracted in the StatsCan 2003 General Social Survey, in which 15,000 Canadians were interviewed on a range of subjects. It too claims to be representative and as you’ll see if you read it, its statistical analysis is rather sophisticated. If anyone knows how those 15,000 Canadians were reached, let me know. And while I’m skeptical of all such surveys, I’m sure StatsCan had a better way of finding people that hoping they’d drop by their web site.

media & youth: Globe blows the pooch

I always read/watch/listen to media coverage of the ‘youth’ vote with interest because I find that I learn more shocking new things about myself and my generation from these sources than I do from my own daily life. I’m sure Freud has a lot to say on how I fail to know myself or peers nearly as well as isolated corporate news reporters.

Today, the Globe ran two brilliant pieces, starting with their analysis of a “poll” with:

"a representative sample of 2,517 people drawn from a database of young Canadians who agree to take part in surverys. Results are considered accurate to within plus or minus two percentage points, 19 times out of 20."

Let’s be honest. The only people who believe in the accuracy of a self-selecting poll -- answered by people who even bothered to enter a mysterious database -- are credulous journalists and their journalistic-standard-free senior editors. According to this poll, 88% of youth plan to vote in the next election. Please note, an estimated 36% voted in the last one. (The same Dominion Institute polled youth last year, but then they at least had the decency to use a random telephone sample.)

Meanwhile, John Ibbitson is at it again, complaining that “our political leaders have absolutely nothing to say to Richard Crosswell,” an 18 year-old with no idea how to vote. JIbbitson’s idea is that federal leaders are all equally distant from youth. But if you look at policy proposals seriously, that’s simply not true. For instance, the NDP is the only party that aggressively proposes measures to lower tuition, and is the party that makes the biggest deal out of dealing with climate change. These – tuition and climate change – are issues we young ‘uns take seriously.

But the stance of the NDP is poorly known because the JIbbitsons of this world – and their editors at the Globe and other outlets – don’t take them seriously. One example is Tuesday night’s broadcast of the national, whose final, brief news item, not advertised in the headlines preceding the broadcast, was Layton’s announcement of the NDP climate change proposal. This even though CBC News allegedly cares enough about climate change to run banal stories about Northerners using triple-glazed windows.

A more grievous example still is JIbbitson himself! In an earlier column, he lamented the lack of a

“hope politician, someone who speaks to the aspirations of the young, diverse, urban, post-national state that Canada is becoming, someone impatient with, and willing to go beyond, the tired debates of the old men who captain us.” He added, “NDP Leader Jack Layton's energy and optimism probably come closest to personifying the hope factor, but unfortunately he remains wedded to a vision of social democracy that was out of date half a century ago.”

In other words, what JIbbitson is really looking for is someone who the youth will warm to and whose politics perfectly mirror JIbbitson’s (yes, the perspective of someone who thinks Jack Layton’s ideas – virtually identical to those of several European governments and most European technocrats – is a little narrow).

The point isn’t that Jack Layton is the answer to youth disenfranchisement. Rather, the point is that you can’t talk about a whole group of potential voters who are in fact disinterested without being contaminated by broader political questions.

Accepting contamination and running with it, you wonder why it is that young people don’t bother voting when they spent their entire childhood and adolescence (the Tory&Liberal years) being told to expect less from a government that was its best best to shrink itself (cheered on by the Globe and its various JIbbitsons). When you look at the fact that JIbbitson-approved neoliberalism has led to fewer permanent jobs, more Mc- and Gap-jobs, and a total disinterest in issues affecting the *future* like climate change, then you start to understand why the JIbbitsons can’t understand the ‘youth’.

__

Ignatieff is, I promise, on the way. Meanwhile, if you're having trouble getting into those JIbbitson columns, just searh "John Ibbitson" in news.google.ca and follow the links from there.

Broken promise of social spending

In addition to delving into the issues myself – to my very limited abilities – I’ll be arguing here that the way the mainstream media covers this election campaign is detrimental to democracy.

I’ll talk about the perfidy of predictions, polls, the discussion of strategy, and more. I owe a lot of my thinking on the subject to a brilliant book by an excellent American journalist, James Fallows. The book is called Breaking the News – click on the title for its link on Amazon. Or better yet, order it at an independent book store or take it out of the library. My first target will be the cult of predictions, which are ubiquitous during election coverage, and completely useless to potential voters.

I should point out that CBC has explicitly claimed it wouldn’t cover this campaign like a horse race, and so far it’s done an alright job. On CBC Sunday News, last night, Neil MacDonald filed a pretty tough story about Paul Martin’s boasts to have kept his promise to reduce debt, lopping off $60 billion. Problem is, as MacDonald pointed out, Martin never promised to do such a thing.

His basic promises, contained in the 1993 Liberal Red Book, were about breaking with Conservative policies and investing in social programs (or, as Neil MacDonald put it, his promises were more 'liberal' -- he didn't say if he meant small- or big-L).

In fact, Martin did the opposite, systematically under-estimating surpluses and laying aside contingency funds to boost year-end extra surpluses. Thanks to a law the Liberals passed that all unexpected surplus money had to go to debt reduction, Paul Martin was able to legislate debt reduction at an absurd pace in a circuitous but extremely successful manner.

MacDonald also showed that Martin had broken his promise (made in the 1997 and 2000 campaigns) to allocate surplus money 50-50 to social spending on the one hand, and tax and debt reduction on the other. He said that Martin had spent only about a third of extra money on social spending. Coming at the close of an uncharacteristically critical story, this seems like a stinging indictment. But in fact, it may have been far off the mark.

Jim Stanford, an economist with the Canadian Auto Workers union, showed in a short study that's worth reading that in their second term, the Liberals actually spent only about 2% of surpluses on social spending and the rest on debt reduction and tax cuts (personal and corporate). The Liberals' spending patterns have not differed much since then; it's key to remember that almost all the recent spending promises won't have a substantial effect until the last years of this decade -- at which point only people like Stanford and their blogging readers will even remember who said what when.

Meanwhile, Stanford has an important column in the Globe today that exposes how Martin's supposedly stellar economic management only stands up if you look at a fraction of the numbers. (To get the column if you don't get Globe Insider edition, search "we look prosperous but the voters know better" at news.google.ca and follow the link). His hits the nail on the head with his closing remark that:

There's an indirect way, however, in which the productivity debate nicely sums up the strangely joyless state of Canada's supposedly prosperous economy. Canadians work harder and longer than they ever have. They have more skills, and a stronger work ethic, than ever. Yet their incomes are stagnant, and their jobs are at risk. All that's a recipe for a populist backlash. And who knows, one might even show up.

I'm not sure that a populist backlash is coming. A major reason is that the commonly accepted view of the Canadian economy is a myth, perpetuated without serious challenge by most of the mainstream media, most of the time. I do think most working Canadians, burdened by record levels of personal debt, feel a striking disconnect between a message of prosperity and their different reality.

But one of the most vicious aspects of inequality, as testified by this detailed Guardian piece, is that it increases the pressure on everyone else to spend more just to feel as if they're keeping up. Never mind the natural feeling one has of being isolated in one's despair: most Americans believe that class mobility in the US is far higher than it really is, in part, probably, because it's emotionally unbearable to be as pessimistic about the future as the empirical evidence demands.

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PS, I said my next post would be about Ignatieff's views on war and imperialism. Clearly, I was lying. A story I wrote about him for this month's issue of the New Internationalist isn't due to go online until January at the earliest, but strings have been pulled and I hope it'll be up in the next couple days. I figured I'd wait until I could link to the story.