Absolutely Spellbinding

It is hardly an insight to state that we have largely wasted and abused the intelligence that evolution has conferred on us. Instead of nurturing and protecting our own species and all the others that abound in our world, our human story seems to be one of ruthless exploitation and degradation, a short-sighted philosophy that will likely end in collective destruction.

The latest iteration of that selfishness is evident, for example, in Donald Trump's intention to undo the advances made during the Obama administration on climate change mitigation. That such is ideological madness is evident in the latest report on massive Artic permafrost melting, which will ultimately serve to accelerate global warming.

But grim as our choices have been and still are, I always harbour a faint hope, despite all the contraindications, that we can still achieve some of our natural potential before it is entirely too late. As I have written in the past, I believe that nature documentaries hold the key if we are ever to overcome even a little of our innate selfishness. To see the larger and the smaller world around us, a world we give little thought to in our day-to-day lives ("So what if another species is going extinct? I'm never likely to see a Sumatran Tiger anyway."), is to be both humbled and infected with awe. This is especially true given the latest techniques in natural cinematography that can be described as little less than magical.

It is in this spirit that I urge you to see Planet Earth 11, which is currently being broadcast in free preview on BBC Earth in my neck of the woods. So far I have seen two episodes, one on islands and the other on deserts. Neither, as you will see if you watch, are static environments, but rather ones teeming with life and constant change.

Believe me, you will not be disappointed; I suspect you will come away from the experience a changed person.

More Reasons To Boycott U.S Travel

I have no regrets about my recent decision to boycott travel to the United States as long as the Trump regime, dominated as it is by paranoid exclusions and hate-mongering policies, continues in office. An item on last night's NBC News amply demonstrates that for some people, border crossings are becoming risks not worth taking.

Two American citizens encountered quite a bit of land turbulence upon returning from visits to Canada:

When Buffalo, New York couple Akram Shibly and Kelly McCormick returned to the U.S. from a trip to Toronto on Jan. 1, 2017, U.S. Customs & Border Protection officers held them for two hours, took their cellphones and demanded their passwords.

"It just felt like a gross violation of our rights," said Shibly, a 23-year-old filmmaker born and raised in New York. But he and McCormick complied, and their phones were searched.

But the story doesn't end there:

Three days later, they returned from another trip to Canada and were stopped again by CBP.

"One of the officers calls out to me and says, 'Hey, give me your phone,'" recalled Shibly. "And I said, 'No, because I already went through this.'"

The officer asked a second time..

Within seconds, he was surrounded: one man held his legs, another squeezed his throat from behind. A third reached into his pocket, pulling out his phone. McCormick watched her boyfriend's face turn red as the officer's chokehold tightened.

Then they asked McCormick for her phone.

"I was not about to get tackled," she said. She handed it over.

This kind of racial profiling and 'lawful' seizure of telephones should give all of us pause; any Canadians travelling to the U.S. are its potential victims, although clearly, if you are white and have a non-Arabic name, your chances of passing through unmolested are greater. But I come back to a fundamental question that prompted me to start my personal travel boycott: Do we really want to patronize a country that once welcomed foreigners but now stigmatizes, bullies and excludes them?

Finally, it is worth noting that Girl Guides of Canada has decided to cancel trips to the U.S.

"While the United States is a frequent destination for Guiding trips, the ability of all our members to equally enter this country is currently uncertain," international commissioner Sharron Callahan and director of provincial operations Holly Thompson wrote in a joint advisory issued Monday afternoon.

"This includes both trips that are over or under 72 hours and any travel that includes a connecting flight through an American airport," the advisory says.

The statement does not directly mention — but appears to be a reaction to — the executive orders U. S. President Donald Trump has signed restricting travel to the United States.

This decision comes amidst many other groups and Canadian school boards contemplating trip cancellations for the same reason.

The American love of money is well-known. It seems only logical that they should now learn via commercial interdiction the price to be paid for choosing a racist, paranoid demagogue as their president. Many of them may love the Trump message, but worldwide, far more do not.

Part Political Theatre and Part Schoolyard Bully

And probably the saddest thing is that far too many people take this kind of clown seriously:

Laughing At Absurdity

I believe that the older we get, the more important it is not only to recognize and acknowledge the tragedies of life, be they social, economic, political or environmental, but also the many absurdities that abound within those realms. Call it dark humour, whistling past the graveyard, or just being politically incorrect, seeing the absurd is a coping mechanism that allows for the release of at least a modicum of the despair that envelops us in the twenty-first century.

I therefore have little sympathy with those who are easily offended. Consider the following political cartoon that appeared recently in the Toronto Star:



As the heading suggests, it is the cartoonist's take on the fact that many are vying to become the next leader of the Ontario Liberal Party, one that looks headed for the Opposition benches after next year's election, in no small part due to the spectacularly unpopular Kathleen Wynne, our current premier.

Yet the cartoon was too much for at least one Star reader, who penned his outrage in the following missive:

Re: Cartoon, March 8

The Star cartoon by Theo Moudakis depicting a plot to assassinate Premier Wynne is obscene and unforgivable. What was the intention here by the Star to its readers?

Showing her cabinet attempting to hide, with knives, suggesting to do away with the premier, is not what you should be preaching to your readers. Truly, there must be another answer on matters of opinion.

Dennis Dineno, Oakville

I've known people like Dennis throughout my life. They are often quite good people, but overly earnest in their pursuit of justice and rectitude. There is little in their lives to leaven the oppression that life regularly metes out. They can be a trial for those around them. Indeed, just reading his umbrage tasks me.

So, from the perspective granted by my years, my advice is to embrace the oddly funny moments life has to offer. To rebuke them prevents what little light there is to shine through and keep us from total darkness.

Energy Democracy

Sure, many will dismiss this as a Utopian socialist dream, especially given the neoliberal tenor of the times, but are there any other viable alternatives to global degradation and destruction?

UPDATED: What The Racists Ignore

I realize that it is essentially pointless to try to argue against those Canadians who harbour fear or hatred of 'the other.' The latest iteration of that debased mental and moral condition is, of course, reflected in demonstrations and hate crimes against the Muslim community, with some pretty vile declarations being made suggesting that they should either die or 'go back to their own country.'

Were I so inclined and the opportunity arose, here is what I would say to those who live in fear that things like sharia law will soon be imposed on all of us, and that they are 'taking over our country.'

I would start with two anecdotes drawn from my teaching career. One, which involved a Christian, occurred many years ago, vivid still in my memory because it was a Parents' Night on the evening following the birth of my son. The other happened many years later, and involved a Muslim.

The Chrisian, who I shall refer to as Mrs. J., was the wife of a Baptist minister, and she came to the meeting in high dudgeon over the fact that her daughter was reading a novel by Robertson Davies entitled Fifth Business. The book was part of an independent reading project in which students made their selection from a wide range of titles. Mrs. J. told me her brother-in-law had given her the book as a gift, something, she said, he should have known better than to do since it dealt with what she felt was a disrespectful depiction of a Baptist's minister's wife.

What was that disrespectful treatment? At the novels's beginning, a boy who turns out to be the protagonist sets into motion a series of events when a snowball he throws hits the minister's wife, the shock of which affects her mentally and induces premature labour.

Mrs. J. then went on to declare that no students should be permitted to read such books, at which point I told her that while she had every right as a parent to request a change of book for her daughter, no one has the right to dictate what others may or may not read.

Fast forward many years to another school, and a phone call from an aggrieved parent. The book in question this time was Flowers For Algernon, upon which the movie Charly was based. There is one small part in the novel that has rather subtle sexual content. The same scenario played out, with a Muslim father objecting to his daughter reading the book (again, it was her own independent selection from a long list of titles). He went on, as had the Baptist Mrs. J.,to declare that no students should have access to such material, and I told him exactly the same thing I had told Mrs. J. all those years before.

What is my point here? In both cases, the children of these strict parents had no problem with the material they had selected. It was, I believe, largely the result of living in a healthy, dynamic, pluralistic society, a society that is bound to exert far more influence and moderation on next generation people than it does on an older generation with more entrenched and often inflexible notions. It is a fact that those who rail against newcomers either choose to ignore or whose profound ignorance prevents them from understanding.

So please spare me the hysteria. I have no patience with those who think of Canada as a society whose values (whatever they may be) and institutions will be overtaken by a particular group or ideology. It is that fear, of course, that propels political opportunists like Kellie Leitch to blow her dog whistle, and it is a fear that, when given voice, is an insult to all of us, whether native born or new Canadians.

UPDATE: In today's Star, Azeezah Kanji writes about people's unfounded fear of sharia law.

The Americans Had Their Wells Fargo Scandal ....

Now we have our own, thanks to TD Canada Trust's duplicitous practices: