Category: society

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Darfur – A Range of Opinion

You know you’re looking at a real-life problem (as opposed to the more easily-digestible choices portrayed in television dramas…who am I kidding – television news as well) when its tangled complexity clogs the drain of your ability (or desire) to “solve” it.

Take Darfur.

The way in which this conflict is rendered has been a hotly debated topic. A recent analysis showed that, in 2005, the Darfur story was covered for all of 10 minutes on the three major American networks; this would imply that the television-drama ER (in an upcoming episode) will have covered 6 times as much as them…again, in a single episode.

The newsmedia is sometimes the only means a tragedy has of reaching the eyes and senses of those who are too distant to know about them. Speculatively speaking, I have to wonder if some in the newsmedia – the above mentioned networks who all but avoided this situation for years prior – are now reluctant to spotlight it because doing so inherently implicates past apathy. An extreme interpretation, perhaps, but considering the media’s tepid hold on our trust – post 9/11 – this seemingly bizarre behaviour is not without recent precedents.

On the topic of how the situation in Darfur has been rendered in the media,Guardian journalist Jonathan Steele, describes in this bloggish-commentary what he calls the Darfur Disconnect:

[…]
Commentators thunder away at the need for sanctions against the regime in Khartoum and denounce western leaders for not authorising Nato to intervene.

Last weekend the outrage took a new turn, with big demonstrations in several American cities, strongly promoted by the Christian right, which sees the Darfur conflict as another case of Islamic fundamentalism on the rampage. They urged Bush to stop shilly-shallying and be tougher with the government of Sudan.

The TV reports are not wrong. They just give a one-sided picture and miss the big story: the talks that the rebels are conducting with the government. The same is true of the commentaries. Why demand military involvement, when western leaders have intervened more productively by pressing both sides to reach a settlement? Over the past few days the US, with British help, has taken over the AU’s mediation role, and done it well. Robert Zoellick, the state department’s number two, and Hilary Benn, Britain’s development secretary, have been in Abuja urging the rebels not to waste the opportunity for peace. Sudan’s government accepted the US-brokered draft agreement last weekend, and it is the rebels who have been risking a collapse.

[…]

An interesting, if divisive, point of view. I say divisive because it drags into the debate an almost unnecessary contention that there is some cabal of the (increasingly journalistic cliche) Christian right to portray this as a spectre of Muslim imperialism against Christian Darfurians – the truth of that particular matter is certainly more complex. I can certainly say that the rally I attended in Toronto had no religious overtones or other types of self-investment.

The more salient argument in this excerpt is whether, in pushing for military intervention, NATO/UN forces could unknowingly apply the wrong type of pressure and drive the conflict deeper or perhaps fragment it along ethnic/political lines – in this regard, it’s not as if there is a single Darfurian rebel organisation sitting at the negotiation table. There are several – some small, some large, and inevitably one would assume each may have their own agenda.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not trying to spin this into something that it’s not – ie obfuscate the conflict to the point where inaction is seen as an option – but rather, I’m trying to see different points of view because I really don’t feel we’re getting it from the media.

On this note, the CBC is having a Foreign Correspondents Forum on June 1st. They are taking questions from viewers regarding international events/affairs. I’ve taken the liberty of posing some of the questions raised above. If you would like to do the same (about Darfur or any other area of the world), visit this page for more information.

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The Not-So-Great Debate

With every year, particularly since 9/11, it’s harder and harder to find reasoned debate. By ‘reasoned debate’, I mean a discussion where arguments are backed up with reason, a bit of logic, and some semblance of research/understanding of history. What doesn’t pass for ‘reasoned debate’ – what we currently have before us – is hyperbole, name-calling, grand-standing, and ridiculously partisan follies paraded in all forms of media.

Before I go any further, I encourage you to look at the dictionary definition of debate. The important word repeated throughout is discussion. I don’t think this word needs defining, though some days I think it should be printed on t-shirts and handed out to school children so that it’s not forgotten. But I digress.

Two reasons for the lack of true (as in useful) debate come to mind, although I’m sure there are more:

1) The replacement of individual thought with self-invested group-think.

2) The perversion of language and its subsequent use as a weapon.

– – –

The first point is as clear as it is demonstrable. Increasingly, individual citizen input (from either the public or private sector) is bypassed in favour of specialists from advocacy groups and so-called think-tanks. Some examples: in Canada, The Fraser Institute, the C.D. Howe Institute, and the Canadian Taxpayer Federation. In the U.S., examples include the CATO Institute, the Heritage Foundation, and the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution.

Whether leaning towards a particular side of the political spectrum or specialising in a particular avenue of advocacy, all of these groups have one thing in common: self-interest. In corporatist style, think tanks and advocacy groups have been propped up as representatives for a discussion which should take place within the public arena but doesn’t. It doesn’t because the public arena is seen as messy; in an increasingly corporatist society, messy doesn’t compute. Messy needs to be streamlined. The rise of advocacy groups, think-tanks and (increasingly) NGO’s often has nothing to do with the public and everything to do with establishing each group’s predominance in their field. Indeed, the first and last thing both the Canadian Taxpayer Federation and the CATO Institute have in common is making sure their organisations keep running – certainly not fostering independent thought.

One thing you can count on is that advocacy groups and think-tanks are consistent: everyone tows the line, everyone knows the script. Their facts, usually half-sided, are provided-for internally and what research they do is with the sole intent of reaching a pre-conceived conclusion that suits a pre-defined format, whether it be economic, social, or political.

When these organisations are inserted in place of the citizen’s voice, democracy becomes Kafka-esque. Often, one ideological think-tank is pitted against another, and what is discussed has no relation to truth (as either the citizen sees it or would like questioned) but to the safe consistency of “staying on-message”. Thus, there is very little debating in lieu of ideological advertisement.

It’s tempting to admire projects like Media Matters for America, which can be very effective at spotting media bias, but my frustration is that its interests are inherently one-sided: attack Republican bias, but support/protect Democrat initiatives. Indeed, it would be daunting for an organization devoted to highlighting media bias if it was looking at all sides of the media paradigm – and this comes to my concluding point: vested interests are easy to finance. Complexity is not.

– – –

The second blockade to real debate is the perversion of language. Media pundit Bill O’Reilly is probably one of the most accomplished when it comes to the distortion of language. His polemic style, his bullying aggression towards dissenting opinion, and his partisan hatred are broadcast every weekday to an audience of millions. He begins and ends most of his addresses with the well-worn cloak of false common-sense: everyone wants to protect freedom, everyone is concerned about terrorism, everyone knows that there are far-left extremists among us. Everyone. His consistent target is a group known previously as liberals, but most recently goes by the moniker secular progressives. In O’Rielly’s words, they are elitists and only Bill O’Reilly can identify this imminent threat to our safety. Obviously this is all very partisan and prejudicial and not dissimilar to what has been said and demonstrated throughout the 20th century by both fascists and Communists – but everything about O’Reilly and FoxNews is paradoxically draped in the opposite: his show is called The No-Spin Zone and his channel’s mantra is Fair and Balanced. The paradox continues the more attention is spent on their language: leftists are compared to Nazis…actually, that’s wrong: everyone who takes a different side ends up being portrayed as a Nazi…or alternately a Communist. (I suggest FoxNews create a doll that, on cue, devotees could raise and shake towards the TV screen at opportune times, whilst shouting “Ooogey boogey ooogey!”.)

A less outraged sentiment is echoed by newspaper columnists such as the Globe and Mail’s Margaret Wente, who habitually tut-tuts those who question authority (save for when she decides to). Her approach, albeit certainly less vitriolic than O’Reilly’s, is to portray dissenters as part of a privileged latté-sipping middle-class elite. Her motto seems to be: shut up and live with it – ostensibly the antithesis of debate itself.

Again, we come back to the word elitist. Elitism is, we are told, our enemy. It’s an easy way to cast aspersions on dissent – let’s face it, there are always going to be a smaller percentage of people who ask disinterested questions (that is, questions that are not self-serving but serve the ideals of the community). In her book, Prisons We Choose To Live Inside (reviewed here), Doris Lessing is philosophical about the word elitism and it’s accusatory usage. She goes so far as to determine it a necessary evil if it means the freedom to ask important, if unpopular, questions aloud. In other words, if painted an elitist – so be it.

– – –

From a local perspective, the debate disconnect was driven home – literally and figuratively – when in 2000, Toronto broadcaster CityTV refused to hold an election debate between the incumbent mayor, Mel Lastman and his opponents. This was the first time CityTV had decided to do this since they began hosting televised mayoral debates*. While it was arguable at the time as to the feasiblity of any of Lastman’s opponents winning (and it should be noted that Lastman won with 80% support), it was shocking to see a local broadcaster that wraps itself in a mantra of street-level community-building refuse to even go that simple distance. I remember watching an evening call-in show on CityTV, hosted by Lorne Honickman, whose guest was mayoral hopeful Tooker Gomberg – this took place after the announcement that there would be no debate. I clearly remember the disbelief, bordering on contempt, that Honickman displayed as caller after caller phoned-in to simply ask: why? Why no debate? His retisence to discuss the subject was as obvious as his clear disdain for his guest.

– – –

Debate is inclusive, not exclusive. Its aim is perspective – not the promotion of canned answers or unmovable positions. The object of debate is not disgracing dissent, but putting forth reasoned arguments. I think there’s a long road ahead as regards our ability to communicate, to argue respectfully, and to share ideas. These things happen at a smaller scale all the time in our communities, but I think we’ve forgotten how important they are, thus it’s going to take a while for citizens to feel attached to it again; to take command of their own voice, as it were.

The responsibility to restore true debate falls on civilians – when the citizenry abdicates responsibility for public discussion, we shouldn’t be surprised when the gap is filled by self-interested interest-groups. When societies forget about their social responsibilities those responsibilities are often annexed as anachronisms, and replaced by the empty comfort of technology (ie televised think tanks). The Internet is a good tool for the restoration of debate, but it’s only a tool and not in and of itself anything more. What’s needed is the will to reform, reason, and a sense of responsibility to society as a whole.

* (I can find no record to refute this, but I’m open to correction)

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Book Review: Prisons We Choose To Live Inside, by Doris Lessing

House of Anansi Press has re-released their excellent CBC Massey Lectures Series. These are expansive, thought-provoking works which aim to push our understanding of society and the individual in the late-20th (now early-21st) century. The series includes works from many different points of view: A Short History of Progress by Richard Wright, The Unconscious Civilization by John Ralston Saul, and Beyond Fate by Margaret Visser are only a fragment of this extremely revealing and influential volume.

Prisons We Choose To Live Inside, a collection of five lectures author/novelist Doris Lessing gave in Canada in 1986, is a fine introduction to this astutely-observed collection. Clocking in at a mere 76 pages, Lessing lays down a sobering, eye-opening conception of the place of the individual in modern-day society. Her points are clear: history (the study of which she advocates with Cassandra-like insistence) clearly warns us against the perils of becoming embroiled in “mass emotion” and the inherent fascism of group-think. Repeatedly, she advocates the need for cool, objective distance from events and society – even at the peril of seeming an elitist.

With succinct skill and a preference to reference personal experience over statistics, she lays down her points consistently throughout:

 

I think when people look back at our time, they will be amazed at one thing more than any other. It is this – that we do know more about ourselves now than people did in the past. But that very little of it has been put into effect.

 

She makes it clear that there is little excuse, living in an age where social sciences (psychology, sociology, social behaviourism) have flourished, for society to not be equipped with an understanding of the basic underpinnings of society and human behaviour. Yet we don’t; the information never trickles down from academia in a way that can be instilled easily in our public schools, perhaps because the message is largely: group-thinking and mass emotions are our undoing – at risk of ostracism, it’s best that you question everything.

 

One of the many examples she lists is how Stalin, at the time when the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union, was referred to in Allied propaganda as ‘Uncle Joe’ and how the Russians’ defiant struggle was our struggle…only to turn on a dime after the fall of Hitler and turn against ‘Uncle Joe’, decrying every aspect of the Soviet Union not only as backward – but evil. This last word is very important within the context of Lessing’s lectures because historically it tends to come up every time a group wishes to strengthen their moral stance – and eliminate dissent. It isn’t enough to politely disagree – you must denigrate and vilify. Lessing speculates the reason behind this lies with our animal instincts: the instinct to separate into good/bad, black/white etc..

One of her more chilling statements, which she uses when talking about her childhood in war-torn Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), is that we have to accept that there are people in all parts of the world – in every society – who quite simply enjoy barbarism. They enjoy it, and, when society is on the verge of a conflict, these same people will move to the forefront to push things towards violence.

Again, sobering – and pertinent – stuff. Lessing’s tone is unapologetic, yet she does pepper her lectures with humour (albeit darkly at times). One thing to be aware of is that the original lecture was given in 1986; her examples refer to the British mining strike of ’84, the Falklands War, and then-Communist Russia. Obviously, for those not born early enough to remember these conflicts, it may be good to have Wikipedia nearby for a little context. However, her analogies and references are universal and certainly applicable to the debacles we face today. Her speculations are haunting in their honesty and relevance, and I am reminded of someone’s reference to John Ralston Saul’s Voltaire’s Bastards as “a hand grenade disguised as a book”.

Quite true, and we are all the better for reading books such as these.

Prisons We Choose To Live Inside is available for sale at a fine independent bookstore near you, as well as…Powell’s, Amazon, Chapters.

Published by House of Anansi Press (ISBN: 0-88784-5215)

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Comment: Watch the Packaging

We have never lived in a more duplicitous age of mass-communication.
Partisan propaganda is becoming more insidious and sublime than
ever before.

Here’s the classic setup:

1) First, the delivery: matter-of-fact, neighbourly, and gently
authoritative.

2) Second, the offence: more than just choosing a random offender,
but an offender who acts as a subtle metaphor for a greater (more
dire) concern. For example, rather than choosing someone who (let’s
say for naive reasons) refuses to honour fallen WWII soldiers,
choose someone who is also a university student. Student council would be
perfect: corruption at the root of education. Suddenly (seamlessly) your target
becomes indicative of a classic hate-mongering cliche: the
ungrateful and radical liberal post-secondary environment. This is
the classic stereotype – worked great in Cambodia.

3) Third, compound the offence with a black and white conflict:
heroes and villains. Follow the naive student’s debacle with an
earnest recapitulation involving inarguable tales of those who
bravely fought for our freedom from fascism. Talk about how evil
lurks at every corner and does not care about the democratic rights
of civilians, and how the only tonic for this insidious evil is a
militarised environment: soldiers, police, guards, controllers.
Slowly draw this together with the events proceeding September 11th
2001 and proudly unfurl the [place country here] flag.

4) Fourth, summarize. Condemn the naivety of post-secondary
environments – portray them as liberal oases for myopic elites, while
our downtrodden guardians fight without asking for thanks, against
an all-pervasive evil which is thankful for student dissent.

5) Conclude with a question for the general public: who’s side are you
on?

This is the overarching style indicative of news media formats
today: rhetorical, manipulative, and hate-mongering. It’s all in the
packaging, not the individual stories themselves. Who wouldn’t
believe the student is a naive idiot? Who wouldn’t believe that
soldiers put their lives on the line everyday? Put the two together
and you have cause to be suspicious about what goes on in
post-secondary environments – about the students, teachers, and
those who defend their rights.

It’s similar to documentary filmmaking: there’s no such thing as
objective. The minute you edit footage you are making an intentional
move to direct the discussion in a particular way/format. Words like
‘fair’, ‘balanced’, and ‘objective’ have been twisted like toffee in
the last five years. The end result is: you’re on your own.

Utilize critical thinking at all times. Ask yourself if you’re being
shown the big picture or simply baited. Ask yourself if there is a
perspective that isn’t being allowed into the picture. Ask yourself
if the questions asked are not actually questions, but assumptions
(ie. How long until Quebec separates?).

When you turn on the news, you have no friends.

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Article/Review: The Man Who Said No To Wal-Mart

I caught a great review on Slashdot for Charles (Fast Company magazine) Fishman’s book The Man Who Said No To Wal-Mart. Although it seems a little lame to link to someone else’s review, I thought the review itself was very well written (kudos to Hemos). The subject matter itself is quite fascinating as it profiles a philosophy of doing business that seems…well…old-fashioned in the best possible way: doing what’s best for everyone from a long-term perspective. When was the last time you encountered that?

Excerpt:

—————-

Review – The Man Who Said No To Wal-Mart

Charles Fishman, senior writer for Fast Company magazine has recently published a book entitled The Man Who Said No To Wal-mart. It’s an excellent book (Yes, I’ve read it) that talks about the intersection of making good stuff, the commodization of products, and the changing world that we work in; not exactly high tech, but tech nonetheless.

Every year, thousands of executives venture to Bentonville, Arkansas, hoping to get their products onto the shelves of the world’s biggest retailer. But Jim Wier wanted Wal-Mart to stop selling his Snapper mowers.What struck Jim Wier first, as he entered the Wal-Mart vice president’s office, was the seating area for visitors. “It was just some lawn chairs that some other peddler had left behind as samples.” The vice president’s office was furnished with a folding lawn chair and a chaise lounge.

And so Wier, the CEO of lawn-equipment maker Simplicity, dressed in a suit, took a seat on the chaise lounge. “I sat forward, of course, with my legs off to the side. If you’ve ever sat in a lawn chair, well, they are lower than regular chairs. And I was on the chaise. It was a bit intimidating. It was uncomfortable, and it was going to be an uncomfortable meeting.”

It was a Wal-Mart moment that couldn’t be scripted, or perhaps even imagined. A vice president responsible for billions of dollars’ worth of business in the largest company in history has his visitors sit in mismatched, cast-off lawn chairs that Wal-Mart quite likely never had to pay for.

The vice president had a bigger surprise for Wier, though. Wal-Mart not only wanted to keep selling his lawn mowers, it wanted to sell lots more of them. Wal-Mart wanted to sell mowers nose-to-nose against Home Depot and Lowe’s.

“Usually,” says Wier, “I don’t perspire easily.” But perched on the edge of his chaise, “I felt my arms getting drippy.”

Wier took a breath and said, “Let me tell you why it doesn’t work.”

Read On…

—————-

Not the usual Slashdot fare, but it’s certainly nice to see.

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CopyWrong

I once watched a PBS-televised lecture featuring writer Clifford Stoll. He wrote one of the first true-life hacker books, called The Cookoo’s Egg (ISBN: 0671-72688-9), about his efforts to track a “telnet” hacker who was using the Berkeley University server hub as a means to tap into the Department of Defense. A very, very good book.

In the lecture he was discussing copyright issues and how it is becoming harder and harder for people to express themselves due to large corporations buying-up the rights and then registering patents for everything from Mickey Mouse to mere phrases/ideas written on cocktail napkins. He said the following (note: I’m paraphrasing due to the fact that it was over 5 years ago that I watched it):

“If we had the same copyright protection rules historically that we have now, you know who the richest people on Earth would be? The League of Greek Mathematicians; because every time you used the Pythagorean Theorem you would have to pay a fee.“

I cannot have chosen a better way to convey how utterly stupid and self-destructive the current copyright laws have become. I’m not arguing against someone protecting the fruits of their invention, however I neither support legally protecting a concept nor extending the patent protecting an invention for more than a reasonable fixed period of time. Historically the reason for patenting an invention was so that the originating inventor would have unabated means (in the marketplace) to collect the rewards of their work/investment – but it wasn’t meant to last forever.

Strangely, this was thwarted by a man who will probably go down in history as “Cher’s first husband”, Sonny Bono. He involved himself in politics and fought (until his death) to extend copyrights indefinitely. One can only speculate that he was concerned “I Got You Babe” wouldn’t net him any more proceeds. Details of this law (amended and passed) are here.

My reasoning is this: the evolution of an idea is often the result of a collaboration of thinkers over a long period of time. When the Principia Mathematica was published, Sir Isaac Newton – when asked about his breakthrough idea of gravity – said that he was only “standing on the shoulders of giants”, namely the likes of Galileo, Kepler, and Copernicus: those who had come before him and provided the necessary groundwork to provide Newton with the tools to complete the picture.

The current environment is simply bad capitalism: dramatically limiting competition and the free evolution of ideas for short term profit. Sad.

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The Vagaries of Vagueness

I would hazard to say, standing in my media-saturated 21st century Western society, that being ‘vague’ is worse than being ‘wrong’. Today, you can be concisely misleading yet never be taken to task by your peers, whereas if you are perceived (even falsely) of ‘waffling’, it is presumed that you are a lower life form and a drag on the sail of civilisation.

Ask John Kerry, the gentleman who ran against the incumbent president of the United States in 2004. Although a confident public speaker, arguably his great shortcoming was an inability to distill his ideas (and, as the campaign wound-down, his reactions) in a precise way. Although he performed well in the presidential debates, off-stage he was generally unable to articulate a clear message at crucial junctures to a large population, many of whom were shopping for a new president. It didn’t help of course that his competitor’s well-funded propaganda machine (abetted by a democratically impotent news media) raised as many distracting peripheral issues as they could. Arguably, by the time Kerry could get back to the task of getting elected, he’d wasted much of his steam as well as the hopes and patience of the US public.

On the other side, the incumbent succeeded in spite of the fact that his administration was clearly contemptuous of journalists, artists, and anyone else who dared to posit difficult questions (being hallmarks of democracy the last time we checked). In other words, in spite of the fact that the administration treated the very people whose job it is to articulate the world around them like rubes, they won. They won a majority. But damn was he clear. Unlike his rival, George W. Bush was firm: cut-and-run, bait-and-switch, flip-flopper. These hyphenated accusations clearly, if inaccurately, conveyed moral and ethical failures within his opponent’s character and ideals. Whether or not his policies were realistic, they were precisely worded: we will not abandon our cause. If you asked what the cause was – easy: democracy.

What I’m saying is that we increasingly reward firmly-stated obfuscations over less impermeable truths.

I often wonder why there is so little true debate in our society, outside of academia. I’ve found that it’s because truth is neither precise, nor is it unyielding. Knowledge is inherently vague – and by knowledge, I don’t mean the concept of knowledge, but rather its practical application in society. Truth is messy; it’s neither red, nor blue, nor grey. Truth is moderated by the lack of absolute answers. The problem of course is that this doesn’t make for nicely-packaged media clips, so what we end up with are endless volleys of increasingly intolerant hyperbole.

When foisted truths are painted in the absolute (some would say fascist) colours of rhetoric the middle-ground of debate is sufficiently suffocated; the public is the loser. And when society’s moderators, the media, are complicit, debate is a moot point altogether. Even a cursory glance at the major news networks (in particular Fox and MSNBC) reveals this partisan implication. Not only is there a lack of interest in debate, but I would dare say that debate is increasingly synonymous with treason. For the last few years, treason has been the word often levelled at anyone questioning America’s involvement in Iraq. Recently, in Canada, the Prime Minister’s office has refused Parliamentary debate of our involvement in Afghanistan, citing ‘security reasons’. We are given the Bush administration’s long-standing argument: we will not cut-and-run. However, I can’t recall anyone initially stating: “Hey, let’s cut and run.”.

There are people, however, who indeed ask necessary questions: the whys, the hows, the whats, etc.. Contrary to the muffling rhetoric from government spokespeople, these necessary questions are not preludes to surrender, nor are they indicative of moral ‘waffling’. They are hallmarks of the very democracy our soldiers are trying (and dying) to instill. When questions that would necessarily draw out a less-than precise response are posited, they are either ignored or condemned. In doing so, our society continues to favour the impermanent solidity of rhetoric. The less solid but more applicable truths wait to be acknowledged, and I fear they will only be addressed in retrospect.

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