Exile and Outrage

I have just sent the following email to my Member of Parliament Gordon O'Connor, with CC's to Prime Minister Steven Harper and Minister of Foreign Affairs Lawrence Cannon. I urge every Canadian of conscience and decency to take similar action (non-Canadians, too -- it can't hurt to show how this harms our international reputation). Let's bury this government in outrage, until the weight of anger and contempt forces them to do the right thing.

Mr. O'Connor,

I am writing you as a constituent to express my outrage at my government's shameful treatment of Abousfian Abdelrazik, whom as you are no doubt aware, has again been refused travel documents to allow him to return to Canada and to his family.

As a Canadian citizen I am appalled by the capricious behaviour of my government, in the person of Minister Lawrence Cannon, in its setting up of successive barriers to Mr. Abdelrazik's return -- a game Minister Cannon has been playing for some months, now. This latest refusal appears entirely arbitrary, and not only without legal justification, but in clear violation of the Charter right of every Canadian citizen to enter this country. The most recent excuse offered -- an appeal to some unspecified risk to "national security" -- is scarcely credible in light of Mr. Abdelrazik's clearance by both CSIS and the RCMP. This is just one more example of the way that catch-phrase has become a pretext for the restriction of liberty, and for tyrannical behaviour on the part of government. If Mr. Abdelrazik can be denied his legal right of return at the sole discretion of a Minister of the Crown, then any of us can be denied any right, without recourse to due process.

I appeal to you to use your influence within caucus and Cabinet to see to it that this government fulfills its legal and moral duty to one of its citizens, currently being held in effective exile in Sudan.

Respectfully,
[my real name here]

An Honorable Ignoramus

Everyone has by now read about how Gary Goodyear, our, um, excitable Minister of State for Science and Technology, replied to a question about his scientific views by proclaiming his religious opinions:

Canada's science minister, the man at the centre of the controversy over federal funding cuts to researchers, won't say if he believes in evolution.

“I'm not going to answer that question. I am a Christian, and I don't think anybody asking a question about my religion is appropriate,” Gary Goodyear, the federal Minister of State for Science and Technology, said in an interview with The Globe and Mail.

Oddly, it's not the creationism angle that bothers me the most about this. Yeah, that bothers me too, but many otherwise intelligent people fall for that, and still manage to be rational and competent at their jobs. It seems to me that the potential harm here depends on exactly how much control the Minister has over specific funding decisions (at least, such seems to be my subconcious rationalization).

But what really got me was this comment (emphasis mine):

“Now I have got a portfolio that I am absolutely passionate about and frankly connected to,” he said, adding that his days of experimenting with engines in high school automotive class gave him an appreciation for what it feels like to come up with something new.

“When I was in high school, we were already tweaking with a coil that would wrap around the upper [radiator] hose and it got an extra five miles to the gallon. … So I've been there on this discovery stuff.”

Well, ain't that folksey? I also really dig "being there on this discovery stuff". Sounds like George W. Bush with an impact wrench, doesn't he?

Magic devices that dramatically improve gas mileage are an old standard of urban legends and scams -- and even among that sorry gallery, frigging with the cooling system seems one of the less likely candidates for improved fuel economy. That much should be obvious to anyone with even the smallest inkling of how engines actually work. It's bad enough that the government is cutting basic research in favour of "get[ting] some of these technologies out of the labs onto the factory floors. Made. Produced. Sold" (though even a creationist chiropractor could probably manage that kind of short-sighted mandate). But with the gas-mileage remark, Goodyear reveals himself as a gullible ignoramus who not only does not understand science, he's also clueless about technology -- he can't tell (as they say) shit from shinola. He's a jumped-up amateur mechanic who believes in woo -- chiro-woo, creation-woo, or car-woo; taken together it forms a pattern of consistent ignorance and anti-scientism.

And in case there is any remaining doubt of the man's complete babbling idiocy, he dispells it in this CTV interview (quoted at MacLean's blog):

We are evolving, every year, every decade. That’s a fact. Whether it’s to the intensity of the sun, whether it’s to, as a chiropractor, walking on cement versus anything else, whether it’s running shoes or high heels, of course, we are evolving to our environment. But that’s not relevant. And that’s why I refused to answer the question. The interview was about our science and tech strategy, which is strong…

I don't expect Ministers to have Ph.Ds, or be professional scientists. But I do expect them to have at least a basic appreciation of the nature of the field they are responsible for -- enough that they're willing to listen to those who are expert in those fields.

Gary Goodyear shows himself to be utterly unfit for any position with influence over science or technology.

Fire. Him. Now.

God and City Council

[I'm going to resist the temptation to do yet another Bus Sign. For one thing, I can't think of a good punchline off-hand]

At Ottawa City Council today, God could be found hiding in the corner behind Policies and Procedures. Or at least, that's where his erstwhile defenders were, when Councillor Alex Cullen presented his motion to overrule OC Transpo's decision to refuse the atheist bus ads.

Cullen gave an impassioned address about free speech and the need for municipal government to uphold it. It probably didn't hurt his case that the city's solicitor had prepared a memo outlining the legal issues involved in carrying "viewpoint" advertising in public facilities -- and pointing out that Transpo's current policy was almost certainly in violation of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and the city would likely get its ass handed to it in the event of a lawsuit. It boils down to: mere likelihood of public offense isn't enough to ban an ad. IOW: deal with it, pearl-clutchers.

Then the nay-sayers had their turn. Marianne Wilkinson continued to complain that she was offended, but acknowledged that the policy was problematic. She proposed amending Cullen's motion, replacing the directive to run the ads with a directive to review Transpo's policies, and bring them in line with the Charter. Cullen replied: What a great idea, and proposed amending his own motion -- by adding the review directive to his own, rather than replacing it. Councillor El-Chantiry had his say; I don't recall what except he also didn't like them, and the same from Councillor Bloess. But the real comedy came from another councillor, I think Bob Monette, who claimed the ads were from "some young people who thought it would be funny" -- and in the blissfully unselfaware manner common to ideologues, went on to complain that the ads were derogatory (OK, at 51 I guess I should accept "young people" as a compliment). Then there was some blather from that side about how Council was wasting time on irrelevancies like this when we still hadn't got the bus system back to full capacity following the strike -- as if putting (revenue-paying!) signs on the sides of busses was in some way impeding doing maintenance and getting them on the road. But the main theme from the opponents was that it was some kind of sin to override the Process -- that Transpo's bureaucrats had made a decision in keeping with Stated Policy (though we know that Policy has not been consistently applied in past cases of pro-religion ads), and while we should fix the Policy, we shouldn't overrule the bureaucrats, because....well, because. Exactly when the Policy would get fixed, and the ads get approved, wasn't quite clear.

Then Hizzoner Larry O'Brien almost gave us a surprise: he started off talking about how clergy on the Ottawa Interfaith Council (of which he is chair) were pretty unanimous in support of the ad; that they welcomed the opportunity for dialog. And for a moment we thought he was going to change his earlier reported position and vote Yes. But then he reversed course, sought refuge with his cronies in Policy and Procedure, and announced he would be voting No.

There was a little confusion in the voting process, because first Council had to approve adding the policy-review directive to Cullen's motion, then vote on the motion as amended. Both votes passed 13-7, with presumably the same councillors voting the same way on both (I didn't keep track).

Various media were there -- at least Metro, A-Channel, the Citizen, the Sun -- filming and photographing Council and the dozen of us sitting in the gallery wearing our protest T-shirts. After the vote, we filed out, and there occurred in the corridor what I believe is called a "scrum" -- we shook Cullen's hand and thanked him; the journalists talked to people at random; I suddenly found a bright light shining in my face, through which I could dimly make out a camera lens, a mike, and a nice lady asking my opinions what had just happened. I managed to blurt out something about free speech (hopefully without sounding too pompous) and about how some people want religion to be immune from criticism, and it shouldn't be. Maybe they'll edit me into the Slavering Baby-Eating Atheist Monster, I dunno. There's a reason I don't work in PR.

A few people had to take off for other commitments, and the rest of us had a celebratory dinner at an Indian buffet on Laurier. On the way back, we just had to take the picture above, which is an artwork hanging in the elevator lobby off the parking garage (sorry for the quality; the only camera we had was a Blackberry). While we were doing that a woman came out of the elevator, and asked immediately recognized the ad on the shirt. She was very pleased to hear that Council had voted our way, and left saying something favorable (I don't recall exactly what) about Hitchens and Dawkins. Funny how you run into people....

All the other kids have already posted this video, but I especially like the fact that the guy looks like Mayor O'Brien:




Hat tip for the video: Mike.

Day 10: Warren Christmas & Pope Maledict

OK, I get that Obama is trying to do the Big Tent thing, and getting a prominent evangelical to deliver the invocation at the Presidential inauguration is part of that. But: Rick Warren? The guy who endorsed California's Proposition 8, to strip gays of a right they already had? And of course, he wouldn't vote for an atheist -- 'cuz everyone knows getting hints from the Big Guy Upstairs is soooo important to a president, right? I mean, look how well that worked out for GWB on the Iraq thing.

To put it into perspective: Would it be Big Tenting, to invite a pastor who was on record as wanting to revoke the franchise from blacks, and who wouldn't vote for a Jew because, really, you need Jesus to hold your hand in the Oval Office?

But speaking of The Bigots vs. Gays game, the Pope has issued a warning of the perils of TEH GAY and, indeed, the whole notion that gender is a social construct. Apparently, blurring the lines between the sexes will lead to the "self-destruction" of humanity, just as surely as if we trash the environment:

We need something like human ecology, meant in the right way. The Church speaks of human nature as 'man' or 'woman' and asks that this order is respected.

This is not out-of-date metaphysics. It comes from the faith in the Creator and from listening to the language of creation, despising which would mean self-destruction for humans and therefore a destruction of the work itself of God.

As a matter of fact Benny, yes it is out-of-date metaphysics: to insist that Male and Female are some sort of transcendent "natures" is Neo-Platonic horseshit, and the phrase "comes from faith in the Creator" is here synonymous with "invented out of whole cloth way back before we knew enough biology to study it properly". Male and female are facts of purely earthly biology, and inconsistent ones at that -- never mind that many organisms get along without sexual differentiation, or switch sexes as needed; even among humans there are those whose anatomical and/or chromosomal characteristics are ambiguous or inconsistent. And the specific cues we customarily use to indicate gender (and the roles we assign) are almost purely social constructs.

My Pessimistic Prediction for the American Election

Barring divine intervention, it appears certain that Barack Obama will win tomorrow's presidential election in the USA.

No, that's not the pessimistic part -- I, in fact, hope that Obama wins, if only because he can't possibly be as bad as McCain and Bible Spice (Especially the latter. If she ever gets to sit in the Big Chair, I give civilization six months before she starts WWIII in the belief it will make Jesus return quicker). Being part of the 95% of the world that doesn't get to vote in this election, I'm not obliged to be better informed than that (even so, I still seem to be better informed than some of the folks who do get to vote).

The pessimistic part is this: I predict that Obama (or McCain, should that come to pass) will serve but a single term, and his presidency will be regarded as a failure. Which sucks in so many ways, only one of which is the comfort and encouragement it will give to those who say a black man should never be president of the United States. [Aside: If you're one of the people who refuse to vote for Obama because he's black, then you're a racist bigot, no matter how hard you pretend otherwise. If you're refusing to vote for him because he's a Muslim, then you're both stupid and a bigot, because he's not, and it shouldn't matter anyway. And if you're refusing to vote for him because he has a "Muslim name" then...there are no words for what you are. "Stupid bigotted mouth-breathing knuckle-dragging moron" doesn't even begin to cover it. Yeah, I realize none of the people that is addressed to read this blog, but I've been wanting to get that off my chest for a while. End digression.]

The reason for my pessimism is that, whoever takes office in January will inherit a mucking fess. There's the financial meltdown, a gift which will not cease giving for some time to come. On Iraq, Obama has the choice between allowing the troops to continue being slowly ground up to no good effect, or pulling out and taking the blame for the likely blood-letting that will follow. Afghanistan? Prospects aren't much better (and we still haven't found Bin Laden!). Then we have a looming oil shortage -- only postponed by the economic slump -- and the first harbingers of climate change. And, and, and. Some serious shit is going to hit the fan in the next few years.

And the incumbent, justly or not, will get blamed for it.

[PSA at Canadian Cynic goes on in the same vein at greater length and deeper depressivism]

Rituals

Today I performed a meaningless religious ritual. You know: something that has pretty much bugger-all effect on the real world, but you do it because you feel obliged to, in the service of some big abstraction. So I did it.

I voted.

The incumbent (who was never my choice of candidate) was predicted to again win by a clear majority, and sho 'nuff currently available returns show him doing just that. So even strategic voting isn't a useful option. Which makes bothering to show up at the polling station at all seem like a futile exercise, no?

Nonetheless, I did. You see, I believe in this big abstraction called Democracy, and its chief sacrament is Voting, so I feel compelled to observe the ritual, just as I have at every election at every level for the past 30+ years.

I voted Green, largely because I'd like to see their concerns get more prominence in the political process. Were they ever to have a shot at real power, I might have to pay attention to whether they were competent to run anything, but for the forseeable future there appears little danger of that. So I have the luxury of choosing how to waste my vote without giving it a lot of serious consideration. Really, my opinion on the Canadian election has only slightly more significance than my opinion on the American presidential election, and quite honestly theirs is both more entertaining (who have we got to compare with the Hockey Mom from Alaska?), and the outcome is likely to affect my life almost as much.

No, I'm not particuarly happy about this. We need electoral reform, badly. It failed in Ontario last time round, but we need to keep trying. Most other civilized countries dumped First-Past-The-Post years ago. It's time for Canada to join the 21st century.
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Update: Darin at The Squid Zone also weighs in (with comprehensive statistics, all in a neat table!) -- I mention him because whereas I've never voted Tory in my life, he has a history of doing so. This is not a partisan issue: it goes to the root of what we all mean by, and value in, our democracy.

Aww, give Sarah a break....

....'cuz she's just a gurrrllll. And that meltdown in the Katie Couric interview? She's just appealing to her Pentecostal base by speaking in tongues.

But never mind: Sarah is OK, 'cuz she's got character. And what, you may ask, is this "character" quality? I'm not sure, but it doesn't seem to include telling the truth or understanding anything about the job. It doesn't seem to preclude hanging out with lunatic clergy (unless of course, it's the other guy's lunatic clergy).

But none of that matters, 'cuz if you've got character[tm], when push comes to shove, and the chips are down, and your back's to the wall, and the crick is rising, and the rubber is meeting the road, and the cliches are coming thick and fast: you'll do the Right Thing.

So I'm still not real clear on this "character" thing, but I have a vague impression it has something to do with shooting Muslims. Or maybe moose. They probably look the same through the 'scope of Sarah's rifle.

D'oh!Leary

It feels sort of surreal when you find your own jokes being used as serious arguments by other people. The other day I commented thusly at Dispatches from the Culture Wars, regarding Sarah Palin's foreign-policy experience:

Hey, she's spent most of her life and all of her career sandwiched between Roosha and Socialist Canuckistan! Obviously she's got lots of experience defending Amerika from it's enemies! Screw McCain -- Palin for Prez!

And wouldn't you know it? Today the ever-risible Denyse O'Leary, in defending Palin from a criticism by Ben Stein, raises exactly that point -- apparently in all seriousness:

Stein thought Palin couldn't handle foreign affairs or the economy. Hmmm. Palin's state sits between Canada and Russia - I wonder how many American states have two foreign neighbours?

Yep. Being off in the hinterland of your own country, with your nearest neighbours being the hinterlands of two other countries, being about as far as it's possible to get from the centres of power of any of those three countries -- according to Denyse, that counts as foreign policy experience.

Am I supposed to laugh or cry?

Trying to Live It Down

This week's tempest in the teapot that is frequently Canadian politics is the Lukiwski Affair. For non-Canadians, Tom Lukiwksi is the Conservative Member of Parliament who was caught on videotape making a slur against gays (the exchange starts around time 2:40):

On the tape, which was released by the provincial NDP on Thursday, the cameraman made a comment about Lukiwski being old.

"As we say on tour, I may be old, but I'm f---ing A," Lukiwski responded.

The cameraman retorted: "And who is this A person?"

"Well, let me put it to you this way. There's A's and there's B's. The A's are guys like me. The B's are homosexual faggots with dirt on their fingernails that transmit diseases," Lukiwski said.

The videotape was shot at a campaign office party -- in 1991. The NDP just happened to find it recently when, back on Lukiwski's home ground in Saskatchewan, they moved into offices recently vacated by the Conservatives. The opposition parties are making predictable hay out of it, including demands for the Prime Minister to fire Lukiwski from his post as parliamentary secretary to the government house leader, or even throw him out of caucus.

Before I go on, let me make a few things clear:

• I am strongly pro-gay rights and anti-bigotry in any form.
• I've never voted Tory in my life, and I have no plans to start any time soon (certainly not while Harper and the rest of the ex-Reform crew is in charge).
• I'd never heard of Lukiwski before, and know nothing about him beyond what has been reported in connection with this incident. His political fortunes, for their own sake, interest me not at all.
  

Lukiwski's remark is a stupid-yahoo thing to say, reflective of a kind of casual macho bigotry that used to be more prevalent (or at least, more openly acceptable) than it is now. He has delivered what sounds to me like a fairly handsome apology for it, in the House.

And that is where I think the matter should rest. However, others are not so ready to forgive and forget. Across the board, there seem to be three main reasons given for sanctioning Lukiwski:

The Unforgivable Sin
On this view, no apology can be an adequate atonement: Lukiwski has committed an unforgivable sin, and should be made a pariah for life. I don't know what to say about this one: you either believe that, or you don't. And I don't. A single off-the-cuff remark does not merit that level of punishment.

The Closet Bigot
Others believe that Lukiwski still holds anti-gay views -- that he hasn't changed in 17 years (somehow, the fact that he was 40 at the time also figures into this). As one commenter put it: "These are core beliefs, and they don't change".

Rubbish. I've changed my mind about lots of things (including homosexuality) in the last 17 years. Some of them were important things too -- easily as much "core beliefs" as any attitude Lukiwski has expressed about gays. And I expect that 17 years hence, I will have changed my mind some more. It's called "growing and learning", and I intend to continue until the day they put me in a box and nail down the lid.

While I can't prove Lukiwski's apology is sincere, I think the onus is on those who disbelieve him to argue for that claim, not just assert it. He deserves the benefit of the doubt.

So: shame on Lukiwski for saying something bigoted in 1991 -- and good on him for growing out of it.

The Larry Spencer Affair
Five years ago while in Opposition, Harper fired another MP, Larry Spencer, as family issues critic for anti-gay remarks. The argument then goes that, to be consistent he should also fire Lukiwski. However, the two cases are not really parallel. According to news stories at the time, Spencer said:

In late November 2003, Spencer caused controversy in Canada by Vancouver Sun reporter Peter O'Neil when he said that he would support any initiative to outlaw homosexuality. He stated that in the 1960s, a "well-orchestrated" conspiracy began and led to recent successes in the gay rights movement. This conspiracy, he further said, included seducing and recruiting young boys in playgrounds and locker rooms, and deliberately infiltrating North America's schools, judiciaries, entertainment industries, and religious communities.

And:

He said this conspiracy has led to successes in the gay-rights movement. "It's so sad that we have to take an issue like this and be asked to put the Good Housekeeping seal of approval on it without being allowed to tell the truth and talk about facts," said Spencer, a U.S.-born former Baptist pastor.

He said homosexuals, due to AIDS and other health problems, have a far lower life expectancy than straight men.

"Let's just say if ... anybody that used Colgate toothpaste, their life expectancy was lowered by 10, 15 years. What do you think would happen to Colgate toothpaste? It would be outlawed. Well, we know that's what happens to men living a gay lifestyle."

He also said homosexuals can transform themselves into heterosexuals.

This, I submit, goes well beyond anything Lukiwski said. In the Spencer case, we have a sitting member openly and deliberately talking about outlawing homosexuality, and repeating several of the standard calumnies against gays -- that they want to recruit young boys, that there is a "gay agenda" (a label applied any time LGBTs ask to be treated like human beings and full citizens), and that gays are sick and have poor life expectancy due to their lifestyle. On this last point, Spencer seems to be repeating the claims of discredited anti-gay activist Paul Cameron. There is no question that this is the kind of wingnut one does not want anywhere near the legislative process. Moreover, there seems to be little doubt that Spencer continues to hold such views: having lost his seat in the 2004 election (after being ejected from caucus, he ran as an independent, and lost -- ironically to Tom Lukiwski), he joined the Christian Heritage Party, which advocates government based on "Biblical principles".

It is in no way inconsistent for Harper to let Lukiwski off with an apology -- it simply and rightly recognizes the relative magnitudes of the two offenses.

In conclusion, my take on it is that, in an unguarded (and possibly tipsy) moment 17 years ago, Tom Lukiwski stuck his foot badly in his mouth. Hopefully, his apology is sincere and he now regrets what he said, for its own sake. Going forward: keep an eye on the guy, but otherwise let the matter drop.

Vermont: Creating Problems on the Cheap

The citizens of Brattleboro, VT, have passed a non-binding referendum proposition directing the Town Attorney to "....draft indictments against President Bush and Vice President Cheney for crimes against our Constitution...[and]...arrest and detain George Bush and Richard Cheney in Brattleboro....". Sounds good to me: and after Brattleboro is done with them, they can be impeached by Congress, and when that's settled, they can be shipped off to the Hague for a war crimes trial.Hey, I can dream, can't I?

Reaction from certain quarters is predictable:

But a spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee denounced the article.

"It appears that the left-wing knows no bounds in their willingness to waste taxpayer dollars to make a futile counterproductive partisan political point," said Blair Latoff. "Town people would be much better served by elected officials who sought to solve problems rather than create them."

First, Brattleboro's "elected officials" haven't done anything yet, and likely never will -- the article is non-binding (and probably non-enforceable). But hypothetically supposing that the town council did act on it, let's do a little arithmetic:

Let's assume that it cost as much as $3000 for the town's lawyer to draw up the indictments.

That is one billionth the amount that certain other "elected officials" (the ones, as it happens, who are the targets of the hypothetical indictment) have spent, or otherwise cost the American taxpayer, to invade Iraq -- and "create a problem" that, one way or another, the whole world will be living with for decades. And that's not even counting several hundred thousand people dead.

But yeah: a few American citizens exercising their democratic right to place a question on the municipal ballot are troublemakers who are "wasting taxpayer dollars to make partisan points" and should just STFU.

Fear, Terror and Obsession

This past Sunday night a dozen of the local Humanists gathered to watch and discuss the movie Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West. It's an alarming film, and justifiably so: there's a lot to be alarmed about in the rise of Islamic religio-political extremism. But at the same time I can't escape the feeling that at base, this film is deeply manipulative propaganda.

The main points made in the movie (from memory) are:

• There exists a hard-line strain of Islam which would like to impose strict Sharia law on the traditionally Muslim countries, and even take over the Western democracies as well. These people are, in fact, engaged in a war with the West -- a war we do not yet recognize, because it is so unlike any war we have fought before.
  
• The radicals are estimated to comprise about 10 to 15% of the world's 1.2 billion Muslims. That's a worrisomely large number of fanatics.
  
• They hold unbelievers in contempt: we infidel ultimately must convert or die.
• Their ideology teaches that to die a martyr while striking a blow against the enemies of Islam is glorious; it is the highest honour to which any Muslim can aspire (and gets you front-of-line admission to Paradise, the 72 virgins, etc.)
• In some places in the Middle East (notably Palestine), an entire generation of Muslim children is being raised and educated to hate infidels (especially Jews and Americans), and to aspire to martyrdom in the cause. One of the film's talking heads termed this indoctrination (and I agree that it is a monstrous thing) "the worst possible kind of child abuse".
• The Blood Libel against the Jews is still openly taught in many Arab countries, generations after most of the West gave up such malicious stupidity.
  
• The roots of Radical Islam go back to the Nazi era. A great deal of time is spent describing the friendly connection between Hitler and the then Grand Mufti of Jerusalem (a large part of what they had in common was, of course, a dislike of Jews). Even more time is spent trying to draw parallels between the 1930s (when the world took far too long to wake up to the threat represented by Nazism), and today when allegedly the West is again ignoring an expansionist totalitarian threat, this time in the form of "Islamofascism".

I was aware of most of the above, to some extent (the notable exception being the historical Nazi connection), and it's probably mostly true as far as it goes. Very scarey, and we should be worried...but: there's a fair bit of manipulation going on, a lot of it concerned with what isn't said as much as what is.

The entire historical background of the situation is reduced to The Nazi Connection. That's it: no mention of a century or so of British, American and Russian meddling in the geopolitics of the region (granted the Ottoman Empire was there first, with its own record of mucking things up) ; no mention of propping up corrupt tyrannies (eg: the Shah of Iran, Saddam Hussein before he fell into disfavour); and -- remarkably -- the word "oil" was never used even once. No discussion of whether the interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq have made things better or worse. The issue of Western complicity in creating the milieu in which Radical Islam could flourish was raised only to be dismissed -- "some academics" blamed 9/11 on American foreign policy; shot of Michael Moore saying there was no terrorist threat -- then back to the mantra: "No, it's the ideology, stupid".

In the discussion afterwards, someone pointed out that the US has been screwing over Latin America for a long time, too, but they haven't dispatched any terrorists northwards. This is a valid point, to which my partial answer is: the ideology is not irrelevant, but it does not exist in a vacuum either. The socioeconomic situation interacts with a culture's foundational memes to produce the response. Both Christianity and Islam have martyrdom traditions, but in Islam (as I understand it) it's the martyrdom of a warrior who dies in battle. Christian martyrdom, however, takes its model from Christ and the early saints -- innocent victims who go meekly to their unjust deaths, with their dying words blessing their tormentors. Thus, from the Muslim East we get suicide bombers; while from Catholic Latin America we get Liberation Theology. (And of course, we have also seen Christian terrorism: the IRA bomb-planters arose from a history of national oppression which divided along Catholic/Protestant lines, and they were aided and abetted by the local Catholic clergy.)

The message of "It's the [religious] ideology that causes all the problems" obviously goes over well with a bunch of atheists, but the more I reflect on it, the more I am of the view that whole movie is written in a kind of code -- one likely to go over the heads of a bunch of Canadian freethinkers, but which resonates with a large segment of the American public. Consider:

• There are a lot of clips of mobs stomping or burning American flags (or maybe the same clips inserted several times). Now, flag desecration doesn't bother me much -- I believe in getting upset over substance, not symbols. But we know there are many Americans who take it very personally.
• There is a longish segment about how the Islamists hate Christians and Jews (and incidentally also Hindus and others), and also a couple of scenes of bombed and desecrated churches in the Middle East (somehow, it's the "desecration" angle that seems to bother the filmmakers, more than the simple destruction of property). Fine, I think hating people and bombing their buildings because you don't like their religious opinions is stupid and evil -- but the harping on Christians and Jews as the target tells me something about the audience the filmmakers want to reach (and a certain segment of American Christendom already has a carefully nurtured persecution complex).
• There are a number of clips of clerics and their mobs proclaiming Jihad on the West and promising all sorts of mayhem. Many of the segments appear to have been shot in England, which seems cursed with a ridiculous number of these sociopaths. But quite a few were Iranian in origin -- the third leg in Bush's "Axis of Evil".
• As part of the Nazi Connection, the Chamberlain theme receives extensive play: just as we failed to take Hitler's threat seriously (despite his clearly stated intentions in Mein Kampf) until it was too late to avert catastrophe, we are now failing to take the Islamofascist threat seriously. "History repeats" we are reminded by one interviewee. However, it is never quite explained just how the Islamofascists plan to take over the West. We are told: "It is a war. It’s just not like any we’ve encountered before." Well then, what is it like? Yes, there are places like Iran that are run by Islamist nutjobs, and you can see how they might directly conquer some of their neighbours, and engineer coups in a few more (all of which is bad). But, aside from occasionally blowing up something (also bad, but hardly likely to lead to an Islamist takeover), exactly how do they propagate that to Europe and the Americas -- to a nuclear-armed USA or Russia? Don't make me guess, tell me! Leaving it all vague (while shouting "Chamberlainism!" repeatedly) creates a pervasive sense of threat, about which We Must Do Something, Quick! -- but what?
  

So if you want to know who the target audience of this film is, look no further than the list of people who praise the film (and how many of them are from Fox News). Obsession is aimed at American Christians and Jews, generally either right-leaning or persuadable, maybe still a bit traumatized by 9/11, and likely supportive of the Iraq War.

Towards the end, having scared us all half to death, Obsession gets around to discussing what to do about this calamity. The answer is a bit of a letdown: the moderate Muslims must stand up and denounce the extremists, and isolate them from their community. Um, yeah that's important, but what am I as a non-Muslim supposed to do? Badger my Muslim neighbours and colleagues to Do Their Duty? Accuse them of being enablers? Apparently, I'm supposed to tell everyone about this film (OK, did that, for all four regular readers of this blog) and urge them to see it. (Meh. Decide for yourself.) But suppose you do all see it on my recommendation, and all your friends and relations to the Nth degree -- surely we're supposed to do something more concrete than tell yet more people to watch a movie?

The FAQ is barely more helpful:

QUESTION: What are you hoping people will walk away with, after they see this film?

We hope the film will inspire people to spend some time thinking about their beliefs, and commit to them, and fight for them.We’re also hoping people will speak out against what is happening. We hope people will start writing letters to congressmen, letters to editors. We hope people we start fighting ignorance and bias when they see it. They will lead marches and demonstrations, petitions and activism on college campuses. We hope moderate Muslims will continue creating watchdog groups for whatever enters their mosques and their schools, and ensuring that the values important to them are taught, if they see they are not.

OK, suppose we're now all writing to our elected representatives, asking them to do....what exactly? Nuke Tehran? Intern all the Muslims in the country until they rat out the terrorists among them? Kidnap Rendition a few random people for torture robust interrogation? Get out of/stay in Afghanistan/Iraq? Strip-search every airline passenger? X-ray every cargo container for nukes? The filmmakers found enough talking heads to tell us exactly how deep is the shit we are in -- surely they could have found a couple more to suggest practical ways to start digging ourselves out.

That part is left dangling, and I think dangerously so. Obsession is clearly designed to scare the pants off its target audience, and people who are frightened are prime material for manipulation by anyone who promises to Do Something About The Problem. I don't know what the filmmakers have in mind, but the obvious immediate beneficiary of this state of affairs is the Bush administration, who have spent the past six years eroding civil liberties and banging the drums in the name of the War On Terror (and it's an open secret that they would like to take on Iran). If the film simply stated boldly that the American public should acquiesce in the growth of their home-made police state and support expansion of the Iraq war into surrounding countries, no one would listen to it. But by raising the alarm and leaving them hanging, they open the way for someone like Bush (or his successor -- I've been hearing nasty things about Hillary) to obtain a mandate to do exactly that.

Some Ex-Equine Flagellation

One of the arguments raised against MMP was that it would increase the power of the party establishments relative to that of the riding associations, and make members less accountable to their local constituency.

Of course, we know that sort of thing can never happen under the First-Past-The-Post system, right?

All Candidates Meeting

We went to the local All-Candidates meeting for the upcoming Ontario election tonight. The candidates' bit was pretty typical boring blah-blah -- they (Lib, PC, NDP, Green) all agreed on motherhood issues like closing the Carp Road dump, better funding for health and education (though a bit vague on where to get the money), etc. The local PC incumbent (Norm Sterling) and Liberal (governing party for the last four years) opponent predictably blamed each other's parties for The Mess We're In. I was actually hoping for the local Family Coalition candidate to be there to provide comic relief, but no such luck.

It was the first half of the meeting that was interesting: a presentation and discussion on MMP. Some guy from Elections Ontario did a mediocre job of explaining the proposed system -- you could tell from the questions that a lot of people didn't really "get it". At all. Then we got a "pro" speaker and a "con" speaker (whose names I didn't write down).

The "pro" speaker made points I'd heard before (and some I've made myself). Then the "con" speaker got up. The acoustics were not great, so I didn't catch his name, but it was something like "Charles Fearmonger", which is close enough because that's mostly what he did. He started by making the reasonable point that the proposed MMP system strengthens the power of the parties (which strictly speaking are not a fundamental aspect of the historical Westminster system) by giving them an explicit presence on the ballot. A couple of points:

• The choice of list candidates is done at the party level, a process which is remote from the local riding association who nominate the local candidate.
• MPPs might be more likely to toe the party line (as opposed to representing their constituents) if it affects their chances of getting on the list next election.

However, he hasn't shown that either of these are true: the proposed system does not specify how the list candidates are to be chosen. A party could, for example, nominate them by popular vote of the whole party membership. So this particular scenario, while it could happen, is hardly inevitable.

After making this semi-valid point, Mr. Fearmonger went downhill into borderline crankery. He claimed it was impossible to find the details of the mysterious Hare Formula by which the list seats are assigned. Huh? I found it -- it wasn't dead easy, but if a software engineer can find something on a website while sitting in his easy chair with a laptop, paying half-attention to Stephen Colbert, surely so could he. Anyways, afterwards I overheard him out in the hallway explaining the fractional-seat resolution scheme to someone -- so he must have found the same information I did! So what the hell was he on about?

Next he presented some truly alarming election scenarios, presumably to show that MMP doesn't deliver what it promises. His scenarios:

• Party X creates a "shadow" party (call it Y -- or maybe they make a deal with an already existing party). Party X only runs candidates in the riding races. Y only runs list candidates. Assuming they both do moderately well, between them they have a healthy majority, out of which they form a "coalition" government. Apparently, Mr. Fearmonger thinks we are all to stupid to see through such a transparent dirty trick, or too docile to send Party X to electoral Coventry over it.
• His final scenario was even stupider: Every riding elects an independent candidate AND all of us (except one) decide not to vote on the party side of the ballot. That one voter votes for Party X. Thus X gets 100% of the party vote, therefore all 39 list seats -- and presumably the government. Do I really need to point out how wildly unrealistic this outcome is? All electoral systems can be mathematically shown to produce absurd results in some extreme situation -- but we don't live in the ideal world of mathematics, we live in the real world.
  

I will grant Mr. Fearmonger that there are probably other, less obvious ways parties could game the system -- but there always are. It requires vigilance on the part of we the electorate to punish parties that try to play tricks -- but again, this is always true. For good or ill, we get the government we deserve. MMP will not change that, but it will allow us more choice over the makeup of our legislature.

Vote for MMP -- with spreadsheets!

There's two new widgets in the sidebar, which will stay there until after the Ontario election and referendum. One links to the advocacy site for the Mixed Member Proportional site, the other to the government information site on the MMP referendum.

Notwithstanding my advocacy for MMP, I do have a couple of reservations about it:

• That the minority or coalition governments which will inevitably result will give too much power to tiny parties with loony views (ie. as the governing party panders to them to retain power).
• Governments need to be stable, and able to act without always being overthrown by non-confidence motions.
  
• I question what seems to be a popular (if tacit) assumption, that having the proportions of the legislature reflect the popular vote is somehow magically "democratic", in a way that other relationships between electoral choice and parliamentary seats are not.
  

However, what I've read of the The Ontario Citizen's Assembly on Electoral Reform (PDF here) persuades me that they Assembly did its homework, and took into account concerns such as the above.

So: I am voting for Mixed Member Proportional Representation. I don't want to belabour points made elsewhere, but briefly, I support it because:

• I think it has been, and is, bad for democracy in this country when parties can obtain large legislative majorities based on a low percentage of the total vote.
• Even if my preferred candidate has no hope of getting elected locally, I can still have some influence by voting for my preferred party. In other words, my franchise still counts for something.
  
• It allows minority views a voice in the legislature. One specific upside of this for me is that the Green Party might get some seats. OTOH, the downside is that so might the Family Coalition Party. I'm willing to take that risk.
  

However, I think the official promotion and education on the MMP system has been poor. For one thing, the video on the official government website really doesn't explain the system very well. I could only find one example of how the system would work, and it's both vague and confusing. Also, it's not hard to think of pathological cases that would "break" the seat-allocation system as described. Perhaps it's just because I'm a numbers geek, but I really wanted to understand how the list seat allocation works, and see some examples using made-up (but reasonable) numbers.

How MMP works

I finally found what I was looking for, buried on page 144&ff of the report of The Ontario Citizen's Assembly on Electoral Reform. To save y'all the trouble, I'll do my best to summarize the scheme here, by way of presenting the spreadsheet I cobbled up to play with scenarios (for anyone who really wants to understand the proposed system, I recommend reading that whole chapter of the report).

Example 1: "Typical" election

	Ridings Won		Party Vote	Quota Calculation			Quota Seats	Final Legislature		Disproportion
Party	#	%	%	Included	Weight	Seats Avail		#	%
A	47	36.43%	39.14%	TRUE	3.91E-001	47	51.77	52	40.31%	1.17%
B	31	24.03%	29.26%	TRUE	2.93E-001	31	38.7	39	30.23%	0.97%
C	12	9.30%	17.96%	TRUE	1.80E-001	12	23.76	24	18.60%	0.64%
D	0	0.00%	7.14%	TRUE	7.14E-002	0	9.44	9	6.98%	-0.16%
E	0	0.00%	4.03%	TRUE	4.03E-002	0	5.33	5	3.88%	-0.15%
Other	0	0.00%	2.47%	FALSE	0.00E+000	0	0	0	0.00%	-2.47%
Check totals:	90	69.77%	100.00%	Quota=	7.56E-003	129	129	129	100.00%	5.57%

Example #1 is taken from page 157 of the Report, and is intended to reflect a fairly typical Ontario election. There are five parties designated A through E, plus "other" representing any additional parties. The inputs to the spreadsheet are in red; everything else is a calculated result.

First, there are 90 seats for local ridings (the "# Ridings Won" column), elected in a First-Past-The-Post manner, just as they are today. The second input column is "% Party Vote", and reflects the new addition to the ballot, where the voter selects her/his preferred party. Note: the "% Ridings Won" column only totals to 69.77%, as this represents % of the entire legislature (139 seats), not just the 90 riding seats. The "Check Totals" line is so I can check that I assigned exactly 90 seats, and 100% of the party vote (and also verifies the sanity of calculations made in other columns).

The fun part comes when you start allocating the 39 list seats to bring the final proportionality of the legislature closer to the proportions of the Party Vote. The proposed Ontario MMP system uses something called the Hare Formula, which begins by calculating a quantity called the "Quota". The formula says:

Quota = (# Included Party Votes Cast) / (# Included Riding Seats + # List Seats)

The "Included" qualifier requires some explanation, as some Party Votes and Riding Seats are excluded from the Hare calculation. A party is excluded if its Party Vote is less than 3% of the total votes cast (see the "Other" line in Example #1). IMHO, this is a good thing: it means that the truly loony fringe can't gum up the works. It also means that the minimum number of seats any party can have based on Party Vote alone is three. (I'll deal with exclusion of Riding Seats in Example #2, below). In the table, which parties are included in the calculation is shown by TRUE or FALSE in the "Included" column. Parties which are included have their Party Votes carried over into the "Weight" column (since the readers of this blog -- all four of them -- are math/sci geeks, the use of scientific notation won't confuse anyone). The Report uses some made-up vote numbers for the Party Votes; for the spreadsheet I've just used the percentage (arithmetically, it works out to the same result). Similarly, the included Riding Seats are carried to the "Seats Avail" column. The "Quota" (given at bottom center) is then calculated by the Hare formula.

The number of seats each party should receive is then calculated as:

QuotaSeats = Quota * (Party Vote) / (Total Seats in Legislature)

Obviously, this usually yields some fractional seats. The official procedure for rounding these up or down to whole numbers is a bit complicated, and in the spreadsheet I've just used a simple a arithmetic rounding, which usually gets the same result (though in some cases it may magically create or abolish a seat). The 39 list seats are then distributed among the parties in order to bring their total representation up to the number given in the "# Final Legislature" column.

The result to pay attention to is the difference between the "% Party Vote" and "% Final Legislature" columns (calculated in the "Disproportion" column). The goal of MMP is to minimize the disproportion, and for many realistic election scenarios, it succeeds. In this example, the total disproportion (obtained by summing the absolute values of the per-party disproportions) is 5.57%.

Example #2: Overhanging Seats

	Ridings Won		Party Vote	Quota Calculation			Quota Seats	Final Legislature		Disproportion
Party	#	%	%	Included	Weight	Seats Avail		#	%
A	55	42.64%	39.14%	FALSE	0.00E+000	0	55	55	42.64%	3.50%
B	24	18.60%	29.26%	TRUE	2.93E-001	24	37.08	37	28.68%	-0.58%
C	11	8.53%	17.96%	TRUE	1.80E-001	11	22.76	23	17.83%	-0.13%
D	0	0.00%	7.14%	TRUE	7.14E-002	0	9.05	9	6.98%	-0.16%
E	0	0.00%	4.03%	TRUE	4.03E-002	0	5.11	5	3.88%	-0.15%
Other	0	0.00%	2.47%	FALSE	0.00E+000	0	0	0	0.00%	-2.47%
Check totals:	90	69.77%	100.00%	Quota=	7.89E-003	74	129	129	100.00%	6.

"Overhang" occurs when a party wins enough riding races to get a higher percentage of the legislature than the Party Vote would entitle them too. This is the other criterion by which a party will be excluded from the Hare Formula calculation, and receive no list seats. This is shown in the table above (taken from the second example in the Report). Here, Party A has won almost 43% of the seats in the legislature in the riding races alone, and 3.5% more than their share of the Party Vote. Thus, their seats are not included in the Quota Calculation (note that the total "Seats Avail" is thus only 74, ie. 129 minus 55). The final result is that A is slightly over-represented in Parliament, but not badly so.

Obviously, MMP means that majority government is the exception rather than the rule. The fun part here is to look at the results of these scenarios and speculate on likely alignments and coalitions (the magic number for legislative control being 65). Assume, say, that parties A, B, C and D are respectively Conservative, Liberal, NDP and Green (with E being possibly a religious or ethnic party) -- who gets to govern? Which parties are similar enough in philosophy to cooperate for three or four years?

Example 3: List Upset

	Ridings Won		Party Vote	Final Legislature		Disproportion
Party	#	%	%	#	%
A	50	38.76%	33.00%	50	38.76%	5.76%
B	30	23.26%	44.00%	53	41.09%	-2.91%
C	10	7.75%	19.00%	23	17.83%	-1.17%
D	0	0.00%	3.00%	3	2.33%	-0.67%
E	0	0.00%	1.00%	0	0.00%	-1.00%
Other	0	0.00%	0.00%	0	0.00%	0.00%
Check totals:	90	69.77%	100.00%	129	100.00%	11.52%

I played with a few more scenarios, just to see what happened. Example 3 shows a situation I call List Upset, in which party A wins a majority of the riding races, but B picks up enough list seats to achieve a plurality (and thus become the presumptive government). If this seems "wrong" to you, I suggest you are thinking about the MMP system the wrong way. You are stuck on the idea that the FPTP riding race is the "real" election, while the party vote is an illegitimate pretender which can be allowed only a secondary effect. In fact, this is exactly backwards: for good or ill, MMP is primarily a proportional representation system, but one that retains the concept of having a local representative.

And finally, an oddball example election I call Asymmetrical Landslide, in which A gets a legislative majority on riding seats alone, but B gets a majority of the Party Vote:

Example 4: Asymmetrical Landslide

	Ridings Won		Party Vote	Final Legislature		Disproportion
Party	#	%	%	#	%
A	70	54.26%	30.00%	70	54.26%	24.26%
B	13	10.08%	60.00%	50	38.76%	-21.24%
C	7	5.43%	5.00%	7	5.43%	0.43%
D	0	0.00%	3.00%	2	1.55%	-1.45%
E	0	0.00%	2.00%	0	0.00%	-2.00%
Other	0	0.00%	0.00%	0	0.00%	0.00%
Check totals:	90	69.77%	100.00%	129	100.00%	49.38%

The total disproportionality here is huge. However, I submit this is very unlikely to occur in a real election. It would require either that A won most of those ridings with only small pluralities, or that most voters decided to split their ballot, choosing the local candidate from A, but choosing B on the party vote.

So, the proposed MMP system is not my favorite alternative to FPTP, but I think it's a significant improvement. Should the referendum pass and MMP become law, we are in for interesting times in Ontario politics -- but hopefully in a good way.

Note: If I could figure out how to use Google Docs, I would post the spreadsheet there. However, being too lazy to do that, I'm willing to send a copy to anyone who asks. Just drop me a line (Open Office and Excel formats available).