Venezuela. SNC-Lavalin. Those are just two issues on which opinion is deeply divided to the point where the force of partisanship is inescapable. In my case I end up sitting on the fence, unable to place much trust in either side.
In Venezuela, it seems to come down to a question of which of the protagonists is worse and it's quite possible that they're both lousy human beings manipulating Venezuelans and inflicting suffering on the entire country. That wouldn't be a first for Latin America. Perhaps, eventually, it will be possible to assess the Venezuelan problem on its merits. Perhaps not. You live long enough you'll see that happen from time to time.
On the SNC-Lavalin affair the warring camps contend either that this is a non-event or it's the worst scandal ever. One side picks at Jody, the other tears into Justin. Perhaps I should care. I don't.
Those who would beatify Jody will wait a hell of a long time before I agree. The way she allowed herself to be compromised on the assisted dying law told me all I need to know about her vaunted integrity. Even though it's everyone's Charter Right, something made perfectly clear by the Supreme Court of Canada in the Carter case, Jody, perhaps to accommodate Justin, abridged those rights to condemn many Canadians to either premature death or the prospect of horrific suffering - strictly for political advancement. That was an utterly craven move.
As for Justin, I heard his solemn campaign promises and watched as he reneged on his word again and again and again. He put paid to any notion of his integrity. When I hear lofty pronouncements about Jody or Justin coming from their respective acolytes, my stomach churns a little bit. Either side - it's all crap.
What really pisses me off is how the rest of us succumb to these controversies. They become the "shiny thing" that saps our energy, our time, and distracts us from the real threats of the day - the arms race, nuclear proliferation, climate change and the possibility of triggering a mass extinction of life on Earth.
Jody's barking dogs and Justin's barking dogs are just that - barking dogs. Mole hills are, of sheer tenacity, turned into mountains.
It's the fracturing that's most worrisome. The tear down of consensus prevents us from getting much done on the important challenges of the day. It divides us and makes us angrier and more suspicious of "the other." Christ, haven't we learned anything from watching the neighbours to the south, a divide that Carl Bernstein labels a "Cold Civil War" that could quickly turn hot?
If you want to see chickens with their heads cut off, turn to the live broadcasts from Britain's House of Commons. It's gone from a contest or "remain" versus "leave." That has broken down into so many camps it's beginning to resemble a gathering of Afghan warlords. There's Leave - soft Brexit and Leave - hard Brexit, there's pro-Backstop and anti-Backstop, there's a faction that want another referendum, some who want a snap election, and now there's a group that wants soft Brexit with a popular vote to confirm or reject the deal immediately afterward. The parties each tend to have several of these sub-factions. Theresa May struggles to cajole better terms from the EU even as she has to deal with an insurgency within her own government. That is a truly shambolic Parliament.
Maybe this is how neoliberalism ends. We get so absorbed in nattering that nothing important gets done, we are overtaken by events we were not heeding, and the whole tired business groans and collapses under its own weight.
Bring it on. Sounds like a good time for sitting on the fence.
Re: Venezuela, I understand you have a bad impression of Maduro, but where did that come from? Who are the ones telling us what a monster he is? I’ve commented about this before, but again, there is excellent reporting on this subject, may I suggest this discussion with the U.N. human rights rapporteur Alfred de zayas, who recently completed the U.N. investigation into the situation:
ReplyDelete“An Ocean of Lies on Venezuela: Abby Martin & UN Rapporteur Expose Coup” https://youtu.be/ii5MlQgGXyk
The blog moonofalabama also has excellent analysis on venezuela, though it focuses more on military conflict generally.
The Conservatives and their supporters would have you believe that the SNC/JWR controversy is the worst scandal ever.
ReplyDeleteI seem to remember charges of accepting a bribe against a Senator without the corresponding charges against a briber. I wonder if the then Justice Minister/Attorney General took his orders from anyone on that. In the meantime, the briber left town.
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Divided opinions ? Quelle surprise. This morning there were a few demonstrators outside a Trudeau event in Charlottetown. One help an anti carbon tax sign while another held an anti pipeline sign. How , in this climate, can anyone judge the public mood?
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ReplyDeleteWell, there's a kick in the balls, Justin Trudeau's balls. Jane Philpott has quite cabinet - over the SNC-Lavalin affair.
This will set the pro-Justin camp to howling rage.
I would like to lay out a brief sketch of the Venezuela situation as I see it. Just to be clear, I see it as a Maduro supporter.
ReplyDeleteThere are a couple of dimensions to criticism of Maduro and the Bolivarian government. One is economic, the other main one is the allegations of repression, dictatorship and whatnot.
On the economic front I would have to say Maduro has made some mistakes. There is a fair amount of blame to go around--certainly the local elites have done some significant economic sabotage, and the US was trying to "make the economy scream" even before it officially announced sanctions. There is (as there has always been) a good deal of corruption in the government, although Maduro himself doesn't seem to be corrupt. And then there's the simple fact of low oil prices, which are bad for Venezuela in much the same way they're bad for Alberta, only more so. But Maduro mishandled the currency issue, which made a sizable difference. And he kept trying to negotiate with opposition groups who were attacking the economy, which only emboldened them.
But on the economic front I would be hard pressed to find a head of state who hasn't been doing deeply counterproductive things, whether it's Britain, or Spain, or Greece, or France, or Argentina, or whoever . . . or the United States. Normally, nobody thinks that makes it OK to invade them or sanction them. One figures that it's the locals' problem and they will not be re-elected.
Which brings us to the part about "dictatorship", "repression" and so forth. Now first, obviously Trump's boys, the Democratic politicians supporting him on this, and the media reporting favourably about the prospect of violence, don't actually care if this is true or not. After all, the "Lima group" contains Honduras, Brazil and Colombia among others. That is, Brazil where they put the most popular man in the country in jail on trumped-up charges so he couldn't win the election. Colombia where this past year dozens of left-of-centre politicians, grassroots activists and trade unionists have, as usual, been murdered by government-linked paramilitaries. And Honduras, which actually is a dictatorship; after a military coup ousted the elected president they have since had two elections that all the observers basically agreed were fraudulent. In the latest one, the opposition was showing a lead in the middle of polling, at which point the count was halted for hours and then it was suddenly announced the coup guy had a solid lead. Everyone knows they stole it, but again, people who complain in Honduras have been showing up dead a lot. So this is the cabal the United States is lining up with to accuse Venezuela of being undemocratic; obviously if they gave a damn about democracy they wouldn't let those guys into their little "pro-democracy" group, they'd be sanctioning them. And the media is not commenting about any of this; they seem just fine with the idea of Honduras denouncing people for being undemocratic. No big surprise; back when Syria was a big deal they used to report with a straight face that Saudi Arabia was denouncing Syria for being undemocratic.
ReplyDeleteBut it could still be true, theoretically. Just because the US are cynical bastards who don't care about democracy, whose accusations can be expected to bear no relationship to reality, doesn't mean their victims aren't dictatorships. After all, Syria actually is a dictatorship. As were Iraq and Libya, although note that still didn't make destroying them a good thing. However, in fact, while allegations of economic incompetence hold some water, allegations of dictatorship are simply false. Venezuela's electoral system is amazingly good (far better than the US, for instance)--very transparent, almost impossible to rig except by actually buying votes directly, voter by voter--and even then, the secret ballot means the voters don't have to deliver. The system is electronic but with a printed paper version of the ballot which is retained for auditing, there are observers from the opposition parties both at the polling stations and at the central count, voters are authenticated by fingerprint . . . there are tons of transparency and anti-fraud measures. This is the sort of reason why at every election since Chavez first had this system put in place, observers have certified Venezuelan elections as not just free and fair, but impressively so. The latest election is no exception, which is probably why the opposition candidates who ran against Maduro agreed the results were genuine. And Henri Falcon, Maduro's main opponent in that election, is a pugnacious guy who would certainly have contested the results if he thought there was the slightest grounds. Incidentally, Falcon is far better known than in Venezuela than this Guaido kid.
So. Elections, free and fair; Maduro is therefore legitimately elected in free and fair elections, with 68% of the vote. If much of the opposition hadn't called for a boycott maybe he wouldn't have done so well, but go figure--you don't stand for election, you don't get elected. Duh. But perhaps Maduro is repressive in some other way? Legitimate president, sure, but maybe he's been doing bad things to protestors or something? As if. Look, the wealthy classes, backed by USAID and the NED and all those regime change outfits, have been running these riots. Maduro has gone easier on them than any other country I can think of, given how violent the opposition has been. They have burned buses and clinics and government buildings, shot national guards, burned bystanders alive for the crime of looking like Chavistas (ie black), strung wire at motorcycle throat height that killed people--and yet Maduro let these people do their intersection blockades for months on end. Would Trudeau have allowed that? Would Macron? The Venezuelan government is in fact unusually careful of civil liberties even by the standards of first world democracies. Everything about Maduro being a dictator, or illegitimate, or even repressive, is quite simply a Big Lie which has in classic Big Lie fashion been repeated so often everyone thinks there must be something to it.
ReplyDeleteVenezuela is in very bad shape. If the Venezuelan opposition were a credible group with anything resembling a serious program for governing, they would right now be the Venezuelan government. But they're not, they're incompetent, violent, egotistical, and constantly squabbling among themselves. The poorer majority know the opposition hate them--something about dousing people with gasoline, lighting them on fire and kicking them while they burn, on video, will give people that feeling. And everyone thinks they're a bunch of quislings because they keep trying, in public, to get the US to intervene.
So that leaves Maduro and the PSUV as the legitimately elected government. Invading would cause a bloodbath.