Maritime Morning - Andrew Krystal

Can you name your Lieutenant Governor? I can’t. Moreover, I don’t care. Do you? Does he/she matter anymore? These people are a complete and utter waste of space, time, and money.

People in the Maritimes have trouble paying their heating bills, and these “representatives” sit around in mansions paid for by the “common people.” Oh yes, they work – they work cocktail parties, ceremonies, and boring government functions – things for which we pay.

The recent visit by Governor General Michel Jean to see the squalor of Vancouver’s Downtown east side is a case in point: there she was, in all her stilted, privilege-dripped over-enunciation, shielded by security, talking about the little people and how being told to #@& — off by residents over the shoulders of her entourage was simply a “manifestation” of their frustration”.

I am sure that she holds the same bemused, hollow, words of distanced empathy for others less fortunate: “Isn’t that a shame they live that way?” Tsk, tsk, my, my, too bad”.

It is not her fault, she is an elitist. The system will always create a privileged class; however, their deportment, and our systemic, structural support for them is another matter.

And we have to stop it. The position of Governor General is a provocatively useless waste of resources that merely serves to further illuminate class divides.

Michel Jean’s recent visit to Vancouver’s mean streets as part of a camera opportunity was a disgraceful sham. If she was serious about either concern or empathy she would have gone there with only one or two bodyguards late at night, unreported, not drawing attention to herself in televised daylight while using homeless people as live backdrops.

People will speak to me of “tradition.” It was also traditional for women not to vote, to have slavery, to have landed gentry, to have dictatorial monarchies. It was also traditional to have duel with wheellock and flintlock pistols during disputes in the Sixteenth, Seventeenth, and Eighteenth centuries.

I, personally, would like to have duels with the Governor General and the provincial representative, the Lieutenant Governor, but I just can’t remember her name. And I don’t even know what she looks like.

I bet you don’t know either. Nor do you know what you are paying for.

And you never get an invite to the cocktail parties either, do you?

For those of you who asked me about my appearance on CTV’s The Verdict, here’s the link: http://www.ctv.ca/theverdict (Click on The Verdict Roundtable, Jan 23)

In the CTV Newsnet broadcast I am commenting on Marijuana legalization and the case of Marc Emery, the so called “Prince of Pot”, who has been recently sentenced for selling pot seeds south of the border. I feel that Emery is a showboat, a professional protestor, a fool and a false martyr. But that’s just me.

I also comment about how Maritimers have reacted to volatility in the stock market recently. Please check it out, as I welcome your comments on this blog.

In other news… It was interesting to have Trade Centre Ltd. CEO Fred MacGillivray in studio. Always a dynamic business leader, Fred would like to see feasibility study commissioned and conducted to see whether or not Halifax could land an NHL franchise.

It all started when NHLPA head Paul Kelly said he would like to see one here. I would love your comments on that one too. Should/could Halifax get an NHL team?

The monster movie is back with Cloverfield. I mention it in my blog today because its significance lies in the nature of the scare, and in the mode of its perception.

In the movie, New York is attacked by a mysterious monster and a group of kids, whom we follow, capture the unfolding events with a camcorder.

The Godzilla movies of the fifties, and the 1956 Sci-fi classic, The Invasion of The Body Snatchers, both dealt with an external “other” who invaded. In the case of the Body Snatchers there was a real concern in America at the time about the threat of Communism in the culture; people being “taken over” by Socialist values and turning against existing power structures.

Japan, in the 1950s, was still reconciling itself to the firebombing of its cities in 1945 and to the two atomic bombs. The American Godzilla had literally invaded it and destroyed it. The Godzilla movies safely processed those fears and vulnerabilities for the Japanese audience and processed Cold War fears for Americans.

In 2008 we have a new, post 9/11 reality with a retro feel: the attack on 9/11 shocked and awed New York, the huge billowing smoke plumes pushing through the buildings with dust-covered inhabitants running for cover; many of the 9/11 attacks most important aspects were covered by camcorders, recorded by ordinary people – those running away.

The camcorder has become an extension of our eyes (the new cinéma-vérité, or “cinema truth”) and, when wedded to state-of the-art special effects, produces a new look.
The old movie experience of the 50s and 60s had spectators suspending their collective disbelief for the eye of the film camera and special effects needed not to be filtered through another “eye.”

The filmmakers behind Cloverfield (the military name given an evacuation point in New York following the monster attack), have done a good job recreating our fears and memories of terrorism and have used most of our memories from that fatal September day, even including an evacuation along the Brooklyn Bridge, to concoct this nightmare of movie magic.

Cloverfield is about 9/11 and the “other”– make no mistake.

We could be attacked at any time and we don’t know what it is, where it is, or when, and many will die and the camcorders will catch it.

And it may not even be a movie.

The Bush administration has back-peddled so much over the past eight years (WMD, Afghanistan, capturing Osama, Palestinian issues, Iraq and the “bring it on” statement - a statement that actually goaded the insurgency; intelligence on Iran, etc.) that the whole U.S. economy is finally peddling backwards too.

The latest integrity outage occurred the other day when U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates, in explaining to the Los Angeles Timeswhy more U.S. troops were needed in Afghanistan, passed the buck. Gates stated that Canada and Britain were not up to the job, so more troops were needed and that NATO was not trained to fight counter-insurgency warfare — an outrageous, ham-fisted, counter-productive, public criticism.

Let me recap the back-peddling: Gates calls Minister of Defence Peter MacKay and his British counterpart (the Brits were furious), and begins the “I didn’t really mean it” spin process.
The next day, he makes a public announcement praising the NATO war effort and hard sacrifices and casualties. Canadian Prime Minister Harper chimes in with an “it’s all right” message, and that “there should be no ‘misinterpretation’ of these remarks vis-a-vis Canada.”

What? There is no misinterpretation. There was no misinterpretation. Gates said, and I quote, from the L.A. Times, “Our guys in the east, under Gen. Rodriguez, are doing a terrific job. They’ve got the (counterinsurgency) thing down pat. But, I think our allies over there this is not something they have experience with”.

The same day, Gates “spokesperson” declares that what Gates meant was that everyone in NATO, including the U.S., has trouble with counterinsurgency. But that is not what Gates said. That was spin.

What is more troubling is the reaction, right afterwards, by Mackay who breathlessly told reporters that he had spoken with Gates, that everything was fine, and that Gates’ comments were taken “out of context.”

Huh? The L.A. Times told me that they had the tapes if I wanted to hear them when I called. There was nothing “out of context.” Why should a senior government official like Mackay, whose salary we pay for, lie, and spin for another country’s official? Why should Harper effectively say the same thing the next day?

This is the same Canadian administration that wanted us to follow America into Iraq and now has exploited the weaknesses of the Paul Martin government that allowed Defence Chief Rick Hillier to slide us into a combat role in Afghanistan — something Harper wishes to expand upon. Harper, if he had his way, would have us fighting there for years. He cannot, publicly, say that however. But that is, strangely, what he would like to do.

Yet, 70 per cent of Canadians have said they do not want Canada in a combat role. So, the Harper administration is being cautious here.

Let’s get back to Gates. The reason for Gates outburst in the first place is frustration. Simply put, the mission in Afghanistan is failing. U.S. troop levels are now more than when the invasion started 7 years ago. That is not winning. So, the finger pointing game has begun.

According to the United Nations new “Super Envoy” to Afghanistan, Britain’s no-nonsense, imperious, Paddy Anderson, “we are losing in Afghanistan - and rather than losing militarily, we are losing the political mission - and in large part we are losing the political mission because there has been a complete failure of the international community to co-ordinate efforts.” Moreover, Anderson has said that the West is only spending one-quarter the amount of troops per head in Afghanistan, and one-half the amount of aid per head of population that we put into Bosnia and Kosovo.

Losing militarily is never a problem. The West never loses militarily: the U.S. was never defeated on the ground in Vietnam, or Iraq. But it didn’t matter.

The only guerrilla war America won was against the Philippines in the (1899-1902) and against the nomadic, disorganized, American Indians throughout the nineteenth century.

More often than not, in the modern era, “winning” militarily means nothing - you still lose.

That is why it is important that foreign policy not be determined by soldiers. War is always political and winning is always about politics.

We are not winning.

America is the last country to be giving lectures on counter-insurgency. Modern counter-insurgency cannot be won. It is not only common sense it is against the Powell military doctrine of overwhelming force; against the lessons of Vietnam and Iraq, the lessons of Israel in Lebanon last summer (and the 80s), and the lessons of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan a few short decades ago.

Blame Canada.

The weekend tragedy of Bathurst, N.B. was a national story, and here in the Maritimes, a local nightmare.

By now it is well reported that eight died — seven teenage members of the Bathurst High basketball team and an elementary school teacher (the wife of the driver) — when their 15-seat van skidded out of its lane and collided with a tractor-trailer head-on, just minutes from their turn-off.

The driver, the husband and the coach, survived (if that is the word).

Among the tangled claws of vehicular wreckage twisted and torn on that cold night lie the shredded lives of so many others — so many who were not on the road that dark, winter evening, but who travel the road now, haunted.

Others in New Brunswick travel the road every day. And each time they do “the accident” will stop their thoughts.

In time, the pain will fade. But, for some, it will intensify: the distance of time magnifying the effect of what might have been: the young lives so full of that long road of promise ahead of them, one that that they will no longer travel; the days and hours as they walk now frozen time; the shadows of sunsets never to be seen.

Timothy Findley ended his glorious novel The Wars, of the First World War and remembrance, and of life’s frailty and fleetingness, with the image of a smiling breath in winter — where breath is frozen in the cold. It is seen and it disappears.

And every time people drive by they will think of “the accident” and the horror of happenstance.

We will remember their breaths.

And it started out like any other day.

John Sculley is the intrepid journalist who has written Am I Dead Yet? He has visited 35 war zones and 71 countries, has suffered innumerable death threats and has actually experienced the rather distinct pleasure of being lined up for execution in El Salvador.

 John Sculley has had guns in his face at least four times. Once upon a time a Serbian gunman even put a shotgun in his gut and pulled the trigger. Sadly, for the miscounting gunman, it was out of shells. The gunman grunted and moved on.

On my broadcast today, John Sculley lamented the fact that the media does not tell the truth — because it is easier not to, cozier even. The case in point to which he refers is the animal known as the “embedded” reporter. This creature lives at the behest of its masters and goes where the military goes, is fed by the military hand, does not bite it, sleeps in warm blankets in warm tents that the military provides, and is a cheery, willing propaganda arm for the most part. The books that are inevitably excreted by such on-the-scene “journalists” are easy to spot, easy to write, and easier to put down.

The constant retort to those who impugn the perspective of the embedded/in bed reporter is “Well, have you been there?” In other words, because they went to Afghanistan and you didn’t, that you don’t know the real story and that they do. This is a lie.

The “embedded” reporters are only seeing the Afghanistan that they want to see, and they are only seeing the Afghanistan that the military and the government wants them to see, and that they want you to see, hear, and read about. It is spin on location.

Are you really going to go stay with the military in Afghanistan and tell them they are losing, that they are misguided, that the strategy is wrong and that they should get out? I don’t think so.

When you play ball with the military you also get better access, and appear to be a “team player,” as it is much easier to praise the military mission and execution under the rubric of “supporting the troops.” It is always the easy way.

Whom would you rather trust? On one side we have journalists who have never broken a nail and who were only peripherally (if at all) under fire, and who were only fed what the chaperone gave him, or journalists like John Sculley who have had had guns in their face — people who have never had field Nannies.

Scully says Afghanistan is a loser and we should get the hell out. So do many international relations experts who have not been there in the visceral sense, but know the history and the geopolitical dimensions of the region.

You don’t need to lie under the tracks to discover that a train is coming — a train whose bar car is filled with coiffed and coddled journalists who perform as government acolytes in their wonderfully groomed capacity to ass-kiss.

Hillary Clinton’s emotionalism won.

Many thought that her moment of honestly, when her voice quivered on the campaign trail just hours before the New Hampshire primary voting, might be her undoing; and that the male-controlled media (a self-awareness and a bias either unacknowledged or repressed) jumped all over Hillary was not surprising: she was being “weak,”  an emotional woman, an estrogen-fuelled “wife,” a victim, a guilt-player — that was “the story.” If it was a man, her emotionalism would be called passion — or it wouldn’t be major news at all. Remember, Hillary’s voice cracked, she didn’t cry.

Apparently, it is okay for George W. Bush to tear up. Ronald Reagan did it many times in a wistful stare-out-the-window way. It was okay for Bill Clinton to emote — he did it all the time. Sometimes with Bill it was a confection — bullshit. But most of the time old Bill meant it.

President Bill Clinton is arguably one of the most successful campaigners and politicians in history, and he did it by wearing his heart on his sleeve. But, because Hillary is a woman, she is not allowed to do it that way without appearing weak. As a woman if you are too strong you are condemned as an ice-Queen (or that “b word”); and if you are too nice, or just emotionally honest, then you are condemned again for being “too much of a woman” — whatever that means.

The position as president is, psychologically, generally perceived in paternalistic tones, according to Dalhousie University professor Jacqueline Warwick. Perhaps that is why Ronald Reagan remains so deified in many political circles — he seemed the most obvious as a father figure and Reagan spoke with a reassuring physicality that exuded paternalistic authority.

Hillary is like voting for your mother, according to many Democrats in the primary process.

Hillary supporters however, realizing she needed help, got out the vote.

It worked for Bill. It worked for Hillary. Thy name is Clinton: brains, heart, compassion and passion.

Maybe there is something to this thing called democracy after all — despite the boy’s club.