Category: Politics

All posts on what Bismarck called “the art of the possible”

Remembrance for victims and objectors

Every year, I see the militarism and nationalism that are linked to Remembrance Day, and every year I find them at least partly objectionable. The twentieth century should be taken as a comprehensive demonstration of the immorality of war, and how dangerous it is when people adopt nationalist and militarist ideologies. Putting on a poppy and saluting the people who fought for ‘our’ side in various conflicts seems to be missing the point.

Rather than celebrate the people who happened to fight on ‘our’ side, it seems more suitable to recognize that virtually all wars have involved appalling crimes committed by the soldiers on both sides of the conflict. We need only think about the firebombing of German and Japanese cities during the second world war (to say nothing of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki) to realize that nobody comes away from major conflicts with an unblemished moral record. The only justification for such crimes is that it seemed necessary at the time to avert a still-greater evil.

Of course, many histories of war are written with retroactive justifications that do not accord well with a dispassionate examination of the historical evidence. Germany is the only country in Europe where the role of the state in perpetuating the Holocaust is unambiguously recognized and taught. People in many other countries were complicit. The trains to the death camps originated in many places, and everyone who was involved in the system bears some guilt for it. The same is true with regard to the atrocities in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia – in Russia, and China, and Congo, and every other place where human beings have engaged in or tolerated the systematic abuse and slaughter of their fellows. I personally find it deeply troubling that there are so many people who remain unapologetic about the crimes committed by ‘their side’ in the course of wars in which they participated. ‘My country right or wrong’ is one of the most damaging and dangerous mindsets people can adopt.

I think it would be much more appropriate to devote Remembrance Day to marking the suffering of all the civilians who have been caught up in wars. That includes people who were the incidental victims of military campaigns, dying either directly from weapons or indirectly from starvation or disease. It also includes the millions of victims of the intentional genocides of the twentieth century and before – crimes that could not possibly have been committed without the willingness of human beings to commit acts of violence upon the orders of their states. We should feel disgusted and angry about how easily people can be convinced to fight for states that are undertaking such programs, and actively involved in building institutional and cultural defences against such things happening again.

In that spirit, I think it would also be suitable to use Remembrance Day to celebrate those unpopular figures who have had the courage to refuse to fight – and those who had the even greater courage to speak out publicly against unjust wars. Conscientious objectors are people who have had the moral insight necessary to realize what an appalling thing wars are, and who have had the personal courage to refuse to fight. They have done so even when that choice has been harshly criticized by the other members of their societies and frequently punished by prison or worse. This has sometimes been equally true for people who have taken a public stance against war, at a time when their societies have been progressing toward it. Soldiers may deserve praise for their courage, but so do people like Dietrich Bonhoeffer – a German clergyman who spoke out against Nazism and paid for it with his life.

The world would surely be a better place if more people refused to get caught up in the drumbeat and euphoria of war. People are dangerously quick to do so, and that is something we must all guard against.

Related:

Keystone decision delayed

The Obama administration has announced that they are delaying their decision on the Keystone XL pipeline until after the 2012 election.

Some of the organizers of the protests in Washington are declaring victory, but I am still nervous about the whole thing.

For one thing, it is possible that Obama will get re-elected and then decide to approve the pipeline. Right now, he is worried about maintaining the support of his electoral base going into the presidential contest. After the election, he will never have to run again. Crucially, his own party will not be so worried about angering environmentalists. Right now, it is just possible that Democratic strategists are more scared of angry environmentalists than they are of Republicans. After the election, that will not be true and we are likely to see more of the same sort of compromises that have kept Guantanamo Bay open and prevented carbon pricing legislation from passing.

Of course, it is also possible that Obama will lose the election and be replaced by a Republican who is keen on digging up and importing as much as possible from the oil sands. It seems to me that having the Obama administration say no to the pipeline before the election would be preferable to them simply putting off the decision.

Even if Keystone XL is now dead, there is still more work to do. The next step is to block the Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipeline, which will seek to transport crude oil from the oil sands to the west coast of Canada. There are also plans to export oil sands crude by rail and to expand the Kinder Morgan TMX pipeline.

Bad economic news from Europe

The latest news about the sovereign debt crisis Europe is far from encouraging:

I have been examining and re-examining the situation, trying to find the potential happy ending. It isn’t there. The euro zone is in a death spiral. Markets are abandoning the periphery, including Italy, which is the world’s eighth largest economy and third largest bond market. This is triggering margin calls and leading banks to pull credit from the European market. This, in turn, is damaging the European economy, which is already being squeezed by the austerity programmes adopted in every large euro-zone economy. A weakening economy will damage revenues, undermining efforts at fiscal consolidation, further driving away investors and potentially triggering more austerity. The cycle will continue until something breaks. Eventually, one economy or another will face a true bank run and severe capital flight and will be forced to adopt capital controls. At that point, it will effectively be out of the euro area. What happens next isn’t clear, but it’s unlikely to be pretty.

It is depressing that politicians around the world have put so much effort (and money) into trying to stabilize the global economy all through the complex aftermath of the subprime crisis, and that they have not managed to do so yet. Certainly, Europe’s problems have additional causes, over and above those linked to the previous credit crunch. These include the domestic politics of countries like Greece, as well as the political and monetary design of the European Union and the Euro.

It’s impossible to predict exactly what will happen, but I very much hope the European Union is able to keep together. While there are many practical challenges associated with the project of European integration, it seems like a very positive undertaking from a human perspective. The European Union embodies the recognition that nation-states are too small to deal with the world’s problems and they need to find ambitious and effective ways of working together. That is especially true now, when economic factors threaten to undermine the whole enterprise.

Previously: Sovereign debt crises in the EU

Crime and pollution

The way in which many political conservatives are obsessed with crime but unconcerned about environmental degradation strikes me as strange and internally inconsistent. It seems to me that pollution and crime are generally objectionable for the same reasons, and that the justification for the state making effort to reduce both is similar as well.

The two types of crime that are most relevant here are those that involve financial harm and those involving physical harm to a person. Burglary is an example of the first sort, while assault is an example of the second. When someone commits a burglary or assault, they are choosing to assert their will on an innocent victim, who suffers either in terms of lost goods or in terms of personal injury or death. The state recognizes this assertion as unfair and something to be avoided, and creates and enforces criminal sanctions as a mechanism for discouraging these behaviours. We see situations in which groups of criminals have complex organizations that produce large revenues through crime as exceptionally objectionable, and exceptionally worthy of intervention by the state.

When a company or an individual chooses to emit toxic substances into the air or the water – or when they choose to dangerously alter the climate – they are imposing the same sort of harm on the general public that the burglar or the assailant does. The acid rain resulting from the operation of a coal-fired power plant could cause economic harm, such as when it kills fish or trees. Pollution also causes personal injury and death.

So how can many conservatives call for ‘cracking down’ on crime, while simultaneously criticizing environmental regulations and promising to scale them back for the benefit of business? The most plausible explanation seems to be an unwillingness of inability to look beyond the most immediate consequences of an action. When a man in a mask stabs another man and takes his wallet, it is clear what has taken place. The full consequences are less clear when a mine or factory seems to be producing useful products, generating profits, and producing employment – while simultaneously hurting or killing people through the production of toxic by-products or contribution to dangerous climate change.

From a more psychological perspective, perhaps the difference in intention is given undue weight by those who do not see crime and environmental damage as morally comparable. Perhaps criminals bear more moral responsibility because they recognize that their behaviours inescapably involve undeserved harm imposed on others. Of course, the same is true of educated polluters. It is no longer credible to claim that dumping mercury into the water or carbon dioxide into the air doesn’t harm people, or that people who choose to carry out these economic processes do not choose to produce these outcomes.

Perhaps the difference in viewpoint is logically connected to the way in which the recognition of interdependence undermines libertarianism. If you are determined to believe that people have an absolute right to undertake certain activities – such as driving in cars, flying in planes, or raising large numbers of pigs in industrial factory farming circumstances – then you must either deny the reality that these activities harm other people or implicitly argue that the people doing the harming have a right that takes precedence over the right that by-standers have to avoid being harmed.

Obviously, I don’t think either of these arguments are very convincing, which brings me back to my initial point. It doesn’t make much sense to get all hot and bothered about crime and to manifest that concern with tough new laws and longer sentences while simultaneously ignoring the harm that pollution causes to people and pressing for less restrictive regulations on polluting activities. If we respect the right of people not be be harmed by criminals, we should also respect their right not to be harmed by polluters.

Keystone protestors to surround White House, Nov. 6th

This Sunday, protestors opposed to the Keystone XL pipeline are planning to surround the White House, in Washington D.C.

If built, the Keystone pipeline would run from the oil sands in Alberta down to the Gulf Coast in the United States. People are rightly worried about the danger of spills over the long pipeline route. Far more worrisome, however, are the climatic consequences of digging up and burning all that oil. Given what we know about climate change, exploiting the oil sands is unethical. As such, efforts to block the oil in by preventing the construction of pipelines are to be welcomed.

This protest is a follow-up to the two-week protest I attended this summer. I wish I could attend again, but I am too busy with GRE prep to make the bus journey to Washington. Lots of others will be there, however, including Julia Louis-Dreyfus (Elaine from Seinfeld).

I really encourage those who are near Washington and concerned about climate change to attend. It may be needlessly divisive to say this, but I would argue that attending this protest would be far more productive and meaningful than attending one of the various ‘Occupy’ protests happening around North America. The demands of this action are focused and important. Blocking this pipeline would make a real difference for the future of the world, and it is plausible that a sufficient level of public pressure will drive President Obama to make that choice.

Please consider contributing to that pressure.

Occupy Toronto

This afternoon, I had a look at the Occupy Toronto protest that is mirroring Occupy Wall Street in New York.

Most protests for causes vaguely considered ‘left wing’ attract a few people intent on advocating an unrelated cause among people who they hope will be sympathetic. At climate change protests, I have seen people concerned about nuclear weapons, oppression of the Falun Gong, Palestinian statehood, and so on.

Insofar as there were meaningful and coherent messages at Occupy Toronto, they were to reform the financial system and to redistribute income from rich to poor. Mixed in was a lot of generalized anger, and a desire to punish bankers and/or the rich.

Beside the main messages were dozens of other causes that ranged from loosely affiliated to fundamentally contradictory. All told, I question whether Occupy Toronto is coherent enough to deserve to be taken seriously. There doesn’t seem to be an awareness that many of the causes advocated by some protestors clash with the objectives of other protestors. Solidarity is all well and good, but policies ultimately need to get made that support one objective or another.

There are real questions to be asked about financial regulation and redistribution of wealth. I just question whether this movement contributes intelligently to those discussions, or whether it is more a matter of unfocused energy being released.

Supreme Court supportive of InSite

The Supreme Court of Canada’s unanimous decision to support Vancouver’s safe injection site is very encouraging, particularly in the present political context. Overall, the direction of Canada’s policy toward illegal drugs is depressing and frustrating. We are choosing the emulate the country with the worst drug policy in the developed world – the United States. We are pursuing a hopeless policy of prohibition, while trying to shut down options with a better chance of success, such as those that seek to reduce the harm associated with addiction.

Politicians often choose to cater to the irrational fears and biases of the general population. Judges are a bit freer to consider the ethics and evidence that bear upon a situation. That seems to be what the Supreme Court has done in this case:

During its eight years of operation, Insite has been proven to save lives with no discernible negative impact on the public safety and health objectives of Canada. The effect of denying the services of Insite to the population it serves and the correlative increase in the risk of death and disease to injection drug users is grossly disproportionate to any benefit that Canada might derive from presenting a uniform stance on the possession of narcotics.

Hopefully, this ruling will prompt a broader rethink of how Canada deals with drugs that are currently prohibited.

Related:

‘Living with very accommodating family members’ not a recognized option

Voting in a provincial election seems to be a tricky thing, if you have no fixed address.

In a federal election, someone can vouch for you as a being a resident in a particular riding. In a provincial election in Ontario, you need paperwork showing an address – something I do not have yet, as my apartment search continues.

The election authority suggested trying to get a letter from the human resources people at work, but I doubt that will be possible before Thursday’s election.