Men kill, Women Do Too - Sometimes.
"Why can't a woman be more like a man?" asked Professor Henry Higgins in the Lerner and Lowe 1950's musical, 'My Fair Lady'. Yet if you scan the crime statistics in Canada, maybe you'd reverse the words and ask, "Why can't a man be more like a woman/"
For if men were more like women in committing crimes, a lot more Canadians would be alive.
Let's look at the stats. Men do most of the killing and commit most crimes. In 2013 there were 452 homicides in Canada. Men did 400 of these homicides. And women? Just 52.
In fact men commit most of all crimes. Close to 9 in 10 crimes including, theft, laundering money, breaking and entering and selling illegal drugs are done by men.
Women match men's crimes in prostitution and doing fraud. Yet even in fraud cases, men's gains far outstrip women's share of the proceeds.
Now this doesn't mean that women can't be criminals and that women can't kill. Of course they can. "Women are not necessarily less aggressive," says Wikipedia. "But they tend to show their aggression in more overt and less physical ways."
Anne Campbell is a woman who's studied aggression. She says that females avoid physical aggressiveness and instead use different tactics than men to achieve their goals."Women, says Campbell use "friendship termination, ostracisms," or cutting a person out of their lives, and stigmatizing or labelling people as bad humans.
Professor Montserrat Huguet, a Spanish professor who's studied wars says that women have fought in many wars. yet this fact is often ignored. War is a learned response, says Huguet, and men and women can both learn to kill inwar.
"Gender is irrelevant here."
Men not only do 90 per cent of the murders. In powerful countries like the United States and Russia, they start most of the wars. Women leaders like British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher had no problems starting a war with Argentina in 1981. Condoleeza Rice was a key foreign policy adviser to U.S. President George W. Bush. She was as hawkish as her boss in sending troops to Iraq in 2003.
Still, men do start most of the wars because basically until now they've usually headed up most countries.
Yet in short, men are more violent and far more potentially violent than women.
Why is this? here controversy rages. Some feminists have argued that men are intrinsically violent and women are not. This is close to the title of John Gray's best seller called 'Men are From Mars; Women are From Venus.' Mars was the god of war in ancient Greek mythology; Venus was the goddess of love.
Then a psychologist, a woman I believe, pointed out that women solve conflicts by talking things out and bringing people together. A man's way of resolving conflict is often with his fists. Yet another expert Jesse J. Prinz zeroed in on man's superior strength which gave men an advantage when raising and taming cattle. To-day, men still have more economic power than women and as pointed out already, still rule most countries.
"Violence," writes Prinz, "is a complex problem which no simple biological approach can diagnose or remedy." In short, men's testerone does not cause their violence.
More equality can lower male violence, Prinz believes. the more equal women become to men, the less violence men do. Crime stats in Canada may be used here to back this up. In the 1980's 650 people were killed in Canada every year, mostly by men. In between then and now, men gained power and did things their mothers never could. Many women practised law or medicine, built homes, drove buses and worked as accountants and became politicians. To-day the number of homicides has shrunk to about 450.
At the same times crime rates have fallen too. Of course this does not prove that women's drive for equality does lower crime numbers. As scientist always caution scientific beginners, "Correlation is not causation.' Still, it does seem that Henry Higgins's plea for women to become more like men is way out of date. And that's good for all Canadians. men as well as women.
Saturday 31 January 2015
Wednesday 21 January 2015
The Artist and The Prime Minister
The Artist and The Prime Minister
He was a painter whose distorted figures and faces of people he painted gave new meaning to the words 'mindlessness or 'airhead'. She was a no-nonsense prime minister who gutted one social program after another. Yet in one way they were very similar.
Britain's Margaret Thatcher was prime minister when she found out that the visual artist Francis Bacon was going to have an exhibition of his works in Moscow.
The very politically conservative Thatcher was astounded. "Not that dreadful man who paints those horrible pictures," she exclaimed. Now most people who read about Bacon or Thatcher would assume that they have nothing in common, except that both of them lived in Britain and for a while at the same time. Yet one thing did unite them and that was their politics.
Thatcher was the most conservative prime minister that Britain had since the 1930's. But Bacon was a right-winger too.
Thatcher was the daughter of a shopkeeper and a conventional house wife. She went to Cambridge University and became a trained chemist there in the 1940's. She married a wealthy businessman Dennis Thatcher and they had two children. One of them, their son Mark got into the public eye when he was mentioned by the media who claimed he tried to cut a business deal selling armaments.
Thatcher's politics first showed up in the 1970's when she became a cabinet minister in Edward Heath's government in the 1970's. "We called her 'Thatcher the Milk Snatcher'', a British man told me. "she tried to cut the milk ration to schoolchildren."
Once Thatcher became Prime Minister in 1979 she slashed one social program after another. She abolished progressive city councils including the London City Council.In the mid-1980's she took on the coal miners who had helped bring down Ted Heath's government a decade before.
Using the police, propaganda and her total belief in her own rightness, she crushed the miners when they went out on strike. She also waged war on Argentina in the early 1980's, when the even more right wing government of Argentina's General Viola seized the British-owned Falkland or Malvinas Islands in the south Atlantic Ocean.
The British took some heavy casualties. Yet in the end they won. This war cemented Thatcher's power. "There is no alternative," she said when people complained about her policies.
Francis Bacon might have said the same. He was born into the Anglo-Irish aristocracy in 1909. His father was a horse trainer and a brutal man. He had Francis whipped when he found out that Francis was gay. Francis Bacon may have been a descendant of the 17th century philosopher of the same name.
Yet Francis despite or because of his father's brutality, was attracted to his father who gave him a taste for whipping when he grew up.
In the 1930's Bacon went to Paris and Berlin and saw some of Picasso's paintings. He went back to Britain and designed furniture and painted pictures which were influenced by Picasso's works. Bacon lived most of the time in London. In 1945 his painting 'Thee Studies for Figures At the Base of a Crucifixion' showed three long necks and shrunken heads coming out of bags.
This painting established Bacon as one of the upcoming talents. He went on to paint screaming popes, crucifixions, men making love to each other, and portraits of his friends and male lovers. The figures in his paintings usually had twisted limbs and distorted faces. By the 1960's, Bacon became Britain's most famous painter.
"Bacon's world," writes art critic Lawrence Gowing, "was centred on the human head." Many of bacon's paintings said Gowing, "show the abjrct physical reality, the unutterable misery of the knob that terminates the human being."
Bacon, says his friend and biographer Michael Poppiatt wanted to capture man's instinct. For Bacon, says Poppiatt zeroed in on man's animality.
Bacon made oodles of money and spent lots of it in drinking, gambling and eating expensive meals in fine restaurants. He bought a number of houses for himself and his lovers. Yet in London he lived in a very small house where his chaotic studio was.
Bacon's politics matched Thatcher's to a t. Though she would have loathed his frantic Bohemian life style. Bacon had no time for progressive policies like universal medicare, social housing and decent pensions.
One of his neighbours at Bacon's country home was newspaper editor Peregrine Worsthorne. Sir Peregrine was surpried by Bacon's right wing views. Bacon was a reactionary, Worsthorne said who "was an ardent supporter of the Vietnam War."
Bacon rejected all official honours that came from the British government. Still he was a hard core right winger who believed that life was a dog-eat-dog struggle for existence.
"Politics make strange bedfellows," the old saying goes. Margaret Thatcher and francis bacon never hung out together yet they would have found much to agree on. Bacon died in Spain in 1991 at the age of 81. Thatcher passed away in the 21st century.
Both of them achieved success in their careers. Famous in their lifetimes they are both remembered to-day.
He was a painter whose distorted figures and faces of people he painted gave new meaning to the words 'mindlessness or 'airhead'. She was a no-nonsense prime minister who gutted one social program after another. Yet in one way they were very similar.
Britain's Margaret Thatcher was prime minister when she found out that the visual artist Francis Bacon was going to have an exhibition of his works in Moscow.
The very politically conservative Thatcher was astounded. "Not that dreadful man who paints those horrible pictures," she exclaimed. Now most people who read about Bacon or Thatcher would assume that they have nothing in common, except that both of them lived in Britain and for a while at the same time. Yet one thing did unite them and that was their politics.
Thatcher was the most conservative prime minister that Britain had since the 1930's. But Bacon was a right-winger too.
Thatcher was the daughter of a shopkeeper and a conventional house wife. She went to Cambridge University and became a trained chemist there in the 1940's. She married a wealthy businessman Dennis Thatcher and they had two children. One of them, their son Mark got into the public eye when he was mentioned by the media who claimed he tried to cut a business deal selling armaments.
Thatcher's politics first showed up in the 1970's when she became a cabinet minister in Edward Heath's government in the 1970's. "We called her 'Thatcher the Milk Snatcher'', a British man told me. "she tried to cut the milk ration to schoolchildren."
Once Thatcher became Prime Minister in 1979 she slashed one social program after another. She abolished progressive city councils including the London City Council.In the mid-1980's she took on the coal miners who had helped bring down Ted Heath's government a decade before.
Using the police, propaganda and her total belief in her own rightness, she crushed the miners when they went out on strike. She also waged war on Argentina in the early 1980's, when the even more right wing government of Argentina's General Viola seized the British-owned Falkland or Malvinas Islands in the south Atlantic Ocean.
The British took some heavy casualties. Yet in the end they won. This war cemented Thatcher's power. "There is no alternative," she said when people complained about her policies.
Francis Bacon might have said the same. He was born into the Anglo-Irish aristocracy in 1909. His father was a horse trainer and a brutal man. He had Francis whipped when he found out that Francis was gay. Francis Bacon may have been a descendant of the 17th century philosopher of the same name.
Yet Francis despite or because of his father's brutality, was attracted to his father who gave him a taste for whipping when he grew up.
In the 1930's Bacon went to Paris and Berlin and saw some of Picasso's paintings. He went back to Britain and designed furniture and painted pictures which were influenced by Picasso's works. Bacon lived most of the time in London. In 1945 his painting 'Thee Studies for Figures At the Base of a Crucifixion' showed three long necks and shrunken heads coming out of bags.
This painting established Bacon as one of the upcoming talents. He went on to paint screaming popes, crucifixions, men making love to each other, and portraits of his friends and male lovers. The figures in his paintings usually had twisted limbs and distorted faces. By the 1960's, Bacon became Britain's most famous painter.
"Bacon's world," writes art critic Lawrence Gowing, "was centred on the human head." Many of bacon's paintings said Gowing, "show the abjrct physical reality, the unutterable misery of the knob that terminates the human being."
Bacon, says his friend and biographer Michael Poppiatt wanted to capture man's instinct. For Bacon, says Poppiatt zeroed in on man's animality.
Bacon made oodles of money and spent lots of it in drinking, gambling and eating expensive meals in fine restaurants. He bought a number of houses for himself and his lovers. Yet in London he lived in a very small house where his chaotic studio was.
Bacon's politics matched Thatcher's to a t. Though she would have loathed his frantic Bohemian life style. Bacon had no time for progressive policies like universal medicare, social housing and decent pensions.
One of his neighbours at Bacon's country home was newspaper editor Peregrine Worsthorne. Sir Peregrine was surpried by Bacon's right wing views. Bacon was a reactionary, Worsthorne said who "was an ardent supporter of the Vietnam War."
Bacon rejected all official honours that came from the British government. Still he was a hard core right winger who believed that life was a dog-eat-dog struggle for existence.
"Politics make strange bedfellows," the old saying goes. Margaret Thatcher and francis bacon never hung out together yet they would have found much to agree on. Bacon died in Spain in 1991 at the age of 81. Thatcher passed away in the 21st century.
Both of them achieved success in their careers. Famous in their lifetimes they are both remembered to-day.
Thursday 15 January 2015
Swimming For My Life
Swimming For My Life
Three times a week, come rain or shine, you'll find me churning the waters in the swimming pool at the Kerrisdale Community Centre.
"Swim or die," is my motto now in the closing years of my life. For two years ago I had a mini-stroke, or a "Transient Ischemic Attack" or a TIA as it's called.
"Your blood pressure is dangerously high," my doctor told me after I'd had the TIA. "You've got to bring it down."
Now I can only walk about six blocks a day, without a ferocious pain hitting me behind my knees at night time. So walking and running are out. So too is bicycling. All that's left for me as an exercise is swimming.
Which in the end was just fine. At the age of 10 or so, I learned to swim in an open air pool in north London. And I love swimming. I sure didn't love playing or doing other sports. I hated playing baseball since I never learned to catch a baseball or hit one no matter how fast or slow it was thrown at me. I only learned how to catch a football and throw one in my early twenties. Even then my football skills were very poor.
"You threw the ball like a girl," a friend said, even after I improved my throws and catches. Hockey? I could skate but never stick handle. As for basketball, eventually I learned to shoot a jump shot. Yet I was hopeless as a team player.
Yet put me in a swimming pool, and I feel right at home.
Of course swimming has its dangers. Every year close to 30 Canadians drown in private pools. A few old and young people even drown while taking a bath. Yet I swim in a pool with at least one life guard looking on. So hopefully I'm safe from drowning.
Swimming, by the way goes back at least 10,000 years and maybe even longer. "Rock painting in south west Egypt," says Wikipedia,"in the place called the Cave of Swimmers show people doing the breast stroke or doggy paddle." This was about 9,000 B.C.E.
Wikipedia then points out that these people maybe weren't swimming. Yet later some Egyptian clay seals show some people swimming.And there's swimmers mentioned in the Bible and the Greek classic tales like the Odyssey and the Iliad.
Competitive swimming first caught on in England in the 1830's. At the first modern Olympic Games held in Greece in 1896, there were four swimming contests, though six were planned. Since then super stars in Olympic swimming have included Americans like the 1920's athlete Johnny Weissmuller and 1970's power house Mark Spitz. My favourite swimmer right now is Diana Nyad, an aethiest I think and a former t.v. star. She swam from Cuba to Florida, a distance of 90 miles in 55 hours a few years ago.
One of the great things about swimming is that you can do it at any age. Diana Nyad is in her 60's. I'm 72, and partly disabled . I know an amputee who has no legs who swims regularly.
Swimming also fits my character. I'm an introvert who lives alone. Most of the things I do I do alone, like painting and drawing,reading books and going to movies. Swimming fits neatly into this pattern.It's also helped my health.
"Your blood pressure is way down," my doctor told me recently. Of course pills like ramipril and statins have also caused my blood pressure to plunge downwards too. Yet swimming regularly has also helped. I hope to keep swimming for some time longer.
Swimming also fits my character
Three times a week, come rain or shine, you'll find me churning the waters in the swimming pool at the Kerrisdale Community Centre.
"Swim or die," is my motto now in the closing years of my life. For two years ago I had a mini-stroke, or a "Transient Ischemic Attack" or a TIA as it's called.
"Your blood pressure is dangerously high," my doctor told me after I'd had the TIA. "You've got to bring it down."
Now I can only walk about six blocks a day, without a ferocious pain hitting me behind my knees at night time. So walking and running are out. So too is bicycling. All that's left for me as an exercise is swimming.
Which in the end was just fine. At the age of 10 or so, I learned to swim in an open air pool in north London. And I love swimming. I sure didn't love playing or doing other sports. I hated playing baseball since I never learned to catch a baseball or hit one no matter how fast or slow it was thrown at me. I only learned how to catch a football and throw one in my early twenties. Even then my football skills were very poor.
"You threw the ball like a girl," a friend said, even after I improved my throws and catches. Hockey? I could skate but never stick handle. As for basketball, eventually I learned to shoot a jump shot. Yet I was hopeless as a team player.
Yet put me in a swimming pool, and I feel right at home.
Of course swimming has its dangers. Every year close to 30 Canadians drown in private pools. A few old and young people even drown while taking a bath. Yet I swim in a pool with at least one life guard looking on. So hopefully I'm safe from drowning.
Swimming, by the way goes back at least 10,000 years and maybe even longer. "Rock painting in south west Egypt," says Wikipedia,"in the place called the Cave of Swimmers show people doing the breast stroke or doggy paddle." This was about 9,000 B.C.E.
Wikipedia then points out that these people maybe weren't swimming. Yet later some Egyptian clay seals show some people swimming.And there's swimmers mentioned in the Bible and the Greek classic tales like the Odyssey and the Iliad.
Competitive swimming first caught on in England in the 1830's. At the first modern Olympic Games held in Greece in 1896, there were four swimming contests, though six were planned. Since then super stars in Olympic swimming have included Americans like the 1920's athlete Johnny Weissmuller and 1970's power house Mark Spitz. My favourite swimmer right now is Diana Nyad, an aethiest I think and a former t.v. star. She swam from Cuba to Florida, a distance of 90 miles in 55 hours a few years ago.
One of the great things about swimming is that you can do it at any age. Diana Nyad is in her 60's. I'm 72, and partly disabled . I know an amputee who has no legs who swims regularly.
Swimming also fits my character. I'm an introvert who lives alone. Most of the things I do I do alone, like painting and drawing,reading books and going to movies. Swimming fits neatly into this pattern.It's also helped my health.
"Your blood pressure is way down," my doctor told me recently. Of course pills like ramipril and statins have also caused my blood pressure to plunge downwards too. Yet swimming regularly has also helped. I hope to keep swimming for some time longer.
Swimming also fits my character
Thursday 8 January 2015
Postscript to the story of Michael Jackson.
In my last blog I wrote that I wouldn't blame Michael Jackson for anything he did.I want to correct that statement. I condemn Jackson for bringing young boys into his bed and sleeping with them. Even if Jackson never molested these young me or boys, what he did was wrong and exploitive.
Tuesday 6 January 2015
Almost White; The Life and Times of Michael Jackson
Trying To Turn White; My Take on Michael Jackson
The great pop music composer and singer Michael Jackson became almost white. Or he tried to be.
When he died in August 2009, this black singer had trod a troubled life. His father Joseph Jackson was an abusive parent who ruled his family with an iron hand. Jackson's family preyed upon his fortune. And he died maybe from a drug overdose in his 52nd year.
Jackson started out in the music industry quite small.
He was the youngest and smallest member of the five person pop group called 'The Jackson Five'. They had about four big hits in the late 1960's and early 1970's.
"All countries are heirarchies," a socials teacher once said. "There's a top, a middle and a bottom." Yet Michael Jackson moved quickly from the bottom to the top, not only in his family but in the pop music world.
In 1982 he put out an album called 'Thriller'. Done with the aid of the top class musician and arranger Quincy Jones, the album contained many fine songs. Yet one song 'Billie Jean' stood out above all others. When Jackson combined the song with his famous Moondance, the record buyers went wild.
Now as the new MTV station played his songs on video, Jackson became a godlike star. Yet alas he ended up treading in the doomed foot steps of other American celebrities like author Ernest Hemingway, movie star Marilyn Monroe and Elvis Presley who just about inventted rock music.
Jackson by the end of the 1980's was a multimillionaire or maybe even a billionaire. Yet by the early 1980's he tried to turn into a white man. His youthful Afro haircut morphed into straight black hair. His once wide nose shrivelled into two nostrils. When a skin infection wormed its way into his skin, he started to bleach his body. Soon he tried to whiten his face.
While all this was going on black rap and hip-hop groups appeared that rejected Jackson's crossover music that appealed to whites and blacks.
"Elvis was a hero to most," rapped Chuck D of 'Public Enemy'. "But he never meant shit to me." Meanwhile Jackson squandered millions of dollars on houses, hotels, toys and private projects. He slept in the same bed with young boys, though it's unclear whether he ever molested them.
He married Lisa Marie Presley which some observers said was done to give Jackson a mainstream image. In any case he and Elvis Presley's daughter soon divorced. Then Jackson married again. Yet the children his wife produced, didn't look like Jackson.
Despite his immense wealth, Jackson lived in a country and world that was often tinged with white racism. Let's recap a little American history. Black people or Afro-Americans first came to the U.S. of A. as slaves.Then after the U.S. Civil War, slavery was abolished. Yet black people still remained at the bottom of society.They faced lynchings, anti-black riots and white terror, whenever they tried to get some justice.
The great civil rights movement of the 1950's and 1960's and the black riots and rebellions that erupted before and then immediately after the assassination of Martin Luther King Junior, swept away many racist practices. Yet black men still make up the majority of U.S. prisoners and many black people still fester in terrible and violent slums. All of this happens while a black man, namely Barack Obama sits in the White House as U.S. President.
Who can blame Michael Jackson then for trying to turn into a white man? I can't.
"I'll remember his 'Thriller' album," a doctor said to me after Jackson died. "Especially the song 'Billie Jean'." So will I and hopefully so will millions of other people. Jackson's conduct was controlled in part by white racism and his troubled childhood. I won't condemn him for anything he did. First and foremost he was a great musician.
With thanks to author Randall Sullivan for his book on Jackson called 'Untouchable:The Strange Life and Tragic Death of Michael Jackson' and The New Yorker magazine and its writer Bill Wyman.
The great pop music composer and singer Michael Jackson became almost white. Or he tried to be.
When he died in August 2009, this black singer had trod a troubled life. His father Joseph Jackson was an abusive parent who ruled his family with an iron hand. Jackson's family preyed upon his fortune. And he died maybe from a drug overdose in his 52nd year.
Jackson started out in the music industry quite small.
He was the youngest and smallest member of the five person pop group called 'The Jackson Five'. They had about four big hits in the late 1960's and early 1970's.
"All countries are heirarchies," a socials teacher once said. "There's a top, a middle and a bottom." Yet Michael Jackson moved quickly from the bottom to the top, not only in his family but in the pop music world.
In 1982 he put out an album called 'Thriller'. Done with the aid of the top class musician and arranger Quincy Jones, the album contained many fine songs. Yet one song 'Billie Jean' stood out above all others. When Jackson combined the song with his famous Moondance, the record buyers went wild.
Now as the new MTV station played his songs on video, Jackson became a godlike star. Yet alas he ended up treading in the doomed foot steps of other American celebrities like author Ernest Hemingway, movie star Marilyn Monroe and Elvis Presley who just about inventted rock music.
Jackson by the end of the 1980's was a multimillionaire or maybe even a billionaire. Yet by the early 1980's he tried to turn into a white man. His youthful Afro haircut morphed into straight black hair. His once wide nose shrivelled into two nostrils. When a skin infection wormed its way into his skin, he started to bleach his body. Soon he tried to whiten his face.
While all this was going on black rap and hip-hop groups appeared that rejected Jackson's crossover music that appealed to whites and blacks.
"Elvis was a hero to most," rapped Chuck D of 'Public Enemy'. "But he never meant shit to me." Meanwhile Jackson squandered millions of dollars on houses, hotels, toys and private projects. He slept in the same bed with young boys, though it's unclear whether he ever molested them.
He married Lisa Marie Presley which some observers said was done to give Jackson a mainstream image. In any case he and Elvis Presley's daughter soon divorced. Then Jackson married again. Yet the children his wife produced, didn't look like Jackson.
Despite his immense wealth, Jackson lived in a country and world that was often tinged with white racism. Let's recap a little American history. Black people or Afro-Americans first came to the U.S. of A. as slaves.Then after the U.S. Civil War, slavery was abolished. Yet black people still remained at the bottom of society.They faced lynchings, anti-black riots and white terror, whenever they tried to get some justice.
The great civil rights movement of the 1950's and 1960's and the black riots and rebellions that erupted before and then immediately after the assassination of Martin Luther King Junior, swept away many racist practices. Yet black men still make up the majority of U.S. prisoners and many black people still fester in terrible and violent slums. All of this happens while a black man, namely Barack Obama sits in the White House as U.S. President.
Who can blame Michael Jackson then for trying to turn into a white man? I can't.
"I'll remember his 'Thriller' album," a doctor said to me after Jackson died. "Especially the song 'Billie Jean'." So will I and hopefully so will millions of other people. Jackson's conduct was controlled in part by white racism and his troubled childhood. I won't condemn him for anything he did. First and foremost he was a great musician.
With thanks to author Randall Sullivan for his book on Jackson called 'Untouchable:The Strange Life and Tragic Death of Michael Jackson' and The New Yorker magazine and its writer Bill Wyman.
Monday 5 January 2015
Global warming And Me - a short entry.
Why I'm Not responsible For Global Warming - Or Climate Change.
In the last few years no topic has been so discussed as the topic of climate change. Whatever newspaper I read or radio station I listen to, the topic of climate change pops up.
There are people I admire like biologist David Suzuki, social critic Naomi Klein or environmentalist Bill McKibben who warn us constantly that if we don't cut back our emissions of carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide and methane, in few years the earth's temperature will soar and this would lead to global disaster.
Whenever I'm confronted by these predictions and other similar ones I always reply, "Sorry, not guilty."
First off, 20 per cent of the above gases are spewed out by the car, buses, trucks and planes. I haven't driven a car in years and I can't afford to drive one now.
Then another 20 per cent of global warming comes from producing meat, chicken, cheese, eggs and butter. I gave up eating meat and chicken years ago. Once in a while I'll spread butter on bread I'm scarfing down. Yet that doesn't happen often. The noodles I love are bathed in egg. Yet that's the only time I swallow egg-related products. I rarely if at all eat cheese. And when someone asked me if I eat chicken, I replied, "Chicken sucks."
Of course all my carbon free eating habits go out of the window come Christmas time and New Years. Yet after that I revert to normal eating habits and don't touch meat, chicken, butter and cheese for another year.
Of course the other sixty per cent of global warming comes from burning the filthy fuel called 'coal.' If B.C. Hydro burns coal to produce electricity there's nothing I can do about that. I hope that this doesn't happen but maybe it does.
In short I've been an environmentalist or green before I ever knew those concepts existed. I will continue to admire David Suzuki, Naomi Klein, Bill McKibben and countless other environmentalists. Yet I don't have to read their books or listen to them any more.
I just hope that millions of other people will listen to them.
In the last few years no topic has been so discussed as the topic of climate change. Whatever newspaper I read or radio station I listen to, the topic of climate change pops up.
There are people I admire like biologist David Suzuki, social critic Naomi Klein or environmentalist Bill McKibben who warn us constantly that if we don't cut back our emissions of carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide and methane, in few years the earth's temperature will soar and this would lead to global disaster.
Whenever I'm confronted by these predictions and other similar ones I always reply, "Sorry, not guilty."
First off, 20 per cent of the above gases are spewed out by the car, buses, trucks and planes. I haven't driven a car in years and I can't afford to drive one now.
Then another 20 per cent of global warming comes from producing meat, chicken, cheese, eggs and butter. I gave up eating meat and chicken years ago. Once in a while I'll spread butter on bread I'm scarfing down. Yet that doesn't happen often. The noodles I love are bathed in egg. Yet that's the only time I swallow egg-related products. I rarely if at all eat cheese. And when someone asked me if I eat chicken, I replied, "Chicken sucks."
Of course all my carbon free eating habits go out of the window come Christmas time and New Years. Yet after that I revert to normal eating habits and don't touch meat, chicken, butter and cheese for another year.
Of course the other sixty per cent of global warming comes from burning the filthy fuel called 'coal.' If B.C. Hydro burns coal to produce electricity there's nothing I can do about that. I hope that this doesn't happen but maybe it does.
In short I've been an environmentalist or green before I ever knew those concepts existed. I will continue to admire David Suzuki, Naomi Klein, Bill McKibben and countless other environmentalists. Yet I don't have to read their books or listen to them any more.
I just hope that millions of other people will listen to them.
Saturday 3 January 2015
' 'Gratitude' Concuding entry
Last Entry for 'Gratitude'
This is my blog and of course it's biased. So let me make three concluding points.
First off, even though I've pointed out how many union members feel no gratitude to the New Democratic Party, there's many thousands of workers in B.C. who are unionized and do vote N.D.P. election after election. As one former head of the B.C. Federation of Labour Len Guy, once told me,"If union members don't vote for the N.D.P. I don't know who does."
Unions like the B.C.G.E.U. may have negotiators who praise right wing premiers. Yet come election time, dozens of B.C.G.E.U. officials flood into N.D.P. campaign offices. Like many other unions, the B.C.G.E.U. gives lots of money to the N.D.P. before and during elections.
Jean Swanson, the long-time anti-poverty activist is not hated on the downtown eastside. Far from it. Many of the poor people who live there, admire Swanson. Some of them revere her.
Billy Taylor may have made enemies among members of the Cree nation. Yet many Cree aboriginals admire him. And before I get on my high horse to denounce those who show no gratitude, I too have been guilty of being helped by people and then never thanking them. One man who drove me to school for one entire
year never saw me again after that.
"You just used me," he said when he ran into me a few years
later. So as the 20th century American movie star Mae West used to say, "I'm no angel." Nor was he the first person I used and then vanished from. with no thanks give.
Ingratitude I conclude has been shown by me and many others. Alas it's just part of life.
This is my blog and of course it's biased. So let me make three concluding points.
First off, even though I've pointed out how many union members feel no gratitude to the New Democratic Party, there's many thousands of workers in B.C. who are unionized and do vote N.D.P. election after election. As one former head of the B.C. Federation of Labour Len Guy, once told me,"If union members don't vote for the N.D.P. I don't know who does."
Unions like the B.C.G.E.U. may have negotiators who praise right wing premiers. Yet come election time, dozens of B.C.G.E.U. officials flood into N.D.P. campaign offices. Like many other unions, the B.C.G.E.U. gives lots of money to the N.D.P. before and during elections.
Jean Swanson, the long-time anti-poverty activist is not hated on the downtown eastside. Far from it. Many of the poor people who live there, admire Swanson. Some of them revere her.
Billy Taylor may have made enemies among members of the Cree nation. Yet many Cree aboriginals admire him. And before I get on my high horse to denounce those who show no gratitude, I too have been guilty of being helped by people and then never thanking them. One man who drove me to school for one entire
year never saw me again after that.
"You just used me," he said when he ran into me a few years
later. So as the 20th century American movie star Mae West used to say, "I'm no angel." Nor was he the first person I used and then vanished from. with no thanks give.
Ingratitude I conclude has been shown by me and many others. Alas it's just part of life.
Gratitude - Continued
' Gratitude' contnued
This is a story about gratitude and when it's given and when it's not. In the first part of this blog entry I talked about a union that never said thanks when it was needed. So let's stick to this theme and talk about another union called the B.C. Government Employees Union. The 'BC Goo' as it's sometimes called is one of the major public sector unions in British Columbia.
Its more than 30,000 members toil away as social workers, court reporters, data entry work and highway maintenance workers. Some work in provincially owned liquor stores, stacking shelves, recording sales as cashiers, and putting sale prices on liquor bottles. In 2014 the liquor stores staff got a new contract after some hard bargaining with the usually anti-union B.C. Liberal government. B.C. premier Christy Clark took part in the bargaining sessions.
"I think she's a brilliant politician," David Vipond, the B.C.G.E.U.'s chief negotiator said of Premier Clark. "She's got a lot of skill."
Flash back about 40 years. At this time, the N.D.P. government of Dave Barrett just about created the present BCGEU. Before Barrett's time in power, government workers scuffled long and hard to get any rights. The reigning B.C. premier of the 1950's and 1960's, W.A.C. Bennett was a right-wing Social Creditor who decided what if any raises government workers would get. He decided everything else about their working conditions too.
Once Barrett's government was elected in 1972, everything changed. The B.C.G.E.U.'s new leader English-born John Freyer helped forge a genuine union. He negotiated members's rights, wages, and so on. Yet he and his aides were helped by Barrett's Minister of Labour, the former railway worker Bill King. King encouraged and helped form the present B.C.G.E.U.
What a difference this was from W.A.C. Bennett's day.
"The B.C.G.E.U. couldn't negotiate its way out of a paper bag," one union official from another public sector union scornfully remarked about the B.C.G.E.U. "Have you ever seen its members on a picket line? They go out on strike once in a blue moon. Everything they won at first they were given by the N.D.P. government."
This comment was a bit unfair. Yet without doubt if the N.D.P. hadn't formed a government once in a while, the 'BC Goo' would be a very weak union indeed.
Yet 40 or so years later here was B.C.G.E.U. negotiator praising Liberal premier Christy Clark to the skies. The NDP that sits usually in opposition and helped create the B.C.G.E.U.? Vipond didn't even give them a mention. Or maybe he did but the media never reported. there was no gratitude here.
Of course 40 years is a very long time. So maybe you can forgive the unions I've mentioned. So let me add a personal anecdote. In 1981 I went down to Vancouver City Hall on behalf of a future housing co-op. I and another housing co-op member
went before the 11 member city council and asked the council for a six month property tax deferral so our money-starved co-op could start being built. Before that meeting I lobbied three council members to support our tax deferral plan. The deferral went through after some discussion.
After that I went to at least 15 more co-op meetings. I was also put through the grinder by an official from Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation or CMHC as it was known. CMHC oversaw housing co-ops back then and this lady from CMHC forced me to find out the rents from 50 nearby apartments and then rank them from 1 to 50.
"You've got 48 hours to do this," she firmly informed me.
I moved into the co-op in the late summer of 1982. After that I went to dozens of meetings and did help track down a a handy man. That took me over 14 hours on one weekend.
But then danger struck. "Dave," someone informed me over the phone in 1995. "There's a group of people who want to throw you out of here. They held a meeting of 14 people last night. They don't like you.
I know what had happened. A few days before I was phoned, I had an argument with the group's leader, a short chunky woman who tried to bully me and others. Still at great cost to myself I kept my cool. I recalled what a sociology instructor had told me years ago. "The bigger the group, the more likely it is to split into at least two factions."
Which is what happened to this group. Soon, nobody talked about kicking me out. They were now fighting with each other.
Of course I am not the easiest person to get on with. I have a terrible temper, and a wide streak of paranoia, talk too much and panic easily. I sure offended people in the 42 unit co-op I still live in to-day. But this incident taught me once again, that many people show no gratitude to those who help them.
This is a story about gratitude and when it's given and when it's not. In the first part of this blog entry I talked about a union that never said thanks when it was needed. So let's stick to this theme and talk about another union called the B.C. Government Employees Union. The 'BC Goo' as it's sometimes called is one of the major public sector unions in British Columbia.
Its more than 30,000 members toil away as social workers, court reporters, data entry work and highway maintenance workers. Some work in provincially owned liquor stores, stacking shelves, recording sales as cashiers, and putting sale prices on liquor bottles. In 2014 the liquor stores staff got a new contract after some hard bargaining with the usually anti-union B.C. Liberal government. B.C. premier Christy Clark took part in the bargaining sessions.
"I think she's a brilliant politician," David Vipond, the B.C.G.E.U.'s chief negotiator said of Premier Clark. "She's got a lot of skill."
Flash back about 40 years. At this time, the N.D.P. government of Dave Barrett just about created the present BCGEU. Before Barrett's time in power, government workers scuffled long and hard to get any rights. The reigning B.C. premier of the 1950's and 1960's, W.A.C. Bennett was a right-wing Social Creditor who decided what if any raises government workers would get. He decided everything else about their working conditions too.
Once Barrett's government was elected in 1972, everything changed. The B.C.G.E.U.'s new leader English-born John Freyer helped forge a genuine union. He negotiated members's rights, wages, and so on. Yet he and his aides were helped by Barrett's Minister of Labour, the former railway worker Bill King. King encouraged and helped form the present B.C.G.E.U.
What a difference this was from W.A.C. Bennett's day.
"The B.C.G.E.U. couldn't negotiate its way out of a paper bag," one union official from another public sector union scornfully remarked about the B.C.G.E.U. "Have you ever seen its members on a picket line? They go out on strike once in a blue moon. Everything they won at first they were given by the N.D.P. government."
This comment was a bit unfair. Yet without doubt if the N.D.P. hadn't formed a government once in a while, the 'BC Goo' would be a very weak union indeed.
Yet 40 or so years later here was B.C.G.E.U. negotiator praising Liberal premier Christy Clark to the skies. The NDP that sits usually in opposition and helped create the B.C.G.E.U.? Vipond didn't even give them a mention. Or maybe he did but the media never reported. there was no gratitude here.
Of course 40 years is a very long time. So maybe you can forgive the unions I've mentioned. So let me add a personal anecdote. In 1981 I went down to Vancouver City Hall on behalf of a future housing co-op. I and another housing co-op member
went before the 11 member city council and asked the council for a six month property tax deferral so our money-starved co-op could start being built. Before that meeting I lobbied three council members to support our tax deferral plan. The deferral went through after some discussion.
After that I went to at least 15 more co-op meetings. I was also put through the grinder by an official from Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation or CMHC as it was known. CMHC oversaw housing co-ops back then and this lady from CMHC forced me to find out the rents from 50 nearby apartments and then rank them from 1 to 50.
"You've got 48 hours to do this," she firmly informed me.
I moved into the co-op in the late summer of 1982. After that I went to dozens of meetings and did help track down a a handy man. That took me over 14 hours on one weekend.
But then danger struck. "Dave," someone informed me over the phone in 1995. "There's a group of people who want to throw you out of here. They held a meeting of 14 people last night. They don't like you.
I know what had happened. A few days before I was phoned, I had an argument with the group's leader, a short chunky woman who tried to bully me and others. Still at great cost to myself I kept my cool. I recalled what a sociology instructor had told me years ago. "The bigger the group, the more likely it is to split into at least two factions."
Which is what happened to this group. Soon, nobody talked about kicking me out. They were now fighting with each other.
Of course I am not the easiest person to get on with. I have a terrible temper, and a wide streak of paranoia, talk too much and panic easily. I sure offended people in the 42 unit co-op I still live in to-day. But this incident taught me once again, that many people show no gratitude to those who help them.
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