One has to wonder about the people who run the world, and those who hope to run it. Not many of them seem too interested in running it for the benefit of most of the people on it or for future generations. If they were, things would not be in such a mess today. The more I watch the performance of world leaders and those striving to be a leader, like the current crop of Republican presidential hopefuls south of the border, the more it is obvious that we are in a 21st-century society being governed by 18th and 19th-century thinking. That, of course, is assuming that there is much thinking going on at all.

The year 1848 is noted for the revolutions that swept across much of Europe. Historians in the future may write of the revolutions of 2011. What started as a popular revolt in Tunisia in late 2010 and spread throughout the Arab world has now gone worldwide as people gather everywhere to protest the current order.

The 10th anniversary of September 11, 2001 has come and gone. One could not help but notice the media was full of articles on the event, and of public officials and others holding forth on what it all meant, yadda, yadda, yadda. There was no opportunity passed up to pander to the fears and gullibility of the citizenry and feed them fantasies and half-truths. A propaganda event, in other words.

Canada's Prime Minister Stephen Harper, in his statement on the occasion, classified the event as a horrific act of terrorism. Fair enough, they all got that right, it was. But he also characterizes the acts on that day as senseless and cowardly. Really. I do not think that he is ignorant enough to believe that, but it is part of the official story that he hopes the public swallows.

It is amusing to watch the never-ending battle of opinions, often devoid of all but the tiniest sliver of fact, if that, in the political arena in the U.S. and Canada. It is particularly entertaining when observing the scene in the United States where fantasies and off-the-wall ideas seem to be a staple in political discourse between the major parties and groups like the Tea Party.

So much of what is said and taken for gospel by one side or the other appears myopic, as if people only pay attention to those parts of history that they find favourable while ignoring the rest. One might reasonably conclude that many do not pay any attention to history at all, aside from the spin that they pick up, created to push one view or another.

The election season is upon us: first the federal election on May 2, then an election this summer on the fate of the HST, possibly a provincial election in the late summer or autumn depending upon how Premier Clark feels, and then the municipal elections in November. If Clark goes for it that will be seven elections in three years. Voter fatigue, anyone?

The HST referendum is the interesting one as the public gets to make a direct decision on something, rather than pick which bag of promises looks better. Unfortunately the decision is limited, and the public only gets to choose between which kind of goring it would prefer.

Those who follow the international news will know that the nutcase pastor down in Florida burned a copy of the Koran. This prompted the President of Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai, to call for the arrest of the pastor resulting in a bunch of yahoos in Afghanistan rioting in protest and in Mazar-i-Sharif even killing UN aid personnel. Western governments criticized the action, General Petraeus, commander of NATO forces, condemned the act, and even the reactionary commentator Bill O'Reilly condemned it, saying that the pastor, Terry Jones, had blood on his hands.

March 18, 2011

Candidates:

I, and many others, are concerned about the most pressing problem of our time and are looking for leaders who will put this problem foremost in their policy. It is a core problem that many of our other problems are connected to, and if we do not solve it first it will prevent any lasting solution for the other issues that are being addressed.

The Liberal and New Democratic parties are coming into the homestretch on their run to choose a new leader. The Libs will pick one this weekend, and B.C. will have a new premier. Seven weeks later the NDP will choose, and who knows how long before the new premier decides to call an election. Speculation is sometime before the 2013 mandated date.

The most important issue facing the province, in fact facing the world, is stabilization of the environment and the development and implementation of policies to insure a sustainable ecological system that can continue to support human society without a radical readjustment of that society. A readjustment that is certain to come if we continue to alter our ecosystem at to the degree and at the rate that we currently do.

Anyone who follows the news knows that last month U.S. Congress Woman Gabrielle Giffords was shot in Tucson. Those who follow a lot of news also know that this incident has generated a lot of finger pointing and other reactions (some might say overreactions) from both sides of the political spectrum. Given the degree of polarization and lack of civil dialogue in the U.S. at the moment, none of this is surprising.

Before the smoke had even cleared in the shopping mall blame was being laid on the Tea Party and their ilk for creating a poisonous atmosphere in the country that led to this sort of violence. Of course the TP types struck back with all sorts of rationalizations as to why they were in no way to blame for something like this. That, of course, is a fantasy.