One Is Enough

My wife reminded me the other day that it was right about this time of year, 20 years ago that we first met. It'll be 18 years this summer since we married and, unless there's something she's hiding from me, our marriage is by all considerations, inside and out, happy and healthy.

Which isn't to say we live a life of wine and roses. We are a pretty standard Canadian family with two kids and three cats living in a fairly standard 3-bedroom home in a standard subdivision in a standard municipality. If you take the opening theme song to Weeds (Little Boxes) and downgrade the neighbourhood by about 1/3, you'd have us.

I was thinking about married life in Canada because there is ongoing controversy in British Columbia about polygamous marriages where men have more than one wife and they all live together and raise kids. In our case, this is a fringe practice and the current court focus is on the community of Bountiful, B.C. where residents are a splinter group of the Mormons (Church of Latter Day Saints). Now, seeing as even the regular Mormons are committed to following the doctrine of Joseph Smith, a known shyster who received the word of God in a language only he, conveniently, understood, it's hard to say exactly how screwed up the Bountiful crew is. I lived in that area for two years in my early 20s and got to see them close up as they traveled the streets in long dresses, kerchiefed hair and running shoes but I couldn't even venture a guess as to how their worldview operates.

I think this is more like a commune with Bibles than anything else but it's not for me to decide the faith and beliefs of others as long as they extend me the same courtesy.

In thinking about marriage, I can't really come up with a good reason why a person shouldn't have more than one spouse as long as all involved are consenting adults. I doubt this is the case in Bountiful where children are indoctrinated from birth but I could make the same argument about traditional marriage - we are brought up to believe one spouse at a time. (Historically, it would even make sense to have multiple partners - men can impregnate numerous women at a time and women would have sought virile, strong men who offered food and protection.) There isn't really a concrete reason unless you want to cite Judeo-Christian values. As much as I agree with most of these values, it doesn't necessarily make them more valid.

The arguments against polygamy seem to be:

a) it flies in the face of our societal structure. Well, people said the same thing about gay marriage (which I totally support) which is now legal in Canada. So far, our society seems to have survived it pretty well.

b) it goes against scripture. I give that about as much weight as I do to Joseph Smith.

c) people involved in these marriages are forced or coerced. This could very well be true. But the remedy to that is to prosecute individuals for marrying those below the age of consent or who have had sexual relations with an individual under the age of consent.

d) it will open the door to more islamic creep in our society. I'm sure not crazy about that idea but that's our fault for letting islamists come here in the first place. In reality, one suspects, most of the concern in Bountiful is actually aimed at islam as it is the only other slice of Canadian society that would actively seek multiple marriages. We can solve this problem by tightening up our immigration laws.

e) it will be more expensive in terms of benefits and other entitlements. This might also be true but then we don't have an upper limit for how many people can be in a traditional family. If mom and dad are strict Catholics and have 12 kids, the impact is going to be the same as a family with three wives each having three kids.

Really, the most compelling reason I can think of not to be married to more than one woman, at least concurrently, is because women are complicated creatures. I have enough trouble remembering all the little things I need to do or not do to keep up my end of the marriage contract (somehow, in our vows, I think I ended up with "obey").

I have a feeling that polygamy will eventually be legal in Canada. Other than creating some more work for lawyers, I don't think there will be any drastic fallout.

Flaming Mo's legacy

So, leaders around the arab world are all of a sudden in deep shit thanks to one Tunisian, Mohammed Bouazizi,who set himself on fire Dec. 17 in a protest, reportedly, against unemployment in his home country. Ten days ago or so, the Tunisian government fell and now there are protests shaking regimes all over North Africa and Middle East.

This eruption in some of the poorest and most corrupt countries of the world is very interesting but I seriously doubt it's going to herald in some new era of growth in that part of the world. In Egypt, for instance, where long-time dictator Hosni Mubarak seems to be in some trouble, a power vacuum would likely give rise or at least increased power to the Muslim Brotherhood. How that could be good for Egyptians - well, other than the ones who are in the Muslim Brotherhood - is beyond me. Perhaps a poll of some Coptic Christians could shed some light...

As someone whose few remaining relatives survived not only the nazis but then the communists as well before escaping to North America, I was brought up to believe totalitarianism in all its forms must be rejected. The vast majority of arab nations are run by absolute bastards but it's not like there are a bunch of democracy-touting populists waiting in the wings to raise their people from poverty and oppression. More likely would be brutal crackdowns to stabilize the existing power structure or brutal crackdowns on those opposed to whomever takes over. That is the existing legacy of the Middle East, whether we choose to admit it or not.

It's not easy to care too much about what happens to the arab street. I can't find a lot of redeeming qualities out there. I'd love to see some freedom flourish in these regressive countries but I'm way too cynical by both nature and intelligence to believe it's coming anytime soon. This isn't post-Berlin Wall Germany. In the Middle East, even when uprisings succeed, what follows is generally anything but pretty - witness Iran following the shah's ouster in 1979 or Lebanon which, as of this week, is now essentially being run by hezbollah.

On the other hand, it is nice to see them protesting something other than Israel for once.

There sure a lot of cobwebs in here for me to clean out

Okay, so it's been 3.5 years since I last made a post to this blog.

I don't even know if people still bother blogging with Twitter and Facebook having overrun the interweb. Twitter seems kind of desperate ("I have something to say and you need to know it RIGHT NOW") to me and Facebook is just annoying.

There are, of course, your very large blogging communities where people of similar views on one issue or another tend to congregate. I never really got the point of a lot of those: "Here's my opinion which is going to be pretty much the same opinion every day and I really only want people who agree with it to respond. If you don't agree with it, me or one of my moderators will likely toss you."

Then there are messageboards where people of absolutely opposing views shout shrilly at one another with endless ad hominem attacks, strawman arguments, red herrings and complete fabrications. For a long time I used one of those boards but, as with this blog, I ended up just stopping, cold turkey. It became over run with extremely angry and personal attacks based largely on whether you supported or did not support Barack Obama. I doubt very much it is unique in that regard.

So, why do any internet writing at all? Well, like a lot of people, I'm opinionated. Or, depending on your perspective, I'm an opinionated asshole. Also, a person whom I have a lot of respect for advised me recently that my blog had been enjoyable. Stopping was never a conscious "I quit" decision. It was more like one day became 1200 or so. At the time, it seemed I had presented my viewpoint on issues that were important to me.

Last night, I re-read the posts I made 3.5 - 4 years ago. It was interesting to see what had changed in the world since then and what, sadly, had remained essentially the same. Also, I could look at what I had predicted what would happen in certain places or to certain people. Anyone who wants to - though I can't really imagine why anyone would - can judge for themselves whether I can compete with all the brilliant talking heads infesting 24/7 news channels.

I'll probably get to some more stuff in the coming days and weeks now that I've fallen off the wagon. Or, maybe I'll forget my password again and we'll see what the world looks like in 2015.

This being the 40th anniversary of the 1967 Summer of Love, I've noticed a lot of newspaper and magazine articles extolling the virtues of the mid-60s and, to be fair, a few that have actually questioned them.

I imagine this is due to a couple of factors. One would be that most editors of larger dailies and magazines are in their 50s and were teenagers during the heyday of that chaotic time. The second is that baby boomers are by far the most self-absorbed generation that has ever walked on planet Earth and the mid-1960s was the time when they were coming into their own. Those who can remember anything about those days, I'm sure, remember how they were busy changing the world.

Being born in 1965, the first post-baby boom year, means I basically missed out on the 60s. Instead of LSD, free love and the most creative period of rock and roll, I got the AIDS scare, disco and Reagan's War on Drugs. My memories of the 60s are largely restricted to the moon landing and watching teenagers smoke pot (though I didn't know that that was what it was) on front porch of our New Jersey home because my parents were nice enough to let them stand there if it was raining while waiting for their school bus.

I'm not really bitter about missing out. I grew up with the music and, despite Reagan, managed to indulge most of my curiousities about drugs when I was a teen. Could have used some of that free love but AIDS wasn't the 60s fault...

What I don't like about the 60s legacy is the ongoing concept that the protest and social change movements of the day are applicable today. If anything the opposite is true: the leftover hippies and those they have influenced have become the far-left and the far-left quashes free speech and supports horrible political systems around the world. They do this because they have somehow arrived at the incredibly misguided conclusion that their lives are more sacred than everyone else's lives and that appeasement, no matter how grotesque, is better suited to dealing with problems than ever using our armaments in anger.

Much of the media is a major supporter of this approach, going out of its way, for instance, to trumpet loudly every lost life while almost never publicizing the good that is coming out of efforts in places like Afghanistan or that could come out of Iraq if the US were allowed to deal with the terrorist elements and their supporters properly. The other places where the leftist culture of the 60s flourish include our universities which, perhaps more than any other single institution, has allowed the dippy part of hippie to take centre stage, churning out generations of far-left mush heads who didn't even need acid to get that way.

Forty years on, the world is a much changed place. Most of those people have probably given up smoking pot and sleeping around. A few may even have traded in their Bob Dylan albums for, well, Bob Dylan CDs. But, unfortunately, the political hangover continues and it's strangling our growth in horrible ways. It is time we buried the 60s alongside Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix.

The Surreal Days of Summer

It's actually way too nice here to sit at a computer blogging which explains why I haven't bothered much lately. But, a couple of items in the past couple of days have caught my attention. And, no, I'm not talking about the Simpsons Movie which was absolutely wonderful; these things are far more surreal than anything Matt Groening and company could have dreamed up.

The first is the announcement this morning that the UN has finally agreed to send 19,000 troops to the Sudan in an effort to stop the murderous arab janjaweed from their genocide on the innocent black Sudanese populace.

The surreal part is: those 19,000 troops will only have a limited role in combat operations and that they will only go if the Sudanese government lives up to its agreement to have them there.

Inasmuch as the Sudanese government is sponsoring the janjaweed and their slaughter, the chance of Khartoum all of a sudden thinking this is a good idea is about as great as Al Gore all of a sudden admitting the polar ice caps aren't melting and the world is cooling off. It ain't gonna happen.

Anyone with half a brain - thereby excluding anyone connected to the UN - knows the only reason the Sudanese government made their so-called "agreement" in the first place was to stall further sanctions and isolation.

What's needed in Sudan is armed intervention with a strict mandate of killing the janjaweed and restoring order. And, if the government falls at the same time, well, one less islamoshithead government on planet Earth would also be good.

But, then, that's not going to happen either, because the West is too busy gazing at its navel to actually intervene and save innocent lives.

The second - even more surreal occurrence - was the US administration's announcement that they're going to beef up arms supplies to Middle East nations Egypt and Saudi Arabia by billions of dollars.

According to Condolleezza Rice, who must ponder which face to wear each day, this will help battle extremism in the ME. Uh, Ms Rice...the Saudis are the main sponsor of extreme Islam around the globe. Sure, they may not announce it loudly as the madmorons of Iran do, but there is simply zero question that radical Islam flourishes because the Saudi wahabbist movement pours money into making it so.

Much more likely is that the Bushies are sending more money to Saudi Arabia because the Saudis have a lot of money invested in the US, the Bushies have always been far too buddy/buddy with the Saudis and they don't want the House of Saud to fall. Unfortunately, George and company are ignoring history yet again. It has long been proven that propping up dictatorships only hurts freedom in the end.

As for Egypt: the US has been giving the Egyptians money for years. And, the US gain from that has been that the Egyptians use the money to foment anti-US sentiment and to crush independent thought in their own country. Yes, that includes radical Islam but it also includes those who promote democracy and human rights.

The Bush White House has completely lost the thread. The best solution at this point - especially with the Sunnis pulling out of Iraq's government - is now: a) to announce that they have done everything they can in Iraq and that the Iraqis have only themselves to blame for the continued violence, b) to announce that they will begin immediately to remove troops from Iraq, c) that the arabs can now solve their own problems, d) to support the only relatively peaceful arabs, the Kurds and a few Gulf States like Dubai and Qatar, and negotiate some kind of solution with Turkey, e) to not send weapons to any arab nation except for Iran and when it sends weapons there, it should be by aggressively dropping them from airplanes and f) giving Israel carte blanche to deal with hostile arabs as it sees fit.

It's about freedom and the future and the vast majority of the arab world is not part of either at this moment in time and probably never will be.

Poor Sports

Ordinarily, I'd think being the commissioner of a professional sports league would be a pretty cool thing. You get to go to all the games, hang out with stars and make tons of money.

But, not last week, which might go down as the darkest moment in professional sports history, if you were to combine all the scandals from all the leagues that hit the papers.

Professional baseball: Bud Selig was forced to sit through a three game set in Milwaukee where Barry Bonds, the human steroid laboratory, could have broken Henry Aaron's all-time home run record in the city where Aaron was a long-time star and against the team that Selig once owned. But, Bud got off lucky, Bonds fell short.

Professional football: Roger Goodell, newly-appointed commissioner, now has to deal with the scandal of Michael Vick, once seen as one of the game's bright young stars - a black quarterback who could have been a role model for millions of kids. Ooops, turns out in his spare time, Vick was part of a dog-fighting ring that featured not only the inhumane "sport" of forcing dogs to fight against one another to the death but also an even more cruel side problem of people involved in the ring torturing and killing the dogs. PETA has been protesting, Vick has been indicted and Goodell has been forced to basically suspend him.

Professional golf: On the eve of the British Open, perhaps the most prestigious tournament in the world, Gary Player, one of the game's most respected elder statesmen, announces he knows that at least one player has taken steroids. WADA - the World Anti-Doping Agency headed by Canadian blowhard Dick Pound who would charge my 11-year-old is on steroids if he watched him play XBox - promptly wades into the fray. Think this is going to just go away? I doubt it.

Professional hockey: Gary Bettman, the rat who basketball sicked on hockey, is under fire because he apparently quashed a sale of the Nashville Predators to Canadian Ron Bellisle who wanted to move the team to Canada. God forbid the NHL allow teams to actually play in cities where they're wanted instead of the Deep South where they rate slightly lower than, well, dog fighting. But, this could be the end of Bettman. If he actually colluded to deny Bellisle the right to buy the team, he's in shit so deep even his ratness might drown in the sewers.

Amateur soccer but with professional players: At the World Under 20 tournament in Canada, the Chilean team gets in a fight with a bunch of Toronto cops wearing bicycle shorts. Chile promptly goes nuts, filing an offical complaint with the Canadian government. Okay, let's look at this logically: Canada has never had a soccer riot in its history because Canadians don't give a shit about soccer; the Chileans had just lost a semi-final match against South American rival Argentina that had turned vicious with 9 yellow cards handed out and something like 60+ fouls called. Who do you think was to blame? Sepp Blatter, the head of FIFA, soccer's world body, was forced to do some serious back-pedalling, especially since Canada had just set the record for the most tickets sold at the World Under 20 and had acted as a perfect host nation.

Professional cycling: the leader at the time of the Tour de France is forced to acknowledge he'd skipped as many as four urine tests due to an "administrative error" and been kicked off his national team. Where's Dick Pound when you need him?

And, the topper? NBA basketball, where David Stern is under serious heat after it was revealed a referee had been betting on games including ones he was reffing. Uh-oh...the whole league, long a disaster for its shoddy rule calling and on- and off- court antics, just took a black eye like it had been beaten by Mike Tyson. Frankly, even basketball fans probably can't take it seriously anymore.

I'm a big sports fan but the fact is there is now too much money, too many egos, too much TV involvement and a severe lack of respect for the games and the fans these days. Professional sports is heading for a fall and last week may have accelerated the descent.

No Fools Like Some Old Fools

According to my morning paper, Nelson Mandela, who turned 89 this past week, has gone completely senile.

Well, actually, the paper didn't say that but it's the only conclusion one can draw from the announcement that the former President of South Africa and the man who was a central figure in the fight to end Apartheid has compiled a "group of elders" who will come together on occasion to help solve the world's problems.

This, of course, sounds very nice. In many cultures, although not in the caucasian world, Elders are looked upon as people who, through their years have gained wisdom and insight and can guide younger people in times of difficulty. Clearly, however, this is not the case with the names Mandela has chosen to associate himself with.

Among the less obnoxious names are Richard Branson - billionaire businessman with a flair for innovation and good-humoured self-promotion. Okay, I don't mind Branson. There's also Peter Gabriel, the former frontman for the 70s arts band Genesis before embarking on a successful solo career. I liked Gabriel in both incarnations though I don't think he's even that old and he's certainly never done anything particularly wise or outstanding that I'm aware of. There's also Mary Robinson, the former president of Ireland. She, too, ain't that old and since she once served as UN Commissioner for Human Rights, she's obviously not that wise, either. There's also Muhammad Yunus, billionaire and Nobel Prize winner for his Green bBank which gave microloans to the poor. Don't have anything against him. Bishop Demond Tutu is also on the list, not the least one imagines, because he and Mandela go way back - I'm not particularly a fan of either because both have been highly critical of Israel while ignoring human rights violations by numerous other nations and, of course, the palestinians, showing a clear lack of objectivity.

Then there are several people I've never even heard of, or if I have heard of them, it was only in passing. They include Gro Harlem Bruntland, environmental envoy to the UN - whoopee! Also, Ela Bhatt, Indian women's rights activists. Well, East Indian women certainly do need a human rights champion, so she's probably okay.

Then, there are the downright insane. Li Zhaoxing, foreign minister of China, one of the world's most regressive nations and a major violator of human rights. He's right in there with Jimmy Carter, asshole extraordinaire and quite possibly the worst president the US has ever had, certainly the worst of the 20th century. And, topping them all: Kofi Annan, former UN head honcho, who oversaw numerous genocides while his family and cronies lined their pockets at the expense of the unfortunate and downtrodden.

This is no council of elders. This is a council of people who should exit stage left and stay exited. If anything, a few of them should be subjected to the Eskimo way of dealing with the elderly and infirm...that is, left to float away to the next world on an ice floe.

God forbid any members of younger generations look to this collection for guidance.