Even though I haven't actually read any of the Harry Potter series, nor seen any of the movies, and even if their global success has been more the product of some well-designed marketing than of their literary merit, their author has, nevertheless, accomplished something remarkable.
So I thought I'd share an interesting quote from J.K. Rowling that I came across in an unlikely place:
“I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything than what I was, and began to direct all my energy to finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one area where I truly belonged. I was set free, because my greatest fear had been realised…I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became a solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.”
Despite my criticism of its government, its military, and its founding ideology, there has always been one positive fact about the State of Israel that has provided a true - if generally non sequitur - argument in its defense:
Out of all the Middle Eastern states, within the territory it captured in 1948, freedom of expression has been the strongest.
It's been hardly ideal, mind you, considering that people were still jailed for advocating against Zionism, but it has still, traditionally, been legal for people within the Green Line to write, talk, and demonstrate for the Palestinians, about what has happened to them, and it has remained legal for some of them (particularly Jews) to point out the problems that Zionism has wrought.
With the passage of these laws, Netanyahu and Lieberman have again changed the score in the Middle East, and not in Israel's favour. Where the Arabs are moving towards freedom, laying down their lives for the right to write and say what they want, the Knesset is curtailing those rights. While the Turkish government is finally making some move to reduce the restrictions on Kurdish culture and language, the Israeli government is making it illegal to talk about what happened to the Palestinians in 1948.
I don't say this with any schadenfreude. It would be nice to feel some pleasure at watching the State of Israel descend into fascism, but it isn't humanly possible. It is, however, possible to hope that this signals the conflict entering its final phase, and that Zionism will finally be forced to take a look at itself in the mirror to see what it has become.
There are fewer things more symbolic of the mysoginy of Arab culture than the Saudi ban on women driving. With no basis in any Islamic text, and the majority of scholarly opinion from Iran to England being against it, the ban epitomizes the backwardness of this 21st century kingdom, not just for non-Muslim liberals who cluck admonishingly at the repression of women, but for Muslims whose feeling about it range from anger to embarrassment.
Thanks to this woman, it might be about to change:
Either Stephen Harper doesn't understand Canadian democracy, or his opinion of the Canadian public is so low that he believes that we don't.
Either he has no recollection of what he himself proposed in 2004 in order to bring down Paul Martin, or he believes that Canadians have such a poor grasp of history that we won't recall it.
Either he is being profoundly - if honestly - mistaken about a matter that he has chosen to make the centrepiece of his campaign, or he is being viciously mendacious with the public, along with his own supporters.
As the always astute Gilles Duceppe pointed out, here is what Harper himself wrote to Adrienne Clarkson in 2004: I don't know whether or not Harper's focus on process issues rather than policy will be successful or not. On both counts, however, his party is taking Canada away from its traditions as a parliamentary democracy and towards an American-style of politics. On the process front, they are doing this by:
1) Fostering the impression that we directly elect the Prime Minister (as in a Presidential system) rather than local MPs.
2) Trying to collapse the opposition parties, who together represent the Canadian tradition of the representation of significantly divergent viewpoints, into a single entity - the "Coalition."
3) Relying on personal attack ads, both during and before the election, to shift the discussion from issues to personalities.
4) Ending the per-vote subsidy, without which parties rely on individual donors with deep pockets to finance their operations.
5) Finally, and perhaps by doing the above, he is trying to destroy the Liberal Party of Canada, particularly where finances are concerned, which the party has come to rely upon since Jean Chretien (perhaps in a final flipping of the bird to the hapless Paul Martin) placed limits on campaign contributions. I don't have any special place in my heart for the Liberals, but if they are defeated, it should be because their ideas were bad, and not because the party was outspent.
On policy, there are no shortage of reasons to suspect that Stephen Harper Hates Canada. Some are documented in this blog. On foreign policy, his is Canada's Likud government. On the economy, his is the party that has perpetually ignored homelessness as an issue. On health care, his supporters have long cried for an American-style health care, even if the party itself denies it. On the environment, his was the government that was instrumental in scuttling the Copenhagen talks. The list goes on . . .
So if you love Canada please, please, don't vote Konservative.
