|
Build them here
Dear Republic:
After enjoying your recent articles in the Courier, I was delighted to discover The Republic, and more of the same, in particular, your refreshingly balanced and sane item on the ferry procurement issue.
There are a couple of minor points on which I disagree with your otherwise excellent article. The first is a point of fact: in the 1970s, the NDP did buy a second-hand vessel from Europe for BC Ferries' Northern service.
The second questions your assumption as to the superiority of the third, production model, fast ferry. Yes, it went together very well, very quickly and probably within the projected budget, but I don't think its service performance would have been noticeably superior to the first two vessels, and certainly not to an extent that it would have changed public opinion about the wisdom of the project.
I was, for 23 years, the editor of Harbour & Shipping journal, and in that capacity documented the decline of the Canadian shipbuilding industry caused by the federal government's decision to withdraw its (by international standards) pitifully small subsidy program.
During the construction of the fast ferries, I was told, off the record, about many unpublicized blunders that made it quite clear that the blame trail should have reached far above Tom Ward, who took it all on his shoulders like a loyal soldier. Yes, he should have known better than to let the project be rushed ahead, but the pressure from above that made him compromise must have been enormous.
My own analysis is that the fast ferry project was doomed the minute the government and BC Ferries backtracked on their initial decision to ban heavy freight trucks from the Horseshoe Bay/Departure Bay run. Firing the board that raised questions about the costs and the all-fired rush to build was another key mistake, as was proceeding under the apparent impression that the Australians had much, if anything, to teach BC shipbuilders about working in aluminum.
The biggest, and worst, blunder, however, was the decision to lay up the PacifiCats, instead of putting them into service on the grounds that, having been built, they should earn their keep. Fact is that even the first, flawed PacifiCat was a fast and comfortable vessel compared to the conventional ferries; given time, people would have adapted and forgotten what the fuss was about.
The public have paid heavily for that failure of nerve, as have a few private companies who invested in new plants in anticipation of supplying goods and services to the new vessels. As to the question of whether the BC shipbuilding industry, headed by Washington Marine Group, could compete to build big new ferries here in BC—of course they could, despite the closure of some of the facilities who participated in the S-Class project. Getting European shipyards to build ferries for BC could, indeed, turn out to be a huge mistake if the vessels turn out to be ill-suited to their intended service because the builders are not familiar with BC waters or the habits and assumptions of BC travelers.
As a taxpayer and traveler, I would be far happier to see Washington Marine Group arranging to have hulls sourced at Chinese shipyards to be finished here in BC; a compromise, to be sure, but one that would support viable local industries.
- Liz Bennett, Vancouver BC
'Incorrigible muddle-headedness'
Dear Republic:
I have read, I think, every issue of The Republic since its inception with growing dismay and despair over the apparently incorrigible muddle-headedness, ignorance, and analytical incompetence of its editor and many of its contributors. The only thing that seems to be missing in the nasty stew served up in every issue is intentional malice, for which small mercy I am duly grateful. But we should never forget that good intentions pave the road to Hell.
It was bad enough that the editor, in deepest ignorance, wrote a rave review of a book on the US Federal Reserve System by the infamous American neo-Nazi Eustace Mullins, and that The Republic published a photo of an apparently evil-looking hooked-nose villain next to an article about Israel (for which the editor in the current issue apologizes—but not abjectly enough, it should be noted).
Now the current issue carries two absolutely rubbishy articles that need at least some brief comment, viz., “Gnosticism is back" by Michael Nenonen and “The Corporation leads to ruin” by Kevin Potvin.
Nenonen's new agey ramblings purports to be a book review but it is evident that he is trying to promote the trashy "spiritualism" of Gnosticism. He is entitled to his absurd parti pris, of course, but he is not entitled to invoke the nonsense of "the spiritual imagination," without the slightest evidence on show that this “spiritual” faculty actually exists.
This supposed spiritual faculty is utterly unknown both to the folk psychology of common sense and to scientific psychology. It has been conjured out of the mad ravings of Gnostic devotees and has no more substance than the ridiculous belief, also supported by nothing more than repeated assertion, that human beings are incarnate excreta of God, that there is a particle of divinity in each of us.
One would have thought that this kind of superstition was a thing of the past since the establishment of scientific biology and scientific psychology since Darwin. It is as well-established a scientific fact as anyone could wish for that we are only risen apes, with all that this entails, not “spiritual” beings. We are in the final analysis just excreta of the primeval mud, and have not the slightest rational reason for flattering ourselves with Nenonen's absurd belief that we are at least partially divine.
The only sort of imagination we actually have is the humdrum, wholly mundane, scissors-and-paste faculty by which we conjure up visual mental pictures. The imagination merely arranges and rearranges remembered swatches of sensory experience. Sometimes these images correspond closely to things we have actually seen, and sometimes the imagination joins things previously experienced separately as in imaginary beings such as mermaids.
When the imagination is conjoined to our capacity for conceiving the non-existent, we get poetry, and fiction, not factual truth.
Nenonen's article is notable for what it does not contain. He omits to report that the really central feature of Gnosticism is not the so-called spiritual imagination, but the Gnostic's elitist claim to have secret knowledge not possessed by the rest of humanity who are not initiates. This is also rubbish.
Humanity's epistemic powers are found in all human beings, though not in equal measure, as Nenonen's article demonstrates so well. Knowledge, real knowledge, not the fantasies of Nenonen and the Gnostics, is worked up by the intellectual powers from the deliverances of sense-perception.
The story is complex, but that's the essence of the matter. We just do not possess any faculties whatever by which we can transcend our earthly condition and reach into imagined other worlds or other dimensions of being. This is, no doubt an irksome limitation to people like Nenonen, the Gnostics, and many others, but there it is. It is no surprise that the early Christian theologians and the Church condemned Gnosticism as heresy. They were sufficiently intelligent and commonsensical to know, and in fact to insist, that our native intellectual powers are utterly insufficient for acquiring non-natural knowledge of any kind whatever. That's why they insisted on faith and revelation, not knowledge and not imagination.
Kevin Potvin's “The Corporation leads to ruin” runneth over with preposterous remarks about fascism. First, we do not have anything like fascism, not even his “fascism lite”, in North America. Mussolini jerry-built fascism out of a number of ingredients such as the anarcho-syndicalism of Sorel, bits of Marx, and lots of corporatism, but the essence of fascism was its totalitarianism. Mussolini coined the term “totalitarianism” and defined it in the slogan, "Everything for the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State."
There just cannot be anything that it would be rational to call “fascism” without totalitarianism. Since Mussolini has the copyright on his own concoction, Potvin is not entitled to use the term any new way he wishes just in order to damn the current state of things in North America. It is also politically misleading and obfuscates the effort to think clearly about our present condition.
Even worse is Potvin's utterly uninformed idea that fascism in Europe was some sort of alternative, albeit a failed one, to capitalism and the clash of interests between capital and labour. In their propaganda, fascism in Italy and in its German variety, National Socialism, certainly did offer themselves as alternatives to capitalism and to Marxian socialism in its several sorts, but in its reality fascism everywhere was the naked, brutal, rule of big capital.
The capital-labour clash of interests was not reconciled, as fascists claimed. Everywhere fascism triumphed, the working class was ruthlessly subjected to the most savage rule of capital. Genuine trade unions were suppressed and phony company unions were established that functioned to discipline and control the working class. Working class parties were outlawed and their leaders, along with the leadership of the suppressed trade unions, were thrown into concentration camps where many were executed; few survived the death of fascism.
It is no wonder at all that the very rich everywhere in Europe where there were viable fascist parties lavished immense sums in support of fascism. If fascism had been a genuine alternative to capitalism, this behaviour would have been irrational, but it was not. Capitalists generally are extremely rational people in pursuing their ends.
The fact is, that fascism everywhere was the abnormal politics of a capitalist system in deep crisis. Since capitalism is systemically prone to crisis and breakdown, fascism lurks there in the dark realm of the possible political options of capitalism in crisis, if all else fails, or seems about to fail, to preserve the system. That is why fascism is a potential danger, but it is clearly not at present a real danger to any of us anywhere in the developed world, and to think so is to wander in a thick fog of mental confusion.
- Donald Todd, Vancouver
Vive la difference
Dear Republic:
The Republic, in thinking a Kerry Administration would be "no different" than the current Bush-Cheney government is making the same mistake Nader supporters made in the 2000 elections.
The current Republican Party leadership is dominated by religious fundamentalists, corporate leaders, and neo-conservatives who oppose government regulations and have little regard for the United Nations and International law.
With regards to workers rights, human rights, civil liberties, respect for the United Nations and International law, and especially the Environment there is a clear difference between Kerry and Bush.
The United States may, or may not, "have a future" but I am certainly more hopeful if an intelligent liberal like John Kerry is elected President rather than four more years of right-wing neo-conservatives in power.
- Ben May, United States
Let’s cooperate!
Dear Republic:
Thank you, Kevin Potvin and The Republic for your series on cooperatives. Cooperation really is the realistic alternative to both corporate capitalism and state socialism. Back in the 19th century the labor and farmers movements saw cooperation as the answer, and the movement was generally known as Mutualism. Unfortunately somewhere along the way state socialism got substituted. Had our schools, hospitals, hydro, pension funds, medical and unemployment insurance been set up as cooperatives (with government assistance for the poor) the present closures and cut-backs would not be happening. What the state gives, the state can also take away, but if these things are actually owned and democratically controlled by the people this is impossible. I think it would be a good idea if the left would start thinking along these lines and develop some plans to turn what remains of our social services into coops to prevent further depredations and also allow these institutions to better serve the people. Looking forward to the rest of the series.
For anyone interested, there is a good web site on mutualism at http://www.mutualist.org
- Larry Gambone
An appeal
Dear Republic:
“[Iraq is] breeding grounds for attacks against Americans at home,” reads the 9/11 Commission Report. This statement made by the bipartisan commission is, of course, true, but no need for trumpets and confetti.
War in Iraq has also inadvertently put former military servicemen Jeremy Hinzman and Brandon Hughey at risk in our own lovely nation. These two former soldiers are now “foreign nationals” fleeing the United States because: they object to the war in Iraq, the manufactured pretexts for the war in Iraq, and Mr Hinzman (a religious man) objects to violence totally. Hinzman’s “conscientious objector” status was revoked because he stated that he would, if under attack, help his camp defeat enemy combatants.
The gentlemen and their dependants have sought “safe haven” in Canada to avoid taking part in a war which they view as unconstitutional.
Their applications for refugee status in Canada are pending. Please help support Jeremy Hinzman and Brandon Hughey’s claim for refugee status. Punishment by the United States government for the freedom to object to illegal warfare is in no way protecting their innate rights. Both parties belong in Canada, not in prison. These men are not criminals, and they have families. To support, write: www.Jeremyhinzman.net and www.brandonhughey.org
- Jonathan Hopkins, Toronto
Mayor untried
Dear Republic:
Larry Campbell was elected by a landslide because the other candidate was so abysmal. He was untried in the political arena and he seems to not enjoy his job.
During the public hearing regarding slot machines in Hastings Park, he was rude to little old ladies, women with children as well as his own council members. He’s a real sourpuss—perhaps that comes from having spent so much of his adult life staring at cadavers.
I voted for him but would not vote for him again. His interpersonal skills are shaky. Larry also seems conjoined at the hip to Gordon Campbell. They suffer from the same fawning obedience to developers.
After four days of hearings, with a record number of submissions, (over 240) with 55% against and 45% for, City Council voted 6 to 5 in favor of installing slots at Hastings Park Racecourse. The Great Canadian Casino Company with its three paid lobbyists was successful in cowing City Council into allowing a casino on parkland in a residential area under the guise of protecting workers’ jobs when in reality the thoroughbred horseracing industry across Canada is in catastrophic decline and there were no jobs to be saved.
Mr Wall and his investors have acquired a white elephant and they are willing to sink forty million dollars into a failed racetrack so they can have another casino. My, the rich are getting richer. They are also becoming arrogant and abusive.
- Stewart Brinton, Vancouver
The last of Moore
Dear Republic:
Kevin Potvin, in his usual erudition, makes all the right criticisms about Michael Moore's Farenheit 9-11 (July 8th). But it seems Potvin's understanding of US politics is not matched by a good grasp of the nature of American cinema.
Unlike films made in other countries, where the viewer is assumed to be a well-educated and thinking person, American cinema, particularly in the documentary genre, must do everything to attract and keep the attention an impatient and somewhat superficial audience. To that extent I would say Moore has done an excellent job, presenting an excellent case against the Bush administration, and its so-called war on terrorism, while managing to entertain and capture the attention of average viewers for a good two hours, no easy feat.
Though he doesn't go as far into detail as would be needed to really expose the extent of the US government's covert agenda, it could be argued that a more hard line and accusatory approach may well have earned Moore the wrath of US censors, not to mention vested interest litigators.
As it stands, the film hammers the message home that it is the US public itself that must wake up and challenge the ill-intentioned powers that be that run their war-torn country. And though many have said that it simply preaches to the converted, as it were, the fact it captured second spot at the box-office in its opening week-end (after Spider Man 2, by a large margin of course), suggests that maybe the US population is becoming increasingly informed and active in bringing about necessary change. One can only hope.
- Charles Leduc, Vancouver BC
****
|
