We are in the midst of a municipal election and I sense frustration by electors regarding the lack of information about the candidates. Apart from the need of to observe and researching councillors during their term of office and new candidates on the hustings, there are two major reasons for this lack of information: one is the lack of openness by candidates and the other is the failure of the media to tell the unvarnished truth and to clarify what is actually said by the candidates. The hard questions are not asked.

Why the media need to interpret what is said can be understood by listening to politicians explain their actions in the House or Legislatures or by watching the British television satire, Mr. Minister and its sequel, Mr. Prime Minister on WNED George Orwell gave us “doublespeak” in his prescient novel, 1984, but modern politicians have turned this tool of tyrants into high art and have undermined democracy by doing so.

Citizens everywhere deserve more than embedded scribes reporting on war, boosterism, sop, and jingoism from the news media. When Bush illegally invaded Iraq, he used an uncritical media to whip an unthinking population into a frenzied mob. The Harper magazine was one of the few which possessed the moral courage to speak out against the war. Had the TV networks along with national and local papers stood alongside the Harpers of the nation, then thousands of Iraqis and coalition soldiers might still be alive and a country not destroyed.

We have forgotten that it was two unknown reporters from the Washington Post who brought down President Nixon. Of all the papers in Canada, only one took on the federal government, sent two reporters to investigate and exposed the Adscam. Other major papers were no-shows.

While advertising income is essential for the news media to produce news and commentary, if the news and commentary become secondary to the advertising then you no longer have a newspaper, TV or radio news program; you have something more akin to a corporation’s blurb sheet with advertising.

What applies internationally and nationally applies to whatever media serve small towns and rural communities. Newspapers were called the fourth estate after the three estate levels of French government because the papers were considered the watchdog of government. That is still the most important role of all newspapers. Shut out the media and you shut out the public from the government’s business.

But when the media self-censors, then they diminish their role of watchdog and do a disservice to the citizens. If the media is concerned about the drop in readership due to the rise of the internet, bloggers, and pamphleteers, they have only themselves to blame.

We will never have good government without an informed electorate; we will never have an informed electorate when the media abandon its duty.

November 8, 2006

“Durham area peace activist Frank Barningham says, ‘you can’t bring peace with a gun.’ He’s wrong. You can.”

The above were the opening words of a recent Sun Times editorial. It is the writer of the editorial who is wrong. The editor believes that the absence of war is peace. It is not. Peace is a value guiding ones life whereby war is not an option.

World War II was really WW I, part 2. A single shot, a single murder led to 6 million, mostly youth, from all sides in the conflict, being slaughtered. All because generals and politicians could not think of any solution other than war. What followed was not peace; what really followed was A Peace to End all Peace as David Fromkin titled his book on the treaty of Versailles. The seeds were sown for the rise of Hitler and the devastating struggles in the Middle East. There was no peace from the gun, only armament building, consolidation of conquests, and profit-taking from those conquests. We called the land the Allies took over in the Middle East “Protectorates”, a euphemism not unlike the Mafia’s idea of protection whereby they protect you from all others while the protectors steal you blind. Is peace being machine-gunned from the air, being imprisoned for wanting freedom or living in poverty under puppet dictators? That is not what I call peace nor, I think, would Frank Barningham.

The end of WW I part 2 saw the enslavement of Eastern Europe, the arbitrary splitting of Palestine where the dying continues, the Korean War, still not resolved, and the Cold War. Central America was racked by war as people sought freedom and land from dictators who were armed by the USA. The gun brings oppression not peace.

We again unleashed the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse when we armed the Taliban and warlords of Afghanistan, and enticed Bin Laden to Afghanistan to evict occupying Soviets. Never think for one moment we did it to free the Afghanistan people. We did it to frustrate the Soviets’ attempt to control this ancient route to India and the Indian Ocean. Did the gun bring peace? No. For those who live by the gun, peace is a strategy, not a way of life.

Did the overthrow, in 1956, of a democratic government in Iran by the USA and the installation of a puppet dictator, the Shah, bring peace? It brought the Iranian Revolution in 1979 and hatred towards the USA and its allies. When Saddam, backed by the USA, invaded Iran in 1980, did that bring peace? Did the gas and armaments supplied to Saddam by the West and used on Iranians and Kurds bring peace to the Middle East or to us?

Afghanistan was bombed back to the Stone Age because enemies of the USA took shelter there, then the West gave unfulfilled promises but not peace. Soldiers die and innocent Afghans killed to support a government in which warlords follow their corrupt practices.

Guns and misused power have killed more Iraqis than Saddam ever did. A middle class, the economic base of a nation, has been destroyed along with the country itself. Is that the peace from a gun?

Threatening countries and calling them “Axis of Evil” does not bring peace. It brings about a race for nuclear weapons.

Now a majority in the USA say they feel less secure than before the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. Canada spends millions of dollars to give us a false sense of security while citizens, like lemmings to the cliff, unthinkingly give up their civil rights. Is that peace?

War brings us, at best, hollow victories masking the waste, destruction, and total horror of the gun.

November 15, 2006

We have a new Council that will take office January 2006. Members of the present Council, when running for election three years ago, loudly proclaimed the opening up Council business to the public and greatly improved communications. Sadly, once elected, their commitments to transparency were set aside.

Transparency is too important to democratic government to be used cynically as a simple ruse during elections. The new Council has the opportunity to be a leader in Canadian municipal government causing people everywhere to sit up and take notice of the little municipality that led the way. The technical tools are available but Council members will need to take a longest honest look at themselves before being able to be comfortable with open discussion and sharing information.

There are many politicians at all levels who were you to ask them the time of day, their eyes would roll as they considered whether or not the answer would jeopardize their career or throw light on their thinking. They could not speak plainly if their lives depended on it. We do not need them. They bring disrespect on all political life and demean the names of the many decent hardworking men and women whose sole goal is to serve their community, province or country.

Our new Council should be to scrap the current website. The limitations have been discussed on more than one occasion during the current Council’s mandate and are known. Because of the design of the original site, the municipality is still overly dependent on the webserver. The new website should have a public forum through which the public and Councillors could make comment, ask questions. The site should have a polling field for issues of general concern. The results might not be binding but would serve as another avenue of opinion along with public, committee, Council meetings, and the press. More information about members of Council, including their statements as candidates, needs to be posted.

Another necessity for transparency is to reduce the number of in camera sessions. Secrecy is never a friend of democracy. Apart from discussions involving staff, there is little reason for secret meetings. Companies, whether local or from away, should realize that they are entering public discussions. The same applies to citizens who wish to do business with the Municipality. The current Council should not have groveled before the OPG and comply when the OPG wanted secret meetings to discuss their nuclear waste dump. It is an example of what never should be done. The greater the issue, the greater is the need for transparency and need for time to deliberate. Only dictators and crooks shun transparency.

Consultants can inhibit openness. The last two Councils made use of consultants inappropriately, costing the Municipality far more than necessary. Good husbandry was not practiced. Consultants should not be used to take members of Council off the hook. Before going to consultants, Council should talk with the citizens. Citizens are not an ignorant rabble but bring a wealth of skills and knowledge to the public forum.

I wish the new Council well. I trust it will be open to new ideas and use their lateral thinking rather than relying on shopworn ideas from the past. I hope its members will, as they did during the election, get out and meet the people.

November 22, 2006

I believe it was Winston Churchill who said that if you want an argument against democracy just talk with three average voters. During our recent election I spoke with men who firmly believed women should not be in politics, especially in a position of power. I met many who did not know the candidates but voted anyway; others just did not care. Some had made up their minds but in many cases their reasons were feeble while others could articulate sound reasons for their choices. Far too many voted for revenge rather than for good government and that certainly showed. Democracy is not well served when the electorate does not exercise its franchise in a responsible manner

I wish the councillors well in their deliberations and hope that in those deliberations they keep foremost in their minds that they were elected to serve all the people. Trust is hard to acquire but easily lost.

Last week I outlined steps Council should take as a beginning towards open government. They are not difficult and will immediately test the sincerity of candidates who spoke much about open government during the election. If ignored I could only assume that openness was only election’s sounding brass and tinkling symbols signifying nothing.

I make a further suggestion, heard on the street many times. Council should shuffle the committee chairs to give everyone a fresh start. When one person chairs a particular committee year after year that person assumes too much ownership making it their personal little fiefdom. When that happens, and it has on the past two Councils, the person no longer functions as a chair, i.e. creating the agenda, leading the discussion while assuring all members have their say and taking the decision of the committee members to Council. It is important for good government to move the long-standing chairpersons. Also, I agree with the current mayoy that there need only be one councillor on each committee. That would give committee reports to Council a wider range of thoughtful opinions. At least it gives the opportunity for it; what actually happens will depend on the quality of the deliberations.

Time soon will tell whether we are to move into the future or remain stuck in the past.

November 29, 2006

My previous two columns spoke of how good and honest government depends on transparent open behaviour by all members of Council. To make it less abstract, examples of what Council can do to achieve this were given. The need to change committee chairmen to improve the democratic climate was also recommended. We live in hope.

Now a word about stewardship: Council and citizens have not done well when it comes to stewardship. The present Council has given no leadership in this direction. The nuclear waste dump was a case in point. Secret meetings and lack of honest debate were driven by the power of OPG and its money. Even the citizens voted for the money and cared little for a balanced enquiry. When the first million dollars arrived, Council again failed the stewardship test by using it for tax relief when we would have been better served if the money had gone into a reserved account to be available for substantial needs that surely will come.

The beach was attacked and trees carelessly cut to gentrify the area. There were other ways but Council prefers engineers to misshape the world rather than environmentalists who work with the world around us.

Economic husbandry, an aspect of stewardship, is seldom practiced. Council spent thousands of dollars for a new logo while our talented KDSS students could have created one, I dare say more meaningful to our municipality, and for less money. Of equal importance, a talented student would have been assisted financially and encouraged towards further studies.

Hundreds of thousands of dollars were spent on an unproven streetscape while citizens complain that regular sidewalks wait for repair, and a distinctive emblem of this municipality is left to fade on the water tower sending a message for all that pass by that Kincardine is a deteriorating municipality with her best behind her.

There was no evidence of stewardship, no sense of the future, no care for neighbours, and no thought for basic moral behaviour when the municipality stampeded to sign up for snake oil from the peddlers of false solutions they called windmills. Making Council’s decision worse was that there were other less intrusive solutions available. Guy Anderson was the one member of Council who saw the danger of dealing with medicine men and their easy remedies. He should be at the top of the list when Committee Chairs are being assigned.

Stewardship demands that we care for our physical and financial resources. Council has failed, whether it be with pipelines, intake pipes, tourist booths, windmills, or slashing down trees and mucking about with our shifting sands; the list is long. To paraphrase Joseph Conrad in Typhoon, when you ignore the small items on the ship then the big ones will bring you disaster.