Robbie Roberston “how to become clairvoyant”

Overdue, but what the heck, good music always deserves a nod:

Regarding Robbie Robertson’s CD from last year, “how to become clairvoyant” – after a careful listening or six, what’s revealed, to me, at least: “When The Night Was Young” just might be his best post-Band song; “Tango for Django” is great. I wish he’d make an instrumental album! At the same time, it must be said that his singing throughout is often quite affecting, even just right. For those who grew up with the tremendous vocal solo work by his mates and harmonization in The Band, who knew? Finally, I’m delighted to report that Robertson finally nixed the gauze-like production value that mars some of his earlier solo work. I can hear his guitars!!!! Pick on Robbie, pick on!

Commander in chief Obama

This week’s stunning new from Los Angeles Times (www. latimes.com) about American military personnel apparently posing for ‘zombie’ photos with the body parts of dead Afghan insurgents is part of a sad pattern. That being the consistent abuse of power by various branches of the American military and intelligence community under Obama’s watch.

In the summer of 2010, Rolling Stone exposed the weirdly derisive and even disloyal behaviour of then American commander in Afghanistan Stanley McChrystal. That cost McChrystal his job and ended his military career after a brief, unpleasant tete a tete with the President.

In the last number of months, there have been further stories of American military and intelligence malfeasance: urinating on bodies and burning Korans in Afghanistan…Secret Service types allegedly caught with prostitutes in Colombia.

Barack Obama has striven mightily to counter the false perception that his Democrats are soft on foreign policy and America’s military stance. A 30,000 person surge in Afghanistan, a massive expansion of drone attacks on ‘terrorist hideouts’ as well as the killing of Osama bin Laden in allied Pakistan all attest to that. However, what is striking, and perhaps harmful to Obama’s on-going re-election campaign, is this disturbing pattern of misbehavior.  One wonders if it is causing some long nights and misgivings among Obama’s campaign team.

An Open Letter to Loaf Fans

Item:  Toronto Maple Loafs fail to make the Stanley Cup playoffs for the 7th consecutive year.

Memo to Loaf fans in the so-called ‘Loaf Nation’: it is SERIOUSLY time to get a life. Believe this: the team will not win a Stanley Cup in your lifetimes; heck, it might not even make the playoffs. A proposed cure – anytime you want to root for the Loafs think of 300 pound+ Toronto Mayor Rob Ford naked. Then move on.

PS If you are a self confessed member of Loaf Nation and you voted for Ford, there is probably no hope for your recovery.

UPDATE: Toronto the Ugly

So Mayor Rob Ford got a lesson from city council about public transit that he didn’t like: it’s impossible to have anything approaching a twenty-first century system relying exclusively on subway expansion. The Mayor wants roads for cars alone.

Having been taught a lesson, Ford lashed back with a political lynching. Top public transit civil servant Gary Webster was ousted by Ford acolytes in an absolutely unseemly procedure. This after Ford deemed council’s view on transit “irrelevant”.

Toronto is now a city in which bullying and intimidation of loyal, effective civil servants is politically acceptable. That means dark days indeed for democracy .

Toronto: Year of the Bully

Rob Ford has been mayor of the city I live in for over a year now. It’s an odd experience.  You see I am convinced that Rob Ford doesn’t even like Toronto.

When he’s not insulting his opponents for being “left of Stalin”, Ford simply lets his brother pile on the dirt.  Can you think of another city in North America, in which the mayor’s henchman, in this case, his brother Doug, would gratuitously goad a leading cultural figure such as Margaret Atwood? Wouldn’t a writer of Atwood’s stature be part of the Toronto brand to any sensible mayor?

In recent days, Ford has insisted he’s restricting development of public transit to the building of subways. This in opposition to any credible analysis of Toronto gridlock and even, recently, to the dismay of some of his own followers on city council as well as the head of the Toronto Transit Commission. Some even believe the mayor overstepped his legal authority in signing a death warrant for a long negotiated transit plan that sat on his desk when he assumed power.

As he travels into work from the western edge of the city in Etobicoke in his now famous van, Ford must be blind to the prevailing situation. In his warped perception, the answer to too many cars is… more cars.

Ford knows his constituency: a  largely suburban based pocket of resentments about taxes and elites that’s an approximation of the American ‘Tea Party’. Yes, the city requires better management. It also requires a twenty-first century system of public transit. It also cries out for a political discourse based on more than posturing and bullying.

A lot can be learned about politicians by observing how they address their own. Ford uses The Toronto Sun newspaper and right-leaning talk radio to deliver the raw meat to his true believers. His self congratulatory year end interview to the Sun (Dec. 18, 2011) and the infamous Stalin comparison on AM640 in Toronto are classics of a kind.

Some commentators, like the Star’s Chris Hume, believe that the bully has had his day and that his powers will be circumscribed by council. I’m not so sure. His cringe worthy public weight loss campaign is a publicity master stroke.  And, above all, let’s not forget that this is the city that elected Mr. Ford in late October 2010.

What I do know is when Toronto’s competitors are getting in stride with a human agenda for the twenty-first century, our mayor is determined to go backwards. Ford’s election was an embarrassment to progressives in 2010. He shows no signs of changing his stripes even as he gets leaner.

Top Docs

In recent days, I had occasion to see both “Surviving Progress” and “Force of Nature: The David Suzuki Movie.” Both films rail against unbridled development and warn of the possibility of ecological catastrophe.

“Progress…” is based on ideas in a book and series of lectures by Ronald Wright. It’s a BIG IDEAS film which is threaded neatly with stunning visuals and provocative commentary from Wright and the likes of Margaret Atwood and the aforementioned Suzuki, among other deep thinkers.

Suzuki will be well known to Canadian readers – he’s been the leading figure in Canadian environmental and scientific broadcast journalism for decades. The film sprouts evocatively from clips from a ‘legacy’ lecture Suzuki delivered as he reached his 70s and began to scale back his public life. Like “Progress…”, this film, superbly directed by Sturla Gunnarsson, also touches on  ideas about the folly of limitless growth and the arrogance of contemporary economics.

The Suzuki film is remarkable for its intelligence, intimacy and sensitivity in revealing private aspects of a very public man. The film follows the arc of Suzuki’s life from forced removals of Japanese Canadian citizens during World War II, to the legacy of the nuclear bomb at Hiroshima, the American civil rights movement and aboriginal protests in Canada.

The Pulitzer Goes To…

If you are interested in hockey, player safety and a lamentable silence in most Canadian journalism, rush to read The New York Times brilliant and disturbing series, “Punched Out: The Life and Death of a Hockey Enforcer”, about Derek Boogaard.

Writer John Branch and a team of  ‘New Media’ story tellers have spun a profound tale about the ill-fated, late NHL ‘enforcer’ Boogaard. Many Canadian sports journalists, and seemingly all broadcasting entities in the country, led lamentably by the  juvenile Hockey Night broadcasts on the publicly owned Canadian Broadcasting Corporation,  condone fighting in the NHL.  It’s past time to read a deep account of how one hockey player’s life was ruined by the absurdist, lethal culture of fighting in hockey.

Jack Layton – Long May He Run

Canada awoke on Monday to very sad news indeed. What had been feared when a physically diminished Jack Layton appeared at a press conference last month to announce a temporary health absence was, in fact, true: the man was deathly ill.  Now he’s gone.

impromptu Layton memorial, Toronto city hall square

I did not know Layton well, but,  as his constituent in Toronto and frequent supporter, I chatted and exchanged e-mails with him off and on for about a decade. I enjoyed his exuberance and admired his intelligence, energy and tenacity.

Politically Jack Layton was right about a couple of very important matters. First, he did not apologize for wanting to be Prime Minister.  In a world where grown up countries regularly elect social democrats, and in a country with a history of competent NDP provincial governments, this should not have come as a surprise.  Sadly, it was only at the tail-end of what would be his final, extraordinarily courageous and effective election campaign last spring, that Canadians seemed finally to weigh the proposition in earnest. The centerpiece of that  success in making his party the Official Opposition in parliament reveals Layton’s other singular achievement as a party leader – Layton brought the NDP to Quebec, where he was born. In policy terms, this was an evident match waiting to happen – social democrats in Quebec were convinced by Layton to support his federalist party. That’s a credit to his sympathetic attitude to Quebec nationalism, his effective embrace of the French language and many years of persistent political effort. If the next NDP leader consolidates that link while continuing growth west of Quebec, Canada might yet see an NDP prime minister. If that were to happen, Layton’s historic legacy would be profoundly affirmed.

Ultimately, Layton successfully brought a left-leaning commitment to social and economic justice, to peace, to national reconciliation with Quebec and aboriginal peoples to the forefront of national politics. He made the NDP impossible to ignore.

Photos by James Cullingham (c) 2011

Canadian Election: Aftermath

We sure blew out the doughnut.  We are officially CONSERVATIVE.  No surprise here that ‘English’ Canadians value entrepreneurial spirit, the opportunity to create wealth and personal security over environmentalism and academic discussions about democratic practice in a parliamentary system.  Harper gets it. Big time. While Grits and left-libs grind their teeth, one must recognize that Harper built a multi-ethnic, bilingual coalition from coast to coast to coast.  He had a plan and he stuck to it.

Harper’s victory means Canada will take on an increasingly American Republican character. Once again, this is no surprise. The vast majority of Canadians live along a 50 kilometer wide strip along the American border.  They buy American products, consume American culture and ape American values.  Colonies are like that. And, if any of my Torontonian friends are still feeling smug, don’t forget that Steve won his majority in Ontario.

Harper is smart enough to burnish the matters Canadians feel separate them from the USA – hockey, doughnuts, ‘universal’ health care and a significantly greater measure of gun control. Harper respects, and evidently enjoys, the French fact of Canada in a way that many of his left and centrist opponents do not, many being simply incapable of doing so because of their inexplicable uni-lingualism.

The good news?  Canada has its first Green member of Parliament. Kudos to Elizabeth May.  The New Democratic Party’s breakthrough was achieved largely in Quebec. It is a most welcome development in our politics. The mainstream media will chew on its Gainseburger over youthful, inexperienced sometimes maladroit NDP M.P.s. When that passes, Jack Layton, Thomas Mulcair and other experienced NDP members may well rise to the challenge of forming an effective opposition. But make no mistake, it’s Steve’s show for the next four years plus. Finally on the positive ledger, if nothing else, the election shattered the illusion that the Liberal Party was a legitimate, electorally ready progressive remedy to Conservative rule. Michael Ignatieff’s massive failure is one of the greatest in the history of Canadian politics. Let some new flowers bloom!

The day after in Toronto Danforth

For the record, this was my predication on the morning of the election:

CONS 152

NDP 77

LIBS 34

BQ 32

OTH 1 (I assumed independent Andre Arthur would be re-elected in Quebec.)

So…I, like everyone else, failed to grasp the entirety of the Bloc collapse, which of course moved en masse to the NDP.

Kickstarter: funding a film about John Fahey

Dear Readers,

As you may have noticed earlier on this blog, I am directing and producing a film about the wondrous guitarist, composer and provocateur John Fahey.

www.johnfaheyfilm.com

I am delighted to report that our project is now up on Kickstarter – a very cool, successful on-line financing tool for artistic endeavours. We seek completion financing for this worthy documentary film project.

Please check this link:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/963556219/in-search-of-blind-joe-death-the-saga-of-john-fahe

Consider your options. Please alert friends, music lovers and any relations who support the arts. We have until Bastille Day to raise US$25k

Ciao,

James Cullingham, president, Tamarack Productions