We don’t as a rule write about our charitable donations here, but readers may want to know more about the very worthwhile charity, Tribute to Liberty. Its aim is to build a monument to the victims of Communism in Ottawa. The charity has made significant progress, as you can read here, but still needs a lot of help. Donors will have their own dedication or story posted on the Tribute website.  We encourage all our readers to consider supporting this very worthwhile cause.

The dedication of my 2011 donation to TTL is in memory of the inhabitants of the village of Varsad, Hungary that were deported for slave labour and perished in the Soviet Union at the end of WWII.  This is the story:

At the start of World War II, approximately 10% of Hungary’s population were ethnic Germans.  Most of these had lived in Hungary for over 250 years, having been settled there by the Austrian Crown to reclaim the land devastated by the Turkish occupation of over 150 years.  Varsad – pronounced “Vashad” by the locals, “Varshad” in Magyar – was a German village with about 1000 inhabitants in southwest Hungary.

In late 1944 the battle-front, in the form of advancing Soviet troops, was moving into the region.  Only two individuals – my grandmother and her neighbour, taking what they could carry – had accepted the offer from the German authorities to be evacuated west, earlier in the year.  Most people who owned property didn’t want to leave it or could not imagine that, despite a likely Soviet occupation, all would not turn out for the best.  They were mistaken.

Soviet troops entered Varsad on December 1st, 1944, unleashing several weeks of rape and pillage common across eastern Europe at the time.  My father’s cousin and a score of other women and girls were able to seek refuge in the Russian command post, where they were protected by a sympathetic officer.

On December 26th, all women aged 18 to 30 and men aged 17 to 45 were to report to the commandant.  There were few of the latter because most had been drafted.  At first, many claimed to be Magyars (ethnic Hungarians) to avoid an as yet unknown fate.  Later it became clear to the Russians that all were in fact Germans and that they would therefore be deported for slave labour in the Soviet Union.

After some weeks in railway cattle-cars, with little food or drink, they arrived in the Donbas coal region, where most would be put to work in the mines.  Rations were below survival level and many died, particularly those from (previously) richer farm families who were not used to hard physical labour.

The cousin of my father’s, mentioned above, was 21 years old when she reached Bavaria, which was occupied by the Americans.  She had survived 18 months in the mines and weighed only 37 kilos, so she was released due to “ill health”.  Her sister died in one of the camps.

It is estimated that up to 35,000 ethnic German civilians, and 30,000 P.O.W.s were deported from Hungary for slave labour in the Soviet Union.  Of these approximately 6000 perished.  A further 250,000 German-Hungarians were expelled to western Germany and Austria by order of the Soviet occupiers, losing their property and livelihood.  Over 50,000 are thought to have lost their lives during the expulsion.

To the horrible toll of World War II were added these innocent lives.  They were victims of totalitarianism, of Communism.

   

Some readers may recall one of the strangest political occurrences of 2011. It came during Prime Minister Harper’s first press conference after the May election, less than 12 hours after realizing a stunning majority victory. One of the journalists – and I hope to find out who – started kind of mumbling a very round-about question.

He began with a couple of qualifiers like “I realize it’s very early to be asking this” and “I know you’ve just won a majority mandate, but people are asking…” Finally after a couple more false starts like this, Tonda McCharles of the Toronto Star blurted out “Just ask him when he’s resigning!” And the room burst out in laughter.

I had a flashback to this when I read the National Post yesterday. No less an authority than Michael den Tandt stated that, with an election in view in 2015, the Red Tories were due to take over the Conservative Party. The well-reasoned argument started from the premise that the “unwritten rule in Canadian political life, in modern times at least, is a decade and out.” Consequently, before the next election, “a couple of years from now perhaps” Conservatives will “begin to speculate openly about who will lead them after Harper.” Wow.

So Conservatives won’t start speculating for a couple of years, but he’ll start right now. Might as well lead the pack. Mr. den Tandt’s “unwritten” law might better be called an “unknown” law, given that it conveniently ignores many facts, like Mr. Trudeau reigning for 16 years, and the Paul Martin Liberals “speculating” Jean Chrétien right out of office. That really didn’t work out too well for them, did it? Nonetheless, that never stopped a wishful columnist scratching around for something to write about.

No. Clearly, just when small-C conservatives in Canada could plausibly say they’ve found a winning combination, that they might actually be shifting Canadian politics in a congenial direction – guess what? –  they are in fact sadly deluded. In reality, now is the time to shift to the Left, to forestall a resurgent Liberal Party.

Obviously dimwits like me are simply too thick to understand this incisive analysis. Unfortunately, I’m also old enough to remember the “Canadian consensus” that prevailed in politics and society in general for a long time, one that Mr. den Tandt might be nostalgic for. This consensus is perhaps best be described by two political panels of the day: Pamela Wallin’s Canada AM crew of Michael Kirby, Hugh Segal and Gerald Caplan; and Peter Gzowski’s Morningside side – Stephen Lewis, Eric Kierens and Dalton Camp. These both epitomized a kind of comfortable salon Leftism where everyone agreed on the expansive role of the state and fashionably “progressive” social mores, the chummy back-slapping interrupted only by a bit of good-natured partisan sniping.

This era was of course exploded in the election of 1993 with the destruction of the old federal PCs. At the time, Senator Wallin was famously unwilling to add a Reformer to her panel, saying it wasn’t really a “political” panel, just a weekly chat with her friends. Fair enough.

But that was then, this is now. Ms. Wallin is now a Conservative senator and the Conservative Party is forging a new identity, removed from both its “legacy” parties. This clearly doesn’t prevent Mr. den Tandt from envisaging some kind of eighties-ish, Back to the Future scenario where the Conservative Party is absent of “Reformers” and “hardline” Mike Harrisites. Good grief.

For the sake of brevity, I’ll skip speculating on just what kind of “progressive social views” den Tandt thinks today’s Conservatives need to adopt in order to “hold the centre”. Seems to me they’d likely be very similar to the ones championed by all those old panellists I mentioned earlier. Maybe we could ask Stephen Lewis for a list?

Remarkably, conservatives have made considerable progress pushing responsible fiscal policy, so much so that even the NDP now has to occasionally tip its orange hat at balanced budgets and flaunt what good economic managers its provincial wings are. This is a huge change from the “consensus” of 25 or 30 years ago. And today, at least small-C conservatives are welcome in the federal Conservatives.

So, despite the nostalgic sentiment of Mr. den Tandt and the base impulses of all the Left parties, Conservatives must politely decline the offer to turn back. Like the journalist at the Harper press conference they may all want to wish away the current government and “restore” the “progressive” vision. Today, more than ever, it is up to Conservatives to oppose them.

   

How refreshing to see two Young Liberals butting heads in public. And to get the interim party leader to slip an expletive into a Tweet; how nice.

The story involves Zach Paikin, the fresh-faced candidate running to be the federal Liberal’s policy chief. The 20-year-old Paikin has apparently been outed as a “rightest” by another Young Lib, Max Naylor. Throw in a sharp Tweet from Bob Rae and things just deteriorate lusciously from there. It reminds me of the droningly dull, sophomoric debates in PC Youth and the juvenile hissing and spitting that went along with it. Paikin previously graced these pages here, and I waxed nostalgic about PC Youth in this other post.

All of this is highly amusing and instructive on a number of levels. Firstly, it reminds the interested observer just how idiotic and counterproductive youth politics is. That’s all a political party needs, to have cat-fighting youth layered onto whatever other divisions already exist.

Secondly, it underscores one of the unwritten laws of successful political organizations – that party officials are most effective when they toil endlessly in anonymity. One sure sign of a sick political organization is when a candidate(!) for an internal party office makes national headlines. There are already, OK “only”, 30-odd Liberal MPs. They, including the leader, can speak for themselves. Nobody needs to hear from a twenty-something candidate or his disaffected former high school buddy.

But let’s be clear, it couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch of guys. Interestingly, Paikin and his erstwhile BFF also showcase that grassroots foundation the Liberals are so well known for. Paikin is of course son of well-known journalist Steve Paikin, while Naylor is son of the president of the University of Toronto. Well, that has Rosedale covered off. Only 300-plus ridings to go.

And it was of course an otherwise sh*tty day for Liberals, Justin Trudeau having excrementally expressed himself in the House of Commons. Charming.

Does it bear repeating that all of this behaviour highlights exactly what a successful political party should never do? But it’s worth saying again to the Liberals – knock yourselves out guys!

P.S. A bonus Stupidism occurred in CBC’s coverage of the Trudeau story. James Cudmore pronounced the “i” in Justin (i.e. “Just-inn”) like the “a” in “ant” – “Just-an” in some strange Inspector Clouseau moment. Maybe he’s auditioning for Radio Canada?

   

Many Habs fans will be crying in indignation tonight at the news that their young power forward, Max Pacioretty, has been suspended for three games. NHL official Brendan Shanahan levied the punishment for his mid-ice hit on Pittsburgh’s Kris Letang Saturday night.

Those readers aware of my own allegiances will wonder when the other shoe will drop. Well here it is. Yes, Pacioretty deserved a suspension, but so did Zdeno Chara who ended the Montreal forward’s season by riding his head into the boards. Chara received no suspension. Nor did Milan Lucic when he deliberately ran Buffalo goaltender Ryan Miller a few weeks ago, giving him a concussion.

When I wrote about the Pacioretty case last spring, an alert reader pointed out that I hadn’t called for a suspension in a previous, similar case. Fair enough. So here I am, for what it’s worth, trying to be consistent and calling for consistency in the NHL. While I’ll do my best with the former, I’m not holding my breath for the latter.

   

Although not appropriate for Remembrance Day itself, there is an episode in Canadian military history that is worth recalling. Worth recalling because it is little known and even less understood.

It is the involvement of Canadians or, more accurately, British North Americans as they were then known, in the American Civil War. If you were taught any Canadian history, and even remember some of it, it’s unlikely that you would have heard any mention of it. Thinking back on my own experience, there seemed often to be a consistent thread of anti-Americanism, or at least other-than-Americanism in our history instruction. The line passed from the United Empire Loyalists, through the War of 1812, to the Fenian Raids right to the National Policy. All emphasized the desire of the northern half of the continent not to be American.

How then to explain the participation of between 30,000 and 60,000 soon-to-be-Canadians in the War between the States is not easy. Perhaps that’s why it’s generally omitted altogether.

But some researchers and authors see it as worthy of study and perhaps one day it will be thought sufficiently worthy to become common knowledge.

As it is, proto-Canadians fought on both sides of that war, but predominantly on the Union side – even though mother-Britain (and France) was not-so-subtly playing footsie with the Confederacy.

I got interested in this because a good friend, through some genealogical research, found out that one of his relatives had fought, and died, in the Civil War. This Upper Canadian son of Irish immigrants left the Coburg area to enlist in the Union Army. Serving in an Illinois regiment, he was ultimately killed during Sherman’s March to the Sea.

As some websites suggest, the reasons for participation in that bloody conflict were perhaps as varied as the motivations of each participant. Thrill seeking might certainly get you to enlist, but what loyalty or emotion would cause you to fight bravely – enough to win the Medal of Honour as at least 29 “Canadians” did?

Some of the personal stories of these men are told here. I find particularly compelling the idea of Nova Scotians volunteering for the 20th Maine regiment, the unit that made the brave stand on Little Round Top during the Battle of Gettysburg. I was able to stand on that rocky hill last spring and survey the ground where the New Englanders, and Maritimers, held off repeated Confederate assaults. The daring bayonet charge that broke the backs of the rebel onslaught is one of the best known – if somewhat disputed – episodes of that war.

Unfortunately, there are several chosen narratives of Canadian history that make it difficult to process Canadians fighting and dying in the U.S. – or in Vietnam for that matter. But just as Americans volunteered in both World Wars before the U.S. entered those conflicts, Canadians felt compelled to fight – and die – for a cause beyond our borders. This is as good a reminder as any that there is not just one, approved, Canadian history following a straight path to the present and beyond. Often it is complicated and harder to explain, which is why many choose to ignore some of its inconvenient episodes.

   

There’s a recent entertainment story relating how Star Wars‘ Yoda will be replaced with a computer-generated (CGI) image in the new Blu-ray release. This made me think about a related subject that’s been bugging me for a while now: when will the next Marx Brothers movie come out? No, seriously. The technology is rapidly advancing and, if we aren’t there already, we will soon be able to resurrect dead actors en masse in new movies.

There are a few factors that, I think, will hasten the use of digital actors. One is the absolute dearth of new ideas and creativity in Hollywood, as demonstrated by the numerous re-makes and multiple films based on every comic book under the sun. Frankly, the same has happened in literature, where conflating things like Jane Austen and zombies is considered novel. So the constant need for new material will push this along.

More importantly, there’s the money. CGI can at once dispense with living prima donnas and, above all, paying them. So if you can do remakes of film classics with facsimiles of dead actors, why not? You have proven, iconic stars that – at least initially – will have some audience drawing power, even if they’re being digitally re-created.

Directors and actors are already talking about this and other developments like blending the attributes of living or dead actors based on potential audience appeal.

Had it not been for a recent Air Canada flight I would not have known that CGI-Yoda is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes Lucas controversies. The documentary The People Versus George Lucas describes the whole subculture devoted to Star Wars and the global rage at what has happened with the films.

I guess, given the Trekkie phenomenon, one shouldn’t be surprised such a thing exists. The fanaticism involves everything from the compulsive memorization of whole scripts, bankrupting oneself through the purchase of action figures, to fan-made film recreations of all shapes and sizes – that now proliferate on Youtube.

The thing is, hundreds (thousands?) of people seem to be in an ongoing feud with Lucas over his tinkering with his films. Besides something like the computerized Yoda, there are many things non-fanatics like me simply wouldn’t notice – like the fact that in Episode IV (the original Star Wars) Han Solo proactively blasts the bounty hunter, Greedo, in the cafe scene. In the tinkered version, Lucas has Greedo shoot first. This has the anti-Lucas loonies launching into conspiratorial rants worthy of Oliver Stone. Indeed, the “Han Shot First” crowd reeks of the grassy knoll.

Lunacy aside, this whole debate has a serious, almost metaphysical side. For example, what constitutes a “finished” work of art. Does the artist have the right to tweak  a finished piece ad nauseam? And there’s the further issue of simply replacing living actors with digital ones.

MrK holds forth a truly apocalyptic vision of almost Orwellian, or certainly Stalinist dimensions, where older versions of films are expunged and new generations no longer know the original work or its intent. Interestingly, Lucas himself suggests this when he states that, after “improvements” older versions of his films will no longer be available.

I am not much more optimistic. What can be done likely will be done. Imitating previous stars and genres will become reproducing them. One blogger already proposes a sort of paleo-Brokeback Mountain, with Jimmy Stewart and John Wayne. A greased, slippery slope indeed.

Where these streams come back together is the fact that George Lucas has reportedly bought up the rights to the images of various dead actors, leading the conspiracy crowd to even more gyrations. In the documentary they refer to the fact that Lucas actually spoke against colorization of classic films back in the 1980′s. And now he’s doing what?

As the technology develops, it’s hard not to think that numerous alternative versions of film classics will emerge, as with the Star Wars fan films. And getting back to the Marxes, they wanted  Kaufman and Ryskind to modify their hit play Of thee I Sing for them, but it never came off. Perhaps now it will.

What appears certain is that we are facing an ever-changing medium, or media, due to the relentless march of technology. Just as with modern theatre, live actors will likely persist as long as people value them. They can after all market themselves as “real”. But history also shows that, if a technology exists, it will be used.

At best there will likely be competing versions of current and past films, if only for the reasons of exhausted originality already mentioned. The hand-puppet versions of Empire Strikes Back will pass and, with the advent of ever-better technology, allow the proverbial pasty lard-ass in his basement to generate full-length, hi-tech features.

So, along with the Marx Brothers in Of Thee I Sing, there will likely be Casablanca of the Zombies and the dramatization of every Thor comic ever produced.

Brave New World indeed.

   

The fortuitous invitation of friends sometimes makes it possible to visit places that you would otherwise not be drawn to. This was the case last week when we took a diversion through Switzerland. The personal visit was very pleasant but the touristic part reinforced the question of why one would ever visit the country.

First, last and likely middle as well, there’s the cost. If one uses the handy central European schnitzel test then eastern Switzerland rings in about three to four times more expensive than Munich. We were told that, should one (inadvisedly) want to eat at McDonald’s, one would have to produce evidence of a numbered bank account.

That raises the immediate cost benefit analysis. What are you getting for the money? Well, there is a lot of scenery, but other places (notably Canada) have scenery.

As Switzerland has been essentially a neutral backwater since Napoleonic times, and more or less since 1648, it falls fairly low on the scale of cultural interest. One is immediately reminded of Orson Welles’ iconic line in The Third Man where he compares the vibrant and violent legacy of Renaissance Italy with that of Switzerland which, he observed, had taken several hundred years to perfect the cuckoo clock. As horrendous as the Italian bloodshed might have been at the time it makes for a much more satisfying touristic experience 500 years later.

There is, however, chocolate and cheese. But is it that much better than the facsimile produced in Germany, Austria and the rest of the region? Mr.K has been quick to point out that again, in terms of value for money, experience, etc., the skiing in competing countries is better. I’ll forego repeating his pointed observations about the cloudy aspect of the Swiss-alpine personality…

Then there is the challenge of having to listen to continuous banter in the local patois, which sounds like high school German enunciation with a large bread roll stuck in each cheek. Admittedly rapid-fire, staccato Italian is soothing by comparison.

There is an election campaign going on in Switzerland right now. Evidence for this is limited to large placards depicting  well-scrubbed, well-fed burghers competing for votes. The mini-scandal de jour is that the “rightist” party that wants to limit immigration is polling around 30%, which is very high for this multi-party system.

It’s hard to determine how obnoxious this party is, although its posters – showing large black boots trampling a map of the country – are certainly graphic. Critics have repeatedly pointed out that the boots are black.

Whatever one makes of this, it is perhaps worth noting that; given a choice of living in poor, politically “exciting” parts of the world, many people still eschew the “excitement” and vote with their feet. As expensive as it is, and whatever else one wants to say about it, they still prefer the cuckoo clock.

   

If there weren’t enough reason already to use the Globe and Mail solely as bird-cage-liner, more emerges with time. Now there’s this: climate change “deniers” are disproportionately – you guessed it – middle-aged white men.

The G&M blog post by Adriana Barton quotes an article from, of all places, Scientific American which asserts that 48% of “confident” conservative males are climate change skeptics, versus 9% of adults in general. The upshot is that skepticism of one view of earth’s climate constitutes some kind of socio-racial or demographic phenomenon, rather than reasoned opinion.

It would be too easy to get sucked into a tirade on the racial profiling aspect of this article, not to mention the demographic that Ms Barton herself represents and the pet ideology evident in her comments. Suffice it to say that there is the usual double standard when it comes to parsing the attitudes of different, identifiable groups. For example, Bill O’Reilly (a notorious M-A-W-M) was told that  analyzing visible minority support for President Obama bordered on racism. Conversely, the Tea Party has frequently been attacked for being insufficiently beyond pale.

What strikes me as noteworthy about this is that the demographic argument postulated in Scientific American is entirely consistent with the ad hominem attacks and other rhetorical devices used by climate change alarmists since the beginning of the debate – such as it is.

The rhetoric has often been in the forefront due to the inability or unwillingness of the alarmists to debate the science. Hence the popularity of the “consensus” concept, which suggests that the truth lies with the greater numbers of believers. The middle-aged-white-man argument is simply a variant of this. Climate change skepticism is wrong because an identifiable group we dislike tends to think that way. As suggested above, one would guess that few would dare make the same argument if climate change skeptics were preponderantly visible minorities.

This all goes to underscore the flawed logic behind all this rhetoric. Scientific truth, similar to Voltaire’s God, is not on the side of the biggest battalions, but rather with those who “shoot straight”.  Scientific truth is colour-blind. The truth of a scientific hypothesis does not change if it is proposed by a middle-aged Dane or a Vietnamese grandmother.

Lord knows the vitriol in the warming/climate dispute has often been much more personal and vehement than the mere damning of the usual suspects. One can’t help wonder how unimaginative the next rhetorical salvo will be.

P.S. Some other Voltaire aphorisms that might be more appropriate to the debate:

“Doubt is not an agreeable condition, but certainty is an absurd one.”

“It is dangerous to be right in matters where established men are wrong”

“Love truth but pardon error.”

   

Albertans and sympathetic Canadians may soon wonder how Canada’s most politically-conservative province could elect a small-L liberal premier. Let’s just say it’s a result of our particular, some would say peculiar, political culture.

Alberta’s political culture is known for electing long-lived, right-of-centre, ruling dynasties. In fact Ernest Manning, the province’s long-serving Social Credit premier undertook significant behind-the-scenes maneuvering to ensure his party was succeeded by the Progressive Conservatives, rather than a further Left party. This led to the current PC reign of just over forty years.

One little known aspect of this conservative dominance is the great number of nominally-conservative activists in the provincial PCs. In fact, the contraction “PC” was popular among many provincial faithful because the word “conservative” seemed to stick in their throats. Fact is anyone -regardless of political stripe – who was ambitious and wanted to get elected, had to run under a conservative banner.

As uncomfortable as this was for some, they managed to gloss over their true political philosophy for the good prospects of a political career. This largely explains the otherwise incongruous phenomenon of the Alberta Red Tory. Joe Clark was perhaps the best example in the federal party.

Another contributing factor was the conflagration that befell the federal PCs in 1993. From that point onward, the federal party in Alberta was an empty shell, dominated by a handful of activists. With philosophical conservatives dominating the Reform Party, left-of-centre PCs and, again, those seeking political jobs, flocked to the provincial party.

This explains a lot of what has happened to the provincial PCs in subsequent years. Most notably, it puts into context the hostility with which Ted Morton and his supporters were met by provincial party stalwarts over the last few years.

I got to know Allison Redford around the time of the 1984 federal election. To my best recollection she was not a philosophical conservative then, and all indications are that she isn’t one now.

Her election, and the fact that Morton and Rick Orman – the other right-of-centre candidate – supported former front-runner Gary Mar leaves conservatives at an interesting juncture. It certainly makes it easier for them to support Alberta’s other conservative party, the Wildrose Alliance, as many of us already are. Interesting times.