The Arab Renaissance

Appropriated authority through individual tyrannical force or institutional usurpation can seem limitless. Yet those that appropriate it are eventually brought to justice and may have to deal with the same brute force.

Ironic, when that happens, they are either on the run or hiding in sewer holes begging for precious life, like Mummer Gaddafi and Saddam Hussein.

Yet something does not seem right when those that were once the subjects of appropriated authority, become a reflection of it whilst the perpetuator is being hunted down in the proverbial rat hole.

The images of Saddam Hussein rolling out his tongue at the command of his captors for examination and the images of Gaddafi in his last moments and especially lying on the floor without a wrap covering his wounds, are going to stay in my mind for a long time. It does not auger well for the civilised world to make a spectacle of death. I agree with those that refused the media access to the pictures of a wounded / dead Osama bin Laden. There must be dignity in death.

There is something barbaric about the way that global masses and global media reacted to the death of Gaddafi. As I watched the gloating spectacle of the last few minutes of Gaddafi’s death, I was struck by how little progress as a civilisation we have made. At least so it appeared at that moment. There was a feeling of being transported back in time. Those captor cries, that mad stampede and brutal jostling of a still  hated tyrant now shaking with fear at his imminent death, mirrored the decadence that has crept into human values and civilisation.

That moment in time remains a testimony to the fact that the civilised world gunning for Gaddafi stooped to the same barbaric values as Gaddafi. At that moment in time there seemed to be little difference between Gaddafi and his captors. However just their cause, the captors came across as barbaric. Yet sitting in our homes and watching television, the brutal and the vicarious seems to enthral us.

The underlying message of the Arab Spring is being overshadowed by mob vengeance. There is much more to gloat about.

Its’ the wheel of life…some would argue. Ironic that it all gained momentum in Baghdad and Cairo. Was it not precisely these and other Middle East countries  that were so instrumental in igniting the renaissance in Europe? Passing on learning and new ideas to a then stagnant  Europe caught up in its dark middle ages. Today the wheel has just spun back… ..the Middle East, some parts of it caught up by rulers of the past has redeemed itself and hopefully will catch up with its glorious past.

So what does the Arab spring signify for me? It signifies the same old eternal struggle of mankind…Yet how important it is to keep having these renaissance moments in every civilisation.

Recently my son came back home and said he had been asked by his school to research the similarities between Renaissance and the Wall Street Occupation. At first I scratched my head and thought, one was a social awakening and the other an economic awakening…both awakenings of some sort....what else could be the similarities?

In my mind the similarities between the Arab Spring and the Renaissance seem far more and yet on deeper thought…all such movements have similarities….some lesser others greater.

My son put it in perspective and said it’s the feudal system mom. Ah! “it’s the cry against a social structure!”. Yet the Renaissance was more about the bringing about of change through awakening, I argued with my utterly unimpressed son. The renaissance was change ignited by learning and not just a fight against a strict social order. The change in the social order was brought about by the emergence of a new class or classes including the intellectuals and artists. Renaissance was the winds of change brought about by exposure to different civilisations. Is the Wall Street protest really that? I argued with my son, that the Wall Street protest is more a protest against government bails outs and the creation of a super rich class of paid employees by the financial system. It is a revolt by those that have been left on the fringes of upward social movement.

The common link is the awakening.

Yet, while projecting the awakening, the focus on the mobs exhilarating over a dead Gaddafi, is subjugating the finer sensibilities of the Arab awakening and letting the mob rule mentality steal the show. ..

What a coincidence that Wall Street protests followed the Arab Spring. Can we attribute one to the other! Perhaps! The Arab protest may have in some way inspired the Wall Street protests. The point I want to make is that however different the underlying causes of the ongoing Arab and the western movements… the method of bringing about change has been the same…..mass movements against perceived economic and social breakdown.

Ironically in the western world, Greece triggered the protests…and the revival of Greek learning was a great influencing factor in the Renaissance….

As the world population amasses over six billion, learning may not be rewarded the way it was in the past… perhaps there are more underlying lessons to be learnt from all that is happening around us. The fear is about another future renaissance being actually dominated by sheer mob mentality, in the absence of the tapering influence of knowledge on barbarity.

Poverty

Wage negotiations, increasing government funding for sectors like health care and tough structural changes within the Canadian economy is making it difficult for governments to allocate social funding targeted at poverty removal.

We may still live in denial about growing poverty in Canada but statistics, however difficult to come by, paint a picture of marginalisation of some sections of Canadian society and an erosion of the Middle Class. Low wages is another factor contributing to poverty.
Into the future this segment is likely to increase in bulge devouring those that are impacted by permanent changes to the job market and the ability of governments to keep increasing minimum wages to match inflation. Increasing cost of food, speculation and most of all the vagaries of weather will each play its own role.
Average growth in Canadian incomes has been 1.3% each year, rising from $28,000 in 1981 to 39,914 in 2007. This many years has not even equalled inflation.
Meanwhile as recession, high energy costs continue to push people into bare subsistence levels; the nation still does not have an official government measure for poverty.
Here’s what Statistics Canada has to say: “Statistics Canada has clearly and consistently emphasized, since their publication began over 25 years ago, that the LICOs (Low Income Cut Offs) are quite different from measures of poverty. They reflect a consistent and well-defined methodology that identifies those who are substantially worse off than the average. In the absence of an accepted definition of poverty, these statistics have been used by many analysts who wanted to study the characteristics of the relatively worse off families in Canada.”.
What about the growing numbers of unemployed who don’t even make it in the LICO’s list? Many out there who are not even a blip on the radar of the official statistical grouping.
A few days back while interviewing Albertans on the impact of inflation, I was told the impact is just beginning to trickle down. Janice Melnychuk of Vibrant communities says, “People are going to have to choose between buying food and paying the house rent and this will complicate health issues and put burden on food banks. She says it is time for not just Alberta but the government of Canada to have a cohesive social policy”.
Small businesses are smarting under the impact of the recent recession as also inflation. A few grocery shops in Edmonton have had to close shop because it was difficult to pay for trucked food from the U.S and other countries.
An index of Canadian small business confidence fell to a six-month low in May as optimism, particularly in Ontario, slipped in the wake of high energy prices.

The question that keeps doing the rounds in my mind is when will there be talk about all inclusive economic strategies that lift people out of poverty, instead of social doles.” Social hand outs for a large percentage of the population are a clear indicator of the lack of economic progress of a society, however advanced. It is also reflective of a lack of planning in terms of preparing future generations for jobs of the future.
We want to be optimistic…who does not? Yet there is no sign that there is a plan to create more jobs over and above those that have been lost temporarily or forever due to structural changes in our economy. What is the incentive for small businesses or even large businesses to set up shop and bring back businesses that have been lost to other countries. Whenever I pick up the phone and dial customer service for existing telecoms services, I get transported to either the Philippines or India. This despite the fact that there are Canadians (refugees/ new Canadians) who may be desperate enough to work at lesser wages.Yet, we prefer to transfer these jobs to other countries and allow Canadians to fend poverty.
What is needed is not money kept aside for doles but economic policies specifically targeted at the poor. The doles can act as income suppliments.
The Human Resource Ministry needs to be pro-active and think of ways of re training Canadians to take up jobs which are parcelled out to temporary foreign workers. The excuse given out is that Canadians are either not willing or not trained enough in those jobs. Poverty and unemployment are also an outcome of the lack of  imaginative thinking of those in charge of our planning.
With government spending on health occupying 12% of GDP and growing and debt, both individual and government weighing down on expenditure the scope for social responsibility of governments is pretty much restricted. Even in oil rich Alberta, gap between the incomes of the richest 20% and the poorest 20% of Albertans has increased by 62.9%. In 1999, the top 20% earned 14.5 times more than the lowest 20%. Alberta now has the highest after-tax in-come gap between rich and poor of any province.
Statistics show that Alberta now boasts the biggest gap between the rich and poor of any Canadian province.
Those that are proponents of a free market economy and minimal government intervention should be alarmed that under the Conservatives, government bulge increased to 3.6 million in the third quarter, up 0.3% from the 4th Q of 2010. Statistics Canada says, “Public sector employees represented 10.6% of the total Canadian population in the first quarter, unchanged during the last year. This proportion had been rising slowly since the first quarter of 2001 when it was 9.7%.The three levels of general government (federal, provincial and territorial, and local) accounted for 38.2% of total public sector employment in the first quarter. Educational institutions represented 29.5%, followed by health and social service institutions (23.5%) and government business enterprises (8.7%).
Meanwhile economic data does not look that promising. Exports between the year 2000 and 2010 period dipped down into negative territory, roughly about ten percent. Consumer spending at about 64% and government expenditure at nearly 25% is moving the economy. With a huge rise in personal and government debt this is likely to see halt and then the real impact of the recession shows.
Foreign investment of Canadian securities has slowed down and investment in Canadian bonds seems to have shown a marked downturn.
Foreign direct investment, that had seen a near 10% plunge in 2010 saw a slight growth in 2011 but remains a far cry from levels seen in 2007.


References:

Canadian poverty


RBC reports