Canada Slim and the Coming of the Fall

Landschlacht, Switzerland, 13 October 2017

There are some things that I don´t enjoy about working at Starbucks: shift work, impolite customers, how horribly messy the customers can be, how terrible things can become when things get insanely busy, especially with the arrival of autumn and the annual St. Gallen OLMA fair on now.

No job is perfect.

As well, no person is perfect at their job 100% of the time.

I´m certainly not.

But to justify supporting an employee, standards are set that he/she must meet.

From the bottom rung of humble baristas, such as myself, to shift managers, to store managers, to district managers, all the way to corporate HQ in faroff Seattle.

Above: Starbucks Corporation Headquarters, Seattle, Washington, USA

The job is defined, standards are set, and, hopefully, those hired by the company will do their jobs by the set standards.

If one doesn´t do his/her job as he/she should, then it is no great surprise to find that person asked to leave the position.

Politics shouldn´t be that far removed from business practices.

National leaders have their jobs defined, by either constitutions or by, the basest standard of measurement, the welfare of those for whom he/she has been entrusted responsibility.

Standards are set, either through comparisons with other current counterparts in a similar position of power or through comparisons with those who previously held the position.

Depending on the system of government by which a nation is administered, an unsuitable leader is forced to relinquish power if he/she is not following the constitution by which the country defines itself or if the welfare of the people has become so unpleasant that legal or even violent methods are sought to force the leader out.

Which brings me to the topic of two leaders, a century and an ocean apart….

In America there are three ways to end a presidency: vote him out of office in the following election, impeachment, and assassination.

Assassination is usually a bad idea, for it creates a martyrdom of that presidency.

Above: The assassination of President Abraham Lincoln by John Wilkes Booth, Ford Theater, Washington DC, 14 April 1865

Election is the normal course, if the dislike of a particular president is less a consequence of wrongdoing the president has done as it is a preference for a different candidate, then folks will willingly, albeit begrudgingly, wait until the customary time for re-election is due and then not return the president to power.

Impeachment is reserved for times when the President has already proven himself unsuitable for the position based on the dual standards of the rules set out by the US Constitution and by the intolerable welfare of the American populace.

At present, the United States is administered by Donald John Trump, a man uniquely unsuitable for the position of President.

Above: Donald John Trump, 45th US President since 2016

At present, his popularity wavers in the low 30s percentage mark.

So, is there a case for impeachment?

“Impeachment will proceed from the misconduct of public men, or, in other words, from the abuse or violation of some public trust, and they relate chiefly to injuries done immediately to the society itself.” (Alexander Hamilton, The Federalist)

Above: Alexander Hamilton (1755 – 1804)

“History is not geometry and historical parallels are never exact, yet a president who seems to have learned nothing from history is abusing and violating the public trust and setting the stage for a myriad of impeachable offenses that could get him removed from office.” (Allan J. Lichtman, The Case for Impeachment)

What follows is an abridgement of Lichtman´s excellent abovementioned book….

The President is the nation´s chief executive and commander in chief of its armed forces, but herein lies the danger that a President might pervert his administration into a scheme of oppression, or betray his public trust to foreign powers.

To keep a rogue president in check, power in America is shared by three independent branches of government, but a determined President can crash through these barriers.

Above: The political system of the United States

So, impeachment exists as the final solution to remove an unsuitable President before an election or before his/her term is due to end.

“The genius of impeachment is that it could punish the man without punishing the office.” (Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.)

The impeachment of a President is rare.

America has seen the impeachment of only two Presidents: Andrew Johnson in 1868 and Bill Clinton in 1998.

Both were acquitted after impeachment by the Senate.

Above: Andrew Johnson (1808-1875), 17th US President (1865-1869)

Above: William Jefferson Clinton, 42nd US President (1993 – 2001)

Richard Nixon avoided impeachment by resigning.

Above: Richard Nixon (1913-1994), 37th US President (1969-1974)

One in fourteen US Presidents has faced the possibility of impeachment.

Trump has broken all the rules.

He has stretched presidential authority nearly to the breaking point, appointed cabinet officials dedicated to destroying the institutions they are assigned to run, and has pushed America toward legal, military and constitutional crisis.

No previous President has entered the Oval Office without a shred of public service or with as egregious a record of enriching himself at the expense of others.

Trump´s penchant for lying, disregard for the law and conflicts of interest are lifelong habits that permeate his entire Presidency.

He has a history of mistreating women and covering up his misdeeds.

Above: The Women´s March, the largest single day protest in US history, 21 January 2017

He commits crime against humanity by reversing the battle against catastrophic climate change.

His dubious connections to Russia could open him up to a charge of treason.

Above: The flag of Russia

There are standards of truthfulness that a President must uphold.

There is a line between public service and private gain.

A free press is needed for a democracy to function.

A country should be immune against foreign manipulation of its politics.

A President has a responsibility to protect his people and, where applicable, the world.

By all these standards, Donald J. Trump has failed as a President.

As I have previously stated in this blog, impeachment is only possible with the majority vote of the US House of Representatives, which is controlled by the Republican Party whom Trump represents.

Only when Republicans themselves become convinced that Trump has committed high criminal offenses against the United States, that he imperils public safety and is unwell to occupy the Oval Office, then and only then will impeachment become a possibility.

Above: Logo of the US Republican Party

Trump could be convicted for illegal acts that occurred before he assumed office, for the Constitution specifies no time limit on any of its impeachable offenses: violation of the Fair Housing Act, the fraudulent charity Trump Foundation which is not legally registered, violation of the federal government´s strict embargo against spending any money for commercial purposes in Cuba, the fraudulent Trump University, and his exploitation of undocumented immigrants to build Trump Tower and in Trump Model Management.

Above: Trump Tower, Trump Organization HQ, New York City

To guard against foreign leverage on a President, the Constitution has a provision known as the Emoluments Clause, which says that “no title of nobility will be granted by the United States, and no person holding any office of profit or trust under them, shall, with the consent of Congress, accept of any present, emolument, office or title of any kind whatever, from any king, prince or foreign state.”

Above: Page 1 of the original US Constitution (1787)

The Emoluments Clause prohibits all federal officials, including the President, from receiving anything of value from foreign governments and their agents.

The prohibition is absolute.

No amount is specified.

A quid pro quo is not required to trigger a violation.

The Trump Company has millions invested in the Philippines and Trump´s profits depend on the good faith of the Filipino agent in the United States.

Above: The flag of the Philippines

The Trump Company has been granted a valuable trademark right for the use of the Trump name in the construction industry in China.

Above: The flag of the People´s Republic of China

Which begs the question of whether there is a quid pro quo agreement between the President and China.

Besides China and the Philippines, there are more than twenty nations in which Trump has business connections.

Does Trump distinguish his economic interests from the interests of the United States?

Trump businesses are heavily laden with debts that give lenders leverage over the Presidency.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Trump owes more than a billion dollars to some 150 financial institutions.

“The problem with any of this debt is if something goes wrong and there is a situation where the President is suddenly personally beholden or vulnerable to threats from the lenders.” (Trevor Potter)

Trump and his appointees make policy and regulatory decisions that affect these lenders.

Federal regulators have sanctioned one of Trump´s largest creditors, Deutsche Bank for fraud and the laundering of money from Russia.

Above: Logo of Deutsche Bank

Trump also has debts in China.

“Trump´s election may usher in a world in which his stature as the US President, the status of his private ventures across the globe, and his relationships with foreign business partners and the leaders of their governments could all become intertwined.” (Rosalind Helderman/Tim Hamburger)

Already, there is a lawsuit, brought by a bipartisan group called Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), which accuses Trump of having violated the Emoluments Clause.

Above: The White House

Trump´s domestic interests violates other federal laws.

The Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge (STOCK) Act prevents members of Congress and other federal employees from reaping private economic benefits through access to nonpublic governmental information.

“If Trump continues to own his businesses and he uses insider information or information he has as President, then arguably it is a violation of the STOCK Act.” (Larry Noble)

The Act also applies to any nonpublic information that Trump provides family members.

Withholding his tax returns, Trump makes it difficult to distinguish between benefits flowing to him personally versus those flowing to members of his family.

Above: Page 1, Form 1040, US tax return form, 2005

Then there is the question of conflicts of interest.

Trump has been urged to sell his interests in all his properties, to liquidate his debts and to put his remaining assets in a blind trust, administered by a third party who would not report to the President or his family any details of financial transactions.

Instead Trump handed over management of his enterprises to his children.

Trump retains all ownership and licensing rights to his enterprises and continually and personally profits from all his businesses.

The list of conflict-making presidential decisions cuts across virtually the entire range of national policies, including taxation, regulation, infrastructure spending, government contracts, trade, military operations, relations with foreign leaders, and so on.

A technical violation of the law is not necessary to trigger impeachment.

Any subordination of America´s national interests to Trump´s financial interests will suffice.

Donald Trump is a liar.

His lies have profited him in business, burnished his image, helped him fight thousands of lawsuits and won him the White House.

It is his reflex response to any challenge or opportunity.

Legally, Trump can lie while in office, but if he lies intentionally on a material matter in sworn testimony, that is a crime known as perjury.

Lying to Congress or to federal officials is also an impeachable offense.

The US Supreme Court has ruled that a President cannot be sued for his official duties, but is not otherwise immune from lawsuits involving unofficial conduct, whether before or after assuming office.

If Trump is sued and forced to testify under oath and lies, this could lead directly to his impeachment.

If Trumps corrupts the government information upon which an informed citizenry depends, this is another avenue to impeachment in that his lies threaten national credibility and trust.

Is Donald Trump a traitor?

If it can be proven that there was some level of collusion between Trump or his agents and a foreign power to manipulate the results of an American election, then Trump could be charged with treason.

No one in Congress will tolerate a compromised or treasonous President.

Impeachment and trial will be quick and decisive.

Trump may be destined for impeachment for egregious abuses of power.

Through his travel bans, Trump has violated the letter and spirit of the Immigration Act, which rejects nationality quotas and states that no person can be “discriminated against in the issuance of an immigration visa because of the person´s race, sex, nationality, place of birth or place of residence”.

The travel bans violate the First Amendment´s prohibition against “an establishment of religion”, which forbids any government to favour one religion over another.

The travel bans violate the Fifth Amendment, which prohibits the government from depriving individuals of their “life, liberty or property, without due process of law”.

The Whistleblowers Protection Act protects the rights of federal employees to report misconduct, without retaliation or reprisals.

Some 1,000 professional American diplomats submitted a dissent memo declaring that Trump´s ban was discriminatory.

They were told that they “should either get with the program or they can go”.

Trump fired Acting Attorney General Sally Yates when she refused to defend his travel ban in court, because she believed, in good conscience, that the ban violated American law.

Above: Sally Yates, US Attorney General (2017)

In drafting his travel ban, Trump did not consult with Congress or any pertinent committees.

Instead Trump recruited staff members of the House Judiciary Committee to assist in drafting the executive order, without prior consultation with their bosses, imposing on them confidentiality agreements.

The unauthorised use of congressional staffers and the coercing upon them of gag orders, violates the separation of powers between the executive and Congress.

When Senior Federal District Court Judge James L. Robart issued an injunction halting implementation of Trump´s travel ban, Trump responded by waging war on the judiciary suggesting that the Courts will be to blame for any future terrorist attack upon US soil.

Trump´s dispargement of the Judiciary raises concerns that, in the event of another terrorist incident, Trump will blame the Courts and his political enemies as a pretext for taking total control under martial law.

To eliminate another check on his powers, Trump discredits any reporting that does not follow his propaganda line as “fake news” by the “very dishonest press”.

The White House has barred from press briefings selected outlets that have reported news critical of the administration.

Above: President George W. Bush unveiling the James Brady White House Press Briefing Room, 11 July 2007

He continues to threaten suppression of those news sources he disapproves of.

Even if President Trump does not brazenly violate the First Amendment through censorship, he can still be impeached for his war on the press as an abuse of presidential power.

Issues surrounding Trump´s temperament raise the question of whether he might be charged with “incapacity”.

The Twenty-Fifth Amendment provides a means for removing a President for disabilities – not limited to the physical – that render him unable to fulfill the duties of office.

It is a procedure that has never been used to remove a President and requires the cooperation of the Vice President and the cabinet.

Should Trump challenge this declaration, then Congress must declare him incapable by at least a two-thirds vote.

Mental health professionals have already challenged Trump´s mental fitness to govern.

By the standard of ensuring that the citizenry under his control are provided for, Trump has again failed.

From his desire to remove millions of Americans from health coverage, to his unwillingness to ensure American safety from the overabundance of and lack of regulation of guns, to his provocation of North Korea in a game of nuclear roulette, to his reversal of needed climate change legislation and cooperation, to his unwilling reluctance to assist a devastated Puerto Rico, Trump has proven again and again of his unfitness to govern America.

 

Perhaps it is not a question of whether Trump will be impeached but more of a question of when?

 

A similar inevitable scenario existed in Russia a century ago….

To be fair, Tsar Nicholas II had powers that Trump could only dream of, but there are definite parallels that can be drawn between Nicholas and Trump and why these parallels led to the necessary abdication of Nicholas as Tsar of Russia.

Above: Nicholas II of Russia (1868-1918), Tsar (1894-1917)

The Russian Revolution did not come of the blue.

The dress rehearsal for the events of 1917 took place in 1905.

1904 had seen military defeat by the Japanese, starvation and discontent in the countryside, appaling living and working conditions in the cities, and the spread of socialist and democratic ideas among the intelligentsia.

These all came together on 9 January 1905, Bloody Sunday, when the Imperial Guard in St. Petersburg gunned down hundreds of unarmed demonstrators.

The result was a mortal blow to the credibility of Nicholas II and his regime.

Massive nationwide strikes and demonstrations forced the Tsar to accept the first-ever representative assembly in Russian history, the Duma.

This concession brought a few years of precarious stability.

The next few years saw a bitter tug of war between a Tsar, who was intent on maintaining his autocratic power, and a series of Dumas demanding economic and political reform.

With the abandonment of serious efforts at reform, rising social disorder and discontent was Russia´s entry into the First World War in 1914.

Russian society pulled together in the face of a common enemy.

Strikes stopped.

Agitators were jalied.

There were huge patriotic demonstrations.

But as the War dragged on, the resulting military humiliation and rising economic discontent, was the final nail in the coffin of the tsarist regime.

The War took Nicholas far away from Petrograd (the new, patriotic name for St. Petersburg) to command his troops.

(Like Trump, Nicholas thought himself to be a military leader.

He wasn´t.

Trump isn´t.)

Government was left in the hands of the capricious and incompetent Tsarina Alexandra.

Above: Alexandra Feodorovna (1872-1918), Tsarina (1894-1917)

The standing of the Tsar reached rock bottom, with even members of his own family plotting to remove him.

Rising popular discontent came to a head with bread riots in Petrograd.

After some attempts at suppression the army joined the rioters.

Nicholas was asked by the Duma to respond directly in Petrograd.

On his train, Nicholas was virtually incommunicado.

Russia had only a provisional government sharing its powers with a workers´ soviet.

The temporary government needed the aura of authority through which to yield power, while the soviet knew its powers need not extend beyond the capital.

The people needed a legitimate sense that order would indeed be reestablished.

It was clear that Nicholas had long ago failed them, but, sheep need a shepherd, someone needed to lead and organise.

Nicholas needed to abdicate and someone needed to replace him.

Trump needs to be impeached and someone is needed to replace him.

Nicholas, like Trump a century later, had shown no willingness to accept advice, to grow in his role, to internalise criticism or to show restraint.

Nicholas, like Trump, lacked the protection of a wide popular mandate.

Both men fought to keep their power regardless of the damage wrecked on others.

Trump´s end has yet to be written.

What follows soon in this blog is how Nicholas´ chapter drew to a close and how an exile in Switzerland would seize the fall of a Tsar to grab ultimate power for himself.

Sources: Wikipedia / Allan J. Lichtman, The Case for Impeachment / Tony Brenton, Historically Inevitable?: Turning Points in the Russian Revolution

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Canada Slim and the High Road to Anarchy

Landschalacht, Switzerland, 7 September 2017

Six nights ago the world was shocked and saddened when a lone gunman in a hotel room on the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Resort and Casino on Las Vegas Strip in Paradise, Nevada, shot into a crowd of more than 20,000 people, killing 60 and injuring hundreds.

The world has learned that the suspect, Stephen Paddock, was armed with at least 23 firearms, including long distance rifles used by the American military for the last half-century.

What we know – and I don´t want to give this monster more attention than he deserves – about Paddock was that he was a professional gambler, a real estate investor, a pilot and plane owner, a former employee of Lockheed Martin (a military contractor), a retired accountant and twice divorced.

Invading his home, police have discovered Paddock had a cache of over 63 weapons.

In plain and simple language, a civilian was armed with military grade firearms.

Those bearing arms in the US armed forces are analysed and supervised.

Civilian gun-owners in the US….

Not so much.

Thus there is a real danger that civilians will – unsupervised – acquire a stockpile of weaponry and that the unbalanced among them will use them.

And as events in Vegas and many other locations prior to Sunday night´s massacre have proven….

It is almost impossible to determine what will trigger these civilians to become unbalanced and unleash the unthinkable upon the unknowing.

Gun violence in the United States results in tens of thousands of deaths and injuries annually.

In an average year in America there are over 10,000 homicides, 20,000 suicides and 500 accidental deaths caused by civilian-owned firearms.

Over 1.5 million people in the US have been killed using firearms since 1968, equivalent to the population of a large American city.

Globally, it is estimated that there are over 875 million small arms in the hands of civilians, law enforcement agencies and armed forces.

Of these, 75% are held by civilians.

US civilians account for over 270 million of this total.

The United States and Yemen are distinct from many other countries in that they consider civilian gun ownership as a right.

In most countries, civilian firearm ownership is considered a privilege because the legislation governing possession of firearms is more restrictive.

Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Eritrea, Somalia, the Solomon Islands and Taiwan prohibit civilian ownership of firearms in almost all instances.

In America it has been shown that the states with the strictest gun laws have lower homicide and suicide rates than those with the least restrictive gun laws.

States without universal background checks or waiting period laws have steeper homicide and suicide rates than do states with these laws.

But, of course, for every study proving that gun control does work, somehow studies emerge that gun control doesn´t work.

And the mindset in America is so pro-gun ownership that an American philosophy Professor Michael Huemer argues that gun control is morally wrong, because individuals have a right to own a gun for self defence and recreation!

In my homeland of Canada, rifles and shotguns are relatively easy to obtain, while handguns and semi-automatic weapons are not.

So, though our gun laws may not have significantly reduced gun violence or firearm suicide rates, the ability and the frequency to murder masses of people at one time is significantly lower than our counterparts south of the border.

Gun control laws enacted in Australia, following mass shootings, have shown a dramatic decline in overall firearm-related deaths, especially suicides.

Gun control laws passed in Austria, Brazil, New Zealand, Israel, Switzerland, Norway, South Africa and Colombia have all shown a resulting reduction in homicide and suicide rates.

The effectiveness and safety of guns used for personal defence is usually the argument given by gun ownership advocates.

Yet it seems in the US, out of 1,000 criminal incidents, guns are used for self defence in less than 1% of the time.

In most cases, the potential victim never fired a shot.

What is certain is that the likelihood that a death will result is significantly increased when either the victim or the attacker has a firearm.

Every year in America there are over 19,000 firearm-related suicides.

It has been shown that individuals living in a home where firearms are present are more likely to commit suicide than those who do not own firearms, because firearms are the most lethal method of suicide.

Every year on average there are over 10,000 firearm-related homicides in America, 75% of them using handguns.

The US has one of the highest incidence rates of homicides committed with a firearm in the world.

Of the victims of gun homicide in America, 55% of them are African Americans.

Of the white homicide victims, 84% are killed by white offenders.

Of the black homicide victims, 93% are killed by black offenders.

In 2015, there were 372 mass shootings and over 30,000 deaths due to firearms in the US, while, by comparison there were only 50 deaths due to firearms in the UK.

(A mass shooting is defined as four or more people shot dead in a public place.)

The rate of deadly mass shootings in the US keeps increasing every year.

Sadly, unbalanced individuals can become infected by the attention given other disturbed people who have become mass killers, resulting in more mass killing.

More people are typically killed with guns in the US in a day (on average, 85) than are killed in the UK in a year.

In the US, areas with higher levels of gun ownership also have higher rates of gun assault and gun robbery.

At least 11 assassination attempts with firearms have been made on US Presidents: four were successful (Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley, Kennedy).

Above: The assassination of President William McKinley, 1901

And throughout history, gun violence has played a major role in civil disorder.

But, let me be fair….

Most gun owners are not criminals and purchase guns to prevent violence, rather than for recreational use.

Debate over gun control remains a heated and controversial issue in America.

Firearms regulations are sets of laws or policies that regulate the manufacture, sale, transfer, possession, modification and use of firearms by civilians.

Much, albeit necessary, focus has been on the possession, modification and use of firearms.

Personally, I think there needs to be more focus and more restrictions on the manufacture, sale and transfer of firearms as well.

The fewer guns produced, the fewer guns can be purchased, legally or illegally.

If manufacturers are restricted to selling arms only to the military and the law enforcement community and private selling of arms to the public are reduced while the private purchase of arms is made prohibitively expensive throughout heavy taxation, then might the production and availability of new armament to the general public be reduced.

As for existing guns, limit ownership to one weapon, buy back or seize (should the gun owner refuse to sell) the remaining weapons and destroy them.

My argument is if the purpose of purchasing a firearm is recreation or self-protection, only one firearm is necessary.

If the purpose of owning a firearm is recreation or self-protection, then, like Canada, let that ownership be restricted to rifles and shotguns, banning the future purchase of handguns and semi-automatics.

As for the illegal purchase and sale of firearms, let the penalties be so harsh as to actively discourage the practice.

Those who read these words may accuse me of being a “gun grabber”.

They are right.

With great power comes great responsibilty.

Owning a gun is a great power – the power to end another person´s life.

Quite frankly, there are far too many civilians who don´t act responsibly, and though there are indeed many who do, it only takes a few to cause carnage as was witnessed on Sunday night in Paradise, Nevada.

And….

Enough with “thoughts and prayers”.

Offering condolences after a public tragedy, manmade or natural, is a poor substitute for preventing or preparing for these tragedies.

There is something deeply hypocritical about praying for a problem you are unwilling to resolve.

“What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works?

Can that faith save him?

If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them:

“Go in peace, be warmed and filled.”,

….without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that?” (James 2: 14 – 16, The Holy Bible)

(Donald Trump, regarding Puerto Rico, take note.)

As well, we need to learn from history that shows just how irresponsible civilians can be once they get their hands on a firearm.

 

Petrograd (today´s St. Petersburg), Russia, Monday 27 February 1917

Events took a decisive turn in the early hours of the day, when the army, as many had predicted, began mutinying.

At 3 am, following the previous day´s example of the Pavlovsky rebels, the soldiers of the Volynsky Regiment´s barracks near the junction of the Moika River and the Ekaterininsky Canal, some of whom had been ordered to fire on the crowds on Sunday, decided to mutiny.

When the soldiers lined up for duty, some of them turned on their commanding officer and shot him dead.

They were unable, however, to persuade the rest of the Regiment to join them, so they headed off to incite other regiments, picking up a rabble of civilian supporters along the way.

They gathered at the Liteiny Bridge and headed to the depot battalion of the Preobrazhensky and Lithuanian Regiments as well as the 6th Engineer Battalion.

Above: Liteiny Bridge, today

Most of them soon joined the Volynsky rebels – with the Engineer Battalion even bringing their marching band – and, by the end of the day, would kill the commanders of a battalion of the Preobrazhensky and a battalion of the Volynsky as well as numerous other officers.

In those first few hours most of the rebellious soldiers were disorientated and numbed by the spontaneous decision they had made.

They had no sense of where to go or what to do, other than get other regiments to join them.

Such was the euphoria among the rebellious troops that many simply walked around shouting, cheering and arguing amongst themselves “like schoolboys broken out of school”.

Leadership of this motley mob of soldiers and civilians devolved into acts of sudden bravado or rabble-rousing on street corners, but they quickly realised that they needed to arm themselves.

It was a huge shock to Meriel Buchanan, daughter of the British Ambassador, arriving back in Petrograd at 8 o´clock that morning from a visit with friends in the country, to find there were no trams or carriages to transport her and her luggage back to the Embassy.

She was forcibly struck by how Petrograd had changed in her absence:

“In the bleak, gray light of the early morning the town looked inexpressibly desolate and deserted, the bare, ugly street leading up from the station, with the dirty white stucco houses on either side, seemed, after the snow-white peace of the country, somehow the very acme of dreariness.”

At 10 am, with Meriel Buchanan shut up and forbidden to leave the Embassy, the rebel group descended on the Old Arsenal at the top of the Liteiny, which housed both the Artillery Department and a small arms factory.

Above: Liteiny Prospekt, today

In a mad frenzy, they smashed in the Arsenal´s ground floor door and windows and looted rifles, revolvers, swords, daggers, ammunition and machine guns.

Around 11 am, they turned their attention to the hated symbols of tsarism – the nearby District Court and the Palace of Justice, together with an adjoining remand prison.

The prison was burst open, the inmates set free and handed weapons, and the prison set on fire.

The District Court was torched, thus destroying all the criminal records of all the freed convicts as well as valuable historical archives dating back to the reign of Catherine the Great (1762 – 1796).

American photographer Donald Thompson watched the violence on the Liteiny when suddenly he himself was arrested and hauled off to the police station.

He showed the police his American press pass, but he was locked in a suffocating small cell with 20 other people.

The mob broke into the police station, smashed the lock to his cell and suddenly people threw their arms around him and kissed him, telling him he was free.

In the front office, as Thompson made his way out, he “found a sight beyond description”: “women were down on their knees hacking the bodies of the police to pieces”.

He saw one woman “trying to tear somebody´s face off with her bare fingers”.

The Liteiny quarter was now a scene of “indescribable confusion”, ablaze from the fires at the District Court and the Palace of Justice, the air thick with the crackle of random shooting. (French diplomat Louis de Robien)

An abandoned, overturned tram was being used as a platform from which a succession of speakers attempted to harangue the mob, but “it was impossible to make heads or tails of the disorderly ebb and flow of all these panic-stricken people running in every direction.” (Louis de Robien)

When a group of still-loyal Senonovsky Regiment soldiers arrived, there was a pitched battle between them and a company of Volynsky mutineers – watched by groups of civilians huddled into side passages and doorways, many of them women and children tempted out by “the spirit of curiosity”, and who took enormous risks, “walking out calmly under a lively fire to drag back the wounded”. (Louis de Robien)

The wounded were carried off as fast as they fell, leaving behind “long trails of fresh blood” in the snow. (US Special Attaché James Houghteling)

In between bouts of fighting, civilians scuttled back and forth across the Liteiny, intent on carrying on shopping as normal, even lining up outisde the bakeries and dispersing only when they heard machine gunfire.

To many of the bewildered civilian population, the events swirling around them were unreal, “as though they were watching some melodrama in one of the cinemas.” (James Houghteling)

Such was the abandon with which weapons looted from army barracks, the arsenal, prisons and police stations were handed out to everyone.

Crowds of civilians, workers and soldiers were soon parading round gleefully, brandishing their weapons and firing them off at random.

“Here….a hooligan with an officer´s sword fastened over his overcoat, a rifle in one hand and revolver in the other.

There….a small boy with a large butcher´s knife on his shoulder.

Close by, a workman….holding an officer´s sword with one hand and a tramline cleaner in the other.

A student with two rifles and a belt of machine gun bullets around his waist was walking beside another with a bayonet tied to the end of a stick.

A drunken soldier had only the barrel of a rifle remaining, the stock having been broken off in forcing an entry into some shop.” (British engineer James Jones)

There was no safe haven for any officers seen walking the streets that day who did not immediately surrender their weapons when challenged.

By midday the rabble of weapon-toting civilians in and around the Liteiny had been joined by 25,000 soldiers from the Volynsky, Preobrazhensky, Litovsky, Keksgolmsky and Sapper Regiments.

The dense crowd jammed the street for a quarter of a mile, “carried on by its own faith in itself”. (Arno Dosch-Fleurot, New York World)

Everywhere, amidst the mighty roar of revolutionary excitement, the singing and cheering and shouting, the fighting colour of scarlet was in evidence – in crude revolutionary banners, in rosettes and armbands and in red ribbons tied to the barrels of rifles.

Throughout that terrifying day in Petrograd many observers became alarmed by the anarchy and violence of the mob.

This was no benign revolution, but rather “like watching some savage beast that had broken out of its cage”. (US entrepreneur Negley Farson)

Hardened criminals, bestialised by brutal prison conditions, yet released by the mob from prisons across Petrograd, proceeded to incite the crowds to violence, arson and mass looting.

It was dangerous for any foreign national to venture into the streets without wearing some token of sympathy with the Revolution – a red ribbon or an armband of some kind.

“It was a very easy time in which to be killed.” (Isaac Marcosson, Everybody´s Magazine)

Foreigners were constantly being stopped and challenged on the streets for being policemen or spies.

Some were killed if they could not produce proof of identity quickly enough.

That day “anybody could have a gun for the asking”. (James Jones)

With so many untrained and inexperienced people now in possession of them and not “having a care as to which way the gun was pointing when they tried it out for the first time“, indiscriminate firing led to many innocent bystanders being killed and wounded. (James Stinton Jones)

All day long, people – mixed casualities of soldiers and civilians – flocked into hospitals from the streets, trying to escape the shooting.

A long overdue day of reckoning had arrived, as popular hatred was visited, with a savage vengeance, on the police.

During this February Revolution of 1917, there were far too many incidental acts of murder of policemen for any reliable record ever to have been taken of the numbers killed.

Nobody was immune to the experience of such savagery.

By late evening 66,700 men of the Imperial Army in Petrograd had mutinied.

Revolutionaries were now in charge of the whole city, except the Winter Palace, the Admirality and the General Staff – still guarded by loyal troops, as were the telephone exchange and the telegraph office.

Above: The Winter Palace, today

The whole day had been “a Revolution carried on by chance – no Organisation, no particular leader, just a city full of hungry people who had stood enough and were ready to die if necessary before they would put up with any more tsarism”. (US aviator Bert Hall)

Above: The storming of the Bastille Prison, Paris, 14 July 1789

These events bring to mind the French Revolution of 1789 and Charles Dickens´ A Tale of Two Cities.

“Petrograd was flaring like the set piece of a colossal firework display.” (Canadian William J. Gibson)

“The prisons were opened, the workmen were armed, the soldiers were without officers, a Soviet (worker´s council) was being set up in opposition to the Temporary Committee (formed by the Duma´s moderate and liberal members) chosen from the elected representatives of the people.”

Petrograd “was already on the high road to anarchy”.

(UK Military Attaché Major-General Alfred Knox)

Above: A scene of anarchy, Thirty Years War (1618 – 1648)

As I have previously written, revolution or civil war is highly unlikely in America as there is great lack of cohesion amongst its citizens.

But should American citizens ever get it into their heads to revolt, their 270 million guns could create one hell of a state of anarchy and destruction.

I hope that day never comes, but a failure to address the problem of an overproliferation of guns is perhaps tempting fate one time too many.

Is it only a century that separates Paradise from Petrograd?

Above: Edvard Munch´s The Scream

Sources: Wikipedia / Helen Rappaport, Caught in the Revolution: Petrograd 1917

 

Canada Slim and the Bloodstained Ground

Landschlacht, Switzerland, 2 October 2017

I have returned, refreshed and revitalised, from a weekend away in Freiburg im Breisgau, in Germany´s Black Forest, ready to write.

Above: Freiburg City Hall

I had forgotten some of my own rules, some of my own motivations, for writing, which two of my best friends in Freiburg reminded me of.

(Thanks, Reggie and Miguel!)

The first rule was to be true to myself, to not write what I think is politically correct but to speak my mind.

The second rule was to remind myself constantly of the old adage that the only way for evil to triumph is when good men do nothing, that I have a responsibility to use my words to show others the dangers of remaining complacent to the world´s injustices and inequalities.

The third rule was to be constant, to keep on keeping on, to write as often as possible, to write as if I am being read by millions rather than dozens, to believe in my abilities to write, to one day become a published author of distinction.

Of recent weeks I have been writing if two major themes: my travels and the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution(s) of 1917.

I believe the second of these two themes is extremely important and relevant these days, for how a society claims for itself democracy and how it can lose that democracy in the desire for order and security is not only a recounting of the events of the Russian Revolution, but is as well a reminder of how fragile democracy is and how quickly it can be lost, even in the most stable of democracies, even in this most modern of times.

When I last spoke of the Russian Revolution….

(See Canada Slim and the Dawn of Revolution of this blog.)

….I wrote of how the Tsarist government had failed the Russian people and how a group of dissatisfied angry women triggered the events that would eventually lead to the Tsar´s abdication.

Day One of what would be later known as the February Revolution came and went in Petrograd (formerly and presently St. Petersburg).

Let´s look now at how the days that followed the women´s march that would bring down a Tsar and bring a revolutionary out of exile.

 

Petrograd, Russia, Friday 24 February 1917

It was dull and foggy with cold rain, but neither the weather nor the appearance on the streets of Cossack horsemen, heavily armed and grim, dampened the demonstrators´ zeal.

 

By late morning, nearly 75,000 workers from Petrograd´s industrial Vyborg quarter (2/3 of Petrograd´s workforce) had joined the strike.

This second day of mass demonstrations had seen more workers out on strike than at any time during the War. (WW1)

As the marchers approached the Liteyny Bridge, Cossacks were arrayed against them, the lines of horses and the glint of steel terrifying.

But these agents of the Tsarist government shared the workers´ frustrations.

For the first time anyone could remember, the Cossacks cantered through the workers´ lines, refusing to brandish their sabres or their whips.

Meanwhile, across the river in downtown Petrograd, further demonstrations filled the streets, bakeries were looted and food shops attacked.

The workers were now becoming violent.

General Khabalov ensured that many more machine gun placements were set up in the attics of mansions, hotels, shops, clock and bell towers up and down Nevsky Prospekt, and on the roofs of railway stations.

He had infantry and machine gunners in reserve and a huge stockpile of rifles, revolvers and ammunition, which, although designated for the front, had been retained for use in Petrograd, should the need arise and stored in the various police stations.

Nonetheless, the disturbance spread west to the dockyards and naval Engineering works of Vasilievsky Island.

Government ministers had yet to respond to events.

In the Tauride Palace, however Duma (Russia´s Parliament) members demanded to take control of the city´s food supply in a last-ditch attempt to address the most immediate economic woe: the shortage of food.

Throughout the night, there were occasional volleys of gunfire, but astonishly the social life of the city continued.

The Alexandrinsky Theatre was packed that evening for a performance of Nikolai Gogol´s (1809 – 1852) The Government Inspector.

The audience was in a lively humour at this satire on the political weaknesses of the mid-19th century.

Few seemed willing to believe that a greater drama was at that moment unfolding in real life throughout the capital.

The atmosphere of the city was like a taut wire.

Over at the French Embassy, First Secretary Charles de Chambrun wrote to his wife, pondering the news he had just heard that a general strike had been declared for the following day.

Above: Charles de Chambrun (1875 – 1952)

More marches, more protests were coming, but what could a mob “without alcohol, without a leader and without a clear objective achieve?”

As night fell, Petrograd waited expectantly.

 

Petrograd, Russia, Saturday 25 February 1917

“Oh, this interminable Russian winter with its white roofs for so many long months and its slippery roads.”, French resident Louise Patouillet wrote ruefully in her diary, by now long accustomed to the kind of low grey sky that greeted the city with a new fall of snow.

National City Bank clerk Leighton Rogers, in contrast, struck an excited note in his own journal:

“What a day!

The general strike is on, all right, and trouble has begun.”

That morning, on their way to the Bank, Rogers and his colleagues had “found the streets thick with police, both afoot and mounted, no factories working, and the Nevsky a long line of closed shops, with here and there a boarded up door or window.”

Rogers had heard rumours that the first person had been killed the previous night when trying to break into a bread shop.

People on the streets seemed on the lookout for excitement, “like a crowd at a great country fair”, but Rogers “hated to think of what one shot would do.”

Had Rogers known the extent to which the strikers were now arming themselves for an inevitable street fight with the police, he might have been even more alarmed.

Across the city, embassies and legations were being warmed by telephone not to allow their staff to go out.

Violent protest was certainly the intention of the workers over in the factory districts that morning, as they gathered for a huge march on the city.

They ensured that they wore plenty of padding under their thick coats to ward off blows from police batons or Cossack whips.

Some even crafted metal plates to wear under their hats, to protect their heads from blows.

They filled their pockets with whatever metal projectiles and weapons they could lay their hands on in their factories.

The general strike had begun.

Among its leaders were members of the Mezhraionka (Soviet inter-district committees) and rank-and-file activists from various left-wing groups, including the Bolsheviks´ Vyborg Committee.

All had worked through the night to spread the message and bring people out.

The morning felt like the start of a holiday.

Trainloads of people, including families with children, streamed into the city from nearby industrial towns.

In Petrograd itself, working class districts hummed with earnest preparation.

The factories were silent.

There were no trams.

By 10 o´clock the streets rang with the sound of marching feet and voices singing revolutionary songs.

As the day went on, the strike spread across the city, bringing out everyone, from shop workers to waitresses, to cooks and maids and cab drivers.

Key workers in the supply of the city´s electricity, gas and water, as well as tram drivers, were also out in force.

Striking postal workers and printers ensured that there were no mail deliveries and no newspapers.

Over 200,000 people chose to march through Petrograd that day.

White collar workers, teachers and students joined the uprising, and as they passed the homes of the wealthy the marchers sometimes saw pale hands waving from upper windows.

The goal was Znamenskaya Square, where huge crowds had assembled by the early afternoon.

Red banners stretched above the sea of heads, many with slogans that demanded peace, immediate and longed-for peace.

Between the many speeches, some enthusiasts began singing the Marseillaise.

In wartime Russia, this was treason and a breach of martial law.

But, for most, the crowd felt like protection in itself, the sense of justice and community a shield in its own right.

A little after 3 pm, a mounted police officer, Krylov, told his men to prime their weapons and disperse the mob.

In the mêlée that followed, the Cossack horsemen charged the crowd, but then rode back and regrouped using their sabres on the police, not on the demonstrators.

Krylov himself lay dead.

The Cossacks had pulled Krylov from his horse, someone had grabbed the officer´s revolver and shot Krylov dead, while another had beat him in a rage with a piece of wood.

It was the first defining act of violence against the police that day.

For an hour or so, the people could believe in a forthcoming victory.

Bitter cold prevailed.

All the trams were stopped and many shops were closed.

People milled on Nevsky Prospekt, “eddying up and down in anxious curiosity”, a “curious, smiling, determined crowd…dangerous”. (Leighton Rogers)

Troops were out in force at the natural gathering points at major intersections, but like the Cossacks, they were unwilling to exert force.

The crowds appeared hopeful that that they had won them over.

The impromptu bread riots of women marchers had now exploded into a political movement, coloured by more and more acts of violence and looting.

Revolution came easily to a people already traumatised by wartime sufferings or, as soldiers, inured to violence.

But there would be other confrontations between crowds and troops that day and marchers and bystanders would be killed.

No one was certain of the facts.

There were neither newspapers nor public telephones.

There was still no outward sign of a systematic organised revolt.

The movement remained chaotic, leaderless.

“Is it a riot? Is it a revolution?”, asked Claude Anet, Petrograd correspondent of Le Petit Parisien, who – like other foreign journalists in town – had no luck in telegraphing the news back to his paper in Paris.

At Russian army HQ at Mogilev nearly 500 miles away, Tsar Nicholas II received news of the violent turn of events in Petrograd, although Interior Minister Alexander Protopopov failed to transmit the true gravity of the Situation to him.

Above: Tsar Nicholas II (1868 – 1918)

Thinking firmer measures by police and troops were all that were needed, Nicholas did not see the necessity of returning to Petrograd.

Instead he telegraphed Major General Khabalov, Petrograd´s military governor, and ordered him to “quell by tomorrow the disturbances in the capital which are inexcusable in view of the difficulties of the war with Germany and Austria”.

His wife Tsarina Alexandra had written, dismissing the day´s events as no more than the workers blowing off steam, “a hooligan movement”, “young boys and girls running about and screaming that they have no bread, only to excite.”

Above: Tsarina Alexandra Feodorovna (1872 – 1918)

Had the weather been colder, Alexandra felt that the protesters “would probably stay indoors”.

Besides, Alexandra had far more serious things to think about:  three of her five children were down with the measles.

Seeking some light relief from the day´s traumatic events, some Petrograders went that evening to the Mikhailovsky Theatre premiere of a French farce, L´ Idée de Francoise.

The imperial boxes were empty and the grand dukes absent.

One of the company, actress Paulette Pax, found the whole performance unnerving – particularly the audience, with its profusion of jewels and sumptuous outfits – bearing in mind what had been going on outside all day,

Pax felt that none of the audience had taken much notice of the play.

Their minds were elsewhere, their applause half-hearted.

“What we were doing was ridiculous,” Pax wrote in her diary, “performing a comedy at such a time made no sense.”

Daily Observer journalist Arthur Ransome did not consider the situation as serious as Pax.

Above: Cover picture of Arthur Ransome (1884 – 1967)

He noted how many of the theatre crowd were out simply to watch other people make trouble.

The “general feeling” was one of “rather precarious excitement like a Bank Holiday with thunder in the air.”, Ransome wrote in his despatch that evening.

Outside in the streets of Petrograd, restless photographer David Thompson was still in search of a story at 2 am, when he came face-to-face with mob violence.

A rowdy group of 60 people had taken two heads of slain policemen and had jammed them onto poles and were carrying them down the middle of the street.

Thompson had seen enough red for one day: red flags, red bloodstains on the snow and now severed heads.

He saw more bodies on his way back to the Astoria Hotel and he would later discover that a great many policemen were killed or seriously wounded by mobs that night.

All through Saturday night there was a great deal of screaming and yelling and incessant gunfire throughout the city.

 

Petrograd, Russia, Sunday 26 February 1917

There was an ominous stillness in the city on this beautiful, cloudless, sunny morning.

But overnight General Khabalov had resolved that draconian measures would have to be taken to keep the situation under control.

New placards posted across the city announced that all workers would have to return to work by Tuesday the 28th or those who had applied for deferment of their military service would be sent straight to the front.

All street gatherings of more than three people were forbidden.

At a meeting of the Council of Ministers that had gone from midnight until 5 am, Khabalov gave assurances that 30,000 soldiers, backed up by artillery and armoured cars, would be on the streets, with orders to take decisive action against the demonstrators.

Overnight, Khabalov had issued orders to turn Petrograd into a military camp.

At daybreak, the bridges were raised.

Armed police and troops had mustered at main junctions and squares, while Red Cross wagons waited to cart the wounded off to makeshift hospitals.

Khabalov´s orders were to fire on any demonstrator who defied his order to disperse.

Khabalov ensured that most of the troops on Nevsky Prospekt were training detachments from the guards regiments, brought in from the military academies.

They were all heavily armed with rifles and bayonets.

The assumption was that NCOs (non-commissioned officers) would be less reluctant to shoot, if ordered to do so.

It seemed that the whole city was out of doors that morning, and on foot – for there were no trams or cabs.

People were determined to get to church as usual or simply enjoy the fine weather for a promenade along Nevsky Prospekt.

Couples pushed their babies in prams.

Children skated on ice rinks.

Just like any ordinary Sunday.

But most of the shops and cafés were closed, with most of them with shutters closed or windows boarded up.

People were desperate for news and groups formed around those with any news to tell.

The predominating conversation was about how many had been killed or injured.

By midday Nevsky Prospekt was blocked with dense crowds.

A mob, waving red flags and singing the Marseillaise, gathered.

The police pulled a machine into the middle of the tram tracks.

Volley after volley rang out.

The dead were thick.

The wounded were screaming as they were trampled down.

Hell itself had broken loose on the Nevsky.

There was gunfire from every point, from the roofs of buildings and sweeping all around.

A little girl was hit in the throat by gunfire.

A well-dressed woman collapsed with a scream as her knee was shattered by a bullet.

All around people lay dead and dying in the snow.

Thirty dead in all, with far more women and chidren than men slain.

Everyone else was prostrate on the ground, hugging the pavement or lying in the snow, numb with cold, too frightened to move.

Ambulances appeared and started collecting the dead and the wounded.

But the bloodshed wasn´t over.

By noon, 25,000 troops had gone over to the side of the demonstrators.

The bulk of the available forces, however, simply stayed in their barracks as the mob took over the streets.

In the early evening, at Znamensky Square, a dense mass of people from the Nevsky converged with another crowd coming up Ligovskaya, the major thoroughfare to the south.

Local police leaders rode among the crowd ordering them to disperse.

The people refused to budge.

The commander of the 1st and 2nd training detachments of the Volynsky Regiment ordered his men to fire into the crowd.

The troop of Cossacks also positioned in the crowd turned and fired at the Regiment gunmen.

It was a veritable pandemonium, as with a great howl of rage, the crowd scattered behind buildings and into courtyards, from where some of them began firing at the military and the police.

More than 40 people were killed and hundreds wounded.

No one knew exactly how many had been killed by Sunday´s end.

Nobody was counting, but evidence of the day´s violence was everywhere to be seen.

Hundreds of empty cartridge cases littered the ground and the snow was drenched with blood.

After dark, when the crowds had been cleared from Nevsky Prospekt, the soldiers involved in the shootings at Znamensky Square and on the Nevsky, returned to their barracks, angry and upset that they had been forced to fire on the crowds.

100 of the Pavlovsky guards in their nearby barracks on the Field of Mars, hearing how earlier in the day members of the 4th Company had been ordered to open fire on crowds, decided to take action.

They attacked their Colonel and cut off his hand.

They set out for the Nevsky with a few rifles and ammunition, intent on dissuading their comrades from shooting on demonstrators, when they were confronted by mounted police.

Firing broke out, but the soldiers soon ran out of ammunition and were forced back to their barracks where they gave themselves up.

The 19 ringleaders were arrested and incarcerated in the Peter and Paul Fortress; the rest were confined to barracks.

There was an immediate clampdown on news of the mutiny, but soon the word was out.

Meanwhile, the much-anticipated party at Princess  Catherine Radziwill´s palace went ahead as planned, although the carriages bringing guests had been refused entry to the Nevsky and had to go the long way around.

Above: Princess Catherine Radziwill (1858 – 1941)

French journalist Claude Anet noted how preoccupied the guests were, though everybody “tried to dance in spite of it”.

Anet watched as Grand Duke Boris Vladimirovich took to the dance floor.

Above: Grand Duke Boris Vladimirovich (1877 – 1943)

Was he witnessing this scion of the Russian aristocracy dancing his “last tango”?

French Ambassador Maurice Paléologue was exhausted, having spent the whole day “literally besieged by anxious members of the French colony” wanting to get out of Petrograd.

Above: Maurice Paléologue (1859 – 1944)

He went out to dinner with a friend that evening rather than attend the Radziwill party, but on his way home he passed the palace and saw a long line of carriages and cars waiting outside.

The party was still in full swing, but Paléologue was not tempted to join in.

As he noted in his diary that night, Sénac de Meilhan, historian of the French Revolution, had written that there had also been “plenty of gaiety in Paris on the night of 5 October 1789!”

(On 5 October 1789, crowds of women began to assemble at Parisian markets.

The women first marched to the Hotel de Ville, demanding that city officials address their concerns.

The women were responding to the harsh economic situations they faced, especially bread shortages.

They also demanded an end to royal efforts to block the National Assembly, and for the King and his administration to move to Paris as a sign of good faith in addressing the widespread poverty.

Getting unsatisfactory responses from city officials, as many as 7,000 women joined the march to Versailles, bringing with them cannons and a variety of smaller weapons.

Twenty thousand National Guardsmen under the command of Lafayette responded to keep order, and members of the mob stormed the palace, killing several guards.)

As late night partygoers made their way home there was a terrible eerieness about the city.

Normally the squares would be full of activity – coaches, sledges and motor cars waiting to take passengers home, but that night the squares were completely empty and there was not a taxi or sledge to be had.

Baroness Meyendorff was obliged to walk home in the moonlight and the intense cold.

The silence was ominous and made the creaking of the snow under foot seem disproportionately loud.

Petrograd seemed like a dead city.

In the Tauride Palace, frantic meetings of the Duma took place all day.

A desperate Mikhail Rodzyanko, leader of the Duma, telegraphed the Tsar.

Above: Mikhail Rodzyanko (1859 – 1924)

“The capital is in a state of anarchy.

The government is paralysed.

General discontent is growing.

There is wild shooting in the street.-

There must be a new government, under someone trusted by the country.

Any procrastination is tantamount to death.”

Reading the telegram in Mogilev, Nicholas dismissed it as panic.

“Some more rubbish from that fat Rodzyanko.”

However Nicholas did decide to put together a loyal force and despatch it to the capital, with he himself returning to his home, Alexander Palace at Tsarskoye Selo, 13 miles south of Petrograd.

Above: Alexander Palace, Tsarskoye Selo

That should settle matters.

The rebel soldiers were no more than an armed rabble that would never stand against proper front line troops.

Fearful of a coup within the Duma, Prime Minister Golitsyn stepped in and suspended the Duma from meeting.

Above: Nikolai Golitsyn, 8th Prime Minister of Russia (1917)(1850 – 1925)

Rodzyanko was outraged.

The Duma was the constituted authority of Russia.

Its prorogation was a violation of Russian law.

He urged his colleagues to rally around and defend the Duma, and a temporary committee was hurriedly organised.

Revolution had now been officially declared: in the seat of government, by some of the guards regiments, and by the once fiercely loyal Cossacks.

Workers, outraged by the indiscriminate firing on crowds, formed their own militias and spent that night plotting not only to continue the strike and the demonstrations, but also to seize weapons and turn the protest movement into nothing less than an armed uprising.

American photographer David Thompson wrote his wife from his room in the Astoria Hotel that evening:

“Since 1 o´clock today it has been a bloody Sunday for Russia.

If this spreads to other regiments, Russia will be a republic in a few more hours.”

Everything would depend on how the disaffected troops would respond on Monday.

 

Landschlacht, Switzerland, 3 October 2017

Any Americans reading this blog today quite possibly believe the aforementioned bloody Sunday couldn´t happen in America, and I sincerely pray that they´re right.

But consider this.

Guns are everywhere in America and discipline is the thinnest veneer of a civilian population that possesses them.

Too many Americans have guns and some are as well armed as any soldiers that might be sent to face them.

What could compel the average gun-toting American to use those weapons against a government they feel as let them down?

In the case of the Russians, it took being on the losing side of a war and worries about the future to compel average workers and common soldiers to defy the authorities that had failed them.

Patriotism is well indoctrinated into the average American citizen for much of his life, but that very patriotism can easily be manipulated into serving the powerful.

Yet natural disasters, due to unchecked global warming, keep happening in America, and it is questionable whether Washington has the will or the means to protect or assist the population on the continental United States when national emergencies multiply, let alone lend help to any of its farflung territories like hurricane-ravaged Puerto Rico.

Above: Aftermath of Hurricane Maria, which struck Puerto Rico on 20 September 2017

The Russian Revolution occurred spontaneously, beginning with impatient breadline women and factory workers and reaching into all quarters of society already discontented but now driven to force change.

Discontent is rife in America today.

What act of spontaneity could make everything unravel?

It seems the prevalence of guns and the discontent felt keenly by disturbed individuals has yet again caused carnage of an unthinkable, but sadly unsurprising, nature to happen this weekend.

Paradise, Nevada, 1 October 2017

Singer Jason Aldean was giving the closing performance of the third and final day of the 4th annual Route 91 Harvest Country Music Festival on a 15-acre lot behind the Mandalay Bay Hotel on Las Vegas Strip, with 22,000 people in attendance.

At 10:08 pm, someone began firing weapons from the 32nd floor of the Hotel into the Harvest crowd below.

With at least 60 fatalities (including the suicide of the alleged perpetrator) and over 500 injured, this incident is now officially the deadliest mass shooting in American history.

The shooter has been identified as 64-year-old Stephen Paddock, a wealthy retired accountant.

Police found 16 rifles and 1 handgun in the hotel room that Paddock had rented.

Stock prices of firearm manufacturers have already risen since the attack.

What drives a person to commit such an act of senseless violence?

And what is to prevent another such act from happening again?

A lone gunman fires into a crowd.

Just another day in America?

Seriously…
What can one say that hasn’t already been said?

Stephen Paddock, a white man probably insane, kills 60 and injures hundreds in Las Vegas.

Will he be branded a terrorist?

Probably not, because he is white, a good old boy.…

Will many questions be asked as to how he got his hands on 17 guns?

No.

Too uncomfortable a question.

Might offend the gun lobbyists, victims be damned.

Will this incident change Americans’ minds about its easy access to firearms laws?

Don’t bet on it.

So, folks will tell you to pray for Las Vegas and not a damn thing will change.

Except folks who had a future now…. no longer do.

What they were, they are no more.

No matter how many die, the money must keep flowing in.

And corporations without a conscience will go on being protected by a government without guilt.

Blood on the streets…. children orphaned, wives and husbands widowed, romances wrecked, families destroyed….

With great power comes great responsibility.

Every time a nation allows folks to come to harm, the nation has failed the people.

Every time a gun is easily accessible, another human life is put at risk.

The mark of a great nation is not in its ability to protect its mighty and powerful, but rather its ability to protect the vulnerable.

America has failed the test yet again, for the lessons of unthinkable carnage never seem to be learned.

The lights of Vegas may briefly lose their lustre and flags will temporarily be flown at half mast and politicians will send their warmest condolences and sympathies to the families and the victims of this terrible shooting, this act of pure evil, this senseless murder….

But the foolish game of profits over people will go on.

There will be no second American Revolution, no second Civil War, for there is no unity amongst Americans who will resolutely continue to feel discontent in the name of patriotism.

It is hoped that discontent does not lead to violence, but history has shown that it often does.

One man in a hotel room in Vegas destroyed the lives of hundreds.

60 dead.

Hundreds injured.

By one single solitary man.

With 17 guns found in the hotel room along with the assailant’s body, his life taken by his own hand.

Let that just sink in for a moment.

One man with a gun ended 60 lives in Vegas on Saturday night.…

Awesome power.

One man was allowed to own 17 guns.

Seventeen!

Am I the only one who thinks that a person should not be allowed to own so much firepower?

True, he was a registered gun owner.

True, he was a licensed hunter and pilot.

True, Paddock was retired.

But what is normal about owning, and bringing into a hotel, 17 guns?

17 ways to kill.

And what exactly did his murdering of 60 people actually accomplish?

Nothing.

Nothing but pain and grief, suffering and sorrow.

Was he seeking fame as the biggest mass shooter in modern US history?

Don’t worry.

I am certainly there will be someone out there who will surpass Paddock’s kill record, just as Paddock surpassed the 2016 Orlando nightclub shooter’s record.

Above: Pulse Nightclub, Orlando, Florida, where security guard Omar Mateen killed 49 people and injured 58 on the evening of 12 June 2016

The ability to take a human life needs to be regulated.

My right to life should take precedence over another’s right to take my life.

There needs to be limits far greater than the ones that can allow a man, who was clearly psychologically disturbed, to obtain 17 guns.

There needs to be regular psychological testing of those who wish to bear arms, because of the incredible damage that can be done by a person with a gun.

A gun as a last defence?

OK.

A gun for gathering food, not sport trophies?

OK.

As a former urban Canadian and present resident in Switzerland, I am OK with only the police and the military having guns that are left at work.

I have never held a gun.

I have never had a desire to do so.

Killing a person who attacks my family may be justifiable but it is still murder.

Fighting for a country or a cause that condones war may be coached in honourable language and gift wrapped in a flag, but the taking of a life – the erasure of everything the slain person ever was or will ever be – is murder.

It should be with the greatest of reluctance and regret that a weapon should be drawn from its sheath or holster.

The itchy trigger finger has been too often seen in recent events.

Cops and soldiers should be seen as our protection not as a threat.

Maybe one day I shall be struck down by a gun.

But whether I am armed to the teeth or not, I cannot control the future.

Even the mighty and powerful have been victim to those with a weapon.

And being human ultimately means being mortal.

Rarely do we see death coming before it arrives, unannounced and unwelcome.

But until America learns to regulate itself better….

There will be blood.

There will be violence.

There are responsible gun owners.

Do we know how many?

Do we know how much firepower they possess?

Are we regularly and really sure that they are rational and responsible enough to keep their weapons?

Vegas should be a wake-up call.

Otherwise there will be more violence.

There will be more blood.

There will be other lone gunmen.

In Russia, a people united by violence would topple an empire once they were joined by those with weaponry to insist that armed might could “make things right.”

History has showed again and again what is born in violence ends violently.

The February Revolution would see hundreds die.

The October Revolution and the ideology behind it would result in the deaths of millions.

Did the Tsar´s rule of Russia need to end?

Yes.

Could his rule have been ended non-violently?

Perhaps.

One hundred years separate the Russian Revolution from 2017, yet gunfire into crowds remains a constant.

Perhaps within all of us lies the potential to be violent.

But if I do not possess a weapon it reduces both the capacity and the opportunity to act upon violent urges.

How many lives have been ruined at the point of a weapon?

How many more will there be in future?

Sources: Wikipedia / Helen Rappaport, Caught in the Revolution: Petrograd 1917 / Tony Brenton, Historically Inevitable?: Turning Points of the Russian Revolution / Ekaterina Rogatchevskaia, Russian Revolution: Hope, Tragedy, Myths / Dominic Lieven, Towards the Flame: Empire, War and the End of Tsarist Russia / Catherine Merridale, Lenin on the Train

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Snowbirds

Landschlacht, Switzerland, 22 February 2017

In pauper’s fields the daisies grow

There are no crosses, sadly, no

To mark the place beneath the sky

There is no singing from up high

Scarce heard beneath the ground below

These pauper’s fields.

We are the dead, some time ago

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow

Loved and were loved, and now we lie

In pauper´s fields.

I have no quarrel with a foe.

To you from me: I failed, I know.

No time, no longer heads held high

Faith is broken, hope gone by

Memory won’t sleep, though daisies grow
In pauper’s fields.

(With apologies to John Mccrae)

Fort Lauderdale, Florida, 22 February 2017

“Ah, we’re drinking and we’re dancing and the band is really happening and the Johnny Walker wisdom running high…”

(Leonard Cohen, “Closing Time”)

For many, this city of nearly 175,000 represents Life.

Until the late 1980s, Fort Lauderdale was the college Spring Break destination.

However the college crowd has been replaced by a wealthier group of people.

Today it is known as an international yachting centre, although there is still plenty of partying in its clubs, bars and pubs by straights and the LGBT crowd.

(The gay community is thriving here with many gay-friendly hotels and guesthouses, their own library and archives, community centre and the World AIDS Museum and Educational Center.)

(AIDS does not discriminate, though some folks still make the erroneous connection between sexual orientation and this uncompromising disease.)

Fort Lauderdale is 28 miles / 45 km north of Miami and enjoys a tropical rainforest climate with little seasonal variation.

Most days the temperature remains above 24°C / 75° F with over 3,000 hours of sunshine per year.

(Though it must be said that the ideal time of the year to visit the Fort is from October to May.)

And this endless summer attracts over 12 million visitors a year, a 1/4 of them from other countries.

To serve all these visitors, Fort Lauderdale has over 130 nightclubs, 16 museums, 12 shopping malls, 63 golf courses, 4,000 restaurants, 46 cruise ships dock here regularly, over 560 hotels offer over 35,000 rooms, with 278 campsites when the rooms are filled (regularly a 72% occupancy rate), 100 marinas shelter over 45,000 resident yachts and the convention centre serves over 30% of the city’s annual visitors.

Like South Florida in general, Fort Lauderdale has many residents who can speak a language other than English, but English predominates.

Residents not serving visitors are probably engaged in making or maintaining boats as Fort Lauderdale is a major centre for yachts.

Nicknamed the Venice of America, Fort Lauderdale, with its many canals – 165 miles / 266 km extensive network of canals – and its proximity to the Bahamas and the Caribbean, the city serves as a popular yachting vacation spot and home port and its annual International Boat Show attracts over 125,000 people to the city each year.

For the nomad, Fort Lauderdale means a chance to find work as a deckhand or cook in exchange for exotic winds.

To beaches and palm trees of distant islands filled with folks dreaming distant dreams of escape from a hell of service to wealthy visitors for whom their islands whisper Paradise…

Few nomads see the Fort as the locals do.

As they search for work amongst the throngs of tourists, the locals work in firms with names uninspiring, such as AutoNation, Citrix Systems, DHL Express, Spirit Airlines, the National Beverage Corporation, Tenet Healthcare, American Express, the Continental Group, Motorola, Maxim Integrated Products, Gulfstream International Airlines, the Online Trading Academy…

Surrounded by wealth, the average worker grits his teeth and sweats his life away for the scraps these firms reluctantly relinquish.

He sends his children to one of 23 public schools and, if he can afford it, later to one of the 9 institutions of higher learning the Fort has to offer.

Getting around, for the rare person without a car, means hopping on a BCT (Broward County Transit) bus.

Getting away means the railroad or the airport.

Only the wealthy dock in Port Everglades, the nation’s 3rd busiest cruise port, Florida’s deepest port.

Only the wealthy use the international passenger ferry service to Freeport on Grand Bahama Island.

But baby you can drive my car out of the Fort upon one of the three major interstate highways leading into the city.

Akin to other US cities, the Fort has fire and police services, hospitals and ambulances, churches and cemeteries, serving the city´s 13 municipalities divided into 90 distinct neighbourhoods.

Do not mistake the Fort for Paradise.

Despite its many attractions, despite its tropical climate, despite the wealthy who come to play, summer is hot and humid rife with folks collapsing with heat exhaustion and concerned by wayward hurricanes, winter is dry with the threat of brushfires and heavy afternoon thunderstorms.

And the Fort has had hard environmental lessons to learn.

Off the coast the Osborne Reef was an artificial reef made of discarded tires intended to provide a habitat for fish while simultaneously disposing of trash from the mainland.

But the ocean decides for itself how it is to be governed.

The nylon straps used to secure the tires wore out, cables rusted, tires broke free.

The tires then migrated shoreward and ran into a living reef, killing many things in their path.

Thousands of tires continue to wash up on nearby beaches during hurricane season, though local authorities along with the Army, Navy and Coast Guard may have removed the 700,000 tires by the time these words are read.

Yet folks still decide to come here, still decide to live here.

Depending on the season the demographic picture changes.

Winter and early spring in Florida, a land of gentle breezes where the peaceful waters flow, attracts the snowbirds – tourists from the northern United States, Canada and Europe.

This Venice of America used to be dubbed Fort Liquordale because its beaches, bars and nightclubs back in the 1960s and 1970s attracted tens of thousands of college students for Spring Break.

But the city has actively discouraged college students from visiting the area since the mid-1980s passing strict laws aimed at preventing the mayhem and madness that regularly occured every year during Spring Break.

Where over 350,000 students used to party, now only 10,000 do so.

The Fort wants to be known as a resort town, a host city, a hub of arts and entertainment, of sports and culture.

Fort Lauderdale is home to the Riverwalk Arts and Entertainment District (that runs from the beach to the heart of downtown, from the Broward Center for the Performing Arts to the Elbo Room Bar on Fort Lauderdale Beach) and the Langerado Music Festival.

Lockhart Stadium is the home of the Strikers soccer team and the Florida University Owls football team.

The New York Yankees, the Baltimore Orioles and the Kansas City Royals all once conducted baseball spring training at Fort Lauderdale Stadium.

Fort Lauderdale is home to the Aquatic Complex, part of the International Swimming Hall of Fame.

The Complex open to Fort Lauderdale residents has also been the venue for many different national and international swimming competitions since 1965.

Ten world records have been set there, the latest being Michael Phelps’ 400-metre individual medley of 2002.

Above: Olympic swimming champion Michael Phelps (born 1985)

Fort Lauderdale is a place where a visitor finds it hard to be bored.

Here one can find the Swap Shop, a large indoor/outdoor flea market and the site of the world’s largest drive-in movie theatre with 13 screens.

The Hugh Taylor Birch State Park offers nature trails, camping, canoeing and picnicking.

The Museum of Art has works from the Cobra art movement (Copenhagen, Brussels and Amsterdam) as well as collections of Cuban, African and South American art.

The Museum of Discovery and Science has amazing exhibits, including an IMAX theatre.

Ten miles west and the #2 tourist destination in Florida is Sawgrass Mills Mall with more than two miles of outlets for such stores as Saks Fifth Avenue, Neiman Marcus, Disney, Kenneth Cole, Tommy Hilfinger, Gap and Polo Ralph Lauren.

(Perhaps even Ivana Trump?)

And for the history buff, Fort Lauderdale offers the Old Fort Lauderdale Museum of History (that covers the history of Fort Lauderdale and Broward County, including exhibits of native Seminole folk art and baseball)…

Stranahan House (the oldest building in the city, originally built as a trading post)…

…the Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel House, the residence of the infamous gangster (1906 – 1947)….

…and Bonnet House (a beautiful historic estate near the beach with a nature trail, tours and tropical plants both native and imported).

Life: throbbing, authentic, vibrant, day and night.

Such is Fort Lauderdale.

But for me, Fort Lauderdale represents death.

This was the site where the native Tequesta tribe failed to stop the encroachment of white settlers who brought with them diseases to which the native population possessed no resistance.

This was the site of a massacre at the beginning of the Second Seminole War where Anglo settlement had pushed the Seminole tribes south from Alabama and threatened to push them out of their new homeland by the establishment of the New River Settlement (present day Fort Lauderdale).

During this War, Major William Lauderdale led his Tennessee Volunteers into the area and erected a fort on the New River in 1838.

Above: Statue of Major William Lauderdale in Davie, Florida, the site of the Battle of Pine Island Ridge, 22 March 1838

Lauderdale left after a month, his fort was destroyed by the Seminoles a few months later, his name remained.

After the end of the Seminole War in 1842, the remaining Seminoles withdrew to Pine Island and only a handful of settlers lived in what would become known as Broward County.

The hurricane of 1926, with the highest sustained winds ever recorded in the state of Florida, killed 50 people and destroyed over 3,500 structures in the city.

Just as the city was beginning to recover, in 1928 another devastating hurricane struck Florida and though Fort Lauderdale was only slightly damaged, the enormous death toll to the north in Palm Beach County, contributed to the perception that Florida was not real estate development heaven.

When the Great Depression struck in 1929, Fort Lauderdale never knew it, for it was already in a depression from the real estate bubble burst caused by the two hurricanes.

The United States didn´t enter World War II until 1941, but Fort Lauderdale felt the effect of the War sooner than most of the country.

In December 1939 a British cruiser chased the German freighter Arauca into Port Everglades, where she remained until 1941 when Germany declared war on the US and the US seized the vessel.

The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour and the US entry into the War had immediate effects on the city.

Blackouts were imposed and several Allied vessels were torpedoed by German U-boats, including one ship within sight of the shoreline.

The first Medal of Honor recipient in World War II was a graduate of Fort Lauderdale High School.

By mid-1942, Fort Lauderdale would find itself with the US Navy Air Station Fort Lauderdale.

By the end of the War, the Station had trained thousands of Navy pilots, including the first President Bush.

Above: George H. W. Bush, 41st US President (1989-1993)(born 1924)

On 5 December 1945, the five planes of Flight 19 departed on a routine training mission from NAS Fort Lauderdale.

They were never seen again.

No wreckage was ever found.

The strange disappearance of Flight 19 and the coincedental explosion which destroyed Training 49, a plane involved in a search for the missing squadron, have contributed to the Bermuda Triange myth.

NAS Fort Lauderdale closed in 1946, becoming Broward County International Airport.

Commercial flights to Nassau began in 1953 and domestic flights began in 1958.

In 1959 the airport opened its first permanent terminal building and renamed itself the Fort Lauderdale – Hollywood International Airport.

Today the Airport (FLL) has five terminals, serving 31 passenger airlines and four cargo air services flying to a multitude of domestic and international locations.

Death has been felt here as well.

On 7 July 1983, Air Florida Flight 8, with 47 people on board, en route from Fort Lauderdale to Tampa was hijacked.

One of the passengers handed a note to one of the flight attendants, saying he had a bomb, and telling them to fly the plane to Havana.

He revealed a small athletic bag, which he opened to reveal an explosive device.

The plane was diverted to Havana’s José Marti International Airport.

The hijacker was taken into custody by Cuban authorities.

On 19 November 2013, an Air Evac International Learjet 35 crashed shortly after take-off en route to Cozumel, Mexico, leaving four people dead.

Fort Lauderdale – Hollywood International Airport, 6 January 2017

“And everybody knows that you’re in trouble.  Everybody knows what you’ve been through, from the bloody cross on top of Calvary to the beach of Malibu. Everybody knows it’s coming apart. Take one look at this sacred heart before it blows. And everybody knows.” (Leonard Cohen, “Everybody Knows”)

Terminal 2, known as the Delta Terminal or the red terminal, has one concourse and nine gates, the Delta Airlines Sky Club (one of only six in Florida) and is used by Delta Airlines and Air Canada.

A shooter opened fire with a Walther PPS 9-mm semi-automatic pistol in Terminal 2’s baggage claim area at about 12:55 pm.

Travellers rushed out of the airport and hundreds of people waited on the tarmac as numerous law enforcement officers rushed to the scene.

Former White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer tweeted from the Airport:

“Shots have been fired.  Everyone is running.”

The shooting lasted about 70 to 80 seconds.

The shooter lay down on the ground after he stopped shooting, having run out of ammunition.

Law enforcement officers did not fire shots.

The gunman was arrested without incident.

Five people died in the attack, all of whom were passing through Fort Lauderdale to begin cruises with their spouses.

Six people were injured by the shooting, three admitted to intensive care units.

40 people were injured in the panic to escape from the shooting.

The American Red Cross assisted 10,000 passengers, bussing them to Port Everglades for food, shelter and transportation connections.

The Airport closed for the rest of the day.

Following the shooting, more than 20,000 pieces of luggage were left at the Airport amid the choas.

Flags of the United States and Florida were flown at half-mast throughout the state on the following two days to honour the fallen.

Esteban Santiago-Ruiz (born 1990), a 26-year-old resident of Anchorage, Alaska and a military veteran of the Iraq War, was arrested immediately after the shooting.

According to investigators, Santiago flew from Anchorage on a Delta flight through Minneapolis.

He checked a declared 9-mm pistol in his baggage before retrieving it in Fort Lauderdale and loaded the gun in an airport bathroom just before the attack.

It remains unclear why the attack occurred.

Though the proliferation of guns in America makes incidents of this kind sadly not surprising.

Federal officials are seeking the death penalty against Santiago and he has been charged with 22 federal law violations.

No links with terrorism have been proven.

According to his family members, Private Santiago had become mentally ill by seeing a bomb explode near two of his friends while he was in service in Iraq.

A man who had seen death up close brought death with him to Fort Lauderdale.

Fort Lauderdale, Florida, 19 January 1971

“Oh, the sisters of mercy, they are not departed or gone.  They were waiting for me when I thought that I just can’t go on.  And they brought me their comfort and later they brought me this song.  Oh, I hope you run into them, you who’ve been travelling so long.  Yes, you who must leave everything that you cannot control.  It begins with your family, but soon it comes round to your soul.  Well, I’ve been where you’re hanging. I think I can see how you’re pinned.  When you’re not feeling holy, your loneliness says that you’ve sinned.”

(Leonard Cohen, “The Sisters of Mercy”)

For four long years, a waitress battled cancer.

She too was a snowbird, born in Manhattan, raised, married and divorced in Montreal, Genevieve – “Jenny” to her friends and family and preferred by herself – was only 34.

Yet those had been a full 34 years, for she had given life to six children – four boys and two girls.

Her youngest, a boy, would have been six years old in four months’ time.

Jenny had dreams of being a singer and still smiled when she remembered performing on local stages with her family band before she married the man who had changed her life for better and for worse.

But the secrets of her heart she did not reveal to the staff of the Holy Cross Hospital, run by the Sisters of Mercy.

She did not give the name of her divorced husband nor mention her children to the staff of the hospital or to her social worker.

Perhaps good Catholic girls confess only to their priests.

She was just a patient among hundreds.

Since migrating down to Florida, Jenny had taken work as a waitress.

But health care in America, then as now, was expensive, and the salary of a waitress, then as now, was insufficient.

Social assistance was needed which entailed a social worker.

Jenny was admitted into the hospital just before New Year´s Eve.

She slipped into a coma and died at 05:30 just before dawn.

She was buried four days later in Sunset Memorial Garden Cemetery.

Buried in an open field, which in spring is covered by daisies and dandilions, designated paupers’ field reserved for those without anyone to pay for a burial plot or headstone, it appears that Jenny died alone.

Fort Lauderdale, Florida, 31 December 1988

“Like a bird on a wire, like a drunk in a midnight choir, I have tried in my way to be free.” (Leonard Cohen, “Bird on a Wire”)

It had been a long journey of many miles and many years, but I would finally be “reunited” with a mother I no longer remembered.

For years I had known nothing about my origins, save that my family name differed from the surnames of the foster parents who had raised me for a decade.

I had, through painstaking effort, retraced the documents that detailed my life prior to my stewardship with my foster parents, and the paper trail would find me travelling from Ottawa to New Brunswick to Montreal to Manhattan to Fort Lauderdale.

I, like my mother before me, did not possess great wealth, so much of my journey was done by thumbing rides and obtaining shelter and food through charity.

I was not reluctant to work, but what work I was qualified to do would have required many months, possibly years, before I could afford to travel without assistance.

And questions too long gone unanswered now drove me impatiently to the road.

Two days ago in Jacksonville, I received my mother’s death certificate from the Florida Office of Vital Statistics.

Now I stand in the cemetery´s caretaker office enquiring where my mother´s remains rest.

He informs me that there is no headstone, that she is buried in an unmarked grave in a pauper’s plot.

The ground is dusty and barren.

The tufts of grass that remain are yellow and brown.

Is this how I am to remember the woman who gave me life?

A few faded black-and-white photographs given reluctantly by the man whose surname I bear and a dry abandoned corner of a faraway cemetery?

According to him, Jenny had left husband and children behind as she was desperately unhappy, but she clung to her newborn son.

For this they never forgave her nor, I would learn later, me.

Out of sight, out of mind.

Now she is only a name on scattered certificates in registeries in Montreal, New York City and Jacksonville.

Unloved, unmourned, forgotten.

Is this the sum of a person’s life?

I stare at the ground which remains stubbornly mute and unresponsive.

Moments feel like eternity.

I look up in frustration at my inability to reconcile this empty field with the years of searching, both within myself and across the breadth of two countries.

I feel cold despite a Floridan winter warm by comparison to Canada.

A chain link fence surrounds the cemetery.

On the other side of the fence stands a factory.

Upon its back wall a painting of a mother holding a laughing baby beneath the words “Baby Love”, a producer of baby food and disposable diapers sold worldwide.

I find myself upon my knees in the dirt of this plot of land rarely visited and tears flow down without warning, without rationale.

There is no comfort to be found in this field.

There are no answers to be found here.

The dead below lack a voice, lack awareness, lack even identity itself.

I dry my eyes, return back to the caretaker to thank him for his assistance and keep my sorrow hidden even from myself.

Landschlacht, Switzerland, 22 February 2017

Years have passed since I said goodbye to Fort Lauderdale.

Weeks have passed since the airport shooting that reminded me of death in Fort Lauderdale.

I realise that it has been these recollections that made me quiet and reflective in my expression of thought and feeling these past few weeks.

Perhaps it is in coming to terms with mortality that we begin to discover the meaning of life.

Not that it ends, but that it is precious and should not be wasted.

I hope I can return one day to Fort Lauderdale and see the city through the eyes of a tourist and sample life there in all of its richness and fullness.

I hope to return to pauper’s field of Sunset Memorial one day and whisper into the tropical breeze a “thank you” to the remains of a woman who gave me birth, knowing she cannot hear the words but knowing I need to say those words to give a meaning to her life, a meaning to my life.

I hope that the families and friends of those that fell to the gunfire of an ill man in an airport baggage claim can find solace in the memory of how those departed made a difference to their lives.

And I hope that in my own humble way that I too will leave this world one day remembered for the way I made a difference in the lives of others.

Maybe if there is an afterlife I will wake to find Heaven resembles Fort Lauderdale.

As a snowbird Canuck, I think I would like that.

“Beneath this snowy mantle cold and clean, the unborn grass lies waiting for its coat to turn to green. The snowbird sings the song he always sings
and speaks to me of flowers that will bloom again in spring. When I was young, my heart was young then, too. Anything that it would tell me,
that’s the thing that I would do. But now I feel such emptiness within,
for the thing that I want most in life’s the thing that I can’t win.”

(Anne Murray, “Snowbird”)

 

Canada Slim behind bars 5b: Time served

Landschlacht, Switzerland, 22 July 2016

In the past five posts I spoke of prisons – how prisons inspire literature, prisons as tourist attractions, prisons as tourist accommodation, my work and life in a youth hostel/former jail, and the road that lead to me being imprisoned for a short time in America.

In this sixth and final installment I will attempt to describe what I personally experienced at the hands of law and order in the States.

I do this with extreme awareness of two dangers…

We live in a society where if one is not cautious one can find himself publicly shamed.

We live in a society where if one is not cautious one can find himself sued for libel.

To the first danger I can only say that though I served time in an American prison my “crimes” were considered misdemeanours and not felonies.

I do not possess a criminal record and I can enter the US freely.

To the second danger my only defense is the passage of time may have created different conditions today and the immediacy of those moments decades ago have left imperfect and impartial impressions in my memory.

Should this blog ever be read by those in law and order enforcement and be found to disagree with their experience I can only say in my defence…the account that follows is what I remember to be true.

I write this account not for financial gain and nor do I seek compensation from those who dealt with me in the manner that they did, but rather I am inspired by two basic feelings:

First, my own experience has lead me to a realization of just how easy it is to get oneself incarcerated. 

If I, a pacifist and humanist, can find myself on the wrong end of the law, then perhaps there are many cases of prisoners unjustly incarcerated as well.

Second, my own experience leads me to believe that the attitude of US law and order is the reason that there are so many arrests and so many prisons in America.

My travels have shown me that, while there are far worse countries than America when it comes to enforcement and incarceration, there are also other methods in other countries that the US could learn from for its benefit.

When I think back to that Arizona interstate freeway and how the state trooper dealt with me I think I can see things from both his perspective and my own.

America is a troubled land, where too many of its citizens feel that a poorly-worded constitutional amendment gives them the “right” to carry death-dealing weapons.

Though every cop in every country knows that when he/she puts on a badge in the morning that a coroner might be examining his/her dead body that same evening, the possibility of death seems more pronounced in a country where so many citizens exercise their “right” to bear arms.

As mentioned in Canada Slim behind bars 5a: Arrested development, hitchhikers are regarded suspiciously.

Why would any sane, rational individual risk his life on a busy highway to get lifts from total strangers?

Perhaps other legal means of transportation mean the exposure of criminal intent?

The very act of hitchhiking suggests criminal behaviour to some people´s way of thinking.

I cannot imagine what it must be like to be a cop and see so many truly criminal individuals on a regular basis.

What is it like to be exposed to so much darkness, so much hate, so much violence?

Yet to a casual observer it seems that so much of a cop´s time seems mundane and routine.

It seems like cops seem endless amounts of time waiting for criminal activity to spur them into action, much like soldiers eagerly waiting for the order to attack yet ever mindful of the risks that this action entails.

To the young state trooper I must have seemed like a criminal, for why else would I be hitchhiking?

And when he grabbed me by my backpack straps and I responded by holding his wrists, I confirmed his impressions of my criminal intent.

When the plainclothes officers in the passing car saw the trooper struggling with a hitchhiker a head taller than himself, they “heroically” sprung into action to defend one of their own.

I, the hitchhiker, saw things differently.

The Canada of my experience is a different land, a different mentality.

Canadians, at least the “average” non-criminally minded Canadians, don´t see police officers as threats to our freedom but rather as guardians of our security.

From my encounters with Canadian police, though they too live in an atmosphere of potential danger, our police tend to treat Canadian citizens politely and respectfully.

If cops can be compared to dogs,(as they are in George Orwell’s Animal Farm) American cops are pitbulls, Canadian cops are beagles!

(Never underestimate the bite of a beagle!)

In Canada I think most Canadians respect cops as necessary and honourable.

In the US I think cops are more a symbol of fear and armed authority.

I cannot imagine a scenario where a Canadian cop would grab someone unless that person was actively doing something violent.

So when the overzealous trooper grabbed me by my backpack straps because I disagreed with him, there was a feeling inside me that what he was doing was wrong and I simply wanted him to stop grabbing me.

Somehow I had the strange notion that I could talk myself out of the situation, if he would simply stop grabbing me.

But I foolishly forgot the concept of “might makes right” –  those who wield power feel that this power justifies and makes right whatever is done using this power.

It seems one cannot argue with the police regardless of the justice of one’s perspective.

People should meekly do what they are told and accept what is done to them, no matter how they may feel about it.

Herein lies my problem with law and order…

(Maybe I do have a criminal mind after all…)

If the laws are just and order is maintained respectfully then I have no qualms with policemen or transit authority or security personnel or judges.

But slavery used to be law, apartheid used to be law.

Capital punishment still reigns in many of the US states and torture is considered justifiable in some military or intelligence situations.

I said “No” to power and authority, “No” to law and order, and I was dealt with accordingly.

(And, sadly, it would not be the sole time when I found myself on the wrong end of the law…

That´s a story for another time…a time when I complain about the SBB – Swiss National Railways.)

I am a white Canadian.

I cannot imagine what it must be like to be a black American, to be harassed and hasselled on a regular basis, to be considered guilty and suspicious because of one’s skin colour.

Above: Martin Luther King Jr. in 1964

A black man it seems is in far greater danger than a white man when challenging the authority of the police.

But if your experience with the police is so often negative even before your thoughts turned to acting outside of the law, then is it any wonder that some blacks might feel resentful and angry at the heavy-handedness of some police officers?

When a black person is prejudged to be criminal because of skin colour instead of character…

Or when a person´s character is judged by the colour of his skin…

When resisting arrest or arguing with a police officer seems to be justification for the officer to discharge a weapon and kill “in the name of the law”…

(It is not that black lives matter more, but rather that black lives should matter too, that they shouldn’t matter less.)

In a land where statistically blacks are denied the same opportunities for employment and advancement that whites take for granted, some are compelled to survive by acting outside approved legal means.

In the prison I was held in most prisoners were black, just as most prisons in the US hold predominantly black inmates.

And money buys the best legal representation, so those who can´t afford this end up behind bars.

And if being black means fewer opportunities to make the money required to get good legal representation, then it really isn´t a great stretch of the imagination to see how and why racial disparity exists in US prisons.

(I cannot imagine the difficulty that Islamic Americans must have to endure in this climate of irrational fear that presently prevades in the US.)

Tempe / Phoenix, Arizona, 1986

I am, that very day of my arrest, after fingerprints and photographs were taken of my person, transferred to a minimun security penitentary.

No one informs me of what I am charged with.

No one informs me of what I can expect nor exactly where I am going.

At the prison the last vestiges of my identity are taken from me and an orange coverall is found in my size.

(I can´t recall if socks, shoes or underwear were included.)

The cell I would spend a fortnight in was neither spacious nor cramped.

I remember it had a table, two chairs, a toilet and two bunk beds.

I don´t recall seeing either a television or a radio.

My cellmate, a man in his 40s, was imprisoned for not paying alimony.

“Arthur” claimed his wife left him for another man and when this other man found himself unemployed he moved in with “Arthur”‘s estranged wife.

Now supporting two, his wife expected “Arthur” to pay for her and her boyfriend.

Feeling that he was the injured party, “Arthur” refused.

The courts did not agree.

Being three decades removed from the events of 1986, I cannot recall with accuracy the hours by which we were regulated or the content of the meals.

(I don´t believe the Michelin Guide gave the prison any stars!)

Neither can I recall with any certainty whether we as prisoners gathered together in a communal dining room or whether meals were brought to our cells.

(I only have a feeling it was the latter…)

I remember showers were communal but I don´t think we were allowed them on a daily basis.

I do recall with vividness being bored with my confinement very quickly and how much I appreciated that paperbacks were available from a passing book trolley and that I was granted a blue pen and a yellow notepad to record my thoughts.

I had the bottom bunk.

Nights were cool, blankets scratchy, linen clean.

I did not feel afraid of my cellmate, for he did not strike me as a violent type.

“Arthur” standing was about 5’6″ and he seemed thin under his coverall.

I never thought of having to fight him nor whether I could win should it have been required to do so.

I have rarely fought nor had/have any desire or talent to do so.

I quickly gained his friendship by giving away the cigarettes each prisoner was allotted as I didn´t smoke and the thought never occurred to me to use cigarettes as currency.

There was no demand made of me to do any labour to “rehabilitate” myself, though I think I would have welcomed it as at least I could have gotten the feeling of doing something productive with my time.

There was an opportunity for recreation – a yard where we all were required to spend some time in the afternoon.

It had a basketball court with two baskets and a basketball provided.

Though I possess the height to be a basketball player I lacked the talent and the co-ordination of one, so I remained on the sidelines watching young black men dominate the game with a flair and accuracy that left me breathless and envious.

I discovered and devoured the works of Clive Cussler, Gregory Macdonald, Louis L’Amour, Tom Clancy and James Michener, in all their dog-eared, well-thumbed, ratty and ripped covers, paperback glory.

I kept my head down and my mouth shut, speaking only to my cellmate on occasions when he needed to talk.

There was nothing to do, but read, write, eat, pee, poop, sleep, repeat, in the cell.

Little to do, but wait and watch the shadows on the walls and the lights in the building to determine the slow passage of day into night, dusk into dawn.

Time passes and only my record on yellow notepad attests to its passing.

Then on the 10th day I am summoned.

My ankles are cuffed as are my hands.

A long chain connects the two sets of cuffs and another runs between my legs connecting myself to another orange-suited inmate.

We are driven into the city.

The prison wagon halts in front of the courthouse and we are marched outside in broad daylight from the street sidewalk into the basement of the courthouse.

It is the scene of a nightmare that only Dante or Bosch could dream of.

Above: “The Last Judgment” by Hieronymus Bosch, 1500 – 1505

Every type of convict, from minimum to maximum, from newbie to hardened con, from the harmless to the violent, are all gathered below.

If the intention of taking me to this hell was to invoke fear, then it was successful.

I see a con strapped to a chair, resisting violently, loudly, six burly guards can barely restrain his passion, his madness, his fury.

I am led to a large courtroom with row upon row of similiarly orange-suited cons, dozens upon dozens, a sea of orange.

Then and only then do we learn of our right to remain silent, our right to an attorney.

Rights read, we are separated.

I am led to a cubicle where a man in a fancy three-piece suit informs me that he is a judge.

I learn that I am accused of disorderly conduct and failure to obey a police officer.

How do I plead?

I don´t feel like I have merited prison and just want out.

If I insist on pleading “not guilty” then I will wallow in prison until a trial can be arranged.

I am offered “no contest” as an option, meaning though I am not admitting culpability or guilt I will not fight the decision of the court.

The judge dismisses the charge of disorderly conduct and tells me that it is his judgment that I have served time for the second misdemeanor.

I am led back to the cellar, then back to the wagon and driven back to prison.

Four days pass.

11 pm on the 4th day after my courthouse visit I am released.

My clothes are returned to me, but my backpack remains in police storage in Phoenix.

It is pitch black night and the open sky is filled with stars.

I had been arrested wearing boots, shorts and T-shirt in the middle of a hot sweaty day.

These same clothes provide little warmth on a cold desert night.

Another con just released and met by his girlfriend’s car gives me a lift to downtown Phoenix.

I am penniless with only the clothes on my back.

No shelter, had I known where to find one, would take me in at so late an hour at night.

I spot a Holiday Inn side door open and sneak in before the door closes.

I find a quiet stairwell and crawl underneath it with remnants of newspaper wrapped around me for inadequate warmth.

It is a restless uncomfortable night.

Morning comes and after much searching I find the police station where my backpack was stored.

All has been restored, though it takes some time to return to the order in which my backpack had been maintained before Arizona State took an interest in me.

There is food and water and clothes and books still stored within. but what money I had had no longer remains.

I want to leave Phoenix far behind, but my troubles are not over yet.

Surrounding the city are signs telling drivers: “Federal Prison Zone: do not pick up hitchhikers”.

I walk and walk north out of town until night falls.

Under the highway I spot a drainage tunnel.

I crawl in and settle myself only to realise that I am not the sole occupant of the tunnel.

Another young man is at the other end.

We don´t speak.

It takes me many hours to fall asleep but upon awaking I find my tunnel neighbour has gone.

Hours later I am finally outside the zone and once again I find myself back on the interstate hitching.

Clearly the rehabilitation was ineffective.

I finally get picked up and resume my journey, heading west to California and north to Canada.

Looking back I realise that my prison experience was tame compared to other prisons I might have been a resident of.

Since then I am wary of police officers and generally try to avoid obvious activities of an illegal nature.

The whole experience brought me no honour nor caused me any shame.

It was both real and surreal at the same time.

An adventure is only an adventure in the telling.

Above: Claudette Colbert and Clark Gable try to hitchhike in It Happened One Night (1934)

 

 

 

Back on the Underground again

1852, Chatham, Ontario, Canada

“Many a time I have looked out in the moonlight and seen my little children, just able to walk in the fields, carrying buckets of water.  They used to carry the buckets on their heads.  They would wear off their hair and I used to make pads to protect the sore places.  Where I was raised, my children were often whipped till the blood ran.” (Mary Younger, ex-slave)

1852, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

“There is a great difference in the modes of treating slaves, according to the character of the owners….I saw a man in Savannah who had been whipped severely and thrust into a dark hole or dungeon in a cellar.  Maggots got into his flesh and he was offensive to the senses….I saw a Methodist minister who had a colored woman for a cook.  Something which her mistress told her to cook did not suit.  The mistress complained to the minister.  He shut up the cook in a stable and beat her having first tied something over her mouth.” (Patrick Snead, ex-slave)

1852, London, Ontario, Canada

“I was longer on the road than I should have been with my burden: one child was 9 months old, one 2 years old, and one 4.  The weather was cold and my feet were frostbitten as I gave my wife my socks to pull on over her shoes. With all the sufferings of the frost and the fatigues of travel, it still was not as bad as slavery.” (Henry Morehead, fugitive / ex-slave)

“Ignorance is as strong a weapon as the whip in keeping slaves in bondage.  I was told before I left Virginia – heard it as common talk – that the wild geese were so numerous in Canada and so bad that they would scratch a man´s eyes out.  Corn wouldn´t grow there nor anything else but rice.  Everything else had to be imported.” (Dan Josiah Lockhart, fugitive slave)

1858, St. Catherines, Ontario, Canada

Harriet Tubman moved back to Bucktown, Maryland, after an illustrious career as a “conductor” on the Underground Railway, bringing escaped slaves from the American south to Canada.

The Underground Railway was a route fugitive slaves used to flee from former masters.

The “tracks” were lined with abolutionists who sheltered slaves from the clutches of authorities trying to return them to bondage.

“I wouldn´t trust Uncle Sam with my people no longer….I brought them all clear off to Canada.” (Harriet Tubman)

By 1860 about 75,000 fugitive American slaves were living in Ontario.

Canada was Canaan the Promised Land, the northern star.

International Underground Railroad Memorial in Windsor, Ontario, Canada

During wartime Canada sheltered millions.

The American Revolution saw Loyalists come to Canada in droves.

Draft dodgers flocked to Canada refusing to fight in the Vietnam War.

“In November 2004, Pam and David Drucker heard the news that would change their lives:

George W. Bush had been re-elected as President of the United States.

A year later, they were on their way to Vancouver to start their new lives.

The Druckers were not alone.

On Election Day 2004, a record-setting 179,000 people visited Canada´s official immigration website, the majority of them Americans.

As Election Day 2016 approaches and anxiety about its outcome grows, many Americans again contemplate fleeing to Canada.

In September 2015, the digital analytics firm Luminoso found that 4% of 4.5 million Donald Trump-related tweets contained threats to leave the country if the billionaire became President.

Of those, 250,000 identified Canada as their intended destination.

Talking about relocating to Canada is very trendy at the moment, but actually relocating there…

Not so much.

According to the Canadian government, the number of US immigrants arriving in Canada has remained stable – 9,000 annually – from 2005 to 2014.

It might not be the northern Utopia of their dreams, but those who have made the move say they have never regretted it.

“If Americans want to live in a country where there is an investment in public education, where people aren´t afraid of going bankrupt because they get sick, and where democracry is taken seriously, they should move, because an alternative exists.“ (Tom Kertes, US immigrant to Canada)

“Leaving behind America´s penchant for authoritarianism, war and inequality was the right call.

I miss the scale and ambition of America´s tech industry, but I wouldn´t trade my life in Vancouver to return to it. 

We integrated easily into Canadian society. 

We learned how to be less arrogant and a bit more gentle and we have even picked up local etiquette and speech patterns. 

Canadians say “Sorry” a lot more than people in the States do. 

They thank the bus driver as they get off the bus. 

In the US if someone says “Thank you” a typical response might be “Sure”. 

That seems awfully brusque in Canada. 

A better response is “No worries”. 

There´s little things like that and if you get those things right you blend in on a day-to-day level.” (Jim DeLaHunt, US engineer / immigrant to Canada)

“When Allan and I moved to Canada from New York City in 2005, we had lost hope in an America plagued by civil liberties crackdowns and endless wars. 

Although I still have my US citizenship, I don´t vote anymore in US elections. 

And whenever I come back to Canada after visiting my family or friends in the States, I breathe a sigh of relief. 

Every time I say, I´m so glad to be out of that crazy country.”

(Laura Kaminker, US immigrant to Canada)

Photo from the TV series Due South

(The Guardian, 1 February 2016)

Landschlacht, Switzerland, 15 June 2016

Your humble blogger, a Canadian resident in Switzerland, is a child of a 4th generation Scottish Canadian and a US immigrant from Manhattan.

I have often been told that I could become an American citizen should I so choose.

And as much as I have enjoyed my travels in the US…

As much as I have met many decent Americans and count some of them as close friends…

I have no desire to immigrate to the States.

Especially now.

America is a land where “slavery” continues – many Americans struggle unsuccessfully to improve their economic conditions and remain heavily in debt.

America is a land of bondage – the US has more prisons and prisoners per capita than any other nation on Earth.

America is a land of inequality – 1% of Americans own much of US wealth while entire neighbourhoods remain blighted and whole generations of Americans are needlessly sacrificed in wars that only profit the 1%.

Most Americans are just ordinary people dealing with limited choices.

America is a land of fear – afraid of others, both domestic and foreign.

I left Canada not because I no longer believed in my home and native land.

I left for the love of a woman who has since become my wife – a choice I seldom regret.

To any Americans reading this blog, let me say I feel for you.

Though it would be painful to leave the US, to leave home…

Remember, an alternative exists.

Eastman Johnson, A Ride for Liberty, Brooklyn Museum

 

 

 

Walking with the President

“Dear Mr. President

Come take a walk with me.

Let´s pretend we´re just two people and

You´re no better than me.”

(Pink, “Dear Mr. President”)

Landschlacht, Switzerland, 30 May 2016

What if the unthinkable actually happened?

What if Donald “Duck!” Trump became the President of the United States?

New York City, New York, USA, 1 April 2017

Yo, Donald! Mr. Prez.

Nicky here.

You know one of the Americans you claim to represent?

Walk with me.

Don, I gotta give you credit where credit´s due.

No one, and I mean no one, just a couple of years ago would have imagined you would pull it off.

But between the choice of two evils – a woman no one trusted and a man no one liked – plus the largest lack of voter turnout in US history, Americans have chosen you to be the 45th President of the United States of America.

(Bernie gave a good fight right down to the wire, but at day´s end he struck Americans as too radical, despite some of his ideas ones America hungered for.)

(The Dems claim they would not have been defeated if you somehow hadn´t cheated, but whomever gets the most votes gets elected.

Isn´t that democracy in a nutshell?)

In your Inaugural Speech back in January, you said you would listen to Americans, that their ideas would help you to make America great again.

So, yo, Mr President, listen up!

In a few succinct words, Donald, you ain´t doin´what needs to be done.

Granted you put on one hell of a show.

Gold leaf in the Oval Office paid out of your own pocket?

Bling, baby, bling!

But as to the rest of it, you got folks mighty worried.

The new bill forcing protestors to obtain written permission from the police before they can protest?

You represent the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

What about freedom of assembly, freedom of expression?

Denied peaceful assembly, peaceful expression, people who you worried about being violent now feel that they´ve no other choice but be violent.

The Great Border Wall between us and the Mexicans?

Bad idea, bro.

No surprise that Mexico won´t pay despite your threats.

And this Wall comes out of American taxpayers´ wallets.

Not to mention the untold millions already being paid to increase the manpower needed to find and deport illegal immigrants already here.

And the media – they really don´t like you much, do they? – showing pictures of INS teams dragging parents away from their children to send them back to their birthplaces is doing nothing to improve your rep.

And the racial profiling that is happening at the borders and airports is not helping your image either.

And exactly what does a believer in Islam actually look like?

Islamic Center in Washington DC

Your daughter Ivanka converted to Judaism when she married, but at first glance does she look Jewish?

For that matter, do Americans look Christian?

As to your dealings with other countries…

On some respects, it seems business as usual – we are still chummy with the Saudis and non-critical of Israel and China regardless of what they do.

As much as you are trying to show a strong image by sending our troops to the Middle East to tackle ISIS head on, I honestly don´t believe we can be very effective without allies to help us.

Russia respects us as long as we live and let live and let them keep doing what they like in their Eurasian playground as long as they let us do as we will in our North and South American playground.

But I don´t think the Germans, French and much of the European Union like America very much, despite your reassurements of providing more troops to the NATO effort.

Hell, even Canada ain´t too wild about us for that matter!

And even though the British PM was glad to meet you, being snubbed by the Queen and denied a visit…

That had a nasty sting to both America´s and your pride.

From what I can see here from Queens we don´t seem to have many friends these days.

And having few friends can´t be good for the economy.

And money already is being spent like there is no tomorrow.

More police, more prisons, more militia, require more money.

And where will this money come from, Mr President?

Show me the money, Donald.

Show me the money.

One of my ancestors once wrote that it was better to be feared than loved.

I can´t say that people fear you, but they sure as hell don´t like you very much.

(Though those celebs that said they would move if you got elected –  they never left.)

It´s true that most of us were long ago fed up with the lack of progress that government seems to represent, but you can´t keep using executive power to ramrod every legislation you want passed.

Washington might be corrupt and often ineffectual, but it still represents the will of the American people.

Respect is a two-way street, Mr. President.

Now there are members of your party, Mr President, that suggest that America must effectively crush its opponents so as to earn great respect from everyone else, but if we destroy our reputation, which, to be blunt, is not so great as it is, who will trust us enough to want to do business with us?

And, sure, attacking those who oppose America will solve many problems right now, but what about the problems of the future?

My ancestor would have approved of how you never appear intimidated regardless of the situation, of how you are reluctant to have others make decisions you prefer to do yourself, and of how you make sure that Americans seek you out especially in times of need.

But my ancestor would remind you that the two most essential foundations for any state are sound laws and a strong military.

Laws cannot be passed without Congressional approval unless you plan to use executive power for everything.

America has a strong military but it is increasingly being spread too thin.

Walk with me, Mr. Prez.

Check out all the homeless here on most US cities or visit the poorer states.

Your party keeps telling everyone that our poverty is somehow our fault.

No, Don, it ain´t.

Being poor ain´t a choice or some kind of preferred lifestyle.

Being broke is a circumstance that can only be resolved if people are given opportunities to rise above their present station in their lives.

Poor folks are no different than you, Donald – they want to take pride in the things they do, but they need the opportunity.

But those who can´t afford an education find few opportunities and working two fulltime jobs like many Americans do and still remain in debt is not what one could call an inspirational American dream.

More folks are incarcerated in this country than many other countries combined.

I am no economic expert, but putting a man behind bars costs money.

If a man´s crime is not violent, wouldn´t time best be served and money better spent if that man were fined and made to contribute part of his salary instead?

A working man contributes more to the economy than an incarcerated man.

Never forget, Donald, that you were hired to make American lives better.

Give a man an opportunity to improve his life and the lives of his family and he will make America great again.

You want respect, Mr. President?

Then restore the dignity of your people by giving everyone the same opportunities.

Create jobs with salaries sufficient that people can afford to go shopping for the products our country produces.

Make health care accessible to everyone and not just for the wealthy.

An ill man cannot contribute to the economy.

A man in debt paying for hospital bills well beyond his wages cannot help the economy.

A man in debt is a desperate man and desperation leads to desperate acts.

You want to help this country then get out of your limo and your Trump hotels and walk among us in the style of King Arthur.

As the original peoples say, don´t judge a man until you have walked in his mocassins.

One of the hopeful,

Nick Machiavelli

Landschlacht, Switzerland, 31 May 2016

Wow, what a weird and vivid dream that was.

I really shouldn´t eat pizza before bedtime.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Working for a giant

As regular followers of this blog know, I have two jobs: freelance teacher and part-time barista.

I work as a humble part-time barista for the largest coffeehouse company in the world, Starbucks.

And I can´t deny that this results in mixed feelings.

I am older than this upstart of a company.

In fact, I am the oldest Starbucks employee in St. Gallen (3 locations) and possibly Switzerland.

It was founded in 1971.

My mother unleashed me upon the planet in 1965.

I am as Canadian as Neil Young, but working for an American multinational, founded in Seattle, Washington.

I work in two of its 23, 132 locations worldwide.

My homeland of Canada has 1, 416 locations.

The US has 12, 937.

The company has opened an average of two new locations worldwide every day between 1987 and 2007.

If Starbucks has its way, public interest will continue to rise in the coming years.

According to a Time magazine article from 2006, the company aims to open another 25,000 stores in the future, bringing the total number of Starbucks stores worldwide to 40,000.

That’s 9,000 more stores than McDonald’s currently has in operation worldwide.

I sell and serve hot and cold drinks, whole bean coffee, espressos, lattes, full leaf teas, juices, frappuccinos, pastries and snacks.

Being Xmas tis the season for toffeenut lattes, honey and almond hot chocolate, gingerbread lattes and snowball frappuccinos, to name just a few.

I sell and serve hot and cold sandwiches, mugs and tumblers and whatever new product idea that corporate Swiss HQ in Zürich passes on from Seattle.

I take the train to/from work, so even on days when I am not working at the Bahnhof location I still poke my nose inside to say “Hi” to my coworkers there and have a “dirty chai”(chai tea with espresso shots) to go.

I witnessed my first Starbucks Evening last night, accomplished professionally by Bahnhof shift manager Katy, promoting our various coffee blends and offering participants muffin treats.

My Bahnhof store manager Ricardo is proud to work at Starbucks.

He loves that he works for such a global presence.

Starbucks has made a point of being wherever you are.

They have a tremendous, almost inescapable, presence in countless, high-traffic neighborhoods.

Yet they’re also somewhat cutting-edge, not just in how they treat their employees (more on this later) or in their gutsy (if questionable) expansion tactics, but also in their efforts to stay relevant.

This is evidenced in such ventures as adding Wi-Fi connections for customers, building Starbucks Entertainment (film production) and Hear Music (music production) and, most recently, partnering with Apple to allow customers to download songs they hear in a Starbucks from iTunes.

As a rule, Starbucks stores are not franchised to private individuals, and the company has no intention to begin doing so.

The mentality has a lot to do with maintaining high company standards from store to store – standards that would be difficult to enforce if they were franchises.

Their “stores” are everywhere,  populated by coffee snobs on both sides of the counter.

Starbucks is indifferent to and beyond the reach of fluctuating economies.

They are accused of everything:

• market saturation
• making war on Christmas
• deliberately writing customers´names wrongly for the baristas´private amusement
• tax avoidance
• questionable anti-environmental practices
• using GMO (genetically modified) products
• corporate social irresponsibility
• opening without planning permission
• not supporting soldiers in the Iraq War
• allowing handguns to be brought into their US stores
• supporting same sex marriage
• unfairing pricing policies where a cup of coffee in one nation is more expensive than in another
• promoting discussion about race relations
• anti-competition.

Yet Starbucks — the world’s biggest coffee peddler — keeps on peddling.

Being only a humble barista I will not comment on these controversies as I do not create corporate policy and am not privy to these details, but of course I do read and am aware of how the world perceives Starbucks, whether positively or not.

I will say in Starbucks´defence, based only on my own personal experiences there, that it is an interesting environment to work in for its international mix of both staff and clientele.

Each working day exposes me to another aspect of that thing called Life and I find myself learning something new every day.

Some of the controversies, policies and practices found in the US are not found here in Switzerland or at least have evolved to a more Swiss-defined implementation.

I have heard nothing about negative market strategy here.

Labour disputes were highly discouraged in Switzerland long before Starbucks made its presence known here.

As Starbucks seems to survive economic difficulties wherever it sprouts up, most employees here are simply happy to have a job, especially in a country where foreign qualifications are often considered inferior by Swiss standards.

Thus every Starbucks I have visited in Switzerland seems sprinkled with a fair share of foreign nationals.

Are we receiving the same benefits as our American counterparts?

I am not sure, but I suspect not.

Starbucks seems to have a perennial spot on Forbes’ list of the “100 Best Companies to Work For,” but this has little to do with the weekly coffee or tea each “partner” takes home.

Starbucks calls its employees “partners” even though we hardly qualify as such in a true business sense, but the use of such a loaded word is meant to breed our loyalty towards the company.

In America, Starbucks offers an enviable benefits package.

Inspired by the childhood of Chairman Howard Schultz, who, as a boy, watched his father work low-paying jobs and retire with little to show for his life, Schultz wanted something different for employees of his company.

The result is a benefits package given to employees who work a minimum of 20 hours per week that includes health, medical, dental and vision plans, a 401k, and access into Bean Stalk, the company’s employee stock option plan.

If that weren’t already enough, those benefits extend to the opposite and same-sex spouses of these employees.

But either because I am a part-time employee or because Switzerland is not America, I have heard little discussion about these plans.

In St. Gallen no one has complained to us about our red cups and view the “War on Christmas” as much American ado about little.

Yesterday, store managers across Switzerland gathered in Bern, the Swiss capital, and had themselves a Christmas rave ringing handheld bells in the middle of town.

At the Bahnhof we offer a 10% community discount for those organisations that share our train station location, though privately I wish we extended this discount to those folks who in their roles as policemen or soldiers serve their communities on a far deeper level.

I have never seen a handgun inside a store, despite the fact that Switzerland is a heavily armed nation with regular compulsory military service for all Swiss-born males from 18 to 55.

We make no fuss, pro or con, about same sex couples or race relations.

Our general policy towards all:

If you pay, you can stay.

Could our environmental practices be improved at our Swiss stores?

Possibly.

I am no environmentalist, but I do feel we do produce one hell of a lot of trash on a regular basis and the word “recycling” does not seem to pop up much in conversation at work.

But again I may not see all that could be seen because I usually work only 20% of a fulltime work week there.

I do think we could do more towards the homeless in St. Gallen but I have been told that homeless shelters will not accept food beyond its due date, so what could feed the hungry instead is wasted.

My own private war against homelessness is limited to giving Bruno, the local street beggar, coffee whenever I see him.

What I do see is regular stress from management to staff.

Directives arrive from Zürich, as well as semi-irregular store inspections, that are strongly enforced to heavily promote our ever-changing assortment of products.

One week, we must heavily promote tumblers.

The next week, promote the coffee beans.

Ad infinitum.

The regular partners have been brainwashed into believing that their very self-worth hinges upon their sales performance.

And management encourages this.

Starbucks generates profits.

Our coffee is not 50-cent diner coffee, but rather highly expensive beverages of exotic quality.

Staff is constantly under pressure to produce as many sales as possible in the shortest amount of time as possible.

Every week our duties seem to increase but pressure still remains on completing these duties as quickly as possible.

My favourite contradiction I witness is the policy of selling, selling, selling right up to the last moment before door closing, then employees should have all other duties involved with running a cafe completed, exiting the premises ideally mere moments later.

Constant pressure from both management and clientele does not make for a psychologically happy environment despite what Forbes would have you believe.

In both stores where I work we operate on overlapping shifts, which should mean harmonious transfer of duties and responsibilities between the shifts.

The key word is “should”.

Tension and turmoil reign rampant and all is often not well in the relations between the personnel of the shifts.

Which, when the wife asks why I won´t work more hours than I do, is why I am happy to be involved as little as possible in these inter-shift civil war struggles.

Bluntly put, as long as the supplies I need to do my job are available I try to remain neutral to the politics that rage around me.

And will simply say that there is room for improvement…

(In fairness, I could improve as well and become a better barista, if I so desired.)

Starbucks was named for the first mate of the Pequod in Herman Melville’s Moby Dick.

Its logo: a bare-breasted mermaid which has, over time, developed a degree of modesty that would please the Pequod’s first mate.

Initially, her hair covered her breasts, then they were cut out of the frame altogether.

The mermaid is the only thing modest about Starbucks.

That, and your humble barista.

(Statistical sources: Wikipedia / Ross Bonander)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Canadian home sickness and the Excited States of America

As a Canadian resident in Switzerland there are many things I miss about life in Canada:

I miss old friends and family.

I miss the magnificent splendour of my home and native land.

And I miss small things too:

• Food like Habitant pea soup, poutine, tourtiere, Canadian breakfast, perogies, microwave dinners, beavertails…
• Comedians like Lorne Elliot, Rick Mercer, This Hour Has 22 Minutes and many others…
  • Some gone but not forgotten like the Royal Canadian Air Farce, Wayne and Schuster…
  • Some not well-known outside Canada like the Arrogant Worms, Bowser and Blue, Radio Free Vestibule, to name just a few.
• Newspapers like the Globe and Mail (affectionately known as “the Grope and Flail”), the Toronto Sun (the Toronto “Stunned”), the Ottawa Citizen, the Montreal Gazette, the Quebec City Chronicle-Telegraph and Le Journal de Montreal (notoriously famous for headlines like “Crime boss decapitated”)
• Musicians like Gordon Lightfoot, Leonard Cohen, Rush, Nickelback, Barenaked Ladies, to name only just five of many.
  • (I don´t miss Celine Dion or Justin Bieber as readers of my blog know if they´ve read my post Victims of the Machine.)
• Writers past and present such as Alice Munro, Pierre Berton, Stephen Leacock, Robert W. Service, Will Ferguson, Farley Mowat (known by his critics as “Hardly Know-it”), among many.
• I miss the CBC, both radio and TV.
• I miss Maclean´s, Quill and Quire, Canadian Geographic magazines.

And zowie, Dr. Foth…

I miss Allan Fotheringham.

Allan Fotheringham (born August 31, 1932) is a Canadian newspaper and magazine journalist.

He is widely known by the nickname Dr. Foth and styles himself as, “Always controversial… never at a loss for words” and also as “the Great Gatheringfroth”.

I still recall with great fondness some of his most quotable expressions:

• “the jaw that walks and talks like a man” (for former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney)
• “In the Maritimes politics is a disease, in Quebec a religion, in Ontario a business, on the Prairies a protest and in British Columbia – entertainment.” — Malice in Blunderland (1982)
• “Zowie, Dr. Foth, could you please de-muddify the fuzzification?”
• “the village that fun forgot”(for Ottawa)
• “the Excited States of America”(for the USA)

This name for the States seems very appropriate, for I cannot think of a time in US history when Americans were not overly agitated about something.

As a Canadian resident in Switzerland, like the rest of the world´s billions who are not American, I am watching with avid fascination and horror the events taking place in the US at present.

And like the rest of the world I am greatly concerned about who will lead the world´s most powerful nation after US President Barack Obama leaves office.

Leading the pack in both popularity and notoriety of those who would be President is the phenomena, known as “the Donald”, Republican Party presidential front-runner Donald Trump.

I can´t decide what is more dangerous about this man:

The things he says, or that so many people are listening to him.

For those aliens new to the planet or for those who have been living under a rock, a brief summary of the man:

“Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946) is an American business magnate, investor, author, television personality and candidate for President of the United States in the 2016 Presidential Election.

He is the chairman and president of the Trump Organization and founder of Trump Entertainment Resorts.

Trump’s career, branding efforts, lifestyle and outspoken manner helped make him a celebrity, a status amplified by the success of his NBC reality show, The Apprentice.

Trump is a son of Fred Trump, a New York City real estate developer.

He worked for his father’s firm, Elizabeth Trump & Son, while attending the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, and officially joined the company in 1968.

In 1971, he was given control of the company, renaming it The Trump Organization.

Trump remains a major figure in American real estate.

On June 16, 2015, Trump formally announced his candidacy for president in the 2016 election, seeking the nomination of the Republican Party.

Trump’s early campaigning drew intense media coverage and saw him rise to high levels of popular support.

Since early July 2015, he has consistently been the front-runner in public opinion polls for the Republican Party nomination.

Trump’s populist, anti-immigrant politics are a defining contrast to the establishment Republican faction, earning him support among working class voters amid heavy and frequent controversies in the news media.” (Wikipedia)

This man has suggested that:

• the 11 million illegal immigrants in the US should be deported
• the erection of a long tall wall on the Mexican border and paid for by the Mexican government
• Mexicans are drug dealers and rapists
  • “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best…They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with [them]. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”^[
• Arizona Senator John McCain was not to be considered a war hero because he was captured
• he is pro-life and anti gun control
• he wants to eliminate taxes on corporations
• he wants to eliminate minimum wages
• he believes that global warming is “a total hoax”
• he thinks that there is an ongoing assault on Christmas
• he is pro school prayer and anti same sex marriage
• Iraq is a corrupt nation, not worthy of his respect
• he proposes withdrawl of military support for allied countries unless the US were paid to defend them
• he would limit access to the Internet
• he would pursue aggressive bombing of ISIS
• he would increase surveillance of mosques in the US
• he would enforce a complete ban on Muslims entering the United States

And what frightens the world is that many Americans agree with him.

And that Americans in their fear, paranoia and xenophobia might actually elect this man to be their Head of State and Commander-in-Chief of the world´s most powerful military.

Even before Trump threw his hat into the political arena, his name was often in the news:

• He has been married three times.
• Four of his businesses have declared bankruptcy.
• He has initiated and been the target of many civil lawsuits.
  • My personal favourite was when he sued comedian Bill Maher for asking Trump to produce his birth certificate to prove that Trump´s mother had never mated with an orangutan!
• There have been allegations that he has done business with firms linked to organized crime.
• He has authored 18 books.
• He even has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

I know many Americans don´t much care for what the outside world thinks or says about it, but for those who do:

If America continues to let itself be lead by fear-mongering demagogues like Donald Trump then America will truly find itself in more difficult straits than it presently is in.

Of all the things I miss about living in Canada, I don´t miss living next door to the US in times like this.

It has often been said that people get the government they deserve, but does the Excited States of America truly deserve Donald Trump?

 

 

 

Brave New World / Meanwhile…

Recent statistic…

There are now more mobile phones on the planet than there are people.

The World Wide Web continues to grow at staggering rates, with millions of websites, hundreds of thousands of categories, in most of the world´s languages, serving at least half of humanity.

Meanwhile-

24,000 people die every day from hunger.

3/4 of the deaths are children under the age of five.

Over one billion people have to survive on less than a dollar a day.

842 million people across the world will go to bed hungry tonight.

One in five women experience a rape or attempted rape in their lifetimes.

Guns kill 34,000 Americans every year.

Today, 14,000 people will become infected with HIV/AIDS.

It is estimated that a person who turned 15 in 2000 has a 74% chance of becoming infected with HIV by his/her 50th birthday.

Every nine seconds one more person becomes infected.

Every thirteen seconds one more person dies.

68 million people will have died prematurely as a result of AIDS by 2020.

24 million people work in sweatshops in 160 countries around the world, with about 80% working under conditions that violate law and morality.

More than half the population of Earth have no access to any kind of toilet.

Diarrhoea kills over 2 million children per year.

Earth is a world of increasing religious intolerance, despite the reality that there is much common ground between religions, it is the differences that are highlighted.

Religions have grown from the desire to understand the place of human beings in the universe, the need to comprehend the mysteries of life and death and the wish to experience meaning and happiness in the face of suffering, yet mankind seems bent more towards destruction than understanding and cooperation.

At least half the world´s 6,000 languages still in existence will be dead or near death by the year 2050.

Without words to express things, knowledge and ideas begin to disappear.

The loss of any one language means a reduction in the sum total of human thought and knowledge and an impoverishment of the human race.

Worldwide, human rights are violated, millions are homeless, racism remains, pollution increases, water levels are rising while polar regions are shrinking, but here in the West, most of us suffer from both apathy and ignorance.

If we care, we just don´t know.

If we know, we just don´t care.

Here in Landschlacht, I am several time zones removed from the United States, so Americans are probably asleep or winding up their nights out after many have gathered around tables of roast turkey, corn bread, cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie, and maybe a beer or a glass of red wine.

As I type these words, I can almost smell the aromas, taste the textures, roll the wine upon my tongue, hear the jovial talk.

Americans gathered together with friends and loved ones are truly unaware of how truly blessed they are as a nation for the resources that sustain them.

Most Americans do not go hungry, in fact, obesity, as a result of overeating, is a growing dilemma.

Most Americans have a roof over their heads, safe from the elements.

Most Americans have a toilet in their homes.

Though income distribution remains a problem in the US, with many Americans earning insufficient wages comparable to high costs of living, working Americans usually work under humane conditions.

Yet Americans, like the citizens of other prosperous countries, including my homeland Canada and, my present country of residence, Switzerland,  are unhappy  and depressed with their daily lives, despite having standards and quality of life unimaginable in much of the world.

They simply cannot imagine their lives without sufficient supplies of water, heat and nourishment.

They cannot conceive of living without electricity or sanitation or doing without their automobiles.

They cannot picture themselves without TV, music, electronics.

American Thanksgiving is winding down as I write these words, but it is my hope that we in the West, we who do not lack the basics of life, remain grateful for the things we take for granted.

It is my hope that we overcome our ignorance by using our electronics to discover the realities of the rest of the world.

It is my hope that we overcome our apathy and our fears and our paranoia and think beyond selfish national boundaries and learn to care about humanity as a whole.

Then, and only then, will we deserve the blessings that have been bestowed upon us.