31 December 2011

2011: The End of the Beginning

While the final days and hours of 2011 have been ticking down, I've been a bit too distracted to do much writing. Living in Barcelona will do that to you. I've enjoyed some interesting Christmas nights in my time, but none before this left me wandering home at five in the morning blissfully drunk on a steady stream of cider, wine, jaegermeister, whisky and rum, consumed in that order. The fact that I woke the next day not disgustingly sick from all the drink might have constituted a Christmas miracle, were I not a godless heathen. As it stands I’ll credit the miracle of a hangover free Boxing Day to the Philharmonic Pub’s incredible steak pie, and the lovely “pica pica” spread put out by the friends who invited two lonely expats to spend the holiday with them. This was a very different Christmas, but a fantastic one all the same.

So my apologies to the few but faithful for being less than prolific over the last few weeks, but I’m not going to lie to you. Being a lazy, shiftless bum for days on end was just what the doctor ordered. Still, to the loyal readers back home in the New World, the locals here in Spain, and that lone reader in Germany who checks in diligently every week or so, I promise to up the output in 2012, and to end delays like this recent one. However this is a promise I will more than likely break on multiple occasions, so in advance, lo siento.

One year ago tonight, I was at The Rhino in Toronto, my local pub of ten years. My wife and I gathered with our friends, standing at the bar drinking, carousing, singing “Auld Lang Syne” as the clock struck midnight. Kisses all around, followed by the Scots tradition of calling your mum, which these days means infuriating and numerous failed attempts to get a signal and successfully place a call  while millions of people in town are trying to do the same. It was a familiar and lovely way to put one year in its grave and witness the first sparks of life in a new one. This particular year the sparks never stopped, they just grew hotter, before igniting a full on blaze across the planet.

This final year of the 21st Century’s first decade had the feel of a video recap of the last ten years as spliced together by someone on a dangerous amount of psychotropic drugs. This has been a decade of perpetual war, terrorism either organic or manufactured, economic disasters, revolutions calling for democracy in the east while the very idea itself was hijacked by the bloated, sausage fingered corporate elites in the west. Change we could believe in dangled in front of us like a carrot on a stick, only to find the new boss was really no different from the old boss. We’ve spent the better part of ten years under the threat of imminent doom lurking around every corner, and 2011 served as the inevitable result of this constant feeling that we were all teetering on the edge of a cliff, desperate just to hang on and not fall to a bloody, bone shattering death. Who could blame us for wallowing in disillusion and apathy after being repeatedly battered with bombs, buzzwords, and boogie men?

The great thing about 2011 is that we stopped wallowing. We woke up.  

It took a while, but here at the end of the beginning a grand chunk of people on this pale blue dot -- including yours truly -- finally opened their eyes to the reality those in control have been forcing on us for far too long. It took crossing an ocean and watching the birth of a revolution here in my new home to rouse me from the comatose state in which I spent most of this century. I hope this new found sense of actually giving a fuck or two sticks around for a while, in all of us.

In 2011 we lifted the veil, and got a good look at the man behind the curtain. He’s an ugly, twisted fucker, not pleased to be exposed to the public, but he’s hardly waving the white flag either. The people in Tahrir Square are still being beaten and assaulted by SCAF; Austerity is still the order of the day across Europe. The line between terrorist and protestor has all but been obliterated. It is going to get worse before there’s a chance of it getting any better. Tonight though, on New Year’s Eve, forget it all for a few hours. Go out, get pissed, and say goodbye to a bizarre, fantastic year.

Tonight I’ll be saying goodbye to 2011 in a new city, in my new local pub, The Philharmonic. My wife and I will raise a glass with new friends here; Catalans, Spaniards, and expats all among them. We’ll think of our friends and family back home, and across the globe, and no doubt share a fair amount of kisses while singing Auld Lang Syne.

It will be a familiar and completely new experience, all at once.

Happy New Year. 

14 December 2011

False Evidence Appearing Real

On the night of September 11th, 2001, after an exhausting day watching the birth of the 21st century live in my dank, cigarette-smoke filled living room, I was sat in my favourite local pub with a few friends. We were all getting drunk. At the table next to us, and the table next to them, sat people all in the same boat. They were also getting drunk. Every table and every stool at the bar contained a snapshot – an identical image repeated over and over again: bewildered, sometimes angry faces pouring a bit of liquid comfort down their throats, each talking about the same awful bloody tragedy, trying and failing to make some sense of it. From person to person the arguments varied wildly, the emotional responses swerved from hysteria to hatred. We didn’t agree on much, but we didn’t really have to right then and there. We needed to talk, to get drunk, and be together because we didn’t want to be alone

We didn’t want to be alone because we were terrified.

People in homes and bars and cafes all over the world were drowning in this same sense of fear and dread. Whether you were feeling it in Boston or Baghdad, or if you were watching Fox News or Al Jazeera, you felt it. You might have feared that your city was the next target. You might have feared that you would be crushed by the full might of the inevitable response. Whatever the individual cause for panic, it was cripplingly real and near impossible to overcome. We had all just watched several thousand people die in a heap of concrete, twisted metal, and a choking cloud of ash and dust. We witnessed people trapped on the top floors of two mammoth skyscrapers leap to their deaths; many of us watched it repeated over and over again in a grotesque loop broadcast across all channels. As much as we wanted to, we couldn’t look away. These horrible visions were burning into our retinas to a soundtrack of screaming New Yorkers running through the streets and news anchors repeatedly uttering names like Bid Laden, Hussein, and Al Qaeda. It was an unrelenting assault on the senses, with any hope of escape completely futile. Logic and reason were high tailing it out the door. The fear had taken hold, and it wasn’t about to let go anytime soon.

What followed after that day was a calculated pageant of fear and loathing, designed to convince the people of the west to keep quiet while the military industrial complex set about inventing wars as a means to epic profit and a tightening of their grip on individual rights. This is an old trick, though – one that fools us every time. 

The fear of communism directed the actions of the west for nearly fifty years. The scaremongering rhetoric that arose about the horrors of a red state was so masterfully orchestrated that to this day there is a certain sort of person still checking under his bed at night to make sure a “commie” isn’t lying in wait to steal his freedom and force him to wait in line for a roll of toilet paper. War is great business, and for decades the mere possibility of an impending fight for ideological survival led to fortunes being made through the manufacturing and sale of ever more terrifying weapons. The theory proves true over and over again. We are easily scared into submission.

For thousands of years fear has been used by Pharaohs and Presidents, Imams and Popes, CEOs and marketing gurus alike, as a means to control, to persuade, to make you do as you’re told. Many never stand a chance against its ability to cajole us so perfectly because from a very early age we are taught that failure to obey a higher authority will have damning consequences.

Before we have a say in the matter, most of us are taught that if you do not do as your god wants you face a never ending torrent of punishment and torture. Fearsome old men in grand costumes preach to us that these are the commands of our supreme father, a vague and faceless figure we cannot see or communicate with but through his human emissary. They assure us that he is everywhere and he wants you to follow his rules. The penance that awaits you for not living your life by the wishes of whichever creator you believe in are nightmarish and eternal -- and bloody frightening. The lesson starts early: Do as we say, or horrible consequences await you.

We move into adulthood carrying this deeply entrenched control switch with us, and the fears pile on, one on top of the other. Insecurities about your social standing become a constant presence as you are guided by a new minister: the marketer. Soon you come to believe that your status defines you, and your status is calculated by the things you own. You need a house bigger than the next guy's, a new car more expensive than the next guy's. Designer brand name clothing that immediately tells everyone how well you’re doing. The newest iPhone the nanosecond it becomes available. The biggest HD, 3D, LCD, flatscreen, plasma television monstrosity you can find, regardless of whether you can afford it. These things define you. They tell everyone else how much you have, and how important you are. Whether you need them or not is irrelevant. Enslave yourself in a sea of debt because if you don’t have these things, you have failed the game of life.

It is a dark and devilish business. Fear makes us consume.

There is profit to be made in keeping the public fearful. Few industries understand this idea – or have realized it so perfectly – as the war industry. This was the industry that kicked the use of fear as control into overdrive after 9/11. Hours of television reports told us that terrorists were everywhere, lurking in the shadows of every city and every town in the free world. Leaders took to podiums in Washington and London and scared the living daylights out of us. Strange and foreign invaders armed with dirty bombs, box cutters, anthrax and hatred were plotting against us. Thousands of terrorist cells were operating in hundreds of cities across the world, all with one common goal: To kill you and everyone you love.

Who wouldn’t be afraid of that?

This was the politics of fear firing on all cylinders, convincing us to make war in the Middle East against enemies old and new. The war against terror in Afghanistan led to the war on hazy nuclear threats in Iraq. Once again they sold the people fear, with murky photos of weapons facilities and suspect rumours about Nigerian uranium, and the people devoured it. In the end, completely disoriented by the constant doom surrounding us, we barely noticed as our rights were thoroughly trimmed down in the name of security. Peace through war. Love through hate. It was more than big brother could have asked for.

Today, in a year of revolution and ongoing civil disobedience, those who want to keep us afraid are telling us there is a new terror lying in wait: the dissenter. The radical is what you need to fear next. The occupier and the indignado are asking questions the elite don’t have answers for, and now they are back to the tried and true method of marginalization through fear. In London, the authorities have named the occupy movement a terrorist organization. Apparently filthy hippies sitting in public squares with no clear message are as dangerous to your way of life as Al Qaeda. In the mainstream media, the persistent message of the occupy movement is that of shiftless bums and violent drug addicts demanding handouts from the rich and successful. The camps are rife with the worst elements of society, people living on the dark fringes. Even the old red menace has reared its paranoid head.

The truth is occupy camps contain these elements of society, as does each community the world over. Drug addicts overdosing at occupy camps would have overdosed alone in some other dark part of the city. In many cases, being at the camps saved them from death. Those who live on the edge of the knife aren’t drug addicts, or mentally ill because they are at camps offering them hot food and some semblance of shelter for the night, they are at the camps providing these things because they are drug addicts, or suffering mental illness –- or both. Mainstream society left them behind a long time ago.

When we think it over for a moment, when logic and reason don’t high tail it out the door, when we don’t choose to fall for it, the fear mongering can be seen for what it is: dishonest manipulation.

The question is will we fall for it again, or not?

01 December 2011

D'Hondt Let Me Down

Ever get the feeling you’re being followed?

I do, at this very moment. I have come to believe that the right wing is stalking me, hunting me down as if I were the last Javan Rhinoceros, eager to mount my head on its wall. It’s either that, or I’m a curse for progressive thinkers and revolutionaries. You’ll forgive me if I prefer to think I’m being chased.

When I left Toronto times were grim. The city was a few months in to what's best described as the end result of former Provincial Premier Mike Harris’ final “fuck you” to the city he so loathed. The Harris “Mega City” amalgamation of Toronto proper with its surrounding suburbs delivered the city into the hands of a mayor who hates cities, progressives, art, culture, even bicycles. Mayor Rob Ford was the Harris regime's inevitable parting gift to the downtown core. If you listened closely, you could almost hear Harris crying out “from hells heart, I stab at thee!”

Similarly, though no less baffling, shortly after I left the country the federal Tories led by Stephen Harper, finally fooled enough Canadians, or lulled enough to sleep, to win the majority government they had craved for so long. No longer confined by the restraints of a minority parliament, and with no need to pay lip service to the idea of bipartisan co-operation, Harper and his cabal could drive through any legislation it liked. These were dark days for my city, my country, and my home. While these weren’t the reasons I left, they certainly worked to reaffirm the decision to go off and explore the world around me. Now, just seven months later, that same black cloud, the darkness on the edge of town, has tracked me down in Spain.

The national elections on the 20th of November delivered Spain into the hands of the Partido Popular, a party formed in the burning embers of the old Franco regime when it fell in the mid seventies. For some here in Barcelona, it brings back sinister memories. A Catalan friend of mine, angry over the results and no doubt fearful of what’s to come, sent a message stating “La oscuridad se cierne sobre nuestro pueblo.”

The darkness looms over our people.

The results, while disappointing for many, come as no surprise. Sit down for a chat in a cafĂ©, or a bar with nearly anyone you meet here to discuss the nation’s political parties and you will learn one thing very quickly: They are two sides of the same coin, ultimately controlled by Santander, the largest bank in the Eurozone. In essence, there is no choice at all.

The outgoing and thoroughly embarrassed PSOE had long ago shown that they were progressive and socialist only so long as it was convenient to be. When the pressure was applied from “Merkozy”, Zapatero quickly played the obedient dog. What is coming from New Prime Minister Rajoy and his party is simply more of the same crippling austerity measures applied by Zapatero in order to appease the creditors, to appease Chancellor Merkel, and to appease President Sarkozy. The people of Spain have been living under and fighting these efforts to sell them into financial slavery for some time now. Swapping out one set of thieves and opressors for another doesn’t mean much to them.

Far from a victory for conservative ideals, these election results stand as a punishment of the former bosses for abandoning their own ideals and turning their backs on the people in the face of relentless pressure from Chancellor Merkel. There were more nullified votes, blanked votes, and outright abstentions than there were actual votes cast for Rajoy and the Partido Popular. More people in this country feel that there is no one they can trust to represent them. They no longer place faith in the democratic process because it no longer belongs to them. It has been taken over by the financiers, the corporatists, and the neutered politicians who serve them.

When asked to choose between the person who wants to punch you in the stomach and the person who wants to kick you in the face, the vast majority of us would opt for neither. The people of Spain were being asked to vote for austerity, or more austerity. Many made the only choice they could. They said no.

It was a strange day here in Barcelona -- election day. The streets were quiet. The tourists were there of course, they always are. They walked up and down Passeig de Gracia as they do every single day of the year. No sense of what was at stake. To them this was not a day of any particular importance, just another lovely day in sunny Spain.

The locals though, the vibrant and rare lifeblood of this city, the ones that make it hum, were taking sides in a conflict of ideologies. Those who believe in the system, the ones that feel it’s working just fine, went to the polls and cast their ballot for more austerity, more crippling service cuts –- more of the same. On the other side of the field stood those who see themselves as prisoners, and the election as nothing more than a changing of the guards. The jailers faces and the names on their placards may have changed, but their plans and schemes all come from the same cold and sinister warden.


Those who refused to vote made a hard choice. They will not give consent to forced financial servitude. They have opted to show those in charge that if you abandon your ideals, and your promise to the public, forcing the people to pay the price for your corruption and that of the money men who hold the purse strings, the people will take you to task, any way they can. This was the harsh lesson the inevitable losers learned on election day, and it is the lesson the default winners should take to heart. Sooner rather than later.


On Sunday, 20th November 2011, millions of Spanish citizens made it clear that they will not be complicit in the methodical dismantling of their democracy. If the politicians don't have the courage, or the conviction to stand up for the people, they are more than capable of making their time on the throne extremely uncomfortable -- and very brief.