All posts by Wayne K. Spear

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Personal Essay

The Decay Of Poetry In The Year Of Revolution

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When the terrible European war which everyone had known for years was coming finally did arrive, W. H. Auden composed a poem, “September 1, 1939,” which begins:

I sit in one of the dives
On Fifty-second Street
Uncertain and afraid
As the clever hopes expire
Of a low dishonest decade:
Waves of anger and fear
Circulate over the bright
And darkened lands of the earth,
Obsessing our private lives;
The unmentionable odour of death
Offends the September night.

Continue reading The Decay Of Poetry In The Year Of Revolution →

World

Gaddafi: The Last Of The Longest Rule

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Gadaffi

If you are at or under the age of forty-two, Moammar Gaddafi has presided over Libya the full span of your life. This factoid must certainly describe the majority of Libyans, most of whom have never known of life under another dispensation, let alone had the opportunity to chose something or even just someone different.

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Canada

Stephen Harper’s Kairos Smear Campaign

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Among the most offensive character traits of the Harper Government is the indolence of its cynicism. How stupid does the current occupant of 24 Sussex Drive take us to be, and how easily lost does he suppose we will become amidst the transparent undergrowth of non-sequitur, evasion, and the changings of the subject? Quite and very, it would appear.

Continue reading Stephen Harper’s Kairos Smear Campaign →

World

An Unwelcome Birthday Gift For Kim Jong Il

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It seems to me that Kim Jong Il’s birthday is a good day to reflect upon the fact that the regimes of North Korea and China are this world’s most depraved and dangerous abominations. The former constitutes “the world’s greatest ongoing atrocity,” and the latter, which appears to compete for that honour, has an ever-growing sphere of influence reflecting its ambition to become the leading world power. So the question ought to be asked, What do you suppose are the prospects if the “international community” continues to shrink from the firmness of commitment that these times require? Before you answer, consider the following.

Continue reading An Unwelcome Birthday Gift For Kim Jong Il →

Politics

Ron Paul: The Dave Matthews Band of American Politics

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I shrink a bit when I recall my twenty-year old self. It’s a character-forming exercise, recalling the supreme confidence of one’s “formative years,” and for this reason and others I should probably do it more often. The universal style of youth is of course unshakable commitment to simple ideas, the enthusiastic throwing of one’s arms around a slogan. It’s this style precisely of which I’m reminded when I behold the ever-hopeful and ever-futile efforts of Ron Paul.

Continue reading Ron Paul: The Dave Matthews Band of American Politics →

Politics

I Give You Mr. Charles McVety

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Readers of this humble column of mine know that as a matter of principle I defend the right to unfettered expression of any and all persons, regardless of point-of-view. The other and necessary half of this social compact requires that I subject to deliberation the jingoism, fear-mongering, and stupidity which from time to time result when this right is exercised. And so, Dear Reader, I give you Mr. Charles McVety. Continue reading I Give You Mr. Charles McVety →

Writers and Writing

Scrapping The Social Media

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Were you to find me by chance at the local pub, I’d be in the dark corner with a scotch and, at most, two or three friends. This may seem an odd way to begin an article headlined in part by the phrase Social Media. The point is I’m not much a practitioner of the social. I don’t “do” small talk well, I don’t care for crowds, and rarely do I think my personal life (which in any case is no one’s damn business) of interest to my interlocutors. So it may seem a contradiction to you that I have had accounts at MySpace, Twitter, Flickr, Facebook, and other such social media websites. I know of people more anti-social than I who can say the same. What is it that draws us, the sub-social, to these improbable places? Continue reading Scrapping The Social Media →

Politics

The Koch Brothers: Drinking Your Milkshake

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Daniel Day-Lewis’s portrayal of oil tycoon Daniel Plainview was six years in the future when real-life tycoons, the Koch brothers Charles and David, were found guilty of drinking their milkshake from federal government and Indian reserve lands. To call them “oilmen” is to bring them down somewhat: the Koch (Coke, not Kotch) brothers have business dealings in chemicals, lumber, minerals, ranching, pulp and paper, fertilizers, polymers, finance, investments, and commodity trading, as well as in the refinement and distribution of petroleum products. Among the five wealthiest Americans, the Kochs control America’s second-largest privately-held company. It was Koch brother Bill who issued the charge of stealing against Koch Industries, for which service he was awarded one-third of the 2001 $25 million settlement. Well, as they say, money goes where money is. David and Charles in 1983 had bought out the shares of brothers Bill and Frederick for $1.1 billion, so a windfall probably wasn’t the issue. Other considerations appear to make the Koch family tick as well. Continue reading The Koch Brothers: Drinking Your Milkshake →

First Nations

The Continuing Story Of A Continuing Relationship

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There was a time when Aboriginal peoples and Europeans newly-arrived to this land conducted affairs between them with mutual respect. There’s no need to romanticize the character of these relations. It was an era of alliances, political intrigue, war, and nastiness. But even warfare indicates respect. It bears an implicit acknowledgement of a foe’s strength and independence. In the initial phase of contact between Europeans and the indigenous peoples of this land, indigenous peoples had the advantages. They knew how to live on the land and how to navigate the rivers and the forests, and in battle there were more of them. Perhaps this is why mutual respect characterized the early relationship. Continue reading The Continuing Story Of A Continuing Relationship →

Personal Essay

And Now For Something Completely Different

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I am most at home among those who’ve an appreciation of the absurd. To detractors this would perhaps be characterized as the silly or, at further depths of condescension, the juvenile. I don’t much mind either characterization and will plead guilty as charged if pressed to do so. You see, my people have a touch of anarchy about them as well as a suspicion (perhaps more than a suspicion) that human pretension, and especially the human pretension toward civilization, is at bottom ridiculous and thus fit for ridicule. An effective mode of ridicule I find is the raspberry, the gesture which indicates that its object is regarded with a lowly contempt precluding a need of serious rebuke. Better still is whimsy for its own sake. On that foundation rests my preference for comedy and comedians aspiring to no identifiable social purpose, for examples and in no particular order Gilda Radner, Jackass, The Mighty Boosh, and Monty Python’s Flying Circus. This preference took root in my childhood, which suggests the term juvenile does have merit.  Continue reading And Now For Something Completely Different →

Obituary

The Obituary

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One of my favourite literary genres, and in my view one of the most under-appreciated and misunderstood, is the obituary. Speaking of literature … it was a premature French obituary of 1888 which perhaps led Alfred Nobel to establish the Nobel Peace Prize. How painfully aware of his public relations problem he must have become, regarding himself in an obituarist’s rendering as “the merchant of death” and seeing his life’s work summarized thusly: he “became rich by finding ways to kill more people faster than ever before.” Continue reading The Obituary →

World

The Tunis Commitment, The Commitment to Tunisia

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When it was announced last week that the entry of Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali and his horrible in-laws would be denied by Tunisia’s former colonial protector, I was about to depart from my usual course and say something kind of the French government. Then I learned that Jean-Claude Duvalier was back in Haiti, and the disgusting dictator-coddling aspect of the French establishment was once again at the front of my thoughts. A great deal of guilt-based French shilly-shallying preceded the eventual taking of a definite position (i.e. not to snuggle up to the expelled President), a fact France’s Foreign Minister, Michelle Alliot-Marie, appeared to be glossing when she said that “the constant principles of our foreign policy are non-interference, support for democracy and freedom and the implementation of the rule of law.” Continue reading The Tunis Commitment, The Commitment to Tunisia →

Religion

It’s The End Of The World Again

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Although one can reasonably claim on historical evidence that stranger things have happened, it is nonetheless discomforting that across the world birds drop by the thousands from the sky and fish arrive dead to the shores. The adjective commonly invoked by these at-present inexplicable events is biblical — a word I saw in relation also to the Australian floods. (An aside: given the post-diluvian Noahic covenant, is not a contemporary flood better described as anti-biblical?) Add to this the many wars and rumours of war, the 1948 re-constitution of Israel, a resurgence of Twelver eschatology, the proliferation of nuclear weapons, the Mayan calendar — which I’m told ends on December 21, 2012 and, by this mere fact, apparently marks Doomsday — and the re-emergence of Harold Camping, and you have good material for End Times speculations. And this is only a partial list. Continue reading It’s The End Of The World Again →