Grading is done, the weather is warming, we keep on zooming with much anticipation for a better summer and fall and yet oy.
Today's oy is in reference to yet another senior officer in the Canadian Armed Forces being investigated for sexual misconduct. MG Dany Fortin, who was the face of the CAF's involvement in Canada's vaccination rollout, was suspended yesterday. We have now had the previous Chief of Defence Staff, the current (alas) Chief of Defence Staff, the Chief of Personnel (until yesterday), and the former commander of Canadian Joint Operations Command all facing investigations, suspensions, and more for sexual misconduct and/or abuse of power. Fortin was the great hope for the CAF to help its image as he was seen as being very competent in both the doing and messaging of the vax rollout. We don't know what the accusation is, and it is possible that his brilliant career may be salvageable. Unlike, say, the Chief of Personnel. I wrote this week that the Minister of Defence and the Prime Minister should move on from Admiral McDonald as the Chief of Defence Staff, as there is no real coming back. The latest news just strengthens my argument.
On the bright side, Acting CDS Eyre did fire the Chief of Personnel yesterday, moving on from him. Maybe Eyre will have set an example for those above him? Stef vH and I had a great interview that we will be posting on the next Battle Rhythm on Wednesday, which energized us for the week. More details to come probably on Monday. I also had the chance to speak to a reservist unit in Toronto via zoom. I talked about Canadian civ-mil in comparative perspective. They asked lots of good questions. I did get pushed on one of my comments about how we need to move beyond "warrior" as the key identity for the CAF, as one of the participants noted that it is an organization that trains to kill people. My point is that while we have plenty of examples of women as warriors, the current social construction of that term has heaps of baggage, and we can call that baggage toxic masculinity. That the way warrior is defined and expressed not only legitimates various behavior (hazing, for instance) but tends to exclude those who don't fit the image of a warrior--short people, immigrants, women, LGBTQ2S, etc.
Another bright spot was the forum my colleague Yanling Wang organized on Anti-Asian Racism. I hate that she felt compelled by the rise of this racism to organize such an event, but it was moving and illuminating.
In plague news, we have heaps of confusion as health authorities message poorly. This week, it was the CDC's turn, saying that the fully vaxxed can go without masks ... but we don't know who is fully vaxxed, so what to do about mask mandates? It seems like requiring vaccination in order work or go to school would be the thing to do, that vaccine passports would be provided by government so that stadia, theaters, restaurants, and others could sort. But the Biden administration is opposed to vaccine passports. Why? Something, something, equity. If there are equity concerns about the vaccines, get the vaccines to those who are on the margins and then give them a damn vax passport. I got a yellow fever vax certificate for a trip I took a couple of years ago--the idea of vax passports are nothing new at all. Making them work domestically is a bit of a move, but schools have long required measles and other vaccinations. Perhaps the clever move is to empower private actors to be able to sort clients so that the imperative to get vaccinated seems less like it is coming from a government that the vax hesitant distrust and more from private firms. All I know is that CDC's sudden announcement was not that well thought out.
Meanwhile, in Canada, AstraZeneca, despite its amazing record of crushing the plague in the UK, is now no longer available for first shots due to fears about clotting. I get it--that there is a potentially dangerous side effect, but the way this has been handled only creates more uncertainty and more vax hesitancy. The good news is that the other vaccines are now arriving in big numbers here. So, the question is, given how the rollout played out, will gen x get AZ for its second shots (please, give me) or will they wait to figure out the mixing of vaccines findings. And of course, this means 100,000's of AZ vaccines sitting around while India burns.
Speaking of burning, the past week of violence in Israel and Palestine has reminded me of the despair I felt, along with most of the rest of academics that were with me, when I toured Israel and Palestine two summers ago. It was clear then that the incentives were all wrong--that the Israeli politicians had no interest in really negotiating, that the Palestinians between Hamas and the folks in the West Bank had no interest in negotiating, that both sides were mostly satisfied with recurrent bouts of violence with no resolution in sight. The peace camp in Israel was broken by the 2nd intifada so that Israelis could vote for different flavors of right wing politicians with varying levels of, well, irredentist claims. We realized that the two state solution was dead, killed by the aggressive settling efforts on the one side and the threat of Hamas to to gain power in the WestBank on the other.
What does one state where Israel incorporates much, if not all, of the West Bank look like? And the answer is: Democratic or Jewish. The demographics are pretty clear--if you give the people living in these territories voting rights, it is going to be hard to maintain an ethnocentric state. But if you deny such a large group voting rights (and if you level buildings where journalists are based), are you really a democracy? I tend not to write much about this conflict. All I can say is that I was really struck by a discussion I had with one of the folks we met two summers ago. An Israeli retired general exclaimed frustration and contempt with the Obama Administration for failing to escalate each time the US was attacked. That this is the way Israel handles things--when they get hit, they hit back much harder. And my point was--how has that worked out thus far, besides fostering a cycle of ever increasing violence? His response was: what is the alternative?
And that is where we are now. In another round of violence with no prospect of an alternative approach. Hence my despair.
Be well and perhaps focus on the positive--that we are past the peak of the third wave and the average adult is at least vaxxed a bit.
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