Jack Layton Steers West: The Complete Interview

In the latest issue, we interviewed Jack Layton about the NDP's prospects in an upcoming election and what it's like to have to work across the aisle from one of Canada's least loved PMs.

Our discussion went quite long so we had to trim a lot to get it to fit into the paper. Here are some highlights from the stuff that was left on the cutting-room floor....

"I remember going to Paul Martin when he was in government and I first met with him and said, 'Hey, we can work together. You haven’t got a majority, we’re perfectly happy to work together on some collaborative issues.' We never heard back from them. We kept trying to get proposals through. We weren’t getting a darn thing. And it was coming back from the Tsunami, when we got over to see that disaster, I said, 'You know, how come you haven’t worked with us, it’s been nine months.' He said to me, 'You’re two votes short.'"

"[We're] laying out an alternative vision for how we start coming out of this recession having learned something, which is that the deregulation, the unleashing of unrestrained greed as the modus operandi of the entire economic system didn’t work and we don’t want to go back to that. Let’s start thinking about some of the things we need to do, and can do, and should do together, through the institutions that we have in common. Namely, the government institutions. And it’s fantastic to see this grass roots response to the shutting down of parliament because people are essentially saying when they’re responding in that way, 'We believe in our government, our government institutions, our democratic institutions. And we don’t like when you disrespect them.'"

"I’d invite you to talk to Dick Proctor at some point about his theories about the federal NDP in Saskatchewan because his theory is essentially that when we’re in government, particularly the longer we’re in government in Saskatchewan, the more of a challenge it is for us to elect federal MPs. It’s a bit of a voting behaviour that the poli-sci profs have been talking about for years that people will offset one party at one level with another at another level. You vote one way at the provincial level, then another at the federal."

"We’re on the have-province side. But what we’re seeing is a lot of people in Saskatchewan being left behind in the boom. Therefore, this is a time for the kind of social interventions to make sure that everybody gets to have some share of what’s going on with the economy. And that’s what the NDP speaks to and works for."

And, like a DVD bonus feature to accompany the latest issue, here's the complete and (mostly) unedited transcript of our discussion with Jack Layton.

Stephen Harper on Zombies

No. Not that Stephen Harper. But I did interview a Stephen Harper on the subject of zombies. I'll let him explain....

“It’s worth clarifying that I’m a British media studies academic, and not your Prime Minister. Then again, inviting him to discuss zombies might not be such a bad idea: world leaders aren’t exactly known for their humanity, but yours seems to have more in common with the living dead than most...”

See, what happened was, for the zombie article I wrote for our decade-in-review issue, I tried to arrange an email interview with Professor Stephen Harper of the School of Creative Arts, Film and Media at Portsmouth University. He'd written a piece I enjoyed called "Zombies, Malls and the Consumerism Debate" for the journal Americana. And, considering his name, I figured he'd be a doubly perfect source for an article looking back on zombie film in the Zero Decade. But, due to holiday celebrating getting in the way, the interview didn’t come off until after the issue went to press.

Still, Harper’s insights into the zombie genre are pretty damn impressive so I’m running the whole interview here on the blog.

But first a few highlights....

“Humanity is living through apocalyptic times – war, famine and disease blight the planet and even the ability of the environment to support human life is being undermined at an alarming rate. Such developments aren’t natural or inevitable (in fact they are all more or less preventable); they are the excrescences of a mode of production that is in terminal decline – in fact, a system that can only be described as necrotic. Especially in the wake of the recent economic crisis, it’s become more and more apparent that capitalism is a rotting corpse. Although a dead system, it blindly staggers onwards. Having enjoyed a fruitful life, it has now exhausted its potential and is now no longer advancing the cause of human progress in any way, but cannibalising humanity. ”

“Perhaps more than any other type of monster, zombies condense ideas about power and its abuse. As you know, the zombie has origins in the Haitian voodoo tradition and insofar as they are seen as slaves, zombies invite a degree of sympathy, opening up a space in which we can see ourselves, as it were, in them.”

"More terrifyingly, of course, the undead can also represent the ‘return of the repressed’, resurrecting unpleasant histories or reviving reactionary values. In many films, zombies figure forth the ‘dead weight’ of archaic or conservative ideologies, recalling Marx’s famous observation in The Eighteenth Brumaire, that ‘the tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living’."

Here is the complete interview with Dr Stephen Harper on the subject of zombies. It is a very good read.

James Hoggan on Climate Change Denial Industry

The CRU e-mail scandal broke while I was working on that climate change article in the latest issue. It kind of ended up hijacking everything I was writing. Not necessarily a bad thing. It's a complete gong show, sure, which the media has -- as usual -- completely bungled. But, the hacked e-mails are a perfect example of the ridiculous extremes to which the denier crowd is willing to go to discredit climate science. It became a nice little case study in how the denial industry works.

Unfortunately, though, I wound up not using nearly as much interview material as I would've liked. For instance, my interview with James Hoggan was awesome but I only ended up taking a couple quotes from it. So, here for all to read, is a transcript of my interview with him. It's very good (because of Jim's answers, not my questions). Here's a sample....

prairie dog: Your book gives a good overview of the state of climate denial in Canada. But I came away feeling like Canada is a real hotbed for denial. Are we really the centre of the denial industry?
James Hoggan: No. The Americans are by far. They’re the ones who set up the echo chambers. In the States, you see it working much better than it does in Canada where you have more of a loose connection. But in the United States, you have this powerful combination of the extreme right religious movement, the libertarians, basically just contrarians, vested interests, then you have this extreme right-wing media, and en masse you have massive numbers of Glen Becks and Fox News and the list just goes on and on. Those are the extreme right-wing guys, then you have these libertarians who are in the media as well. So the echo chamber down there is really very impressive. And for some reason, a lot of these libertarians and extreme right-wing groups have joined forces with the anti-science interests that are working for business. And I think it’s because they’re just anti-government. We have those kind of people in Canada but not in the organized way they do in the States.

James Hoggan, by the way, is the author of Climate Cover-Up, which details how the fossil fuel industry supports a massive, decentralized climate-change denial industry. It's a scary but important book. By day, Hoggan is a public relations consultant and he is also one of the founders of DeSmog Blog, an essential source for those who want to track the misdeeds of the deniers.

Read the full James Hoggan interview.

Robert J Sawyer Interview

As a bonus feature to this issue's article about life on Mars, here's the complete interview with Robert J Sawyer. In it he discusses the possibility that life down here began out there and he argues that we actually discovered life on Mars back in the early 70s.

For those who don't know who he is, here's his bio...

Called "the dean of Canadian science fiction" by The Ottawa Citizen and "just about the best science-fiction writer out there these days" by The Denver Rocky Mountain News, Robert J Sawyer is one of only seven writers in history to win all three of the science-fiction field's top honors for best novel of the year: the Hugo Award in 2003 for Hominids, the Nebula in 1996 for The Terminal Experiment and the John W Campbell Memorial Award in 2006 for Mindscan. Rob has an honorary doctorate from Laurentian University. He was born in Ottawa and currently lives in Mississauga. His latest novel, Wake, will be published in April of 2009.

You can check out his website here.

Interview Revue '08: Naomi Klein

Back in September. Naomi Klein was passing through Regina on a book tour promoting The Shock Doctrine. I got to interview her in advance of her visit.

I posted the unabridged interview on the Act Up In Saskatchewan website. Harper had just called his federal election and I reckoned the province needed as much Naomi Klein as was available.

Act Up In Sask, by the way, is a great site worth checking out --- great political commentary and their event calendar is invaluable, especially if you're interested in knowing the when and where of progressive gatherings such as rallies, talks and fundraisers. Thanks to them for hosting this interview.

Interview with Naomi Klein

Interview Revue '08: Kevin Miller, Writer For "Expelled"

Back in June I signed up to write an article about the anti-evolution doc Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed starring Ben Stein. You may have seen it mentioned on several critics’ Worst-Of lists.

Turns out the writer and director are from Saskatchewan. (As I mentioned in the article, I accidentally wound up chatting with the family of director Nathan Frankowski after the Regina premier.)

As part of my research, I interviewed the movie’s writer, Kevin Miller, via the email but opted to write a more straight-up review of the film for the prairie dog and didn’t end up using any of it.

In hindsight, I wish I would have challenged him more on the misinformation in the film. Thing is, there was just so much crap in there masquerading as truth I found myself a little overwhelmed.

Anyway, here's the interview in its entirety. As a Google doc. (My first time making one of those so let me know if it doesn't work on your machine.)

Interview with Kevin Miller