Reality Control #nlpoli

The Memory Hole

Nineteen eighty-four is popular these days.

People think that the ideas in the book like the memory hole are modeled on communist or fascist dictatorships from the early part of the last century.

What those people forget is that George Orwell worked at the BBC during the Second World War.  As Dorian Lynskey noted in his recent history of the novel, Orwell thought that “radio, as it existed in the 1940s, [was] ‘inherently totalitarian.’”  

In Spain during the Civil War, he saw his first newspapers that “did not bear any relation to the facts, not even the relationship which is implied by an ordinary lie.” But it was in his exposure to radio during the Second World War that Orwell heard in all the propaganda on all sides very similar distortions of reality.

“This kind of thing is frightening to me," Orwell wrote in his 1943 essay Looking back on the Spanish war, “because it often gives me the feeling that the very concept of objective truth is fading out of the world.”

“After all, the chances are that those lies, or at any rate similar lies, will pass into history… Yet, after all, some kind of history will be written, and after those who actually remember the war are dead, it will be universally accepted. So, for all practical purposes the lie will have become the truth”.

This is only a small step to the slogan of the Party in Nineteen eighty-four: “Who controls the past, controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.”

Innu Nation suing provincial government not HQ over Churchill Falls #nlpoli

 

Laws suits get filed in court.

Political claims for cash launch with a news conference, a website, and a deceptive news release that misidentifies the target of the action.

The Innu Nation statement of claim  filed in Newfoundland and Labrador  Tuesday is against the Churchill Falls (Labrador) Corporation as the first defendant in its claim for $4 billion in damages.  The provincial government owns 65% of CF(L)Co and Hydro-Quebec owns a minority interest (35%).

There’s no reason to sue HQ since it is a minor partner in the company that runs Churchill Falls and manages the reservoir built in the 1960s on land claim by Innu in Quebec and Labrador.  Whatever liability HQ might have would be through CF(L)Co.

Otherwise, Hydro-Quebec is just a customer for the power.  And if Innu Nation wanted to include the customers of the power, then it would have sued every single customer of CF(L)Co since 1971, which would include companies and towns in Labrador, Ontario, and the United States. 

There are lots of little clues in the claim that this is a political move, not a legal one.

The graveyard of ambition #nlpoli

Think of it as an inside joke.

James McLeod interviewed Premier Dwight Ball about the horror show that has been Ball's first year in office. "Ball also came under heavy fire,"  McLeod wrote, "for his handling of Nalcor Energy and perceived dishonesty about what he knew about outgoing CEO Ed Martin’s exorbitant severance package." McLeod quotes Ball:  "'I understand why people would suggest that, well, this guy, I can’t trust him, simply because of the HST or because of this or that.'"

This or that, of course, would be Ball's claim that he knew nothing of the plan to pay Ed Martin any form of severance although he'd quit as the head of Nalcor. That's the sort-of joke part. I can see, said Ball understatedly, how people might think I have some trouble telling them the straight story.  Subsequent evidence made it pretty clear Ball knew about severance payment Martin got, even if it was only to the extent he believed Martin was entitled to a severance payment under his employment contract and didn't know about the elaborate fraud perpetrated by the Tory-appointed Nalcor board.

Jerusalem, Eldorado, and Perdition #nlpoli

Part I:  The development of our country
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The Heritage Newfoundland and Labrador website "aims to provide school students and the general public with a wide range of authoritative information on the province's history, culture, and geography. It is based at the Memorial University of Newfoundland. Faculty, graduate students, and professional writers contribute articles, while undergraduate students provide support as research assistants."

That statement of authority is one of the reasons why the introductory sentence to its section on the impact of Churchill Falls is so intriguing:

The Upper Churchill Falls hydroelectric project remains one of the most notorious ventures in Newfoundland and Labrador's resource-development history.   

There is no such thing as the "Upper Churchill Falls" project.  There is no upper Churchill Falls or, indeed, a lower one.  There is simply Churchill Falls.

The Price of Revanchism #nlpoli

Churchill Falls occupies a unique place in Newfoundland and Labrador's political culture.

Most of what people believe about Churchill Falls is just sheer nonsense.  Made up.  Never true. Completely ludicrous.  But accepted as fact and unshakeable truth all the same.  And that's where things get weird. People use all that foolishness nonsense to make decisions in the real world.

One of the enduring legends is that Newfoundland wanted a corridor to wheel electricity through Quebec,  went to the federal government in the 1960s to look for one, couldn't get it, and thus wound up a slave to Hydro-Quebec in 1969.  It's been a popular story since the 1970s,  after the Newfoundland government nationalised BRINCO.

There's never been any evidence that Joe Smallwood ever put the question to Lester Pearson although lots of people will swear to it and swear by the story as evidence of how Newfoundland has been shagged by whatever version of the foreign boogie-man they favour.  

Danny Williams trotted the story out, indirectly, in November 2010 when he announced he had committed the provincial government to build Muskrat Falls.  Our electricity would never be stranded again.  We would never again be held hostage by Quebec.  The new, magnificent power corridor through Nova Scotia was the way that we would break Quebec's stranglehold over our magnificent future.

Yay!  Hooray! people screamed, including more than a few editors and columnists.

The only thing was that what Williams said wasn't true.

And he knew it.

Reality check for the Ontarians, please #nlpoli

If nothing else, media coverage about energy talks between Ontario and Newfoundland and Labrador shows just how much people don’t know about what is going on in the country.

Not a crowd for half measures,  the National Post ran a story on Monday morning that was rife with basic factual mistakes.  They even started the piece with a statement that had two facts in it, both of which were simply not true.

“Ontario is the latest customer to line up to purchase Newfoundland and Labrador’s growing supply of hydroelectricity…”