Aug 31 2007
I have to write an entire novel over the Labour Day weekend.
Really, I have to. I already paid the $50 entry fee.
I won’t be answering the phone this weekend. Not really that different from my usual routine. Still, just so you know, the reason is something different from my usual anti-social habits.
Wish me luck.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTR-0W2T880]
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Aug 28 2007
Doublethink is alive and well around the world.
Canadians and Europeans surveyed in a recent poll strongly support sending United Nations peacekeepers to Iraq to oversee its democratic transition. 58 per cent of Canadians supported the idea (likely a lot less if they’d bothered surveying only the west coast, but whatever)- not exactly wholehearted support, but startling, given that our strained army has its hands full just keeping southern Afghanistan somewhat free of heroin-smuggling, RPG-toting jihadis… and Canadian politicians have thus far had the good sense to keep us the heck away from Baghdad.
The European’s much stronger support is even more eyebrow-raising, given that the UK is in the process of cutting its current troop levels in Iraq, the Italians got out long ago, and the French and Germans opposed armed intervention in Iraq from the get-go.
Just where do the people who took part in the survey think these UN peacekeepers are going to come from: China? Brazil? Cobra Island?
Pollsters, next time, try asking this question: do you support sending soldiers from your country to Iraq – knowing full well that by doing so, your soldiers will become the new priority target for every trigger-happy idiot with a Koran and an AK-74?
This poll is sooooo 2003.
Aug 28 2007
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore…
If everyone in the world could choose to live in a faraway land of peace and harmony, without want of coin or freedom, the Scandinavian countries would be the repository of the world’s huddled masses.
As it is, Canada sometimes seems to be the second home to far too many geriatric killers, terrorists and corrupt tycoons. Fair or not, the case of Laibar Singh has brought our nation’s system of immigration under the microscope once again.
Immigration has been good to Canada (even if it wasn’t at all a good thing for its germ-decimated First Nations prior to Confederation). As ever, our citizens must try to sort out people whose own nations have failed to provide for them and those who just need a place to crash where they won’t have to pay for their sins.
Control of borders is hardly a modern concept. Indigenous peoples all over the world had rules about outsiders passing through their territory without permission – often a breach punishable by death.
The No One Is Illegal movement out of Vancouver therefore seems not well thought-out, not to mention probably counter-productive: if national governments have no legitimate control over their own borders or the resources found therein, then by default our North American territory becomes just one big playground for the people with the biggest guns and the most gold – that is, the people to our south whose elected leader has a distinctive Texas twang in his speech.
No one is illegal? Are you sure you won’t reconsider?
Aug 24 2007
Vancouver Mayor Sam Sullivan got trashed this morning.
Sullivan awoke to piles of garbage outside his Yaletown condo, courtesy of the Anti-Poverty Committee’s latest attempt to grab some headlines.
Frankly, if the APC had decided to dump their refuse outside of Vancouver City Hall, I’d be sympathizing a lot more with citizens of the Downtown Eastside most affected by the garbage strike.
I’d be even more sympathetic if the APC had also dumped garbage outside the offices of CUPE. The labor union is prolonging a strike which most Vancouver citizens have decided has gone on long enough, given the City’s reasonable offer of a 17.5 per cent wage hike over five years for the striking workers.
But targeting the actual residence of our Mayor steps over the line. This isn’t democracy in action. It’s just plain garbage.
Meanwhile, it seems rats aren’t the only ones attracted by the scent of rotting garbage in our strike-stricken city.
Aug 17 2007
Even the most die-hard Canadian neocons have pretty much washed their hands of George Bush Jr. and his disastrous legacy, if only to salvage their own credibility. (FULL DISCLOSURE: I was on the fence when Bush beat Gore as to whether he’d make a good president. Frankly, before 9/11, it didn’t really seem to matter who got in).
Some have gone to the extent of denying Bush true political conservative status. It certainly is possible to make such an argument. But I suspect the impetus for such denials stem from a sort of a twisted counterpoint to Muslims who deny the existence of Islamic terror by simply stating that anyone who commits terrorist acts in the name of Allah cannot possibly be a true Muslim.
Any lingering sympathy by some (but by no means all) Canadian Conservatives for the current Republican administration should be pretty much dealt a death blow by the Bush-ites latest blunder: trying to list the sovereign and official military forces of the Iranian Republican Guard as a terrorist group.
Declaring a War on Terror was a big enough blunder (As BC columnist Norman Spector would say, why not declare war on armored personnel carriers? How about declaring war on flanking movements?). But to compound the error (and the English language’s misery), the Bush administration is now in the business of equating the armed forces of a major regional power with the Shining Path guerrillas or the Red Brigades.
The consequences of such idiocy are as clear as they are lethal (potentially, for the entire planet).
The world knows that Canada is America’s friend. Friends don’t let friends start world wars.
Best of 604 Award, Politics Blog
Best of 604 Award, Politics Blog