Currents

While Vancouver’s most vocal peace group (and a wide-ranging assortment of peace groups, NGOs, national governments, unfortunately alongside an unimaginable number of extremist fanatics) remains as focused on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as one of the biggest impediments to world peace (see Terry Glavin’s excellent column from a while back on the issue here), some numbers pulled effortlessly off the newswire today are illuminating.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has claimed the lives of more than 4,500 Palestinians and 1,100 Israelis since September 2000.Meanwhile, 200,000 people have been killed in Darfur, Sudan, since February 2003.In Iraq, well… Nobody really knows. 250,000? 1.2 million? In any case, the most likely reason the numbers for the latter part of 2007 seem slightly better is that the ethnic cleansing campaigns by Sunnis and Shiites seem for the most part complete.The list goes on. Sri Lanka, Colombia, Myanmar…

Meanwhile, Medicines Sans Frontieres has released its list of the 10 top underreported humanitarian disasters of 2007.There’s more to this world peace thing than the actions, hopes and dreams of people in a strip of desert (sans oil) smaller than Vancouver island.

Vancouver’s Georgia Straight reports Vision Vancouver has released a fictitious board game, SamCity, inspired by Vancouver city politics, in which players can take turns “keeping their opponents down by the throat.” The cover of the game depicts a city overcome by garbage

Creative? Check. A little bit late to capitalize on the strike? Only by about two months.

Currents has overcome two frustrating blogging platform changes, ferocious bouts of writers’ block and an occasional hangover to bring our readers riveting posts guided by hard-boiled realpolitik, Canadian pragmatism with an ironic sense of humor. Here’s the best of 2007.

Vancouver Indymedia shuts down, no doubt due to a Zionist conspiracy. (January)

Albertans decide they need oil more than water. Bottoms up! (February)

Urban sprawl vs. Ecodensity (March)

Vancouver-area Green Party candidate commits political suicide (April)

Anti-Poverty Committee decides to pursue politics by other means (May)

Making First Nations Poverty History… eventually. (June)

Black gold found!… in Burnaby? (July)

Obscure Vancouver writer finishes novel in three days. (August)

Vancouver City Hall strike drags on… and on… (September)

The masks are coming off the stooges. (October)

Raven and Jason and life in Vancouver’s DTES (November)

An assassin ends the year with a shot heard round the world. (December)

Keep reading! The good part’s coming up…

As loyal Currents readers may have noticed, the title of each recent post on Currents is now preceded by a category name.

While Currents is a Vancouver writer’s take on current affairs, politics and life on Canada’s west coast, that list of topics can encompass a pretty nebulous (AKA confusing) array of subjects. The new categories should help our readership quickly figure out the topic of the latest post (and whether or not they might want to read it).

CityView:Comment on Vancouver City Hall, local news and municipal shenanigans
WorldView: Perspectives on current affairs and global hotspots
Globe&Post: Canadian issues, politics and argument
EcoView: Environmental news and green views
Vlog: A video blog post, just for the hell of it
PhotoBlog: Featured image of the week
BlogRant: The technical hurdles and small victories of getting a blog to function properly
TrueNorth: Activism and punditry from Canadians fighting fascism, demagogues and unrepentant jerks
WriteImage: The business of writing, marketing and media manipulation
MyLife:This writer’s personal milestones and speed bumps

Excelsior!

UPDATE: Thanks to new media maven Michael Klassen of Thinking Cap Inc. for some very helpful support in getting this site working properly. The intricacies of RSS feeds and HTML may give others pause, but Thinking Cap’s el presidente himself was on hand to get everything working properly with step-by-step assistance. Now that Currents’ Feedburner feed does what it is supposed to do, this writer can actually get to the essential work of winning more subscribers…

Speaking of which, if you’re curious about how to subscribe to Currents, try clicking on the giant orange button in the top right corner (or the little orange button in your web browser bar). Subscribing only takes a few seconds, and it’s totally painless.

A martyr died in Pakistan today. But that statement surely does not refer to the cowardly thug who took the life of Pakistani politician and potentially next prime minister Benazir Bhutto.

Some Canadians may think this is just another random act of violence in a rough neighborhood of the world, that will ultimately have little effect on us.Yet our efforts to help Afghanistan back from the brink are intertwined with the success of efforts to root out extremism in Pakistan.
Quite recently, Bhutto had this to say about Canada’s contribution to the UN mission in Afghanistan: “I can understand that Canada has suffered a lot of casualties, and I can understand that the imperatives that would be there for Canada to pull its team. But I do believe that the future of Pakistan and Afghanistan is critical to the direction the global community is going to take.” (CBC News)

The Pakistan-Canada Association had this to say: The Late Benazir Bhutto was a tireless worker for the benefit of Pakistan and made the ultimate sacrifice to bring moderation and democracy back to the people of Pakistan. Whether or not you supported her politically her death has struck a cord with all Pakistanis and it is only after her tragic death that her importance to Pakistan can now be truly felt. It is our wish that a full investigation into her assassination be held and those responsible be brought to justice.

Rough days ahead.
UPDATE: Metroblogging Vancouver’s sister site, Metroblogging Islamabad, has some excellent firsthand blogging coverage of the reaction to Bhutto’s murder in Pakistan.

Taking our cue from the mind-bogglingly popular holiday TV yuletide log (and Vancouver’s Beyond Robson Christmas post), Currents offers this warm holiday cheer, courtesy of Youtube. Cheers.

Democracy is restored (sort of) to the Land of Smiles.

The junta has stepped down and it looks like the democrats are back in. Of course, there were a few bumps along the way: The Asian Network for Free Elections, or ANFREL, an Asian election watchdog, said Tuesday that several political parties practiced pre-election vote-buying. It cited in-kind gifts, cash handouts, electronic transfers of money, payments to attend party rallies and free sightseeing trips.

Yikes. Two steps forward, one step back.

Pretty much says it all, eh?

Below, readers may find one of the more classic (and my personal favorite) Christmas sequences of any holiday film from the legendary Scrooged (1988). Clearly, it was ahead of its time.

The Christmas spirit has finally gotten to me: I’m going to buy a Mac.

I’ve been procrastinating on a laptop purchase for a year and it’s finally do or die time. Over few weeks of browsing for digital cameras (and ultimately picking up a very reasonably-priced and impressive Fuji model), my attention strayed often to laptops - particularly, the non-PC kind. Far too many of my writer and multi-media wielding friends and relatives have already taken a bite of the Apple - some of them made the move years ago, before iPod was just an idea. Their enthusiasm seems to be the kind that people most often reserve for cults.

Ultimately, the Macs just look too good and work too well to say no. Besides, their commercials are awfully persuasive.

UPDATE: Bought it, but now waiting for the machine to power up overnight. Tomorrow would be awfully like Christmas morning if I were of that cultural persuasion.

Ah, the latest incidence of identity politics and victim-cloaked self-righteousness being used as a weapon to blunt our tradition of free speech in Canada.

Here’s the story: Supporters of Laibar Singh, an Indian who entered Canada on a fake passport in 2003 and was to be deported from Vancouver’s YVR earlier this month, are upset with media reports that they had abandoned the failed refugee status claimant and ‘confronted’ the media to reiterate their support for him.

Interestingly, the much-syndicated report goes on to explain that Singh continued to enjoy full support from the whole South Asian community and many white mainstream organisations.

Just for the record, what exactly is a “white mainstream organization”? The reporter in this case seems to be less than familiar with the realities of our wonderfully multi-hued urban landscape in Canada. The report seems to make more of a statement about the perspective and practices of newsmakers outside of this country.