Current events on a rainy Vancouver afternoon

The world is a nasty place today (as opposed to yesterday, when everything was just balmy).

Canadian opposition parties throw all their energies into defending a confessed and unrepentant double-murderer. Soon after, Conservatives begin negotiations with contractors to paint the House of Commons blue when Canadians vote them in unanimously in the coming election.

Yasser Arafat aims a laser beam at Jerusalem from beyond the grave. In related news, a new poll shows terrorist heads of thuggish kleptocracies are guaranteed a loving memory by the people they brutalize.

Gen. Pervez Musharraf imposes martial law to deal with the threat of rising Islamic extremism. No one saw that coming, right?

Olympic fever is inciting Chinese parents to use unconventional methods to prod their children into becoming superhuman overachievers. In a linked story, a father in southern China tied his 10-year-old daughter Huang Li's hands and feet and watched her swim in a chilly river for three hours.

Protest Myanmar, but is the junta listening?

Vancouver residents braved near-torrential rain yesterday to rally for the dissidents in Myanmar.

"I am here today because I cannot tolerate injustice, oppression, violence and the blatant suppression of human rights," said organizer Deanna Scott. (CNEWS)

Sadly, the junta that is in the process of shooting monks and rounding up the "ringleaders" for mass protests in that poor country probably aren't paying attention.

If the generals actually cared what the world thought of them, they would have thrown in the towel in the 1980s.

China and Japan prop up the Myanmar regime through investment and economic aid. Until those Asian heavyweights stop lending their support, the junta is free to do what it wants.

It took a massive display of violence to get Canadians and others to wake up to the horror show going on in Myanmar. But it's a sad truth that international protests can only ever exert real pressure on countries with at least some element of democratic government.

But perhaps this rally will do more than reassure our own guilty consciences. For Myanmar's oppressed, let's hope so.

Parlez vous Cantonese?

A hefty majority of English-speaking Canadians want to be more fluent in French, according to a new poll from Angus Reid.

Hardly surprising, really. Who wouldn't want to have a second language?

But Canada is a trading nation within a globalized economy, and French is just one of several international languages that will help our nation thrive. Here in Vancouver, we've already got a bit of a head start on the rest of the country.

We ought to be promoting bilingualism anyway. Making an intermediate level of fluency in a second language (not just French, but Mandarin, Cantonese and a bunch of other Asian and European languages) a requirement of getting a university degree might be a good start.

Let's get the word out.

A dollar a day and a housing boom to stay

Everybody and his blog is shouting from the rooftops about the Canadian dollar's rise to parity with the US greenback.

Frankly, I'm not all that convinced that this is a good thing, particularly for people like me that rely on foreign clients for part of my income. If our currency goes much higher, our international friends are going to go elsewhere.

But I've also been hearing a lot from people who are concerned that Canadians are going to undergo the same housing slump that has hit the US. I don't see it happening, though. In particular, the housing market right here in Vancouver seems set for even more insane prices.

Oh, the housing cycle will eventually take us down. But international investors looking to park their money somewhere are probably going to keep propping up our local housing prices for a little while longer. They won't want to put their money into the radioactive market to our south, at least until the worst of the fallout subsides. Besides, the Olympics aren't even here yet.

Patience, first-time home buyers. The time is not yet ripe. But soon...

There is no such thing as a UN soldier

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.

World without borders

“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?

Canada, be a friend. Offer early retirement for George Bush Jr. on Vancouver Island

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.

Canada plugging the brain drain

Canada's best and brightest are going where the opportunity is: right here in the true north.

The brain drain to the US is finally slowing to a trickle, Vancouver blogger and technologist David Drucker points out, with Vancouver Sun in hand. Indeed, Americans are coming Canadians in increasing numbers. Will the movement of gray matter finally reverse itself entirely?

Probably, right around the time that the Canadian dollar reaches parity with the US greenback. Right now, the USA is the number one target for bad guys all over the world, with a declining economy and increasingly unrepresentative political system.

Canada has its own set of problems, but whether it's the economy, politics or just the ability to stay out of the firing line no matter where our foreign policy goes, the smart money seems to be on Canada these days. If anyone has a reputation for following the smart money, it's our southern neighbors.

Just like Microsoft testing the waters in Vancouver, it's a sign of the times.

Welcome to Canada, scumbag. We couldn't stop you, even if we wanted to

In the latest self-inflicted blow to Canadian sovereignty, a judge has ruled that our border guards need warrants to search vehicles of people coming into this country.

In the process, the judge threw out the drug-smuggling case against Ajitpal Singh Sekhon, who had attempted to import 50 kilograms of cocaine past a Vancouver-area border crossing.

This comes after unarmed Canadian border agents in 2006 abandoned their posts en masse and literally ran for their lives at the approach of murder suspects from the USA.

Oh, well. The border's really just an imaginary line on a map, anyway.

Our true north strong and free of pesky Danes

Canada is sending a flotilla of patrol ships to guard our sacred Arctic waters against... Denmark?

Granted, if global warming ever unleashes the vast treasure trove of raw resources that is our northern frontier, we might have a little more competition to deal with. And in that case, our hold on the new Northwest Passage will pretty much depend on a simple lack of enthusiasm on the part of the Russian and American blue water navy sailors to freeze their naughty bits.

There is a case to be made for sending a token force up to secure our country's territory. Strangely, those who disparage the cost of the mission are often the same people who condemn our creeping loss of sovereignty to our southern neighbor.

In any case, let's keep our country safe from the Vikings and other scourges of the high seas. If anyone is going to freeze their extremities off for ice-encased oil and diamonds in a region clearly unfit for most human beings, it better be us.

Protest against Native poverty, but without the guns, please. We're Canadian, eh?

Canadian Native groups are protesting to "Make First Nations Poverty History". I'm not certain whether protests will actually make employers across the coutnry want to hire more Natives or give existing employees raises, or whether it will inspire Natives to start more of their own businesses to meet their objective.

It certainly isn't likely to cause the feds to actually consider the Liberals' scheme to just funnel $5.1 billion to Native communities without any method of accountability.

Still, it certainly is a laudable goal and the protests will raise visibility on an issue that is far too easy for most of the country to ignore. Canada is booming, government coffers are still overflowing and Natives certainly should be able to remedy some of their historic economic inequities. Best of luck.

But to the idiots led by Shawn Brant holding up Highway 2 in Ontario, remember: you don't bring guns, masks, camouflage gear to a protest, at least not in this country. Put away the guns and play nice.

One million per cent inflation. That's got to hurt

You thought living in Vancouver was expensive? Try living with one million per cent inflation.

Zimbabwean President (for now) Robert Mugabe has essentially committed economic suicide for his country. Confiscating farmland and turning it over to violent but lazy cronies has turned the former bread basket into an agricultural basketcase. Infrastructure that used to be on par with some European countries is now equal to that of war zones like Afghanistan. Now diplomats are suggesting that already-nightmarish 3,700 per cent inflation in Zimbabwe could hit the million mark by the end of 2007.

When Mugabe's thugs realize they're going to have to push a wheelbarrow full of Zimbabwean dollars to the corner store just for a pack of smokes, they'll turn on him.

Mugabe was likely just following the model of other dictators before him: regulate private enterprise and shrink the economy to the point where the government becomes the sole reliable source of sustenance. When the choice is to toe the government line or starve, everyone is a true believer.

The problem for Mugabe is that he did his work too well, too fast.

If anything, the situation is instructive of how fast and how far you can run a prosperous country off the rails if you're really trying.

We're gonna be so stinking rich! Well, my country will be. I'll still be working...

We may have to start rethinking that self-image of Canada as a first world nation getting its economy exploited like a third world banana republic.

Yes, our economy is still far too reliant on raw commodities exports. And, yes, virtually anytime a Canadian company gets big enough to get noticed, it gets taken over by multinational sharks.

But for the first time ever, we're on the verge of becoming a creditor nation. Assuming we continue to ride the jetstream of petro-dollars and surplus federal budgets, our economy will be in the black by 2010.

Then we can just plug our surplus into a giant RSP for all of our citizens and we'll be on our way to joining the ranks of Sweden and Denmark.

Our Home and Native Land

Kudos to the Conservatives for putting Native land claims back on the fast track. New legislation to be co-written with Aboriginals will hopefully clear up a backlog of 800 land claims over the next decade or so and clear out some of the rot in our national fabric.

Will the news head off a planned national day of protest by First Nations people on June 29? Phil Fountaine, the National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations, was evidently impressed enough to call today a historic day and added that he prefers negotiation to confrontation. Sounds promising.

We're in a unique period in history. A small minority can extract financial concessions from the national government of a multicultural population that no longer really represents the invading cultures - cultures that alternately conquered or demographically swamped germ-emptied territories of the decimated minority centuries ago.

This sort of legal action is not without precedent, but the opposite situation is far more common even in present day. The Han never bothered to financially compensate nations within China that their own ethnic group swallowed up. The Ainu people of Hokkaido also got nada from the ethnic Japanese. Same goes for Russia's far eastern native groups. Ditto for the pygmies and other groups that got wiped out by the Bantu in Africa before the European colonization really got going.

But just because everyone else is doing something (or not doing it) doesn't really make it right.

Land claims treaties on their own won't be a panacea for the poverty, illiteracy and lack of opportunity that are epidemic for First Nations people living on reserves and to a lesser extent in our big cities - but Natives and non-natives need to get along in this country. The government is right in its new rush to put the land claims behind us so we can focus on the future together.

(The video above shows a traditional Ainu dance outside of a replica of an Ainu home. Interesting parallels to some aspects of North American native culture).

Looniness in the currency market

The loonie's rise to over 94 cents US is causing some nationalistic pride amongst our citizenry and some real financial worries for corporate Canada. It won't do us much good if we can buy our iPods at the same price as our southern cousins if we're out of work and can't buy groceries.

But we can't say we didn't see this coming. Canada's budget-surplus guided, resource-driven economy has been booming for years while the US is saddled with an $8.5 trillion public debt and a national treasure pipeline that funnels wealth one way, straight into Baghdad.

In any case, now might be a good time to book that Las Vegas trip you've been thinking about. At least when you're forking over your paycheck, it will be at par.

Political penguins will be Terminated

There will be critics who note a disconnect as California Governor Arnold Schwartzenegger's promotes his lofty vision about protecting the environment to Canadians. The sprawling freeways and car culture of major Californian cities, superbly demonstrated in Los Angeles, is the antithesis of Vancouver Mayor Sam Sullivan's policy of densely a densely-populated metropolis where cars are an option, not a necessity.

High Californian auto emission standards, the highest in North America, are also a bit of a misleading subject - there are no car manufacturers in the state that would have to build cars to those specifications.

But the Governator inherited his state's freeways and smog-choked cities. At least he's saying the right things. It's a stark contrast with the American president, who has had his head stuck in the oil sands on the issue of global warming since he took office.

Summer barbecues and the balance of power

Conservatives just can't seem to leverage their early successes and lacklustre opposition into political gains.

That's one way of looking at it. Another is that Canadians pretty much like what they've seen so far from our current political balance and see no reason to change it up. As soon as Conservatives started edging up in the polls, voters smack them back down.

It doesn't even matter that Conservatives have tried to take over the center by developing an environmental plan far more detailed and visionary than their supposedly green competitors. The media and righteous pundits hoping to score some easy points are having a field day bashing the Tories with their own plan. Clearly, Canadians don't want to change things up.

That doesn't mean the opposition parties can start feeling entitled. None of the other parties are getting much love from the voters either. It just means we don't want an election right when we're getting ready for summer barbecue season.

Canada for sale

"Of note is that Canada's largest companies by value, and largest employers, tend to be foreign owned in a way that is more typical of a developing country than a G-8 member."
–Wikipedia entry, Foreign ownership in Canada

A Toronto Star business section article takes issue with foreign ownership of Canadian industry. This is an old subject that is unlikely to ever go away, barring a Fidel Castro-style nationalization of our industries.

Canada is a vast storehouse of resources with not enough people or capital to exploit it. Tied to the issue of foreign investment and ownership is the supposed deindustrialization of Canada. Whether that is a real threat to our sovereignty remains to be seen.

But the current situation is no surprise: as one commentator in the article says, "As Canadian companies mature to the point where they are world class, they are getting world-class attention, and, typically, the most appropriate suitor will be a foreign buyer."

Basically, we're getting attention from the world because we're seen as a safe, profitable place to invest. That's not necessarily a bad thing.

Moving the Afghanistan debate forward

I attended a Thursday night debate in Vancouver's Gastown over Canada's role in Afghanistan. Author and panelist Terry Glavin has already summed up the event, and the larger debate, nicely on his own blog.

It is refreshing to see intelligent people able to really discuss the issues that need to be talked about (ie. what the role of Canada's NATO allies ought to be, how we can conduct ourselves according to international law in a chaotic environment against a fanatical enemy, the opium trade, Pakistan, etc) rather than a watered-down sound-byte without any context (ie. should we stay or should we go). Most of the panel agreed that Canada and the world had to stay involved, since simply pulling out all foreign troops would result in a horrendous civil war.

But I couldn't escape the feeling that the people who most needed to be there, the ones who believe that their own commitment to peace precludes the involvement of Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan, even if a pullout resulted in hundreds of thousands or millions of deaths in that country - did not attend.

It would be nice if we had reached a point in the national discussion where we could all at least agree with Terry Glavin and others on the following: The Taliban were and are as savage, cruel, misogynist, violent and cunning as any of the battalions the enemy has deployed, and the people of Afghanistan continue to suffer their depredations. Canada has been honoured with the privilege and the opportunity to be fighting this war on the side of the Afghan people, at the request of the Afghan people, shoulder to shoulder with the Afghan people.

But not everyone is quite there yet. That's a shame.

Hamas never misses an opportunity to miss an opportunity

Given that Canadians are currently involved in military operations against one group of extremists aspiring to a state in Afghanistan, it is instructive to see how a group with a similar ideological framework can simply ignore international condemnation, tear up peace agreements, blame the victim and go on the attack whenever they feel like it. NDP Leader Jack Layton and his adherents calling for negotiations with the Taliban really ought to be paying attention.

Just weeks after concluding a unity government deal with Fatah to induce the international community to end sanctions, Hamas has once again declared war.

For those who are keeping score, the international community imposed sanctions in the first place because of Hamas' ongoing terrorist links, after Palestinians fed up with Fatah corruption voted for Hamas as the only other political party available (since all moderate Palestinian politicians have already been co-opted by the extremist movements or executed as collaborators).

The international community didn't actually ask for a unity government. They asked for Hamas to renounce violence and recognize existing peace agreements. That didn't happen.

And now that Hamas has declared the ceasefire between itself and Israel nullified (which only makes sense, given constant rocket attacks on Israeli civilian centers since Hamas was elected), the sanctions have no hope of ending. It's a tragedy for the Palestinians, Israel and everyone in the world who would rather that the world wasn't such a violent place.

Canada: rogue nation?

The U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination "remains concerned at the extent of the dramatic inequality in living standards still experienced by aboriginal peoples" in Canada.

Rightly so. The status quo, in which native people have the worst outcomes in virtually every index of quality of life in our country, is just not acceptable.

Of course, it's not like Canadian governments haven't tried different solutions. Self-government, tax benefits, multi-million dollar settlements, affirmative action... it's all been tried.

Which is not to say that Canadians should just give up. On the contrary, for everyone's benefit, solutions must be found.

Whether that means little steps like allowing private ownership of housing on native land or more drastic action like doing away with the entire system of reserves, who knows? But for all our sakes, change better come soon.