David Remnick's book, Lenin's Tomb

A friend loaned me this book a few weeks ago and I completed it this morning. I can only quote Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in the "Vintage Edition" Afterword: The heart is not yet glad. So much waste, so much betrayal, so much accusation of "you moved too fast!", "you moved too slowly!", "you betrayed our trust!" (in every possible direction). And yet, the book is out of date already because Boris Yeltsin has been out of power some time now -- died just this year -- and in his place the former KGB officer, Vladimir Putin, looks to be establishing himself as the next long-term autocrat. Of course he has some semblance of legitimacy but it is hard, in the face of his relations to politically interested oligarchs (e.g. MIkhail Khodorkovsky), Belarus and Ukraine (with regard to natural gas pipelines) to accord him more than the semblance.

May the heart yet be glad! Still, it's easy to ignore, in the Anglophone west, what a long hard struggle the progress from autocracy to civil, responsible government was. The French might still remember that Bastille Day was followed by the terror, Napoleon, the return of the Bourbons, another Napoleon or two before things settled down, decades after the ouster of the WWII Quisling government, to the (largely) civilized government we see today. But in the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, the memory has to be a little longer -- okay, so the Americans have fought more recent wars, but their progress was accelerated by their English heritage and the Lessons Learned from the conflict by England helped the others along. These countries all mostly inherit the results of the Magna Carta (1215 or so) and the ensuing developments over the next 500 years until the last time (Queen Anne, 1707) a monarch over-turned an act of the Commons, outright.

These things take time, lots of time. It may not be in our lifetimes but there is still reason to hope that tyranny will come to an end some time in Russia (and the former SSRs). They are not doomed forever to swing from autocrat to autocrat, from corrupt bureaucracy to corrupt bureaucracy. We can hope and pray that it'll be sooner rather than later but we need not despair that it'll likely be never.

Northern Ireland

Today was the biggest day in Ireland's history since I was born. Rob Gifford's analysis made the most sense of past failures and current success that I've heard: Before the agreements were between moderates and the extremists on either side of them were always out-flanking them. Today, the extremists got together. Wonder of wonders, they found that they could understand one another and there was nobody left to out-flank them. May peace come to the 6 counties! Today was a glad day -- may there be many more like it.

According to Michael Geist, as reported on slashdot, something like DMCA may be coming to Canada this spring. Please, anyone who reads this, who lives in Canada, find your MP here (look for "Find your M.P. using your postal code") ou ici (à "Trouvez votre député au moyen de votre code postal") especially if Conservative, and write to them, by post, by e-mail, phone them and ask them to reconsider. We're already paying a piracy tax on blank media, so a law like this is unjust. It may be a little bit odious to pay a surcharge on media in order to maintain fair use, but to have paid the surcharge and then to have fair use hemmed in with severe consequences for attempting to retain it is just plain wrong. Not as wrong as withholding cheap vitamins from 3rd world children but wrong as in collecting fire insurance on a box of cigars you just finished smoking.

Some of my latest favourites

Cosmology: The Many Directions of Time -- I blogged this some time ago and tried to find it again talking to my Dad last night. Of course, when I wanted it, I couldn't find it. And then I see the guy's won a Pritzker Fellowship. Cool! I got excited, and so did some other people who could be expected to know better. Good-bye Dark Matter, good-bye tuning-fork model of classification of galaxies, hello possible explanation for quasars and Seifert Galaxies. This looks like it could be the next revolution in cosmology and physics. But it comes with a caution for anyone who hooks Genesis 1 and the Big Bang theory too closely. As usual, marrying theism too closely to one scientific hypothesis can always bite back later.

Literature: I feel like a kid again. Tomorrow, a brand new book by one of my favourite authors, now passed-on for 30+ years, is coming out. Christopher Tolkien has left publishing all of his Dad's doodles and scribblings and put the Narn î Hin Húrin out in book form. It's coming out tomorrow. I'm so excited. Time to go revisit Neldoreth after Nirnaeth Arnoediad, Nargothrond after Finrod's departure, to see what a real friend Beleg Strongbow was. Children of Hurin, coming out tomorrow. This one I think I'll bother to buy hardback.

Auditory pleasure: I am so enjoying the Drew Marshall Show, even if I wind up listening to most of it delayed over a week -- how can you justify spending four hours on a Saturday (1:00PM-5:00 PM EST/EDT Saturday) glued to your computer with a family and a house to deal with? I don't know. Check out the site, check out his (first and probably only ever) appearance on Huntley Street. If Joe Molson-Six Pack can relate to any Canadian Christian personality out there, it'll be Drew. Interviews of special interest to Canadians with Stephen Lewis, Roméo Dallaire, Bruce Cockburn, Stephen Harper, Valeri Bure (Pavel's brother), Don Cherry, Paul Henderson -- and most of them are archived for on-demand listening later.

To Gord MacDonald, presenter and host on CKNW

Dear Mr. MacDonald,

As a member of the news team for CKNW, I'd like to thank you for all the work you and your colleagues do to keep British Columbians informed about what is going on here. You are, overall, a rich source of information, and in general you discharge your responsibility to do so admirably, as your team's steady stream of awards appropriately confirms.

In regard to the one year anniversary of the sinking of the Queen of the North, there was one aspect of your coverage in the open line session that disturbed me, and if you were to give second thought to the things you were saying, perhaps they would give you pause as well. Before saying more, let me state that I share your frustration, that of all other BCers, even more those of the families of Mr. Foisy and his companion, and of the community of Hartley Bay who face an environmental disaster in the making with the 240,000 L of various oils still at the bottom near Gil Island, at the utter lack of candor on the part of the standing watch at the time of the sinking. It seems unthinkable that with two lives lost and a large cache of underwater diesel the consciences of these folks would not drive them to saying clearly and distinctly what was going on. But that is the state they are in, and if they persist in that state, ultimately they will be reprimanded by their employer and who knows but that they will face charges of negligence causing bodily harm or death eventually.

My concern is the zeal with which you were enjoining the Fourth Officer and the Quartermaster to abandon their rights to due process, implying even a moral obligation to doing so. I would remind you that if you yourself were accused, truly or falsely, of acts that could conceivably result in your imprisonment or significant loss of opportunity to earn income in your trade, that right to due process might be your only safeguard against unjust application of any penalty, or in the case guilt of a lesser offence, of an excessive penalty. These rights to due process are one of the most precious benefits we receive as citizens and we should not encourage others to abandon them, nor make them seem ridiculous or unduly cumbersome. I know individuals who have lived in regimes where these benefits are not bestowed on citizens -- some as citizens who have escaped, some as expatriates who saw co-workers harassed and were themselves expelled unjustly.

Your station's status as the primary source of local news in Vancouver give you a special responsibility, not just to hold the feet of the powerful to the fire when wrong-doing has been done (as seems clearly to be the case in this instance at some level or other), but also to honour and safeguard, in every possible way, these freedoms which keep us from living at the mercy of authorities who are free to assume that we are guilty at their whim and are already under serious threat in the low-level insanity North America has bought into in the aftermath of 9-11 as well as in the face of regular perceived breaches of justice that trouble the public when otherwise guilty persons get let off on technicalities. Those technicalities could very well defend one of us, you or me, from false accusation on some other occasion and we would do well to remember that when we -- and especially you, in this position where thousands of people listen to you and take what you say very seriously in forming their own opinions -- are tempted to deride these protections when they seem to obstruct us from finding out "what really happened" in some contentious situation.

Two Earthquakes -- Ireland and Québec

Yesterday was a huge day. I woke up to pictures of 11th hour meetings with Gerry Adams and Ian Paisley at the same table promising to form a power-sharing executive in six weeks. In this matter I have more praise for Sinn Fein and Gerry Adams than for Paisley, but not very much more. For the unionists, I understand that thirty years of conflict make them gun shy, and I understand that there's less of an official connection between the DUP and the so-called unionist, so-called militias than there was between Sinn Fein and whatever body the "volunteers" became in the last decade, but... It seemed petty to me that in the face of a hard, legislated deadline, the DUP could dig their heels in and threaten further unrest in the face of what some folks in the six counties could only interpret as double-charging on water. Good on Sinn Fein for acting to prevent the collapse. But both these parties are still working off of very different dictionaries. Until they can agree on what the end game will be (and their founding documents contain absolute contradictions there -- to join Ireland or to remain a province of the UK), any agreement will be in constant jeopardy. But I have more hope for Ireland than I did. No matter who holds the reins, all parties have to feel that they are full citizens in their own country, not systematically discriminated against regardless of how they identify themselves.

And then, in my own country, I had no idea what to expect in the results of Québec's provincial election. I turned on the telly just before supper and saw the ADQ in the lead and I've been shaking my head ever since. No sovreignty referendum for the next little while I think. Whew! What Mario Dumont is going to do with his huge rump is anyone's guess: echoes of the Reform Party sweep of the west after Mulroney stepped down as Prime Minister of Canada. It also remains to be seen what "Autonomism" (Dumont's idea of what Québec's relationship with Canada should evolve into) means and how easily it may transform, transmute, revert to "Soverigntism" (the Parti Québécois's position that the province should separate from the rest of Canada). I wonder, too, what this means for electoral results in Québec in the next Federal election which can't be that far away.

Panasonic Fluorescent Bulbs

So... according to Panasonic, Home Hardware carries these bulbs (regardless of what the packaging shouts about "Gen IV" etc, they're known within Panasonic as "EFA" bulbs). But before you go running down to your local branch, phone ahead. My closest store bought stacks of them when they first came out but they didn't sell well. He can order them in but they're not necessarily in stock just yet.

Also... I mentioned to the person I talked to at Panasonic, Canada, that the 23W bulb was a little too dim, that a brighter one would be nice. She said their supplier had chosen not to produce anything brighter. Perhaps there's some technical problem still to be overcome.

And... if you do go in for replacing your bulbs at home with any kind of fluroescent bulbs, you should be aware that they contain mercury and should really be recycled in some other way than through the trash (unless of course you want mercury in your local water table some decades from now). Not that any municipality that I know of has that kind of recycling infrastructure in place yet, but it's something that somebody should be doing something about.

Canadian Federal Liberals the new BC Protest Party?

I laughed long and hard when I heard the story.

For years, federally, British Columbians have tended to vote Progressive Conservative, Reform, Alliance or now, again, Conservative -- in part because the party in power, the Liberal Party of Canada could be trusted to ignore BC, to pour largesse on Québec, Ontario, even Manitoba but never on BC. We neither had a large population whose employability needed to be shored up (Ontario), nor a tendency to question our future within Canada (Québec). We even had an unnecessary recession in the 90s because of fiscal policy that was good for everyone east of the Rockies -- well, in deference to Alberta, everyone east of Lloydminster.

Yesterday, the minority Conservative government tabled their 2nd budget (a small wonder in itself), during which speech the MInister of Finance, the Hon. Joe Flaherty, betrayed his (and his staff's) oblivion to their being anything Beautiful in BC when he proclaimed that the Rockies were the country's westernmost beauty spot. Then he went on to lay out a budget which, while I as the head of a single-income household with three children will benefit from, shortchanges BC on several fronts, especially in federal infrastructure dollars towards better public transportation. Less than a fortnight ago, $1,000,000,000 was announced in spending for Toronto's system. So, perhaps we, as the 3rd largest city don't quite deserve that much but, no further money at all? I was surprised.

But I was not as surprised as I was to hear about a Liberal MP from BC loudly complaining about how the budget had abandoned BC. Hearing that, I laughed and laughed and laughed. The barefaced hypocrisy stunned me. Where were you, Mr. Liberal MP in the Trudeau years, the Chrêtien years, even the Martin years? Were you in the back of caucus meetings being sat on so that your constituents' reasonable requests got ignored? Actually, I think this MP is a relative newcomer to parliament but certainly other members of the Liberal contingent from BC were there before their current stint in the minority. Where were your voices then? Why should we take your calls for redress seriously, as in, "if only we vote for these guys, BC will be better off next time."?

And I laughed but my laughter was hollow. I don't suppose that trying to leave confederation will help BC much, but our population is growing and we have a similar unemployment rate to that of Powerhouse Alberta. Still, I think we would do well never to expect anything from Ottawa, save appeals for votes, even from parties that unseat the current government after years of promising us a better deal, if only we vote them in next time. Proportional representation in the Commons would be a better idea, but I see no political will for that among the haves: Conservative, Liberal, NDP. That might not fix things either but it might enable BC to have a stronger voice, a unified contingent, willing to become part of any and every ruling coalition, so long as the next government takes BC's needs seriously, instead of having them look west, see a scary Alberta and ignore anything from beyond that point. If BCers care less and less about Canada, Canada will have nobody to blame but successive Winnipeg-and-east-thereof governments that have treated BC as no more than that vacant lot beyond the Rockies. I like the idea of Canada and I hope things don't continue to develop along that vein.

Fluorescent Bulbs I Can Live With

It's happened. I never thought it would, but I have found a replacement fluorescent bulb whose light bulb doesnn't feel like a refugee from some under-lighted cavern, far from warmth or "real" light. It's a "Panasonic - Gen IV Light Capsule" -- UPC in Canada is 92281 09308. It uses 23W and puts out what feels like 45 or 50W incandescent worth of light. And it's a nice warm reddish colour. Much preferrable to the harsh fluorescent panels in the ceiling.

Translink Re-org

There have been a spate of things I have wanted to write about these last few weeks but have been unable to grab a moment here or there. So, there's a compile going on and I have a moment to mention this story that greeted me when I picked up the paper this morning. I wish I felt any confidence that this was going to improve transit and transportation in the Lower Mainland. The revised governance and the expanded sphere of responsibility is good. The missing link is still funding. Where is the funding for all these projects going to come from?

One aspect of the announcement is that public-private partnerships will be fostered by revised zoning and encouragement to develop around transit hubs in return for the private sector building certain parts of the transit system. Great. But where does infrastructure improvement that doesn't have a built-in opportunity for development get its funding from?

It's time, it's time, it's time for governments to admit that the steady stream of gasoline tax already being collected belongs not in general revenue where it's currently being sent, but in paying primarily for better transit, secondarily for better roads. Using that money for any other purpose is an illegitimate redirection of those funds that is tilting the playing field up hill for any sensible transit policy and downhill for whatever else it's being used for.

I despair of that conclusion ever being reached by the people who could make that idea a reality.

I have decided something...

What have you decided, Pooh?

I have decided to move all the noisier things (about sports and other trivialities -- what Noam Chomsky would call the real opiates of the people) to another blog, namely So Much Depends... and I'll keep this one for "more important" (at least more important-looking) issues.

Also, now that google has assimilated blogger, I'm going to try the e-mail posting route again -- there used to be a several-days' turnaround between things I e-mailed and having them show up. Quite unacceptable.

Some of the issues that have concerned me most, in my 24-time-zone village.:

• Turkmenistan's self-absorbed "Father of the Turkmen", who spent insane amounts of money erecting gold-covered monuments to himself passed on over Christmas, and for just a moment or two, I hoped the Turkmen would get a more sensible leader. Imagine my dismay when I read that the new leader said he would continue the policies that had resulted in so much more greatness for Turkmenistan under his wonderful forebear.
• DOJ v. Microsoft is being replayed in Iowa courts these days (groklaw, as usual, is covering it...), among other things, once again covering "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish" and other such joys.
• My youngest niece and nephew are about to turn two. She lives twenty minutes drive away, he eight time zones. Elly has been a careful, cautious person with her affections, taking some time even to accept her siblings' affection. I think she finally likes me. Nothing is so precious, on a personal level, as the confidence of the smallest that you are a safe person to be with -- nothing in human relations deserves such careful guarding and preservation.
• I sincerely hope that Ethiopian military adventurism is conducted, over the long haul, in a saner fashion and with more peaceful, stable outcomes than that of other countries. Oh, let there be peace in Somalia, no more warlords, no more blackhawks, no more political strife outside the ballot box and legislative chamber...

And hey.. it's been awhile since I went looking at Gwynne Dyer's web site. I wonder what incisive analysis he's put out in the last six months?

I never get here anymore but...

I've found a new use for this. There are a couple of articles I mean to read some time when I find the time. Linked from Groklaw's news clicks: They are World Domination 101 and World Domination 201. Then there was also a long article by Joel Spolsky explaining some guy I've begun to wonder if I should know about already, named Steve Gillmor -- but using some interesting Talmudic techniques. I probably don't really care about Steve Gillmor, but Joel's take on him looked generally informative enough to be woth perusing, at least briefly.

Anyways, now my blog has become my über-bookmark. I wonder how long it'll take to become my über-coffee maker -- and then whether it'll be an über-maker or make über-coffee? I should be careful here, or I'll require someone to come after me with rashi and tosefot sections of their own...

The Canucks did what??

The 2006/07 hockey season (NHL) just got under way and I placidly expected the Vancouver Canucks to be bottom feeders all summer after trading away Bertuzzi, Allen and a draft pick to Florida for an uninspiring Roberto Luongo and Krajicek. I know Luongo's always gotten high ratings from scouts, including a berth as an alternate goalie for Canada's Olympic squad in Torino -- an honour I thought he couldn't possibly deserve given the way he played any time I saw a Florida game (and without excessive spending on Pay-Per-View and satellite channels, that wasn't much).

So they go to "the Joe", home of the Detroit Red Wings and, come playoff time, dead octopuses, to meet the many-time President's Trophy winners in their opener and I thought, natch, they're going to lose, badly and embarassingly.

And I was prepared not to care very much -- the local lads in the WHL, the Vancouver Giants, were so very satisfying to watch after the Canucks failure to make it to the post-season, that I thought I could get my "fix" of hockey in some other way. Here in Canada, hockey is big, almost like soccer is in England, or rugby in New Zealand, or like basketball in inner-city USA. I'm embarassed to say how much I enjoy seeing a good hockey game, regardless of the teams -- but there's something about the home squad doing well. It just sort of gives you a lift.

So imagine how much I enjoyed driving home with the 3rd period commentary on Vancouver holding a 3-1 lead! (something they haven't been able to do with any team for three years or so) And succeeding! It almost made how light the traffic was between 5:45 and 6:30 unnoticeable (maybe everyone had gone home early to see the game? it sure was light...),

And they won. Very confidently. Go figure. And held Detroit of all teams, to zero goals on nine powerplay attempts? Who are these guys? Same team, new vitamins I guess... Or perhaps Nonis (the General Manager -- in hockey a different individual than the coach most often) knows more about hockey than we all thought he did.

I'll still probably never get to more than one game in five years but it'll be more fun to drive home hearing about a winner on the ice. Can they do it again in Columbus tonight? 23h30 GMT will tell...

One of my distractions...

As some of you know, I read groklaw somewhat regularly. The other morning, I may have waken someone up with my belly-laugh when I read (after too many days hearing about Hewlett-Packard Inc.-- I understand why: PJ's stock in trade as a journalist are this kind of leak and there is some need for journalists to be able to do their thing without being spied on -- and the "d" link above is truly chilling but still. Did it need THAT many articles? I thought not.) that Novell had amended their counterclaims against SCO to require them to pass along their SCOSource license fee revenue back to Novell: if their heretofore collected license fees are ruled as belong to Novell, then this slander of title suit brought by SCO against Novell may serve to strangle their case against IBM to death. And that wouldn't be entirely a bad thing, I think.

(I remember thinking some time ago, that it was odd that given the tenuous hold SCO had on Unix IP, they should then be able to claim license fees on Unix IP from all Linux users without so much as a breath about paying any portion of them to Novell. And now Novell has said so plainly...)

Still, it might be better if SCO v. IBM could continue, at least to the point that it would be a matter of accepted case law in the US that Linux does not contain infringing material from Unix. There's already more than enough noise in the Linux market over the GPLv3 process (and I plan to post my opinion on that front some time...) to have lingering threats murmuring out from any other shadows. The extent to which Linux has been developed out in the public eye is probably a cautionary lesson towards anyone else who might try this on other fronts but even so, it'd be good to have a conclusion reached, appeal-proofed and in the books for all to refer to.

Back to SCO, though, and its claimed right to collect license fees (and then hang onto the loot), IANAL (but like other groklaw readers, I have been attracted to the idea of becoming one through the description of the SCO odyssey and some of the IP law issues that still remain to be settled) but it seemed to me pretty clear that all SCO ever had the right to do was collect monies on behalf of Novell. I wonder that anyone ever took them as having more value than that? If Martha deserved to do hard time for her small insider trading misdeeds, Darl and the top management of SCO deserve more for their pre-meditated pump and dump on a wing and a lie. Much more. I wonder if any indictments against them are in the works?

Another long hiatus

I guess I'll have to give up on the possibility of becoming the most influential new blogger of the year. <sigh>

So, what have I been doing instead? A lot of things -- well actually, only a few things, but I do them again and again until they begin to look like a lot of things. I could tell you all the things I haven't done.

I haven't changed employers but my employer has changed (we were bought out).

I haven't sold my house (but its value has gone silly).

I still get to work by automobile (but my erstwhile carpool of four has vanished and I'm now sharing rides with one other person).

And I haven't written a lot of blog entries (but I have continued to watch my village unfold).

Enough negativity! Let me tell you a bit of what I have done.

I've continued reading. A lot. (but there are still more things I want to read)

I've continued to enjoy the company of my gradually-becoming-adult sons.

I've experienced the worst commuting-September in Greater Vancouver that I can remember. (Usually at least three trips are taking 2x the no-volume travel time or more per week)

And I've begun to ponder how I can prevent that fact from taking a toll on me. Move? Down-size the house and then down-size my salary needs, therefore change jobs, even careers? The good news on that front is that there has been a significant up-tick in the job opportunities that are flying about. The down-side of that is the extent to which those opportunities still require a river crossing to get there.

Oh well... at least my carpool is humming along again.

Overall, I guess the reason I haven't written and published anything is that things have been happening so fast in the world and I've been so busy that things go by faster than I can get to saying anything intelligent or interesting about them.

With your kind indulgence (which I'll probably never know if anyone is extending to me) I'll try again...

Oh, Canada! What a feeling

Oh, it felt good. To listen to NPR interview Assistant Commissioner Mike McDonnell of the RCMP regarding the 17 people arrested this weekend was refreshing and proud-making. Lines of note follow.

Q: Why move now?
A: It got to the point where for public safety... It got to the point where we could no longer control the risk.
...
Q: How does it add to the challenges that you face that you need not only monitor recent immigrants but people who are actually citizens if you're worried about this kind of thing?
A: Well, actually, we don't monitor recent immigrants. We don't monitor citizens. But we're always looking for indications of criminality and pursue that. This is not a police state. ... I've never worked in a community that didn't exhibit some level of criminality... We practice community policing. The community is the eyes and ears of the police force.

And he signed off with a typical Canadian phrase... "take care" which I hadn't realized was so Canadian.

Okay, so this is a bit disingenuous with the existence of Echelon but still... The difference in tone was obvious. Painfully obvious. Another up-tick of exiting Americans coming to Canada? Perhaps.

And when I'm sick...

I go home and learn some more.

Today something has shaken me again but before I mention that, there are a couple of other things worth sharing with you all...

A friend of mine recommended the Kite Runner. I got up to a certain point and stalled but then read through to the end. For anyone who wonders what anybody ever saw in Kabul as a place to live, read this book and weep for a land that got strapped onto the rack when I was in High School and has only had the rope tightened since. This is not an easy read, but I think I understand Afghanistan a little better than I did.

Some time ago, I came across a link to Alexander Mayer's site -- I don't remember where. At that time, I viewed his introductory presentation and downloaded the two longer lectures as well. And there they sat. They're heavy on the math -- not so much so that I couldn't follow them, I just needed a bit more time and attention than I could give to them at that time. Friday I was off sick and went through them. I think he's on to something... I wonder what a "real" astronomer / cosmologist thinks, but I'm inclined to believe he's solved the Red Shift problem in an acceptable way. (I also liked the Michael Crichton speech it linked to -- not because I doubt that global warming is happening, but warnings against all kinds of junk science are always worthwhile.)

By the way, Mr. Crichton, I would link to the version on your site, except that your webmaster added some really stinky javascript to the page which I don't want to inflict on my readers -- resizing the browser window in the a way appropriate only when accessing things from your website's speeches page.

Today, I was struck by an interview with James Carroll on NPR regarding his book House of War. What touched me the deepest was the story of his father assigning him to take his mother and brothers far away in case he was kept inside at the Pentagon. Next to that was his father's assertion that if we didn't, as a race, find new ways to resolve disputes, that he felt we would not survive to the end of the 20th Century. That guess has proven wrong but it shows that we've all been living with war for far too long.

Real Canadian #4

If you see a Canadian in a Tim Horton's taking a pull on a double-double and sighing, "Just like back home...", why not turn around and ask what sport the founder, "Tim Horton", played. If he or she doesn't know, or calls it "ice hockey", as opposed to just plain, "hockey", you may not be talking to a Canadian. On the other hand, the younger generations may not remember #2 and his contributions, especially to the Toronto Maple Leafs and the Buffalo Sabres.

Canada vs. Kyoto: Both win?

Canada is getting a bad rap these days for the current government spurning the Kyoto Accord -- when in actual fact it was the last government's abundant rhetoric and sparse action that have brought us to the current pass of appearing as a US-style Kyoto scofflaw. In the midst of all this, a Canadian company, Iogen, may be showing a creative way forward with a neutral-or-better carbon footprint: using a combination of waste-straw and fancy enzymes to produce ethanol. Couple that with hybrid-fuel cars that can burn 80% eth and we may have another way out of the crunch that's surely coming whenever we pass the peak of oil production.

Never in the US but at America's behest? You bet...

An alarming story on the Register about widespread collection of employees' biometrics in a centralized database. So many warning whistles here: in India, you can't work in a certain class of job without being in the registry; it includes biometrics -- to guarantee the identity of the workers (how soon will chipping be mandatory, too?); it's "Self Regulatory" which gives the collective of American Überemployers plausible deniability (reminds me of chilling effects, self-censorship and the Chinese baidupedia); there is no privacy, no shield from failed relationships with former employers for the workers in future. How would we like the same things to happen here in Canada (or other countries of the wealthy west)?

This is obviously a response to Western consumers' unease with service orgs in the developing world having access to our personal details. Coupled with a bit more apathy and there's nothing preventing this from becoming widespread everywhere, for any and every possible job with even minimal responsibility. I know... it's going to come anyway, eventually, but I'd rather it didn't happen at all and not any time soon: not even in my kids' generation.

Skype Out competing harder

I just went past skype.com looking at my balance (less than €1 for the second time since I started) and I was surprised to see that they're offering free calling to all numbers in the US and Canada until the end of the year. Probably, they're feeling the pressure of the various VoIP offerings here and they're trying to fight back. Sometimes the customers win...

Mistaken, amused -- and a thinner razor than I thought

So, I went back to Neil Young's website and he is still playing the album. He must have been getting slashdotted on the week-end. And speaking of slashdot, it's interesting to hear the micro-kernel vs. macro-kernel debate being rehashed. At least it would be if (a) someone had mirrored all parts of the conversation or (b) realworldtech.com hadn't gone down in the first place. Finally, it comes out today that a single juror was enough to prevent Moussaoui's execution. Unless this individual is sought out and assiassinated, we'll probably never know who it was, but whoever you are, thank you.

Living With War -- Online No More

I tried to listen again on the week-end and Neil's taken the album down. Good advert, though. I'm more likely to buy a new album by any artist today than I have been for a long time.

Won't need no shadow man to run the government
Won't need no stinkin' war...

Moussaoui: The real flip-flopper

Didn't I say Moussaoui might change his mind over time? It's all so sudden that the immediate explanation is "I don't like my sentence -- I wanted to be a martyr." But perhaps, just perhaps, the contents of his memo asking for a new trial is evidence of exactly how non-acculturated to the west communities of Africans are in Paris. It might even be a measure of the justice gap between the French system and the British one (together with its logical descendants, including that of the US).

We in the west get pretty cynical about our governments, our courts system. We've seen, often enough, things that feel like travesties, legislated injustices, people who get let off that shouldn't, people who are punished that shouldn't. But at the end of the day, the system we have in Canada, the systems in Britain, the US, Australia and other post-British countries allows for the most credible attempts anywhere on the planet for real justice to be done. We should appreciate it more than we do.

It's too bad Moussaoui didn't know what to expect. But perhaps if he had, he wouldn't have been available for recruitment by al-Qaeda in the first place.

Note to Zac: take more than your Qu`ran with you into the supermax. You'll need more than one kind of thought to keep you from going utterly nuts in there.

I've never been a fan...

But I have to applaud fellow Canadian, though expatriate, Neil Young. In the first place, thanks for leaving Canada in such a way as to give my favourite Canadian poet/guitarist a platform. But today, thanks for giving voice to a paradoxical rage that's being felt by many: how do you vent something that makes you want to stop the killing? Neil's given us a way. Thanks, Neil. You may be crazy but at least you're human -- and Canadian to boot!

I wear my shadows
Where they're harder to see
But they follow me everywhere--
I gues that should tell me I'm travelling toward light
I guess something you sang made me remember that
I guess I'm saying thanks for that...

Real Canadian #3

If you see a "Canadian" skiing somewhere (or doing some other winter activity) and he or she is wearing a particularly chic woollen hat, if you say, "Nice touque you're wearing," and you get a blank stare, you've bumped into another impostor. Incidentally, "touque" is pronounced to rhyme with "Luke", as in "Use the force, Luke".

Two Near Misses

The world dodged two bullets yesterday. I was amazed to see mention of this earthquake here no more than 20 minutes after it occurred. But I was relieved to see the associated tsunami warning called off within after a 60 cm wave showed up at the nearest shores. Perhaps the Boxing Day tsunami of the other year has at least resulted in some kinds of co-ordinated tracking Next Time; as in yesterday. Good job, folks.

In the evening, I was on my way to a taping of a locally-produced television program when I heard that the Moussaoui verdict had been published: Life with no parole. I was relieved to see that 12 ordinary men and women decided that justice would not be served by making Moussaoui a martyr. Perhaps, just perhaps, twenty years from now Moussaoui will have a different view of the events he wanted to be involved in (but wasn't competent or reliable enough to be). I'll admit, it's unlikely, but you must admit that it's not impossible. And now he won't be a martyr, something that could only have resulted in more bloodshed, if it had occurred: "Blood calls out for blood", so a little less blood shed is probably a good thing, by default.

I grieve for his Mom back in France -- any way this works out (Moussaoui stays in US and she moves there, just visits or not; Moussaoui is transferred to France) she's lost almost all the comfort a son could be to her. But at least she won't have to deal with a picture of her executed son used to recruit more jihadis. Time to go back and read the play Twelve Angry Men again, maybe, and speculate what it might have been like in that jury room.

Real Canadian #2

Canada has a senate. Some Canadians don't even realize that becuase unlike Senates in other countries, it's not (yet) elected. It works more like the House of Lords in the UK although appointments to it are more like political patronage than the way the Lords typically functions.  If you ask Canadians how they voted in the last Senate elections, unless they're from Alberta (where they've experimented with recommendation-by-election), there's only one right answer: "What Senate elections?" Any other kind of answer means you've got an impostor on your hands.

Iran and Sanctions?

According to CNN, "the US is confident of Iran sanctions". I wonder if that confidence extends outside the Bush Administration and those who serve "at the pleasure of the President"? What ace in the hole can they have with regard to Russia and China?

I've said before regarding India and Pakistan that their acquisition of nuclear weapons was what earned them respect on the world stage, which led to a cessation of hostilities in Jammu & Kashmir. Now Idon't want any nuclear weapons, let alone more of them in more people's hands but the results were there for all of us to see.

So now, Iran wants respect -- not to mention another source of energy. And China and Russia desperately want a way to look like they're a counter-balance to what is perceived as American bullying without themselves looking belligerent. And they're going to fail to veto Security Council sanctions against Iran? Somebody's dreaming here.

I have only one thing to mention to the US: what happens when you attack a tyrant? He becomes a hero in the eyes of his people. Then you have to destroy his country to depose him. Remember Saddam and Milosevic and find some other way to "deal" with Ahmadenijad than finding another "coalition of the bought" and sending in your invincible military machine. This is not a game of Risk. People's lives and the longterm habitability of large pieces of the planet are at stake.

Budget Eve in Canada

(written yesterday)

Tomorrow the Canadian Federal Government is issuing a new budget. The various spins before the fact are amusing. In the run-up to the last federal election, the Conservatives tried to cast themselves as a different breed of politician in so many ways: floor-crossing is slimey (David Emerson is now International Trade Minister), we need more accountability in parliament (the new accountability act apparently gives civil servants whole new ways of evading "Freedom of Information Act" requests), we'll start rolling back the GST (small retailers are asking that it not be done immediately because the change will be so expensive).

And in the middle of it all, the Softwood Lumber trade war is probably over and the loonie is higher than it's been since I left high school -- will that affect my job (negatively)? And America gets a dry run of life without (illegal) immigrants. What a time it's turning out to be.

Trying to get back to regular posting

I have not found it easy to keep posting to this blog, despite the fact that all kinds of interesting things have happened since my post on stupid constitutional tricks. Things like the Canadian Election, the joint declaration of Ahearn and Blair on the future of Northern Ireland, the turmoil in Nepal, the Iran nuclear controversy, revolving doors in the the US Presidential  staff roster, the exit of the Vancouver Canucks from the Stanley Cup Playoffs before they start (and Marc Crawford's dismissal), the advance of the Vancouver Giants to the WHL finals, and now a final end to the Canada-US softwood dispute and the Canadian dollar is as high as it was before I got my driver's license.

I'm going to try again. There's all kinds of interesting stuff happening, in every corner of the world and sometimes I feel the need to get up and say some'at about it. Like Sam Sullivan, Vancouver's mayor travelling to Ottawa this last week; and giving harm-reduction (in an approach I'm not entirely comfortable with) a further chance. I heard him quote (un-footnoted) a study in Switzerland showed that when you give people the drugs they're addicted to, 10% wind up quitting outright really soon thereafter? I wouldn't have believed it but if it's true, that kind of result is worth at least a little bit of a try. And if you do it, primarily for prostitutes who are walking scared after the Pickton story came out... The weak and relatively defenseless need something. Maybe this isn't the best answer, but if it's better than the one they've got now, I wonder.

Oh well, enough for now. Gotta get back to other things...

Stupid Constituional Tricks

Jack Layton's cute little motion to force the government to call an election for February sounds pragmatic and reasonable -- and clearly no politician wants to be on the campaign trail during the Christmas Holidays. Various other groups don't want it then either, and it's often painted that the Canadian public in general doesn't either, but I wonder. It might be good for the politicians to feel the pain of their retail employee-constituents who find the last 50 days the most hectic of the whole year.

Constitutional Monarchy's like Canada are governed by a combination of written and traditional rules and one of these for minority governments (as Canada currently has) is that government can dissolve parliament for specific dates and/or hand specific dates to the opposition at which the opposition can pull the trigger. But the opposition can not dissolve parliament at a particular date, much though it might like to do.

Jack Layton, whose stellar record as a city councillor in Toronto speaks for itself, still needs to go back to elementary school when it comes to running national politics. His scheme is the kind of pragmatic, creative one that there is room for at the civic level. But a country can't go changing these procedures at the whim of an albeit intelligent, creative group of people. A federal government, even one that does not have a parliamentary majority, is still about stability and the one power that the governing party in the minority has is this: choosing when a the next possible election date will be. It's a game of "I aim, you fire", but the neophyte leader of the NDP will just have to get used to it.

Will "King George" be content to be "Prince George"?

Or, more importantly, will his followers, in loyalty to the idea of a civil society in Liberia allow their allegations of fraud and pressuring to be investigated and adjudicated, be content with the result and move on? Now, after the election is the moment of truth. What does Liberia want? More civil war or rebuilding?

Western democratic institutions took a long time to build and included civil wars like those that have happened in the 20th and 21st centuries in lands where democracy has not yet taken root. The English story is held to have begun with the Magna Carta in 1215 and can be said to have become almost impossible to reverse after the reign of Queen Anne, five centuries later: She was the last monarch to over-rule the English Parliament. Subsequent monarchs had the titular right to do so but did not. If Elizabeth II or her successors were to do so, it would spark a constitutional crisis.

I applaud the restrained and conciliatory tone I have heard Mrs. Johnson-Sirleaf extend to Mr. Weah and his supporters. Winners do not usually share much power with losers, but in view of Mr. Weah's first round polling numbers and the energy of Mr Weah's supporters on the street, pragmatism and commitment to a peaceful future for Liberia will drive her to seek Mr. Weah's support in rebuilding that shattered country. Now the test of the maturity of Mr. Weah and his supporters come: will they bury their differences until the next election and reciprocate?

Show yourselves adults on this score please, for your own sakes and for those of your children.

Ah, Bliss but not yet Heaven

A local co-op radio station is rebroadcasting the BBC world service in the mornings. Ah the sweet sound of news that's not just from my country, my province, my valley, or worst of all my neighbours' favourite celebrities. <ugh>

And it was there that I heard the news that with 75% of the ballots counted, Mrs. Johnston-Sirleaf is leading 58% to 42% in the vote counting in Liberia. Unfortunately Mr. Weah's party is filing a complaint that the Electoral Commission prejudiced the process against him. I hope Mr. Dyer's thoughts that it would take the soccer star to keep the poor masses from revolting in the painful period of reconstruction Liberia needs to undergo prove false but from my own friends' opinions and those of Mr. Peabody now of Pennsylvania, I have reason to hope that this will be for the best.

Peace be to those streets as well.

One of the listener comments I heard on the BBC this morning made me stop and think. Some chap was objecting to the war in Iraq on the grounds that there is no cause worth dying for. I think it would be more advisable to object on the grounds that there is no cause worth killing for. Since killing only breeds more killing (ask the residents of any war zone, from Northern Ireland to the WestBank/Gaza to Darfur), the less often we insist on resorting to killing in settling disputes and differences, the less often others will have us in the crosshairs -- and if they've already taken aim, we would die with clearer consciences.

Do you want to make your part of the earth a little more paradisical? (and who does not?) Start by looking at the things in your hands. If you are using them as instruments of violence against other people, lay them down and do not take them up again until you can be clear on what their appropriate targets and uses are.

Things changing...

Well, telus and the union have reached a second tentative agreement. It's not clear what's changed -- it sounds like there's more money, but not more job security, so will it pass? Is it enough sweeter to convince 24 more people to change to "yes" than will have changed to "no" since the 30th of October? The results will be in via mail-in vote by November 16th. The contract is for five years from November 17th.

And then there's federal politics. I honestly didn't believe that the NDP would bring down the government this fall, but it looks like the last day sitting for this government will be late next week.

Both of these stories are visible right now, here.

Tomorrow, Liberia votes. So do a bunch of places in the US, too, right?

Telus Lockout Losing Traction

Telus, which was formed from combining the old "monopoly" telecoms, Alberta Government Telephone and BC Telephone has been on strike for some time now, and on my drive to work, I pass three of their plants. Actually, the workers were locked out. The issues are mostly "flexibility", as far as Telus is concerned and freedom from worries over off-shoring as far as the union, TWU is concerned.

A couple of weeks ago, The Vancouver Sun, the most news-y local paper, ran a story that there was a tentative agreement. Only the pickets never came down, so I wondered if I had been dreaming. Finally, this week, I find out that the agreement was put to a vote and lost by a really narrow margin. From the Union's website, "Of the 9027 votes cast, 4487 – 49.7% – voted yes and 4540 – 50.3% – voted no."

Late this week, most of the overpasses I drove under on my way to work had Telus workers holding protest banners against Telus' on-going actions. The largest site I drive by was a little emptier than usual, but I knew where some of the strikers were that morning. I had seen them.

I feel for these folks. It's not that long ago they were a crown-corporation monopoly but the communications boom of the 90s happened and now Telus has to deliver, not to Cabinet (two cabinets, actually) but to shareholders. And they don't understand that most of the other workers in the market they serve have never enjoyed the kind of pensions and job security they enjoyed before the 90s -- I've never had them. They're dedicated to their picket line, but this is a fight that Telus can wait them out on, I'm afraid.

On the other hand, a call-in radio comment I heard, from someone who had switched their high-speed internet from Telus to Shaw and was so thankful to be "dealing with a non-Union company" seemed wrong-headed in another direction. The Winnipeg General Strike was only 86 years ago. The need for unions in the coal mines of southwestern Alberta was a hot issue then, too. Since then, unions have often been more interested in gathering more and more power without much concern for the welfare of the worker, but it would be a shame if the protection for the little guys that unions have provided disappeared with the willing and eager acceptance of other little guys.

I can't help comparing this strike with the hockey strike that resulted in no 2004/05 NHL hockey season. At the beginning, the players didn't want to accept a $54 million per team salary cap. The hiatus in play has led to a depression of their market value and they've had to accept a cap of $39 million. At this point, it looks to me like the longer the Telus workers are out, the less value they'll be to their employer. I suspect they need to cut their losses now, settle and get back to work. There're Christmas presents to buy, not to mention meals, clothes, heat and electricity.

The National Blood-letting -- November 2005

So, the latest chapter in the sponsorship scandal in Canada has gotten to a public milestone: the preliminary Gomery report. Since most of this testimony was conducted live on television (sort of like the OJ Simpson trial), there aren't a whole lot of surprises here. The surprises came six to twenty months ago as lurid tales of suitcases full of money, implications of mob connections, outrageous commissions for little or no work followed by kickbacks to civil servants who allocated the work, and significant portions of the commissions ending up in the coffers of the ruling Liberal Party, all wrapped up in end-justifies-the-means excuses: the Separatists nearly broke up our country -- we just had to do something to save Canada.

(None of this is news to my Canadian readers)

So all we have now that we didn't before, are Judge Gomery's notes, laid out in an orderly fashion showing how money flowed from here to there and back -- ultimately the facts and allegations go like this:

• Money flowed from the federal government of Canada into ad agencies (and other "structural companies" like Canada Post and VIA)


• The purpose of the money was ostensibly to "raise the profile of Canada" in Québec after the nearly-won sovereignty referendum of 1995.


• Firms receiving the money/advertising contracts were hand-picked, not chosen through any kind of bidding process.


• More money was paid than value received by the federal government and some of the money was paid in kickbacks to certain civil servants, especially Chuck Guité


• The most visible result of the money at the time was big "Canada" signs showing up at all kinds of festivals, conferences, conventions and shows in Québec between 1995 and 2001.


• The firms receiving the contracts were typically run by Liberals, who as well as having paid kick-backs to civil servants, also contributed significant percentages of their fees to the Liberal Party of Canada.


• Sheila Fraser, our Auditor-General (sort of like the GAO in the US gave some hints of the problem in 2002 and a full-blown report of her findings.

The end result seems to be a big fizzle. The Liberal Party of Canada
* is exposed as the most venal in the country
* is perceived in Québec as having tried to buy Québec's loyalty in the late 90s (outrage, votes for the sovereigntist Bloc Québécois follow -- no version in English)
* is viewed as being shrewd operators who were only trying to save the country in Ontario and by half the folks east of there, and
* is viewed as reprehensible and bereft of the moral authority to govern: scoundrels who ought to be drummed out of office by most of those living west of Ontario -- except for urbanites who are scared to vote for anyone else.

Quite likely we will have another federal election (what I called a "National Shout" last time) in the next six weeks to three months and I don't see the result being significantly different than it was 16 months ago. As I stated earlier here, I still don't have a real, viable place to park my vote and anyway, I live in a riding where a toothpick could run for a particular party and win, so my vote doesn't mean very much.

Do I sound cynical and disillusioned? I'm afraid so. But hey -- my kids aren't going hungry, we have no shortage of food, fuel or potable water out here in BC and I have the freedom to complain about this kind of thing out loud when it happens. Life's not all that bad, on balance, really. But I wonder how long this kind of meretricious behaviour in our political leaders can go on before all those other things are threatened.

Is that a real Canadian?

Has a tourist ever come through your town, with Canadian flags plastered over his or her luggage and you wondered, "Is that really a Canadian?" Saying "eh?" at the end of ordinary statements has become so stereotypical that you may be fooled initially.

One of the things I want to do here, is help to give little hints to help you figure out who is a Canadian and who is an impostor.

Really Canadian #1: Most Canadians (at least Anglophones) will not pronounce "roof" so that the "oo" rhymes with "hoof" or "book". On the contrary so that it rhymes with "blue" or "scooby doo". French Canadians will pronounce it "twa" or "twat" -- at least when they're speaking French.

All the best, but not just to King George

Gwynne Dyer's latest commentary focuses on Liberia, a place where I have some friends. At first I thought it referred to King George II of America. When I saw instead that it was about George Weah in Liberia, I was curious to hear the opinion of another outsider (besides me) on the situation there.

It happens that Mr. Dyer disagrees with my friends' political opinion (he's Liberian, she's white, born in Canada -- they are working in Johnson-Sirleaf's campaign) but I'm sure he and they (and I as well) would agree that it would be a good thing for Liberia to escape from the cycle of violence it has been trapped in for the last few years.

Until next Tuesday...

Irish news!

Just off today's Five-Seven-Live and here on RTÉ's web-site.... One of the Protestant paramilitary groups has announced the beginning of decommissioning their weapons. I'm not from Ireland, so I'm not sure how influential the LVF is among all the Protestant paramilitaries, but one less weapon on any street is one less means to maim and bereave. Cause for rejoicing, even on a small scale.

Dissing raised to fine art

I never expected the movie debut of Dukes of Hazzard to be a culturally enriching experience for anyone -- and I wasn't planning to see it. But if you want to hear it dissed in the most delicious fashion, you've gotta listen to the linked item. Mr. Turan, without having seen the movie, I am sure you must have told it like it is... Not that your review will hurt the movie's gate receipts, I'll bet. And if does, it won't hurt them anywhere near as much as your review (from laughter) hurt my sides.

Pot Activist, Marc Emery, to be extradited to the US

On a story like this I find myself very conflicted, which is probably surprising given my very conservative lifestyle and views.

I do not smoke tobacco (never have), let alone pot. I only rarely drink alocohol (at age 42, I think I've had some alcohol about five times in my life, never more than a sip of beer, never more than a small glass of wine). I have seen pot destroy -- either itself or as the entry drug for other, harder substances -- many friends and some relatives, so that I am not a big supporter of pot rights either in theory or in practice.

On the other hand, some of the stories of those who find medical marijuana absolutely necessary to stay functional in the face of debilitating and life-ending diseases (the segment from 02:00 to 03:37 of the program here is one of the most heart-wrenching ones I've ever heard -- but less so than another story I can no longer locate. Does Angel Raich suffer from any striking credibility gap?). Does something displaying this kind of potential, even anecdotally, to alleviate debilitating symptoms deserve the kind of enforcement regime that exists in Canada? even more, the one that exists in the US?

On the other hand, should a scofflaw like Marc Emery be allowed to go parading about thumb firmly stuck on his nose at the law indefinitely? And, if his actions are not counter to Canadian law, should he go unpunished for flouting US law or fail to face extradition for supplying, not just medical users but also organized crime and hordes of under-functional pot-heads (made so by their ongoing use of pot) with the supplies that maintain their ability to break US law?

I have to do some research here for the following question: Were the Bronfmanns, Reichmanns and other liquour manufacturers ever similarly subjected to attempted extraditions to the US while the Prohibition laws in the US and Canada were divergent?

As a follow-on, I would ask, are there no parallels between the Prohibition debates then and those surrounding marijuana now? To me it seems self-evident that there is a high level of parallelism between the two questions and that ultimately, as much as anything, to get organized crime out of the marijuana supply chain, it will become a public safety necessity for government to get as intimately involved in the production and distribution of marijuana as they are today in the production and distribution of tobacco products and alcohol.

To me, speaking chemically, there is no difference between tobacco, booze and pot. They are all somewhat mind- or mood-altering; they all have some negative health impacts; they are all used recreationally and only tobacco, the most life-threatening of the three has never been outlawed, and hence has never been intertwined with organized crime. Doesn't anyone else see something wrong with this picture? Outlaw all three of them, or let them be legal and tax the bejeebies out of them, as is being done with tobacco and booze. Let's be consistent here.

All that said, Marc Emery's mistake, the one that removes all sympathy for his cause from me, is the fact that he made no efforts to keep his trade within Canadian borders. For him to have ignored what the standards are on the other side of the 49th, to have done anything but ignore all requests from potential customers from the US put him well within the DEA cross-hairs and if, in an American court he gets 10 years to life of hard time in an American Federal prison, that was the risk he took and he should be willing to survive the ordeal.

I say this, as much as anything else, from a Christian point of view where my fellow believers contravene their local laws in their countries of birth by possessing Bibles, talking about Jesus, or even by the very act of themselves having converted to Christianity. They know the risks and they accept them -- and if I lived there, so would I. From the outside, I appeal to their governments to desist from harassing my brothers and sisters in Christ but my appeal is for them to change their laws, not merely to release them apart from that change. (Are you listening People's Republic of China? Myanmar? Saudi Arabia? North Korea?)

On top of this, let me add my initial reaction with regard to Canadian sovereignty and Canadian authorities choosing to allow Mr. Emery's "rendering" to a country where penalties for marijuana trade are harsher. I already feel that Canada's very existence is at risk, especially with regard to having a separate legal code or an independant foreign policy, so my first reaction was, "How dare they!" However, a lot of these feelings evaporated when I heard the contents of the indictments against Mr. Emery, that they mostly had to do with trade into the US. Marc carried on business in the US which under US law was illegal. It would have been more productive to his cause in the Canadian national debate for him to be arrested in Canada and have his case tried before a Canadian court. His own folly or excessive idealism led him to a place where that will not happen. For his sake, I hope there are people who will be willing to visit him in Leavenworth, or San Quentin, or whatever life-suspension home a US court will consign him to.

Towards a Christian Socialism

I am a frustrated voter.

I oppose the proliferation of weapons, especially of Space-, Nuclear-, Biological- and depleted Uranium-based ones as well as other long-term and wide-spread effect weapons such as cluster bombs, butterfly bombs and land mines. I also oppose aligning Canada's foreign and defense policy with that of the US. Don't get me wrong: I like Americans. But I deeply distrust their government, their foreign policy and especially their military. The policy choices of these three have often tended, at least since 1945 or so, to be consistently foolish, more than occasionally criminally so.

I believe that responsibility for the social welfare of a country's poorest, weakest and most victimized citizens rests with that country's citizenry, morally so for its Christian believers, but also, at least to some extent with the government of that country. To that end, I support a progressive taxation system which would be used to fund broad and generous programs to maintain a reasonable level of health, safety, education, protection and empowerment for all.

On the other hand, I believe that there are some objective standards of right and wrong, which political parties who would so far agree with me are willing to treat as relative, negotiable, discardable or even barbaric. My commitment to a Christian philosophy convinces me of the moral correctness of insisting on the one hand of preferring or insisting on the use of fair-trade goods, individually and collective making a smaller consumption footprint, and striving for dependence on renewable-energy-sources just as surely as it convinces me that marriage is a union between one man and one woman.

[As an aside: I am not convinced that a government should legislate all the points that I consider part of an objective moral code (theft and murder are clearly proscribable by all; alcohol use was unenforceable and I'm not sure cannabis use will be in the long-term, either) but to call something a marriage that does not contain the basic paradox of a life-long commitment across gender lines seems too much like the intentional weakening of one of the foundation-stones of civilized society for me to roll over and accept.]

Where are the others of like mind with me? How can we forge an alliance committed to these portions of agendas present on the right and on the left but from a committed, wholistic-Christian moral philosophy, one that denounces for instance, a belief that "Fill the earth and subdue it" was a divine mandate for anything other than the responsible husbanding of our world? If nothing else had convinced me that politics contains at best only provisional answers to the problems facing humanity, and in my case, more-specifically, the population of Canada, the lack of this political alternative certainly did.

Are there any others of you out there? Is it reasonable to hope that there can be a political movement that works towards a "Christian Socialist" agenda?

So BC STV failed

Just shy of the 60% mark, but definitely winning out in most ridings, there is no mandate that the provincial government move ahead with STV -- but that doesn't mean that they shouldn't or that they won't.

I'll admit I wasn't always a booster, but by the time the vote came around, I really believed in it. And if you got there, too, perhaps you're wondering what next? Well I have a suggestion. Here's a letter I'm going to write to my newly re-elected MLA, Mr. Rich Coleman, Fort Langley-Aldergrove. I suggest you write something like it to your MLA. The more of our voices they hear, the more likely they are to pass it.

Failing that, I think there's a good chance that it could be written up as a ballot initiative. The bar for passing an initiative is bother lower and higher. 10% of all the voters in every riding need to sign a petition -- that's the higher part. And then the initiative needs to pass by 50% + 1 across the whole province. That's the lower part.

Norman Spector, Dave Barrett, Christy Clark and other such elitists said they thought the STV was a foolish idea, foolishly arrived at and foolishly presented to the people for a vote and to some extent I agree with them: after spending so much to arrive at it, why was so little spent on informing the public on the choice either way? Indeed nothing, to me, showed the value of the proposal more than the diversity on other points of political doctrine among those who agreed in support of or in opposition to BC STV. Still, I think that it's time for us, the Great Unwashed electorate, the Secret People (who have not spoken yet -- though we may not be of the same nationality as those whom Mr. Chesterton once referred to) to show that we didn't just like it enough to vote for it once, but to sign for it and to vote for it again.

So if you write a letter like the following to your MLA and he or she takes no notice, be on the look-out. That doorbell may be someone coming around with a petition (maybe me!) asking for you to join the 10% of the voters in your riding to sign up to put forward a ballot initiative. We'll get our STV yet -- and a much more honourable end it is than the one that Levesque and Parizeau forwarded unsuccessfully in Québec before us.

Dear Mr. Coleman,

I am writing to ask you and your party to introduce the BC STV plan as conceived by the Citizens Assembly, despite the fact that the referendum may not have reached its 60% threshold. Most of the people in your riding wanted it and though the bar for a mandated passage was set appropriately high, it would be shutting your ears against the desires of your constituents not to send it through the BC Legislature anyways.

If it does not get introduced and passed, it may yet become a ballot initiative and become law through other means. I commit myself to pursuing such ends and encouraging my friends, neighbours and relatives to do the same. This is a time for your party to show some leadership. Don't wait for us to bring about a ballot initiative. Introduce, pass and proclaim a bill instituting BC STV as the the way BC will elect its Legislature from now on. Either way, your electorate will remember whose interests you pursued now: ours or those of the Liberal Party. And either way, you can be sure, that later, when STV passes we will know how to reward you appropriately.

Sincerely,

Arthur N. Klassen
xxx xxxx
xxxxxx, BC Vxx xxx
(address redacted)

Belinda Stronach, the latest Liberal

In response, I sent the following to letters@cbc.ca:

Why am I not surprised? Martin is only doing in Ontario what he was already doing, with more success than failure out here in BC. Welcome to the circle of the excessively ambitious, Ms. Stronach! You should have held out for more than Ms. Stewart's old gibbet.

So the fall of the government isn't quite so certain.

What's "Linux"? What's "Open Source"? What's "Free Software"?

There's a growing document describing the history of open source here. If you want to understand those sorts of things better, take a look. The chapters are short and readable and expose the details of the culture quite well -- especially at the price!

Response to kuro5hin article against Intelligent Design

Earlier today, slashdot posted this article regarding an OpEd piece on kuro5hin. What followed was an incredible storm of comments, counter-comments, accusations and counter-accusations. I couldn't resist adding my €0.02 worth under the subject line, "2000 fundamentalists and counting", thus:

I have read the article and I wish to make two criticisms of it. Then I wish to point out the absolute lack of well-reasoned dialogue on this point.

1. benna writes:

The premise of Intelligent Design is that the universe is so unimaginably complex and perfect that it must have been created by an intelligent designer.

Anyone catch the "gotcha"? What ID proponent is going to say that the universe is so "unimaginably... perfect"? This is a classic but cloaked "argumentum ad hominem - abusive": make ID'ers look like extremists so it's "obvious" to everyone that they're stupid before they even look at what is actually being said.

2. benna also cites a lack of ID articles in peer-reviewed journals as evidence that nobody in the "real" scientific community believes in ID.

This is a trifle circular. The tools used by those who oppose theistic explanations for the world (including ID) include belittling, caricaturizing, marginalizing, black-listing, not to mention monopolizing money and prestige to the exclusion of all other options from serious consideration. Faced with the scientistic forces arrayed against these bodies of ideas, is it any wonder that nobody who wants to be taken seriously later will give articles with an ID point of view serious attention? This is less about ideas "winning or losing" in the scientific marketplace and more about ideas being sand-bagged and informally kept from being heard in that marketplace.

If you don't believe this possible, look at what happened in a slightly different field to Immanuel Velikovsky when what he said didn't line up with accepted scientific orthodoxy in the fields Worlds in Collision and Ages in Chaos speak to -- whether or not you accept the contents of his books as reasonable alternative explanations.

As to my subject line: it seems that very few people can make a dispassionate, deal-with-the-facts comment on this subject either in favour of or in opposition to Intelligent Design. It struck me that there are more than one kind of fundamentalism and many slashdotters who would sooner die than be called fundamentalists merely suffer from fundamentalism in a different direction.

cheers...ank

More on BC's proposed STV electoral reform

When it first came out, I thought it looked like a great idea. Later, after discussing it with some people I thought it wasn't such a great idea. Now, I'm leaning again to thinking it is a better system than what we currently have but I'm not sure that it's the best we could do.

I understand that some people in Ireland want to get rid of it but every time that comes to a ballot measure it gets put up against a re-run of FPTP (our current system) and people don't want to go back there.

For myself, I would have preferred a Mixed-Member proportional system -- leave the rural provincial ridings intact, use federal boundaries for the more urban areas and everyone votes twice: once for a local candidate and once for a list. I personally believe that the rural BCers who, at the constituent assembly asked that the proposed system be STV instead of MMP were, to some extent mistaken: their ostensible reason for choosing STV over MMP went something like this: "we want to know our candidate and not be voting for a slate". I think that with the STV system we're going to be voting on, their ridings will get so big that no group of people will know any one candidate enough that the "personal support" factor will be at all significant.

To me the biggest downside with STV is the way ridings will have to be consolidated to support it in the face of the rider on the constituent assembly's mandate: choose a new system with the same number of seats. This is probably less of an issue for really urban areas -- and maybe not much of an issue for the far-flung reaches, either. Some of the rural ridings are truly monstrous already.

But for me, in the Langley riding where I used to live, and the Fort Langley-Aldergrove riding where I now live, I can see local issues and local interests getting completely swamped in one direction or another, depending on how the consolidation takes place. Will these two ridings get lumped with three Surrey ridings? I can tell you that Langley's and Aldergrove's interests will not be well served in that case: those areas are far more urban and our voices will get lost in their shuffle. Or what if we're lumped in with Abbotsford and Chilliwack? That might be less disadvantageous but I wonder.

I think local issues everywhere but in the urban areas will be ill-served by this particular reform: MMP would have resulted in moderate riding consolidation that would have gotten no less granular than the federal ridings. But STV will result in there being about 15 or 20 ridings across the whole province. Think about it: your riding and up to four neighbouring ones will be consolidated. Is that what you want? Or your riding may be consolidated with others up to two or three ridings away from where you are. Is that what you want?

Still, I may be completely mistaken and STV is far better than what we have now: I'm going to vote "yes".

My only other concern is that it will be open to manipulation in ways that only the big political machines recognize yet. Gordon Gibson says that party politicians don't like STV: I suspect they're shamming but we'll only be able to find that out either way several elections AFTER we adopt STV.

Missing the message...

If there was a life message in John Paul II's papacy, in the sense that he was one of the biggest contributors to the fall of Communism, it was that authoritarian structures can not stand in the face of an ever-more-embraced truth. I believe that in many ways, the Catholic Church failed to understand that fact today.

Stop the Harp Seal Hysteria!

In response to this, I wrote them the following:

Unless you are a 100% organic vegetarian who grows all their own food, collects rainwater and distills it with solar energy and does entirely without the benefits of modern industrialized medicine, you have no moral high ground to oppose the harp seal hunt.

Just be quiet and go away, please. But I understand that that will take even more effort than it would to stop the hunt. So I wonder why I'm even bothering to send this. I don't know. Perhaps it's because I'm under the delusion that there may be a way to stop the mindless hysteria. I only wish.

These are not humans: they're seals! Okay, so they are extremely cute mammals. But once we realize that they are not humans -- unless of course we are complete vegans and all that as in the first paragraph, the issue shouldn't be how ugly their death looks but how long do they suffer and what will be the consequence if they are not hunted.

This last point is easy: they will over-run their habitat and cause all kinds of other problems.

As to how long they suffer, it's not significantly longer than the time a horse suffers when it gets shot as a form of euthanasia.

Oh, and there's also the factor of livelihood of the hunters, many of whom have no other source of income than this annual hunt. Unless you are willing to support them and their families, there's yet another reason why you should just be quiet and not criticize what you are reacting to emotionally -- not rationally at all.

I'm sorry, I'm trying to be respectful. I hope it worked but I have my doubts. Primarily emotional reactions which I have some reason to view as silly tend to bring out the pejorative in me.

In any event, please, you, respect my fellow Canadians and let them cull an otherwise over-abundant population, supply some folks with very warm coats and feed their families. You want "greater good"? There it is in plain sight if only you'd drop your placards long enough to see it.

Solution for puzzle of January 31 (longer than two weeks ago)

US OCCUPATION AUTHORITY IN IRAQ LOST TRACK OF NEARLY NINE BILLION DOLLARS
BRITAIN SAYS TEN MILITARY PERSONNEL BELIVED DEAD IN IRAQ PLANE CRASH
EU WARY OF MICROSOFT ACTIONS AFTER RULING
SWEDISH COACH WAS KEY TO SAFIN WIN - RUSSIAN CHIEF
GUANTANAMO BAY TRIBUNALS RULED UNCONSITITUTIONAL

SETTING = VOTER
KEY     = DEMOCRAT
HAT     = DEBATERS

Headline Puzzle #2 -- solution to come in two weeks

FU CSSFVBQECM BFQICPEQG EM EPBX OCUQ QPBSN CJ MRBPOG MEMR WEOOECM KCOOBPU

ELYZIYF MIPM ZGF JYDYZILP OGLMKFFGD EGDYCGS SGIS YF YLIA ODIFG NLIMW

NW SOMU ZY EKAMZBZYR OARKZIB OYRNM MWJKIF

OAHPXOQ LGJLQ AJO VHB NG OJSXD AXD - ICOOXJD LQXHS

YSZKMZKZNL AZW MEHASKZGC ESGIV SKOLKCHMHMSMHLKZG

enjoy...ank

Headline Puzzle rotate:

Solution for puzzle of January 17:

BOMBARDIER GETS FORTY-FIVE MILLION DOLLAR TRAM ORDER

THE SIMPSONS CROSS BORDER INTO MANITOBA

TSX DRIFTS AHEAD OF SLEW OF EARNINGS AND NY CLOSED FOR KING HOLIDAY

INDIAN TRAIN FIRE THAT SPARKED RELIGIOUS RIOTS 'ACCIDENTAL,' PROBE FINDS

NON-PRESCRIPTION CHOLESTEROL-LOWERING DRUG NIXED BY FDA PANEL



SETTING = SLAVE

KEY = EQUALITY

HAT = UNCLE TOM

I don't know if anyone even tried to solve it, but I'll post another one a little later today.

More thoughts on "BC's Citizens Assembly recommends STV for plebiscite"

I'm not so sure now. After talking with friends and ruminating over the idea. A Citizen's Assembly has recommended an STV system for electing our unicameral legislature in BC, the vote to be held with the provincial government election in May. I'm having second thoughts about it. The concerns voiced from the northern representatives, that they wanted to "know their specific MLAs" doesn't wash now that I've thought further about it.

I would be happier if they had recommended a mixed-member-proportional system and I think it could have been done in such a way as to allow the "northerners" to "know their MLA" and more importantly, not to be rendered legislatively irrelevant by the far more populous south. Something along the following lines would have done the trick:

1. Use the current federal riding boundaries as a basis.
2. For ridings larger than some threshold size, split them in half (make the threshold large enough that this only happens for four or five über-rural ridings)
3. Each voter ranks all the "riding" candidates and votes for one list ("proportional").
4. "Riding" candidates are elected through STV as proposed.
5. "List candidates" are sent to Victoria based on popular vote.

I think that would serve all sides better than what is going to be presented to the electorate in May.

The only remaining question is, will eventual "correction" of the system be easier if the current proposal passes now or if it is defeated? The $64,0000,000 question...

To understand all is to forgive all?

Today I understand a bit more why Dubya was so intent on taking Saddam down. I'm reading A Pretext for War (which, by the way, contains a fair bit of overlap with the later material in Body of Secrets) and Bamford's exposition of the plot against Bush Sr. and the rest of the Bush family when they came to Kuwait just after Clinton's inauguration made things a trifle clearer.

I understand now much better why he would be so motivated, and he has my sympathy though not my approval. Until now I was thinking it was no more than a little boy finishing what his Daddy started -- another honourable motive, but not a mature enough one for a national leader. And vengeance on someone who tried to kill your family is, at least in the eyes of most, also an honourable motive. My quibbles with that view aside, I submit that fulfillment of a personal vendetta should not be the animus behind the actions of any national leader.

In short, I can understand his actions, even forgive him as an individual for his actions and their reasons -- as far as that goes, to understand all is to forgive all. Still, I cannot exonerate those actions nor acclaim their reasons as valid.

26,000,000 people should not be made to pay for their tyrant's plans. Perhaps they will be better off in the end without Saddam at the helm. But democracy doesn't come by the barrel of the gun. It's a long slow process, a crop that needs to be sown -- and often re-sown many times -- that originally took centuries: like the time between the Magna Carta and the last time the British monarch over-rode the under-democratic House of Commons (Queen Anne, 18th century) -- that even took half a century with a much higher toll of blood in France. China's odyssey on that road is not yet done (farewell, Zhao, man before your time, such as you are never welcome in your own time).

But what about the post-colonial independence binge? There were some success stories there, but not very many. How many decades will it take before a government that looks democratic from the outside will take root in the Middle East? Military action hasn't brought that date nearer, and that you may tie to.

Someone's thinking clearly!

The Emperor's New Clothes -- The Emperor's New Mind -- now The Emperor's -- er, Pentagon's -- New Map (and sorry, Chapters, but you just didn't list it -- I tried to be a loyal Canadian but you thwarted me, here). The interview with Mr. Barnett on Morning Edition today is quite educational and worth a listen -- follow the first link. I've requested the book from my local library already -- okay, so I'm cheap! :)

Headline puzzle anyone? (I apologize -- the former version was wrong. Sorry, folks, still learning...)

PGYPNALOFA SFXC ZGAXJ-ZODF YOHHOGB LGHHNA XANY GALFA

ZIR HVBFHDCH QGDHH EDGURG VCZD BSCVZDES

UNW GFQTUN ZCPZG RT NSPH RT PZFMQMAN ZMG MV BSRNPG TRF IQMA CRSQGZV

XGYXOG EIOXG QXIH EUOE DCOIZHY IHJXVXKPD IXKED 'OLLXYHGEOJ,' CIKSH QXGYD

TCT-KBMFZBSKVSCT ZACRMFVMBCR-RCGMBSTE QBOE TSDMQ XW YQP KPTMR

Solution to be posted in this space, 31-Jan or so.

Blogger-blogging by e-mail

What a disappointment! I sent some mail to my blogger and the lag-time in getting here completely defeats the purpose of using such a feature. I guess I'll be logging in instead of e-mailing here. I sent a test-post to my blog (now deleted since its content was so VERY pithy -- not) by e-mail on the 10th of January but didn't make it to my blog until this morning, the 14th. Not a very useful feature, I'm afraid. Oh well. I said this blog thing was something I wanted to "test". This time the test failed. sigh...

What is the Meatrix?

Okay, so it's old, but someone posted it past me again and it was worth watching again. Grain of salt not included.

Mostly Political

The longer things go on, the less I trust or like the American administration. Even Mr. Bush's show of grief at the bombing in Mosul rang hollow to me, and I couldn't avoid laughing at the irony of his promise to "finish the mission" in light of his aircraft-carrier-top appearance under the heading, "Mission Accomplished!"

In other news, yesterday I almost wished I was Polish. The initiative shown by one Polish minister to show up and "object" to the fishy but not ichthyological entry in the Fisheries and Agriculture Ministers' session renewed my wobbly faith in the ability of governments of-, by- and for-the-people to stand up to huge well-funded multi-national lobbies. Up with Poland!

The other thing I've found amusing was the opposition by the currently sitting but retiring MLA for my former provincial riding (we've moved since the last election) given to one of the candidates looking to replace her. First some background: governments in BC tend not to win byelections (called when someone must step down, up or aside in mid-term) unless the current government is hugely popular. The current Liberal (just not federal Liberal) government is not.

A byelection in a riding in neighbouring Surrey fell to the NDP, which whether you like the NDP or not is probably a good thing since it increased the opposition benches by 50%. The failed candidate there is gunning for Lynn Stephens (perceived to be) much safer seat. Ms. Stephens recently endorsed all the candidates (eight) seeking to replace her except that one. What reason did she give? "We need a local candidate. There are other ridings in Surrey she can seek nomination in."

Ah, the things that doomed-to-be-short-lived huge majorities bicker about. I chuckled.