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?